We have recently branched ScummVM 0.6.0, and are now entering the final testing phase. As such, we would be most happy if people could test the latest daily builds (or CVS build from tag 'branch-0-6-0' and report their results. We have already conducted preliminary testing of several games, but the following still have not been tested and should take priority: *V1 Maniac Mansion *V2 Maniac Mansion *V1 Zak McKracken *V2 Zak McKracken *EGA Indiana Jones 3 *VGA Indiana Jones 3 *EGA Monkey Island 1 *Monkey Island 2 *The Dig *Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey 3) Please report bugs in our bug tracker and successful completions of games on our General Forum. Thanks in advance for helping to shape up the next release of ScummVM!
What? We promised more frequent news updates? You lie! Prove it!... News archives you say? Pfffah. Um. We were hacked! We are nearing the final release of ScummVM 0.6.0, and there are just a few last minute bugs to fix. We're also waiting for a reply to an e-mail from [two](http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,1859/)[people](http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,1858/) whom have recently gone on an international jaunt, under the guise of 'work'. We have heard rumors they have been seen in San Francisco running around naked screaming "I'm working, I'm working". If spotted, approach with extreme caution, as they may be holidaying and dangerous. On a related, but more serious note, since the above pair are reasonably incommunicardo, we may be releasing ScummVM 0.6.0 without the previously promised freeware game, which will instead be released at a later stage. We will leave you now with the promised blatently stolen quote. There is no subliminal message enclosed. Honest. > Anyway, to answer your question, to get into the games industry, **b**reak into the Sony party at E3, walk aro**u**nd sa**y**ing "Online multi**p**layer i**s** the future," and if nobod**y** has hired you by 11:00 pm, sleep with the first person you hear speaking either Japanese or French. Worked for me! \- Tim S**ch**afer, as seen **on**[DoubleFine](http://www.doublefine.com/news.htm), replying to **a** n**ut**ty fan**s** e-mail. Finally, Ender, your humble (yet lazy) news poster and co-project leader would like to let any Sony employees who happen to read this site know that he believes Online multiplayer is the future. We're not even going to touch the Sam and Max 2 thing. (Boo! Hiss!) Stay tuned for more zany and space-filling content-less news posts in the future!
ScummVM 0.6.0 will be released in the next 48 hours, along with our super special yet not really all that secret surprise! Keep your eyes on this page!
**In other news, ScummVM will be featured on TechTV's Call for Help show, on the 19th of March as Free File of the Day.** The ScummVM project is pleased to announce the immediate release of ScummVM 0.6.0. ScummVM is a graphic adventure game interpreter designed to allow users to play many classic adventure game titles on various computer systems; (Linux, Windows 2000/XP, \*BSD, Mac OS X, PocketPC/Handheld PC, Palm, Dreamcast and more) Version 0.6.0 brings with it a new milestone in ScummVM history, with all LucasArts/LucasFilm SCUMM adventure titles now being supported. We are also proud to announce in conjunction with ScummVM 0.6.0 the release of the classic adventure game 'Flight of the Amazon Queen' (originally available for the Amiga and DOS) as freeware. The ScummVM team would like to thank the authors Steve Stamatiadis and John Passfield for providing the team with the source code to this classic game, and allowing us to release it. So, what's new? ScummVM 0.6.0 includes, as usual, many bugfixes in all supported game engines. There have also been dramatic fixes and improvements in the area of sound and music, as well as a greatly improved game management/options screen and two new graphics modes (HQ2x and HQ3x). Most importantly, we have also added new support for the following games: *The classic V1 versions of the original LucasArts SCUMM games Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and the LucasArts SCUMM game 'Full Throttle' *Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2. Many thanks to Revolution for providing us with the source-code to these games. *Support for Flight of the Amazon Queen. Thanks to Steve and John for providing us with the source code to this game, and permitting its release as freeware. ScummVM 0.6.0, the two freeware games Flight of the Amazon Queen and Beneath a Steel Sky, as well as converted cutscenes required for playing Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2 may be downloaded from the [Download Page](/downloads/)
A few people have asked for further details on the TechTV segment featuring ScummVM. Well, you can read the online article intended to compliment the segment on the [TechTV Website](http://www.techtv.com/callforhelp/freefile/story/0,24330,3640615,00.html). ScummVM will be shown as 'Free File of the Day' on the 'Call for Help' program at 3PM EST on Friday the 19th of March, and again at 9AM Eastern on Monday the 22nd of March. Don't know how to watch TechTV? I'm told those of you in America can tune into DirecTV channel 354, Dish Network channel #191, or locate the cable channel by following the instructions on [tv.yahoo](http://tv.yahoo.com/grid?) Or, if you just happen to have a C-band dish in the general vicinity of GE Americom Satcom C4 at the time of the show, it's on transponder 12 at 135 degrees west, 40 degrees elevation. Those lucky Australians subscribed to Foxtel Digital can also watch the program. I have to try and find somebody with FTD so I can watch it myself.
