- This topic has 19 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 16 years, 10 months ago by
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Clocks Ticking. Any news about the release of the KQ and SQ compilations? Walmart says 3/21/2006.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4307237
That’s a week away. -
My Lord I hope its true this time…..I wanna buy some new King’s Quest stuff!! If they work great in XP I’ll be in heaven. And I might even forgive Vivendi enough to stop sending death treats to their management weekly! (Kidding)
It was also very nice to see that great KQ9 article in Computer Gaming World this month!!! Very emotional for me reading that article, even moreso considering CGW gave so many of the old Sierra classics ‘Game of the Year’.
Very good times!
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Nope, they’re not being released yet. VU probably projected that bumped
date last year, so I assume that online retailers will get another
projected bumped date in the next couple weeks.PS Ken, I don’t
know why there’s carriage returns being inserted into this message?
Most noticeably after the first time I use the word ‘bumped’, I never
originally typed in the carriage returns and even when I edit it and
then remove them, they still stay. Plus there’s a double CR between
these two paragraphs but the editor shows only one. -
I doubt it will be released too. There has been no official
announcement and stores pretty much know as much as us so their release
dates mean nothing. For example, I saw on Amazon that A FIsh Called
Wanda Deluxe Edition was coming out today. So I thought cool, I’m
gonna get that and I waited until today and I checked the site, and now
it says it won’t be released until August 1st. I’m glad I didn’t
preorder. -
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It’s official, the worst delay yet, I go my e-mail from Amazon today, and in the biggest leap yet, it now says the King’s Quest Compilation has been pushed back all the way to DECEMBER 31 !!! Estimated shipped by Januarary 4-7 of 2007 !!!!!!!!!!!!! Why O Why O Why? Can’t they see how much those compilations go for on eBay now? If they got the games out there and working nice in XP, they stand to restart the Series and bring a whole lot of people into the games again. I mean, there was a huge article in CGW about KQ !!!! If they did it right, good things could happen.
It’s just so hard to see what at least in my opinion deserves ALOT better treatment. Woe is me! I feel heartbreak over the loss and mistreatment of my beloved Sierra!
Oh yeah, was it just a rumor or fact that Vivendi had someone working on porting these games to XP? I hope that is the reasoning behind these delays! They taunt me with the fact they let the preorder show up on Amazon. On top of their disregard of our beloved series, they feel the need to slap me in my face and tease me with these releases. I am heartbroken now. Truly.
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I believe the third party working on the re-releases is simply doing an emulator-type deal.
The third party will not be working with the original code and engine.
It’s a fair bet that VU no longer has the original code and engine.
They wouldn’t release that (or the rights for the games) to the fans,
even if they had them. Why would they?This all goes back to my belief that VU should be getting NewRisingSun to fix these games.
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Brandon,
Do you think a petition would get NewRisingSun the job? VU listened concerning KQ9 fan project, and allowed the Kq1 and Kq2 AGD fan projects!
I have never had a good experience with an emulator, I messed with a SNES one way back when, just so I could play games that never made it to the U.S. from Japan. It worked, but there were always problems…..
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I really believe these compilations are coming but VU is indeed taking their time.
My suspicion now is that they are trying to make them compatible with Windows Vista. It’s due out before the end of the year, and I bet VU doesn’t want to release something that won’t run on an OS that is just around the corner.
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Brandon,
Tomb Raiders released its Level Editor for all of its previous games when it switched to a new engine. Ofcourse, that is not the same as the source code. I don’t know if the SCI 1 engine is available in its original form on the web somewhere?
I agree that VU would not do this, but I can dream. Has there ever been a company that released the original source code for their game?
I was wondering what Ken did in regards to the old games that went out of production when he was managing the store. Did the games and source material go to storage? -
actually, releasing source code for older games is kind of a trend these days. i know that id software released all of its old source up until quake3, and if you think about how quake3 is only around 6 years old (i think it came out in 2000, not sure), thats pretty generous. i believe that epic has released the code for unreal 1. also, i have heard rumors that the code for duke3d is going to be released from 3d realms. i think that id started this trend, but i also think it wont catch on to the bigger companies like VU. john carmack of id actually supports the linux/open source movement and i think thats the only reason why he did it. and then other companies just copied him because they always do. a company like VU that doesnt care about consumers or developers probably would never even think of releasing code.
i also find it hard to believe that the code for the engines and the script code for the games is gone. if that is true, that is the most irresponsible thing one can do in software design. thats as bad as a record company losing a master recording of an elvis song or something. i still have a copy of the source code for the first program i wrote back in high school ten years ago! didn’t they have any source control? maybe ken can elaborate on how Sierra used to handle source code archiving. i’m sure if it was lost it was during all of the switching around of management and stuff.
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Releasing code for dime a dozen shooters is one one thing, I guess,
with Sierra’s old adventure games I suspect you’re in a different
ballpark. Also with the old 3D games the fun of level editors and the
code is making your own mods and improvements and such. There’s not as
much
‘need’ for that and certainly not as much (at least perceived) target
market, between the user-apps of AGI and SCI Studio and the
decline of the adventure genre.LOL,
I also have all the code for every program I wrote in high school. But
at least in the early days of Sierra, code just wasn’t saved or
documented like that. There’s a story (I forget where it’s from, either
Hackers or High Score probably) about another company taking Sierra to
court and they couldn’t prove a thing because Sierra didn’t keep or
document any of their code. Of course in Sierra’s golden era I’m sure
some code must have been kept, along with things like artwork, but then
there’s the horror stories of how so much stuff was simply thrown away
at the close of Oakhurst, for example.I don’t think a petition would be a helpful thing in this case. I don’t
even know if NRS would be interested if approached by VU. I am
following some of my own lines of inquiry to see what can be done.PS Ken> For some reason my messages are still all being truncacted
at the end of lines and appearing with double carriage returns between
lines when I’ve only put in single CRs. No one else’s messages seem to
be doing this. Here at work, I’m using Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7 on a Linux
Workstation. -
I don’t know if the SCI 1 engine is available in its original form on the web somewhere?
Vivendi had nothing to do with it, of course, but there is actually a
freeware SCI editor available at http://www.bripro.com/scistudio/index.php.
I haven’t had time to take a good look at it myself, but according to
the web page it allows users to ‘create games using the
exact same engine Sierra used’. -
re: Throwing Out Games, etc.
When I visited Sierra Bellevue in ’97 they had, I’d guess, 20 or 30
games from the classic times in the whole building (except what Tech
Support may have been hiding). My closet right now has probably
100 or more, so I guess I’m one of those people with a sizeable
collection in hopes of it being needed someday.About the emulation type stuff, I just downloaded Quest for Glory 1 and
Space Quest 3 from Gametap and they seem to play okay. Do you
think this is a route that Sierra will take with more games that aren’t
as easily boxed up for $20? -
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It is interesting to see that Microsoft has now delayed their release of Windows Vista to the same date as the new release date for the compilations. Do you think that VU had a heads up of the OS delay? And, that they may be making the new compilation games Windows Vista compatible.
Now I will have to update my Windows 3.1 !
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