tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post6063973374415248190..comments2024-03-29T05:52:53.051+11:00Comments on The Adventurers Guild: Game 42: King's Quest Remake - Final RatingThe Tricksterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01419316208187255801noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-88220724505801802422022-11-21T07:48:57.536+11:002022-11-21T07:48:57.536+11:00I don't think disk capacity has anything to do...I don't think disk capacity has anything to do with the lack of story in these early graphic adventures. Remember, "games" in these days were still very much short, action based, coin eaters - this *was* an evolved plot in comparison to its peers. Add to this the fact that graphics in an adventure were in and of themselves a selling point - a story would merely have added to the development effort and cost without resulting in any greater sales. Sierra first and foremost was a business and Ken was a master of process/output optimisation.PsOmAhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03872947040059866064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-23962454798020817872022-09-28T19:10:45.419+10:002022-09-28T19:10:45.419+10:00You guys were talking about disks capacities but f...You guys were talking about disks capacities but forgot that different platforms used different storage devices. For example, Amiga was one of the main players on the 1990s gaming market. However, the most popular format for Amiga floppy disks was 880KB instead of 1.44MB. It means a Title data that fits in 3 floppies on PC requires 6 floppies on Amiga. The best adventure games of the era (The Secret of Monkey Island 2 & Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis) were shipped on 10 + floppies. Juggling disks was the nightmare but it did not take the fun though. We were used to it.qwertyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16747798871196421602noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-65249470035395445732014-08-20T10:10:45.699+10:002014-08-20T10:10:45.699+10:00I never had a lot of trouble with this one persona...I never had a lot of trouble with this one personally, I saw the solution pretty quickly, but it took a few tries for me to get it exactly right.<br /><br />It's annoying that the game doesn't give you a hint you're on the right path for trying and failing thoughIshtarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09037860723340457424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-5870301245987070712014-08-20T10:05:59.206+10:002014-08-20T10:05:59.206+10:00Despite reading through from beginning to end now,...Despite reading through from beginning to end now, this is legitimately the first time I knew the answer in advance of reading the ROT13 comments.<br /><br />Often I would decode the answer and think 'that makes sense' to myself, but this one I spotted right away. It's certainly a superb gameIshtarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09037860723340457424noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-15372139907014014562014-04-15T06:43:52.690+10:002014-04-15T06:43:52.690+10:00I don't get why you keep associating story wit...I don't get why you keep associating story with pages of text. The story should be told via the puzzles. "To get our trust you must steal the foobar of baz from the globspleens" later on you meet the globspleens and see from the art they are an exploited underclass, and there is a bit of text about how that was their religious relic, and then you do more puzzles to steal it back, while seeing the opulance of the people you were trying to trade with. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-51316365827230036862014-04-10T21:16:00.762+10:002014-04-10T21:16:00.762+10:00Nope, Stackpole was behind Neuromancer, which we&#...Nope, Stackpole was behind Neuromancer, which we've been through. Also he's coming up wiith Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Judgement Rites, which are both adventure games. However, there is a point here, because his novels didn't come out until AFTER he had done game design for some years.<br /><br />I don't think there's a single reason for a somewhat lacking big story in early adventure games, but actually many reasons.