Forum Replies Created
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Posts
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(re: manhunter issue)
This is a problem that some modern graphics cards have with running old AGI games. The solution is easy. Just run the game with NAGI, http://www.agidev.com/projects/nagi/ or with DOSBox, http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/
NAGI, a new third party AGI interpreter, gives you a very convenient way to run all of your AGI games. You even will get all three MIDI voices through your sound card instead of just one through your PC speaker.
DOSBox is a DOS emulator that you can run many of your old DOS games in when you have trouble running them in Windows. Best of all both NAGI and DOSBox are free.
(re: PQ and real police training)
I LOVED that poker game. I used to restore back to that point just so I could replay it. I actually learned to play poker with that game… I was in 5th grade (11 years old?) I was recently at a casino in Tahoe playing on a poker machine, and I realized all my habits (i.e., making decisions when to hold, when to draw, etc.) were based on what I’d learned from PQ1. I only won a dollar… but it wasn’t for lack of enthusiasm! (Actually my boyfriend dragged me out of the casino after only a few minutes because he could tell we were going to be there all day otherwise!)
Incidientally, I learned to play blackjack from LSL1. I was even younger then. I played the game alongside my dad (mom was just thrilled…)
-emily
(re: Interactive chat) Chat is on my list of things to add to the site. It should be easy, in that I have no plans to write a chat application – it’s something where I would just surf around and find one to link to from the site.
Currently, we’ve had family visiting for almost a month – first Roberta’s and now mine. It’s awesome being able to spend time with our parents, but I don’t get much work done when people are here. Starting next week, Roberta and I will be alone for a few weeks, and things will start moving. I still have a major new release of this software which has been 90% complete for a month. I need to get it finished, uploaded, and debugged.
-Ken W(re: re: re: re: re: PQ and real police training) “…Rod worked on a lot of Sierra’s franchises (King’s Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, etc.) and started as a Studio Director filming actors on Sierra’s blue screen stage. Police Quest 4 was his first experience as a full-time developer assigned to a team. So I assume you knew him Ken. Can you remember what kind of guy he was? Any funny stories let me know 🙂 …”
You are right that Rod worked at Sierra for a many years, and on a lot of projects. I met him hundreds of times, but didn’t really know him. He was a quiet guy, and serious about his work – not someone who would spend hours telling you his life story. I remember having tremendous respect for him.
Hopefully, I’m not wrong on this: but I belive Rod was married to, or living with, or both, Tammy Dargan – who ran the SWAT project. I realize that I should know more, especially about someone I saw as often as Rod and Tammy, but it really wasn’t my style to do a lot of small talk with people at the office. Even my assistant would frequently point out that it had been months since I had said hello to her. I always thought that if people had time to chat around the coffee machine, they didn’t understand the problem (that there was work to be done!) I met regularly with Tammy and Rod to review their projects, but we didn’t really hang out.
I think I recall that Rod was the Art Director on one of the Leisure-Suit Larry projects. If so, Al Lowe would be able to tell you tons of stories about him.
Reading your message confirms what I suspected, Sierra, after I left, was embarrassed to have associated with Daryl Gates.
It’s really sad how they screwed up Sierra. I remember thinking that it was OK for Roberta and I to sell, because Sierra was strong enough to withstand just about anything. One expression I used to use was that “I wanted to build a company that our grandkids could be proud of”. I always wanted to focus Sierra on a 100 year game plan, and do the little things right that would keep us “in the game” for many generations, even when it might mean temporary pain in return for long-term gain. I thought we could weather out periods of time when there might be poor management. Now I know I was wrong. Bad management can bring down a good company with amazing speed.
-Ken W(re: re: re: re: PQ and real police training)
No, Gates’ name does not appear on the box its self, only in the credits as the Consultant. Kenneth A. Thatcher is the LAPD SWAT Advisor for SWAT 3 (also as Advisor and Consultant for SWAT: Global Strike Team for the console).
SWAT 3 was and is the best tactical FPS game I would say and there is not a game like it as of yet. It was also awarded Tactical Game Of The Year ones. Raven Shield of Ubisoft comes close but not close enough. It’s the live saving part that really is good, very few if none other games have that. A true Sierra game, original, only Ubisoft got a bit close to making the same type of game (but again not close enough), realistic, great AI, life saving, real police procedure orientated etc. etc. It also had a great development team of people who really had their heart in the right place. Rod Fung (Producer) really was into SWAT and really knew what he was talking about.
