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Riven (1997)

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A Fully Working Version of Riven
By Navigator
Most would say that playing Riven on modern PCs is impossible without crashes and savefile-corruptions. This, however, is wrong. Playing this wonderful game on Win 7, 8 or 8.1 is now possible. This guide will show you how!

NOTE: This method is off-Steam, meaning that you won't need to have Steam open to play this. This is good, but it also means that you can't do Steam related stuff while playing, like Shift+Tab, screenshots etc.
   
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15 Aug, 2016 @ 3:02am
15 Aug, 2016 @ 6:36am
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Guide Index
Overview
Step 1: What You'll Need 
Step 2: Copying the necessary files 
Step 3: Setting up ScummVM 
Conclusion 
Comments
Step 1: What You'll Need
Luckily, you won't be needing a lot to fully enjoy this game. The only thing you will need is a certain build of a program called ScummVM. According to Wikipedia, this is ScummVM:



ScummVM is a game emulator, allowing the user to play supported adventure games on their platform of choice. ScummVM provides none of the original assets for the games it supports, and expects the user to properly own the original game's media so as to use the software legally.

With that said however, you can't download a normal stable release of ScummVM. Go here:
http://buildbot.scummvm.org/builds.html
And, depending on your OS (32-bit or 64-bit), choose "Download latest development build".

IMPORTANT NOTE: It MUST be the development build, or else it won't work.
Step 2: Copying the necessary files
In this step, you will need to go to your Riven directory. To access it more quickly, you can right-click on Riven in your library, then go to Properties, then Local Files and Browse Local Files. You will see this:



Open the Data folder. Now, you will need to create a new folder wherever you want (I would recommend calling it Riven) and copy these files from the Data folder to the new folder:
  • a_Data.mhk
  • a_sounds.mhk
  • b_Data.mhk
  • b_sounds.mhk
  • extras.mhk
  • g_Data.mhk
  • g_Sounds.mhk
  • j_Data1.mhk
  • j_Data2.mhk
  • j_Sounds.mhk
  • o_Data.mhk
  • o_Sounds.mhk
  • p_Data.mhk
  • p_Sounds.mhk
  • r_Data.mhk
  • r_Sounds.mhk
  • Riven.exe (back one folder)
  • t_Data1.mhk
  • t_Data2.mhk
  • t_Sounds.mhk
Step 3: Setting up ScummVM
The last step in this guide is really simple. Open up ScummVM and go to "Add Game...".



Then browse to your newly created Riven folder (mine's called Rivunu in this pic). Select it and click
"Choose".



Then, ScummVM will recognize the game and will show this:



Click "OK", and you're done! To open the game simply choose it and press "Start". It should show this:



In this case, simply ignore it and press "Start anyway". Don't worry, this isn't a problem.

And with that, you should be ready to go!



Conclusion
A thousand thank yous to the official ScummVM wiki and community. You guys are great!

The game runs mostly fine. I only encountered one crash so far, but that's because of Avast.

One thing you should know is that the menu opens with F5. With that, you can save, load and activate Zip Mode.

Overall, the game should run just fine and MUCH better than the Steam version. If you have any problems, feel free to add me on Steam or comment below.

For now...

ENJOY RIVEN!!
2 Comments
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Nootilus 9 May, 2019 @ 6:16am 
Actually, I’ve just downloaded and installed Riven (mid-age crisis… I replay all the Myst games…) and figure! It’s natively use ScummVM.
I don’t know if it’s an update made since that guide was written, but I runs smoothly so far.
[ Ø ] PS/2 > USB 21 Jan, 2018 @ 11:58am 
Scumm 2.0's release supports Riven. No need to hunt for nightly builds anymore. Stable releases support Riven and Myst fully.