Opened 18 months ago

Last modified 18 months ago

#13933 closed defect

Use “Enable game-specific enhancements” for Sierra bug fixes — at Version 1

Reported by: obskyr Owned by:
Priority: normal Component: Engine: SCI
Version: Keywords:
Cc: obskyr Game:

Description (last modified by obskyr)

As of some recent version(s), bugs present in the original version of a variety of Sierra games were fixed in ScummVM, making their behavior different from the originals. Following the precedent set by these LucasArts games, these bug fixes should use the “Enable game-specific enhancements” setting.

I don't know exactly which games are affected, but this blog post mentions “over one hundred original Sierra bugfixes” being added in version 2.1.0. It's probably possible to find the relevant games and changes by looking at the commits! It seems that most (if not all?) of the changes are in /engines/sci/engine/script_patches.cpp – perhaps this whole file can be disabled, rather than having to do it per enhancement.

I've filed this ticket under “Engine: SCI”, but it might affect some AGI games as well.


I'm not sure what the stated purpose of ScummVM is – I believe it's primarily to recreate these games so that they're accessible on modern platforms. Going back and changing their behavior, though, suggests that it might be something more akin to “making a better version of these games”. On the other hand, there's the aforementioned “Enable game-specific enhancements” checkbox, so it might be both!

On a personal note, I use ScummVM for convenience, and bar concessions made for that convenience, want to experience these video games as they were to the extent that that's possible. For example, I recently played the MS-DOS version of The Colonel's Bequest, and was disappointed to see the plane flying by, as opposed to the hilarious and charming bug that that makes a statue fly by in that version of the game.

Change History (1)

comment:1 by obskyr, 18 months ago

Description: modified (diff)
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