DREAMM 2.1 Released

[Aaron Giles]

DREAMM 2.1 is officially released for Windows, MacOS, and Linux targets (x64 and ARM64). DREAMM is a bespoke emulator for LucasArts titles running on DOS, Windows, and FMTowns platforms.

 

Download it here: aarongiles.com/dreamm/

 

Link to what's new (also copied below): aarongiles.com/dreamm/docs/v21

What’s New in 2.1?

DREAMM 2.1 sports a number of significant upgrades over the original 2.0 release. In short, the major changes are:

• Greatly enhanced Windows emulation to support new games:
  • Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures
  • Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion
  • Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
  • Star Wars: Yoda Stories
  • Outlaws
  • Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II
  • Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith
  • Star Wars: Behind the Magic
  • Star Wars: Episode I Insider’s Guide
  • Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine
• Extended support for Windows releases of Star Wars: X-Wing, Star Wars: TIE Fighter, and Afterlife.
• Added support for Star Wars: Making Magic multimedia CD
• Added support for running on Linux systems, both Intel and ARM.
• Added detection of dozens of new game variants.
• Improved the UI, adding mechanism to verify installed games.
• Added support for MDS/MDF and CCD/IMG CD image formats.
• Added a mechanism to turn on portable mode, where all data is kept next to the DREAMM executable.
• (Re-)added standalone mode if you place DREAMM next to the game files.
• Added an OPL-based MIDI emulator as a fallback for all platforms.
• Games can now be installed via the command line.
• Added limited telemetry to notify me remotely if DREAMM runs into problems.

 

[AndywinXp]

Great job Aaron, and congrats for this new release!

[Aaron Giles]

(removed 2.1.1 beta announcement -- see below for official release)

Edited October 1, 2023 by Aaron Giles

[Aaron Giles]

A couple of last-minute fixes and now DREAMM 2.1.1 is officially released!

 

https://aarongiles.com/dreamm

 

This is just a bugfix release for 2.1, with a number of reported crashes fixed and support for a few new international game variants.

 

Full details of the changes:

• Fixed error/lack of sound with some versions of Yoda Stories
• Fixed unpredictable audio synchronization in Mortimer
• Fixed joystick in Outlaws (and other Winodws games)
• Fixed ARM-specific hangs in Infernal Machine menus
• Improve handling of very long pathnames during installation
• Improve behavior of Windows emulation process cleanup to reduce crashes
• Fix crashes when exiting Indiana Jones and His Desktop Adventures
• Fix race condition when starting up the 3D rendering threads
• Fix occasional crash when rendering overlays with custom images
• Support version 3 MDS image files
• Add support for a number of new international releases

[EOakford]

Great work on the Windows emulation. This greatly simplifies getting the Windows games running; no more need for compatibility fixes or workarounds. With macOS and Linux versions of DREAMM, it also makes them more portable!

 

Having said all that, I did find one issue.

Shadows of the Empire (GOG release) has an issue where the OGG tracks are stuttery, and eventually stop playing entirely. Is this related to the WinMM wrapper (win32.dll) that GOG uses to emulate the CD audio tracks? I've witnessed similar issues with the Windows versions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter (whose WinMM wrapper is named music.dll). I ordered an original CD of the game off eBay, and will test it to see if there are any problems with the tracks.

 

Rebel Assault II version FA1.08 actually has a native Windows version of the game, which uses DirectX. I imagine there's little point in supporting that (probably doesn't have much improvement over the DOS version), but it's still good to know.

 

All in all, a fine emulator for LucasArts games. Hopefully, X-Wing Alliance and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter can be supported in the future to complete the X-Wing series. More classic Star Wars games will certainly help. I've got Phantom Menace on the way from eBay, and that game has severe compatibility issues.

[Thrik]

I was playing a bit of Curse of Monkey Island again yesterday with the latest version, and noticed an issue I’ve seen before where the music doesn’t play when you first return to gameplay after turning Elaine into a gold statue. The music only kicks in once you’ve left the scene.

