This release is mainly to support SCI testing and give users a chance to preview updates to some of my ScummVM backends.

These releases are build straight from the mainline trunk ScummVM code for the given SVN revision number.

An OpenPandora and original GP2X ScummVM SVN release should follow next week(ish). Been a little busy to track down some bugs in them.

Note: Please don’t mirror or hotlink these preview/test/alpha etc. releases or put them on download services but rather, direct people to this page.

This helps me ensure that users always have the most recent versions.

Also note that these test releases are not officially (or unofficially) supported .

Please give these releases a go and provide feedback.

New features since 1.1.1 releases:

Below are the main features and fixes added with this new release.

GP2X Wiz: Further cleanup to the downscaling support. Most of the glitching that has been seen in previous releases should now be gone.

A few small performance tweaks.

Caanoo: The Caanoo is GamePark Holdings new console and it is based on a slightly upgraded version of the platform used for the GP2X Wiz.

Performance of this new backend should be similar/better to the GP2X Wiz. It’s also VERY new so expect a few snags and issues.

I hope to make Caanoo support official with the upcoming 1.2.0 ScummVM release.

Supported engines:

These releases feature support for all the game engines supported in ScummVM 1.1.1 and additionally include support for testing the SCI engine (early SCI games) and for testing Fascination support in the Gob engine (remember, it’s really not a children’s game). It is the testing of these engines that is the main motivation behind the release.

Specific restrictions:

Each of the releases has a small number of restrictions that have an affect on the games/engines you are able to use with each platform.

Caanoo: The biggest restriction of this backend is simple. I have not tested it as I do not yet own a Caanoo (it’s in the mail). Several testers have tried it and told me it works well but it has been coded blind. Feedback appreciated.

GP2X Wiz:  I have spotted a minor issue where the screen is not totally cleaned when some types of screen movement occur, that combined with the Wiz’s LCD tearing can lead to the odd graphics glitch.

Providing feedback:

If you would like me to consider a feature or fix a bug help me to help you by ensuring the reports end up recorded in official places.

• Bug Reports (ScummVM’s Sourceforge bug tracker)
• Feature Requests (ScummVM’s Sourceforge feature tracker)
  • Source Code Patches (ScummVM’s Sourceforge patch tracker)
  • General Forum Feedback (ScummVM’s GP2X/GP2X Wiz/Caanoo forum, I also check any official news posts I make to the GP32x forums)

Downloads:

Please ensure you download the correct version for your device.

• GP2X Wiz: download

Extract the contents of the zip to the game folder on your SD card, ensuring that you have a “scummvm.ini” in your game folder and the rest of ScummVM in a “scummvm” subfolder.

Launch “ScummVM” from the main SD launcher menu to run.

Review the README-GP2XWIZ for more information.

• Caanoo: download

Extract the contents of the zip to the game folder on your SD card, ensuring that you have a “scummvm.ini” in your game folder and the rest of ScummVM in a “scummvm” subfolder.

Launch “ScummVM” from the main launcher menu to run.

Review the README-CAANOO for more information.

Regards,

John

(better late than never and all that, I mean it’s only 3 months late )

This post is also an announcement of the GP2X backend release as I forgot to post about it at the time despite the fact it got uploaded and released only a few days late .

I have not had a great deal of time recently to work on these releases so the backends are largely the same as the previous releases with just the needed changes to support all the fancy new things in the ScummVM core. No reworking of the control system or the like has been done yet (it’s still on my TODO).

Some of the highlights of the changes 1.1.1 bring, that benefit the GP2X and GP2X Wiz, include 2 completely new engines and games, Dragon History (available free from here) and TeenAgent (available free from GOG.com). Also new is 16bit graphics support, which allowed us to add support for a whole bunch of newer Humongous Entertainment games for kids and improved support for the Amiga versions of Monkey Island, Legend of Kyrandia and Future Wars.

Please provide feedback in the usual places on these releases and enjoy using them.

Platform specific restrictions:

Each of the releases has a small number of restrictions that have an affect on the games/engines you are able to use with each platform.

GP2X: The biggest restriction with this platform is the overhead (and crudeness) of the downscaling when using 640*480 high resolution games on the 320*240 screen making such games perform poorly and look, well, bad.

