NANCY: ScummVM save/load menus and Nancy 8 fixes #6599

bluegr · 2025-05-08T15:56:21Z

This PR aims to add support for ScummVM save/load menus for Nancy games and fix issues with Nancy 8. With these changes, Nancy 8 is completable, with the following puzzles missing (added as stubs):

Laptop - flag puzzle (MatchPuzzle - optional)
Squid Toss arcade (AngleTossPuzzle)
Barnacle Blast arcade (ArcadePuzzle / Arkanoid)
Art studio lathe puzzle (CuttingPuzzle)
Stenography tutorials (QuizPuzzle - optional)

With ScummVM save/load menus, we have the following benefits:

All games can now benefit from 999 save slots, instead of only the
newer ones, which feature more enhanced save/load menus
It's possible to delete saved games
The ScummVM menus can be used in newer games (Nancy 8 and later),
where the original save/load dialogs aren't implemented yet

Note: Since the original save/load menus aren't implemented for Nancy 8
and newer games, we always use the ScummVM ones there

Status update: I've played through Nancy 6,7,8 (6 and 8 with the ScummVM save/load menus, 7 with the original save/load menus), and they're all completable.

Detailed status:

Nancy 6: completable, fully working (~~one fix is needed for the Zip disk hypertext entries~~ fixed in 2facc4d)
Nancy 7: completable, fully working
Nancy 8: completable (with the changes in this PR), 5 puzzles missing, ~~in some cases the game freezes when you talk to someone that has nothing to say~~ hopefully fixed in 4c375b3

tunnelsociety · 2025-05-09T22:06:55Z

Shall "Use original save/load screens" be enabled by default?

tunnelsociety · 2025-05-09T22:07:42Z

Minigame stub: there are many, many other unimplemented things in the game which behave the same way; I wonder if it's worth it to add stubs. (For example, enable power on the circuit board puzzle, or try to play Squid Toss at the midway.) CAR is still WIP, and within a broken scene there are at least console commands and tools which can give useful info about the scene; for a game like CAR which is in development, I wonder if it's better to remain on the broken scene instead of jumping away from it.

tunnelsociety

Pardon my intrusion, not familiar with github, hope this is the right action

engines/nancy/nancy.cpp

engines/nancy/state/loadsave.cpp

engines/nancy/metaengine.cpp

bluegr · 2025-05-09T23:45:45Z

Shall "Use original save/load screens" be enabled by default?

ScummVM load/save screens offer an enhanced experience over the original ones, so the idea is to use them by default, as we do in other engines

bluegr · 2025-05-09T23:48:57Z

Minigame stub: there are many, many other unimplemented things in the game which behave the same way; I wonder if it's worth it to add stubs. (For example, enable power on the circuit board puzzle, or try to play Squid Toss at the midway.) CAR is still WIP, and within a broken scene there are at least console commands and tools which can give useful info about the scene; for a game like CAR which is in development, I wonder if it's better to remain on the broken scene instead of jumping away from it.

The idea is to prevent the game from crashing/locking in unimplemented screens, plus have a list of which mini-games are actually missing

fracturehill

A couple of things for the save/load changes, no objections to the rest.

engines/nancy/metaengine.cpp

engines/nancy/state/loadsave.cpp

fracturehill · 2025-05-11T19:04:46Z

engines/nancy/state/loadsave.cpp

+
+	if (!ConfMan.getBool("originalsaveload")) {
+		if (Nancy::State::Scene::hasInstance()) {
+			GUI::MessageDialog saveOrLoad(_("Would you like to load or save a game?"), _("Load"), _("Save"));


Just noticed this - when exiting the game through the main menu, the engine shows a "Would you like to save your game before exiting?". Clicking yes still leads to this code path, and asks the player whether they want to load or save. But since they said yes to that question, they'll want to save.

To solve this, I'd add a transient ConfMan bool in savegame.cpp, stop() case 6, and then check for it (and clear it) on this line.

Not exactly. What happens now is that after the user has saved in this scenario, they get thrown back into the Scene state, which resets the _hasJustSaved flag, and they get prompted again. You should either:

Return to the main menu after a save (in this scenario only); or

Just always return to the main menu after the save or load dialog is closed.

@fracturehill Fixed in 7d2655c.
I've modified the ScummVM save dialog to return to the main menu, like the original dialog does.

The original load dialog takes the user back to the scene upon load, so I've kept that behavior the same in the ScummVM load dialog.

tunnelsociety · 2025-05-13T17:36:24Z

Is Carousel really completable? Even with the commits in this PR (currently 68f13e8), I can't flip the power switch on the circuit board, which I think is necessary to proceed (to enter the roller coaster area). Maybe I'm missing how to skip that or how to complete it successfully.

(I humbly and respectfully suggest removing "final", "last" etc. from commit names, since I guess we don't know what we don't know and there may be more stubbable things lurking that we have not encountered yet.)

bluegr · 2025-05-13T19:42:28Z

Is Carousel really completable? Even with the commits in this PR (currently 68f13e8), I can't flip the power switch on the circuit board, which I think is necessary to proceed (to enter the roller coaster area). Maybe I'm missing how to skip that or how to complete it successfully.

(I humbly and respectfully suggest removing "final", "last" etc. from commit names, since I guess we don't know what we don't know and there may be more stubbable things lurking that we have not encountered yet.)

Yes, Carousel is completable. Nothing else should be missing, other than the already identified missing puzzles.
Check here for a solution to that puzzle:
https://community.herinteractive.com/forum/nancy-drew-adventure-series/the-haunted-carousel/car-hints-and-tips/658549-fixing-the-employee-axcess-card-reader-thingy

tunnelsociety · 2025-05-13T19:56:48Z

The solutions in the forum you linked all say to flip the power switch. As I wrote, flipping the power switch does not work in ScummVM. Maybe there is some bug specific to my builds?

