The Longest Journey

The Longest Journey
First release	1999
Also known as	N/A
Developed by	Funcom
Published by	Funcom
Distributed by	Funcom
Platforms	Windows
Resolution	640x480, 24-bit color
Engine	Stark
Support	not yet
Available for Purchase	Yes

The Longest Journey is a game by Funcom. A woman named April Ryan who lives in the scientific half of the world known as Stark finds that she has the ability to shift between both worlds.

Current status in ScummVM

The ResidualVM Stark engine is being merged into ScummVM.

In the latest daily builds of ResidualVM, The Longest Journey was completable.

Installation

Required data files

For more information on how ScummVM uses game data files, see the user documentation.

Copy the data files from your The Longest Journey CDs, DVD or digital distribution into one directory:

• The 1a—79 directories (only 4f for demo version).
• The global directory.
• The static directory.
• The fonts directory (not critical, but recommended – see below).
• x.xarc and all the INI files.
• game.exe (not critical, but recommended for a styled message dialog)

The 2-CD and DVD versions have some of the data files packed in installer archives. Unpack the archives.

The Steam version and the demo from Steam are missing the fonts directory. The required fonts can be copied over from demo version obtained from different sources, such as a GOG or retail version.

Mixing files from different versions of the game is not supported.

Controls

The mouse is used to interact with objects and menu elements.

Available keyboard shortcuts:

Key	Binding
Escape	Skip video sequence or current line of dialogue, skip time if Time Skip option is enabled
F1	Diary Menu
F2	Save game
F3	Load game
F4	Conversation Log
F5	April's Diary (initially disabled)
F6	Video replay
F7	Game settings
F8	Save a screenshot
F9	Toggle subtitles on and off
F10	Quit game and return to main menu
A	Cycle back through inventory cursor items
S	Cycle forward through inventory cursor items
I	Inventory
P	Pause the game
X	Display all exits on current location
Page Up	Scroll up in dialogues and in your inventory
Up arrow	Scroll up in dialogues and in your inventory
Page Down	Scroll down in dialogues and in your inventory
Down arrow	Scroll down in dialogues and in your inventory
Enter	Select currently highlighted dialogue choice
1 – 9	Select a dialogue choice
Ctrl + F5	ScummVM menu
Alt + Enter	Switch between windowed mode and fullscreen
Ctrl + c	Force quit (from command line)
Ctrl + q	Quit (in-game)
Alt + x	Quit
Alt + q	Quit
Alt + s	Save a screenshot

Modding

ScummVM can load replacement assets instead of the original files for some of the asset types. By leveraging this capability, users can create mods for the game. These are the currently supported modding features:

• Load mods from the mods directory inside the game data path. Each mod should be in its own directory in the mods subdirectory. Mods are loaded in alphabetical order.
• Load external PNG files instead of the XMG files inside the game archives. The replacement PNG files can have larger dimensions when compared to the original XMG images, enabling the creation of a high resolution mod. The game looks for the replacement files in a mod directory and then in the xarc subdirectory of the directory containing the archive in which the XMG picture to be replaced is located. For instance:mods/[my_mod]/1e/00/xarc/fountain_layercenter.png needs to be used for the Venice park background. ScummVM expects PNGs to be in pre-multiplied alpha format for improved load times. However the replacement_png_premultiply_alpha scummvm.ini setting allows to load regular transparency PNGs when set to true for convenience when testing.
• Load replacement video files for the Smacker animations. The replacement files can be either in Smacker or Bink encoding. With Smacker, only 1-bit transparency can be used. Transparent pixels must have the Cyan color (#00FFFF). When using Bink, 8-bit transparency can be used. The alpha channel should be encoded in the pre-multiplied alpha format. The replacement videos can have larger dimensions than the originals but must have the same number of frames and the same frame rate. Like with PNG files, replacement video files are loaded from mod folders: for instance mods/[my_mod]/08/02/xarc/011001.bik is the animation where the tree spirit lifts the egg back into the nest.
• Load replacement textures for the 3d models. Each original tm file contains several textures, each with its associated mipmaps. The replacement files are zip archives containing dds packaged textures. The replacement archives must be placed at the root of the mod directory and be named after the tm file they replace:mods/[my_mod]/april_waitress.tm.zip. Each zip archive must contain all the textures from the replaced tm file. The textures need to be encoded in uncompressed RGB or RGBA dds files with mipmaps. Files inside the archive must be named according to the replaced texture name, but with the bmp extension replaced with dds: backdress-highres-battic.ddsThe extractAllTextures console command can be used to extract the tm files to png files.

Contact us if you need further capabilities for your mod.

Developer resources

• Debugging
• Design notes
• TODO list

External links

• MobyGames page about The Longest Journey
• Wikipedia article on The Longest Journey