 

I’m almost certain it’s meant to play there… I think!

[Scummbuddy]

It should be the Part 2 The Curse Gets Worse Act screen that has music that continues back into the Puerto Pollo beach/fort, followed by a few strums of harp music before kicking back into some music. Maybe it's getting tripped up trying to find that harp music file/cue, and halting more music?

[AndywinXp]

Wowie-zowie, that's true, music should play! I can reproduce it too very consistently with my english copy.

EDIT: and THIS is where it gets weird, playing the original EXE without DREAMM consistently yields no music as well. But this is not a collective allucination or some kind of Mandela effect, music is really supposed to start there... I should try to see what happens in the disassembly.

 

EDIT 2: ever weirder, the issue is not there when running the game with the IDA debugger with the windowed flag, nice 🙂

Edited October 31, 2023 by AndywinXp

[EOakford]

I just got my Shadows of the Empire CD, and the CD audio plays without issue in DREAMM. So it looks like the WinMM wrapper is not properly supported. And from there, I found other issues in X-Wing and TIE Fighter.

 

In TIE Fighter for Windows, selecting the Joystick Flight Options doesn't show any options at all; the list is blank.

In X-Wing for Windows, the joystick buttons can be reassigned without issue. However, rotating the Z-axis causes changing the engine speed, when this shouldn't be doing anything, and indeed does nothing in the joystick configuration.

I can say for certain that these are issues with DirectInput emulation. It's serious in this case, since these games won't run at all without a joystick.

EDIT: Indeed this is an emulation issue, as playing these games directly from Windows doesn't have such problems.

 

The DOS CD version of X-Wing has a tendency to hang when entering a mission.

EDIT: The DOS versions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter work just fine with the joystick now. It must have been a configuration goof on Windows' part that fixed itself.

 

The joystick I'm using is the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, if that matters. It works wonderfully with the Rebel Assault games.

Edited November 5, 2023 by EOakford
DOS joystick support actually works just fine

[Thrik]

Spotted another two oddities that may or may not be present on original hardware:

 

1. After looking at EL POLLO DIABLO!!!!!, the music seems to skip back a few seconds each time.

 

 

2. A couple of times while doing the banjo challenge, I tried to play my note immediately after the music stopped and the cutscene for me being too slow immediately started. Normally you get a second or two so I think some timing issue sometimes reduces it to nothing. I worked around it by not waiting until the music ends.

[AndywinXp]

4 hours ago, Thrik said:

1. After looking at EL POLLO DIABLO!!!!!, the music seems to skip back a few seconds each time.

 

Oh no no, that's perfectly normal! 🙂

 

Whenever you do one of the following things:

* Looking at the Pollo Diablo painting;

* Looking at the recipe book;

* (Probably one or two more things I can't remember)...

 

The engine makes what's called heap savegame (a temporary savestate), and then proceeds to change room to our destination (the painting or the recipe book).

Whenever we have to go back to where we were before, the engine re-loads the heap savegame. That's a neat trick which avoids moving around SCUMM variables to only show a room which has very few interactions.

 

The caveat here is that the iMUSE state is being saved into the savegame (as it normally should) and then reloaded: this means that the music will restart from the point it was saved before.

 

So TL;DR: that's normal and happens on the original hardware as well.

Edited November 19, 2023 by AndywinXp

[Didero]

Over the holidays I was talking with my brothers about games we played as kids, and then we all got nostalgic about Spy Fox and friends.

So I was wondering: even though Humongous games aren't LucasArts, only LucasArts-adjacent, are there perhaps any plans to have DREAMM support them too?

[Aaron Giles]

On 10/31/2023 at 7:51 AM, EOakford said:

Great work on the Windows emulation. This greatly simplifies getting the Windows games running; no more need for compatibility fixes or workarounds. With macOS and Linux versions of DREAMM, it also makes them more portable!

