FREESCAPE: Unknown game variant for freescape (Dark Side / Amiga / WHDload version)

[blam666]

The game in 'data\' seems to be an unknown game variant.

Please report the following data to the ScummVM team at https://bugs.scummvm.org/ along with the name of the game you tried to add and its version, language, etc.:

Matched game IDs for the freescape engine: darkside-amiga

{"0.DRK", 0, "61fbd46fb7b7b1c5025db4a3cc439507", 84824},
{"1.DRK", 0, "49cc73a5ca7adb26065286a7afd4d0a4", 280704},

[neuromancer]

Hi

Which ScummVM version are you using? For your deleted comment, it seems that you tried with 2.8.1. However, this version is too old, you should use 2.9.x from daily builds since it contains the latest fixes.

[blam666]

Replying to neuromancer:

Hi

Which ScummVM version are you using? For your deleted comment, it seems that you tried with 2.8.1. However, this version is too old, you should use 2.9.x from daily builds since it contains the latest fixes.

Hi! Sorry, I deleted first comment because it was too long and touches more broadly problems with ALL freescape games (was thinking of creating a seperate ticket for that).

ALL freescape games crash on both current (win 64bit) versions of daily builds (stable and latest) right now on my Win 10 64 system. ScummVM starts to build up a small window shortly with all of them but then immediately crashes to desktop. All other non freescape games are all running fine with both daily builds as far as I can see.

I can start some Freescape games still on an older daily build (2.8.0 from Dec 17 2023).

[neuromancer]

Hey, it's ok, we can chat here. The fact that all the games are crashing is more a priority. Can you provide some log of the crash so I can check it?

[blam666]

Of course.

I've never created a ScummVM log before, though. I will look into how that is done and then post it here.

[neuromancer]

Sure, no problem, take a look here: ​https://docs.scummvm.org/en/latest/help/report_bugs.html#logfile

[blam666]

Ok, here is a log from a failed start of Dark Side (DOS version) with current "stable" daily build. Hope it's attached correctly. EDIT: Yeah the log shows up as attachment of this ticket.

[neuromancer]

This is the issue:

2024-12-12 19:59:34] WARNING: Shader:Shader(): Could not link shader freescape_triangle/freescape_triangle: Fragment shader(s) failed to link, Vertex shader(s) linked.
12	[2024-12-12 19:59:34] Fragment Shader not supported by HW!
13	[2024-12-12 19:59:34] Could not link shader freescape_triangle/freescape_triangle: Fragment shader(s) failed to link, Vertex shader(s) linked.
14	[2024-12-12 19:59:34] Fragment Shader not supported by HW!

You need to make sure you have the proper video card graphics drivers installed (e.g. Intel, Nvidia, ATI, etc), since the game is 3D.

As an alternative, you can also switch to software mode, but the results are not great. To switch, select the renderer in the game config. Check this instructions: ​https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Freescape#How_to_switch_different_renderers

[blam666]

Ah ok. The game starts if I check software mode.

This is probably very true that it's a specific graphics driver issue, but I won't be able to do anything about it. I'm on a a pretty dated old notebook with an Ati onboard card (Ati Mobility HD 4650) which never got Windows 10 drivers (the last specific driver for that card were made for Windows 8). I got this notebook sold already updated on Windows 10 with this issue and I'm using a replacement driver which sometimes produces problems like this. For instance, tools like dgvoodoo never work on this system because of this driver issue).

But it's not a big deal, I can just play these freescape games on other systems I own.

Thanks a lot for your help!

[neuromancer]

Great, glad to help!. If you still feel you want to play in software mode, it will be great to get bug reports. In any case, let's get back to this report. How you got the 0.drk and 1.drk files exactly?

[blam666]

Replying to neuromancer:

Great, glad to help!. If you still feel you want to play in software mode, it will be great to get bug reports. In any case, let's get back to this report. How you got the 0.drk and 1.drk files exactly?

Wanted to add that the games also work in "pure" OpenGL mode. It's the "OpenGL with shaders" version that causes the crash. I will play them a bit in the following weeks and if I encounter bugs I will create bug reports here.

