Any remastered version of the infocom titles in the future?
Hi,
first of all, congratulations for your amazing work, I've followed/instantly bought your releases with great enthusiasm and I'm very fascinated by your vision about the evolution of the interactive fictions.
Is there any chance to have in the future a remastered version of the great classics by Infocom (as Trinity, Zork and so on)?
Thanks,
Comments
Hi There!
Thanks for your interest in our remastering projects
It would indeed be nice to be able to remaster the Infocom games. Maybe even add graphics? However, the problem is that the rights to these games are not obtainable. I think several people have tried to obtain them, but have been unable to do so.
It is my understanding that the rights are currently with Activision who, in theory are still selling the games. Indeed some of Infocom's works were released on iPhone in 2012.
Unfortunately, this means they are not inclined to release them to enthusiasts. Which is a shame.
However, you never know what might happen in the future.
FYI, we're currently in the process of remastering Jinxter and hoping to add sound effects, which could be cool.
cheers!
Hi Hugh,
about the release of infocom titles on iPhone/iPad platform, I've bought them some years ago but it was a great shame because it actually doesn't works or -in detail- it works only in 32bit.
Activision didn't make any conversion from 32bit to 64 bit so I was hoping that this serious negligence to their customers was an indication of the expirations of the rights.
About Jinxter: almost every day I check your site to find the indication of the release day, this will be an other instant buy for me.
Thanks for you great work!!!
Hi Fosforo,
64 bit
It is my understanding that all apps released onto the Apple Store now have to be 64 bit. Thus if ever Activison update those releases, they will have to make a 64 bit version. Whether that means they won't bother, i don't know.
Jinxter
Work is well underway for Jinxter but it will be a while yet.
We have the idea to try to add something new in every new game. For example, for The Guild we brought back the animation and added the word suggestion feature, and fixed the save game :-)
For Jinxter, we're looking to add sound effects and perhaps location ambiance. This could be really nice.
I've also started investigating whether we can feature 3D objects, so that certain special objects within the game can be viewed in 3D. This feature won't be for Jinxter but maybe the one after...
The addition of the sound effects would be great for sure.
About 3d objects, I look with suspicion at 3D and very often I don't feel the need of it, but it's only my opinion and I'm a very very nostalgic guy in every aspect (so don't listen to me).
Instead, a great innovation that I'm waiting for is an accurate voice recognition capability; it would be an excellent feature to speed up the inputs of the player and to make interactive fictions highly playable on mobile device.
Any project about this?
Hi Fosforo,
Voice recognition would be interesting, but it would need to be an online service. So far, attempts I've seen for voice game input have been poor.
On the other hand, i am thinking about the reverse problem, ie voice output. I've been looking into SSML, ie speech markup that, if used correctly, gives a bit of intonation and cadence to what is otherwise a monotone output.
Obviously, the text would need this markup to work. but it's an idea anyhow.
Jinxter -> voice synthesizer -> terminator voice
Should be fun