Graphics The graphics characters used in Beyond Zork and Journey are built into Frotz, so no extra files are required to play. If the fixed width font is not 8 pixels by 8 pixels, the graphics will be scaled accordingly. The Atari ST release of Beyond Zork has a title picture, which Frotz can display. The picture must be in MCGA format (the same as that used for the V6 graphics files) and can be downloaded from the IF Archive. The graphics file must have the same name as the story file, except for the different file ending, e.g. BeyondZork.z5 Story file BeyondZork.mg1 Title graphics file Colour If Frotz is running on a custom screen, or Frotz is running on Workbench 3.0 or higher on a Workbench screen with enough free pens, then colour in games is supported. If Frotz is using a cutom screen this requires the opening of a 16 colour screen (as opposed to the usual 4 colour screen), which may result in a slowing down of Frotz, depending on your system. Due to this, colour is disabled by default, and must be enabled from within preferences. Beyond Zork and V6 games are supported as special cases, since these games force changes to the background colour of the entire screen. Note that in non-colour mode, Frotz represents reversed text as white on blue, as this is more readable, but in colour mode the text really is reversed. Sound The sound files which were released with both the Amiga version of The Lurking Horror and the Amiga and Macintosh versions of Sherlock are supported by Frotz. Also supported are versions of these sound files which were prepared by Stefan Jokisch for use with IBM PC sound cards. This last set of files can be downloaded from the IF Archive. As distributed by Infocom, the sound files were stored in a sub-directory Sound of the directory where the game file was kept. However, some of the sound files from the two different games have the same name. For this reason, Frotz looks first for the sound files in the sub-directories LurkingHorrorSound or SherlockSound (depending on the game), and then in Sound. Note that some game files (particularly those released for the PC) do not contain the required instructions for playing the sound files, so to get the sound effects a suitable (i.e. Amiga or Macintosh) game file is required, as well as the sound files. The Lurking Horror releases 219 and 221 contain the sound instructions, as does Sherlock release 26 (see the release and serial numbers displayed when the game is first started). As of Amiga Frotz 2.41, AIFF format samples stored in Blorb resource files can be played, provided that the samples are 8bit mono. The Blorb file must have the same name as the game file it is associated with, except that its extension should be ".blb". Input and Output Frotz supports the timed input of Border Zone, which has an internal clock that runs in real-time, i.e. events take place even if you do not type in any instructions. Frotz also supports the accented characters used in the unreleased German version of Zork 1. In Beyond Zork, some location descriptions can occasionally be longer than the upper window will allow. In this case Alt Cursor Up and Alt Cursor Down can be used to scroll the description.
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