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Tex Murphy Special Edition?

I know Chris and Aaron aren't fans of this, but this is why I support the idea of a remastered version of those thre Interactive Movie Trilogy because they truly deserve it and would be all the more timeless if they were remastered. Full screen cinematics, updated graphics, revamped engine - it would be great. There's a perception that if this happens it will replace the originals, that's not true.

Just look at Monkey Island, you could change between the old and modern modes at absolutely any point of the game. With UKAM/PD/Overseer, you could just bundle the original version with the updated versions. Besides, the originals are available digitally. The technology may have dated somewhat, despite the affection we have for those games in their original form, but the writing and story telling hasn't. In fact, the themes are even more relevant now than they were back then. I think a technological revamp would open the games to a whole new audience that appreciates good story telling.
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I'd settle for the _feeling_ I could get any of the last three Tex Murphy games to play on a modern computer without having to become a computer software debug expert.

Over the years since becoming a TM fan, I have tried to load UAKM/PD/Overseer onto various Windows OS (Windows 98/XP/7) computers so as to show the kids, in hopes to introduce TM to a newer player. As soon as the game invariably locked-up; out went the inductee's interest.

Regardless; looking forward to playing the new TM game on Windows 8.1. It does run on Windows 8.1, doesn't it?...

Ema Nymton
~ @ : o ?
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We Cheat The Other Guy And Pass The Savings On To You.
Yes, it runs on 8.1. They're not going to shoot themselves in the foot by not making it compatible with the only operating system you can even really buy these days :)
Ema,

did you try the new gog version of overseer dvd or were you trying to do it on the original disks
Lynne
tex murphy is back in town
plumgas wrote:Ema,

Did you try the new gog version of overseer dvd or were you trying to do it on the original disks
I downloaded the GOG games. Ran them on earlier Windows platforms. Ran ok, but had occasional, unexpected lock-up issues. Afraid now to run games on new computers...

Ema Nymton
~ @ : o ?
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We Cheat The Other Guy And Pass The Savings On To You.
I mean I don't know if the market is there for it or not, but I really think there's an awful lot that could be done to seriously improve the old games without having to completely remake them.

1) Simply redoing the interface to something more like Tesla Effect, where you can stay in full-screen and not have to use the floaty mouse-tank controls would have a dramatic impact on making these games more accessible to a larger audience.

2) Many (most?) of the textures for the game were originally created in higher resolution and downsampled. If the originals exist, you could seriously improve the texture resolution.

3) In the case of Pandora Directive and Overseer, you could probably remaster the FMV to look worlds better. This could prove more difficult in UAKM without a lot of manual work, however, since it was shot on black screen.

4) Render the MIDI soundtrack at a higher quality, or even record it with a live band/orchestra.

5) Just making it natively compatible with new systems, wide screen monitors, modern resolutions, etc.


If you did that, I think you'd have a compelling reason for most people to re-buy without having to spend hundreds of thousands actually remaking the games. But then, this assumes that they've recovered the source code and assets, and I'm still not clear if that's the case or not.
I was under the impression that the source code & media for the old games was lost forever. Not true?
Gur, Gur bëhet mur.
If people were serious about this, fans could recreate a lot of it. The hardest part would be recreating the environments... Ripping the video/audio should be relatively easy.
Gur, Gur bëhet mur.
xhonzi wrote:I was under the impression that the source code & media for the old games was lost forever. Not true?
During the KS campaign someone came forward and said they had access to the source and assets for the old games, but I've never been able to get a straight answer about whether or not this panned out.
no nothing happened with this statement
Lynne
tex murphy is back in town
plumgas wrote:no nothing happened with this statement
Did they fail to follow up with him, or did it turn out to be a bogus claim?
All I really want is the raw video footage. The non-FMV graphics are fine and have their own DOS appeal.
it appeared the info was incorrect & if the were available I don't think they could be used for legal reasons
Lynne
tex murphy is back in town
plumgas wrote:it appeared the info was incorrect & if the were available I don't think they could be used for legal reasons
I'm positive the latter is not true. The only difference between the source assets they have and the assets they don't is their physical location. Wordplay LLC holds the rights to the old games and their source assets.

They've already talked about cleaning up the video for the old games, and the source code is no different, legally speaking. It just so happens they still have the tapes and not the code.
no you are wrong, as the guy that wrote the patch for overseer actually hacked into the game to access the codes and was told by big finish that they didn't have the codes.

the person who claimed someone had the codes took them without anyone's knowledge & legally they belonged to access software which was sold to microsoft so the codes cannot be touched.

lets put an end to this forever!
Lynne
tex murphy is back in town