And about the versions: I actually own the Dark Side and Total Eclipse Amiga versions from back then in those Amiga days. But I wasn't able to extract the Dark Side files and Total Eclipse files so far. (There are some confusing instructions on the ScummVM wiki site atm.) So I found versions of the necessary drk files in a whdload pre-install from GamesNostalgia. They have each a PAL and a NTSC version of these games.

This one: DarkSide_v2.0_1099.lha
has versions of the two files that are not recognized by the current stable daily build. (This is the one that created the ScummVM "unknown variant" message of this ticket.)

But this one works: DarkSide_v2.0_NTSC_1424.lha

While the PAL and NTSC versions of Total Eclipse also have the necessary tec files but both versions don't work.

[neuromancer]

I'm investigating these versions to see how they can be supported. In the meantime, please feel free to ask about the wiki instructions (e.g. ​https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Dark_Side#AtariST.2FAmiga_releases ). I wrote the instruction, so happy to answer your questions on how to recover the files from the original disc.

[blam666]

Thanks you very much for investigating those versions.

I'll try to explain what I thought was confusing about the current wiki:

I started looking up the wiki to understand how I'm supposed to extract the right files from my Amiga Discs. I actually started to look for the Total Eclipse game files in particular.

On the Total Eclipse wiki page there is

1) the mention of using deark to extract 0.tec and 1.tec. This was the first part of what I found confusing - the hotlink just leads to the github page of deark without specific instructions how to use that program. I didn't know deark before and wasn't able to extract those files after trying for a while.

I'm not sure if I was just handling it incorrectly. At least after trying to create an adf, the files were not accepted by ScummVM. But it could also have to do with the copylock protection that is mentioned there. Which leads me to confusing instruction 2)

2) I suspect my version of Total Eclipse could be one of those copylock protection versions. When I follow the current wiki, the instructions for dealing with a copylock version lead me firstly to this page:

​https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Freescape/DRM

where I learn I'm meant to provide an ipf disk image of my disk. I unfortunately have no clue how to do that. I tried a bit, though, and also learned that deark actually doesn't even read ipf. It can only read regular Amiga Disc (adf) images. So I can't use that program to extract the necessary files either.

But on the page I linked there is a hotlink for people who want to extract data from copylock protected Amiga disc.

Now that was the MOST confusing part: That hotlink doesn't lead to instructions, really, but to a GitHub page that contains something that looks more like a program code:

​https://github.com/keirf/disk-utilities/blob/master/amiga/cracks/dark_side/Makefile

I didn't really know how to proceed with that. There is also only mention of Darkside and the "code" seems to want some Darkside ipf I didn't have and no mention of Total Eclipse at all. Some of the lines read to me like I have to have some kind of Python base programs installed to even use any of what I'm reading on that page.

So this is why I failed using my own discs to make these Amiga freescape versions run and be tested and found those whdload pre-installs.

I think some more beginner-friendly instructions could help to get more testers of these freescape games active to check for bugs.

[neuromancer]

You are completely right, the instructions are confusing and not beginner friendly at all. I will edit them to make sure they are clear, but in the the meantime, keep in mind if you cannot access the data files directly from your Amiga disk (e.g. using Amiga tools to copy the required files), then the files are copylocked. This DRM is particularly nasty, and the only way to decrypt it obtaining a low-level dump of the disk. I don't think you can do it with a normal disk drive nor the Amiga. You need to use a special hardware like greaseweazle (​https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle/wiki). If you don't have it, you cannot create the ipf image pf the disk and the rest of the instruction will not make any sense. I will update wiki to make sure it is clear.

[neuromancer]

I took a quick look to the WHD versions. As you said, some of these versions are correctly decrypted and it should work fine (given that the support it is complete, which is not case right now). Some other WHD versions have "improvements" for the game, which are useful if you play with the original hardware, but here they introduce an issue, since they break the compatibility with ScummVM. I will keep this issue open, but the priority for fix it will be low, until I complete the original versions.

[blam666]

Ok, thank you for looking into those versions and the instructions.

And merry christmas!