I was hoping that I would be able to play Escape from Monkey Island using the classic environment in OS X, but it turns out that it's not without major flaws. If you get it to run (ie. if you don't have an Intel Mac) then the cutscenes are missing and the sound seems to be slowed down, giving people really deep voices. I have read that EMI works Ok with previous versions of OS X, but if you have Tiger then you could be out of luck. Aspyr (the Mac developers) have said that they do not support OS X and the classic environment for this game and you will need to boot your Mac into OS 9. Personally, I wouldn't recommend trying it. It's not even possible on newer Macs.
I am going to try on my old PC and I will let you know how I get on.
Oh, and yes, I know it's not a SCUMM game ;)
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
Monday, 24 March 2008
Loom
I'd never played Loom but I had heard good things so I decided that this would be the first game that I would work my way through. Before you get going on this somewhat magial adventure there are a few things that you might need.
The game manual - A basic explaination of how to play the game.
The book of patterns - This is very helplful. I will come onto this in a short while.
Loom does more than a few things differently to most adventure games. There is no inventory system for a start. All of your interaction with the game world is done through the use of music. You can select an object in the environment and then play a short tune, or draft, to interact with it. These short tunes are described in the book of patterns. They are different in every game (apart from the open and transcendence drafts) so you will need to write them down as you learn them. I printed off the book of drafts to make things a bit easier.
The story is somewhat unique as well. All of the peoples of the world have banded together into various guilds based on their skills. You play the role of Bobbin Threadbare, who is a member of the guild of weavers. This particular guild have moved beyond simply weaving carpets and can now weave the very fabric of reality itself using a special loom (from where the game gets its name). You can probably guess that bad things happen and you have to save the day. I'll let you play the game to find out what happens though.
The original game came packaged with a 30 minute audio casette with some more background on the story but I have been unable to get a copy. This hasn't caused too much grief. Although the story is a little weird you will be able to work out what is going on.
There are a couple of versions of this game knocking around. The main two that you may come accross are for the PC. One comes on disks and the other on a CD. The CD version of the game includes enhanced graphics and a voiceover track. However, it is missing a lot of the music. This is because the CD can only hold 74 minutes of uncompressed audio and most of this is taken up by the talking. There are also a number of close up scenes in the original game (similar to those in Monkey Island) that are missing from the CD version. I would actually recommend playing the diskette version for the full musical experience but the CD version is also fantastic. There is information on extracting the music for the CD version for use with ScummVM on their homepage.
The game is quite short and I was able to play through the entire thing on the standard difficulty in a single sitting but while it lasts this is a brilliantly imaginative and different gaming experience. There is nothing like this that has been done before or since and I definitely recommend that everybody tries to play at least once.
The game manual - A basic explaination of how to play the game.
The book of patterns - This is very helplful. I will come onto this in a short while.
Loom does more than a few things differently to most adventure games. There is no inventory system for a start. All of your interaction with the game world is done through the use of music. You can select an object in the environment and then play a short tune, or draft, to interact with it. These short tunes are described in the book of patterns. They are different in every game (apart from the open and transcendence drafts) so you will need to write them down as you learn them. I printed off the book of drafts to make things a bit easier.
The story is somewhat unique as well. All of the peoples of the world have banded together into various guilds based on their skills. You play the role of Bobbin Threadbare, who is a member of the guild of weavers. This particular guild have moved beyond simply weaving carpets and can now weave the very fabric of reality itself using a special loom (from where the game gets its name). You can probably guess that bad things happen and you have to save the day. I'll let you play the game to find out what happens though.
The original game came packaged with a 30 minute audio casette with some more background on the story but I have been unable to get a copy. This hasn't caused too much grief. Although the story is a little weird you will be able to work out what is going on.
There are a couple of versions of this game knocking around. The main two that you may come accross are for the PC. One comes on disks and the other on a CD. The CD version of the game includes enhanced graphics and a voiceover track. However, it is missing a lot of the music. This is because the CD can only hold 74 minutes of uncompressed audio and most of this is taken up by the talking. There are also a number of close up scenes in the original game (similar to those in Monkey Island) that are missing from the CD version. I would actually recommend playing the diskette version for the full musical experience but the CD version is also fantastic. There is information on extracting the music for the CD version for use with ScummVM on their homepage.
The CD version of the game
and the original version
The game is quite short and I was able to play through the entire thing on the standard difficulty in a single sitting but while it lasts this is a brilliantly imaginative and different gaming experience. There is nothing like this that has been done before or since and I definitely recommend that everybody tries to play at least once.
