Opened 13 years ago
Closed 22 months ago
#6008 closed defect (wontfix)
BACKENDS: Dreamcast - FT/Dig: Crash when subtitles are enabled
| Reported by: | (none) | Owned by: | dwatteau |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority: | normal | Component: | Port: Dreamcast |
| Version: | Keywords: | ||
| Cc: | Game: | Full Throttle |
Description
ScummVM 1.4.1 Dreamcast port English, talkie
When you enable subtitles in both of these games, they eventually crash at the moment when a new subtitle would be displayed (i.e., between lines of text). The games seem to run fine without subtitles from what I've seen.
Ticket imported from: #3504678. Ticket imported from: bugs/6008.
Change History (12)
comment:1 by , 13 years ago
comment:2 by , 13 years ago
| Owner: | set to |
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comment:3 by , 13 years ago
From http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Dreamcast: "The Dreamcast has no external storage medium, and only has 16MB of RAM. As such, the Dreamcast port of ScummVM does not support The Curse of Monkey Island, nor the Dig. The resources required for these games are too great for the Dreamcast to handle. Full Throttle is not completable. Every other game supported by ScummVM should be completable with the Dreamcast port."
i.e. This crash is probably an Out of Memory issue.
Though the fact it seems to work fine without subtitles, might warrant some investigation in the SCUMM engine to see if there is a memory leak in subtitle resource/text loading which may be causing this.
comment:4 by , 6 years ago
| Keywords: | dreamcast added |
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comment:5 by , 4 years ago
| Component: | Engine: SCUMM → Port: Dreamcast |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | dreamcast removed |
| Summary: | DC: FT/Dig - Crash when subtitles are enabled → BACKENDS: Dreamcast - FT/Dig: Crash when subtitles are enabled |
comment:7 by , 2 years ago
Tested latest git version using the Flycast emulator.
Both Full Throttle and The Dig don't start at all and just go to the Dreamcast menu, so I can't say if the subtitles make any difference (I doubt it, to be honest).
Other scumm games seem to work normally, I tried indy4, monkey2 and the talkie version of DOTT. The latter starts with subs disabled and seem to work normally when enabled from the gui.
follow-up: 9 comment:8 by , 2 years ago
Thanks for your test.
It's maybe time for the Dreamcast port to stop building scumm-7-8 at all? AFAICS, it doesn't receive as much care as some other resource-limited ports such as NDS nowadays, so it's probably a better experience not to ship what's known to be K.O. there for years? And removing SCUMM 7-8 support on Dreamcast will maybe give the SCUMM engine a bit more air to breathe there?
(I know that FM-TOWNS smooth scrolling is also broken there, in that it's painfully slow, by the way. And since there's no UI to disable this setting on this port...)
comment:9 by , 2 years ago
Replying to dwatteau:
It's maybe time for the Dreamcast port to stop building
scumm-7-8at all? AFAICS, it doesn' t receive as much care as some other resource-limited ports such as NDS nowadays, so it's probably a better experience not to ship what's known to be K.O. there for years? And removing SCUMM 7-8 support on Dreamcast will maybe give the SCUMM engine a bit more air to breathe there?
I agree with dropping v7-8.
It's not surprising that the Dreamcast port gets little interest, using it is really an exercise in frustration and nowadays there are easier ways to use ScummVM on a CRT or the like...
comment:10 by , 23 months ago
| Priority: | normal → high |
|---|
Would be nice to take a decision for 2.7.0 for this one IMO. The SCUMM experience on Dreamcast is getting worse for users who want to test our most well-known engine, and it’s been this way for many years so I don’t think there’s any sense in shipping a broken scumm-7-8 there. Especially when the test costs you a CD-R.
comment:11 by , 23 months ago
@dwatteau: Just a few bits from me as I have helped zeldin with the DC port previously since I own the hardware and being an electronics engineer, I have made up the required serial debug cables etc.
Firstly, though the user documentation only lists running this by burning a CD-R, DC developers or anyone else with the inclination can use a upload slave program loaded from CD-R which can then load other programs such as ScummVM from serial or IP (ethernet) interfaces:
https://mc.pp.se/dc/serslave.html
https://mc.pp.se/dc/ipslave.html
Once the upload slave is loaded in memory, you can swap out the CD-R for one with game data and then upload a ScummVM binary to test with into memory... Admittedly the limited RAM can cause issues with "heavier" engines.
The fastest way to upload is via the Ethernet interface for the Dreamcast which replaces the modem, but this is relatively rare and expensive (I do own one).
However, the serial cable method will work fine and you can get / make the required connector and cable relatively cheaply and easily. See:
https://mc.pp.se/dc/serifc.html
One tip is that the serial port connector for the DC can be hard to find, but you can make one by cutting down a VGA port connector using a sharp knife from a very easy and cheap VGA to SCART / composite cable. See E-Bay for these.
This then avoids the huge pile of CD-R coasters.
It is up to the Dreamcast maintainer and core team how they wish to handle this in the end.
comment:12 by , 22 months ago
| Owner: | changed from to |
|---|---|
| Priority: | high → normal |
| Resolution: | → wontfix |
| Status: | new → closed |
We now don't build the scumm-7-8 engine anymore by default on Dreamcast (see Github PR no. 4693).
It might be technically possible to let the SCUMMv7+ titles (and some other engines) properly run on Dreamcast again, but that would require some dedicated work and AFAICS nobody has been actively working on this yet.
Assigning to DC maintainer for visibility.