It's been almost two months since we started our website design contest, and I know some of you have been eagerly awaiting the outcome. Since the team couldn't quite decide on who should be winner, we let you, our dear users, have a word in the outcome of this epic battle. And finally, we are happy to let it be known that after about 1400 votes we do have a clear winner! And it is... [draven](http://www.scummvm.org/poll/draven.jpg), with a strong majority of 55% of all votes! Congratulations, draven! So what now? We'll be settling the issue of the prize(s) for the winning entry in the next few days, and start working on implementing the new design. We consider doing some further tweaks to it (like, some people suggested to actually use the logo of jeanm's submission; and we have some other ideas up our sleeves). This may take some time, partially because it's a holiday time for a lot of us. So I am afraid you'll have to be a bit more patient. Good things need time :-).
We are proud to announce the release of ScummVM 0.7.0, right in time for Christmas Eve! While not quite as ground breaking as some of our previous major releases, this version sports some notable improvements and additions, amongst them: *Added preliminary support for 26 Humongous Entertainment titles *Added support for FLAC (lossless) encoded audio files *Added native support for Macintosh versions of some SCUMM games -- this means the 'rescumm' tool is now mostly obsolete, and you can now play those games directly from the original CD *Added smooth horizontal scrolling for The Dig, Full Throttle and COMI (matching the original engine) *Added support for compressed speech and music in Broken Sword 1 and 2 *And as usual, we fixed lots and lots of bugs A link to the release notes and a more detailed list of changes can be found over on the [downloads page](/downloads/), along with the download links. Updating to this latest and greatest version is strongly recommended to all our users.
First off: once more a Happy New Year to all of you out there! We just wanted to let you know that since the release of ScummVM 0.7.0 a week ago, a few more binaries have arrived at your [download page](/downloads/). We now offer binaries for the following systems: *Windows *Mac OS X *Linux: Fedora Core *Solaris 8 *PalmOS *PocketPC (WinCE) *Dreamcast *BeOS ... and hopefully the Debian package will be ready soon. That's already quite nice, but more never hurts. For example, it would be nice to have packages for Mandrake, Slackware, Solaris x86, or your favorite toaster. So if you are interested in joining us as a packager, please [contact us](http://www.scummvm.org/contact.php). And now for something completely different: Taking a look at our [project statistics page](https://sourceforge.net/project/stats/index.php?report=last_30&group_id=37116), you might notice that we have now more than 10,000,000 page views (accumulated over the total life time of ScummVM as a SourceForge.net project), and have served more than 1.1 million downloads since our conception. Not too shabby, we think :-)
I guess it's time for the usual, regular, monthly sign of life, *"Yes, we are alive. No, we still won't merge with FreeSCI. Yes, you can donate your Ferrari to me, I might reconsider then."* As usual, lots of small and big things happened, we might post some info in the not too distant future. In the meantime, I'd like to set a spotlight on a small but nifty detail, maybe it'll be of interest/use to some of you...: Some time ago, we added a [list of boot params](http://www.scummvm.org/documentation.php?view=bootparam) to our documentation section. Maybe you have already noticed it, if not, check it out. In case you don't know what a boot param is (shame on you!), I actually tried to explain it [on that page](http://www.scummvm.org/documentation.php?view=bootparam), so, have a look anyway ;-). If you think the explanation is not clear enough, drop me a line and tell me how to improve it. And if you really want to feel cool, you can even contribute a bit here and help us out by filling in some of the gaps in our boot param tables. Once again, see [the boot param page](http://www.scummvm.org/documentation.php?view=bootparam) for more information.
We now have an extensive list of boot params for Fate of Atlantis on our [boot params page](http://www.scummvm.org/documentation.php?view=bootparam). Many thanks to Laura Abbott who spent a lot of time to compose this list and then generously donated it to us. I am sure this will help us working on FOA issues in the future. In other news, Robert Kelsen has volunteered to work as a SlackWare packager, and has started by providing a [SlackWare binary of 0.7.0](https://downloads.scummvm.org/frs/scummvm/0.7.0/scummvm-0.7.0-slack-i486-1.tgz). Way to go, Rob! So, apparently, some people actually read our news section... I am astonished ;-). Thanks to all of you out there who contribute to ScummVM by providing us with useful feedback, and the occasional praise -- both really help keeping up interest in working on ScummVM!
