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(re: re: FA: Many new sealed sierra classics for sale)
Before bidding on these items, please review the sellers feedback. It appears as though most of his 71 positive feedbacks were provided by a small handful of buyers and sellers. Would you please offer an explanation for this before we place bids on your merchandise?
No offense to the seller, but I have been burned on Ebay repeatedly when it comes to classic video and computer games. Also, for some reason classic Sierra game collectors are being preyed upon:
http://vintage-sierra.com/fraud.html
UPDATE: Over 90 positive feedback ratings were left by the same seller in the course of 15 minutes on April 9th. Most of them are identical.
(re: Sierra Online 1989-90 Video Catalogue) Perhaps if the “senior management” folks do realize advertising material for out-of-print products is being distributed to interested parties, it might occur to them that re-releasing the classic games is financially viable.
One last link relating to the copyright discussion, then I’ll shut up about it:
This doesn’t directly relate to what we were discussing here, but it is a striking example of how a corporation can screw with the livelihood of someone formerly employed by the corp. over intellectual property rights
(re: Larry’s funny pic ;))
Reminds me the Space Quest 1 part in Space Quest 4, with the monochrome guys and Roger Wilco in full 256-color in the old AGI screens. 😉
Vincent.
(re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Shadow of Darkness)
A lot of people seem to have trouble with the audio of KQ5 DOS on XP. It is not speed related. It is much easier to get the Win version going, though the out of heap error is more of a Windows error.
(re: Sierra Online 1989-90 Video Catalogue) Brad:
Let’s go ahead and host the video on this site. They (my hosting service, MaximumASP) recently raised my monthly bandwidth allotment, so I’m in good shape. I’ll watch to see how much of a spike in bandwidth it causes — if it’s off the top of the charts, I’ll have to rethink this decision.
-Ken W
PS I read the comments about the worry that this is Sierra copyrighted material. This is a real issue. However, I have mentioned several times to Sierra’s senior management that this site exists, and described its contents. To my knowledge, they have never come here, even though I’ve encouraged them to do so. The odds that they’ll come here, see their own advertising on public display, and then sue me, and negligible. That said, if they ever do actually write me a nasty letter – I’ll pull the files off quickly (but will be shocked if this ever occurs).
(re: Sierra Online 1989-90 Video Catalogue) J,
I believe everything you said is vaild, and cannot argue with your points. You are right, anyone can make a case out of anything, or at least use it as ammo for something else.
The file itself will be hosted on either my site, or SpaceQuest.net (or both), that is in no way connected to Ken Williams. Ken has already mentioned that he does not have the bandwidth to host this file anyway – Ken if you forsee any problems with us hosting this file outside of this website please let us know, otherwise I will proceed forward as originally planned.
-Brad
(re: FA: Many new sealed sierra classics for sale) Wow! Some great sealed items. Thanks for the heads up.
Brandon – sealed games. I can hear your mouth watering. Be careful though – some of them are Slash releases.
-Brad
(re: Interaction Magazine Archive UPDATE!)
Hey I want to volunteer my help on this or any other scanning project, I have a scanner and I’m in the Seattle area so if there is anything I can do to help let me know praetorianxiv#hotmail.com
(re: re: Has there ever been a CD Talkie of Robin Hood?)
I realise some CD upgrades were begun and then cancelled, e.g. SQ5. However, I do have a rolling demo of Conquests of the Longbow with full speech for all the characters.
Whatever that means.
(re: re: Sneak Peek CDs)
Yeah, it was great. The premise was that the ship that you
were on was attacked by the Bjorg(sp?). It was your quest to get rid of them. I can’t remember anything more about it.(re: re: TSN / INN Patents)
The same thing happened to my father. He invented a specialized air conditioning system for large industrial equipment, and the patent was owned by the corporation he worked for. He could be a millionaire today if he owned that patent. So believe it or not, I feel your pain.
(re: Sierra Online 1989-90 Video Catalogue) You’re right, there probably won’t be any problems. A point to remember, though, is that when a corporation (or someone representing a corporation) wants to stick it to you, they usually will. You know what I mean if you’ve ever been on the bad side of a supervisor. Suddenly every detail of your job performance is analyzed, every minute you’re late to work is recorded, and so on. That way once they finally boot you out the door, they’ll have a paper trail to back up their actions. Corporate lawyers can use the law in the same way.
