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== What is SCUMM? == | == What is SCUMM? == | ||
'''SCUMM''' stands for "Script Creation Utility for | '''SCUMM''' stands for "Script Creation Utility for ''Maniac Mansion'']]". It is a utility used to create the famous [[LucasArts]] adventure games like the [[Monkey Island series]]. | ||
It was initially created in 1987 by [[Aric Wilmunder]] and [[Ron Gilbert]] for the game | The SCUMM language is a [[LucasArts]] in-house standard, but was also used by [[HE Games List | numerous]] [[Humongous Entertainment]] games. The format was never designed to be public and so would change unpredictably from game to game to suit the task at hand. Therefore, many different [[SCUMM Versions]] exist today. | ||
It was initially created in 1987 by [[Aric Wilmunder]] and [[Ron Gilbert]] for the game [[Maniac Mansion]] and was used later, with some modifications, for [[Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders]]. | |||
Aric Wilmunder and Ron Gilbert's original SCUMM has been expanded a bit since 1988, of course. Every time a game required some feature that SCUMM had not previously supported, the interpreter was extended and the data file format expanded. The whole system was redesigned from scratch twice. With Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, LucasArts developed a modular file format based loosely on the standard IFF format. This was used several times in various forms until The Secret of Monkey Island, where the SCUMM engine and file format was redesigned from scratch. The new format was used from then on, and even now that LucasArts has finally retired SCUMM for their latest games, the interpreter/data file philosophy is still in use and you can see SCUMM design decisions in the data files of the latest LucasArts games such as [[Grim Fandango]]. | |||
== The idea behind SCUMM == | |||
It is well known that the best way to perform some very complex | It is well known that the best way to perform some very complex tasks is to start out by building a tool to help you with that task. In the same way, two programmers at LucasArts back in 1988 decided that rather than write a single, complicated program for their new graphic adventure game, they should instead build an generic engine that would play any graphic adventure game, if given the proper data files; this would let them concentrate on the game design, rather than the details of the programming. | ||
It worked. And so SCUMM was born. | It worked. And so SCUMM was born. | ||
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A lesson many people have learnt. Infocom, creators of possibly the finest text adventure games of all time, did a very similar trick with their Z-machine; you can now get Z-machine interpreters for everything from a Cray Supercomputer to a Game Boy, all of which will play Infocom's games, encoded in the data files. See Brass Lentern for more information. | A lesson many people have learnt. Infocom, creators of possibly the finest text adventure games of all time, did a very similar trick with their Z-machine; you can now get Z-machine interpreters for everything from a Cray Supercomputer to a Game Boy, all of which will play Infocom's games, encoded in the data files. See Brass Lentern for more information. | ||