ResidualVM is a cross-platformcomputer program comprising 3Dgame engine recreations with a common graphical user interface. It supports Grim Fandango, and The Longest Journey. ResidualVM was originally designed to play LucasArts adventure games that use the GrimEgame engine. On May 26, 2009, ResidualVM was adapted so that it could support multiple engines. The Sprint engine from Presto Studios is now recreated in ResidualVM as well. Various other engines are in preliminary stages, but have not yet been added to the main branch. Like its sister project, the 2D adventure game interpreter ScummVM, the VM in ResidualVM stands for virtual machine. ResidualVM is a reimplementation of the part of the software used to interpret the scripting languages by conducting reverse engineering on the original game rather than emulating the hardware on which the games ran. As such, ResidualVM allows the games it supports to be played on platforms other than those for which they were originally released.
History
The name of the project comes from the fact that it was originally started to support the residual LucasArts adventure games not supported by ScummVM. The original Lua-based engine used by LucasArts in their 3D adventure games was called GrimE, so ResidualVM's title is also a word pun as grime is a type of residue. The project was started by former ScummVM team leaderJames Brown, and was first publicly available on August 15, 2003. Progress on the project was initially slow, and as a result the project's main goal of supporting Grim Fandango did not occur until April 25, 2011, when the compatibility of Grim Fandango was upgraded to "completable with a few minor glitches". The project obtained a domain separate from ScummVM on December 6, 2011. As a result of the new domain name, the project name was changed from Residual to ResidualVM. The logo was changed to reflect the new name on January 25, 2012. The first stable release of ResidualVM was released 9 years after the project started, on December 21, 2012. ResidualVM is officially available on multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, AmigaOS 4, and IRIX. In addition, an Android port is available in the source code, and unofficial builds have been made with that source. There is also a port available for the Pandora console, and for FreeBSD, but they are not official as they have not been added to the main branch.
Developer support
With increased attention, ResidualVM has entered into favorable agreements with adventure game developers to help bring their titles into the engine. Cyan Worlds partnered with ResidualVM to release Myst III: Exile on digital platforms. The digital storefront GOG.com which specializes in selling digital copies of older games, sells Myst III: Exile' with the ResidualVM engine as part of its distribution.
Games supported by ResidualVM
The stable release supports Grim Fandango and , which are completable with a few minor glitches. In the development branch, there is also support for Escape from Monkey Island, which is completable with a few glitches, and The Longest Journey, which is completable with missing features. Like ScummVM, ResidualVM contains fixes for bugs present in the original executable. The ResidualVM team discovered a workaround for a bug that causes a critical dialog not to play in Grim Fandango. In addition, the Grim Fandango engine in ResidualVM has fixes for over a dozen other bugs present in the original. There is also a branch of ResidualVM called Grim Mouse, which allows Grim Fandango to be played completely with a mouse as a traditional point and click adventure game.
