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We are very pleased to announce today the start of the testing period of two single-game engines: _Kingdom: The Far Reaches_ and _Escape From Hell_!
[_Kingdom_](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Kingdom:_The_Far_Reaches), was developed and released by Interplay in 1995. Only the DOS version of the game (available on [gog.com](https://www.gog.com/en/game/kingdom_the_far_reaches?pp=22d200f8670dbdb3e253a90eee5098477c95c23d)) is supported. It's a cartoon FMV game, with an inventory, in which you have to guide Lathan Kandor through a medieval world, discovering the magic spells and the items required to defeat an evil wizard. [_Escape From Hell_](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Escape_from_Hell), was developed for Electronic Arts by the game veterans Richard Seaborne and Alan Murphy and was released in 1990. You play Alan in this keyboard-only Role Playing Game and visit Hell, looking for your girlfriend who was accidentally teleported there. Both games use heavily hardcoded logic which is error prone and requires a lot of testing, so we need your feedback more than ever as they are both incompletely tested. There is sadly only one known demo for [Kingdom](https://downloads.scummvm.org/frs/demos/kingdom/). Support for the Windows and Mac versions of _Kingdom_ may come later! Please [contact us](https://www.scummvm.org/contact/) if you have some other demos of both games. To play any of these games, you will need a [daily development build](https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/#daily). As always, please submit your bug reports to our [issue tracker](https://bugs.scummvm.org/) and please take some [screenshots](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Screenshots) along the way! |
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| 20231110.title | ||
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The teenage detective returns!
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| 20231110.content | ||
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Put your sleuthing caps on, detectives—it’s time to solve some mysteries! We are proud to announce that a whole batch of HeR Interactive’s Nancy Drew games are now ready for public testing:
In [_Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger_](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Nancy_Drew:_Stay_Tuned_for_Danger), a soap opera star needs your help in uncovering who is behind a series of death threats that sound a little too real for comfort. [_Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion_](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Nancy_Drew:_Message_in_a_Haunted_Mansion) has you helping out with repairs in a Victorian mansion. However, a series of strange accidents, plus some murmurings of a ghost haunting, quickly threaten to turn this renovation into an investigation. In [_Nancy Drew: Treasure in the Royal Tower_](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Nancy_Drew:_Treasure_in_the_Royal_Tower) a failed ski vacation at an eccentric castle with even more eccentric inhabitants soon turns into a quest to uncover a lost piece of the history of the French Revolution. And if you’re looking for something more thrilling, in [_Nancy Drew: The Final Scene_](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Nancy_Drew:_The_Final_Scene), you will find yourself racing against the clock to find your kidnapped friend, while also saving a historical theater with more than a fair share of secrets from demolition. The games are available for purchase through [HeR Interactive’s website](https://www.herinteractive.com/shop-games/all-games/) or [Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=nancy+drew) (Stay Tuned for Danger is not available on Steam, however). Or if you already own a CD copy of the games, their English and Russian variants will also work. To play them with ScummVM, you will need a [daily development build](https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/#daily). As always, if you encounter any issues, please submit a bug report to our [issue tracker](https://bugs.scummvm.org/). |
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| 20231206.title | ||
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GOG.com Affiliation Links for ScummVM are no longer supported
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| 20231206.content | ||
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For many years, the GOG.com affiliate program has been a great way to support the project. By using our affiliate links to buy your favorite games, you granted us a small commission from GOG.com – without having to spend more than the original price.
Earlier this year, GOG.com announced the discontinuation of its old affiliate program. Instead of using a simple referral link, they are now using two external affiliation networks that contain cross-site tracking, as considered by many ad blockers. Since we have been affiliated with GOG.com since 2009, we were able to use the legacy referral links for a couple of months after they initially discontinued them. Unfortunately, our affiliate links were put to rest effective November 22nd, 2023. Since we don't feel comfortable that you would have to use external affiliation networks just to support the project, and because tracking users is against our project policies, we decided not to join the new program. We still value GOG.com as an excellent source for legally purchasing games supported by ScummVM. Even though we are not affiliated with them anymore, we'll continue to support their releases, e.g. by adding and updating the game data files' signatures for the ScummVM supported games that are available for purchase from GOG.com in our detection database and providing links to their releases in [our list of available games](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Where_to_get_the_games). Thank you GOG.com and everybody who used our affiliate link for your support over the last 14 years! |
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| 20231214.title | ||
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End of year Director roundup
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| 20231214.content | ||
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The end of the year is almost upon us, along with a new release of ScummVM. So here's a quick update for one of the more ambitious sub-projects that has been percolating along in the background: Macromedia Director support! For those who aren't aware, Macromedia Director was a popular framework used for thousands of games, educational titles, catalogues, art pieces, and other multimedia works.
