AndywinXp

Let's bring back this thread with an update on my end: https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/pull/4033 This pull request adds support for the original GUI and menu for COMI. I encourage those of you who are able to compile builds and have some spare time to test this and see if it works fine 🙂 After these changes are merged, my project is to proceed backwards from SCUMM v7 down to whichever version I can reasonably arrive to (so probably not v0 or v1).

Nah, it probably would have worked fine anyway given how the iMUSE "clock" works internally, I think that issue might have lied in the fact that they needed to resequence 2 hours of music for what essentially was a 4-channel tracker and find a different way to embed layered transitions inside of those files. Something which (if true) ultimately just wasn't worth the hassle. Another theory could be that they only ported only a part of the iMUSE system with the essentials, given that the original works very closely with some variation of the standard MIDI format and, again, they had to deal with a 4-channel tracker. EDIT: Also, being that there was no built-in synth engine in the Amiga (I think?), each of those music pieces had to be shipped in a self-contained way (samples+sequence), and it probably occupied too much space

Speaking as a (primarily) guitar player I'm probably biased, but I personally still think things like slide guitar and more complicated dynamics are not very credible when done on VSTs 😛

Sure! (Note that whenever I'm saying "synth" I'm actually referring to sampled instruments from the E-MU Rack Instruments) Drums are live except for orchestral pieces (where there are marching drum patterns, like snare rolls); Percussions are also live for most part except when there are a LOT of percussion, in those occasions the live percussions are augmented by synth ones (the cannibal theme on Blood Island is a perfect example of mostly synth percussions); Marimba and steel pan are live on in-game pieces, and synth on cutscenes (except for the intro cutscene and the Elaine becoming a statue scene); Reed and woodwind instruments are for a good half live and for the other half synth in-game, while are completely synth for the cutscenes (except for the main theme, in which the only synth instruments are the hammond organ and the MT-32 organ); Keyboard instruments are synth (organ, harpsichord); Bass guitar is always live, played by Michael Land himself, and can be heard on any band based track. Non-band tracks use a synth pizzicato doublebass instead; Electric and acoustic guitars is always always live (thank god, sampled guitars just suck 🙂); The whole orchestra (violins, violas, strings in general, brass instruments, timpani) is synth;

My musical brain is already tickling, this is some fricking good stuff! The production level seems to be on par with Curse (well, at least for these 12 seconds), which is only good news 🙂 take this with a grain of salt, but (judging by ear) the wind instruments seem to come from SWAM virtual instruments, which I have used many times and are so good. And I agree with @KestrelPi, not-live/synthesized does not equal a bad soundtrack: want to know how many synth instruments Curse has versus live ones? You'd be surprised 🙂 It probably comes down to choosing the right instruments to be performed live (notably percussive, exotic and band instruments), choosing some very convincing samples (and as a musician I can say that in 2022 we're basically overloaded with those) and having the right producer working on it and mixing the final product. Unfortunately, IMHO Tales lacked in all these three departments, but Return already seems to excel at each one of these!

Congrats Aaron, great job!

Thanks Aaron! In the meantime, your application has already replaced DOSBox and my Windows 95 VM as my personal way for checking the original behavior of the games. DREAMM is so quick to use that I'll probably never be bothered again to fire up DOSBox for that purpose.

I haven't read any comment section, Reddit boards, Twitter, anything! And I couldn't be happier about this: I loved the trailer, the art style, the music, Dom's voice-over, everything, I am still 100% psyched! Nothing and nobody has managed (or will manage) to put down my excitement! I'm just waiting for the moment when I'll be in my pajamas, plausibly with an autumn breeze coming from my window, my earl grey tea, and the game up and running either on my PC or my Switch (or both? ). Aaah Do yourselves a favour, if you can and if your job allows for that of course, suppress the FOMO and try not looking at Twitter/YouTube/anything Because at the end of the line, it's just not worth it to have our excitement artificially put down by an uneducated mass of people who think writing mean stuff on the internet has no consequence on the real world.