SWAT: Urban Justice dropped the LAPD SWAT license as I said before. Probably upper management wanted to reach a wider audience and sell more, it’s always about the money. Things really did not work out for that game and Rod was the first to leave after 12 years at Sierra. He went to Microsoft to work within the Xbox division in their “Advanced Technologies Group”, supporting and assisting all the Xbox developers. More developers have also left and most of them have found a new job within the industry. It was a great development team who really cared about the game and it’s fans. There are only a few (if none) of them left, Sierra/ VUG has been silent about the game for years now and never made any public statement or announcement about what was going on with the game, they just seem to want to keep quite and hope everyone forgets. PR is not a word which goes together with that game. It’s a real shame. Also SWAT: Global Strike Team for the Xbox and Playstation 2 was not a true SWAT game, it did have some SWAT features but you can get medals for shooting 10 people in the head and some more other “Dark medals”. Killing sells better then live saving these days I guess.
I also mailed Rod to see if he knew more about the police departments and PQ/SWAT. He also could not remember about PQ itself but for SWAT 1 he knew the Honolulu PD SWAT had looked at it as he did a presentation to them (and the FBI) of the product. A number of individual police dept. swat teams had looked at the SWAT 3 product as well. There was a much larger following from individuals who were on SWAT teams including a number of people on LAPD D-platoon.
Rod worked on a lot of Sierra’s franchises (King’s Quest, Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, etc.) and started as a Studio Director filming actors on Sierra’s blue screen stage. Police Quest 4 was his first experience as a full-time developer assigned to a team. So I assume you knew him Ken. Can you remember what kind of guy he was? Any funny stories let me know 🙂
Micha
(re: Thanks from the other side of the world.)
Ken,
did you have a look at our christmas-demo and also on the other screenshots ? What did you think?
Regards, Marco
(re: re: re: re: PQ and real police training)
Ken,
I’ll have you know that I spent many, many hours as a kid playing that poker minigame. It’s been a while so I can’t tell you how good it was, but I can tell you I definitely got my dime’s worth of entertainment out of it.
Man, I loved those freaking games….
Michael
(re: Sierra and IBM relationship)
Do pass along his info to me, by clicking on my name you can send me a message. I will see about getting in touch with him to get his further memories on those early days for my archival project.
(re: re: re: Ken and Infocom) “… I remember having read somewhere that there was a big rivalry between your two companies: so it was a fair business rivalry, with mutual (I believe mutual) esteem, and this is great….”
I only met Joel Berez (Infocom’s founder/CEO) a few times, but will always remember our first meeting. Sierra was about a year or two old, and Infocom was on top of the world. At one time they had virtually every slot on the best seller charts. We were at an industry conference and Roberta and I stepped into an elevator with him. I was a big fan, and for me, it was a chance to meet my hero.
He, on the other hand, had never heard of Sierra, and didn’t have the vaguest idea who I was. Roberta and I introduced ourselves, and he blew us off. Roberta’s very competitive, as am I. This meeting in an elevator, which meant nothing to Joel, meant a lot to us – and, really kicked us into gear, as we tried to compete with Infocom. It’s funny how something like this can motivate competition.
Anyway, years later, I met Joel again at a computer conference, and this time, he knew who we were. And, as it turned out, he was a VERY nice and charming guy, and had absolutely no idea that years before we had even met.
-Ken W(Adv games: dead or not ?)
Well, if somebody believes that adv are dead, just search the Internet or even eBay for old titles. The love for adv is there, maybe we all only have less time and/or current adv are not as good as the old ones, too concentrated on graphic maybe rather than plot.
Syberia is not bad though, honestly.
Ciao,
Giovanni(re: re: Better / Worse Adventures)
Yes. I remember well reading something like her dream was to make Sierra adventures like movies (or TV) in which you are the main character.
I also remember at the time to be surprised by the courage of Sierra for ex. to go for sound devices when old Roland / Adlib just started to be out. Bold move, but soon after we all could see it was the right vision: leaving aside the “after” company sale period, up to your times (and a bit later for finishing projects like Gabriel Knight) Sierra was a sound company, whereas many others failed.
I still remember old AGI games as greatly fascinating though, maybe because they were the first and they were indeed a dramatic change vs any previous game: could you believe it, anumated graphic which could even walk in front or behind scenery ! Ingenious. I read AGI programming instructions and really it was ingenious.
