Maniac Mansion released on Steam

Sorry, but there is one and only Trinity:

BTW, the Bud Spencer and Terence Hill game has been released on Steam just a few days ago.

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Is it a Double Dragon/Streets Of Rage-like beat-em-up, though?

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Doesnā€™t ScummVM skip the copy protections?

Exactly:

Still early accessā€¦

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Yes, Iā€™ve backed it. Iā€™ve met the programmers, during a cosplay event in Verona. They are young and very passionated, and let me test the game on a Xbox. Itā€™s funny, with all the licensed things from the original movies.

They hacked the interpreter. The scripts are unchanged. Thatā€™s why the bug in the German version is not present when playing with ScummVM.
In DOS, you can use the matching (v1 or v2) executable from Zak McKracken and play Maniac Mansion from DOTT with the protection intact.

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I donā€™t think it does it for games that werenā€™t officially released with skipping of copy protection (via parameter), thus Iā€™m not sure the program would skip it for non-DOTT version of MM. Would have to test it with an unmodified copy. Not sure the 10 adventures pack has untampered version. I know that I have the copy protection sheets, but I donā€™t remember if I ever used them.

Didnā€™t know, that the interpreter was that identical/compatible between the two. I always expect some specific changes in each iteration.

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Anyhooo, as long there is no way to legally buy this version on steam or gog IĀ“m not really interested.

Only true versionā€¦

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They usually hacked the interpreter to specificly skip copy protection without altering the game resources, thus ScummVM wouldnā€™t know the difference and hence skips protection by default in all games that was released in that manner.
There is only one known case where they actually changed the game script itself, which was a re-release of Monkey Island 2 on the Amiga.

You can actually skip the codewheel query in both Monkey Island games in the original version too. For that, you have to enable the debug mode and press ā€œ.ā€ instead of entering the numbers. Of course, enabling the debug mode was that obscure that it was figured out only many years later.

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I see, I found this: http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/User_Manual/Playing_a_game_with_ScummVM#Copy_protection
And ScummVM has a command line parameter to enforce copy protection, which would normally be disabled.
After all those years and refactoring I donā€™t find the old place, where it was all commented, but AFAIR it was really just a variable which was set by officially hacked versions and was then skipped by game scripts.
I think in Monkey Island 2 they had to hack the script because if copy protection is skipped the normal way, you canā€™t select the difficulty level, as this is also skipped. Thus the hack that allows entering of any values.

Edit: Now I know, why your name and avatar seemed so familiar to me, I remember you from ScummVM forums. :sweat_smile: Have you also been active in their IRC channel?

While the games have such skips included in their scripts, they also check for debug mode first. If debug mode is not enabled, they just refuse to allow skipping that part. It seems there are hacked executables which start the game in debug mode by default, but those are certainly no official releases.

Actually, it can be done without the need to enter anything at all and still have the difficulty screen. I managed to start the game right at the difficulty screen in my Ultimate Talkie Edition. I let the copy protection for both games intact as an option, just for completeness sake. It is available as a boot parm.

While I frequently use the ScummVM forums and occasionally the trackers, I never used IRC. I prefer structured forum posts over an unorganized wall of text.

It should be this way, this was also said by the devs: problem with DOTT copy protection - ScummVM :: Forums
I donā€™t think they did anything else than just use the scripts that were already there.

Iā€™m not sure what you mean. Your link actually contains specific code of ScummVM to bypass copy protection in Zak:

    if (_copyProtection) { 
        // The enhanced version of Zak McKracken included in the 
        // SelectWare Classic Collection bundle used CD check instead 
        // of the usual key code check at airports. 
        if ((_game.id == GID_ZAK) && (script == 15) && (_roomResource == 45)) 
            return; 
    }

For some games (Sam&Max, Indy4) just a boot param is set and for the rest you have hacks in the ScummVM executable like this one above.

The boot parameters used to be more organised in a list, but this was at the time where at max the Simon engine was integrated, so all this was refactored multiple times probably.

What do you mean with refactored? The copy protection hacks havenā€™t changed much (as the games havenā€™t changed either).
In fact the Zak one above which was posted on their forum nearly 12 years ago is exactly the same as today.

In that case my memory is wrong. :sweat_smile:

ScummVM is emulating the behavior of some official releases here. Some versions of the executable behaved the same way (as mentioned in the codeā€™s comment), ie. deliberately overriding the game script designed for the protection.

So at the moment IĀ“m also reading the old Tales From The Crypt comics and I stumbled across something that looked vaguely familiar.

I think I read somewhere that Gary is a fan of the old EC Comics so something like that might have contributed to the design as well as the Skywalker Ranch.

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Thereā€™s a typo right at the beginning! :scream: My eyes! My eyes!

I assume that wasnā€™t in the original.

ThatĀ“s when you know youĀ“re playing a true Ron Gilbert Gameā„¢.

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