Hi Aaron! I was testing the current beta of DREAMM on COMI&demo and I noticed that I wasn't able to trigger any CTRL combination with any of the keys (e.g. CTRL-C for opening up the exit message, CTRL-T for changing the subtitle/speech mode, CTRL-B for changing the number of iMUSE buffers); is that done by design or is that a bug?

Oh yeah, the original menu is there too! I still have to implement the thumbnails, but other than that I managed to get every remaining feature to work as expected.

Let's bring a more positive note to this thread So, about the original COMI GUI not being in ScummVM...

Hoping that this can count as a detail, a very hidden one: COMI has a hidden old-style main menu in the code (I had to patch the executable to make it work). I guess that the kinda out of place palette for the "Are you sure you want to overwrite this game?" banner makes sense now

I had a pretty big rant written here, where I explained once again that everything in ScummVM is *volunteer work* and if you're not okay with the direction it's currently taking you can do what I did and become a team member yourself, but even though I'm sick of the project getting crapped on for seemingly no good reason at all, I'd say this is not the place for this kind of discussions

This is SO great!! I agree though, GOG and Steam should start supplying the EXE files at some point! The one thing that stood out for me is the suggestion box for the copy protection screen! That's insane and so cool! How did you do it? Is screen scraping involved in some measure? I am hoping this can be open sourced at some point, both for the educational value (you are a very experienced programmer and I'd have a lot to learn from your code), both for easier long term support and port developing. Also, I'm really glad this exists, this is fuel for some very healthy "competition" (even though I'd say this is not the right term): I now have this itch that I really want to scratch, which is implementing the original GUI and menu for COMI in ScummVM, and I have already begun the RE works for it

Haha, no I didn't, I literally lifted the "Cursed" name and the idea from there though 😛

Ah the issue with MI2 is the duration of the OST, I unfortunately don't have time to re-perform all 2 hours of music, not mentioning all those iMUSE transitions... Also, thanks for all these kind words, I really do appreciate that!

Thanks for the nice words about the Cursed soundtrack but I should really find some time to remix it and rerecord some drum and guitar parts... Jeez those are old

We have been pretty much active on SCUMM lately thanks to the fact that the number of maintainers for this engine has grown up to four/five concurrent devs, so please send your bug reports and don't be scared to do so! Yes, the enhancements are on by default!

Please, please please, DO file it on the bug tracker! We might fix it and mark it as an enhancement!😁

I am literally hoping for the COMI rendition, to be elected as the official theme 😛 That, or anything which diligently uses live performers and (as a drummer I'm finnicky about this) a well written rhythmic section. Which means, no drum parts which are clearly not written by drummers 😛 (looking at you, MI1, 2 and 5)

Hi everyone! I wanted to pass a message from eriktorbjorn himself (who, by the way, is unable to register to this forum since it appears there's an issue which prevents people receiving confirmation mails). He recently merged a great feature which allows for disabling with a toggle some of the SCUMM improvements not found in the original interpreters. This can be done in the "Game Options" dialog (not in the global options dialog); you can find a list here https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=SCUMM/Game_Enhancements for details on what the setting covers now (for instance, the character spacing setting in Mac Indy3 has been incorporated into the toggle). I personally find this very cool, this is a great way to have some cool enhancements while still being able to lend a hand to purists and let them play something closer to the original experience.

Heya! I'm getting reports of some folks trying to register an account here and not being able to receive a confirmation mail (independently from which mail provider they use), could you please check if there's an issue within the registration phase?

For the love of whoever-you-want, keep COMI away from Bill Tiller! Why is there such need as fixing what's not broken in the first place? The hope is that nobody would invest the amount of money necessary to make something more than what's actually useful, which is a remaster with the original clean and high resolution assets...

Oh well

Uh, is this intentional?