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(re: re: re: game concepts) Personally, I think the 1st thing to agree on really has to be ‘what’ to produce… All this talk on whether to choose a bespoke or 3rd party engine is purely ‘noise’ before that is done.
Also, DirectX is not an engine. It’s a set of primitives that you can use to build an ‘engine’ with. Don’t forget that DirectX is *much* more than just a graphics interface – DirectInput for joysticks, DirectPlay for networking/voice and DirectSound for audio (sfx and music).
Maybe Ken has ideas of a web front end, although I’m not exactly excited by that as a realistic option! Hell, could even consider Flash these days?!(re: Torin’s Passage Manual) The website replacementdocs.com has been mentioned numerous times – I don’t know if they have a manual for Torin’s Passage or not.
I don’t have a proper copy of the game – I have just a CD I picked up from a computer store – no box or anything. The CD does come with a CD booklet though – nothing special or that interesting inside – there’s a photo of the game team on the back of it, but that’s relatively small. I suspect Torin’s Passage is from the era when Sierra was making those nifty get started hint guide / booklet things, colorful foldouts that looked pretty (other games they did this for were KQ7, SQ6…) but I don’t know that for sure.
The back of the CD case itself is not even Torin-related, as Sierra started doing at this time too, which I found annoying. It has an ad for Shivers.(re: New Interview With Al Lowe)
It’s a good interview, but your web hosting company SUCKS! The banner ads were bad, but the pop-ups were worse. If you don’t want to spend money on your site, at least find a hosting company with just banners and not pop-ups.
(re: re: game concepts)
I remember John Carmack said in one of his interviews, he chose to write and maintain the 3D engine used in Quake from scratch to be able to constantly innovate. Peter Molyneux (Black and White) said something to the same effect, “If 3D graphics will be your main selling point, the engine has to be in-house.” I’m in the opposing camp, I believe DirectX provides most of the tools necessary and allows developers the ability to leverage the state of the art hardware video accelerators out there.
But with regards to game creation engine (ex. AGI/SCI, etc.) as opposed to graphics engine, I definitely think we should own the game engine so we are in control of our destiny.
A lot of stuff to learn and write though!
It just occured to me that there were several new game concepts that were developed in the past few years, many quite good. Namely Animal Crossing (gamecube), Black and White (good concept but poor implementation), and Grand Theft Auto. Haven’t tried Syberia yet, heard it’s quite good.
I was downloading some of sierra’s old music from SQ3 and Leisure Suit Larry last night. A decade has passed yet I am still in awe at the quality of the music. It brought back a lot of those sierra memories, and for a second I felt like I was back in another time. I think Ken W wrote about this in one of his posts, the ability to create a cinematic experience to get that special feeling in the game. This is what the newer games are lacking, and what we should aim to create.
(AOL Games Channel???? The end of an era) Here is INNs good-bye letter in the original format (sniff).
(Cawdor game Images (and hacking too)) For those of you with and eye for detail, you will see my wife and I have impossibly high levels (sorry Ken). And NO I didn’t use Vitamin F. I had already figured out a way to hex edit memory using Norton Utilities and some other DOS utilities.
OK — I’m sorry, I played Yserbius through and hacked Twinion and Cawdor (ok I cheated in Yserbius, but only a little). I’m sorrrryyyyyyy. Please don’t banish me. I was young! Misguided! I’ve (mostly) reformed my ways.
But I got a wife out of the deal. 🙂
Da INNs!!!!!! Where all the real action was….Hey Ken! Check out this interface! Who needs 3D anyway??
My Lovely Wife
(re: Ken!)
I know I’m replying to my own message, but if you want further inspiration for this idea, check out the newly reinstated and improved American subsidiary of SNK. Once a powerhouse of arcade and console arcade 2-D gaming, SNK fell on hard times. Now they’re back making niche console games. They even just released a 2-D remake game for the Xbox – Metal Slug 3! It can and is being done!
(re: game concepts)
well the first thing to think about is should we create an engine or use a game engine on the market what do you think ?
(re: Ideas for Shivers 3)
I love how in the first one, you could go back and trace what happened to the Professor and 2 kids who broke in through the notes, broken stuff and where their corpses were. At one point, I even wrote notes about their schedule the night they died. I hope you have something like that in the 3rd one. And please don’t have the villian turn out to be a dork with bedhead.
(re: A rant about a review of The Hobbit)
That reviewer probably hated King’s Quest for the same reason as most people who hate the games: You have to use your brain to play it.
“What’s this? It has a STORY? A PLOT? And I dont blow stuff up! This sucks!”(re: GK III – ahead of its times ala Da Vinci Code)
I thought the same thing when I first read about that book. Maybe if the movie version does well they’ll make a GK movie! Well, probably not but it would be nice.
(re: re: Is there a market for quality adventure games?)
That is precisely why I posted this question: I am seriously considering my own gaming company once I have my MBA and some experience in the industry (I’m just graduating from college now). I’ve always loved adventure games, but obviously if they are not feasible it’s not worth it. I believe that it is possible, I was just curious what other gamers/ people in the industry thought.
