Torbjörn Andersson

I read a post on Mastodon from someone who had received his copy, but it seems to indicate that only the VGA talkie version was included on the USB drive. I hope that's incorrect because even I, who didn't buy the thing, would find that pretty disappointing.

Ron Gilbert tweeted a while back that he'd love to remaster Maniac Mansion. But personally, I'd be happy enough if someone could just fix the version that's currently sold. Because at least the enhanced version on GOG is cracked in a way I can't imagine Lucasfilm Games themselves would ever have done.

Not if you trust the back of the Escape From Monkey Island box. Though for whatever reason, the promise of "more monkeys than the three previous Monkey games combined!" was toned down for the PlayStation 2 version.

Thanks, something very much like that! (Though it never even occurred to me to draw Guybrush as Charlie Brown. Nice touch!)

Thanks! I got the lyrics and music from https://tomlehrersongs.com/ (which will apparently be taken down by the end of 2024, so you can bet I've archived everything I could from it!), and hacked the ScummVM source code to intercept the text from the first Stan scene. (I had a convenient savegame for it.) Then I spent some time fiddling with the timings, recorded a silent version of it, added a few title cards, and mixed it all together. Edit: Attahching a text file didn't work nearly as well as I hoped, so here's the contents of the file instead. Of course, you still need to be comfortable with compiling ScummVM and understanding diff files... And it's possible that tabs have been converted to spaces, so some editing may be required. The basic idea is to intercept when Stan is saying "I'm Stan ..." and instead insert your own text with an appropriate duration. The script pointer is then moved back to the start of the instruction so that it will still see "I'm Stan" the next time and insert another line of text. diff --git a/engines/scumm/script_v5.cpp b/engines/scumm/script_v5.cpp index da0045ef237..1f20a5f5328 100644 --- a/engines/scumm/script_v5.cpp +++ b/engines/scumm/script_v5.cpp @@ -1855,6 +1855,95 @@ void ScummEngine_v5::o5_pickupObject() { } void ScummEngine_v5::o5_print() { + static int songIndex = 0; + + const struct { + int duration; + const char *msg; + } messages[] = { + { 550, NULL }, + + { 120, "There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium^" }, + { 120, "^and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium^" }, + { 110, "^and nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium^" }, + { 120, "^and iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium^" }, + { 120, "^europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium^" }, + { 120, "^and lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium^" }, + { 120, "^and gold and protactinium and indium and gallium^" }, + + { 50, NULL }, + + { 130, "^and iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium." }, + + { 110, NULL }, + + { 120, "There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium^" }, + { 120, "^and boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium^" }, + { 120, "^and strontium and silicon and silver and samarium^" }, + { 140, "^and bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium." }, + + { 350, NULL }, + + { 120, "There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium^" }, + { 120, "^and phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium^" }, + { 120, "^and manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium^" }, + { 120, "^dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium^" }, + { 120, "^and lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium^" }, + { 110, "^palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium^" }, + { 130, "^and tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium^" }, + + { 70, NULL }, + + { 120, "^and cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium." }, + + { 130, NULL }, + + { 120, "There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium^" }, + { 120, "^and also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium^" }, + { 120, "^and argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium^" }, + { 120, "^and chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium." }, + + { 140, NULL }, + + { 180, "These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha'vard^" }, + + { 30, NULL }, + + { 160, "^and there may be many others but they haven't been discavard." }, + + { 500, NULL }, + { 0, NULL } + }; + + + if (vm.slot[_currentScript].number == 56 && memcmp(_scriptPointer, "\x03\x0fI'm Stan", 10) == 0 && messages[songIndex].duration > 0) { + const byte *oldPtr = _scriptPointer - 1; + + vm.slot[_currentScript].delay = messages[songIndex].duration; + vm.slot[_currentScript].status = ssPaused; + + const char *msg = messages[songIndex].msg; + _actorToPrintStrFor = getVarOrDirectByte(PARAM_1); + + if (msg) { + char buffer[120]; + + buffer[0] = 0x0f; + strcpy(buffer + 1, msg); + + _scriptPointer = (const byte *)buffer; + decodeParseString(); + } else { + stopTalk(); + } + + _scriptPointer = oldPtr; + songIndex++; + + o5_breakHere(); + return; + } + // WORKAROUND bug #13374: The patched script for the Ultimate Talkie // is missing a WaitForMessage() after Lemonhead says "Oooh, that's // nice." so we insert one here. If there is a future version that

I'm always amazed by people who can draw. I had this picture in my head of Ron Gilbert (or at least his "grumpy gamer" avatar) and Guybrush in a Lucy/Charlie Brown style "football gag"... and this was the only bit of it that came within a country mile of what I imagined:

Not my kind of music, I'm afraid... So I put this one together instead:

Nothing very exciting, I'm afraid.