With thanks to you and to Roberta,
Giovanni(re: re: Ken and Infocom)
Dear ken,
first of all, thank you for such a fast reply. I know this is meant to be normal since this is your site, but I’ll never get used to be able to dialogue with the founder of Sierra ! It’s really great.
Well, back to the issue: you have my 100% agreement on all.
Thanks to eBay I was recently able to get some Infocom adventures I never played before and maybe not all, but most are indeed great. As per Douglas Adams (never tried to read the first “Dirk Gently”, it made me laugh out at the electric monk my friends thought I was gone nuts), I’m sure you know that he died a couple of years ago, so sad, sic.
Infocom failure hit me too. I have copy of a very clear case study called “down from the top of its game” which is very interesting and informative. I don’t want to be tough, but their biggest mistake was the fact that they never believed fully in the power of their games, they considered them as a bridge to the business software. From a management point of view though I do understand their willingness to differentiate in a world so fastly evolving towards graphic (Sierra docet too), but I will never be able to forgive them for not having separated their business project financing from the rest: you cannot drain money from adventures like this damaging beyond hope the chance to evolve and stay alive (maybe moving vs Magnetic Srolls like advs…, who knows).
I live in Italy and at that time it was really hard to get adventure games: english language was still a barrier for many people. It went improving though and I must admit that I improved my english thanks to Sierra and Infocom.
To close this message, I was glad to read your reply also because I remember having read somewhere that there was a big rivalry between your two companies: so it was a fair business rivalry, with mutual (I believe mutual) esteem, and this is great.
Ciao,
GiovanniPS: don’t worry, my collection of original boxes of AGI games is complete too.
(re: re: re: PQ and real police training) “…his name still appears in the credits of all 3 SWAT 3 games, CQB, Elite Edition and TGOTY. “
Does Gates’ name appear on the front of the box? I left the company before the third installment came out, but remember that the one time I visited Sierra (after my departure), I ran into Tammy Dargan and she gave me a quick demo of the third SWAT game, and showed me a mockup of the box. I never saw the final version, but on the version I saw, they had dropped Gates.
On a different topic: One of the early Police Quest games had a poker game in it. I wrote the game, and I think it was the last code I wrote that was published by Sierra. As the company grew, I had less and less time to write code. Someday I’ll have to replay the game, just to see how good (or bad) the poker game is.
-Ken W(re: re: Sierra and IBM relationship)
Hi Ken,
Thanks for the reply. It all makes sense now.
Another piece of trivia:
I have remembered that I bought a PCjr keyboard in 2000 from Jeff Cope, one of the beta-testers of King’s Quest at IBM.Here’s what he told me:
“Mine Shaft, remember it well. FYI, I worked for IBM back when the PCJr was coming out and actually was in the department that put out those cartridge games. Remember King’s Quest? I was one of the 2 testers at IBM for it. Ahhh, the good old days. :-)”I still have his e-mail and postal addresses if you are interested. They may not be current though.
Vincent.
(re: re: PQ and real police training)
Thanks for the (fast) reply Ken.
I knew I read about PQ (1) being used for training, didn’t really know the SWAT series were used for that. Of course it’s a nice training tool. This is what I found on the back cover of a PQ 1 box on Moby Games:
“So real it’s used as a police training tool!
Police Quest is a serious training tool… Luck does not play a part in successfully completing the program. The simulation is based on skill and knowledge… The dept of training is enormous. – Law and Order Magazine”
See: http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,5397/gameId,2031/ So can you remember any police department using PQ 1 –4 or so being used for training. Like how they used it, for what purpose etc.? What did/ do you think of that anyways, cops using the games you guys made for training?
> “After Sierra was sold, one of the stranger moves that the new owners made was to drop Daryl Gates’ name, and association with the SWAT product. My understanding, which I haven’t confirmed, is that he doesn’t appear on the third SWAT game.”
Well his name still appears in the credits of all 3 SWAT 3 games, CQB, Elite Edition and TGOTY. As can be seen on the Moby Games site: http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,26457/ and I have checked the manual of the game I have to be sure 😛
I also saw that Al Lowe worked on PQ 1, nice 🙂
The so called next SWAT game SWAT 4/ Urban Justice has dropped the LAPD SWAT license and has been postponed, delayed and all other horrible things like; most developers have left, engine change etc. etc. I guess the line I liked from the PQ series: “Proper police procedures have to be followed.” is not going to apply to this one since they want to reach a larger more “killing orientated” audience to sell more. Sierra made the PQ series, VUG might have ended it.
