New "old-school" LucasArts game announced tomorrow

[Noyb]

Isn't Sam and Max already on Steam?

Not the original: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_&_Max_Hit_the_Road

4yWnnk9fyJE

[miffy495]

[Oh, Miffy, it looks like you were a similar age to me when you joined these forums. Did you go through an initial "massive wanker who tends to make people annoyed" phase too, or will I forever be condemned to a merely tolerated presence here?]

Well, I kinda got in on the ground floor when the site was fairly new, so I didn't have so much of an issue. I got most of my "massive wanker" stuff out of my system on the mixnmojo and lucasfans boards a couple of years previous to that under a different name. I'd rather not tell that moniker, as I no longer stand by most of the stuff I said when I was 13. If it helps, I didn't assume anything about your age until you said "born in the 90s" which makes me assume you're old enough and intelligent enough to not be a complete asshat. Far as I can tell, you're being accepted fairly well and the few comments directed your way are merely friendly hazing. Worry not, and keep plugging away at it.

I love the Dig. It's so different from anything else Lucasarts was putting out at the time, playing it completely straight and telling an interesting story in the process. Don't get me wrong, Lucas did more for humour in games in the 90s than most other studios combined, but it was so refreshing and compelling to have them present a polished science fiction drama in the same style as they'd been presenting their comedies. The only other real drama I can think of was LOOM, which still had occasional moments of pure comic relief. The Dig just kept you going, and the situation around Brink is still interesting to me. Now I really can't wait to replay that game.

[Roderick]

Wait, we don't give a crap about age, right? We give a crap about posts being either funny or good, doesn't matter who wrote them

For instance, we all know Toblix is a twelve year old serial rapist from Scandinavia. Yet he makes us smile. The second way out-importants the first.

[toblix]

Serial?!

[miffy495]

Serial, as in "more than once." Don't try to kid us, man.

[toblix]

So there's serial-, parallel- and mass-? I just want to make sure we're on the same page here.

[BigJKO]

Why are we all assuming they're using ScummVM for these re-releases?

I'm buying each and every one of these adventure games. Only one I ever owned in this batch was The Dig (and, yes, that's a friggin' awesome game!)

[toblix]

My impression was the games would be released in a package, rather than separately.

[miffy495]

The idea of a "parallel rapist" is simultaneously terrifying and confusing. Well done, I guess?

[elmuerte]

So there's serial-, parallel- and mass-? I just want to make sure we're on the same page here.

MMOR?

Why are we all assuming they're using ScummVM for these re-releases?

Because it's the easiest and therefor cheapest solution.

[BigJKO]

I don't know. They've had to have updated the ScummVM engine for the Special Edition Monkey Island. So maybe the cheaper way now is to test the old games on the new updated in-house version. Their twitter is talking about the games running on whatever resolution your computer is running in, which, as far I remember, isn't the way ScummVM works.

[Patters]

I doubt it (with regards to ScummVM) the latest rerelease of Hit the Road works perfectly in all modern Windows operating systems (XP, Vista...), so I would assume that they will use their own system, which will likely to have been tweaked to support custom resolutions.

[thorn]

I don't know. They've had to have updated the ScummVM engine for the Special Edition Monkey Island.

Do you mean SCUMM? I'm pretty sure they said they were creating a new engine, not using the VM.

Could Lucasarts legally use the ScummVM to port the older game and sell them? Seems like a fairly twisted web of dependencies.

[Erkki]

Could Lucasarts legally use the ScummVM to port the older game and sell them? Seems like a fairly twisted web of dependencies.

ScummVM is released under the GPL (General Public License), so it's more than free. ScummVM source code is freely available and you can do whatever you want with it. If you make modifications to it and redistribute your work you MUST make the source available. However, the ScummVM team would be pleased if you choose to send them your modifications, so they can be merged into the main tree.

GPL is not exactly the most business-friendly license.

[Nevsky]

[snip. I'm 100% slower than Erkki]

I do have something to offer, though...!

Some more, interesting, info on the GPL, and how they got violated by Atari/Majesco/Mistic Software here.

