You can set the preferences of the game anyway you want, but the game does not deliver the qualities that you would choose. The 3D sound option, however you set it, does not work. Pan around at the GUE fountains and you will see that the sound does not pan according to the direction you face. Line skip or Interlacing as we are familiar with in Win 95 games, actually makes the video sharper than Pixel Double, but this again does not work. The game plays all videos in Pixel Double.

I would expect that Zengine, the company whose logo appears everytime I run the game, is responsible for reviving this game. Why revive an old game if you cannot make it work as well as the way it used to? Bluffing the player by allowing the options panel to be fiddled with does not count as actually offering the options!

ZEngine isn't a company, it's an open-source project. It was merged into ScummVM and is no longer maintained. ScummVM will add this feature when someone volunteers to do it.

Love the fact we have DVD version now.

But hopefully the cd-rom could be included as a seperate bonus download... It works in ScummVM too? I love GOG gives us all the legacy versions! So we can compare them.

Thank you, Gog,com Team! I will re-download the new ScummVm version/ DVD Version of the game and play it!

Checked it out, and regretably there doesn't seem to be much of an improvement. Videos are still grainy, 3D sound still does not work - I tested it at the GUE fountain again. When you click the switch for 3D sound you get to hear a cool sound effect, and the sound of the water cuts in for a while then it goes away when you travel to the next node and back, and you cannot hear it anymore until you adjust the 3D sound switch again. So, in what way is the DVD version better than the CD version?

Edit: Line Skip still does not work. Pana Quality, Mpeg switches also do not appear to change anything. The captions switch, pana rotation speed and pana anim switches work.

When I play the Wing Commander 4 DVD version and the DOS version, the differences are clearly visible.

"When I play the Wing Commander 4 DVD version and the DOS version, the differences are clearly visible"

I'm trying to remember my experiences from long ago, but I don't think Zork Grand Inquisitor ever looked as good as WC4's videos.

Pretty sure the game always used a different encoding method, that wasn't as smooth as the one used in WC4.

Also trying to look into this further it seems Zork Grand Inquisitor dvd may not offered any 'upgrades' to visuals. It's main selling point was not having to 'disk swap', and many early copies also came with a copy of Zork Nemesis on the disks too., which also removed 'disk swapping'.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/52156-13-zork-grand-inquisitor-disappointment

However it was always described as 'enhanced'.. but not sure what the 'enhancements' actually were...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Zork-Grand-Inquisitor-DVD-Enhanced-Edition-PC-explore-fantasy-areas-quest-game-/401462962454

Still researching...

From the DVD box the enchancements that were included.

50 minutes of MPEG-2 video clipos, improved animation playback, and remixed Dolby DIgital AC-3 5.1 multichannel sound.

Finaly got hte DVD verison downloaded... Checked thorugh the files... The dvd 'mpeg' files are definitleyh included. However, it doesn't look like they cover every scene. Most of the game seems to rely on the lower quality AVI files.

The "mpeg"/vob files appear to be used for very specific important scenes. Roughly 35 scenes....

There are 67 or so AVI files for varius scenes.

They are also not the same level of encoding as the Wing Commander 4 VOB files. But certainly much higher standard than AVI files.

I'd play through the game and make sure those VOB files are functioning as expected, where they occur.

Edit: The propaganda movie at the start of the game definitley has a DVD Vob file in the ENG_MPEG folder, and it the game currently defaults to the AVI file version instead... So something definitley needs to be fixed.

LIne skip should be for non-dvd release... it adds scanlines IIRC, and only with the AVI files in the game.

The DVD should be running seperate VOB files from the ENG_MPEG Folder, which it is not doing.

Thank you for doing the research. I really appreciate your response.

Personally I get annoyed whenever a product makes grand promises but only partially deilvers on them, and I particularly dislike bogus features - it is like buying a piece of hardware, paying a jacked up price for "state-of-the-art" but the additional knobs or sliders either makes minor adjustments or do not actually work.

If a control does not fully work, it should not be released. If a feature does not fully work, it should not be touted as such. It is only what I expect of honest advertising. Providing an Mpeg switch while only half the videos are Mpeg, and providing an auto/ manual video quality switch which works in the cd version and not the dvd version of a game is neither honest advertising nor good workmanship.

I particularly get uncomfortable when people think that it is my system that is not compatible when it is in fact that not all the features are actually in place. And I am tired of being unsure when I hear sounds or see a video and start doubting my senses - did I just hear a higher quality sound or watch a higher quality video or am I getting old? When I pay extra for an advertised feature I expect to be able to enjoy the feature all the time, and not wonder when it would actually work and when it would not work.

Comparing the DVD and CD versions I feel that there is no significant improvement for the DVD version, particularly on Gog.com as we already do not need to switch CDs for the previous version that Gog.com provided.

By the way, some may have doubts about the benefits of the Line Skip or Interlacing in an FMV game thinking that it was initially provided by budget video compression technology to save CDrom space, but they have grown dear to me as part of nostalgia, as long as the videos are not of extremely bad quality that they are near unwatchable, as those in Privateer 2: The Darkening.

I cite another example: Schizm

The cd versions and the dvd versions are remarkably different, because the developer actually scaled down the dvd version to release it on cd-roms, for inexplicable marketing reasons. The dvd version had clearly higher quality videos than the cd rom version, and there are video logs on all the tablets that your player finds. On the cd version the video logs are mostly wiped.

It is the dvdom version that is provided on Gog.com and I greatly appreciate it.

Riven cd and Riven dvdrom:
Riven dvd rom did away with the cd switching, which is greatly appreciated when you travel across the islands after riding the trams. Besides the disc switching I do not remember any other improvements, but it is much needed improvement for player immersion.

ZGI is ultimately disappointing because it makes bigger promises but it retracts more than it did in the cd rom version.

Well, if you hit CTRL F5 in the game... You will bring up scummVm's settings, if you click on go to launcher you can check the settings... The settings udner "Engine" has a checkbox for use High resolution MPEG video", so at least SCUMMVM is supposed to be able to use them... This feature is already checked...

So maybe the files are not in the right place that ScummVM is supposed to read them... I'm still trying to find any information on SCUMM's side, that might discuss what the file structure should be....

Note you can't just manually run this game in ScummVM, it also needs some fonts places in specific folders and places... before it will run.. I haven't found all the fonts it needs, or tried to put them in the locations it says to put them yet... But if you are willing to test this and let me know what happens... It would be great...
Note the functioning vob/mpeg 2 files are roughly the same quality as the DVD files on Journeyman Project 3. They are noticeably different than the AVI files when they are functioning right... Got o your folders and try loading them using VLC media player... At least having them 'archived' is handy for now... If we can just figure out how to fix this, even if its manually fixing it ourselves, its promising to have those files on hand.

Also I thought Riven DVD actually had enhanced videos and graphics?

I am one step ahead of you. I have already tested this out last night, as I was so disappointed by the video quality in the game. Switching on the Mpeg option in the options in ScummVm launcher or off has no apparent improvement to the video quality. I wonder why Activision never even bothered to touch up their own logo video.