Frosty the Snow Man

Authoring TADS
1

A tribute to the Little Golden Book Frosty the Snow Man is now available for downloading at these URLs:

.t3 file
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/13/2140959/Frosty/Frosty%20the%20Snow%20Man.zip

source files
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/10/13/2140959/Frosty/Frosty%20the%20Snow%20Man%20%28src%29.zip

  1. Please feel free to tell me if you find any bugs or if you have any suggested enhancements.

  2. Before I list this file on an IF archive, should I contact the publisher about “permission to use”?

Jeff
jbowyer@seznam.cz

2

If you use copyrighted material, then yes, you are obligated to ask for permission.

(Btw, it would probably be a good idea to bundle the graphics and sounds into the game file. Or at least create a multimedia resource file for them.)

3

I did send a letter to the “publisher”.

First, a little history…

Little Golden Books are icons in the world of literature (at least to me :slight_smile:). I was surprised at their recent history. Published by Western Printing and Lithographing Company in Racine, Wisconsin. Mattel (the toy company) bought Western in 1984 and sold it the same year. Golden Books Family Entertainment was acquired by Classic Media Inc. and Random House in a bankruptcy auction in 2001.
(data from Wikipedia)

Take a look at the website for Classic Media Inc. (http://www.classicmedia.tv/). I was shocked at the extent of their portfolio.

In any case, I sent an email to Classic Media, requesting permission to use text and graphics from the Frosty the Snow Man Little Golden Book. After one month, I haven’t received a response.

Questions for the forum:

  • How long should I wait for a response?
  • How do I eventually interpret no response? Silence means assent?

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Now, on to my soapbox…

I picked a Little Golden Book as my first TADS 3 project for several reasons, including…

I’ve read many comments about the slow death of interactive fiction. If IF wants to gain wider popularity, I think the path lies not in creating new works but rather in bringing to life old classics such as Little Golden Books.

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Yeah, I thought about it, too. :slight_smile:

I haven’t decided on the preferred way to package a TADS 3 creation yet. Frosty’s .zip file includes a .t3 file because I wanted to try it. In the future, however, I’ll probably settle on keeping everything, even the source code, unbundled. For the sake of “openness”. So other TADS 3 programmers can modify whatever they want.

Again, thanks for your comments, RealNC.

4

I mentioned the resource bundle because right now some images will not load on Linux and Mac. Same reason as this:

https://intfiction.org/t/three-extensions-for-tads-3-released/932/1
(Second-to-last post.)

Using bundles makes this a non-issue.

Also, putting loads of stuff in a zip is not exactly user-friendly, IMHO. Perhaps a separate “*.src.zip” would be more appropriate :slight_smile: Anyway, that’s just my own opinion.

5

With respect to the copyright issues, I have a couple of suggestions.

First, make sure you used the right email address to send your request. In other words, try to nail down the question of whether the message was received and read by a human. That probably means making a phone call (or two, since these days no one ever answers the phone).

Second, make sure they understand that your intended usage is (a) very limited in distribution and (b) non-commercial.

Third, in your follow-up email, state specifically, “If I don’t hear from you by [date], I’ll assume you have no objections to the usage.”

Then, if you don’t hear from them within a few weeks, go ahead. You will have exercised what lawyers call “due diligence,” which means (in the U.S., at least) that if their lawyers ever come at you with a claim for damages, you just smack the ball right back into their court.

–JA