I enjoy reading about (the old) Sierra and how it all got started etc., nice site Ken.
Micha
(re: PQ and real police training) Micha:
I do remember that there WERE police departments around the country that used our SWAT product as part of their training, but have no recollection as to which ones.
We worked hard to ensure that everything in the product was accurate. Daryl Gates primary contribution was his contacts inside LAPD. His name opened doors everywhere. Tammy Dargan, who lead the project, spent a considerable amount of time working with real SWAT officers from the LAPD.
There’s a careful balance you need to walk between making a game accurate, and making it fun. Tammy did an excellent job of knowing where to draw this line.
After Sierra was sold, one of the stranger moves that the new owners made was to drop Daryl Gates’ name, and association with the SWAT product. My understanding, which I haven’t confirmed, is that he doesn’t appear on the third SWAT game. I have no idea why… His background was controversial to some people, but no one can argue that he doesn’t know his stuff. I doubt that there will ever again be a law enforcement simulation produced which has the direct involvement of someone of Daryl Gates stature. Love him, or hate him, it cannot be denied that he ran one of the largest police departments in the country, and is a historic individual.
-Ken W
PS Here’s a bit of Daryl Gates trivia… I’ve forgotten the details of this story, so I’ll just tell it as I remember it, and hope I get it right. During the OJ Simpson trial, we were preparing one of the SWAT games. We wanted a SWAT officer for an interview on the CD, and the Chief recommended we hire an officer who at the time was unknown: Mark Fuhrman. My memory is that Mark did record some video that appears, or was going to appear, on the SWAT CD. When suddenly Mark’s name turned up in connection with the OJ trial, I remember calling the Chief to ask whether or not we had to worry that any skeletons might surface in Mark Fuhrman’s closet. The Chief assured me that Fuhrman was a stand-up guy, and that OJ was the bad guy, not Mark Fuhrman. Later, as we now know, Mark Fuhrman was not able to escape negative publicity, and I remember feeling somewhat betrayed. Now that the trial is over, it seems that Mark Fuhrman has gone on to a successful writing career, and Mr. Simpson, has not fared as well.(re: Ken and Infocom) I was a HUGE fan of the Infocom games, and played them all. I always wanted our parsing to be as good as theirs, but there are a thousand reasons why its easier to parse complex expressions in text than in a graphic world. I was disappointed when Infocom failed — for those who don’t remember, they decided to go into business software and failed at it. Had they maintained their focus on games, they may have still been doing games today.
Their Hitchhikers Guide was an awesome game. I loved the books (at least the first ones) and always wanted Douglas Adams to do a game for us. A few times, I had him giving me a firm “maybe” but we could never quite get him to commit, and then, it was too late…
-Ken W(re: Better / Worse Adventures) Giovanni:
You are right…
Roberta always wanted to do something new with each Kings Quest game – so, she was always pioneering new user interfaces, or new graphics modes, or new a new engine, new sound drivers, etc. That’s one of the keys to the success of the Kings Quest series that most people haven’t picked up on. You can’t see it when you play the old games, because everything looks old by todays standards.
Roberta would never consider shipping a game that wasn’t new in some way. That’s what drew her to the Phantasmagoria project. No one had done a live action game, nor done a game with such controversial subject matter. She loves breaking new ground.
-Ken W(re: re: re: Try This Site, Lots of Classics Here)
You’re right, I was able to download the emulator (it’s called the standalone ActiveX, took me a few minutes to find on the site), and KQ4’s disk images and get started. I had heard months ago that the Apple IIGS version of KQ4 was a “stripped down” version that didn’t include the same movies as the SCI DOS version. I disputed this at the time — I played KQ4 for the IIGS originally, and many years later played the SCI version in DOS, and didn’t notice a difference. Well, I was wrong… they are very different. the IIGS version looks like it’s similar to the AGI DOS version, but I have not fired up the AGI version to compare them. The graphics in the IIGS version seem to be based on the same artwork as the SCI version, but with less detail. Also, text boxes are handled differently, and the parser cursor remains at the bottom of the screen at all times as in AGI.
Still, the IIGS sound is much, much better.
I haven’t played very far but it does not seem that the IIGS is “missing” movies (which is what I had heard the difference was), just that the movies may have fewer animations and may be stripped down a bit.
