Frequently Asked Questions

Read this before mailing me questions. This list will be added to as the questions get in. :)

Q. When will you add support for <Costumes/Dig music/Fonts/Cutscenes>?
A. There's a very short answer to this: When I find out how to do it. Period. There is absolutely no way that you asking ever day will make it come sooner :). SCUMM Hacking requires a certain mix of spare time, hard work, luck and other people working on the stuff. Sometimes I find the solution in a magical inspirational moment (much as it happens when I write themes for my musical compositions), other times it takes hours, days, weeks or months of focused work.

Q. I want to do some work on SCUMM hacking! What should I know/have?
Well, you should obviously own some of the SCUMM games... Other than that, knowledge of how computers and DOS/Windows work is a must. Knowledge of various file formats which may use some of the same techniques that LEC use can be handy too. Knowledge of assembly language is quite nice also, but not required. The number one thing that is needed is wanting to experiment. You'll find a lot of stuff by just opening the files (including the executable) in an editor, and looking at the bits of actual text inside of them. If you feel you need more info on various programming/hacking stuff, or need to know what tools would be handy, check out the section devoted to that on the links page.

Q. How do I rip CMI / The Dig music?
A. The latest version of SCUMM Revisited should be able to play music and voices from CMI. Open any .bun file and choose any .IMX block within, press Play or Decompress to .WAV. I'm currently working on Dig music.

Q. How do I find a specific voice file in the voice bundles?
A. In games before CMI the only thing you can do is look for it... On the CMI CDs, however, there is an index file of voice samples in the resource directory, called "language.tab". This file is a plain ASCII text file, which contains a list of filenames along with the dialogue line they contain. So, open this in a simple text editor (note that it's too big for NotePad), and search for a word which is included in the voice sample you're looking for. Each voice bundle file in CMI is ordered alphabetically, so it should be easy, when you have the filename, to find the right file.

In Grim Fandango a similar file is stored in the grimdata directory (and in the installation directory on your harddisk), called "grim.tab". This file is encrypted, however, so you have to open it in SCUMM Revisited, choose the RCNE block, and press the button Decrypt to Text. The file you get out of this is similar to the CMI one. It will be harder to find the right file here than with CMI, though, as the files are not stored alphabetically in the bundles. A block name search function exists in SCUMM Revisited 3.

Q. Why are the help menu items disabled?
A. Currently SCUMM Revisited only has HTML Help. If your computer doesn't support it, the menu items will be greyed out. In order to get your system to support it (Windows 98 and Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 4 automatically do), you have to get Internet Explorer 3.02 or later (it doesn't have to be your default browser), as well as a file called hhupd.exe from Microsoft. Users who already have HTML Help, but who experience problems (such as when clicking the index tab) may want to download this too, as it was just recently updated with bug fixes. I do realize that some of you may not want to have Internet Explorer in any of its incarnations installed. And for you, I've added a zipped version of the html files making up the help file at the download page. Also, online help is available.