Opened 3 years ago

Last modified 16 months ago

#12604 new defect

AGS: Maniac Mansion Mania (MMM) series keyboard shortcuts issues

Reported by: scureuil Owned by:
Priority: low Component: Engine: AGS
Version: Keywords: original
Cc: Game:

Description (last modified by scureuil)

Most "Maniac Mansion Mania" games are written in German/Deutsch at first,
and have shortcut issues with both original Windows AGS engine and ScummVM/AGS-engine.

https://www.maniac-mansion-mania.com/index.php/en/spiele/episoden/staffel-1.html

  • For the German language version, the AGS action menu is:
Schau Benutze   Nimm
Öffne Schliesse Gib
Ziehe Drücke    Rede

The game expects this german keyboard layout,
and maps actions position-wise :

[Q] [W] [E] R T Z
[A] [S] [D] E F G
[Y] [X] [C] V B N

(so [E] is a shortcut for "Nimm", and [A] for "Öffne")

But on US keyboards (QWERTY), bottom-leftmost key is Z, not Y,
so the shortcut for "Ziehe" is misplaced.

Worst, French keyboard are like that:

[A]  Z  [E]  R  T [Y]
[Q] [S] [D]  F  G  H
[W] [X] [C]  V  B  N

which gives:

Öffne   *        Nimm * * Ziehe
Shau    Shliesse Gib  * * *
Benutze Drücke   Rede * * *
  • The English/Italian/Russian language version uses the US/IT/RU keyboard layout :
[Q] [W] [E] R T Y
[A] [S] [D] E F G
[Z] [X] [C] V B N

which gives the same issue when the user uses a different keyboard layout, both with ScummVM AGS-engine and the original Windows AGS executable.

  • For shortcuts to work as expected, raw keycodes should be used instead of keymap-translated keys, and keyboard shortcuts for the action menu should be patched accordingly.
  • Affected games:

At least Maniac Mansion Mania 1, 3-8 (Maniac Mansion Mania 8 doesn't adapt shortcuts to other languages at all), 10-11, 14-15, 17-18, 21-24, 27, 29-30.

Maniac Mansion Mania 2,9,16 use first letter based shortcuts for English language, MMM12 has no shortcuts.

Change History (6)

comment:1 by scureuil, 3 years ago

Description: modified (diff)

comment:2 by dreammaster, 3 years ago

Owner: set to dreammaster
Resolution: pending
Status: newpending

I'm not sure how to test this, but since the codebase has been recently updated to match the stand-alone interpreter, there's every chance it could already have been fixed; if you could test and confirm?

comment:3 by dreammaster, 17 months ago

Owner: dreammaster removed

comment:4 by tag2015, 17 months ago

This is still an issue even with the upstream interpreter and there's no timeline for it, most likely because any change would cause regressions in other games.

See https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/issues/1391

Dropping priority

comment:5 by tag2015, 17 months ago

Priority: normallow

comment:6 by tag2015, 16 months ago

Resolution: pending
Status: pendingnew
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