TECHNICALLY it may still violate Sierra’s copyright to distribute that video over the internet, since the video itself, while intended for advertising purposes, is protected against duplication and distribution in another medium by a third party (such as a MPEG file posted on a website). For instance, if you wanted to post a Tiger Woods American Express ad on your website, in MPEG format, AMEX could sucessfully sue you for copyright infringement since they did not authorize you to duplicate and distribute their advertisement.
No corporation in their right mind would prosecute someone for something that trivial, though, UNLESS they were in another dispute over another copyright, patent, or contract. Then they could get bent out of shape if they saw a legal advantage in doing so.
Again, most likely it won’t happen. But for the sake of the Williams and any legal dispute or negotiations they may be involved in, there is no sense in muddying the waters, especially when Ken has provided this site out of the kindess of his heart and the depths of his wallet.
(re: Sierra and South Africa / Sierra en Suid-Afrika) Hi there
Another South African here – glad to see that I am not the only one on this board. Will be dropping you a line. Any other South Africans? Maybe we can start a SASG – South African Sierra Group.
Regards
Michael
(re: re: QfG4 – Dialogue boxes)
If you pirated your version then you’re probably running the CD version without the speech files. Hence you should get the Disk version and it will run fine (there are heaps of places to ‘look’ for it on the net) or buy the CD version which is absolutely brilliant. I picked it up for $14.95 brand new from CDAccess.com as part of the Sierra Gamer pack and got GK1, KQ5, LSL1, Red Baron, A10 Tank Killer and Caesar with it.
It has John Rhys Davies as the narattor and he’s all good!
(re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Shadow of Darkness)
I have played every single Sierra talkie CD rom including QG4 using nothing but VDM Sound on XP or in some cases running the Window’s versions. I’m running a P3-600 Mhz with XP and Dos Box can’t handle the sound.
I have only had 1 problem game, all the other games have run perfectly, and since using the great fixes for the speed problems there hasn’t been any need to use DosBox at all.
The one exception is King’s Quest 5 CD version which the sound is all jittery and the speech just plain out doesn’t work. Also the intro sequence just skips through like a slideshow. But in DosBOX I get the exact same results so its clearly something screwy in my setup – the disk version of KQ5 runs fine in VDM.
Space Quest 4 CD which came out at a similar time to KQ5 runs perfectly with VDM sound – so I need to play around with KQ5 a little more to get that one going.
I find it weird when loads of people say the only and best way is to use DosBOX, and that they can’t get the games running in XP with VDM sound. DosBox is great for some games that just don’t run anymore, but for Sierra games I don’t see any need for it.
(re: TSN / INN Patents) Cyriak:
Even though the INN patents are in my name, all rights to the patent were owned by Sierra. Part of our standard employment agreement was an “invention assignment agreement” which gave all rights to any inventions back to the company.
They are great patents, and someone will make a lot of money off of them, but, unfortunately, it won’t be me…
-Ken W
(Additional Images) Jason,
Basically, aside from captures of posts, the stuff posted here is pretty much all I have.
As for AOL, well, the letter I posted from INN pretty much says it all. And like goof balls AOL didn’t do anything with it.
As for ownership, I no more own the images than I would the Lincoln Memorial if I took a snapshot of that. They’re merely “pictures” I took of a fun place I want to remember.
I’m glad you’re taking a shot at recreating the interface. Have you seen the M$ zone interface? Man, that’s just getting worse every day.
What’s always bothered me, is that I know (in my bones, so to speak) that some programmer somewhere has the a copy of the TSN / INN source in a box somewhere. I don’t care what all the lawyers say, if I had been there, I have some source squirled away. I’ve always been amazed that it didn’t start making the rounds at some point.
One other point — TSN / INN was primarily a client based network, in that the servers merely handled authentication, billing, bulletin boards and setting up IO between clients — much like ICQ operates. I think they said the original network started on four 386 computers. Not a whole lot of horsepower there. Anyway, the point — yes the point. If you start hammering away on the DOS client, you will get, IMHO, about 90% of TSN /INN, including all the graphics.