GP2X Wiz:  The downscaling support is a relatively recently added feature to the Wiz backend and while it looks a lot better than the GP2X, some issues still remain with high resolution games exhibiting ‘tearing’ when updating the screen under some circumstances.

Unfortunately this seems to be an exhibit of the Wiz screen tearing bug and while efforts have been taken to minimise it in this release it the problem has not totally gone away.

Providing feedback:

If you would like me to consider a feature or fix a bug help me to help you by ensuring the reports end up recorded in official places.

• Bug Reports (ScummVM’s Sourceforge bug tracker)
• Feature Requests (ScummVM’s Sourceforge feature tracker)
  • Source Code Patches (ScummVM’s Sourceforge patch tracker)
• General Forum Feedback (ScummVM’s GP2X/GP2X Wiz forum)

Downloads:

• ScummVM download page

What’s Next:

Now I have the outstanding official 1.1.1 releases out of the way my plan is to get test releases from the main ScummVM trunk codebase featuring the ‘new’ SCI engine out as soon as I get time for the GP2X and Wiz, hopefully I will also be including support for the new GPH Caanoo at the same time.

I also plan to update the OpenPandora release at the same time.

Regards,

John Willis

Note: Please don’t mirror or hotlink preview/test/alpha etc. releases or put them on download services but rather, direct people to this page. This helps me ensure that users always have the most recent versions and stops me being swamped with requests for help with ancient test versions.

Nothing especially exotic about the code as it stands (it’s mainly a plugin enabled ARMv7 optimised build of ScummVM packaged up as a PND file) but it works quite well and at least a fair selection of games are very playable.

I am only releasing this so people have some ScummVM goodness for their new OpenPandora consoles (you can stop emailing me now ). It’s largely untested and has been hanging around on my build box for a few days. All 1.1.1 game engines should be working but I have only tested SCUMM, Tinsel (Discworld) and SAGA, and played a little bit of The Curse of Monkey Island .

It does not represent what the final backend will look like and a lot of the OpenPandora specific graphic and input handling is disabled in this release (nothing is mapped to the DPad and game buttons/triggers for example). It does support the keyboard, nubs and touchscreen fine however (for the most part) and most regular ScummVM keyboard shortcuts should work fine.

My plan is to commit the changes to the ScummVM codebase as soon as I have things cleaned up a bit and make the backend official (and manage releases accordingly) but as I am now away for the next few days I thought I would do a quick test release 1st so people have something to mess about with it on there new toy.

To install just download and unzip the file and copy the resulting scummvm-openpandora-2010-05-26.pnd to the following folder on your SD card (or USB2 stick):

/pandora/menu –> This will cause the ScummVM app icon to show up in the Xfce menu sorted by category.
/pandora/desktop –> This will cause the ScummVM app to appear as an icon on the Desktop of Xfce.

Either folder will also ensure the application icon shows up in MiniMenu.

To run, just select the icon as normal, the ScummVM GUI will start up and you can add games as you would normally do with any other ScummVM release (including Mass Add).

Note: On the OpenPandora /media is the root mount folder for removable storage devices. Your SD cards are known by the driver name (MMC) and the card number so the root of your 1st SD card is normally /media/mmcblk0p1, 2nd SD card is normally /media/mmcblk1p1. When you 1st add games you will need to select the SD card you are using (or a folder on your USB2 stick).

Downloads:

• ScummVM for the OpenPandora – Test 1.1.1 release – 2010-05-26

Feedback:

Any feedback, please leave comments or drop me a mail.

Regards,

John Willis

Please provide feedback on these releases and enjoy using them, this is a huge milestone for the ScummVM project and we are all very proud of this release.

New features since the 1.0.0 RC1 for my backends:

Below are the main features and fixes added with this new release from the earlier RC1 release.

Both releases feature additional ARM assembly optimised routines and tweaks to the build system along with a myriad of small ‘nips and tucks’.

There are also further tweaks to refine the use of the “Return to Launcher” and “Global Main Menu” features (remember that Left Trigger and Select/Home/Menu will bring up the Global Main Menu in any game).

This is in addition to the hundreds (litterally) of bug fixes that have gone into the core and game engines for this release from the ScummVM development team.

Supported engines:

Both releases feature support for all the game engines that are due to be included with the 1.0.0 release.

This includes support for high resolution games.

Specific restrictions:

Each of the releases has a small number of restrictions that have an affect on the games/engines you are able to use with each platform.

