ALG

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ALG
Engine developer dckone
Companies that used it American Laser Games
Games that use it Various
Date added to ScummVM 2025-04-10
First release containing it 2026.2.0

About

The ALG engine supports the DOS ports of American Laser Games' live action FMV games.

Games supported

Other platforms

The 3DO versions are quite similar to the DOS versions, except for using a different video codec and better video quality, and could be supported in the future.

The Sega CD versions are similar, but using a different video codec as well as binary script instead of text script. Also video quality is worse than DOS.

All other platforms use a completely different system, mostly hardcoded in the binaries and therefore cannot really be supported in this engine.

In theory, the DOS versions could use video from the laserdisc, since the original start and end frames of the scenes are present in the script (assuming the frames match the ones from the laserdisc, which needs to be investigated).

Debugger

The debugger knows the following boolean variables across all games:

  • godMode: do not lose lives
  • unlimitedAmmo: do not lose ammo
  • drawRects: draw rectangles on the screen for all current and upcoming hitboxes

Especially drawRects can make the games much easier to play through.

In addition, the following functions exist:

  • warpTo <int>: jump to another part/level of the game. parameter range varies depending on game, always starts with 0.
  • dumpLib: dump the content of the LIB file to disk.