[Erkki]

Some more, interesting, info on the GPL, and how they got violated by Atari/Majesco/Mistic Software here.

Thanks, that was an interesting read.

[syntheticgerbil]

I doubt it (with regards to ScummVM) the latest rerelease of Hit the Road works perfectly in all modern Windows operating systems (XP, Vista...), so I would assume that they will use their own system, which will likely to have been tweaked to support custom resolutions.

There was also that box set released a few years back somewhere in Europe that also had working Windows XP versions of Hit the Road, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, and Grim Fandango. I think someone even interviewed the one guy responsible for making those games run on modern systems. Hell if I know where to find that interview now.

It wasn't ScummVM though.

Some more, interesting, info on the GPL, and how they got violated by Atari/Majesco/Mistic Software here.

That made me furious, but it was interesting.

[Thrik]

The classic adventure games don't use SCUMMVM or DosBox, instead they all have self-running executables for Windows.

n/t

[Patters]

It freaks me the fuck out that people who were born in the 90's aren't still in primary school. You can't be adults yet, you just can't be!

haha, some have started university already. I caught the 80's by 12 days though

[elmuerte]

GPL is not exactly the most business-friendly license.

Not really, it's friendlier than various EULAs from propriety software.

Because if you are just going to use the software there are no restrictions at all. If you are going to distribute the software you just have to provide the source if requested. If you are going to use the source of the software it will become a bit more complicated: if you are never ever going to distribute the modified software, then there is no issue; otherwise you will need to make your changes to the software available under the same license, and everything that links to the application must be GPL compatible.

[SignorSuperdouche]

That's all true but BSD is undeniably more business friendly.

[elmuerte]

That's all true but BSD is undeniably more business friendly.

Depends on which variation of the BSD-like license you mean. For example the 4-clause BSD license isn't that great. Anyway, next to public domain the zlib/libpng like license is the most friendly to people/businesses that want to just take the technology and never give anything back.

But apparently, not even that is good enough for Nintendo (as you're not allowed to include any Open Source software).

A good rule of thumb for (Open Source/Free Software/*) licenses:

• Ok to use: public domain, zlib/libpng, 2-clause BSD (the one without the 2nd clause), (1)
  
• Check with legal-dept: the rest
  

(1) A nice overview is available of licenses which are quite safe to use in any environment are listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_licenses in the first table licenses with "yes" in both columns are quite safe to use. But remember, that certain licenses require the license text to be included, and some also don't allow you to embed the code within a project (so, you can only use it as a library). For example, the MIT/X11 license requires you to include the license text in the distribution, but you can completely close down the code. The licenses with a "yes" in the left column and a "no" in the right, are more or less safe to use when you use unaltered versions.

Edited July 7, 2009 by elmuerte

[ThunderPeel2001]

The classic adventure games don't use SCUMMVM or DosBox, instead they all have self-running executables for Windows.

Awesome!

[elmuerte]

I wonder how they're doing the upscaling. None of ScummVMs soft-upscaling methods produce good results.

[Erkki]

A good rule of thumb for (Open Source/Free Software/*) licenses:

• Ok to use: public domain, zlib/libpng, 2-clause BSD (the one without the 2nd clause), (1)
  
• Check with legal-dept: the rest
  

Yeah, BSD & zlib are good. Apache 2.0 is also a very common license that should be ok. Also Eclipse Public License should be good most of the time if you don't actually modify, which you don't usually have to do since most of Eclipse licensed code is made of small modules and if you only modify one you only have to release your changes to that module (IANAL, TINLA etc.) *

Didn't actually know you can release modified BSD code under a different license! Thanks.

* On the other hand, the Eclipse Foundation pays sometimes ridiculous-seeming attention to Intellectual Property correctness for software released at eclipse.org, and they have only declared very few licenses to be compatible with EPL (forget which ones) and even then every library they use that is produced outside must go through an IP-review. Many projects they release are unusable out of the box because they can't fucking publish an open source library that is not 100% proved IP-clean with anything that comes from eclipse.org. I guess this has advantages for businesses relying on Eclipse though. Sorry for the rant