GP2X: The biggest restriction with this platform is the overhead of the scaling when using 640*480 games on the 320*240 screen making such game perform poorly.

GP2X Wiz:  The downscaling support is a recently added feature to the Wiz backend and as such some issues still remain with high resolution games exhibiting ‘tearing’ when updating the screen under some circumstances. Unfortunately this seems to be an exhibit of the Wiz screen tearing bug and while efforts have been taken to minimise it in this release it the problem has not totally gone away.

Providing feedback:

If you would like me to consider a feature or fix a bug help me to help you by ensuring the reports end up recorded in official places.

• Bug Reports (ScummVM’s Sourceforge bug tracker)
• Feature Requests (ScummVM’s Sourceforge feature tracker)
• Source Code Patches (ScummVM’s Sourceforge patch tracker)
• General Forum Feedback (ScummVM’s GP2X/GP2X Wiz forum)

Downloads:

• ScummVM download page

Regards,

John

Note: Please don’t mirror or hotlink preview/test/alpha etc. releases or put them on download services but rather, direct people to this page. This helps me ensure that users always have the most recent versions.

Please test and provide feedback on these releases as they will form the basis of the official 1.0.0 release candidate release for these platforms.

New features since preview 1:

Below are the main features and fixes added with this new release.

Both releases feature additional ARM assembly optimised routines that offer performance increases in a number of games including “Sam and Max” and “The Curse of Monkey Island”. Both releases also feature tweaks to the default volume levels to cut down on sample clipping.

There are also tweaks to refine the use of the “Return to Launcher” and “Global Main Menu” features (remember that Left Trigger and Select/Home/Menu will bring up the Global Main Menu in any game).

GP2X: Lots of code cleanup and a few tweaks to lower memory usage. Disabling “Aspect Ratio Correction” now also works as expected rather then stretching the screen.

GP2X Wiz: The biggest new feature is the addition of downscaling support using an optimised ARM assembly routine. This means the Wiz release now features support for the 64*4xx games such as Discworld 2, The Curse of Monkey Island etc. – It should also be mentioned that this seems to work well (better then I expected as I am not a fan of downscaling). Lots of my testers reported that the high resolution games are often extremely playable and look very nice on the Wiz’s OLED screen.

There has also been substantial code clean up and fixes since the preview 1 release.

Supported engines:

Both releases feature support for all the game engines that are due to be included with the 1.0.0 release.

This includes support for high resolution games.

Specific restrictions:

Each of the releases has a small number of restrictions that have an affect on the games/engines you are able to use with each platform.

GP2X: The biggest restriction with this platform is the overhead of the scaling when using 640*480 games on the 320*240 screen making such game perform poorly.

GP2X Wiz:  The downscaling support is a new feature to the Wiz backend and as such issues may still remain with some high resolution games. I have already spotted a minor issue where the screen is not totally cleaned when some types of screen movement occur.

Providing feedback:

If you would like me to consider a feature or fix a bug help me to help you by ensuring the reports end up recorded in official places.

• Bug Reports (ScummVM’s Sourceforge bug tracker)
• Feature Requests (ScummVM’s Sourceforge feature tracker)

Note: Feature Requests for 1.0.0 are closed but any requests will be looked at for future releases.

• Source Code Patches (ScummVM’s Sourceforge patch tracker)
• General Forum Feedback (ScummVM’s GP2X/GP2X Wiz forum, I also check any official news posts I make to the GP32x forums)

Downloads:

Please ensure you download the correct version for your device.

• GP2X F100/F200: download

Extract the contents of the zip to a suitable folder on your SD card and launch “scummvm.gpe” to run.

Review the README-GP2X for more information.

• GP2X Wiz: download

Extract the contents of the zip to the game folder on your SD card, ensuring that you have a “scummvm.ini” in your game folder and the rest of ScummVM in a “scummvm” subfolder. Launch “ScummVM” from the main SD launcher menu to run.

Review the README-GP2XWIZ for more information.

Regards,

John

This is just a quick post is to announce the “preview 1” test releases of the upcoming ScummVM 1.0.0 for both the GP2X and the GP2X Wiz.

Note: Please don’t mirror preview/test/alpha etc. releases or put them on download services but rather, direct people to this page. This helps me ensure that users always have the most recent versions.