## New Games For Testing First off, the upcoming 2.8.0 release will have some new supported games, and we need your help testing them! * _Alice: An Interactive Museum_ * _Ape Odyssey_ * _Classical Cats_ * _Gadget: Invention, Travel and Adventure_ * _The Cute Machine_ * _The Dark Eye_ * _Wrath of the Gods_ You will need the data files from the games' original install media, and a [daily build](https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/#daily) of ScummVM. For Macintosh editions, you will need to run the disc images through [Dumper Companion](https://www.scummvm.org/dumper-companion) in order to extract a complete copy of the files. In the case of The Dark Eye, you will also need the files created by the installer. As always, if you run into issues, please let us know on the [issue tracker](https://bugs.scummvm.org/). If your favorite isn't in the supported list, don't despair! ScummVM can open Director titles from 1995 and earlier, so grab the latest [daily build](https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/#daily) and give it a try. Titles released after 1995 tend to use Director versions that aren't supported yet. If you get stuck, reach out on the [issue tracker](https://bugs.scummvm.org/) and we can try and help. If you've encountered a Director title that isn't recognized by ScummVM, that's great! Please let us know on the [issue tracker](https://bugs.scummvm.org/) so the title can be added to the detection list. ## Engine versions As of the time of writing, ScummVM can detect **1595** different titles based on Director, with the following counts by Director version: | D0 | D1 | D2 | D3 | D4 | D5 | D6 | D7 | D8 | D9 | D10 | D11 | |----|----|----|-----|-----|-----|-----|----|-----|----|-----|-----| | 12 | 1 | 14 | 288 | 602 | 262 | 194 | 97 | 138 | 31 | 36 | 4 | ScummVM 2.8.0 will be the first release to include preliminary support for the D5 version of Director! A lot of work has gone into overhauling the codebase to support multiple cast libraries, however there is still plenty of work to be done adding Lingo functions and Xtras. Adding support for a new Director version is a tricky process. First we need to check for any changes to the movie file format, then add in any new engine and Lingo features, and finally start working through issues in a bunch of candidate games. Because of the difficulty of keeping track of facts vs. assumptions, we only enable features for an engine version once they have been confirmed with testing. This is why D6 and higher games will not open at all, even if the code we have would somewhat work. Support for the D2, D3 and D4 versions of Director has steadily improved. We are building up a suite of unit tests, both for Lingo and for the various drawing modes in the renderer. Most of the remaining bugs are related to undefined or incidental behavior: consider how two types in Lingo are compared, or the precise order that events are processed in, or how functions respond when you pass them nonsense data? All of these things are relied upon by thousands of Director products! And ScummVM must support all of them as closely as possible. ## XLibs Macromedia provided a C API with Director, which proved to be very popular for adding new engine features. There are hundreds of XObject and Xtra libraries in circulation, and each has to be reverse engineered and added as code to ScummVM. As of the time of writing, we have added support for **63** of these libraries. A common use case is video; Director includes the ability to play back QuickTime videos as a sprite, but computers of the day would struggle with the added overhead of Director's renderer if the video resolution was larger than a postage stamp. To work around this, several XLibs exist to play back video as an accelerated overlay. Quite a few D3 and D4 titles are missing video playback due to this type of XLib, and we plan on creating a common method of supporting these. The good news is that most uncommon XLibs did only one or two things, and are pretty easy to add initial support for. Part of the XLib format is a list of docstrings explaining each of the functions; there is a script in `/devtools` which can turn these docstrings into stubbed C++ code, saving a lot of hassle. --- That's about it! We have some very dedicated volunteers scouring every corner of the globe for obscure Director titles and testing them; if that sounds like your bag, you can visit them in the #engine-director channel of the [ScummVM Discord](https://discord.gg/4cDsMNtcpG). Until next time! |
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| 20231230.title | ||
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ScummVM 2.8.0: Mysteries, Mammoths, and Muppets
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We are proud to announce the last release of the year 2023. Please welcome ScummVM 2.8.0 – “Mysteries, Mammoths, and Muppets”.
