LASTEXPRESS: fails to start: Save game file "blue.egg" is corrupt

[kparal]

I installed ScummVM from Flathub and wanted to try The Last Express (from GOG). After adding the game and starting it, I see this error:

User picked target 'lastexpress' (engine ID 'lastexpress', game ID 'lastexpress')...
Running The Last Express (Interplay Release/English)
CD1.HPF: 8c86db47304033fcff32c69fddd5a920, 525522944 bytes.
CD2.HPF: 58aa26e782d10ec5d2231e539d2fe6a2, 669581312 bytes.
CD3.HPF: 00554fbf78a2ad391d98578fbbbe1c48, 641128448 bytes.
HD.HPF: bcc32d977f92bb52c060a0b4e8589cac, 30715904 bytes.
Save game file "blue.egg" is corrupt!
Debugger started, type 'exit' to return to the game.
Type 'help' to see a little list of commands and variables.
Type 'clear' or 'cls' to clear the debugger's output.
ERROR: Save game file "blue.egg" is corrupt!

The GOG file version downloaded is:
setup_the_last_express_1.0_gog_v2_(88837).exe (and .bin)

I extracted the GOG installer using innoextract.

ScummVM version:

$ flatpak run org.scummvm.ScummVM -v
ScummVM 2026.2.0 (Nov 11 2011 11:11:11)
Using SDL backend with SDL 2.32.66
Features compiled in: Vorbis FLAC MP3 ALSA SEQ TiMidity RGB zLib MPEG2 FluidSynth Theora VPX AAC A/52 FreeType2 FriBiDi JPEG PNG GIF cloud libcurl SDL_net ENet SDL2 TinyGL OpenGL (with shaders) 

Quite interestingly, I can make the game run on older ScummVM. When using ScummVM 2.9.1 packaged in my distribution (Fedora 43), I get a warning that support for The Last Express is experimental, but the game starts and can be played. From that same directory, same files. That leads me to believe that the files are not corrupt, but instead there's some problem in ScummVM 2026.2.0.

[AndywinXp]

Hi, can you confirm from a fresh install that there was indeed no blue.egg file in the save directory?

[kparal]

$ ls -l The\ Last\ Express/
-rw-r--r--. 1 kparal kparal 525522944 Mar 22  2019 CD1.HPF
-rw-r--r--. 1 kparal kparal 669581312 Mar 22  2019 CD2.HPF
-rw-r--r--. 1 kparal kparal 641128448 Mar 22  2019 CD3.HPF
-rw-r--r--. 1 kparal kparal  30715904 Mar 22  2019 HD.HPF

There's no blue.egg file in my directory.

I copied these files over from an extracted GOG installer. There's no blue.egg file in there either.

Now I also tried to install the GOG installer using Wine, and looked into the target directory. There's saves/ directory, but it's empty. There's no blue.egg file in there (anywhere in the target directory) either.

[AndywinXp]

And what about the global ScummVM save folder?

Quoting our documentation:

ScummVM follows the XDG Base Directory Specification, so by default the saved games can be found at ~/.local/share/scummvm/saves/, but this location might vary depending on the value of the XDG_DATA_HOME environment variable.

.local is a hidden directory. To view it use ls -a on the command line.

If ScummVM was installed using Snap, the saves can be found at ~/snap/scummvm/current/.local/share/scummvm/saves/

(​https://docs.scummvm.org/en/v2026.1.0/use_scummvm/save_load_games.html)

[kparal]

D'oh, I'm sorry! There indeed was ~/.scummvm/lastexpress-blue.egg . It was created by ScummVM 2.9.1, and that's why ScummVM 2026.2.0 probably considered it corrupt. I didn't realize the save files are placed into a different non-game directory. It makes sense of course, it just wasn't obvious to me.

After I removed the .egg file, The Last Express now starts correctly. Thank you!

I believe this ticket can now be closed.

As a possible recommendation, you could change this error line:

ERROR: Save game file "blue.egg" is corrupt!

to include a full file path. That would make it easier for other people that encounter this problem to figure out how to resolve it.

Thanks again.

[AndywinXp]

Thanks for the follow up! This explains everything.

Between 2.9.1 and 2026.1.0 I rewrote the engine from the ground up, so the two savefile formats were not matching. The current savefile format is the exact same of the non-ScummVM non-Gold-Edition version, and what we had in 2.9.1 was something custom and completely different.

I'll be sure to look into clarifying the message, that's some good feedback, I could even add something like "be sure that you haven't got a savefile from 2.9.1 and below".