Please test and provide feedback on these releases as they will form the basis of the official 1.0.0 release for these platforms.

New features:

Both the GP2X and the GP2X Wiz backends benefit from some long overdue code cleanup and general TLC in this release. Where possible both backends are using common/similar code to aid in there long term maintenance.

Both releases also now feature support for the ScummVM virtual keyboard. This can be accessed by holding the left trigger and pressing the right trigger (the old ‘0’ for Monkey Island 2 copy protection key combination).

The ScummVM virtual keyboard works well but it’s feature set is still maturing. If you have virtual keyboard specific feedback I would welcome that. It should be noted that the virtual keyboard works independently of the game engine and the running game is paused when it is in use.

GP2X Wiz: If you have used the early alpha releases for the GP2X Wiz then you will be pleasantly surprised, all the known issues with saving, OGG Vorbis playback and volume control have been resolved along with loads of other minor fixes.

Supported engines:

Both releases feature support for all the game engines that are due to be included with the 1.0.0 release.

Specific restrictions:

Each of the releases has a small number of restrictions that have an affect on the games/engines you are able to use with each platform.

GP2X: The biggest restriction with this platform is pure performance (some audio can be choppy) and the overhead of the scaling code when using 640*480 games on the 320*240 screen.

This renders high resolution games such as Discworld 2 totally unusable on the device and games such as Curse of Monkey Island, Touché and the Broken Sword games very slow (to the point of unplayable IMHO but others disagree).

GP2X Wiz: Whilst the Wiz is a more powerful console then the GP2X on paper there are still a number of features lacking compared to it’s older sibling. The most noteworthy is the complete lack of any down-scaling support in this release.

This means that any games that have graphics higher then > 320*240 will fail to function on this release. Most/all 320*240 or lower resolution games run very well at full or near full speed on the device.

Providing feedback:

If you would like me to consider a feature or fix a bug help me to help you by ensuring the reports end up recorded in official places.

• Bug Reports (ScummVM’s Sourceforge bug tracker)
• Feature Requests (ScummVM’s Sourceforge feature tracker)

Note: Feature Requests for 1.0.0 are closed but any requests will be looked at for future releases.

• • Source Code Patches (ScummVM’s Sourceforge patch tracker)
• General Forum Feedback (ScummVM’s GP2X/GP2X Wiz forum, I also check any official news posts I make to the GP32x forums)

Downloads:

Please ensure you download the correct version for your device.

• GP2X F100/F200: download

Extract the contents of the zip to a suitable folder on your SD card and launch “scummvm.gpe” to run.

Review the README-GP2X for more information.

• GP2X Wiz: download

Extract the contents of the zip to the game folder on your SD card, ensuring that you have a “scummvm.ini” in your game folder and the rest of ScummVM in a “scummvm” subfolder. Launch “ScummVM” from the main SD launcher menu to run.

Review the README-GP2XWIZ for more information.

As some people know I have been hacking around with the Wiz on and off for some time now (in addition to the Pandora) and while I got ScummVM running on the Wiz quite some time ago I have been holding off on a release so that I could get a little more time to fix issues with the Wiz backend.

Well time has been rather cruel of late and I have not had as much time as I would like to clean up things and add funky features so rather then leave a half completed ScummVM backend languishing on my hard disk and rotting I decided to find a few hours to trim down the code, bring it up to date and put aside all the non working bits for now (mostly scaling support, OpenGLes parts, better controls, that sort of stuff) and get a ‘raw and ready’ ScummVM release out so people can start to give me feedback etc.

This release is mostly untested and is built from mainline (HEAD) ScummVM revision 41101. Expect odd issues and things not to quite be working correctly yet. If your not happy with the odd crash and bit of unexpected behavior then this build is not for you.

Anyway, onto what you get in this release and what you need to do to get it running.

You can download the release here – Don’t forget to check the README-GP2XWIZ text file in the zip.

As this is an early alpha release and is likely to get superseded quickly I would appreciate it if you did not mirror the download but rather pointed users back to this page.

Once you have downloaded the release you need to extract the contents of the zip to the ‘game’ folder on your SD card. Once extracted you should have a ‘scummvm.ini’ file in the game folder and a separate ‘scummvm’ folder with all the actual files needed by the Wiz.

