How to guides/TODO

See also TODO: Docs, Web site

User's Guide

A user's guide should be written. Here's a layout proposal, taken from our DocBook manual.xml file, which also already contains some content (mostly taken from the README, but updated in some cases).

• Introduction
  • What is ScummVM
  • Reporting bugs
  • Contacting the developers
• Getting started
  • Requirements
  • How to obtain ScummVM
    • Binaries
    • Compiling from sources
  • Installion
    • Debian
    • Fedora Core / Redhat
    • Slackware
    • Windows
    • Mac OS X
    • Windows Mobile (WinCE / PocketPC / Smartphone)
    • PalmOS
    • Symbian / EPOC
    • Nintendo DS
    • Dreamcast
    • GP2X
    • GP32
    • PlayStation 2
    • PlayStation Portable
  • First steps
• Running and using ScummVM
  • The launcher
    • Managing your games (adding/removing a game)
    • Configuring a game
    • The (global) options dialog (this will point to the "Configuration" section)
  • Command line options
  • Hotkeys
  • Saving and loading
  • Macintosh games: Accesing HFS filesystems
  • Multi-CD games
• Configuration
  • Using the launcher to change the the options
  • All config file switches in detail
  • Graphic filters
  • Music and Sound
    • Music drivers
    • Using compressed audiofiles
    • Volumes settings
    • Output sample rate
• Appendix: Supported games (well this already exists on the wiki, so just link to these pages, but also see the extra notes below)
• Appendix: Tools (describe each ScummVM command line tool in detail. Game pages might link to this.)

Enhancing the 'Game' wiki entries

It's nice that we have a page for every single game ScummVM supports. But IMO those pages could become a lot more useful with some effort! In particular, it would be nice if one could find all relevant information to a game easily from that game's page -- it would make support work so much easier. Just point people there, and they can help themselves.

Here are some ideas for potential extra information we might consider adding to the game pages:

• Disk space requirements
• Memory requirements (will this even run on my device XYZ)
• List of platforms the game is known to work / not to work (using a nice Wiki template, with red, yellow, green fields maybe?)
• For multi CD games: Instructions on how to handle these (copying both CDs to HD, how to rename files, etc.)
• Whether we support compressing the datafiles of this game, and how to do that (i.e. link to a Wiki page describing the usage of the relevant compression tool)
• For games with a Mac CD version: Pointer to a webpage explaining about these (Mac CDs use a different file system, HFS; tell them which tools to use on Windows/Linux to access them etc.)
• List of required datafiles for each game, resp. pointer to the datafile page (we already have the pointer, still might consider listing the information also on the game page)
• List of FAQs on the game, resp. known issues / workarounds
• Links to important bug reports for the game
• Info on where you can legally obtain the game
• Link to the relevant part of our screenshots section like (for Monkey Island) http://scummvm.org/screenshots.php?cat1=0&cat2=4&view=-1 (instead of directly linking to each screenshot, which is inflexible) -> this end it would be nice if the website code would be changed to also accept http://scummvm.org/screenshots.php?game=monkey
• List of known variants of the games, possibly with a brief explanation what distinguishes that version from others (to stick with the MI example: EGA vs VGA vs AMIGA vs CD version: different graphics, different audio, etc.)
• The compatibility level from the compatibility page could be mirrored