The International House of Mojo

Nightlight Productions has released the final episode of Tierra de los Muertos, a radio drama set in a world similar to Grim Fandango's Land of the Dead, but with an entirely different cast. You can grab it here.

For those of you who haven't checked this series out, or who may have missed an episode, they are all available for a limited time in the archives. If you're interested in what Nightlight Productions is doing, and want to give your support/feedback for specific episodes or the whole series, check out their forum.

Also be sure to stay tuned for the next Nightlight Production: The Lost Cause: There's No Hope, a Star Wars parody, already in production. The first episode is set to air in 10 days!

There's a new version of the popular software, LEC Quick and Easy available with several new features, including support for the CD version of Loom. For those who haven't heard of LEC Q+E, This program was written by bgbennyboy, and helps people running on NT-based OSes (Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP) play classic LEC adventures with full audio and music. Grab it!

Update: There's also a new version of ScummVM Quick & Easy available for those of us with Windows 98/Me.

Source: SCUMM Bar :)

Well, not quite yet, but soon. Thanks to the X-Box's rather PC-like architecture, homebrew developers have been able to easily port open-source PC software to the console. However, it is also now thanks to this PC-like architecture that coders have figured out a way to convert X-Box games to play on a PC. According to this article, it won't be long before it's public. However, either some crack code work or an emulator might be necessary, as the games will still call for some functions exclusive to the X-Box's software coding.

Remember, though, the X-box is a hell of a powerhouse, and you'll need a horse of a machine to run anything at the speeds you'd get on dedicated hardware.

We apologize for the errors that have been plauging the site and the forums. They'll be fixed before you know it, since after all, we're the International House of Mojo.

Bill Tiller and Larry Ahern, 2 of our most beloved ex-LEC employees, have decided to help Adventure Developers 2.0 start off with a bang, thanks to their new article 21 Rules for Adventure Gaming. Bill Tiller, as you should recall, was the artist behind the lovely backgrounds for The Curse of Monkey Island and Larry Ahern was Co-director of the game. Says Bill:

Over the past nine years Larry Ahern and I have worked with many different adventure game designers and on many adventure games. We both contributed heavily to the game designs for all those projects. Larry even got to co designed The Curse of Monkey Island with Jonathan Ackly. During those projects we have learned a lot about the genre including these basic adventure game design ?rules?, or you could just consider them ?strong suggestions?. The word ?rules? seem a bit strong for such a flexible genre as adventure games. Also many of these ?rules? can be applies successfully to other game genres as well.

It's Sage advice, indeed. One new tip will be posted each week, so check it out.

Never thought you'd live to read the phrase "ScummVM - Quick and Easy"? Well, unless you've died and are somehow still reading this...nevermind. The point is that bgbennyboy, the ultra-stylish programmer and mojo forum moderator, has written a frontend to the popular program ScummVM.

This program, as many of you already know, is a virtual machine used to run many classic LEC adventures on newer machines. However, many people found it to be a bit...well, user-unfriendly. ScummVM Q+E works to make the original program easier to use, with a number of options explained in greater detail the readme file.

You can download ScummVM Q+E here!

Source: The SCUMM Bar, yo.

LucasArts will be actively recruiting new employees at SIGGRAPH 2002, in San Antonio, Texas, USA. This event takes place over a 3-day period starting on the 23rd of this month and going until the 25th. LucasArts will have representatives from Human Resources and hiring managers from the LEC Art Department at SIGGRAPH on the 23rd and 24th. Check out the LucasArts job page for details!

Nightlight Productions has cranked out another installment to the radio drama series, Tierra de los Muertos! Give it a listen here. 8 of 12 has decided to keep the first part online for a little while longer, so for those that missed it, you can check out part one here.

Modern-Mac using folks rejoice (the three of us)! Drigo, of the MacSCUMM site, has informed me that his SCUMM Revisited-like tool, SCUMM Explorer, has been updated to run native on MacOS X.

For those who don't know, Scummrev and SCUMM Explorer let you browse through the data files of SCUMM-based games like Monkey Island 1, 2, and 3, and Full Throttle and view the original art, sound, and music. Here's the page for the OS X version of SCUMM Explorer, and here's a screenshot.

While developer Raudaschl was unable to release the full demo of his fan game Indigo Island: Grim Fandango II due to legal reasons, he has released a technology demo which shows off the engine of the game.

I suppose I kinda just left the GF community suddenly about one year ago. Lucas Arts closed
down the GF2 project and I went to discover other areas where my game making skills could be
put to use. Since nobody actually was able to see the game running I have decided to release this
tech demo. It demonstrates the GF2 engine in action. I hope you all enjoy it.

It's a really impressive engine, I especially like the reflection from the ground. You can download the tech demo here.

James ?Ender? Brown, Project Leader on ScummVM, received a request from LucasArts Legal Affairs earlier today asking that he close his site by July 1st.

ScummVM, in case you don?t know, allows some of the old LucasArts adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island and Sam and Max Hit the Road to run on a variety of operating systems. For example, you can faithfully play these older products under Windows XP or even different platforms like Sega Dreamcast using ScummVM.

In the e-mail to Ender, LucasArts defended their actions. ?We are grateful when fans take such strong interests in our games,? the letter said. ?In order to protect our intellectual property interests, we must ask you to take down your site as it infringes on LucasArts's intellectual property ownership interests.?<:MORENEWS:>

LucasArts also points out that the SCUMM engine is ?still proprietary to LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC (?LucasArts?) and is not released under general public license as referenced in the FAQ section on your site.?