Pop the SD card into your Wiz and select ScummVM from the SD games menu. If all goes well after a few seconds you should be greeted with the ScummVM game launcher. From this point it behaves very much like any other ScummVM release.

Controls are very similar to the GP2X F200 release (including touchscreen support) with a few notable exceptions. Menu now brings up the game menu and Left trigger + Menu now brings up the global main menu for ScummVM.

Other then that things pretty much match the layout of the GP2X F200 release. If you want to refresh yourself of the control mappings I have included full details in the README-GP2XWIZ text file in the zip.

Known Issues:

• No scaling support so only 320*xxx games run. Games that need a bigger screen then the Wiz will just crash ScummVM. Scaling support is on the TODO.
• Save support may be erratic. Not quite sure of the cause yet but some of my testers had the odd issues with saves not writing correctly.
• Speed. For most games speed is quite good but I have noticed a few points when performance really gets bad. Still looking into that.
• OGG Vorbis support: One tester mentioned that games he used that had OGG Vorbis audio did not work. Still looking into that.

Feedback on this release:

The feedback avenues for the Wiz release are the same as the existing GP2X release.

In order to help me keep track of requests, bugs etc. I am asking that people kindly report such issues to the correct places (or at least copy them there). I don’t spend all my time looking at forums and bug reports placed on random internet forums are never very helpful to me (i.e. they are very unlikely to get fixed or even read). The same applies to feature requests etc. etc.
If you would like me to consider a feature or fix a bug help me to help you by ensuring the reports end up recorded in official places.

• Bug Reports (ScummVM’s Sourceforge bug tracker)
• Feature Requests (ScummVM’s Sourceforge feature tracker)
• Source Code Patches (ScummVM’s Sourceforge patch tracker)
• General Forum Feedback (ScummVM’s GP2X forum, I also occasionally check news posts I make to the GP32x forums)

Source Code:

Source for this release will be up on a ScummVM patch tracker in the next few days (or, if the team view it as good enough, hopefully committed to SVN).

• Bug Reports (ScummVM’s Sourceforge bug tracker)
• Feature Requests (ScummVM’s Sourceforge feature tracker)
  • Note: Feature Requests for 0.12.0 are closed but any requests will be looked at for the next release.

• Source Code Patches (ScummVM’s Sourceforge patch tracker)
• General Forum Feedback (ScummVM’s GP2X forum, I also check any official news posts I make to the GP32x forums)

• Bug Reports (ScummVM’s Sourceforge bug tracker)
• Feature Requests (ScummVM’s Sourceforge feature tracker)
  • Note: Feature Requests for 0.12.0 are closed but any requests will be looked at for the next release.

• Source Code Patches (ScummVM’s Sourceforge patch tracker)
• General Forum Feedback (ScummVM’s GP2X forum, I also check any official news posts I make to the GP32x forums)

Just a quick note to draw people’s attention to the latest and greatest release of ScummVM (0.11.1).

It has taken me a few weeks to get a chance to get a tested GP2X build up together but there is now a version of the GP2X port that matches the official release. The only fixes in this release are to specific games (Lure springs to mind). There are no noteworthy changes to the GP2X backend.

This release also marks a change in how I go about considering donations for my projects.

Previously I have never taken donations for any of my projects and have suggested that people either donate to charity or to the upstream projects. Whist I still firmly believe in this approach for a short while I am also going to accept donations for ScummVM so I can use any donations to actually get hold of a working GP2X (and maybe an F200 to improve support). So if anybody has hardware they no longer use and don’t need .

Don’t worry, I have every intention of maintaining the port no matter what and I do NOT expect donations. Please also note that I do not accept donations for features, bounties or anything like that, only donate if you like what is there, not what may be done in the future. Also be assured that it really is appreciated.

Anyway, on a lighter note you can find information about the release on the main ScummVM pages here including download links for the GP2X.

Information for the GP2X port can be found on the ScummVM Wiki here.

Before any questions of compatibility with specific games are raised I would like to draw people’s attention to the following ScummVM Wiki page that outlines what criteria are used to decide if games are compatible with the port. I hope this should clear up any misunderstandings over what games are ‘supported’ on the port and the reasoning behind such decisions.

As always please leave feedback here or over at the ports official ScummVM forum.

Any updates to the compatibility information are always appreciated as are patches and bug reports or reasonable feature suggestions.

Enjoy messing about with ScummVM.