Any Adventure Games for the DS, Anybody?

[Marduk]

Originally Posted by corruptbiggins

I would love to see more adventure games on the DS but I would prefer developers to create games designed for the consoles, not just ported because they were successful on another platform. I do think, however, that Revolution did a good job in porting Broken Sword to the DS but I believe that's mainly down to them doing it themselves instead of a third party creating the port (like Myst).

Both the Wii and DS are excellent venues for adventure games but aside from those don't see the point of porting or creating adventures for any other console. There's no reason why console versions of games (or original console games) shouldn't work on them but I imagine it's something to do with having to use a joypad instead of a mouse and keyboard.

Still, another code seems to be doing quite well so we may well be seeing original titles on the wii if not other consoles.

[jared25]

Originally Posted by LuigiHann

I think you listed most of the ones I know of. The Ace Attorney series is the best there is on DS.

I hadnt played that yet i held off because i thought it may have been like the old pc game "In the First Degree (PC)" the idea on that was to interview individuals pretrial to charge the muderer with his hanus crime. Then when finished, place in the 2nd disk and pry the real truth out of them. Best i had done was
2nd degree, been a while

[MusicallyInspired]

Originally Posted by natlinxz

I don't think that SCUMMVM will be supporting Myst anytime soon. Part of getting SCUMMVM to work was having the source code from a few SCUMM games, and I don't think that Myst is open source.

I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that it's hard.

You don't need the source code to support games if the engine is possible to be reverse engineered. SCI, for instance, was reverse engineered. As was AGI. And there is somebody actively working on Myst and Riven compatibility in ScummVM with tangible results (you can read his blog). It's still a long ways off but hey, we thought we'd never see SCI support in ScummVM either! And honestly, the notion of Myst support would have been a lot more realistic than the notion of SCI support was before it was incorporated.

[Marduk]

Originally Posted by MusicallyInspired

You don't need the source code to support games if the engine is possible to be reverse engineered. SCI, for instance, was reverse engineered. As was AGI. And there is somebody actively working on Myst and Riven compatibility in ScummVM with tangible results (you can read his blog). It's still a long ways off but hey, we thought we'd never see SCI support in ScummVM either! And honestly, the notion of Myst support would have been a lot more realistic than the notion of SCI support was before it was incorporated.

But... Isn't this Piracy?

Don't get me wrong; I have been guilty of small acts of piracy. But I really think that it's wrong in certain situations, like if the company creating the game is quite small or in financial difficulties. That might be not be the case, here, but when so many large game producers are dropping all of their Adventure games wouldn't you want to see them get the best possible sales revenue?

[Fizzywix]

Time Hollow is another adventure game as well.

[LuigiHann]

Originally Posted by Marduk

But... Isn't this Piracy?

Don't get me wrong; I have been guilty of small acts of piracy. But I really think that it's wrong in certain situations, like if the company creating the game is quite small or in financial difficulties. That might be not be the case, here, but when so many large game producers are dropping all of their Adventure games wouldn't you want to see them get the best possible sales revenue?

ScummVM isn't for piracy, it's about running your old games on your new computer. I'd love to be able to play Myst and Riven on my computer without having to mess with rolling Quicktime back to an older version, and stuff. Even if they add support in the main ScummVM build, I doubt Myst and Riven would be supported by any of the ports, though, especially the handheld ports, due to their complexity. But I could be wrong.

Just as an aside: Cyan, the makers of Myst, most certainly do fall into the "quite small or in financial difficulties" category.

[MusicallyInspired]

It's not piracy. There's nothing illegal about reverse-engineering a game engine since it doesn't have to be bundled with a game's resources that use said engine (that would be illegal). All that's being incorporated into ScummVM is the ability to interpret and understand game code from specific engines not the game itself. If reverse engineering game engines were illegal that would render all AGI and SCI fangames illegal, which they aren't. Unless they were to be sold. That would be illegal as well since you're making money off of a proprietary game engine. LucasArts has long been confused about the purpose and state of ScummVM as they were worried it would actually contain and supply a SCUMM SDK as LucasArts often licenses the SCUMM engine out to third party developers. But that's not what ScummVM does. The code is all there in the source, however, and you could take the source code for the part of ScummVM that understands a certain engine and create your own SDK out of it but that's a means to an end. The existence of reverse engineered code to understand game engine scripts itself is not illegal.

[PariahKing]

All Scummvm does is allow you to run it through a program that'll run on a more modern computer. You still need to provide the game.

EDIT: Ah, I see I've been sarnath'd.

[Marduk]

I'm not saying that ScummVM is piracy, I'm sorry for not being clear enough.

I run it myself to play out dated games which aren't compatible with modern PCs and almost all of those games are out of print (hence why they're incompatible).

