“Scumm” comes from the fact that it was originally designed to run SCUMM games, like Monkey Island. “VM” stands for Virtual Machine.

Every now and then somebody will raise the subject of finding a “better” name for ScummVM, one that fits better with it's modern scope (which extends well beyond SCUMM games). So at this page we present you with some nice alternatives. Choose whichever suits you best -- but we will stay ScummVM.

SCUMM stands for "Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion". It is a utility used to create the famous LucasArts adventure games.

It was initially created in 1987 by Aric Wilmunder and Ron Gilbert for the game "Maniac Mansion" and was used later, with some modifications, for Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. Development on the SCUMM system continued for some time, and was used in Loom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Monkey Island 1,2,3, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle, The Dig and Full Throttle.

ScummVM is released under the GPL (General Public License), so it's more than free. ScummVM source code is freely available and you can do whatever you want with it. If you make modifications to it and redistribute your work you MUST make the source available. However, the ScummVM team would be pleased if you choose to send them your modifications, so they can be merged into the main tree.

You can find it on the download section on our web site. You can download the latest version, which could be a little old. For the most recent cutting-edge in-development version, you have to compile it yourself from Subversion or use the precompiled 'daily builds' linked from our download page.

The source code package contains a file called README that should explain everything.

ScummVM should be able to be compiled on any SDL platform, with just small modifications.

Currently tested platforms include Win32 (Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP), Linux i386 and PPC, BeOS, Solaris, Mac OS X, Dreamcast, MorphOS, IRIX, PalmOS, WinCE, GP32, Sony PSP and PS2. It is also part of the Free/Net/Open BSD ports collections and included in Debian testing and unstable.

See also the platforms list in our Wiki.

While it is theoretically possible to write a new game that uses ScummVM it is not advisable. ScummVM has many hacks to support older games and no tools geared towards creating content usable by ScummVM. Potential game authors are encouraged to look at open source technologies such as SDL for a cross platform DirectX like library, and the Lua and Python scripting languages for game logic.

We have a compatibility list on our website that contains an up to date list of what games work, and how well they work. As well as SCUMM games, we also include virtual machines for the first two Simon the Sorcerer games (by Adventure Soft), Broken Sword 1/2 and Beneath a Steel Sky (by Revolution), Flight of the Amazon Queen, Gobliiins 1 (by Coktel Vision) as well as Inherit the Earth (by The Dreamers' Guild). Other games may be added, but this is not a common occurrence - see below.

Yes. As well as SCUMM titles, ScummVM supports Simon the Sorcerer (1 and 2), Flight of the Amazon Queen, and the Revolution Games: Broken Sword 1, Broken Sword 2, and Beneath a Steel Sky, as well as Gobliiins 1 and Inherit the Earth.

Simon support was initially written by the original founder of ScummVM as a separate program, and later included in the main binary. Revolution Software Ltd. are very nice people and kindly provided us with the source code to BASS and Broken Sword 1/2, from which we based our interpreters. John Passfield and Steven Stamatiadis kindly provided the original source code to Flight of the Amazon Queen. The Wyrmkeep Entertainment Co. kindly provided the sourcecode to Inherit the Earth. Gobliiins 1 was widely researched by Ivan Dubrov.

We do not have any plans to support any other non-SCUMM games at this time. If we do, it will be added to the Compatibility List.

Unless you work for a company interested providing us with source code for one of your classic titles, please do not ask us to support a game.

The ScummVM team is currently focusing on bugfixes for our next release.

We do NOT generally add support for non-SCUMM games! Reverse engineering a completely new game without source is a long process, and our developers are all very busy as it is... so unless you work for a company interested in providing us with source code for one of your classic titles, please do not ask.

The short answer: never. The long answer: This game is a fan-made replica of the original Maniac Mansion. It is not the same game as Maniac Mansion Enhanced, which we do support. It features improved music, sound, 256-colors graphics and reworked game interface. It was made using the Adventure Game Studio which is a free, albeit closed-source graphics adventures engine. There are Windows, Linux and FreeBSD versions of the engine. Its author keeps his source code closed due to reasons explained in the project FAQ (see last two questions). That means that you need to download that program to play the game.

If you want to play SCI games, have a look at FreeSCI. or at DOSBox.