## New games The team was quite busy working on new engines and enhancing existing ones. The list of supported games grew noticeably, and we now support these additions: * _Adibou 1_ * _Classical Cats_ * _The Dark Eye_ * _Dark Side_ * _Escape From Hell_ * _Gadget: Invention Travel and Adventure_ * _Gobliiins 5_ * _The Excavation of Hob's Barrow_ * _Kingdom: The Far Reaches_ * _Might and Magic Book One_ * _Muppet Treasure Island_ * _Nancy Drew: The Final Scene_ * _Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion_ * _Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill_ * _Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger_ * _Nancy Drew: Treasure in the Royal Tower_ * _Primordia_ * _Reah: Face the Unknown_ * _Schizm: Mysterious Journey_ * _Shardlight_ * _Strangeland_ * _Syberia_ and _Syberia II_ (macOS versions only) * _Technobabylon_ * _The Vampire Diaries_ * _Whispers of a Machine_ * _Wrath of the Gods_ and four other Director titles. * 14 AGS titles by _Stranga_ and _Cloak and Dagger_ All together, we’ve introduced 50 new games and five new engines. ## New platforms We are happy to see the RetroArch port being properly rewritten, and the port is now part of our source code. The Atari port has also been redone from scratch and now talks natively to the hardware, skipping SDL as an intermediate layer. That made many more games playable on the platform. The Atari FireBee port is still using the SDL library, though. ## Speed-optimized graphics Thanks to the work of one of the GSoC participants this year, Wyatt Radkiewicz (a.k.a. eklipsed), we now use CPU-specific SIMD instructions such as SSE, AVX2, and NEON for drawing graphics in the AGS engine and in some generic routines. This led to 4-14x speedup in drawing for many cases. ## Networking games This year, we merged with the [Backyard Sports Online](https://backyardsports.online/) project, which made it possible to play _Backyard Football_, _Backyard Baseball 2001_ and _Backyard Football 2002_ over the internet with other humans. Also, the _Moonbase Commander_ support is in active playtesting mode, though not yet ready for prime time. ## Notable engine enhancements The AGS engine has been brought up to version 3.6.0.53 from upstream. For many engines, we added support for numerous Chinese and Japanese game variants. Believe it or not, we implemented a lot of native GUI dialogs for SCUMM games, bringing them closer to the original experience. We also rewrote the sound code for the SCUMM Humongous Entertainment games, making them flawless. We performed a deep review of the _Broken Sword 1_ game engine, implementing some small, previously unnoticed things like scene transitions, in-game menu peculiarities, accurate fonts, idle animations, and more. Now, the game is absolutely faithful to the original. ---- The full [Release Notes](https://downloads.scummvm.org/frs/scummvm/2.8.0/ReleaseNotes.html) contain a comprehensive summary of the changes and enhancements; it is about 3 pages long with this release. On [our downloads page](https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/), you can find the downloads for various platforms. If you are using Windows, macOS, or either the Ubuntu Snap or Flatpack packages, the autoupdater will assist you in updating to ScummVM 2.8.0. Android port will follow up very shortly, as we are currently in the Open Beta phase. Play the games, and enjoy ScummVM! _Ah, one more thing…_ ScummVM is coming to [the Apple App Store for iPhones and iPads](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scummvm/id6446184412). Please leave us with good reviews and report any problems on our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/4cDsMNtcpG), which includes an [iOS support channel](https://discord.com/channels/581224060529148060/1149456560922316911). |
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| 20240113.title | ||
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Lets Do the Time Warp Again, Or Burger Chow Awaits
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| 20240113.content | ||
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English
A poor test subject is doomed to repeat an hour over and over again. Trying desperately to prove his species worth as something better than merely meat to be ground into intergalactic fast food burgers.
The ScummVM Team is pleased to announce full support for _Orion Burger_, the classic game by Sanctuary Woods. The engine also adds a few niceties that the original didn't have, such as mouse wheel handling, and using the spacebar to skip walk animations - something the original didn't do properly. Help us test the game by grabbing a [daily build](https://scummvm.org/downloads/#daily). Read through our [testing guidelines](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Release_Testing#Testing_Guidelines). The game's logic was all hardcoded, so we really need people to try all sorts of weird actions, and make sure the game handles everything correctly and matches the original implementation. And please take some [screenshots](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Screenshots) along the way. Now, luck be with you. And remember, with the aliens cheating on the tests they set up for you, this will be no easy task. |
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| 20240310.title | ||
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ScummVM has been accepted to the Google Summer of Code 2024
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For the 17th time, ScummVM has again been accepted for the [Google Summer of Code](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com) program this summer.
