Forum Replies Created
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Posts
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(Rights to Quest for Glory Series)
Dear Ken and Roberta,
I can’t say how great it is to be able to finally have a chance to tell you how much of an impact your games have had on my life, not only as a gamer, but just as a person. I literally grew up on Sierra Online games. The first games I ever purchased were Conquest of Camelot and Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire for $15.00 of my own hard earned cash, earned by mowing lawns when I was 11 years old back in 1990. Now I am 24 years old, I have a degree in Film Making from the University of Maryland, and QFG II is still my favorite adventure game ever. I played all the Quest Series Games, and I still remember the surge of excitement I felt the first time I would install a new Sierra game onto my parents PC.
Anyway, I have thought for years that the original Hero’s Quest would make a great movie, and I was wondering who owned the rights to that material, if it was you guys or Vivendi Universal, the Two Guys from Andromeda or the Wizards at W.I.T. Any info you guys could send along the way would be great. Once again, thank you for all the years of solid gaming excitement.
Adam
(re: re: re: LSL 7 problems in XP) Look in the game folder and open the file “VERSION” in Notepad to see what version you have. In version 1.01 the game can lock up if you type more than 20 characters in a text box. For this scene, you can get out of the handcuffs with point and click. Another possibility is that the game is trying to read a file that is corrupt and that locks it up. You might try deleting the game’s folder and re-installing it.
You might also try installing the Windows version and see if it runs on XP.(re: RE: Games with heart) I received an email from Jim in October of last year saying that he was retiring, and haven’t heard from him since. His email didn’t say anything about being laid off – only that he had decided to retire — but, then I heard from someone else that all of Westwood, the Las Vegas branch of Electronic Arts, had gone through a major staff reduction. Whether or not the two events are related or not, I have no idea.
One way or the other … Jim’s a world class guy, and I’m sorry to hear he isn’t producing games. He was great just to be around. Hopefully he’s doing something fun.
-Ken W(RE: Games with heart)
Ken,
I received an e-mail from Jim Walls’ son earlier this year(I purchased a game from him on e-bay). He said that Jim recently retired from EA, and is planning on relaxing and taking it easy. I do not think he was laid off because he also said EA had a big retirement party for him etc.I am not sure if this is going to quote the long msg that I replied to, if so I apologize because I did not know how to post without doing so.
See ya!
(Re: Legality of fan sequels?) What would happen (if anything) to the intellectual property, ownership, etc of Sierra’s products if Vivendi either completely shut down their games business, or if they (Vivendi) went completely bankrupt and shut the doors to the entire corporation.
I would be very surprised to see them just shut it down – someone will buy it at some price – although, my guess is that the price is getting lower by the minute.
If it were to completely shut down, then I’m not sure what would happen. Perhaps someone out there is a lawyer and could tell us.
-Ken W(Re: Legality of fan sequels?) Ken,
I hope this doesn’t come out as a stupid question, but I’m curious about something in regard to your message about Vivendi losing money, etc. It got me to thinking: What would happen (if anything) to the intellectual property, ownership, etc of Sierra’s products if Vivendi either completely shut down their games business, or if they (Vivendi) went completely bankrupt and shut the doors to the entire corporation. I think I may already know the answer to my first question: Vivendi would retain ownership if the company chose to shut down what remains of Sierra, correct? Even though I know it’s highly unlikely that Vivendi would just cease to exist, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the “what if?” of such an occurence.
Thanks,
GeoffP(re: Building Old Computers For Sierra Gaming) I saw this thread and just HAD to post about my system… I just put together a P100 for my DOS gaming. I managed to locate both an SB16 and an AWE32, and an old Matrox Millenium video card at work. I already had the P100 left over from when I upgraded my sister’s computer, so I got mine built for free as well. I did spend a little bit on a Roland MT-32 off E-bay because I’d heard that they were abundant and cheap. I’d always wanted one but couldn’t afford it as a teenager since it had ~$500 price tag back then. Anyway, it was money well spent… the game music on an MT-32 is AMAZING!
(Just had to share!)
GeoffP(Re: Legality of fan sequels?) I am a long time Sierra fan. I have question about all these people out there trying to make sequels to Space Quest and Kings Quest (kq9.org)…Is this legal?
I am not a lawyer … so, take this as just my opinion – but, I believe these are definitely in violation of copyright laws, and that Sierra would have no problem shutting them down IF THEY WANTED TO. I haven’t spoken to anyone at Sierra in years, so I’m not sure what they are thinking, or even if there is anyone is left there to do any thinking.
My suspicion is that they know about these games, and either don’t want to alienate their own fans, or don’t want to spend the money with lawyers. That said, there is still a chance they will attack the games. You have to protect your trademarks and copyrights, or you can lose them. They may at some point get guidance from their lawyers that they have to attack, whether it makes business sense or not.
I love the idea of fans building games. Sierra could, if it wanted, grant some form of cheap license to the people building the games. Hopefully they’ll consider this.
