Heya. This is just a quick heads-up: with the very kind help of Michael Roberts I’ve extracted the multimedia resources from all the TADS games that have them in separate files and bundled them together into their respectives .GAM files.
The games in question are Arrival, Kaged (comp and post-comp), Threnody, Six Stories, Jarod’s Journey, Adventures of Helpfulman and Generic NY Apartment Building. Yep, those are the only games that actually had external resource files.
As to the why, well, TADS is coming to iFrotz. It really, really is. I have a copy of it that actually plays vanilla TADS games (no hyperlink support on the version I have, but I know it’s being looked into). It’ll be here sooner rather than later.
And any iOS app is going to have a real problem with story files that rely on external files that are not created by the app itself. I mean, if I load Alabaster or Kerkerkruip, their configuration is created by the app and managed within the app. That’s ok. But these separate external files? Problem.
So, I’ve bundled them together and am uploading them to the archive. I’ll update their IFDB pages and post the links here when that process is finished.
A note about Kaged - it’s the competition version. I did bundle the post-comp version, because it seemed to run splendidly with the existing resources, but since it states very plainly that it’s shareware and because of that it does notcome with any music included… it did not seem right to make it publicly available. So a bundled (still shareware) post-comp version can be made by anyone, I guess, but I’m not going to distribute it myself.
Bleckt. Er, Nathan, could you give me a set of commands that’ll lead to the first instance where an image is shown in Max & Doris? For testing purposes. There’s no cover image, nothing in the intro, no X ME images…
I’m truly vexed right now. No, it’s not that it’s in a zip file, what’s happened is that when I first did this I thought the files started at .rs1.
So when I did a global search in my folder, those were the games I got. Naturally, doing a search for .rs0, and additionally of course .3r0, I got - whaddayaknow - more hits.
Thank you very much for bringing this to my attention. I’ll look this over in the next few days.
BTW, no, I can’t extract the story from a Windows executable; to my mind, if the author so desperately wanted to have a non-portable file, they can have it. It’ll go in the “Windows” section of my collection.
Okay, Max Blaster will have to wait; it’s T3 and the tool MJR kindly supplied me doesn’t seem to like it. But in the meantime, the following are being uploaded into the archive right now:
British Fox 2 (AIF)
Tomorrow Never Comes (AIF - but by all accounts, the good stuff!)
A Night with Dr. Crusher (AIF)
French Mansion (AIF)
Fusillade
Escape from a planet filled with monkeys!
The AIF ones (excluding TNC) are not on IFDB, much to my intense lack of surprise. You might argue, successfully, that they deserve to be left forgotten, like so much debris floating around the coast of Knowledge, barely within sight of such lush and vibrant greenery that holds Worlds Apart and Babel and 1893. But there is always a place for muck in the grand scheme of things; is not compost the very foundation of the greenery? Can you possibly arrive at a great game without the existance of some sub-par attempts? Could you, in fact, have Make It Good without having had Detective? (Answer: probably, and it has nothing to do with AIF anyway, so why did I even bring it up?)
Thus it is, ladies and gentlemen, that I present you you AIF titles with image files. Tremble. Quiver. And don’t open them at work.
Now I’ll go take a pill, or something, and lie down. Too much excitement.
I’m going to have to make some educated guesses. Drool, for instance, does use external images - done. Ecdysis only had the one cover image - done, too. Exhibition has images which are clearly feelies and has pre-bundled resources - I’m not doing anything to that one. Fog Convict appears to have feelies, and without actually playing the game I have to guess that that’s what they are (they are two maps and one cover image. The cover doesn’t display when you start the game and there’s no ABOUT text, and the walkthrough doesn’t reference any MAP object, nor does the command MAP do anything), so I’m not doing anything to that one either.
Basically, my point is, if there are still gaps once I’m finished, let me know. I could bundle pretty much anything into a .gam file, just in case, but if the game doesn’t reference it it’s just bloating needlessly. And if the whole point of this exercise is to make it easier to mobile terps, then size is an issue.
“Frosty the Snow Man” comes with a “graphics” and a “sound” subdirectory, then proceeds to use neither. Even when I put the fame in the same directory as the media. Sigh. No point bundling this one…
I’ll be submitting them to the archive shortly. The newest additions, then, are:
Drool
Ecdysis (just the cover)
Journey from an Islet
Special Detective Agent
The Mist (nothing to do with the Stephen King story or licensed game. It is, in fact, AIF)
The Sex Artist
Games like “Frosty the Snow Man” and “Triune” got left behind because it didn’t look like the game was accessing the image files. I actually suspect Frosty was originally supposed to get the files from an online resource, based on a very old thread around this here place, and the version that was supposed to read the resources offline has typos or just plain bugs.
Max Blaster and BattleTech Demo will have to wait until I can extract files from .t3 resources, which has everything to do with Michael Roberts’ kindness and patience and putting together a tool that’ll allow me to do so (that guy is just plain awesome).
Naturally, doing a search for .rs0, and additionally of course .3r0, I got - whaddayaknow - more hits.