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Translating SCUMM games

Started by July 14, 2004 04:37 PM
5 comments, last by VBBR 20 years, 4 months ago
Uh, I'm not too sure if this is the place to post this question, but as I didn't find the answer anywhere... Is there any way to translate the old good SCUMM games (like monkey island 1 and 2), that is NOT with a hex editor, and/or without the risk of corrupting all the game and having to start over again and/or being able to change the lenght of the in-game texts (like if you need to translate a small word like "at" to a bigger one like "uhiuwdywgueygfu" and the entire phrase becomes bigger. Note that "uhiuwdywgueygfu" is a word I just created. :) )
So you'll create an MMORPG, uh? Well, what about reading THIS?
You might just want to use this:
www.scummvm.org

I just stumbled accros it a few days ago.

Man, did I enjoy Flight of the Amazon Queen... It always ran to fast for me. But now it doesn't do that anymore!
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I already use that to run my SCUMM games, as the original EXEs didn't run on WinXP. But I couldn't find any links related to game translations there tough.
So you'll create an MMORPG, uh? Well, what about reading THIS?
Most likely you would need a SCUMM compiler+the original scripting source code. And I doubt Lucas would release it.
I stumbled upon a program called scummtr some days ago. It theorethically (sorry if this word is not right) would export a text file with each string on a line and then re-incorporate the text into the game (after you edited it).

The exporting worked right, but unfortunately the import didn't. I just exported and re-imported the same file and the game crashed as soon as I put the cursor over an object. I just tried to use it with monkey island 1 however. Maybe I should try on MI2.
So you'll create an MMORPG, uh? Well, what about reading THIS?
You could either try to modify ScummVM to use external language files, or try to make such a tool yourself. Have a look at the ScummVM sources. Basically, the Scumm resource files are in RIFF format. That means you'll more or less have to extract each block (at least something like that), scan the scripts for opcodes that have text arguments (look at descumm sources). Then you reconstruct the file again by putting all blocks together. Note you also have to change the .000 file, as it contains absolute file positions.
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Woo hoo! Never mind! I just realized I was using the wrong game ID with scummtr, now the program works beutiful! The texts can even change length!

Thanks anyway for the responses!
So you'll create an MMORPG, uh? Well, what about reading THIS?

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