Best of Luck(re: Sierra Online 1989-90 Video Catalogue) J.
I appreciate your concerns about the legal standpoint. True Ken does not hold the copyrights to these items anymore, however he has openly expressed this fact and has stated that if a legal issue does surface because of materials such as these, that he would remove them.
This video however I do not believe will cause any issues – the video itself was originally made from an advertising perspective. The video was available back in the early 90’s for the cost of the tape and shipping… there is nothing to be gained from this video other than planting the “bug” to go out and buy Sierra software. I don’t think anyone is going to complain about free advertising.
Anyway, we are all entitled to our opinions, but I seriously doubt this will affect Ken and his VU negotiations.
-Brad
(re: Sierra Online 1989-90 Video Catalogue)
I don’t mean to sound like a jerk, but if you guys are going to distribute material that may still be copyrighted by Sierra (now VU), it might not be a good idea to do it on Ken’s boards. Like the rest of the classic Sierra big-wigs, he doesn’t seem to have the best working relationship with VU and the last thing he needs is their legal department hassling him.
(re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Shadow of Darkness)
In general, I only use DOSBox as a last resort for a variety of reasons, including that the sound is not as good as with VDMS. I do agree with you, though, that it is nice to be able to run the DOS games in a window. Running old VGA games on 19″ or larger monitor enlarges the images so much that they are too pixelated. Being able to get them down to the size that they would have been on a 14″ monitor is what I would like. This is one of the reasons that I try to get the Windows version going.
(re: Sierra Online 1989-90 Video Catalogue) Sorry you didn’t win it bud. I thought for sure it was you with the high bid. =(
No worries though, I will be uploading soon – I just talked to Frans at SpaceQuest.net, and he is wanting a copy on his site too, so I’ve got “pressure” from several directions.. watch for it to be posted soon =)
-Brad
(re: Sierra Online 1989-90 Video Catalogue) Dang, I lost the bid. Really wanted that item. But at least it is one that Brad has so we will all get to see it. I wanted to actually have a real original tape though. Well, whoever won it is sure going to pay a lot for it!
(re: “Hot” times)
I miss INN so much.
Met some amazing people, people I eventually met IRL.
Was a really fantastic experience and to this day, I feel the warmth of the commmunity has not been matched by ANY online entertainment service.
(re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Shadow of Darkness)
you’re right about speed; you need at least a 600 mhz machine to play the game at full speed w/ general midi in dosbox, and 800 mhz to play the games with MT32 emulation.. but theres give and take either playing straight in dos or in dosbox.. like i mentioned QG4 speech isnt perfect, even with VDMsound, under dos in win 2k/xp, but do you get the speed advantage, however in dosbox you have the advantage of playing in a window, playing with scale2x filter so that the screens look much nicer than regular EGA/VGA, using your video card’s gamma correction, etc..
but im not trying to undermine your work, its great (when i first heard of it its actually what got me back into the adventure gaming mood again), and im thinking of making a website myself as kind of an archive of all things sierra (or at least quest for glory) and posting *all* of the methods to fix the bugs in sierra games.
(re: re: re: re: re: re: Shadow of Darkness)
“One other bug that would be nice to have fixed is the audio error that you get with the Windows version under XP.”
I’m not using XP, so there’s nothing I can do about that. AFAIK though you can use VDMsound and then run the DOS version under XP which is better anyway.
Either way, the point of using patches instead of DOSbox is that DOSbox works around bugs by making the system not too fast, whereas patches FIX bugs (notice how the game still works the same on old systems). Also, you’ll need a high-end system, which not everyone has, to run DOSbox at Pentium speed to make QG4/SQ6 playable at an acceptable speed.
“such as the Windows version of KQ6 not launching on the NT kernel”
Ah, KQ6, the only game where there’s actually an excuse for using the Windows version. 🙂 Though I personally find the “Hi-Res character art” to be uglier than the low-res faces…
” the save bug with GK1.”
I think Endroz was working on that one… maybe you should email him atmaczoxx@libero.it and ask him how he’s doing…