The program intends to bring new contributors into open source projects. In the most recent two years this has included both students and non-students as eligible candidates for participation. Like last year, participants can apply for working on either short tasks (about 175 hours of work), or large tasks (about 350 hours of work). The coding period typically runs from start of June through August, but there is some flexibility which allows participants to have longer time frames if they are unable to work full time through the summer. ScummVM is looking for people interested in participating in GSoC with us. A list of suggested projects can be found on [this page](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Summer_of_Code/GSoC_Ideas_2024), but we are also open to your own ideas as well. Please provide the [required information in your application](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=GSoC_Application) before submitting. We also strongly encourage you to join our [Discord server](https://discord.gg/4cDsMNtcpG), in the #scummvm-gsoc channel. This allows you to engage with our mentors and the rest of the team, to get advice about how to get involved with the project, as well as writing your application. Based on our previous 16 years of experience with GSoC, we have put together a [Google Summer of Code miniportal](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Summer_of_Code) to help you get started. Looking forward to hearing from you! |
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| 20240331.title | ||
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Please welcome ScummVM 2.8.1: Oh MMy!
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| 20240331.content | ||
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Oh MMy — a new ScummVM release!
Please welcome the first ScummVM release of the year: ScummVM 2.8.1. ScummVM 2.8.1 is a maintenance release mainly focused on fixing bugs that were uncovered since our last stable release. This update includes upgrades for the following engines: AGI, AGS, GRIM, SWORD2, MM (which is now enabled — yes, we really skipped it in 2.8.0 by accident), mTropolis, NANCY, SCUMM, TWINE, Ultima, and V-Cruise. The Android, Atari and macOS ports received multiple bug fixes, mostly for improving overall stability and preventing some crashes we’ve seen under certain circumstances. The detailed list of improvements is available [here](https://downloads.scummvm.org/frs/scummvm/2.8.1/ReleaseNotes.html). As always, you can find the latest release [on our Downloads page](https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/). Go grab it while it's hot — enjoy! |
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| 20240407.title | ||
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When facing the Curse of the Sun God, sunscreen won't save you
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_Total Eclipse_, a real-time, curse-breaking, 3D adventure (with a dash of Indiana Jones flair), is ready for public testing!
Originally unleashed by Incentive Software Ltd. in 1988, [_Total Eclipse_](https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Total_Eclipse) added yet another groundbreaking title to their repertoire of revolutionary games. Step into the shoes of a heroic archeologist on October 26, 1930, as a total solar eclipse akin to the one happening today over North America looms over Cairo. Knowing of the Ardognus prophecy, created by the powerful high priest Hahmid III, you must find and destroy the hidden shrine devoted to Ra before the eclipse occurs. Embark on this exciting journey packed with a trusty gun for blasting through doors or dispatching undead mummies; a compass to guide you through a treacherous pyramid; a wristwatch to track the precious time left; and a water bottle to fight dehydration (you’re only human after all). Can you solve this ancient mystery within 120 minutes and avert catastrophe, or will Rah's wrath obliterate the moon? Our modern reimplementation of the Freescape engine features graphics using hardware mode (OpenGL) at arbitrary resolution. The initial _Total Eclipse_ support includes DOS (EGA/CGA modes), ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC. More releases are coming at a later date. Additionally, there are [three playable demos](https://downloads.scummvm.org/frs/demos/freescape/) if you want to test the game. Please [contact us](https://www.scummvm.org/contact/) if you have some other release or demo. To play any of these supported releases, you will need a [daily development build](https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/#daily). As always, please submit your bug reports to our [issue tracker](https://bugs.scummvm.org/). |
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| 20240413.title | ||
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A walk in the park with ScummVM and Thimbleweeds
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| 20240413.content | ||
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English
1987: In the small town of Thimbleweed Park, two officers-a-reno are investigating a murder.
The body, still in the process-a-reno of being pixelated, lies in the river. The agents meet a video game developer, a mysterious clown who never takes off his make-up, and many other strange characters. You can purchase the game in your favorite place: [Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/569860), [GOG](https://www.gog.com/game/thimbleweed_park), [Epic Game Store](https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/thimbleweed-park), [Xbox](https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/store/p/Thimbleweed-Park/9NBLGGH40DCM), [Switch](https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/thimbleweed-park-switch), [iOS](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/thimbleweed-park/id1228969539?mt=8), [PS4](https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/thimbleweed-park-ps4/), [Android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.terribletoybox.thimbleweedparkandroid&hl=en). You're invited to try out this adventure with ScummVM. First, download the [daily build](https://scummvm.org/downloads/#daily) and enjoy! If you encounter any bugs or oddities, please report them on [our bugtracker](https://bugs.scummvm.org). |
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| 20240505.title | ||
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Google Summer of Code 2024 - drum roll please!
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