Jun 10

"kyra.dat not found or corrupted", running Kyrandia via ScummVM on Ubuntu

Category: Linux,multimedia   — Published by goeszen on June 10, 2016 at 5:58 pm

kyrandia-spring

When you try to run The Legend of Kyrandia via ScummVM on Ubuntu (actually any platform), you'll learn that some games need an additional .dat file in order to run. In my case I was trying to run Kyrandia 1 PC disc version, and while I had installed ScummVM via package manager, it kept complaining about the missing kyra.dat file.

This doc page about the Kyra interpreter tells us we need to fetch the kyra.dat file from the git repo, which I did but still got the error. Turns out, ScummVM is picky about having a matching kyra.dat file for your ScummVM version. So here's the fix:

  • Open ScummVM and open the About dialog to get its version. On my Ubuntu 14.04 it is version 1.6.0.
  • Jump over to github and on this page for kyra.dat change the branch from "master" to, for example, "branch-1-6-0":
    scummvm-branch-change
  • Download the raw file and place it into one one these locations: the dir where the game files reside, some other dir you set in "Game Options" > "Extrapath" or in /usr/share/games/.

ScummVM really has to improve this error message, telling you if the file's version is wrong or if it couldn't find the file at all.

One last note: If you plan to jump from room to room, and you end up asking yourself how to enter the debugger in kyrandia - as nothing happens when yuo press CTRL+D, and the docs keep telling you to press "hotkey ctrl + d" and nothing happens! The debugger will not open during cutscenes! There's no 'hotkey' to press in addition to CTRL + D, it's just CTRL+D...

2 Responses to “"kyra.dat not found or corrupted", running Kyrandia via ScummVM on Ubuntu”

  1. Hosting says:

    Hello, I've updated ScummVM through the Google Play store and now Land of Lore is not working anymore - it says that I have a missing or corrupted KYRA.

  2. goeszen says:

    Probably a similar problem - but you're on Android, right? And I don't know how to fix it there.

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