MI2 SCUMMVM Thingy.

[TheFreak]

Howdy-do people. I'm the newest shipmate to search the sebben seas. Just got my copy of Monkey Madness (Well, the 'monkey Island 1&2' part anyway. I'm a lousy Ebayer) and I have a quick question or two concerning Monkey Island 2 and SCUMMVM.

 

I had read somewhere that the CD version of MI2 doesn't have the difficulty option, but when I run SCUMMVM I get some nutty password system and have to add in some numbers, then I get the difficulty selection screen.

 

I know you folks aren't SCUMMVM developers, so I'm not gonna ask why the difficulty screen comes up at all, but I do like to ask those that know what the original purpose, if there was one, of that password...screen...thing is all about. It doesn't seem to do anything important when I try it, and if it's for something that happens later in the game I haven't played far enough yet to know.

 

Anyway, great games, now I'll have to get the other two games....

 

Hope you can answer my question.

[scabb]

Yes, the game had two difficulty levels, the easy one being for magazine reviewers.

 

Also, the code-wheel is useless in the CD version; It was used to prevent piracy with the floppy disk version. A wheel came with the game, you turned it round to show the images on the screen and typed the correct values in. There are pictures on The Scumm Bar no doubt.

 

The code-wheel screen doesn't appear when the CD is loaded up without ScummVM, and you don't have the option to choose difficulty level either, as it just skips past this part and loads a specific room (Going straight to the intro).

 

They didn't remove the "screens", so much as change the game so that it would skip past them. ScummVM, however, doesn't skip past the screens. Hence the reason why they are there.

 

Unless, of course, for some reason you have a copied version of the game. I'm basing all the above on my White Label CD version.

[Remi]

Aye, we have a scan of it here.

[TheFreak]

No no, it's a legitamate disk. I wager that there's a code in the actual exe that tells the game to bypass the difficulty menu, but when run under SCUMMVM, that code is lost...forgotten, maybe? Or open just 'cuz they can? Who knows, either way it's a neat extra.

 

But I didn't know the Easy Mode was for reviewers. I wonder if there's a way to access it without SCUMMVM....

[Benny]

Its not so much 'for magazine reviewers' thats a joke on the back of the MI2 box.

 

The original interpreter came with the codewheel which you had to use to bypass the copy protection screen. You then got the difficulty selection screen.

 

Later releases of MI2 (usually on budget labels like the White Label version) presumably didnt want the extra expense of printing codewheels so the interpreter's (exe's) were made to skip it, this also had the side-effect of skipping the difficulty selection screen.

 

The reason for this is that MI2 (and some other SCUMM games for that matter) each had a certain secret command line parameter that when used to start the game would skip the copy protection and at the same time difficulty selection. What the later budget versions did was to use this parameter internally - hence no difficulty selection.

 

Fastforward to ScummVM, it used to use this method too but this was unsatisfactory for obvious reasons. What it now does is have the copy protection screen as normal but allow any numbers to be correct so that difficulty selection then shows up and all is well.

[TheFreak]

Thanks for the enlightenment. Very fascinating, this stuff.

[Darth Boboy]

cool,

when i use real dos mode.. i didn't get any difficulty selection,

but,

when i use scummVM.. WTF?

that means i can play the game in under 10 minutes!

[Meksilon]

I'll explain this very simply and quickly. The original Monkey Island Two release is as follows:

 

CODE WHEEL

MONKEY2.EXE

MONKEY2.000

MONKEY2.001

ADLIB.IMS

ROLAND.IMS

SOUNBLAS.IMS

SPEAKER.IMS

 

The copy protection is in Moneky2.001 and is the same ROOM as the difficuilty selection. There's a two-byte patch you can apply to Monkey2.001 and I used to have a tiny program that did this on my MI webpage which I made, but alas I didn't bother continuing that page (so not it exists only on my computer and on whoever's who downloaded it). Now some releases (like KIXX) actually came with a patched .001 so that you didn't need the code-wheel (in other words it accepts any answer).

 

This however was not suitable for the CD-ROM release because the CD version had to have a diffrent EXE so that it could save to your hard disk and not try to save to the cd-rom. For this reason they simply wrote the MONEK2.EXE interpereter to skip the first room (copy protection/difficuilty) since it was to be run from CD (but it didn't have to be). Interestingly enough the Madness CD also has an updated MONKEY.EXE which dosen't require the MI CD to be in to play either (though you'd miss out on the music).

 

 

And of course there is a back-door, MI2's copy protection is not random it always starts with the same two symbols - so if you repeadily hit enter when starting MI2 the answer is:

 

erm... gosh it's been so long...

 

This is the mark of Meksilon.