Hey all. I (Ender) am interested in finding out if any ScummVM users will be present at Linux.conf.au '03 here in Perth... if you'll be there, drop a post in the forum. If there are a few people going we might get together for Pizza or something afterwards, or maybe chuck together a last minute spontaneous Classic Gaming BOF (if somebody else wants to organise it, I'm a terrible person for that kind of stuff :) Blonk.
If you're a Linux user, Happy Penguin are running a [series of polls](http://happypenguin.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=17) to determine the best games in a ton of categories. Go vote for your favourite emulators, what you think the most promising project is, et cetera... Hopefully some of those votes might even be for us :)
In a few cases, we do not (yet) have new binaries of ScummVM and/or the ScummVM tools for some platforms. In these cases, we still have older versions around, for your convenience.
Over at the Linux Game Tome (http://happypenguin.org), ScummVM has been voted [Best Emulator](http://happypenguin.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=549). Thanks to anybody who voted for us. In other news, Curse of Monkey Island support is stabilizing. While there are still a number of small graphical glitches, currently we are down to two known gameplay-critical bugs and a number of other 'inconveniences' and cases of incorrect behavior. We hope to be able to announce Curse of Monkey Island completable very soon. A lot of people have been asking where we are going from here. Here is a brief (very subject to change!) guide to our next few targets: *February 2003: Curse of Monkey Island completable *Feb - Mar 2003: Regression testing/bugfixes for other supported games *Feb - Mar 2003: Completion of the Launcher functionality (tabbed option dialogs, etc) *Early March 03: CVS Freeze, Regression testing, 0.4.0 release *March onwards: V1/V2 game support (Maniac Mansion, non-FmTowns Zak, EGA Loom, etc.) As usual, this is but a rough guideline depending on both progress and free time for our developers. If you want to help, and know how to use CVS and a compiler... either fix bugs, or regression test! We are very much looking for people to test CVS with games other than ComI and look for critical bugs that were not present in 0.3.0b, then attempt to try different versions of CVS and locate at least the day when the bug started occurring. This allows us to more easily determine what changes have caused problems, without spending weeks blindly guessing. Needless to say, if you find a critical bug that IS also present in 0.3.0b, check for a bug report. If one isn't present, please submit one!
Work has been slow lately, but recently with the addition of Super Dooper Secret Project Number Six, development has started to pick back up with a lot of code cleanup and some fairly important bugfixes. Expect a new release eventually. In other news, there has been a surge in interest of a Playstation 2 port again. I (Ender) am quite willing to do one if people donate at least US$75 (see that little button under the menu) to purchase a modchip. It shouldn't take long, and one of you - our loyal users - has already volunteered to install it for me if I do manage to obtain one. If we find there is enough interest (which will obviously depend on the donation status :), we will start an official port ASAP.
Last Friday, March 14th, our fellow ScummVM developer and friend, Felix Jakschitsch (known to many under his nickname *yot*), committed suicide at the young age of 19. We are completely shocked by this, and do not know or understand what drove him into this. It is a sorrowful world in which a cheerful, intelligent and helpful man is put in a situation in which he sees no other way to escape than taking his own life. We are sad to lose our valued friend. He contributed important work to ScummVM, including much of the Zak256 support. His loss is felt deeply by all of us, and we extend our condolence to his family and close friends, whose grief we share. If you want to leave a message to his friends and family, there is a [guestbook available](http://www.cbg2003.de/). Also here is a news paper article telling more details (use babelfish if you don't speak german). Felix, we miss you and will never forget you.
The following builds are bleeding edge development versions made directly from our source repository. That means that they received no proper testing (usually no testing at all) and that any number of things may be broken in them. For example, they might corrupt your config file, crash frequently or might not even start. Use them at your own risk!