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(re: re: A few suggestions) OK – I made them slightly less thick (the lines separating messages) – do you like them better now?
Brandon: What don’t you like about the new layout? I’m definitely open to improving things. That said, I disagree with you on the fade effect on the menus – it is slower, but I like the look.
There are some elements to the navigation that aren’t in yet. I had another 20 or so features that I wanted into this release, but I decided it was better to put this code live now, and start working on the other features, rather than to hold it until I had everything done.
I’ve got one major feature upgrade that I hoped to get into this version, that I should have done within a couple of weeks. I’d say what it is – but, would rather not – for now.
-Ken W(re: Manuals found (Hero’s Quest 1 and S101))
Beth, Paul… manuals must be worth something – I guess it depends who you ask and what they’re interested in – I’m interested in anything Sierra – as long as it’s in very good or mint condition. I would be interested to buy the Hero Quest manual. You can now click on my name from this post on the website and get my contact info.
(re: Space Quest EGA Original Disk)
Thanks NewRisingSun, you’ve been very helpful! I look forward to any insight Ken can give on this one now.
Some comments on new website version that arise from this post:
1) As I notice when I’m replying to NewRisingSun’s post, when it quotes the post above, it doesn’t say who wrote it – it should!
2) Interesting style for the title of the message you’re replying to (big, spaced out, red) – but it should be smaller and there should be a blank line between the title and the contents of the post.
3) NewRisingSun’s messages don’t display properly in the daily email… I don’t know why, his (or her I don’t know!) messages are the only ones that seeem to do this, oddly enough.
4) The daily email thing.. does that just do x amount of messages per day? For example, each day it sends out the last 20 messages? It should either do x amount of messages every time you reach x amount new messages, or once per day with all the messages for that day – NOT both. Because what is happening now is each time, in the first 1/2 of the email, we get all the messages from the last 1/2 of the previous email – does that make sense?
(re: A few suggestions)
Ugh…. I’m sorry to say I don’t like the new design much at all… OK, I do like some of it, but not all of it. The line between messages is too big and clunky first of all, and in fact the whole messages layout is now very hard to read. It just needs some design tweaks to not give me a headache… which I’m sure you’ll accomplish, since I imagine you first just wanted to make it work.
And another thing – the fade-in menus… they’re too slow. I hate slow scrollbars for news, for example, on websites. Same thing here. When I want to navigate, I want to do so quickly. I guess it takes 1/2 second to be gray, and 1/2 second to become black – 1 second in total. What it should be instead is a true fade-in (not just two frames), and it should happen a lot quicker.
As always that’s just my humble 2 cents.
(re: Funniest Leisure Suit Larry Moments)
I remember when my friend and I were playing Larry 7. We got to the part where Larry had that drink that was spiked and he started tripping. We couldn’t stop laughing when they started playing In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
(re: re: re: re: re: Re: A few suggestions)
Aye…that it is. If I can’t see it now then I would be blind!
(re: re: re: Leisure-Suit Larry) A message about the new lsl: don’t mock it till you try it!
I agree with the others, the cameos in the old sierra games added some face to sierra. In fact, sierra is probably the only company I knew of that I could name most of the staff! I knew that when I saw Al Lowe it was Larry’s creator, and I knew Ken and Roberta and all the rest. It was like the guys and gals at sierra were friends of mine or something.
btw- about young people nowadays…this may be a shock to you, but I’m only 18! I grew up with sierra games and actually began to play them too. Of course, of all the people I know….not many even know about sierra’s old days. It’s like I’m an old gamer stuck in a new gamers body. Older games rate higher with me than newer ones for gameplay and replayability!(re: Manuals found (Hero’s Quest 1 and S101))
If manuals were worth anything….I would be a millionaire. I have almost every one of my original game manuals…..especially from the early sierra days. They are like collectable items from the past, but I doubt anyone would buy them for big bucks. After all, most could be downloaded in pdf files off the net.
(re: re: re: Re: A few suggestions)
Sorry Ken…..I must have been high or something…I just noticed the line! (man do I feel stupid…) I actually thought on that all that info below was a couple of posts and not one. I see it now….just go back to development and ignore me… 🙂
(Safari Browser) Everyone will be happy to know (or, at least some everyones) that I bought an iMac, just to try this. It worked!!! And, amusingly enough, it worked better on Safari than on Windows Explorer. Strange…
-Ken W(re: re: Re: A few suggestions) There is a line seperating the messages – at least on my screen .. isn’t it appearing on yours?
-Ken W
PS You haven’t seen anything yet! I have a LOT of ideas for this site over the next year…(re: Re: A few suggestions) I have some suggestions….you know how the original message is contained within a box? Why not make every post have their own little box seperators…or maybe even a line to seperate them. It would make reading them easier.
btw- Very nice job on the layout! 😀
(re: Funniest Leisure Suit Larry Moments) Funniest? Hmmm let me think…I don’t really have a favourite…
How about when he finally thought he was going to get two women at once in larry 6, then it turns out they don’t even need him to have any fun! 🙂(re: re: Space Quest EGA Original Disk)
>So are you saying that it’s possible to replace the AGI
>file or the Sierra.com file from another Sierra AGI game
>without copy protection, and hence make the game work
>without needing the disk? Is that what you’re saying? I
>don’t know the structure of AGI games, so I don’t know
>which files are game-specific or not.To replace the interpreter with that from another game, you would need to replace the file “AGI” and all *.OVL files. However, AGI also has the gameId (i.e. “SQ2”) hard-coded into the executable to prevent you from doing this (since you’re not supposed to bypass the copy-protection).