April 1st, THE INTERNET: The [FreeSCI](http://freesci.org/), [Sarien](http://sarien.sourceforge.net/) and [ScummVM](http://www.scummvm.org/) teams today announced the formation of CABAL (Coalesced 'Adventures beyond Architecture' League), a universal adventure game interpreter. This new project will unite the strengths and capabilities of the projects involved, creating what the project members believe will be a revolution for adventure game fans around the globe. When asked about the relevance of CABAL for the worldwide adventure gaming market, ScummVM project lead Max Horn commented that "\[with\] the market for adventure titles waning, we believe that the formation of a project with the explicit goal of running every adventure game ever released will infuse it with new life." FreeSCI maintainer Lars Skovlund added that "this will certainly cause an upheaval in the gaming world. Adventure game fans around the world, rejoice!". In addition to supporting LucasArts' SCUMM games (including famous titles such as "Monkey Island", "Indiana Jones" and "Sam and Max"), Sierra's SCI and AGI lines ("King's Quest", "Leisure Suit Larry", "Space Quest"...), and other games already supported by the retrospective engines, the newly united team plans to continue to add further titles to their already impressive list. Some of the juicy new modules include: *An Infocom module (based on the [Frotz Z-machine interpreter](http://www.cs.csubak.edu/~dgriffi/proj/frotz/)), so you can now play your favorite text adventures anywhere you go! *[Exult](http://exult.sourceforge.net) is being merged in as a plugin, allowing Ultima 7 fans around the world to play their favorite game on the many platforms already supported by the CABAL component engines - including Palm/PocketPC PDAs and the Dreamcast. *Revolution software has offered the source-code for Broken Sword 3, which will be added to the titles supported by the upcoming CABAL3D project - alongside with Grim Fandango and, possibly, Ultima IX (negotiations are ongoing). *Support for the SNES games Final Fantasy IV through VI (Japanese numbering, i.e. FF2/FF3 according to US releases) is planned for sometime this Fall. Whilst these are not strictly adventure games, the storyline and plots in this series are more imaginative than any 'action adventure' title published in recent years. Offers by various companies, including Microsoft and Amiga International, to buy out the team have been gently but firmly declined by the leads of the joint project. "We know that we could earn a lot of money from this, but we are idealists and at this time we have the goal to reform the worlds adventure market. Once that is achieved, we can reconsider about making some money out of this."
CABAL team splits over fundamental design issues After yesterdays ground-breaking announcement, we are sad to announce the immediate disbandment of the CABAL team. Over the last several days there has been heated debate regarding several important design issues, and current tension in the team has risen to an insurmountable level. "It's really unfortunate", Max Horn, senior developer on ScummVM and Exult, was quoted as saying, "but \[former FreeSCI maintainer\] Christoph \[Reichenbach\]'s ideas of aligning curly braces with the left-hand side of function declarations while appending them to the end of the line for 'while' and 'for' loops did not make any sense at all." The latter replied by pointing out that "using anything but tabs for indentation is calling for trouble." Claudio Matsuoka, of the Sarien project, pointed out his disappointment and noted that he didn't see much of a point in trying to co-operate with people entirely incapable of reaching agreements on such trivial issues. "I mean, we haven't even resolved the entire EMACS vs. vi dispute, and they're already at each other's throats again." James Brown, another senior developer on the ScummVM project, sadly announced that he was laughed out of the project meer hours before a decision to split was made. "They just said I didn't belong, since I prefer nano as a editor..." he admitted.
This is just a quick update to let everybody know we're still alive. Work on ScummVM is progressing as per usual, and we intend to release ScummVM 0.6.1 shortly. ScummVM 0.6.1 will contain several bugfixes for various games, as well as several sound and music enhancements for later SCUMM games (Full Throttle, The Dig, Curse of Monkey Island). Also, followers of CVS may have noticed that support for Another World was recently added. This provoked quite a bit of argument within the ScummVM team as to whether this is considered an adventure and within ScummVMs goals. After much debate, the engine author (cyx) decided that it would be more convenient to continue the project seperate from ScummVM. It has now been removed, and future information and development will occur as part of the [RAW](http://membres.lycos.fr/cyxdown/raw/) project. To prevent any doomsday predictions, I should also point out that he remains a member of the ScummVM team.
ScummVM 0.6.1 is out, and can now be grabbed from our download page! Among the usual changes, ScummVM should now run natively on 64-bit machines -- something we actually forgot to mention in the NEWS file. And you know what they say: "To save the world, you have to push a few old ladies down the stairs." So we made a mother-load of fixes in this release. Some of the wonderful things you will no LONGER see in ScummVM include: *Glitches using an Ogg Vorbis talkie file in some games *Crashes on 64-bit machines *Crashes when saving to an invalid directory in Broken Sword 1 *Lots of sound glitches in Curse of Monkey Island, Full Throttle and The Dig *Crashes in some international versions of Simon the Sorcerer *... and lots of other annoying bugs! So don't delay, download today. Downloads are not yet available for all supported ports, such as non-ARM PocketPCs and the HandheldPC binaries. These should become available within the next week.
Well, one of those "Small Yet Important" coding mistakes has cropped up in ScummVM 0.6.1. A copy-and-paste error in the 'Edit Game' screen may result in people not being able to save a game. The mistake involves the new 'Paths' tab, which allows for easier editing of game paths. Unfortunately, the 'Extra Path' field on this screen is accidentally saved as directory to use for saved games, instead of correct field below it. This was noticed and fixed in the experimental CVS version, but the fix was mistakenly left out of the ScummVM 0.6.1 release. If you encounter this glitch, the recommended work around is to set the Extra Path to the saved game directory. ScummVM 0.6.1b will be released soon to correct this issue.