Again and again people suggest this. The argument usually involves the observation that the two projects have similar goals, and that FreeSCI's development is appears to be quite slow while ScummVM's seems to be very fast. So, people conclude, that a merge would somehow miraculously solve all perceived problems (i.e. increase development speed, increase portability, fix bugs, enhance support for newer SCI games, whatever).

This logic is flawed in several ways. For example, a merge would not automatically ensure SCI support on all platforms ScummVM supports right now; porters would still have to adapt it for each platform. It is however true that this would probably be easier than adding support for all these platforms to FreeSCI itself. Still, it's far from being easy or simple.

Next, it is not true that the development speed would automatically increase. If you look at the internal organization of ScummVM, not all our devs actually work on all engines. Typically, between one and five people work on a given engine. When new engines are added, only a very few people (typically those who performed the merge) actually work on it. That means that in order to support (Free)SCI, we first would have to find people who performed that merge, and who then secondly would continue to work on the added code. One might wonder whether anybody who is capable of such a task and interested in it could not do the very same directly within the framework of the FreeSCI project itself, but saving the hassle of first porting the code to ScummVM... ? So where is the advantage here, exactly? The only potential advantage in this regard would be the hope that other ScummVM devs might develop an interest in the SCI code base and started to work on it. Not a completely invalid hope, but there is a steep and long road from some trivial bug fixes to actual improvements to the SCI engine. Not to forget that those people who know most about how SCI games (its creators aside) already work on FreeSCI anyway... :-).

We are not fundamentally opposed to merging FreeSCI, but the plain truth is: There is not as much to be gained from this as you might naively believe. Nor is it easy to do. There are many more details we could list here, but in the meantime, just have a look at this thread on our forums for a thorough discussion of the subject.

Most definitely. ScummVM won't work without them. If you would like to buy these games, we suggest you browse Ebay. Do not ask the ScummVM team where you can download the full versions of LucasArts games. These requests will be ignored.

See "What games does ScummVM support?".

See "What games does ScummVM support?".

Yes. Saving and restoring is already supported (ALT-1/9 to save, CTRL - 1/9 to restore, or F5 to access the save/load menu).

In general, no. We do not have any plans to load old savegames (with the exception of the Simon the Sorcerer series of games). Newer versions of ScummVM have also sometimes broken compatibility with older ScummVM savegames. Since ScummVM is under heavy development, this may occur again in the future.

Yes, ScummVM fully supports CD audio in Gobliins (CD), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (FM-TOWNS), Loom (CD & FM-TOWNS), Monkey Island 1 (CD, FM-TOWNS & SegaCD) and Zak McKracken (FM-TOWNS). Just keep your game CD inserted into your CD drive when you start ScummVM. If you have more than one CD drive in your system, you can specify your CD drive using the -c command line parameter. See the README for more info.

Yes. You can use LAME or some other CD audio conversion utility to convert your CD audio to MP3. Since version 0.3.0 we also support Ogg Vorbis files, and FLAC is supported since version 0.7.0. See the README for more info.

No. If all the game does is to play or loop a tune it would be possible, but many of the games do fancy stuff like smooth transitions from one tune to another, or turn individual instruments on and off, etc. There's simply no way ScummVM could take a piece of digital music and emulate that kind of behavior.

This question usually comes up in connection with Sam & Max Hit the Road (which has a few unused bonus audio tracks on the CD) and Monkey Island 2 (which is sometimes distributed on the same CD as the version of Monkey Island 1 that uses CD audio). Both of these games do far too much fancy stuff to even consider an idea like this.

Yes, ScummVM supports several filtered graphic modes such as AdvMAME2x, also known as Scale2x. See the README for more info.

Yes. You can either start your game using the -f command line parameter, setting the game to Full Screen in the ScummVM Options dialog, or by using the Alt+Enter key combination in-game to switch between full screen and windowed modes.

First make sure your game is supported. See "What games does ScummVM support?". If it is a supported game and you have followed the instructions in README to the letter, then see "Reporting Bugs." to report this as a bug.

First don't use the install.exe or setup.exe shipped with the game. They usually will not do what you need to run the game with ScummVM -- rather they just copy the game .exe and install some shortcuts. ScummVM requires all game data to run, so you will need to copy those manually. Look at the Game Data Files page for further details.

