laurence dougal myers

After nearly two years since I poked around in Robin Hood's guts (I'm referring to the game, of course), I got the urge to investigate further, and now have a rough idea of how the data in the rules files is stored.

I will be discussing the format based on the "ERULES.PRG" file, which contains English text. The other rules files should be in exactly the same format, only the string values should be different. All bytes are in little-endian format (unless otherwise stated).

I'll state up here at the start of this post, if anyone wants to join forces in exploring the intricacies of the game, feel free to send me an e-mail: jestarjokin@jestarjokin.net

View after the break, IF YOU DAAAAARE...!

I've heard whispers that The Clue! is being considered for inclusion in ScummVM. I'd love if it was. This got me looking into the source code for The Clue!, which was released to the public quite a few years ago.

It looks like there was a "Profidisk" expansion released for the game, but only for the German version. This expansion adds a few more scenarios for burglarising. I'd like to play this expansion in the English version, but lack the Deutsch to translate it myself, so if anyone out there could help me, contact me at my e-mail (listed later).

Turns out the text requires very little to change; all text data is stored in external files, which are XOR encrypted using a key ox 0x75. At this point I'm not sure if any graphics will require editing, for now I will concentrate on the text.

If anyone wants to help me out by translating the text, I'd be grateful. E-mail me at jestarjokin@jestarjokin.net.

Also, while the German game data was released to the public, the English version remains in limbo. Would it be worthwhile to translate the whole game into English again, to avoid any copyright issues?

It may also be worth editing the original English text anyway, since from memory it didn't make much sense at times.

If you want to unencrypt the files yourself, here's a small Python script to do so. If you have Python installed, you can run it like "xor.py 0x75 TEXT\*.txt".

xor.zip

EDIT: 30/05/2011 - I've found my translator! Turns out Google Translate does a damn fine job. I'll tweak the text a bit to match some of the existing English translations and maybe add some flavour... stay tuned.

It seems there was a problem with the last build of ScummPacker. I'm not sure why, possibly because I did it on a different computer than usual. This release is just a new build which seems to be working. There are no code changes.

Win32 Binaries
/apps/scummpacker/bin/3/1a

Python Source
/apps/scummpacker/src/3/1a

A bug fix release for ScummSpeaks.

• Fix issue where importing sounds into a MONSTER speech map did not sort the sounds by ID (original offset), resulting in invalid game resources when exporting.

/apps/scummspeaks/bin/3/4

Python Source

/apps/scummspeaks/src/3/4

ScummPacker v3 r1

• Complete rewrite. Breaks all compatability with old versions.
• Supports SCUMM v4, v5, and v6 games, as well some v3 games.
• Outputs some information (such as headers) to XML format.
• No longer need to explicitly state the order of each block.
• All object data are contained within their own sub-folder.
• Local scripts are contained within their own sub-folder.
• License changed from "public domain" to the MIT/X11 license.

/apps/scummpacker/bin/3/1

Python Source

/apps/scummpacker/src/3/1

SCUMM Image Encoder v2 r1

• Updated to work with ScummPacker v3
• New option to "freeze" the palette, preventing the original palette from being updated.
• New option to specify the quantization (number of colours in the palette)
• License changed from "public domain" to the MIT/X11 license.

/apps/scummimg/bin/2/1

Python Source

/apps/scummimg/src/2/1

And that's it!

A new bug fix for ScummSpeaks.

Summary

• Fix problem trying to export sound resources, where the sound map contains sounds that are not mapped to any line of text (and will effectively be unused in the game). This might exhibit itself in an error box popping up with a message like "973996".

/apps/scummspeaks/bin/3/3

Python Source

/apps/scummspeaks/src/3/3

New version of Scummbler (v2 r14).

• Adds support for inline string functions, like "wait", "newline", "sound", "getInt", "setColor", etc.

/apps/scummbler/bin/2/14

Source:

/apps/scummbler/src/2/14

I have also submitted a patch for descumm (part of the ScummVM tools), which makes SCUMM V5 and lower output the inline string functions, where previously it would output escape character codes (e.g. "wait()" instead of "\xFF\x03"). This change should be available in the latest SVN build, or any future releases of ScummVM after 1.2.0.

EDIT: this release was initially built and released in "testing" mode, which prevented the executable from running as normal. If you have downloaded this release before 1:55 PM AEST on 22/Dec/2010, please re-download.

ScummSpeaks v3 r2 has been released. It is a bugfix release, and includes the following changes:

• Fix inability to save text files ("AttributeError: 'TextData' object has no attribute 'save_to_file'")
• Fix "TypeError: decoding Unicode is not supported" when using "Find" dialog

Win32 Binaries
/apps/scummspeaks/bin/3/2

Source
/apps/scummspeaks/src/3/2

Manual
/sw/doc/scummspeaks_manual.html

ScummSpeaks v3 r1 has been released. It includes the following changes:

• Big overhaul! Redesigned how ScummSpeaks works; it now stores mappings of sounds to lines of speech, saved in an XML file, and both the text and sounds must be exported to game resources as a final step. (You will need to manually use ScummTr to insert the text back into the game directory.)
• You now need to import an existing text file and sound resource, in order to create and work on a Speech Map.
• Adds support for BUN resources, as used by The Dig.
• Support for metadata such as lip-synching tags.
• Includes a small utility, "trspack", to decode and encode the *.TRS file used in The Dig, which stores subtitles for cutscenes.
• Import/Export Sounds now uses XML files for each sound, to provide information on which line number the sound should be played on.
• Removed all support for original game sound resources that use VOC files; ScummSpeaks now only works on sound resources that have been compressed with the ScummVM tools (compress_scumm_sou and compress_scumm_bun).
• Better dialog for "scummtr", effectively giving it a nice frontend.
• Binary distribution includes the "scummtr" executable.
• More alert messages when things have finished processing, or errors have occurred.
• Text comments and sound comments are stored in the Speech Map XML file.
• In the sound list display, if no custom comment for a sound has been entered, it will display the associated line of dialogue from the text file.
• You can now sort by some columns.
• New manual.

Win32 Binaries
/apps/scummspeaks/bin/3/1

Source
/apps/scummspeaks/src/3/1

Manual
/sw/doc/scummspeaks_manual.html

New versions of Scummbler and ScummPacker.

Scummbler v2 r13

• Much more accurate error reporting.
• Pyparsing library now included in the source (I've had to modify it in order to support better error reporting).
• Fix example script in the manual (escape codes were "\x033" instead of "\x03").

/apps/scummbler/src/2/13

Win32 Binaries

/apps/scummbler/bin/2/13

—

Scummpacker v2 r2

• Added support for General Midi sound blocks ("GMD"), as possibly found in the Sam and Max WIP demo. Added by request, so you can insert new music into games.

/apps/scummpacker/src/2/2

Win32 Binaries

/apps/scummpacker/bin/2/2

—

I've also made some minor changes to the web page (previous versions history is now hidden by default, use points rather than pixels for fonts, enlarge font sizes).