Opened 13 years ago
Closed 4 years ago
#5855 closed defect (fixed)
MADE: Unknown Version of "The Manhole"
| Reported by: | (none) | Owned by: | sev- |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | normal | Component: | Engine: MADE |
| Version: | Keywords: | detection | |
| Cc: | Game: | The Manhole |
Description
This version of The Manhole appears to be unsupported. I believe it's a fairly obscure copy. It was given to me by my uncle years after he obtained it. I do have parts of the manual which are labelled "Magnavox", so I only assume it was part of a Magnavox CD-ROM bundle that came with his computer, I can't be totally sure.
This version *appears* to be the floppy version with CD audio tracks. I don't think it's the enhanced edition, it's been a while since I have played it but I do believe it is the EGA copy (I can reach the title screen in DOS Box occasionally, but no further), and I'm quite sure it's the version from 1989.
ScummVM 1.3.1 (Jul 10 2011 19:38:39) Features compiled in: Vorbis FLAC MP3 RGB zLib
Title: The Manhole Language: English Version: 1989 MAGNAVOX Bundle CD-ROM Platform: Windows 7 x64
Please, report the following data to the ScummVM team along with name of the game you tried to add and its version/language/etc.: {"manhole.dat", 0, "df77ad5232757d7149342fb6471de4ed", 99317},
Ticket imported from: #3415193. Ticket imported from: bugs/5855.
Attachments (3)
Change History (26)
comment:1 by , 13 years ago
comment:2 by , 13 years ago
| Summary: | Unsupported version → MADE: Unknown Version of "The Manhole" |
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comment:3 by , 13 years ago
Thank you for the bug report. It would be useful to identify the exact version.
If you could attach a text file listing the data filenames and MD5 checksums to this bug, it would help i.e. The output of a tool such as http://md5summer.org/ on your Manhole CD
comment:4 by , 13 years ago
It is likely that your EGA version does use an earlier version of the MADE engine used for the Enhanced version, which we do support.. but adding this may not be as simple as just adding an entry to detect your version: http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/The_Manhole
comment:6 by , 13 years ago
Hmm... Since the game uses CD-DA Audio tracks as well, could you attach the cue file from a bin/cue dump of the disc? This would list the track data in terms of length, number of tracks, audio/data etc.
Any reasonable CD burning program such as Nero Recorder etc. should be able to generate this type of disc image. The result will be a large bin file (Don't attach :-) and a small toc or cue file(Please attach this small metadata file). Cue would be optimal, but if your program produces a toc instead, then this is fine as it is trivial to convert to a cue file.
comment:7 by , 13 years ago
Gladly, and done. Let me know if there's anything else I can give you to help out. :)
comment:8 by , 13 years ago
Right, looking at the MD5 filelist against the MADE engine detection tables, your version is unknown i.e. not listed.
If you are confident with compiling code for your own platform, then I will attach a patch to this bug for our current development code, which you can apply with a "patch" tool and then you can compile a modified ScummVM for your platform: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_%28Unix%29 http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/ http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Compiling_ScummVM
This modified ScummVM should then detect your version of The Manhole... It would be interesting to know what happens/the error message when you try to run it.
comment:9 by , 13 years ago
| Owner: | set to |
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comment:10 by , 13 years ago
If you need assistance with this, I would suggest asking in the development IRC channel at #scummvm on freenode.
Based on looking at the engine code, the filelist and the cue file, I think the major issue will be that this version lacks the sound resource file "snds.blk", which I think in this early engine version (V0?) is provided instead by the CDDA tracks. The cue file shows 95 audio tracks following the main data track, so this seems very likely. This will need a fair modification to the engine code to skip opening the snds.blk file and stub off the sounds accesses for this version...
comment:11 by , 13 years ago
Sorry, that second paragraph was technical detail aimed at the MADE engine developers, not the bug submitter.
comment:12 by , 13 years ago
That's fine tdhs, thanks for the replies.