Check the compatibility list to see if your game has sound support currently. You can also try the -s command line parameter to set the in game SFX volume.

See "I don't hear any sound.".

Check the Compatibility List to see if your game has any known issues. If you can reproduce this crash more than once, please report it to our Bug Tracker. See "Reporting Bugs.".

If you are experiencing random crashes, and your game plays music from CD, you most certainly have encountered a Windows bug. Try copying the data files from CD to your hard disk, and running them from there.

To make it visible, you should run ScummVM from command line. To open a command prompt, open the Start Menu and select the 'Run' option. Under Windows NT/2000/XP, type 'cmd.exe' (no quotes) in the dialog box that shows up; under Windows 95/98/Me, type 'command.com' instead. If necessary, change to the proper drive first by typing 'D:' (where 'D' is the drive ScummVM is located). Change to ScummVM's directory by typing 'cd \your\path\to\scummvm' (substituting the appropriate path) and then type 'scummvm'.

This is a known issue with using Amiga version datafiles. Select Amiga as a platform in the ScummVM Game Options dialog, or use the --platform=amiga command line parameter to enable Amiga-specific code.

You are most likely using a game such as Maniac Mansion or Zak McKracken if you have this problem. You need to specify a language in the ScummVM Game Options dialog, with the -q parameter or by using the 'language' config file option.

Consult the README or command line help for further information.

First, if you use a ScummVM version prior to 0.7.0 we strongly recommend you to upgrade to the latest version, as we improved support for mac games considerably starting with 0.7.0.

For newer games ScummVM needs the main data file, usually called "<Game Title> Data" (where <Game Title> is name of your game, such as "The Dig" or "Sam & Max"). Some CDs may appear to only contain an application (watch out, it has almost the same name as the data file, except that it lacks the " Data" at the end). In that case there is still a separate data file but it is invisible.

There also exists a separate tutorial for setting up Mac versions

The older games which have LFL files should only need the platform set to 'macintosh' to run. See "The game colors are messed up." for information on specifying the game platform.

To report a bug, please create a SourceForge account and follow the bugs link from our homepage. Please make sure the bug is reproducible, and still exists in the latest daily build/current Subversion version. Also check the compatibility listing for that game to ensure the issue is not already known. In your bugreport please provide the following information:

These are not full games but reencoded cutscene (video) packs. To run the games you still need the original disks. Originally cutscenes were encoded in proprietary format and Revolution Software kindly permitted us to reencode them into MPEG and distribute them freely on our site.

Be patient. There are about 12 seconds of speech only and eventually the Revolution logo will appear.

Make sure you have enough permissions to write in c:\windows directory. Also note that this warning the first time you run ScummVM, since the file does not exist yet then.

Check savepath in Options->Paths->Save Path. That should point to writable directory.

This problem has been reported to happen under Windows in some cases. Check that you have the latest drivers for your graphics card. If that does not help, try setting the SDL_VIDEODRIVER environment variable to "windib" and try again.

Apparently other applications have had the same problem, because the release notes for SDL 1.2.10 (May 17, 2006) contained the following note:

This problem has been reported to happen under Windows in some cases. Check that you have the latest drivers for your sound card. If that does not help, try setting the SDL_AUDIODRIVER environment variable to "waveout" and try again.

That depends on what operating system and/or command shell you are using. Under Windows, you could try creating a file called scummvm.bat in the same folder as scummvm.exe. Open this file in your favorite text editor and put something like this in it:

You should now be able to run ScummVM by double-clicking on this batch file, instead of the ScummVM executable.

On more recent versions of Windows, you can also set an environment variable permanently, and for all applications, through the control panel.

In fact, this is SDL problem. SDL does by default has xinerama support enabled. Set the SDL_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_HEAD environment variable to "1" to start ScummVM (and other SDL applications) in fullscreen on only one monitor. If this does not work make sure your SDL library does have Xinerama support compiled in.

We will not do it. There are two main reasons for that. First, we believe that it would ease illegal distribution of games. Second, we already support compression of sound & speech in most larger titles, and use specially designed algorithms like MP3, Ogg and FLAC, so you can already reduce the size of the data files.

We as a team already discussed that question. We can't absolutely exclude the possibility of changing our mind one day in the future, but for now, we have no intentions to do so, hence please don't ask us about it!