Vivendi, who owns Sierra, just published the financials for the games business. Sales are WAY DOWN, and they’re losing money. People are being laid off. My guess is that they have much bigger problems to worry about than someone building fan games. I tried a few years ago to contact someone at Vivendi to see if I could help, but was told politely to butt out. The gentleman I spoke with didn’t last 60 days past our meeting, so perhaps the new management would talk to me. I’m not sure who to call…
-Ken W(re: Dagger of Amon Ra Speech Problems) Sharon,
I just setup an old PC (P100) for playing my old DOS games again and ran into this problem. As the previous poster mentioned, 1st you need to install the game from disc 3 of the KQC. Then once the install is completed, you need to navigate to the directory where the game is installed. In order to get speech to work correctly in DOS you will need edit the resource.cfg file. Change the line that says “AUDIO=D:\” where D represents your CD drive. It needs to read “AUDIO=D:\LB2\” without the quotes. Doing this should fix the speach problem…it did for me.
GeoffP(re: re: RAMA: Do any of you remember that one?)
Based on the Clarke novel and not the game, I would assume.
(re: Shadow of Darkness)
Look up dosbox on google. It has been the only totally reliable way to get past error 52 for me and many others.
(re: re: Little mistake in Sq6)
Bob,
Hey there!
I can’t speak for Scott, but I certainly played through SQ5, a couple of times at least. No sore feelings on my part, otherwise I wouldn’t have helped write the Galactic Inquirer (Mark had me do a couple of articles for that “doco”).
–Josh
(re: RAMA: Do any of you remember that one?)
On a side-note, director David Fincher (Alien 3/Seven/Fight Club etc.) is planning to make a movie out of RAMA, which I’m very much looking forward to.
(re: Sierra Talents)
I realize this thread is probably long abandoned and forgotten, but just for completion’s sake, I can fill in a few of the voids.
Jane Jensen was initially hired by a man named Michael Feinberg. Michael had been hired (I believe by Bill Davis) to head up the newly formed “Product Design department,” a department made up of designers who would be in-house rather than contract. Michael only stayed at Sierra a few months.
Bruce Balfour was also hired by Michael Feinberg.
Lorelei Shannon started out as a writer in the Creative Services department, writing InterAction material, ads, box copy, and so on. We brought her into the Product Design department, I think, around the time that Bridget McKenna left.
Gano Haine was also hired by Michael Feinberg, I believe.
Bridget McKenna and Leslie Balfour were, like Lorelei, folded into Product Design from Creative Services.
Scott Murphy became part of the Product Design department after SQ4 was released and Mark Crowe went to Dynamix.
I was initially hired by Guruka Singh Khalsa and Bill Davis as a junior Producer, since there were so many games coming out and only one producer to handle them all. I moved into the Product Design department when that was formed, and then headed up that department after Michael Feinberg left.
–Josh
(re: Possible bugfix)
It does not matter if it does not work on the Windows version as the Windows version of QfG 4 is hopless on XP — there are more problems than just the timer bugs.
(re: LSL 7 problems in XP)
Are you running the DOS or Windows version? What Sierra patch, an update for LSL7 or the GOSiERRA patch?
(re: Funniest Leisure Suit Larry Moments)
My favorite moments are mostly from Larry 7, probably the one that cracked me up the most was when you “look” at Peggy’s chest…
“Al! I can’t read THAT!”
the narrator then continues to complain that his reputation will be ruined, the union will throw him out, etc…and all the while, you can hear (presumably) Al Lowe in the background laughing.Great game. Played it dozens of times, always found new details to enjoy.
(re: Fenrus & Eramus from 4 to 5)
Yea, I remember that. I never did fully play QFG5…..maybe that’s something I should set out to do.
*pulls out QFG 1 – 4*
Better start from the beginning.(re: Shadow of Darkness)
Yes those damn bugs… the only way I found to fix it was to put it on my REALLY old computer from like ’93. 1893. Anyways, when I put it on that computer it was really slow, but it worked!
(RE: cloak: the naked mind) Hmmm…. Whatever it was (Cloak: the Naked Mind), I’ve forgotten it. Do you have anymore information than this? Who the author was? The series?
-Ken W
(re: re: re: User generated links should bring up a new browser window.) I personally wouldn’t… there’s a lot of discussion on this very topic across many web development sites. A link is a link and the power of opening one up in situ or in a new page is in the hands of the user. A user can easily use shift-click or right click, open in new…
‘Some’ users’ don’t want to have pop-up windows and (obviously) some do.
Take a look at the XHTML spec, the target attribute is deprecated (as it was in HTML 4 strict). You can of course ignore the [X]HTML doctype and place any old ‘code’ in and most browsers would be ‘happy’.(re: re: Don’t call it a comeback!)
Probably. I wouldn’t follow opinions too closely…games like FF-X2 and such have fanatics who are obsessed with it, but that doesn’t mean the game is good. Not to mention some games I like probably have bad reviews….
(re: Don’t call it a comeback!)
The other thing to do is download demos. I downloaded a Syberia playable demo… and it seemed pretty cool – BUT, it wasn’t enough to convince me to buy the game (and I would have to buy it online now, I live in BC, Canada and I’m sure it was in stores here, but it isn’t anymore). So that’s really your best option is to get your hands on a demo because then you can really see whether you’ll like it or not.