I am interested to know more about AGDI… I read on their site that two of their main developers also have full time jobs WHILE working on these games (which they claim to spend around 70 hrs a week working on). If they do get into actually selling games I think that would be awesome. Obviously there would be a lot of competition for their jobs, just as there is everywhere else in the industry!
(re: re: sierra’s future )
hey ken. the idea of a community game with all of us sounds great. i would be willing to help as much as i could. i am a computer science major and have some experience in directx, both ddraw and d3d. if you do decide to do something from scratch and not use an engine already out there, i would love to contribute. im sure im not the only programmer here either. i think we could get something together. great idea!
(re: is Vivendi universal == sierra) I understand your confusion… The otherday I saw that the Simpson’s Hit and Run was a “Sierra” labled game, I hired it and popped it into my PS2 expecting to be greeted by the typical Sierra logo … unfortunately it seems that the only thing referencing to Sierra was the packaging – no-where in the game was there any reference. <Sigh>
PS: The game was good and I love the 3D enviroment but it does get a bit tiring after playing for 5 hours 😉(re: re: does anybody have any old computer magazines they loved reading)
okay then. thnks for offering me the offer 🙂
(re: does anybody have any old computer magazines they loved reading)
Thanks for the info about that book and your offer to scan the Sierra articles – I have not heard of this book before. I will contact you via email about this.
(re: Is there a market for quality adventure games?) I know the folks at AGDI are putting their everything into their efforts. They are working 24-7 on their current project… and so sooner or later, they have to do their own new games commercially or they’ll be broke and homeless 🙂 So judging by their fan base, they must be convinced that they’ll be able to sell a commercial product and do it for a living. I’d tend to agree.
I think it’d be hard for any small group to start off and get into the gaming market with adventure games. With all the talented people and adventure fans out there though, you would have more than a reasonable amount of competition to join a group such as AGDI if they ever openly advertised positions for hire. So even though I said it’s hard for any small group to start off – what we need is just that – more small groups starting off. It seems you have some interest in this so you may want to consider yourself starting something.(re: Is there a market for quality adventure games?)
I had read what others said about the market as far as large gaming companies… this was not what I was refering to. I meant in general; ie. if someone were to start their own company to create such games, would there be enough of a market (providing the products were good quality and advertised well, etc)
I have checked out what AGDI is working on and I am impressed, though this seems to simply be a hobby for them. I would be interested in working with a company such as AGDI should they in fact begin to design there own original games; I will keep my eyes peeled for future developments.
(re: Is there a market for quality adventure games?) You bring up the huge questions that we’re all asking, to which there are lots of answers and lots of speculation. I suspect if you read the messages around here, you will find your question already answered – in many different ways, of course. Ken might have something direct to say to your question, but I figured I’d chip in a word or two.
1) Cost of production has risen. That means you have to sell a lot of games to cover your costs. Most game-making companies will sell a lot more shooter games, so that’s where the market’s gone.
2) There is still interest – but not as much as the big companies need to justify the spending cost. There is still interest because of support for the adventure games of today, such as Syberia 2, and some other companies doing adventures (I keep hearing that Runaway is good, but never played it) – there are a lot of downloads of the King’s Quest remake games that AGDI is making – there is great anticipation for other Sierra fan games, such as the KQ9 and SQ7 projects – there is a lot of strong fan reaction to the Lucasarts cancellation of their Full Throttle 2 and Sam and Max 2 games – there are a good number of websites that show support for adventure games in different ways (justadventure, mixnmojo, underdogs, just to name a few) – and Sierra’s games are always on sale on eBay.
3) Is it possible to create successful games in this genre? I assume you mean commercially, on the market? Probably – but it probably needs to be a small company to start small, even smaller than companies such as Microid for example, just as Ken and Roberta did all those years ago. At some point, the AGDI folk plan to make new, commercial adventure games, in the absolute traditional style of adventure games, under a new banner – that’s the closest commercial endeavour I know of in the near future.(re: re: What happend to Lori and Corey Cole?)
They are living in LA, and neither is currently designing games (though Lori is looking for a design job) Lori is currently working on a book, and Corey is working on card games.
I will hopefully be meeting Corey at E3 (big game development expo), if anyone has any more questions.(re: re: does anybody have any old computer magazines they loved reading)
I’d love to help, but over the years, old issues of omni, egm, gamepro, nintendo power, and sega visions and nextgen is all that’s survived. I’ll check next gen.
i have this book called Dvorak’s Guide to PC Games (1991). It seems like an old book, and is written by Silicon Spin’s John C. Dvorak and the didn’t know he was about to die Peter Spear. Pete always told me him and John were working on a second edition when he suddenly died in ’98. Boy I miss talking to him. He was good guy. John’s just funny. Since this book is never in print anymore, I’d be willing to send scans of the Sierra articles in the book.
(re: does anybody have any old computer magazines they loved reading) Yeah, the stack of Compute issues I have are the ones with the old program listings in them.
If any of you people who have these boxes of old PC magazines wanna look through them at any time and find Sierra ads or articles, and donate the magazines to me… well, I’d make sure that everyone else got to see the articles too. I’d cover mailing costs of course… I might be able to pay you a bit extra too… and I’d archive everything so that, in the grand scheme of things, the material is accessible to Ken if he ever wanted to use it in his computer musem idea… or other such purposes.