<br /><br />For one, the problem with space. Games of this era already have content being cut due to the small footprint of the tech. Should the creators then remove additional puzzles and areas to fit more story in? Remember, LucasFilm operated with a 5-floppy-limit per game due to the pain of disk swapping and the increased risk of bad disks the more you had to use for a single game. <br /><br />Secondly, adventure games in this period wasn't the gold mine you would expect. The first adventure game that we know sold into the millions was The 7th Guest from 1993. Day of the Tentacle from the same year had a budget of $600,000, but sold only around 80,000 copies on release. Hiring a professional writer to create a big background story that wouldn't necessarily improve sales at all wouldn't be the first item on the list of need-to-haves.<br /><br />Additionally, at this time people got less and less interested in reading page after page of text. That meant you had to accompany it with graphics, or music, or turn it into cutscenes. These do take up a lot of space. Infocom as you know did focus on story and not graphics, and ended up tanking by the last half of 1980's. That meant taking a huge risk if you went the route with too much story and text and not enough gameplay and fancy graphics.<br /><br />That being said, I don't think many of these games are suffering from it. Would The Secret of Monkey Island be much better if you had 50 pages of intro text to read? Would Space Quest 3 be hugely improved by an elaborate backstory? I'm thinking no.Lars-Erikhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17853818944579785754noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-68181470943227576892014-04-10T19:45:14.329+10:002014-04-10T19:45:14.329+10:00Michael Stackpole? Now you are thinking of CRPG Ad...Michael Stackpole? Now you are thinking of CRPG Addict’s blog. Furthermore, the fact that you could think of so few examples and that the games where the writers were involved had more complex plots just verifies my suggestion.<br /><br />Also, coming back to the question of floppies. Sure, one floppy could hold lot of text, but we are speaking of GRAPHIC adventures here – one floppy cannot hold much graphics + text (consider that text adventures did have more complex plots at the time, but were by 1990 almost a commercial dead end, especially those with no pictures).<br /><br />As for the possibility of many floppies, well, this was done when the graphics and plots expanded, but there were limits as to how much floppies you could cram into a game. Swapping disks every now and then was pure hell, so the more a game had disks, the less you could endure it (especially if you had a machine with no hard drive). The case was different, if you had a hard drive, where you could install the game, but even then – well, let’s just say that they were quite a bit smaller those days (and quite a lot of us PC players were still youngsters and had to share hard disk space with dad’s Lotus, which was the reason why the computer was actually bought in the first place). Of course, it all started to change really fast in 1990s when hard disk drives got bigger and CD-Roms became a viable option.Ilmari Jauhiainenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01655841880034965950noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-73666140616718436692014-04-10T18:11:21.474+10:002014-04-10T18:11:21.474+10:00ALSO, who was behind the VERY FIRST adventure game...ALSO, who was behind the VERY FIRST adventure game on this blog?Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-82806901384392677902014-04-10T15:36:25.991+10:002014-04-10T15:36:25.991+10:00Except we've already seen the involvement of M...Except we've already seen the involvement of Michael a Stackpole, Orsen Scott Card, and a few other professional writers. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-70359142842100119442014-04-09T20:32:48.098+10:002014-04-09T20:32:48.098+10:00How about this for a solution? Programmers were no...How about this for a solution? Programmers were not be default writers, ergo, they would most likely not have had the skills required for decent plotting. Contracting decent writers was costly, so in many cases all gaming companies could come up was a) rubbish or b) no plot to speak of. When the sales of games have grew enough, gaming companies got enough money to actually hire good writers.Ilmari Jauhiainenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01655841880034965950noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-86399999346303516182014-04-09T16:50:12.956+10:002014-04-09T16:50:12.956+10:00Yeah, Kenny? We are on the era of 3.5" floppy...Yeah, Kenny? We are on the era of 3.5" floppy disks, that is 1.44 MB of data per disk, and I don't remember games ever coming on one disk. 1.44 MB doesn't seem like much, but in terms of text that is tons and tons. Grabbing a random novel that I could get on Project Gutenburg, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is about 574,475 characters long, or 0.548 MB. So, you can add ALL THE TEXT YOU WANT for the price of ONE floppy disk, and have enough space left over to hide the entire dev teams names.<br /><br />The 1.5 MB floppy disk came out in 1986, and we are at 1990. The amount of space text takes up is no longer an issue and hasn't been for a while. Portal also came out in 1986 and it was literally a full novella. <br /><br />Console games had to cram everything into a tiny package as they were super outdated by this point; the NES came out in Japan in 1983, and was outdated then. Most cartridges had the amount of memory on them measured in kilobytes as I recall. <br /><br />Also 1 letter = 1 byte in ASCII or ANSI, not 1 bit (1 byte = 8 bits = 2 nibbles). However, if you were really desperate you could compress the text then decode it. You'd need to have enough ram available to do this, and your load times would suck, but a even a very inefficient decompression program (Replace the most common word with $1, the second most with $2, etc. Even if you only replace 'the' you save a byte each time.) Your load times would be *abysmal* but people dealt with that back then. <br /><br />Also: My high school computers didn't work right with USB drives, as we were still on Windows XP, and the disk image they used didn't have USB drivers installed by default, and to do that you needed admin privileges. So I had to keep all my documents on floppy disks, and let me tell you, I could fit a lot of essays on a floppy, and that is as a fancy word doc with formatting and such. <br /><br />Also: Sort stories are, you know, short. I feel those are a much better fit for games. You've got only a couple of settings, a handful of characters and one big plot twist in most of them. Perfect for a game outline, and you can the text for a dozen of them or more on a floppy disk. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-41968638894984798432014-04-09T14:57:38.515+10:002014-04-09T14:57:38.515+10:00Wait, WTF was I saying?Wait, WTF was I saying?Kenny McCormickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01553499727945099493noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-55474614514649794242014-04-09T14:55:52.572+10:002014-04-09T14:55:52.572+10:00Seeing that 1 single letter already takes up 1 bit...Seeing that 1 single letter already takes up 1 bit of memory, I doubt you could have too much space for text that could be used to have more codes to empower the game engine.<br /><br />Game designers then were thinking of how to make games that are more game-y and less visual-novel like, with their limitations.<br /><br />As stated by Laukku, Nintendo did this by squashing everything that even remotely resemble a plot into their little flimsy and glossy instruction booklets. Just take a look at Kid Icarus' manual, for instance: http://www.vnotesonline.com/img_art/Kid_Icarus_Manual.pdf<br /><br />No NPC in the game is going to tell you anything about monsters. You just RTFM. No "Mentors" are going to walk you through a tutorial. You just RTFM. And no, there will definitely be no lengthy and elaborate intros with custcenes to tell you WTF is going on. Again, you just RTFM.<br /><br />The first console game ever that did an elaborate intro (because no PC game is going to do this during that era) is Ninja Ryukenden aka Ninja Gaiden: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rkaiKYEkDQ<br /><br />The importance of having a really great intro to entice players into slotting money into the arcade machines was pioneered by Soul Edge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApsSVNP3wIc<br /><br />Before that, it was all about showing a demonstration of gameplay with a huge "INSERT COIN" text blinking over the screen without any semblance of a storyline.<br /><br />I blame Soul Edge for making every game on the market trying to dell themselves as RPGs (but are nothing like that) because of their rock-solid characters, colorful history-backed plot and big fat titties. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xo4i64_taki-soul-edge-bouncing_naKenny McCormickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01553499727945099493noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-6794591321560771402014-04-09T00:15:04.127+10:002014-04-09T00:15:04.127+10:00One of the best features of the AGDI KQ2 remake wa...One of the best features of the AGDI KQ2 remake was how they did justice to a character from KQ5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMDbLtx4Rr8Laukkuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16258625692586860655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-22392438999784099802014-04-08T22:52:56.808+10:002014-04-08T22:52:56.808+10:00At least the story is fairly minimal in this case ...At least the story is fairly minimal in this case and stays out of the way. I'd rather have no story than a bad one.<br /><br />Also, in the days of floppies and cartridges you had so little space that even text took relatively much of it. There's many cases where translators of Japanese SNES games had to cut the dialogue to a fraction, so it could all still fit in when reworded in English.Laukkuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16258625692586860655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-24708106975456568512014-04-08T22:34:16.791+10:002014-04-08T22:34:16.791+10:00(Trickster note: this spoily discussion of Broken ...(Trickster note: this spoily discussion of Broken Sword)<br /><br />Lbh xabj n chmmyr vf onq jura vg unf na ragver Jvxvcrqvn negvpyr jevggra nobhg vg...<br /><br />uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Gur_Tbng_ChmmyrLaukkuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16258625692586860655noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-32102503171552929612014-04-08T17:22:56.779+10:002014-04-08T17:22:56.779+10:00See, I don't get why old games get away with h...See, I don't get why old games get away with having poor stories. Poe was writing damn fine things in the early 19th century. Lovecraft in the 1920s and 1930s. Andre Norten was publishing at the same time as this. Good writing has been around a very, very long time. Also the concept of making it interactive was around by this; Portal: A Dataspace Retrieval came out in 1988. Heck, there were books ABOUT computer games coming out at this time. <br /><br />So yeah, writing is the one thing that I don't give much slack for due to time. Graphics of course get better with time, and we've learned a hell of a lot about user interfaces (Though, we keep UNlearning this just as fast as designers try and make things more immersive. (Freaking DOOM let me overlay a map onto the screen on my Dad's 386 with 8 mb of RAM, spread over 8 1 MB chips, what is your excuse? I'm sorry, WHY can't I hold shift and select multiple things from this inventory to transfer to my other character? Windows has had that since at least Win 95, you are perhaps familar with the concept? Next week I'll show you what windows lets you do with a group of items and the control key, and you can give me more excuses. Oh, I'm sorry, why can I only have one inventory open at once? Freaking Castle of the Winds had that in 1991, why are you making me juggle things? Ahem). <br /><br />But anyway, graphics, sound, UI are all unquestionably better with each passing year. Voice acting also improves. However, the three things that don't get that excuse are sound design (Some of the best music composed for games happened right at the start, due to Nintendo getting their hands on Koji Kondo in 1984), control responsiveness (Mario had this figured out before I was born; I hit a key, something happens NOW.), and writing (We've been putting words on a page since at least Mesopotamian times. I'm not SAYING your game should be as good as the Epic of Gilgamesh, but damn, if I have to read one more bad plot about saving a female hostage I'm going to break into a game company and tie them up Clockwork Orange style and make them watch all of Feminist Frequency, followed by a collection of selected science fiction, detective and horror audiobooks.)Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-47833066884831876322014-04-08T13:49:11.805+10:002014-04-08T13:49:11.805+10:00Lbh'er xvqqvat! Gur ragver vffhr jvgu vg jnf ...Lbh'er xvqqvat! Gur ragver vffhr jvgu vg jnf gung gurer jrer ab bgure yvxr chmmyrf orsber be nsgre, fb lbh jrera'g rkcrpgvat vg gb jbex... Qrsvavgryl n cyhf gura! Aperamahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13669724908141286435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-18597937942160453622014-04-08T13:04:19.636+10:002014-04-08T13:04:19.636+10:00Gur tbng chmmyr jnf npghnyyl fvtavsvpnagyl fvzcyvs...Gur tbng chmmyr jnf npghnyyl fvtavsvpnagyl fvzcyvsvrq sbe gur Qverpgbe'f phg - gurer vf ab cerpvfr gvzvat arrqrq naq rira jvgubhg xabjvat jung gb qb lbh'q rnfvyl fghzoyr hcba gur fbyhgvba whfg ol pyvpxvat ba gur fvatyr ubgfcbg ba gur fperra, juvpu vzzrqvngryl erfhygf va gur tbng trggvat pnhtug.TBDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13815382857422719383noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-1284031777685330852014-04-08T12:50:16.466+10:002014-04-08T12:50:16.466+10:00That's like saying 'the Rumplestiltskin pu...That's like saying 'the Rumplestiltskin puzzle from KQ1 was easy the second time around! I might have stabbed my eyes out with a pencil and engraved the solution into my eyelids from the pain it caused the first time around, but this time around it seemed easy!"Aperamahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13669724908141286435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-33494402937410363952014-04-08T12:35:28.796+10:002014-04-08T12:35:28.796+10:00Actually, when I played it recently I played the D...Actually, when I played it recently I played the Director's Cut and... gur tbng chmmyr jnf irel rnfl. V erzrzorerq gung chmmyr jryy, nf V hfhnyyl qb sbe chmmyrf gung gnxr ntrf sbe zr gb fbyir. Crbcyr jub bayl cynl gur Qverpgbe'f phg jba'g unir gur tbng chmmyr avtugznerf gung gubfr bs hf jub cynlrq gur bevtvany jvyy unir. V'z abg fher vs gung'f n tbbq be n onq guvat.TBDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13815382857422719383noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-89129086917759888262014-04-08T09:54:49.957+10:002014-04-08T09:54:49.957+10:00Nterrq jvgu rirelguvat rkprcg sbe gur svfg svtugf....Nterrq jvgu rirelguvat rkprcg sbe gur svfg svtugf. V ybbxrq ng vg, rkpynvzrq gung gur nafjre jnf oebxra fjbeq, naq ernyvmrq V nyernql unq Zbaxrl Vfynaq naljnlf. Gur cebcre pyhr sbe Oebxra Fjbeq jbhyq or "FGHCVQ SERNXVAT TBNG CHMMYR" naq sbe TX3 vg'q or "jrnevat n png unve zbhfgnpur sbe n Uneyrl"...Aperamahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13669724908141286435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-4221176388635247052014-04-08T09:34:23.438+10:002014-04-08T09:34:23.438+10:00Yep. Laukku and Novacek were right. Sorry Canageek...Yep. Laukku and Novacek were right. Sorry Canageek.<br /><br />Novacek wins the prize! I assume Laukku deliberately didn't name the game due to already having Monkey Island .<br /><br />And Laukku, I'm actually currently replaying the series in preparation for the latest too - I've deliberately not played the first part so I could do it this way.<br /><br />Vagrerfgvat ubj zhpu TX3 svgf gur pyhrf gbb gubhtu.<br /><br />Ur vf va Senapr, ur qbrf frnepu fbzrbar'f cnagf, ur qrnyf jvgu Grzcyne Xavtugf naq, cbffvoyl trgf va svfg svtugf (abg fher rvgure jnl ba gung bar)<br /><br />Ohg grpuavpnyyl, ur'f abg gnxvat inpngvba - ur'f npghnyyl qbvat n wbo - gubhtu ur qbrf cergraq gb or n gbhevfg fb gung bar zbfgyl svgf gbb.<br /><br />Ur'f nyfb frnepuvat sbe n xvqanccre, abg n xvyyre. Ohg ntnva, gurer znl or n xvyyre nebhaq va gur tnzr fb...<br /><br />TBDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13815382857422719383noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-65437882271206210922014-04-08T06:14:55.497+10:002014-04-08T06:14:55.497+10:00Really? Damn: Tnoevry sbyybjf gur xvqanccref gb gu...Really? Damn: Tnoevry sbyybjf gur xvqanccref gb gur zlfgrevbhf Serapu ivyyntr bs Eraarf-yr-Puâgrnh. Tnoevry'f neeviny pbvapvqrf jvgu gung bs n gbhe tebhc; fhccbfrqyl nyy va gbja uhagvat sbe n yrtraqnel ybpny gernfher yvaxrq gb gur Xavtugf Grzcyne, gur Pngunef naq fhccbfrqyl pbaarpgrq gb gur Ubyl Tenvy.Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-52299851016786892272014-04-07T23:01:06.061+10:002014-04-07T23:01:06.061+10:00Oebxra Fjbeq: Funqbj bs gur Grzcynef nxn Pvepyr bs...Oebxra Fjbeq: Funqbj bs gur Grzcynef nxn Pvepyr bs Oybbq. Novacekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01180934235887217860noreply@blogger.com