Design Docs

[Unknown,Unknown]

Hey

Ken…You’ve said in the past that Roberta most likely has many of her design documents from her games and scripts…
If you could put these up here or get them online somehow, I think it would make a ton of fans days.
Especially the design docs for Phantas, Mask of Eternity (as it went through soo many changes from ’96 and 98) and the other games…

[Unknown,Unknown]

You may have seen some design documents available for download at Al Lowe’s site http://www.allowe.com, for some of the Larry games and the Freddy Pharkas game (possibly Torin’s Passage as well? I forget). Having had the chance to look at Roberta’s design documents, I can tell you one thing – they are much, MUCH longer. They are literally in the thousands of pages. The last time I inquired with Ken about this, he couldn’t find digital copies of Roberta’s design documents. Perhaps he could check again.

[Unknown,Unknown]

I’ll ask her again. I haven’t asked her for a few years.. but, the last I asked, she still didn’t want to. I’m not sure why. I think she still thinks we might do a game again some year, and that they contain all her “trade secrets.”

I think the odds that either her or I will ever do another game are REALLY tiny.

-Ken W

[Unknown,Unknown]

In some ways Roberta’s documents are fairly similar to Al’s, so if you haven’t seen Al’s, you should definitely check them out. Al’s are interesting because they contain a lot of prose. Roberta’s contain a lot of description. Basically, for each room in the game, Roberta has described what will happen if you interact with any of the different objects or characters on screen. For a complex game like KQ6, for a scene such as the branching path on the Island of the Crown with Cassima’s bird, since there are a number of times you have to go into that screen and interact with the bird, each of those interactions are all described in the same section of the document, that screen. The document goes through all the screens in the game to describe what each one is, and everything that must happen in that screen. And, when you get into the later games such as Phantasmagoria, they get even more complicated, because of all the planning that has to go into designing the game in a very specific way because everything will need to be filmed and then work smoothly in-game.

I can understand Roberta not wanting to post her whole documents. I’d love a digital copy for the master archive I’ve been working on for posterity, but I do have some photocopies of small portions of Roberta’s documents. Perhaps with Roberta’s permission, I could put up a couple of pages to at least provide an example, which would be especially interesting in contrast to what Al has posted on his site, to see how different designers work.

[Unknown,Unknown]

Replying to Ken, I think you and her definately should consider it.
The market is stagnant now, it needs some fresh air and I think that Roberta’s vision and your williness to innovate and push boundaries could do the industry a lot of good.

[Unknown,Unknown]

Roberta and I have a new boat arriving, that we’ve been waiting on for nearly three years ( http://www.nordhavn68.com )

Once it arrives, we’ll be starting a circumnavigation, which will keep us busy for at least three to ten years. At the same time, Roberta is working on a historic novel, and I’ve got Talkspot.

So…

As you can imagine, we’re swamped for now.

-Ken W

[Unknown,Unknown]

When did you and Roberta’s like of boating start?
Was it something you were always interested in,
or  something that only came about after you retired?

EDIT: I clicked the link provided by Ken, and that is a really awesome, really beautiful boat! I used to live in New Jersey with my parents when I was little…We had a small fishing boat type of craft, like a dinghy, but I always dreamed of having a boat like that.

[Unknown,Unknown]

Quote:
…

nico, r., 2007-03-24 00:34:40

When did you and Roberta’s like of boating start?
Was it something you were always interested in,
or  something that only came about after you retired?
….

Roberta and I have been boaters every since we were first married (Approx. 35 years ago), starting with little ski boats, and growing over the years to the 68 foot boat we now have on order. We crossed the Atlantic on our 62′ Nordhavn in 2004 and plan to circumnavigate our 68′ boat. I have both a 100 ton masters license and a European yachting license.

-Ken W

[Author]

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