Frequently Asked Questions
I get a lot of email about ScummVM DS. Nearly all of them are exactly the same. Here I'm going to try and answer the questions that everybody asks me in the hope that I will spend less time answering questions that are clearly in the documentation and more time helping people who have a real problem or have discovered a real bug.
Q: I can't see the bottom line of inventory items in Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island 2, or
a few other games! What do I do?
A: Hold down the left shoulder button and use D-pad (or the touch screen) to scroll the screen around.
Q: I dont see a menu when I press Start in Flight of the Amazon Queen or Simon the Sorcerer. Is ScummVM broken?
A: No. To save in Simon the Sorcerer, click 'use', then click on the postcard in your inventory. In Flight of the Amazon Queen, click 'use', then click on the journal in your inventory.
Q: Why does ScummVM crash when I play Monkey Island 1?
A: This happens when MP3 or OGG audio tracks are present from the PC version of ScummVM. Delete the MP3 tracks and reencode them to ADPCM WAV files, from your original CD, as described in this section.
Q: When will you support my Mini/Micro SD card reader? I want it! Pretty please?
A: ScummVM uses DLDI drivers. If your card reader manufacturer doesn't provide a driver, there is nothing I can do about it. The people to ask are the card reader manufacturers themselves.
Q: ScummVM won't save/load, or crashes in the newspaper scene in DOTT, or during the intro in Fate of Atlantis. What do I do?
A: This is down to a buggy DLDI driver which doesn't support unaligned data reads properly. Contact the author of the DLDI and point them to this FAQ, and they should know what to do. If the author of a DLDI want to contact me, feel free, and I will tell them what the issue is.
Q: Can't you use the extra RAM in the M3/Supercard or the official Opera Expansion Pack to support more games like The Dig and Full Throttle? DS Linux has done it, so why can't you?
A: Not at the moment. The extra RAM has certain differences to the build in RAM which makes it difficult to use for general programs. As ScummVM DS is an official port, the changes to the ScummVM code base must be minimal to avoid making the code difficult to read for other users. I do have plans to work on this some time in the future, but don't nag me about when it'll be done. If and when there's progress with this, I will post on the ScummVM forums about it.
Q: ScummVM DS turns off my DS when I hit 'Quit' in the game or quit from the frontend. Why doesn't it return to the menu?
A: Due to bugs in the ScummVM codebase, many of the ScummVM games cannot quit cleanly leaving the machine in the same state as when it started. You will notice that no other versions of ScummVM can quit back to the menu either. This will be fixed at some time in the future.
Q: The text looks a little unclear. Is there a chance of a better scaler? Perhaps a software scaler?
A: Press select and enable the software scaler. Press select during the game for the DS Options Screen, and select 'Software scaler'.
Downloads
The current version of ScummVM DS can be downloaded from Sourceforge. Download this if you want to play the games:
ScummVM DS 0.11.1
You can also download the source code. This is only needed if you want to make changes to ScummVM DS:
Download ScummVM DS 0.11.0 source code
Pleae note: due to a typo on my part, version 0.11.0 used to be called 0.11.0a in a few places. Sorry.
Previous stable versions:
ScummVM DS 0.11.0
ScummVM DS 0.10.0a
ScummVM DS 0.9.1a
Older versions (from before ScummVM DS was an official port):
ScummVM v0.61 Binary
ScummVM v0.61 Source Code
ScummVM v0.6 Binary
ScummVM v0.6 Source Code
ScummVM v0.5 Binary
ScummVM v0.5 Source Code
ScummVM v0.4 Binary
ScummVM v0.4 Source Code
ScummVM v0.3 Binary
ScummVM v0.3 Source Code
ScummVM v0.2 Binary
ScummVM v0.2 Source Code
ScummVM v0.1 Binary
ScummVM v0.1 Source Code
Contributors
ScummVM DS uses chishm's GBA Movie Player FAT driver.
The CPU scaler is by Tramboi and Robin Watts
The ARM code was optimised by Robin Watts
Thanks to highpass for the ScummVM DS icons.
Thanks to zhevon for the Sam & Max cursor code.
Thanks to theNinjaBunny for the M3 Adaptor guide on this site.
Thanks also to everyone on the GBADev Forums.
This program was brought to you by caffiene, sugar, and late nights.
Donations and Getting Help
If you have problems getting ScummVM to work on your hardware, please read the FAQ first. Please don't ask me questions which are answered in the FAQ, I get many emails about this program each day, and I can't help the people who really need help if I'm answering the same question all the time which is already answered on this page. Other than that, feel free to post on the ScummVM DS forum for help. Please do your research first though. There is no way of running this on an out-of-the box DS without extra hardware. Most of these things are fairly inexpensive though.
If you want to contact me, please email me on scummvm at millstone dot demon dot co dot uk.
If you want to help with the development of ScummVM DS, great! Download the source code and get building. There are plenty of things left to do.
You can also help by making a donation if you've particularly enjoyed ScummVM DS. This uses Paypal, and is completely secure. There's no pressure though, ScummVM DS is completely free. This is just for those who would like to make a contribution to further development.
Building from Sources
To build ScummVM DS from source, it's probably better to checkout the latest version of the code from the ScummVM SVN repository. The ScummVM
Sourceforge.net homepage has all the information about how to do this. Please post on the ScummVM DS forum for assistance with compilation.