Leisure Suit Larry 1 - In the Land of the Lounge Lizards

Leisure Suit Larry 1 - In the Land of the Lounge Lizards

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Steam Overlay, Playtime Tracking and In-Game Status with Special K and Latest ScummVM
By Shadow Barkley
How to update the game engine and enable the Steam overlay
   
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How To
The overlay will freeze and glitch out until you pass the age check screen, but functions normally afterwards. Reply here if you find any other issues with the overlay while playing other portions of the game.

I'm using the VGA version, you can switch to it in the "Betas" Properties sub-menu that's available when you right click the game from within your Steam Library.

Above all, replace the ancient version of ScummVM. Delete all the files within the "scummvm" folder and extract everything from the latest ZIP version of ScummVM into the original "scummvm" folder. Open the standalone ScummVM executable to configure your settings.

The original "run.bat" that Steam directly uses to launch the game can remain as is.
Optionally, you can change the run.bat to read:

start "" ".\scummvm\scummvm.exe" "--no-console" lsl1sci
exit

In order to get rid of the command prompt window that the poorly written original .bat file leaves behind.

Portable mode or, using ScummVM's install location to store config files and saves, does NOT work if your game is in installed in Program Files because of Windows' security restrictions, see the ScummVM documentation for the default configuration and save file locations otherwise.

Setup the "Special K Injection Frontend" installer exactly as instructed by the developer. Special K's launcher app will auto-detect your Steam copy and populate it in the "Library" tab.

Hit Launch from Special K's launcher with Leisure Suit Larry highlighted. You can also select "Special K" from the list, activate the service and open the game from within Steam. See Special K's documentation for different configurations.

I personally use the game library manager "Playnite" together with an extension called "Special K Helper". The combination of apps allows me to directly launch games without manually activating Special K's system service or opening Special K's launcher. "Selective mode" within Special K Helper also lets me pick which games launch with Special K rather than indiscriminately opening every game with Special K.

Avoid opening the overlay until you've completed the age check screen and have gotten in-game and you should be all set.

Assemble Entertainment could really suck one.