Forum Replies Created
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Posts
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(re: re: Try This Site, Lots of Classics Here)
The emulator is downloadable. Just go to the link for the company on the home page. I downloaded it and was playing all my downloaded images from the site. I am so glad I found it, I’ve been waiting years for something like that.
If only Thexder would work with my joystick…(Would you ever design for another company?) If you and Roberta were to be offered a position at say another company, such as EA, would you 2 take the job?
Good question…. I don’t know the answer. It would depend on the publisher, the development team to be assigned, and the people we’d be working with.
My guess is that if it were an EA-quality company, we’d give it serious thought.
-Ken W(re: Try This Site, Lots of Classics Here)
I was able to get in and see part of the opening movie last night. It’s definitely different from the SCI version of KQ4 (I can’t tell how different yet, because I didn’t see that much of the movie). Hitting the ‘esc’ key seemed to help the repeating letters in some cases, but in other cases the thing had a mind of its own and seemed to be hitting the Return key independant of anything I was doing.
I’d like a downloadable emulator too. Hmm.
-emily
(re: re: LSL movie)
There isn’t one good movie released based on a game, but I often think of one game that COULD be a good movie: Gabriel Knight. 🙂 In fact, I went as far as doing a GK1 movie section for my web site.
(re: re: re: Try This Site, Lots of Classics Here)
I had exactly the same problem. I was trying to play KQ4 as well. I wish that they had a downloadable emulator as well. It’s not much fun to have the game bomb and have to download the disc images a 2nd time on dial-up when you want to try again. The files are in a different format than what the AppleWin emulator can use.
(re: re: Try This Site, Lots of Classics Here)
Unfortunately, I wan’t able to get the ROM working last night. Don’t know if it was a problem with me being on dial-up, or the game I was trying (KQ4), or what. Initially my keyboard wouldn’t work, and then when it did it stuck on certain letters and seemed to kit return on its own, so I wasn’t able to answer the copy protection question.
I’m going to try again though!
-emily
(re: Try This Site, Lots of Classics Here)
Your Welcome :). Brings back memories when I had my apple //c back in the days.
(re: re: RE: EA, Sony Sign Music Promotion Deal for Video Game)
Personally, I just see this as yet another way for the RIAA to dip their hands into yet another market. Maybe this has already happened, but I can just imagine being able to go into a store to buy the “Grand Theft Auto 4: Unicorn” Official Soundtrack. (BTW, I just made that up, and if you don’t get it, go see Gone in 60 Seconds.) Why? I mean, seriously…they are just games. Yes, sometimes the music is so cool, you want to hear it over and over again. I remember playing the Full Throttle Demo over and over again while doing homework on my bed because the song rocked. But if you want to know who performs the songs…find out! They’re usually in the credits. For instance, Full Throttle’s entire musical score was done by “The Gone Jackals.”
Yet one more way to eek more money out of lazy gamers. (re: AGI Creator) AGI was 100% a Sierra invention. Most of the credit for AGI goes to Jeff Stephenson and myself.
SCI was 99% Jeff Stephenson’s invention, but had a fairly large team at Sierra to work on it. Some of the names that come to mind are: Larry Scott, Bob Heitman, Chris (Something?) I think the full SCI team was around 10 engineers.
SCI was the first mass-use object oriented languages. The concept of an object oriented language existed prior to SCI, but no one was using it for commercial applications. I remember the first time Jeff showed me some object oriented code. He created an object that was a door, and had methods like “open” and “close” – and, then overrode the object to make it a window (that would have the same methods). It made absolutely no sense to me. It took years before I really “got it” with respect to object-oriented technologies.
-Ken W(re: Larry 8 update – Ken, any opinons?)
Emily – Ofcourse, and adventure game SHOULD have some kind of story, but it’s unfair to use a game like KQ6 as an example. The latter LSL games (especially 6 and 7) didn’t have much of a story at all. Sure, there was a REASON for Larry being in the hotel/on the ship, but that’s not really a story at all. Nothing HAPPENS during the game that furthers the story, except for Larry scoring a girl once again.
On a side note, this is also why I think LSL2 and 3 were the best in the series. They DID have stories where things were actually happening.
This designer diary doesn’t mention it, but there is a story about MCL, which is just as ‘valid’ as that of LSL6 and 7. A reason is given for Larry to be at that location (winning a television show in LSL6, finding a cruise ticket in LSL7, and being in college in MCL) and there just happen to be many hot girls there.
