Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!nntp.gmd.de!Germany.EU.net!netmbx.de!zrz.TU-Berlin.DE!zib-berlin.de!news.dfn.de!tubsibr!wuerdema
From: wuerdema@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de (Henning Wuerdemann)
Subject: Re: Scotty...
Message-ID: <1994May9.114237.19782@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>
Sender: postnntp@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de (Mr. Nntp Inews Entry)
Organization: TU Braunschweig, Informatik (Bueltenweg), Germany
References: <2qeromINNpdh@gecko.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: Mon, 9 May 1994 11:42:37 GMT
Lines: 58

john t baker (baker-j@cis.ohio-state.edu) wrote:
: Hello all.  I am still trying to track down the current copyright holders
: of the old Scott Adams text adventures, to try to get them to let me port
: them to TADS for Public Domain use, or at the very least to tell them that
: there are still people interested in owning them.

: I have managed to track down the copyright file number of The Count
: (it is TX-1-301-966), but have had no further luck, and I don't get
: to do much searching as the on-line stuff (available by telnet'ing to
: marvel.loc.gov and logging in as marvel) is up only during business hours
: and I work during the day.

: If anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate hearing from you.  There's
: a lot of Adams games out there just begging to find their way into TADS...
: --
: John Baker

Hi John!

Some time ago I have asked to get these adventures for the mac. To that time
Russ Wetmore owned the copyright of the games for the mac. Another netter, Greg
Donoho, got a mail from Russ. Here's basically what it said...

>I used to run a software company called "Star Systems Software." We licensed
>the rights to the Mac version of Scott's adventures back in 1984. As far as I
>can determine from our contract, when Scott's company went bankrupt a couple
>of years later, the rights to the Mac version reverted in perpetuity to Star
>Systems, which assigned the rights to me personally when Star Systems folded.
> 
>I've never had to test this assumption, since there hasn't been a market for
>Scott's games in recent years. However, enough people have contacted me
>recently after the Internet discussion that I may go ahead and plan something
>for the future.
> 
>In the meantime, I've been selling the Mac version over time for $15 a
>copy.  The packages I have don't currently work on anything other than the
>68000 (I developed the interpreter with the Consulair Mac C compiler, which
>used self-modifying code in its libraries which fails on more recent 680x0's)
>but it should be a fairly simple matter of recompiling the sources with THINK
>C. If I can find them...
>        [ Russ ]

>His address is still R.WETMORE@AppleLink.Apple.COM.

On the other side do I have a book with some listings of adventures for the 
TRS80, which contains also a listing of ADVENTURELAND, so I think this game is
PD.

Hope this will help you.

			Henning

			wuerdema@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de

*************************************************************************

         MS-DOS is the worst text adventure game I have ever played:
             poor vocabulary, weak parser and a boring storyline.