 

Having said all that, I did find one issue.

Shadows of the Empire (GOG release) has an issue where the OGG tracks are stuttery, and eventually stop playing entirely. Is this related to the WinMM wrapper (win32.dll) that GOG uses to emulate the CD audio tracks? I've witnessed similar issues with the Windows versions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter (whose WinMM wrapper is named music.dll). I ordered an original CD of the game off eBay, and will test it to see if there are any problems with the tracks.

 

Rebel Assault II version FA1.08 actually has a native Windows version of the game, which uses DirectX. I imagine there's little point in supporting that (probably doesn't have much improvement over the DOS version), but it's still good to know.

 

All in all, a fine emulator for LucasArts games. Hopefully, X-Wing Alliance and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter can be supported in the future to complete the X-Wing series. More classic Star Wars games will certainly help. I've got Phantom Menace on the way from eBay, and that game has severe compatibility issues.

 

Thanks for the feedback, and sorry for not responding earlier -- my notifications on this thread seem to have been turned off!

 

As for the SotE issues -- DREAMM ignores the winmm wrapper provided by GOG and tries to act like the OG winmm from Windows 9x days. It's possible the emulation just isn't fast enough to keep up with demands here -- what kind of system are you running?

 

I'm aware of the Rebel Assault II native windows version and intend to support it eventually. But obviously not a super high priority since the DOS version works fine.

 

The next DREAMM release will be focused on the remaining DOS LucasFilm/LucasArts games, but after that I hope to get back to more early Win9x games!

On 10/31/2023 at 4:49 PM, EOakford said:

I just got my Shadows of the Empire CD, and the CD audio plays without issue in DREAMM. So it looks like the WinMM wrapper is not properly supported. And from there, I found other issues in X-Wing and TIE Fighter.

 

In TIE Fighter for Windows, selecting the Joystick Flight Options doesn't show any options at all; the list is blank.

In X-Wing for Windows, the joystick buttons can be reassigned without issue. However, rotating the Z-axis causes changing the engine speed, when this shouldn't be doing anything, and indeed does nothing in the joystick configuration.

I can say for certain that these are issues with DirectInput emulation. It's serious in this case, since these games won't run at all without a joystick.

EDIT: Indeed this is an emulation issue, as playing these games directly from Windows doesn't have such problems.

 

The DOS CD version of X-Wing has a tendency to hang when entering a mission.

EDIT: The DOS versions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter work just fine with the joystick now. It must have been a configuration goof on Windows' part that fixed itself.

 

The joystick I'm using is the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, if that matters. It works wonderfully with the Rebel Assault games.

 

Thanks for the report on the Windows versions joystick configuration issues -- I'll have to look into what's going on there. For the moment I am just emulating a very basic configuration, so it's entirely possible I'm doing something wrong in mapping extra axes. The more details you can provide, the better as I don't have a fancy flightstick to test with, so I'm kind of flying blind!

On 1/1/2024 at 4:21 AM, Didero said:

Over the holidays I was talking with my brothers about games we played as kids, and then we all got nostalgic about Spy Fox and friends.

So I was wondering: even though Humongous games aren't LucasArts, only LucasArts-adjacent, are there perhaps any plans to have DREAMM support them too?

 

I've thought about it, but I'm frankly a bit terrified at the sheer number of games and versions I would need to wrangle. For the near term I'm going to focus on LucasFilm/LucasArts/Lucas Learning games (plus a few stragglers). But once I'm solid there, I may consider venturing farther afield....

[Didero]

10 hours ago, Aaron Giles said:

I've thought about it, but I'm frankly a bit terrified at the sheer number of games and versions I would need to wrangle. For the near term I'm going to focus on LucasFilm/LucasArts/Lucas Learning games (plus a few stragglers). But once I'm solid there, I may consider venturing farther afield....