Ender replied to LucasArts, discussing the very nature of his project. ?ScummVM is NOT the SPU [Script Presentation Utility] engine as used internally by LEC,? Ender said. ?ScummVM is a valid clone of the SPU engine, designed to facilitate the playing of LucasArts adventures on modern machines and operating systems. ScummVM allows the data from LEC adventures to be played on many platforms (Intel, PocketPC, etc) and operating systems (Linux, Windows 2000, etc) which are not supported by your own SPU engine.?

ScummVM, as described by its project leader, is the product of reverse engineering without using any information from LucasArts itself. ?The [reverse engineering] techniques used are generally protected in most states under what is generally known as the 'compatibility' clause,? Ender said.

At this point, Ender has informed LucasArts that he will not be taking down the site. ?We are distributing our own software designed to mimic the functionality of the SPU(tm) engine, which we have licensed under the GPL (General Public License),? he said. ?We are not distributing proprietary LucasArts software itself.?

Most fans would argue that ScummVM has done nothing but support the classic adventure games of LucasArts rather than damage them. However, it is interesting that LucasArts? lawyers took this opportunity to attempt the shutdown of ScummVM, which has existed for almost a year. Speculation has been made that these actions could have ties to the comment LEC President Simon Jeffery recently made to Mixnmojo concerning the update of its older graphic adventures. Mr. Jeffery discussed the ?streaming? delivery of these games over the Internet, which would require that they actually work on Windows 2000 and XP.

We will be sure to keep you posted on these matters, and hopefully a favorable resolution will be reached soon.

PolyCount has put up a spectacular model of the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader, for use in Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast multiplayer. Check it out here. It comes complete with all the extras: Custom sounds, bot support, and CTF skins. What are you waiting for--go download it. It is your destiny.

JediKnightII.net just got a sweet set of skins: Boba and Jango Fett, the infamous mandalorian bounty hunters. Included in the package is an original model, skin pack (featuring CTF skins), bot files, and custom sounds. They look great, so check them out here!

Version 0.2.0 of the popular tool ScummVM has been released. For those of you who don't know, ScummVM allows you to run the old LucasArts adventure games on a variety of platforms like Windows, Linux, PocketPCs, and even Dreamcast. Here's a quote about this version:

The 0.2.0 release of scummvm includes the usual bugfixes and new features, as well as support for the rare 256 color fmTowns version of Zak McKracken, the CD version of Loom and (although it's not from LucasArts), Simon The Sorcerer. The ScummVM team now plans to complete the (currently experimental in 0.2.0) support for Full Throttle and The Dig, before moving on to games like Maniac Mansion.

ScummVM is availiable at scummvm.sourceforge.net.

Daniel Wishart, webmaster of LucasTones, sends word that version 3 of the site is complete, thanks to the design work of the artist formerly known as Zaarin. Looks great! Be on the lookout for more from Daniel and LucasTones in the near future.

Mojo hosted site Mediocre Entertainment is back! Mediocre Entertainment is a game developer group whose current project is an adventure entitled Day After The Night Before. They've posted a demo of their adventure game engine "KAGE" so make sure to check that out.

Hot on the heels of JK2Radiant comes an add-on program that allows maps from Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight to be imported to Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast. I'm not sure how it all works, but it looks to be a useful tool for old-school and aspiring mapmakers (cartographers?) alike.

Check 'er out!

Source: The Massassi Temple

The editing tools for Jedi Outcast have been released by Raven, although they are officially unsupported by any of the companies involved. These tools include the map editor called JK2Radiant, two model viewers called MD3View and ModView, ShaderEd for editing and viewing the shaders, and sof2map for compiling maps.

Visit JediKnightii.net's Essential Download Section to download all the tools you'll need. If you have a hard time getting through, check out this news story for a list of mirrors. Hmm, maybe this would explain the server problems we've been having today, eh?

In response to the recent article up at The SCUMM Bar entitled Why your Fan Game Ain't Legit, Yorick Kingzjester has put up A Lesson on Legal Anarchy 2 over at Adventure Developer. Here's a clip:

The law is not set in stone nor is it made by clairvoyant people -- in fact, most of the legislators possess virtually no foresight -- they act on popular belief. Sir, if you think there is virtue in the folly of the masses that is your god-given right. You can keelhaul me, if so you desire -- I find the water quite pleasant.

You can check out the full article here.

DOTTcom has a new section of their site entirely dedicated to Day of the Tentacle and Maniac Mansion add-ons for The Sims. While not all of the pages seem to be working yet, they offer floors, walls, new characters and more for you to toy with.

Now you too can starve Bernard and then set him on fire while Nurse Edna, trapped in a 3x3 tile room with nothing but a coffee pot, soils the floor. Fun!

The SCUMM Bar has run a new article, titled "Another Lesson on Legal Anarchy - Why Your Fan Game Ain't Legit (Or Even Good)." The article, obviously a response to AdventureDeveloper's original "A Lesson on Legal Anarchy - How to Avoid the Cold Wrath of LEC," tells why your LucasArts-based fan game has very little chance of surviving in the real world, and little reason to exist at all.

As was mentioned in the comments section at the bottom, the article doesn't address the "Parody" defense at all. This could be viewed as the weak point of a well written article, or the saving grace of fangames (though I sometimes wonder where some fan games lie on the line between "parody" and "rip-off").

Also, Dominic Armato drops in on the comments to further remind us why companies have to chase after fan work, even if they love it more than they love their own work. The article and most all the comments to date are definitely worth your time, so get reading.