The Secret of Monkey Island - Mega-CD vs ScummVM

General chat related to ScummVM, adventure gaming, and so on.

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Wesker
Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Apr 10, 2009 3:03 am

The Secret of Monkey Island - Mega-CD vs ScummVM

Post by Wesker »

What's ScummVM supposed to do with the Mega-CD version of The Secret of Monkey Island when running it? Is it modifying it's display or graphics somehow?

I ask this because one prominent feature of the Mega-CD version is that it's dark, very dark. You can clearly notice this when you run the game either on original hardware or any typical Mega Drive/Mega-CD emulator. However, ScummVM seems to light the graphics/colors considerably, making a huge difference in vividness. Here's some pics for comparison.

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My wonder is if this is doing something out of reach for the Mega Drive/Mega-CD itself, not possible to recreate when you run the game either on original hardware or emulation somehow. I'm aware there's a trend to attempt color hacks for Mega Drive (and some Mega-CD) games, though this is not the scope of ScummVM. But if this is keeping strict to the limitations of the Mega Drive/Mega-CD, then maybe it would be possible. I have some doubts regarding that point, because you can see the Mega-CD version changes the Guybrush color hair sometimes (like in the harbor scene, see picture), obviously because of color count limitations, while ScummVM keeps that consistent. That's something the Mega-CD version does from time to time, depending on the scene context and its color count.

Well, maybe the Mega Drive/Mega-CD itself can't totally match what's ScummVM is supposed to be doing with it, but surely something could be done with that darkness/grittiness the original game runs to make it more vivid, even if just a little.
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LogicDeLuxe
Posts: 432
Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2005 9:54 pm

Re: The Secret of Monkey Island - Mega-CD vs ScummVM

Post by LogicDeLuxe »

What is the reason they couldn't take the colors straight from the Amiga version, anyway?
Wesker
Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Apr 10, 2009 3:03 am

Re: The Secret of Monkey Island - Mega-CD vs ScummVM

Post by Wesker »

While this ended up being largely ignored, fortunately the issue has now been fixed when playing the game on a real Mega-CD.

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6540/

Apparently, this (odd) problem was derived of setting up the shadow mode of palette colours of the Mega Drive as default.
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