Getting started with Scumm
When I look back to my childhood and remember my favourite games there is one that really springs to mind. The Secret of Monkey Island(tm). It's a shame that the point and click adventure has fallen out of favour with gamers and there are almost no large developers making new ones. The recent Sam and Max games by Telltale Games were excellent but I am not convinced by the episodic content. There were also very few characters and a lot of repetition of locations. I guess that in order to get my adventure game fix I am going to have to look back to the 1990s.
Unfortunately (for the adventure gamer) things have moved on since then. There have been a number of upgrades to Microsoft Windows, processors have gotten much MUCH faster and I have bought a Mac. A trip to Game or Gamestation is going to reward me with blank stares if I try and buy any of these classics as well. Luckily there are some resources out there that are going to make this all possible.
Firstly, eBay. The first step in playing any of the old games is going to be actually getting hold of a copy of them. A quick search on eBay and you should be able to find what you want. I expect that some people (if anyone is even reading this) are wondering why I don't just download them? You can get them for free from certain sites! Well, it's a bit of a legal gray area.
The idea with abandonware is that if a company is no longer distributing certain software then you won't be harming them by allowing people to download it. Whether you are harming the company or not isn't all that important. If you do not hold the correct license then you can't distribute other peoples intellectual property, whether they are distributing it themselves or not. Some companies are clamping down on abandonware. LucasArts and the Entertainment Software Association (along with others) are going to some length stop me from downloading old software. I'm not going to go into much more detail but you can find some resources for abandonware with a quick google if you want to learn more.
There are a couple of adventure games that have been released into the public domain that you can download and play for free! Beneath a Steel Sky and Flight of the Amazon Queen are both available to download from various sources.
The second thing that you will need is some way of actually playing the games. Most are not compatable with Windows XP or Mac OS X so you can't just run them directly from the CD (or diskette). You will need either an old PC capable of running DOS or other old Operating Systems or an interpreter such as ScummVM. I would recommend ScummVM, mostly because it is free and you won't have to clutter your office with old hardware. The ScummVM homepage contains downloads for Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Nintendo DS, PS2 etc. so your hardware platform of choice is not a problem. This is excellent news for a Power PC Mac owner such as myself.
Setting up ScummVM depends on your machine so you should just follow the instructions on the website. As previously mentioned you can downloadBeneath a Steel Sky or Flight of the Amazon Queen to test that everything is working correctly.
Unfortunately (for the adventure gamer) things have moved on since then. There have been a number of upgrades to Microsoft Windows, processors have gotten much MUCH faster and I have bought a Mac. A trip to Game or Gamestation is going to reward me with blank stares if I try and buy any of these classics as well. Luckily there are some resources out there that are going to make this all possible.
Firstly, eBay. The first step in playing any of the old games is going to be actually getting hold of a copy of them. A quick search on eBay and you should be able to find what you want. I expect that some people (if anyone is even reading this) are wondering why I don't just download them? You can get them for free from certain sites! Well, it's a bit of a legal gray area.
The idea with abandonware is that if a company is no longer distributing certain software then you won't be harming them by allowing people to download it. Whether you are harming the company or not isn't all that important. If you do not hold the correct license then you can't distribute other peoples intellectual property, whether they are distributing it themselves or not. Some companies are clamping down on abandonware. LucasArts and the Entertainment Software Association (along with others) are going to some length stop me from downloading old software. I'm not going to go into much more detail but you can find some resources for abandonware with a quick google if you want to learn more.
There are a couple of adventure games that have been released into the public domain that you can download and play for free! Beneath a Steel Sky and Flight of the Amazon Queen are both available to download from various sources.
The second thing that you will need is some way of actually playing the games. Most are not compatable with Windows XP or Mac OS X so you can't just run them directly from the CD (or diskette). You will need either an old PC capable of running DOS or other old Operating Systems or an interpreter such as ScummVM. I would recommend ScummVM, mostly because it is free and you won't have to clutter your office with old hardware. The ScummVM homepage contains downloads for Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Nintendo DS, PS2 etc. so your hardware platform of choice is not a problem. This is excellent news for a Power PC Mac owner such as myself.
Setting up ScummVM depends on your machine so you should just follow the instructions on the website. As previously mentioned you can downloadBeneath a Steel Sky or Flight of the Amazon Queen to test that everything is working correctly.
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