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AGOS: Add extract_simon_acorn tool for Simon the Sorcerer (Acorn)#84

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robertmegone:extract_simon_acorn
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AGOS: Add extract_simon_acorn tool for Simon the Sorcerer (Acorn)#84
robertmegone wants to merge 2 commits intoscummvm:masterfrom
robertmegone:extract_simon_acorn

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@robertmegone robertmegone commented Mar 14, 2026

This PR adds a new extraction tool, extract_simon_acorn, to the ScummVM tools repository.

The tool extracts the data files required for running the floppy disk version of Simon the Sorcerer for Acorn Archimedes in ScummVM from a set of .ADF disk images.

What the tool does

The game stores its resources across multiple ADFS floppy disks and uses a mixture of raw and UCMP compressed files.

This tool reads the ADFS filesystem directly from .ADF images, extracts the required resources, and decompresses UCMP data. The UCMP compression format used by the game was reverse engineered and implemented as part of this tool so that the VGA resource files can be recovered correctly.

The tool has been tested with both 9 and 10 disk versions, and expects disk images named as follows:

Simon the Sorcerer - Acorn Archimedes - (Disk 1).adf
                                 V
                                 V
Simon the Sorcerer - Acorn Archimedes - (Disk 10).adf

The original game shipped with nine disks, but some releases also included a Disk 10 containing updated resources.

Optional Disk 10

Disk 10 provides the correct versions of files to fix corrupted data on Disk 6 in the original release.

If Disk 10 is present, the tool extracts these updated resources directly. If not, the tool reconstructs the corrected files using blobs included with the tool.

Permission to distribute this data with the tool was granted by Mike Woodroffe of Adventure Soft.(I have an email to clarify this)

Why this tool was written

Installing the Acorn version from the original disks is very unreliable, and the VGA resources cannot be used directly from the disk images because they are UCMP compressed. This tool provides a way to extract the required data without having to rely on an emulator and pure luck.

Usage
./scummvm-tools-cli --tool extract_simon_acorn --input-dir <directory_with_adf_images> --output-dir <output_directory>

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