Is ResidualVM for real?
 

OK, I confess. I am not a geek or a cool dude. I am not in the know.

I am just a guy who likes to play adventure games. Including old ones like Grim Fandango. Which will not even install on my 64-bit Windows 7 machine.

So I hear about this thing called "ResidualVM," which is supposed to be a free app that will allow you to play Grim Fandango, and maybe some other old games, on new machines. I am always a bit leery of free apps—my Mama told me to beware of anything that claimed to be free—but I had great success with ScummVM and DOSbox, so I checked it out. It looks OK. There is a forum and a page for FAQs that seems informative and intelligent.

Then I check out the downloads page. This does not look so great. There is nothing here except "Daily Builds" and "Libraries." I have no idea what a "daily build" is, but I see a warning that they are only "for people who know what they are doing." I suspect that this does not include me. It says this is where you find "UNSTABLE" versions of ResidualVM. So where are the stable versions? Not to be found. I check out the "libraries" and find pages of geek-speak. I know I do not belong here.

Well, maybe those dire warnings are just lawyer-proofing. I cautiously check out the "daily builds." Only one looks reasonable, so, with some trepidation, I try to download it—and my Norton anti-virus grabs it, examines it . . . and then deletes it, telling me that a terrible threat has just been averted!

YIKES!

So Norton stands in front of me like Captain Marvel heroically saving me at the last minute from the evil villain. What do I do now?

Is ResidualVM just a trap luring suckers into letting Trojan Horses take over computers, turning them into evil bases from which bots storm out selling cases of Canadian Viagra?

Is it an elaborate practical joke, a snipe hunt that lets all you cool guys laugh your butts off at schlubs like me?

Or is it for real, and I just haven't found the key?

Have a heart guys; help me out.

I've never heard of ResidualVM, and from the sound of it, I think it's best to stay clear of it...

If you want to play Grim Fandango on Windows 7, then you'll probably have more success downloading this installer. It worked for me on Vista and is supposed to work on Windows 7 as well.

ResidualVM is very much real, but still under development. The game is completable with it, but there might still be bugs here and there. Also, they only offer daily builds, i.e. the current development version of the software on a given day, so if you're unlucky you might get it on a day when a recent change in the code broke something. There will be a stable version (i.e. a version having received extensive testing from the community before release) someday, probably reasonably soon, but it seems they're not quite there yet.

So playing GF with a daily build of ResidualVM should probably work fine, if you're willing to put up with a few rough edges here and there. The Grim Fandango launcher might be a safer option otherwise.

(Oh, and Norton is a joke, not to mention a resource hog. You should get rid of it and switch to something else.)

I agree with TimMovieMan, get the installer for Grim Fandango. I have Win 7, 64 bit and the installer has made it possible for me to play Grim again.

If there are other older games you have and can't play, go to Good Old Games and see if they offer them.
The games are cheap, DRM-free and they've made them compatible with new operating systems. So far I haven't had a problem with any of them though I did have to run as Admin on one or two, but you can always check the forums to see if anyone has had trouble running a particular game on Win 7.

And ditto on Norton.

Residual is the sister project of ScummVM. It started as a side-project of ScummVM to support 3D LucasArts' adventures - Grim Fandango and Monkey Island 4 and eventually branched off as a standalone. They're also working on supporting Myst and Journeyman Project 3. Nothing dangerous about it. I can't express enough how much goodness ScummVM brought to me, so i'll give it a try when i decide to play some of those games, although only GF is playable atm, with 70% compatibility.

Thanks guys. I guess I'd better switch antivirus apps. (I really don't think it's a good idea to go without it). I have heard good things about Bitdefender. Or is that just as bad as Norton?

I use Vipre myself and it's done a good job for me without slowing my computer down to a crawl but I believe BitDefender is supposed to be a good one. I've also read very good things about the free Avast AV.

ResidualVM, as noted by Kurufinwe is a legitimate project. It is a sister project of ScummVM. That is why the styles of both the site and the GUI are so similar to that of ScummVM. It's intent is to create a third party interpreter for the 3-D style LA games like Grim Fandango and MI4. There has been talk of incorporating engines of other 3-D adventures, much as ScummVM has done with 2-D adventures.

It is far behind ScummVM in terms of development, but they have just requested beta testers for Grim Fandango. If you would like to help out, grab a daily build and give them a hand. If all you want to do is play the game, use the Grim Launcher linked to above. Note that the launcher will not fix any bugs that you may encounter in the game and nobody to report the errors to, but it will allow you to start the game. Any errors using ResidualVM can and should be reported to the ResidualVM team so they can be fixed.

More info about the beta testing of Grim Fandango in ResidualVM: http://forums.residualvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=149

It should also be noted that while the launcher allows the game to run on modern PCs, ResidualVM is actively improving the game. They recently fixed a not insignificant bug in the original game (tweeted about by Tim Schafer) and there is currently a community effort to produce hi-res textures for the game.

I've played through Grim Fandango multiple times in ResidualVM and it works great. I was never able to get the original Grim Fandango executable to work properly on anything newer than Windows XP, and it especially hated my dual processor Athlon. But I've never had any problem with ResidualVM.

ResidualVM works just like ScummVM (and even shares it's GUI, since they are sister projects) so if you are familiar with ScummVM you will be able to use ResidualVM just fine.

The reasons they haven't made a stable build of ResidualVM yet is because they are still actively working on the underlying code of the Grim engine and still ocassionally change the save format between releases in order to squash bugs. They don't want the save format to change after a stable release is made, since the users would expect their save games to be compatible from one stable version to the next.

Regarding Antivirus software, I have good experiences with Panda. I've now used it for years, so I can't really compare with anything, but I did try a couple different before I decided on Panda and I've been happy with it since (except for a period a while back when it'd could cause games to slow down occasionally - that's fixed in the current versions).

^ This. Been running Panda too for about three-four years now...

Collector, now when Grim Fandango support in ResidualVM is almost completed, a nice installer that would copy only needed files to HDD could come in handy. ;)

There's the Grim Fandango Setup from Quick And Easy for that. :)

Yes, I know that installer and it could work (I haven't tested it yet). But ResidualVM needs only *.LAB files, GRIM.TAB plus 1.01 patch, that is necessary for an older version of the game . So I think the special installer that would copy just needed files, check the game version and install 1.01 patch if needed might be better.