It's because those games are out of print that I make the distinction between this and piracy; those games aren't otherwise available unless second hand and getting them used doesn't give revenue to the producers of the game.

On the other hand it's still possible to buy new copies of Myst. (I don't know about Riven and subsequent sequels, though. If they're no longer in print then anything you do to them is fine).

If the rights holders were to allow the Myst series to become open source I wouldn't have a problem with it (and, as I said, I don't have a problem with making a version that's compatible with ScummVM of any game that is no longer in print).

[Homestarlover]

Drawn To Life 1 and 2 baby!

[Marduk]

Originally Posted by Homestarlover

Drawn To Life 1 and 2 baby!

This really looks like a platformer to me.

[MusicallyInspired]

Originally Posted by Marduk

snip

Read my post again.

[Marduk]

Originally Posted by MusicallyInspired

Read my post again.

Done. Now what?

[natlinxz]

Originally Posted by Marduk

On the other hand it's still possible to buy new copies of Myst. (I don't know about Riven and subsequent sequels, though. If they're no longer in print then anything you do to them is fine).

I don't think anyone has ever had any troubles getting MYST in the past...



Sorry for the huge post...Yes! I scanned that myself!

[MusicallyInspired]

Originally Posted by Marduk

Done. Now what?

I explained why it wasn't illegal. Game resources (pictures, sounds, music, story, characters) are illegal to distribute but there's nothing wrong with reverse engineering an engine to allow it to be played on multiple systems. Source released or not. I've already said that AGI and SCI game engines have been reverse engineered as has the GOB engine (Gobliiins, Lost in Time, Ween: The Prophecy) and a lot of the others supported and going to be supported by ScummVM including SCUMM itself (which is still in active use today). You can't do anything with these engines anyway as you still need the game resources to make anything work. So, it doesn't matter if you personally have a problem with it or not. It's not illegal.

[badmonk]

i have always thought this since the DS came out, its perfect for point & click adventures so how come TTG & lucasarts aint bringing out their games on what is a potential gold mine for this genre of games?

also anyone know if theres any acronym for point & click adventure games please as i kinda get tired of typing it all the time lol!

[Marduk]

Well as long as you're only doing it for yourself it would be fine.

but realising you never said you would redistribute it highlights my demonstration ignorance in thread.

Originally Posted by badmonk

also anyone know if theres any acronym for point & click adventure games please as i kinda get tired of typing it all the time lol!

well, when you're on a forum that is largely dedicated to adventure games, or using a site that happens to have a lot of them, you don't need to type the words 'point and click' each time. People will understand what you mean simply by typing 'adventure games'. (Though, tbh, I still think this could use shortening. I think that, over the years, the genre has (sadly) become too obscure for people to easily recognise it in an acronym or abbreviated).

[badmonk]

Originally Posted by Marduk

well, when you're on a forum that is largely dedicated to adventure games, or using a site that happens to have a lot of them, you don't need to type the words 'point and click' each time. People will understand what you mean simply by typing 'adventure games'. (Though, tbh, I still think this could use shortening. I think that, over the years, the genre has (sadly) become too obscure for people to easily recognise it in an acronym or abbreviated).

thanks for the reply!
lets make one up then!! P&CA easy peasy!!

[Emily]

A few others that I don't think have been mentioned: Touch Detective 1 and 2, CSI: Dark Motives, Ankh, Jake Hunter, Miami Law.

I though the Touch Detective games and the CSI port were okay. Ankh had a lot of problems, Jake Hunter... I wouldn't recommend that one. I'm still playing Miami Law, so the verdict's still out for me, but I'll be reviewing it for Adventure Gamers in the near future.

Flower, Sun, and Rain is another one... I haven't played it, but I've heard it's a bit weird.

I really, really liked Time Hollow, by the way.

[Marduk]

Originally Posted by Emily

A few others that I don't think have been mentioned: Touch Detective 1 and 2, CSI: Dark Motives, Ankh, Jake Hunter, Miami Law.

I though the Touch Detective games and the CSI port were okay. Ankh had a lot of problems, Jake Hunter... I wouldn't recommend that one. I'm still playing Miami Law, so the verdict's still out for me, but I'll be reviewing it for Adventure Gamers in the near future.

Flower, Sun, and Rain is another one... I haven't played it, but I've heard it's a bit weird.

I really, really liked Time Hollow, by the way.

For some reason 'Touch Detective' was called 'Mystery Detective' in this country. Had I realised sooner I'd have realised that more or the clues were in the textures she describes... There's Touch 2 now, you say? Excellent I found this game rather extremely sweet and charming as well as funny, even if the clues were mind boggling.

[EDIT] thanks for mentioning those other games, too, I shall look into them post haste

I already decided to avoid the PC version of Jake Hunter as I heard it was from the makers of 'The Runaway'.