 

Oh yeah, that's totally understandable. Thanks for at least considering it!

[Pingamer]

Hello, I recently upgraded to the last version of DREAMM but unfortunately it stop working. The reason is that my account folder is containing non-English characters and the new version stores the configured games in a folder inside my account folder and DREAMM can't handle non-English characters.

I tried to configure a new folder, outside the user folder, but it didn't work and just causes the program to collapse and after reopening it returns to the original configuration.

In the previous version this didn't happen as long as there weren't non-English characters in the path of the game.

Renaming my account folder is impossible without breaking something so it doesn't seem like an option.

[NightWalker]

Hello, Aaron (I hope you read this), I'm having big troubles with Grim Fandango. I'm not a native English speaker, so I will try to write the best way I can...

 

When I executed the game, I tried to play with the number pad on the keyboard. With the key "Bloq Num" I have been able to play with this section of the keyboard, but I have problems. If you are pressing "8" (advance), "Shift" (run) and then you press the "5" key (examine), Manny will disappear from his current position and he will appear in a kind of default position of the screen. That will happend in every different screen, everytime you press the combination I told you about.

 

So... I tried to play with the other section of the keyboard: the cursors keys and the letters. I had even more problems. If you, accidentally, press the shift key (run) and "P" (pick up), Manny will jump to another section of the game. For example, if you are in the beginning of the game (I think it's "El Marrow" in English) and you press "Shift" + "P", Manny will appear in Rubacava suddenly (in Act 2). And if you press those two keys again, Manny will appear under the water (Act 3). It´s as if the game entered in a kind of "debugger mode" where Manny goes jumping from one act to another.

 

Another weird problem: if you press "Shift" + "O", there will appear words on the screen. Every word is over each interactive object of the screen. Grim Fandango is not supposed to have that words, so... it's a little weird, because when you enter in the inventory, the words that appeared over every object are floating over the screen even when you are seeing Manny's jacket in a close up view.

 

Oh, and another problem. Everytime I load Grim Fandango, the game continues automatically where I left the last time. Grim Fandango is supposed to start from the beginning everytime, but I can't restart the game anymore. If I use F12 and press "restart game", it won't work. The only way to restart the game is deleting some files from the registry of DREAMM.

 

I don't know if this problem just occurs to me. Anyone here had such problems? I'm playing the English version with the 1.01 patch and I'm using the latest version of DREAMM from Aaron's webpage.

 

Thank you very much.

Edited February 6 by NightWalker

[Aaron Giles]

On 2/3/2024 at 7:41 AM, Pingamer said:

Hello, I recently upgraded to the last version of DREAMM but unfortunately it stop working. The reason is that my account folder is containing non-English characters and the new version stores the configured games in a folder inside my account folder and DREAMM can't handle non-English characters.

Hmmm, I'm surprised about this happening, especially since it worked before! When you say the "last version of DREAMM", do you mean 2.1.2? If so, you might want to try the new beta version 3.0 that I just published here: https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/beta and let me know if that works any better.

On 2/6/2024 at 8:47 AM, NightWalker said:

Hello, Aaron (I hope you read this), I'm having big troubles with Grim Fandango. I'm not a native English speaker, so I will try to write the best way I can...

Hi, thanks for reporting this. It really does seem like some kind of debugging mode might be enabled. I will have to do some investigation to see what's going on and whether I can reproduce your behaviors.

[NightWalker]

On 2/10/2024 at 5:27 AM, Aaron Giles said:

Hmmm, I'm surprised about this happening, especially since it worked before! When you say the "last version of DREAMM", do you mean 2.1.2? If so, you might want to try the new beta version 3.0 that I just published here: https://aarongiles.com/dreamm/beta and let me know if that works any better.

Hi, thanks for reporting this. It really does seem like some kind of debugging mode might be enabled. I will have to do some investigation to see what's going on and whether I can reproduce your behaviors.

 

Thank you very much!