There are no warnings, errors, or debug lines in the console when this happens. The latest console lines with -d11 are

Loading new scene 5210: description "Scene description", frame 0, vertical scroll 0, kContinueSceneSound
FSDirectory::createReadStreamForMember('EXT_ROLCircuitBrdXCU_PUZ.avf') -> '/home/user/nancy/car/CDVideo/EXT_ROLCircuitBrdXCU_PUZ.avf'
Opening hashed: EXT_ROLCircuitBrdXCU_PUZ.avf

capture.mp4.mp4

bluegr · 2025-05-13T20:01:34Z

The solutions in the forum you linked all say to flip the power switch. As I wrote, flipping the power switch does not work in ScummVM. Maybe there is some bug specific to my builds?

There are no warnings, errors, or debug lines in the console when this happens. The latest console lines with -d11 are
Loading new scene 5210: description "Scene description", frame 0, vertical scroll 0, kContinueSceneSound
FSDirectory::createReadStreamForMember('EXT_ROLCircuitBrdXCU_PUZ.avf') -> '/home/user/nancy/car/CDVideo/EXT_ROLCircuitBrdXCU_PUZ.avf'
Opening hashed: EXT_ROLCircuitBrdXCU_PUZ.avf
capture.mp4.mp4

Solder the top cables of the board, not the bottom ones

tunnelsociety · 2025-05-13T20:08:19Z

Ah! I knew I had a wrong solution in the video (I really just clicked whichever solders I felt like clicking); in earlier testing a couple months ago, I thought I had the correct solution but still experienced the same bug so assumed it happened no matter what. I guess I actually had the wrong solution then.

engines/nancy/misc/hypertext.cpp

fracturehill · 2025-05-13T20:44:56Z

engines/nancy/state/loadsave.cpp

+
+	if (!ConfMan.getBool("originalsaveload")) {
+		if (Nancy::State::Scene::hasInstance()) {
+			GUI::MessageDialog saveOrLoad(_("Would you like to load or save a game?"), _("Load"), _("Save"));


Not exactly. What happens now is that after the user has saved in this scenario, they get thrown back into the Scene state, which resets the _hasJustSaved flag, and they get prompted again. You should either:

Return to the main menu after a save (in this scenario only); or

Just always return to the main menu after the save or load dialog is closed.

engines/nancy/action/puzzle/artstudiolathepuzzle.h

engines/nancy/action/puzzle/squidtosspuzzle.h

engines/nancy/metaengine.cpp

bluegr · 2025-05-15T08:28:43Z

Committed the revised Nancy 6 fix, after talking with @fracturehill as 2facc4d.

Will clean up the commits in this PR

We have the following benefits: - All games can now benefit from 999 save slots, instead of only the newer ones, which feature more enhanced save/load menus - It's possible to delete saved games - The ScummVM menus can be used in newer games (Nancy 8 and later), where the original save/load dialogs aren't implemented yet Note: Since the original save/load menus aren't implemented for Nancy 8 and newer games, we always use the ScummVM ones there

These stubs skip the unimplemented puzzles, and will help us progress further on in the game. Unimplemented puzzle stubs: - Laptop - flag puzzle (MatchPuzzle - optional) - Squid Toss arcade (AngleTossPuzzle) - Barnacle Blast arcade (ArcadePuzzle / Arkanoid) - Art studio lathe puzzle (CuttingPuzzle) - Stenography tutorials (QuizPuzzle - optional)

Needed for Nancy 8 and newer games. Fixes the Swimmer's Itch puzzle in Nancy 8. Changes for this puzzle introduced in Nancy 8 have been implemented with commit 3a6e256. However, since _puzzleStartTime wasn't initialized, the puzzle timer ended prematurely, resulting in immediate loss when starting the game

The helper text animation would overwrite the actual phone numbers displayed, rendering the new phone interface useless

bluegr · 2025-05-15T08:58:57Z

I've pushed some minor commits with no functional changes to master, to remove noise from this PR.
I've cleaned the commit history, and the only thing pending is @fracturehill's reported issue about getting an unwanted save prompt when exiting the game

This follows the behavior of the original save screen, and fixes the issue where the user would get a superfluous save confirmation dialog when exiting the game, after saving

Check if no active records were found for the current frame. This will lead to an infinite loop without anything happening, so we reset the _recordsWereExecuted flag, to fall back to the kDefaultAR dependency. This is needed for some scenes in Nancy 8, where SetVolume() is called, but no other action records are active.

bluegr requested a review from fracturehill May 8, 2025 15:57

tunnelsociety reviewed May 9, 2025

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fracturehill reviewed May 11, 2025

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bluegr added 4 commits May 15, 2025 11:51

NANCY: Properly stop animation in new phone (used in Nancy 8 and newer)

544fe79

The helper text animation would overwrite the actual phone numbers displayed, rendering the new phone interface useless

bluegr force-pushed the nancy_enhancements branch from c1435e7 to 544fe79 Compare May 15, 2025 08:56

bluegr added 2 commits May 15, 2025 22:06

NANCY: Return to main menu after saving with ScummVM save/load screens

7d2655c

This follows the behavior of the original save screen, and fixes the issue where the user would get a superfluous save confirmation dialog when exiting the game, after saving

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NANCY: ScummVM save/load menus and Nancy 8 fixes #6599

NANCY: ScummVM save/load menus and Nancy 8 fixes #6599

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NANCY: ScummVM save/load menus and Nancy 8 fixes #6599

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