Forum Replies Created
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(re: Documentations – the solution)
Unfourtnaley the no longer have the manual from laura bow 2 – the dagger of amon ra.
does someone know where i can get it. pdf or jpegs prefered.much thx.
(Question about Shivers creator) Man funny thing.. I was surfing a website called CRM (Customer Relationship Management).. and accidently clicked this link….
Hmmm.. might be of use to someone in this thread.
Enjoy.
-Brad(re: re: Power Chess)
There’s not much you could say about Power Chess (well about games or the industry in general) that I wouldn’t want to hear. But that’s really cool. It really sucks that no one can really challenge Chessmaster (I think that’s the title you were thinking of) and Mindscape. I almost have a grudge with them because I own three copies of Chessmaster (5500, 7000, and 9000) and none of them function properly on Windows 2000, and they flat out won’t support it. (Oh just double checked it, and I guess Mindscape sold Chessmaster to Ubisoft.)
Oh well…I really appreciate the story. Power Chess was never a distant second to anyone who ever owned it…I can personally vouch for that. XD
And actually, the more I think about it, the more I remember reading they were going to incorporate the chess engine from Power Chess into a massive chess software package a few years ago…but I guess the bean counters advised differently. Well, I think I’ve rambled enough…^_^
(Question about Shivers creator)
The only way I could probly do it is ask the questions here and you can pass it on to her unless there is a much easier way that im missing.
(re: re: re: Sierra spoof in MAD Magazine)
Just to keep other people from having to squint at their monitors, here’s the text that goes along with the SeeError screenshots:
Paternity Suit Larry: Lounge Lizards IV
Larry’s caught with his pantw down this time — and the joys of fatherhood are hitting him where it hurts!
Now, our polyester-clad hero is a hunted man, chased by everyone from private investigators to process servers, from child custody case workers to his ex-girlfriend’s shotgun-toting father!
With the right kind of help, Larry might still shirk the responsibilities of parenthood — and find a good time along the way. Without it, this lounge lizard is one endangered species!
For adults of all ages only. [SeeError]King’s Digest XIV: Perils of Mozzarella
The latest time-wasting interactive adventure in the King’s Digest series!
Can you help Princess Mozzarella and her sidekick Pepto rescue the Green Goddess from the evil Kitchen Magician? Or will you all be sliced, diced and cast into the Pit of Indigestion?
Sound far-fetched? You bet — but if reality was so great, you wouldn’t blow thirty bucks on a computer game anyway! Be warned, though — with 20 disks of endless options, a 700-page instruction manual and a cast of thousands, Perils of Mozzarella is a mouthfull — and not for the weak of stomach! [SeeError](re: Sound Problems on a WIN98)
First of ALL – You should try to change the settings in the install.exe – I think what suits you system is selecting “General MIDI Sound driver”.
If you can supply additional info about you audio card- this will be helpful.{Control Panel=>System=>Device Manager=>Sound and…=>Click on you sound-card and properties=>specify important information.
Also, Control Panel=>Multimedia=>Go to the MIDI settings}(re: re: Sierra spoof in MAD Magazine)
Odd…I remember something exactly like that appearing in a ’95 (?) issue. It must have been a repeat. Incidentally, I still have a copy and posess a scanner, if anyone wants to see it. The spoofs had hardly anything to do with the games they were based on, though.
(Oops…sorry, I didn’t realize that it was already uploaded…it was late when I first wrote this. Sorry.)
Akril
(re: re: Power Chess)
Ken,
I always find it interesting to read answers you post about questions people ask. It’s pretty neat to find out about the little things I never knew about. 🙂
I did a little search and found out what Elon is up to these days.
He is now Sr. Vice President at VizXlabs.
(re: Power Chess) Here’s a bit of the history to Power Chess…
One of my goals for Sierra was to expand our market leadership into additional categories besides adventure games. At the time, chess was a great category. There was one product, I think it was called Master Chess, that was dominating the category. My recollection is that it wasn’t a huge category, but it was a predictable, and solid category.
I don’t remember the numbers, but think it was roughly a $25 million business.
This may be more than you want to know, but, here’s how I thought about it, from my perspective as a software company CEO: My goal was to grab a little more market share in the space each year, with a five to ten year plan to own the category. Generally speaking, when there is a dominant product in a category, you need a lot more than just “the best product” to really win the category. Specifically, Master Chess was entrenched, and there was no amount of money we could spend to immediately own the category. My goal was to have an awesome product, but recognize that our plan was going to be to take 5-10% of the business in year one, and then add 5-10 points per year for each of the next five years.
In other words, I built a plan which called for us to lose money at first, through aggressive spending on product development — but, ultimately win the category.
My designer on the product was a genius (literally) named Elon Gasper. There are some people who you meet in life that you never forget — and, Elon is in this category. An incredibly gifted person. Whereas I thought about Power Chess as a business problem to be solved, Elon had a much more noble cause — he wanted to build the worlds best chess game. Power Chess was Elon’s baby. We had tons of never-before-seen features, all of which were Elon innovations.
I’m not sure what happened to Power Chess, but here’s my educated guess:
To me, Power Chess was a huge success. We launched the product, to critical aclaim, against a product that had been in the market for over a decade, and that was considered to have a virtual monopoly. My recollection is that we exceeded my target market share of 5% by at least double. Everything was on track.
Then, we sold the company. The new owners took one look at the P&L, and said “Why are we spending a million a year to build a chess product that is a distant #2 in the category?” And, promptly axed the product. No one ever called me to ask what my vision for the product was, or why we built it in the first place.
