Lastexpress
| Lastexpress | ||
|---|---|---|
| Engine developer | Littleboy, jvprat, AndywinXp | |
| Companies that used it | Smoking Car Productions | |
| Games that use it | The Last Express | |
| Date added to ScummVM | 2010-10-18 | |
| First release containing it | 2026.1.0 | |
Status
- Engine is complete and supports the original The Last Express game and its demo.
Resources
- TODO page
- Engine internals
- List of characters
- The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, USA supposedly has complete source code for The Last Express, but it can only be accessed on-site.
Debugger
The engine includes an ImGui-based in-game debugger available in builds compiled with ImGui support (USE_IMGUI).
Enabling the debugger
Pass the ImGui debug flag when launching ScummVM:
scummvm --debugflags=ImGui lastexpress
Alternatively, enable it at runtime without restarting: open the ScummVM console with Ctrl+D, then type:
debugflag_enable ImGui
To disable it again:
debugflag_disable ImGui
Features
The debugger window is divided into three areas.
Main panel (top-left)
A tabbed panel showing information about all 40 characters in the game. Pinned characters are highlighted in yellow. A text filter is available on the List, Grid, and Pinned tabs.
- List View: scrollable list of all characters; selecting one shows its full state: car, position, direction, current sequence name, callback index, and all callback parameters.
- Grid View: compact overview of all characters at once.
- Pinned Characters: same as Grid View but restricted to characters you have previously pinned (right-click -> Pin Character) for closer monitoring.
- Current Scene: renders the current background frame and overlays all navigation hotlinks (red rectangles) and their collision lines (cyan = floor, orange = non-horizontal). Hovering a hotlink shows a tooltip with its bounds, target scene, action, cursor type, and line equations.
- Global Vars: table of all 57 engine global variables with their names and current values.
Right panel
Two stacked sub-panels:
- Clock: displays the current in-game time (HH:MM:SS) and date.
- Where's Cath?: shows the player's current car, position, and direction.
- Engine Info: mouse state, fast-walk flag, a checkbox to lock the grace period timer, and a time-advance utility (input a tick count and press Go to jump forward in game time).
Bottom panel
- Train Map: a color-coded schematic of the Orient Express showing the current location of the player and all active characters.
Keyboard shortcut
While the ImGui debug flag is active, pressing F4 during gameplay triggers the chapter-skip cheat (advances to the next chapter with the appropriate items).