There have been many games I enjoyed over the last decades and some of them would have been already lost if it weren’t for enthusiasts writing emulators or go as far as rewriting engines themselves.
Personally, I haven’t done much in that regard other than poking memory for infinite gold or a simple reversing challenge. However, when the organizations for this year’s GSoC were announced one particular project caught my attention.
I have fond memories diluted by nostalgia, of point and click adventures like Day of the Tentacle, Loom and others. Despite the genre’s revival it has been mostly off of my radar for quite some time. So far it has been a great experience contributing to the project. Not only can I finally put my DOS knowledge and reverse engineering to use but the community has been welcoming, helpful and overall a great place. The ScummVM project ports point ‘n’ click and since recently also RPG game engines to their ecosystem so that they can be played on a variety of platforms. (shoutout to criezy going through 30 revisions of my PR deep into the night…)
I have been fortunate to be selected to port Mission Supernova over the summer and translate the game from German to English. Anyone interested in the progress of my work, keep an eye on my repo and this blog where I will write about the progress of the project, its difficulties and technical details I find interesting.
Thanks again to the ScummVM team and Google for giving me this amazing opportunity.