I have experience compiling code on various UNIX platforms, but Windows has never interested me as a coding environment, and I've never needed to compile my own software for the platform, so I don't even have any compilers or libraries installed. To be honest I'm not really great with code - I can write simple scripts and I have an intermediate understanding of programming itself and a very very basic understanding of the C language, nothing more.
If there are free compilers available (I'm not sure, never looked) and you can point me to one, I can give it a shot to help out with the SCUMMVM project if necessary, otherwise I'm more than happy to wait for a new version. If I need any further assistance than this I'll be sure to head to the IRC channel.
I can confirm that you're completely correct regarding the CDDA tracks. A lot of them are very short tracks (i.e. sound effects, not music) that are played throughout the game.
Thanks again for checking this out, and I hope I haven't caused too much of a headache for the team. ;)
comment:13 by , 13 years ago
I suspected as much in regard to your experience.
The main issue I can see here with adding support for your version will be getting a copy of the game for the main MADE developers to use to add and debug addition of support, since it is fairly obscure. Otherwise, we will need you to help in an interactive way to add the required support and test.
There are free C++ compiler toolchains for Windows i.e. MinGW and (free as in beer) MSVC, but this issue is not Windows specific, so you could help by compiling under any Unix, including Linux which is fairly easy. I indicated earlier our documentation on compiling for various platforms, which generally give step-by-step guides: http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Compiling_ScummVM
If you can compile and confirm the detection entry works, but the game crashes out fairly early, I can look at an additional patch to remove the snds.blk accesses and stub out sound resource accesses for your version.
If this then works in terms of game play, we can look at adding sound resource access from mp3 versions of the tracks as per RTZ etc.
by , 13 years ago
| Attachment: | MADE-add-version-to-detection.patch added |
|---|
Patch to add detection of this version
comment:14 by , 13 years ago
Oops, used the file, rather than the detection MD5 in the patch. Corrected and uploaded a new version of the patch.
comment:15 by , 13 years ago
As I don't have this version (yet?) it's quite hard to add support for it. And I guess trial-and-error would be very time consuming (and I sadly don't have much of it). I'll try to keep an eye open for this specific version on eBay, until then I'm sorry but you're out of luck :( Also the manhole.dat is significantly smaller than from the normal EGA version (almost 25kb smaller) so it's probably doing something else different than just the sounds...
comment:16 by , 13 years ago
That's fine, I certainly don't expect you to go through trial-and-error trying to fix this! Even with my limited programming experience I know what that entails.
Please don't get me wrong here, I am not promoting copyright infringement in any way, but what are the legalities behind such old software? If it's perfectly legal to do so I could organise a copy via FTP or something easily enough, just let me know.
I'm in no rush to get this working, it was more a curiosity, at this point my intentions are simply to further the SCUMMVM project. I love open source software, and I love to contribute when I can.
comment:17 by , 13 years ago
@Unnamed Google Account User: No, it's not legal for you to upload it. Copyrights last 90+ years in the United States.
@john_doe: I believe I just found a copy on Amazon (and bought it), so I'll take a look at it when it arrives.
comment:18 by , 13 years ago
Ah, no problem then, wasn't aware you were in the US, sorry. :)
I'll do my best to get this patched+compiled in windows, otherwise I'll wait until I get access to my friend's Linux box and do what I can there and post the results.
comment:19 by , 13 years ago
@Unnamed Google Account User: Just to update this bug's status mthreepwood now has a copy of your variant and has confirmed that though it is MADE, there are significant numbers of differences which will require work. The MADE developers will look at this, but it will take some time, so please standby.
comment:20 by , 13 years ago
For reference, I now also have a copy of this variant of The Manhole, so can assist in working on support/testing.
comment:22 by , 4 years ago
| Type: | defect → enhancement |
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comment:23 by , 4 years ago
| Owner: | changed from to |
|---|---|
| Resolution: | → fixed |
| Status: | new → closed |
| Type: | feature request → defect |
I added detection with the unsupported flag.
Sorry, first time submitting a bug report here, I should have included the title of the game in the summary - I thought the "Group" drop down list would take care of that.