SCUMM

SCUMM was originally written by Arik Wilmunder and Ron Gilbert in 1987 , the following versions were further developed by Arik Wilmunder (or SCUMM Lord ) and others.

As a single-game development, SCUMM was later rewritten many times and involved in LucasArts quests . Ten versions of the engine are known, starting with "version 0" (the original version for Maniac Mansion under Commodore 64 ), "version 1", "version 1.5" (for the NES version of Maniac Mansion) and ending with version 8. Starting from the fifth version in SCUMM introduced the iMUSE subsystem, which allows you to smoothly and imperceptibly change the musical design depending on the game state.

LucasArts stopped developing SCUMM in 1998 when it switched to the more modern GrimE engine .

Ron Gilbert, after leaving Lucas Arts in 1992, founded Humongous Entertainment and licensed SCUMM (at that time the fifth version) for the development of its own games for preschool children. Starting from this moment, the engine has been divided into two branches - the official one from Lucas Arts and licensed by Humongous, which was developed up to version 11.

The player interacts through the character who has the inventory and the objects of the game world using various control directives - “ verbs ” - a huge number of teams accumulated from previous games, but they were reduced to The Curse of Monkey Island to several - “see”, “ use ”(which is modified depending on the context of use: lift, push, pull, etc.) and“ talk ”.

Interaction with objects is carried out using the "verb" and the necessary object - for example, " use gunpowder on the gun ."

"Talk" invokes a sequence of dialogs with which the player, choosing a predefined option, interacts with other characters.

The only exception to this system is the LOOM game, which does not use the standard “verb-object” interaction, but uses the possibility of dialogs.

Version 0

• Maniac Mansion ( Commodore 64 )

Version 1

• Maniac Mansion (original IBM PC )
• Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (Commodore 64 and PC)

Version 1.5

• Maniac Mansion ( NES )

Version 2

• Maniac Mansion ( Amiga and PC )
• Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (Amiga, Atari ST and PC)

Version 3

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure (Amiga, EGA / VGA PC and FM Towns )
• Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (VGA for FM Towns)
• LOOM (Amiga and EGA PC)

Version 4

• The Secret of Monkey Island (Amiga and EGA / VGA PC)
• LOOM (VGA PC CD-ROM)

Version 5

• The Secret of Monkey Island (VGA PC CD-ROM )
• Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (PC and Amiga)
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (PC and Amiga)

Version 6

• Day of the tentacle
• Sam & Max Hit the Road

Version 7

• Full throttle
• The dig

Version 8

• The curse of monkey island

The name of the engine is found in many LucasArts games as an Easter egg .

• In Maniac Mansion, one of the acting characters, a girl named Razor, is the lead singer of the punk band Razor and Scummettes
• Scumm (distorted English scum - foam, garbage) is part of a pirate grog from The Secret of Monkey Island . (In fairness, it should be noted that the names of almost all the subsystems included in SCUMM are also a pun.)
• The Secret of Monkey Island has a bar called SCUMM-bar . In this case, another meaning of the word scum is played out - scum, scum, scum of society. It is noteworthy that in Escape from Monkey Island this bar was renamed to LUA-bar in honor of the Lua interpreter, on the basis of which the new GrimE engine was created.
• It is also noteworthy that the name of the GrimE engine ( Grim Fandango Engine ) traces a good tradition, laid down in the name of its predecessor: if translated from English scum is foam, rubbish, then grime is a lot of stubborn dirt.

There is now an open source ScummVM project that has developed a free , portable, SDL library- based client for SCUMM. Thanks to him, many SCUMM-based games can be run on various systems: Microsoft Windows , Apple Macintosh , BeOS , GNU / Linux , Palm OS , PocketPC , Sega Dreamcast , Microsoft Xbox , Playstation 2 , Playstation Portable , Nintendo DS , GameCube , Nintendo Wii , GP2x and Symbian , Openmoko , Bada , Android .

• Sierra's Creative Interpreter
• Z-machine

• ScummVM Project