I don't have any DOSBox savegames near that spot, but if I understand it correctly the game has a helper script that implements three different operations: Remap all palette colors to the same color. Remap one palette color to another. Reset all palette color mappings. The flash is implemented as a series of "remap all colors" plus "remap color 0 (presumably black) to another". This looks fine at the voodoo lady's place, where large parts of the image is black and there is a symmetrical black border around the scene. But here only a few small bits are black, so it looks weird. In the CD version it calls the helper script with the same parameters, but the "remap all palette colors" operation is implemented as some kind of hard-coded "brighten/darken palette" thing, and the "remap one color" operation is ignored. So it's almost certainly not a ScummVM bug. From what I've seen on YouTube, the EGA version looked fine here, so I'd say it was a regression in the VGA floppy version that was fixed again in the CD version.

Unless there's a bug in ScummVM that I've never heard of before, I guess I have to award this one to the VGA CD version: The flash when the voodoo lady disappears is different between the two versions as well, but there I couldn't say which one looks the best.

I can see why it was removed, though. It doesn't make sense when running the game from CD. (Multi-CD games were still a few years away, I believe?) But I agree it's a shame. Particularly since both MI2 and MI3 make references to that stump joke. It is still in the VGA floppy version, though.

Another musical difference is that the VGA CD version plays music in the Mêlée Island jail. (Sounds like the forest music to me, or possibly the music when following the shopkeeper.) Also, is the music when you see LeChuck's ship sail away from Mêlée Island in any of the earlier versions? I don't remember. Oddly enough, the Mac versions I have both have the CD version's user interface, but apparently none of the musical additions?

I tried to get an online AI to write a plot synopsis, but only one of my attempts came even close: My other attempts were much more vague:

Well, yes, but that's not a mandatory thing, so I figured it was enough to link to the ScummVM wiki page in an earlier post. 😀

The most noticeable difference in behavior I've seen in the VGA CD version compared to the VGA floppy version is that some text was (accidentally?) cut in the scene where you bribe the Monkey Island cannibals. There are some graphical differences besides the user interface, though. Mostly it's subtle differences in colour. I suspect some of them may have been caused by the colours being ordered differently in the palette. At least with things like the smoke from the voodoo lady's cauldron. That change carried over to the special edition, too. Maybe it also explains why the actors are a bit brighter in the CD version? Unless that was a deliberate change. (I had to use a demo for the EGA version, since I don't own a copy of that game. Hence the difference in text.) But the most noticeable colour difference, and one that I'm sorely tempted to fix in ScummVM because I think the CD version is harder to read, is the sign about the dogs: One other graphical difference was probably introduced by mistake: When playing the floppy version from hard disk (rather than directly from the floppies), the close-up of captain Smirk has animated cigar smoke. The same smoke animation as for the cauldron, apparently. I'm guessing whoever updated the game just mechanically removed those checks, and only kept the case without the smoke. Restoring the animation in ScummVM turned out to be easy, but getting it to appear a the correct position and with the correct colours took a bit more fiddling: The only case I've seen where graphics have been redrawn, rather than re-coloured, is the meat in the SCUMM Bar kitchen. The floppy version looks like ribs to me, while the CD version looks like a leg. And while preparing this screenshot, I just noticed that the colour of the grog changed to green. Edit: This change may have been to match the animation when you use the hunk of meat later?

Maybe someone already mention this, but you can also find details in the ScummVM wiki: https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=SCUMM/Game_Enhancements (I started the page, but others have added a lot to it so I don't know the details of everything in it off-hand.)

If memory serves me, the music for the cannibal village is also unique to the CD version.

It's very impressive how much it can do, but you can see some things that would have to be touched up a bit. Perhaps most obviously this sign:

As an aside, I guess the developers at Adventure Soft liked the rap sheet joke as well, because The Feeble Files had it too. With an even longer list of possible crimes: Piloting a Company spacecraft through an asteroid field. Damaging a Company spacecraft by colliding with unknown object. Piloting a damaged Company spacecraft. Failing to report damage to a Company spacecraft. Destruction of Company facility: Ministry of Galactic Uncertainty, Crop Circle Division. Unnecessary flamboyance when starting a Space Bike. Unauthorised messing about with a flashy space car. Unauthorised charging of carbonated drinks products. Lacing a drink with out-of-date Charm pills. Witholding information about treasonous activities from the OmniBrain. Using docking permits under false pretences. Making a treasonous statement about the OmniBrain. Making advances to a member of the opposite gender without a Hot Love Permit. Delivering a package to a centre of rebellious activities. Possession of out-of-date Charm Pills. Attempting to barter for Charm Pills. Attempting to incite other prisoners to escape. Dismantling decorations in Company Correctional Facility. Unauthorised nocturnal activity. Being found several times outside a correctional facility cell. Defacing security equipment with edible material. Tampering with Company property leading to malfunction of a security droid. Watching a traitorous TV channel. Setting in motion a Company production line out of hours. Possession of the traitorous Freedom Fighters Database. Forcing exit of a correctional facility thus damaging Company property. Taking and driving away a Prison Transport Vessel. Achieving release from Cygnus Alpha under own recognisance. Colluding with a known traitor Delores. Developing a sarcastic and critical sense of humour. Unapproved interference with natives from a Class C Planet. Removing a Company number from XDirectory. Phoning Citizens In Need without good reason. Releasing mind altering chemicals into the water supply of a Class C Planet without a permit. Using a Company teleporter without necessary status. Causing destruction of a Company research facility. Posing as a member of the opposite gender. Attempting to remove a captured ship from a junk droid. Endangering Citizens safety by deactivating a junk droid. Taking possession of a space car from a junk droid. Stealing a magnetic tow rope from a Company employee. Deliberately and repeatedly activating a spacebike alarm. Failing to be aware of a miraculous new Company product 'Miracle Mud'. Being spectacularly bad at a Company Entertainment Device. Causing unauthorised repair to an illegal spacecraft by being sneaky. Naughty rebellious goings-on at Asteroid 447. Illegal parking of a space Bike. Attempting to use female charms to gain favours from a Docking Controller. Attempting to use female charms without being female. Consorting with another known rebellious type, Gardum. Entering a Docking Controller's office. Stealing photographic equipment from a tourist. Indulging in a pointless activity: Ship Spotting. Causing a Docking Controller to be buried under a pile of rapidly-reproducing life forms. Removing a set of keys from the prone form of a docking controller. Unauthorised landing in a space car at Metro Prime. Attempting to steal Company Information Publication. Being present at a centre of rebellious activity. Tampering with a Company Robot. Tampering with a Company Robot again. General 'attacking the Company stronghold' type behaviour. Taking a security pass from a recently-vaporised Company Engineer. Having sympathy for a dying treacherous robot. Altering the operation of a Company ventilation system. Experimenting with grenades of unknown destructive capability. Introducing foreign bodily liquid into the OmniBrain's fluid. Taking a Company safety device: Fire Extinguisher. Taking a Company device: Antigravity weight. Taking fluid and matter from the OmniBrain vat. Reducing the temperature of a liquid life form to freezing point. Outwitting an Octoped and making off with a Company publication. Searching for protected information. Failing to lead a happy and fulfilled life. Looking up 'Directive Charter' in Oracle. Not watching Omni TV for long enough. Interrupting a Citizen in the process of validating a Hot Love Permit. Unauthorised knowledge of the location of the C.C.C.C. Using the food machine in Cygnus Alpha during Sleeptime. Failing to use an Apprehender droid for its intended purpose. Posing as a supernatural being. Exceeding Light Wave Soda quota. Collaborating in an extended pun. Wasting an Enforcer's time. Concealing deep-seated misery from a Happybot. Repeatedly defying a Docking Controller's orders. Using Earthspeak. Attempting to use a token to pay for a newspaper. Breaking into a Company Entertainment Facility. Owning in excess of 500 Company Gaming Tokens. Attempting to vandalise Company property. Attempting to use a Class A security pass machine. Poisoning a Company Employee: Ministry Controller. Theft of private property from a doddering Company employee: Ministry Professor. Misuse of a key pass. Creating a laughably unrealistic decoy in an attempt to deceive a loyal Company agent.

The ever growing rap sheet is one of my favorite Monkey Island 2 jokes. The following crimes are always listed: the murder of G.P. LeChuck the use of witchcraft on the person of Largo LaGrande the thievery of clothing and medically prescribed hair supplements for such witchcraft graverobbing trespassing larceny without a permit and releasing a dangerous reptile in a populated area The rest of the crimes are conditional, but I'm not sure exactly what all of them correspond to. Some are mutually exclusive. disturbing the peace illegal gambling on a sporting event use of falsified identification for the purchase of alcohol exceeding allowable FDA limit for rodent parts in vichyssoise premature entombment of a non-dead individual reckless tampering with city-maintained plumbing without prior acquisition of an environmental impact report transportation of animals not in a mental state to give consent vandalizing a historical miniature reckless use of gardening tools impersonating a woman in order to evade prosecution unauthorized exiting from a penal institution two counts of unauthorized exiting from a penal institution unauthorized exiting from a penal institution impersonating a federal mail boat reanimating dead persons within city limits possession of library books not specifically checked out to oneself mixing drinks without a liquor license Also wanted for questioning regarding the disappearance of prescription eyewear I hope I didn't miss any.

Actually, the thing I'm most interested to see from a trailer is a release date. But that wasn't an option.

You can see that the game speeds up, because the animated fires in the background speed up as well. (I wonder if that's why the animation was removed in the VGA talkie version.) Edit: Oddly enough, it seems that (arguably) glitch was worked around in the non-interactive demos.

Replay? I finally got around to playing Maniac Mansion for the first time! And now I'm in the mapping phase (oh boy) of Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, which I also haven't played before. It remains to be seen if I'll find the time to finally play Thimbleweed Park before Return to Monkey Island is released.

It's not as if anyone has forgotten the game exists, but someone has to do the work. A lot of game engines have very few active developers. What's most likely to produce results: Complaining, or offering to help?

It is at the very least quite similar to a puzzle in Infocom's game Sorcerer. Whether or not the MI4 developers had played it is, of course, an entirely different matter. I'm attaching an annotated transcript of that part of the game. (It uses Unix-style line breaks rather than DOS-style, but I hope it works.) It is, of course, a complete spoiler for that entire section. coal-mine.txt