MCL goes even further; it gives a reason for Larry to start chasing girls! He’s fed up with his live as a loser, and decides to change things. My, that’s already more character development than in LSL6 and 7 together! 🙂
(re: LSL movie)
can anyone really name one single movie that was made from a video game that was decent in any way?
ok, everyone stop shouting tomb raider. you’re right, that one was pretty good. (the second one was sort of lame though) however, every other video game turned movie was a complete disaster. let’s be honest with ourselves for a second and admit that we really don’t need a lsl movie. it would be terrible. i’m already irritated that they are releasing the new game on xbox and the ps2! let it stay on the pc where it belongs!
what’s next? saturday morning cartoons???
(re: Try This Site, Lots of Classics Here)
Thank you for this link! I originally played many of these games on a IIGS, and playing them on DOS just hasn’t been the same.
Maybe now I can finally figure out if there is a difference between the IIGS and DOS versions of KQ4!
🙂 emily
(re: RE: EA, Sony Sign Music Promotion Deal for Video Game)
I thought this was Open Chat which meant you could talk about anything really. Just follow the rules that Ken stated above.
Why I posted this is because it reminds me of Sierra. I mean here is “one of the widest-ranging collaborations yet between a game maker and recording label”.
I see this as a first. EA is taking a chance here and doing something first before anyone else does it… just like when Ken was the head of Sierra.
Ken took big chances and was the first to do lots of things and that is another reason Sierra was so successful.
(re: re: Old interview with Ken) I’m not sure when this interview was done — I looked up the release date for Lighthouse, and it said 1996 … which seems wrong to me. Sierra was sold in 1996, and Lighthouse was an old product by the time we sold the company.
Personally, what most interested me about this interview, was that at the time, I thought multiplayer gaming was going to be the biggest category. As it turns out, it really isn’t that big a business. I would be very surprised if online multiplayer games account for 5% of total game sales revenues — and, this is 10 years after that interview was done.
I can only think of two possibilities: a) I was wrong, or, b) no one has shipped anything multiplayer that was interesting enough to spend money on (in mass quantities).
I think the answer is a little of both, but mostly: I was wrong. Most people prefer to play games alone – making them multiplayer adds too much complexity. People don’t like thinking that the gaming world is changing while they aren’t there.
All that said, I would still do mutliplayer games – at least until I shipped one I thought was as good as could be done within the genre. I think what made Sierra special was that we liked to do things that were different. We were willing to take risks, and do things that others weren’t doing. Sometimes we were right, and sometimes we were wrong — but, we were rarely boring. And, if you think about it .. the goal was to have fun, not to do brain surgery … so, let’s say we were wrong from time to time, but we and our customers had a good time — what’s wrong with that?
-Ken W(re: Old interview with Ken)
Wow! DVD programming was a possibility back then? I am curious as to whether the first person shooters that were alluded to had anything to do with Half Life. It’s perhaps a little hard to tell when this interview took place but I’m sure someone has already figured it out by looking at when Lighthouse was released and when KQ8 was supposed to be release. One last thing I found interesting about this interview was the interviewers move to distinguish the Internet and WWW as two separate things. It’s interesting because people today don’t often make such distinctions, the web is the internet in the modern world.
-Danny
(re: MT-32 ROM)
Link: tibby_dude@absamail.co.za(mailto:tibby_dude@absamail.co.za)You shouldn’t really post a link that could endanger the MT32 Emulation product further. The developers involved removed the link and moved the file.
If you read the project status, Roland are still not happy with the emulator being available but have allowed it to continue whilst they attempt to locate evidence so that can shut it down permanently. It’s complete bull…. if you ask me as the company have absolutely zero interest in the h/w any more but it’s their IP after all.
As google is a net users friend, the exact filename would have been enough to come back with the URL 😉(RE: EA, Sony Sign Music Promotion Deal for Video Game) Message what does this have anything to do with Sierra?
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eriq chang studioLink: http://www.eriqchangstudio.com(http://www.eriqchangstudio.com/)
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(re: re: Game box)
I live in the Netherlands. I’ve already sent you an e-mail about it, if you didn’t receive it, please contact me through my e-mail shd@earthling.net ).
(re: re: MT-32 ROM)
The difference is quite pronounced. The AdLib card used only FM synthesis, had 9 voices and they weren’t stereo. Although excellent for the time, the sound now seems decidedly tinny and nowhere like real instruments. The MT-32 is an external MIDI sound module that uses wavetable synthesis (actual recordings of actual instruments). It has 32 stereo voices and, even after 15 years, sounds amazing. Out of all the sound cards I’ve had, I still think it sounds awesome. Much better than even the SB Live! or Audigy. (The only thing equally good IMHO is the Gravis Ultrasound — of which I have 2 lying around).
