smk decoding

fabio · Post by **fabio** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 10:55 am

Hi,
in the README file i see:

Broken Sword 1 and 2 both come with in-game cutscenes compressed using
RAD Game Tools' legacy Smacker(tm) format. As RAD is unwilling to open
the older legacy versions of this format to us, and have requested we not
reverse engineer it, Revolution Software has kindly allowed us to provide
re-encoded Broken Sword cutscenes for download on our website:

Now seems that ffmpeg has a smk (Smacker) decoder: http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/changelog.html

Will then be possibile to include this in a future version of ScummVM?
There should not be any problem from the legal point of view (unless smk is patented, but however ScummVM already includes some other patented code, like MP3 and MEG2). Also there should not be any problem from a moral point of view since it was not reverse-engeneered by ScummVM and this won't cause nothing more to RAD.

Thanks

clem · Post by **clem** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 11:07 am

this has been discussed before when ffmpeg first got smk files to run (forum search?) - the consensus back then was to wait and look if RAD would take action against them.

not sure if this changes anything - afaik RAD Game Tools still hasn't officially allowed third-party smk decoding and I guess ScummVM doesn't want to risk angering the industry

however, this being open source, nobody could stop some renegade individual from forking off and creating a ScummVM version with native smk support

fabio · Post by **fabio** » Tue Oct 28, 2008 4:21 pm

Hi,

sorry to ask again but over an years have passed

.

Is there any news on this?

If there aren't patent on the format itself there should be no problems in including ffmpeg smacker support in scummvm.