We are pleased to announce the release of ScummVM 0.7.1. This update concentrates on fixing bugs from 0.7.0, especially in the Windows Mobile port (PocketPC / Smartphone). For more information check out the [release notes](https://downloads.scummvm.org/frs/scummvm/0.7.1/ReleaseNotes). As usual, you can download it from our [downloads page](/downloads/). On an unrelated side note, we received even more [boot params](http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Boot_Params) from you, our dear users, in the past two weeks. Many thanks to those who contributed!
Although it will not be part of the official ScummVM program, some of our team members have been working on a little easter surprise for you all. Unfortunately, we're running a bit late. Expect something very sweet (especially for Linux and Mac people) soon...
Apart from previous hints, [more information](http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Dragon) is now available about the ScummVM project [Dragon](http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Dragon). Please note that Dragon is still very much an unreleased Work In Progress, but things have just started working and we're expecting to announce more about this project over the coming week.
On the downside, we really need to post news more regularly. On the upside, we have accumulated a lot to tell you about: **New Ports** *Ports are important for us -- that much we have in common with the good ol' pirates from Monkey Island. Of course in our case it's not the wet kind (with ships and stuff), but rather ports of ScummVM to different architectures. On that front, we have some pretty nice things coming up for the next ScummVM release, including an official PlayStation 2 port, as well as the AmigaOS port now being official, too. And with some luck maybe even the often requested EPOC/Symbian port will finally be a regular part of ScummVM (take a look at the relevant [patch tracker item](https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1188433&group_id=37116&atid=418822) if you are curious). **New games** *We added a new game engine, this time for Coktel's Gobliiins series. So far, Gobliiins 1 is completable. Work on the other parts (Gobliins 2, Goblins 3, and "The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble") has not yet begun, but at least Gobliins 2 seems to be similar to part 1, so we hope to have that in the foreseeable future, too. Regarding the other parts, we'll see... *Thanks to the hard work of some dedicated people we also finally support the (in)famous NES version of Maniac Mansion. Wow, that should be about the last LucasArts SCUMM game we were not supporting ... ;-) *Support for Humongous Entertainment's kids games is progressing well, the following titles can be completed with the current development version of ScummVM: *Freddi Fish 1 - 4 *Pajama Sam 1 & 2 *Putt-Putt (several titles) *Spy Fox 1 & 2 *Several arcade titles **New thumbs** *No, I didn't undergo plastic surgery (although another pair of thumbs sounds tempting...). Rather, we added support for thumbnails in SCUMM savegames. Pretty cool stuff, click [here for a screenshot](/data/news/20050511.png). Not too shabby, we think. And we actually have more really cool stuff in the works, stay tuned.
Due to a local space/time vortex which will in the future be located near Earth, the meaning of 'regularly' may be in flux. Stay tuned for further updates. And now, to current news: We're happy to report that Ron Gilbert, co-creator of Maniac Mansion and SCUMM, made a nice reference to ScummVM on his website ([Grumpy Gamer](http://grumpygamer.com/). Or so we hear from [Slashdot](http://games.slashdot.org/games/05/08/03/1641224.shtml?tid=207&tid=202&tid=203), which seems to have brought his site to its knees :) Please note, however, that the Nintendo DS port mentioned is not yet an official or supported port. So please don't contact us about it, because we can't help :) The contents of Rons latest post has been quoted in [this blogspot post](http://humaninbox.blogspot.com/2005/08/ron-gilbert-supports-illegitimate.html). For the record, we've given Ron the nod in our readme.txt since Wed Apr 17 17:31:05 2002 (UTC). We're also calling for testers to report problems with ['Inherit the Earth'](http://www.wyrmkeep.com/ite/) (details and purchase information behind the link!). Please use the bug tracker, and set the correct game under Group. Please only test with the **latest** CVS version. Thanks!