And, as they say…. now you know the rest of the…..
-Ken W(Question about Shivers creator) Tyler:
I can’t give you her email address. But, my guess is that if you read this thread carefully – and, pretend you’re playing an adventure game — and, do a bit of detective work, — you can guess at how to reach her.
-Ken W(Question about Shivers creator)
Is there anyway I can get an email adress I have some questions to ask Marcia Bales I just want to ask her a few questions If you prefer could you could send me the email to.Tymich55@hotmail.com
(Something fun to do. Build website Win $100) Guess this would be a good opportunity to revamp my 3DL/Eccentric webpage. Last year, I designed a pretty nifty little language interpreter to help teach middle school kids how 3D games are created. It didn’t do 1/10th of what I wanted it to do, but most of that was because I was on a very tight schedule…I’m not sure I even slept that week. XD But it was fun, and I’m still updating the project between classes. If anyone’s interested, I think it’s still available for download. Course, I suck at HTML. But maybe I can get something that looks decent with this software. XD Thanks for the opportunity at least.
(re: Sierra games changed my life!)
I’m quite familiar with AGS, as well as AGI Studio, and SCI Studio. If you’ll pardon my opinion, AGS is nearly worthless. Yes, it has a huge following, but not because I ever voted for it. ^_^ I still have been unable to beat Tierra’s King’s Quest I or II because of the scripting job. AGS loses the sound driver or locks it up, and the script sits waiting for the “all clear” message from the sound driver. Deadlock…and there’s no way to get past it. It’s not only Tierra’s games, either…most of the fan made ones puke on my system. This tells me it’s not the games, but the engine. But, now this is getting waaaaay off topic. XD Sufficed to say, I’m eagerly awaiting SCI Studio 4.
(re: re: Random Encounters on KQ games)
I loved KQ4. If you were in the middle of the screen when the encounter appeared basically you were screwed becasue then it was harder to move to another screen really fast, so it’s good to stay close to the edge of the screen so you can leave really quick if a monster appears. I don’t think it’s possible to not have the brooch in KQ4, night won’t come without it. I sit possible for night to come without pickin gup the brooch? I think it’d be fun to see Rosella get killed by a zombie.
(re: re: Problems with KQ V —-> Dark Forest)
Hey everyone, I figured out how to fix the color pixels on my computer, and I’ve got it set to 256 colors and have been happily playing kqV. I played the game twice and finished it. I didn’t have any trouble with the spiders. Does anyone need any help figuring out how to get rid of the witch?
(re: Sierra spoof in MAD Magazine)
That’s hilarious. I actually remember owning that issue.
Knowing me I probably bought it just because of the Sierra references.(re: Sierra games changed my life!)
You may be interested to know of the massive ‘underground’ community of people making their own homebrew adventure games.
The vast majority are obviously amateurish, but there are a few gems worth checking out!http://www.agsforums.com/
This is the homepage for one of the more popular game engines. You can find tons of links to games, as well as a friendly discussion forum.
(re: VaperCalc)
I’m pretty sure it was a goof on the ‘boss keys’ of the day, which were in some games as a quick way to hide the fact that you were playing games at work, should your boss suddenly wander into your office.
(Something fun to do. Build website Win $100)
Thank you Ken. I will be looking forward to the next release. The site on Talkspot I made is actually an adaption of my church’s website of which I am the webmaster. I figured it would be a good idea to test your web-system, since it allows others to upload pages and content without knowing how to code HTML. You can find the original site at http://www.gerefkerkhia.nl – it would be great if I could adopt the lay-out.
(Something fun to do. Build website Win $100) Martjin:
I saw your Dutch website – cool! Good luck with it. I have no idea what it says – but, it looks great to me.
I agree with you – I need to add a feature where people who know how to build their own custom layouts (appearances) can do so. It will be in the next release. Also, I’m adding a feature (which will be there sometime soon) that allows you to customize a layout.
It’s always depressing to me to see my own product. I have sooo many good ideas for where to take it — but, there is soooo much work still to be done. I miss the Sierra days where products like Phantasmagoria had nearly 100 people involved. On my website project (
Link: http://www.talkspot.com(http://www.talkspot.com)
) there is JUST me. Lots of work, and only one lazy programmmer (me)
Thanks for giving it a try!
-Ken W(Question about Shivers creator) Tyler:
With respect to Shivers….
Roberta (my wife) co-designed Shivers I with Marcia Bales. After the initial game, Marcia continues the series alone. I saw Marcia lately, working a “straight” job at a traditional non-entertainment software company (Primus Knowledge in Seattle).
Thank you,
-Ken W(Re: LSL7 under win2000)
I believe that VDMSound is out at vdmsound.sourceforge.net. I use it to
play DOS games with sound in XP.
–Shieldwolf—
(Re: LSL7 under win2000)
Do a web search for VDMSound, it allows you to run all sorts of older
programs in windows 2000. The other option might be formatting part of
your
drive using FAT32 instead of NTFS.—
(Something fun to do. Build website Win $100)
This is an excellent opportunity, thank you Ken! The website I’m working on is in Dutch, so I don’t think it’ll be a candidate for the contest. 🙂 What I think your site really needs is the possibility to create custom appearances. You’ve made some very nice ones yourself, but I’d still prefer to be able to use my own design. I am familiar with HTML design, so you wouldn’t have to bother about making this more advanced option easy to use, I guess. 🙂