An AdLib rendition of Sierras Silpheeds level 1 theme music.
An MT-32 rendition of Sierras Silpheeds level 1 theme music.(re: Ken, questions about “Public” Sierra) Sierra was acquired by another company that was also public – CUC. At the time of the acquisition, all of the shares of Sierra were bought by CUC, and Sierra stopped trading as a public company. All Sierra shareholders gave up their stock. If there is still any Sierra stock out there floating around – my guess is that it would be worthless.
CUC itself was acquired about a year after they bought Sierra, by a company called HFS. All CUC shares were traded for HFS shares, and CUC shares stopped trading. HFS renamed itself Cendant, and swapped all the outstanding HFS shares for Cendant shares.
About six months after this, it was discovered that CUC had been cooking their books for years, and that someone(s) in their senior management was crooked. Criminal investigations, and prosecution, are ongoing.
About a year after all this, Cendant sold off the software business to a company called Vivendi, which owns Universal. Today, the only way to own stock in Sierra is to buy stock in Vivendi – which is a giant conglomerate. Sierra represents under 1% of their sales.
Part of Sierra’s problem was that it was acquired by a crooked company – who mismanaged it – and, it has never recovered. No one would would have dealt with CUC had they suspected that anything illegal was going on. Not HFS nor Sierra. Unfortunately, bad guys exist not only in computer games, and innocent people get hurt (in this case Sierra’s employees, shareholders and customers).
-Ken Williams(re: Building Old Computers For Sierra Gaming) I just need to buy a nice new tower case, and I’ll have to watch for another monitor cause the one I have doesn’t do 16-color EGA, only black and white. Odd, but what do you expect from a free used monitor? It runs from 320×200 to 800×600 in 256-color VGA properly.
The monitor? Check the video card first. Usually monitors are not the problem when it comes to display modes, especially low resolution and color. In fact, the only problem I’ve ever come across with monitors and display modes is the refresh rate can be a pain. However, newer video cards absolutely SUCK at supporting the old EGA/VGA graphics resolutions. I’ve had old Sierra games (which never flickered once on my Number 9 VLB video card) flicker like mad on my GeForce 2 MX. As for making a new “old” system, I’ve thought about it, and have more than ample parts, including a 386 motherboard, with an i386/33, i387, and close to 64 MB of 30 pin RAM. XD Not sure if it still works though. I’ll have to find an ISA video card.
(RE: Ken saludos de Mexico)
“… Are you in Mexico city or in some other state?
Viva Mexico!
Guillermo Carrera”
We have a home in Cabo San Lucas. Roberta and I have been coming to Mexico
for over 30 years! We’ve driven many thousands of miles in Mexico, from the
US to Acapulco, as well as the length of Baja several times. Our original
plan was to live in Puerto Vallarta, but we saw a piece of land we liked in
Cabo and decided to build a home here.We’ve seen most of Mexico, except Mexico City. Sooner or later, we’ll spend
time in Mexico City, but I’m not a fan of big cities, and I’ve heard too
many horror stories of high crime rates there. After nearly 20 years in a
small mountain community near Yosemite, even Cabo seems too big sometimes.-Ken Williams
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(re: Software Ratings)
I’m not sure if this matters, because I could be in an outgroup (oh no! a statistics term! ^_^) but I’ve been playing Dungeons And Dragons since I was at least 7 years old. D&D is inherently violent and often very mature game, but it is still a game. I also remember playing Battle Chess, and staying up late at nights, swearing up and down that a knight was going to break into my room to chop off my arms and legs. As well, I grew up on both violent and non-violent games, but also on mature “adult-only” games. This includes Leisure Suit Larry for which I would actually ask my parents friends if they’d played and get hints or tips. I am still a “Disney-esque” person who abhores violence for anything less than protection. As I said, I may just be part of an outgroup, perhaps the group who had parents smack them silly when they were caught in Lefty’s Bar. XD
My personal belief has always been that it’s the parents responsibility to know what their children are doing when they do something. Period. If they don’t know what’s in the game, they need to do research and ask. (This is also the reason there are so many people getting ripped off buying computers. People fail to do any research on the subject and get …. …. …. well, let’s just go with ripped off. ^_~)
Sorry if this seems like a rant, but in reality, I’m very much torn between ratings. I’m not sure whether or not I like them. If they’re used for informing consumers of content, and only for that purpose, then I totally agree with it. However, it tends to be used in a “you must be this high to ride this ride” sense, so I tend to raise my voice a bit. 🙂