On an unrelated note, I also downloaded Zany Golf (an EA game) which I had borrowed from a friend for my IIGS many years ago, and always wanted to own. There’s a DOS version but it sucks. I was having much fun with it until I ran into problems with the cursor that seem to be emulator-related. In any case, just being able to play it and listen to the music was great. I am having a great time reliving my youth… who’d have thought I’d miss that clunky Apple so much when my dad suddenly got rid of it!
-emily
(re: Sierra and IBM relationship) Vincent:
You are right about everything you posted. IBM did fund the development of Kings Quest I for the PCJr .. and, the game did save Sierra (we had lost a ton of money making video games).
IBM did not ask for any sort of exclusivity in their agreement, which allowed us to to market the code, with almost no changes, on the Tandy 1000. It was a HUGE hit.
The reason IBM didn’t ask for an exclusive is interesting…
At the time, IBM was dominant, and in fact, so dominant that they feared anti-trust action. IBM, 25 years ago, was in the position that Microsoft is in now. IBM was afraid that they might be broken up by the government. This meant that their contract administration group was extremely worried about anything in an agreement that could be deemed monopolistic. We didn’t have to ask for non-exclusivity – IBM never asked for it, and didn’t seem to want it.
The PCJr bombed, but the Tandy 1000 was a hit. IBM did quite well with the PC, so everything turned out fine for everyone.
-Ken W
PS One other interesting piece of history. I dealt at the time directly with a gentleman at IBM named Don Estridge, who many considered the father of the IBM PC. Don was a strong supporter of Sierra and of our word processor, Homeworks. Sadly, he and his wife died in a plane crash (I think it was an American Airlines flight going into Dallas) just after the launch of the IBM PC. I remember a quote from him: “If you want to compete with people in a garage, you have to build a garage” He was referring to his vision that IBM could compete with Apple, at a time when IBM was a giant lumbering beast, and Apple was a nimble young company.(re: Finding / buying old InterActions) Heres a link with a bunch of the old Interaction magazines.
Link: http://www.vintage-sierra.com/magazine.html(http://www.vintage-sierra.com/magazine.html)
Troy
(Re: Make KQ9 in AGI? Also about autographs) Roberta is happy to sign boxes .. but, the hard part is getting a box to us. We’re currentlly in Mexico, and won’t be back to Seattle until mid April.
If you want a box signed, the best would be to send it to our address in Seattle, and let it sit until the middle of April — which means, wait until the beginning of April to send it.
I’d have you send it here to Mexico, but there really isn’t a reliable, or fast, way to get us anything.
-Ken W(re: Game Archive)
Hi everyone,
I can only but recommand Disk2FDI.
http://www.oldskool.org/disk2fdi I have created this utility precisely to be able to make perfect images of original games on floppy disks. With it, you should be able to image any original Sierra game on floppies for any machine (Apple 2, PC, Amiga, ST, to name a few).
It will even be possible to play Amiga games imaged to the FDI 2.0 format with the upcoming version of WinUAE.
http://www.winuae.net Vincent.
(Personal Favorites)
Hello Ken and Roberta. First of all, your games I’ve enjoyed since I was two, it helped me to read, type, write, etc. I am forever greatful, and until the day I die your games will forever be my favorite one’s. However speaking of favorites, I was wondering if you could let me some input as to some of your favorites and why. Like which was your fav from each series and why. I believe it would be interesting to hear the perspective as to why they were your top choices.
And for the record, I blame you and Roberta to losing a few weeks up sleep due to the intensity of Phantasmagoria. It came out, I was young, and that game scared the heck out of me. But great great game. So if you could let me into which your favorite games of each series are, it would be cool. Thanks for your time, and hopefully we’ll see something from you or your wife someday soon. Thanks for releasing the best games, and hope to hear a response soon.
Jason
(re: Vivendi Influence)
I work for a medical publishing company that used to be owned by Vivendi. Other than stuff like health benefits, they really had nothing to do with the way my company was run. I suppose they *could* have, and it may be that they’re more active in the software companies than they were in mine, but I don’t know.
Vivendi sold us about a year ago, in comparison our new owners stick their noses in our business a lot more. It can be very frustrating. Being owned by Vivendi was great because we had good health insurance, got Christmas bonuses, and didn’t have to work so hard to justify our budget requests to senior management. Oh well…
-emily
ps I should add that my company had a very strong business model and structure before being acquired by Vivendi. So, we were able to be pretty self-sufficient and Vivendi didn’t really have to step in. I could see how a company that might not have a strong management structure — like Sierra after the sale — would flounder without help from the parent company.