The best solution would be to download this program:
http://www.agidev.com/dl_files/sup.zip SUP patches SIERRA.COM so that the keydisk prompt no longer appears, CPC.COM is no longer loaded and the buffer which would be filled by CPC.COM with the decryption key at run-time will be already filled at program start. Or in short: It just “cracks” SIERRA.COM. 😀
(BTW, this is exactly what SIERRA did for the collection versions — no, they did not properly *recompile* the games to remove the copy-protection, they just used a “crack” on their own games! How’s that?)
What I would really like to know is whether Sierra programmed CPC.COM all by themselves (unlikely, given the way it is implemented), or if they licensed it from some other company, and if that is the case, which company that was. Ken? 🙂
(re: KQ8 – please help :))
Uh, oh. I ran into the same problem when visiting the merchant in the barren region. Any one know how to get past that?
(re: None)
Ken –
In html there are two ways to define what the size of the font will be. You can go with one of the browser’s defaults (e.g., “font size = 3”) or you can define what point size the font will be (this is more common with style sheets).
If a website uses a browser default for the font size, the user can then select View / Font Size to make the font display larger or smaller. (At least, it can on a PC — I’m now on a mac and it’s not exactly the same, so I’m going from memory.) This menu gives options like “smaller,” “medium,” and “larger” rather than point sizes. So, if I have poor eyesight and need to see a larger font, I can use this menu to make the font display at a larger size.
When a website uses a fixed font size (for example, the html or style sheet defines that the font will be 10pt), this parameter overrides IE’s view menu. So, no matter what I change the font size to in my view menu, the font on the screen will stay at 10pt. Your site seems to be set up this way.
Hope that helps clarify the issue…
-emily
ps If you want an example, go to my website at http://home.earthlink.net/~fov/main.html
Play around with font size in the View menu of your browser. You’ll see that all the text — even the smaller caption about my dear departed hamster — changes relatively when you change the font size in the view menu. Now try doing the same thing on this site… nothing happens.
(None) I like the new style, but you still can not change the text size from IE’s view menu. I like having replies to messages on the same page. This will make it easier to follow threads. I miss the formatting features for posting that you had before.
If you look under the System menu, at My Account, you will see that you can now choose between a “standard” or “advanced” editor. The editor that used to be the default is now the “advanced editor”.
I made it a selectable option, because many people cannot run the advanced editor – and, for others it was too confusing.
-Ken W
PS I just re-read your message — I think I didn’t understand your question. Can you rephrase your question, or give me an example of a website that does what you are asking?(Re: A few suggestions) I tried posting this under Sytem -> Suggestions, but there is no post option there. So, my first suggestion is to add a post option there.
Fixed!
Second, I would like to see a proper message (thread?) tree on the side when I am reading the messages. That way, it is easier to see who replied to what message.
I agree – there’s something I need to do in this area. I may go to a thread-tree, but want to explore some other options first. I’ve got some higher priority things I want to get in (and, some performance improvements to make – so, expect this to take some time (weeks)
Third, I would like to have the option to arrange the message stream on the screen by various parameters (date ascneding or descending, by thread, etc.)
Yup – it’s on the list. I’ll get this in fairly quickly.
The message times are not in my local time. I suggest that you either write the times in GMT, or write them relative to the user’s local time (if that can be done!)
I’m not sure what to do on this. I did a system once where I stored everything on the server in one time zone, but displayed it for each user in their own time zone. I might do this again …. I’ll give it thought.
-Ken W(New Layout) The replys ARE sorted in reverse sequence, so that the newest responses should be immediately under the original message.
That said – when I imported the old data, I sometimes consolidated multiple threads into one thread – which causes some confusion. My plan is to go through today (actually tonight) and look at each thread to see if they make sense.
I definitely have some work to do on the new navigation. I wanted to get this version public as ffast as possible, because it represents such a dramatic change, and then start doing the rest of the changes.
-Ken W(I just love the new design) Wow, this is an excellent design. Much better than the previous designs.
And I like the option to switch between the advanced and the standard editors.(None)
I like the new style, but you still can not change the text size from IE’s view menu. I like having replies to messages on the same page. This will make it easier to follow threads. I miss the formatting features for posting that you had before.
(Testing)
This is a test to verify that posting messages is working. If anyone has a problem, email me atkenw@seanet.com
-Ken W
(Someone post something!) I’m going to bed now .. but, I’ll check in the morning to see how the system is doing…
-Ken W(re: re: Cant get Phantasmagoria 2 to work at all?)
Thanks everybody for responding to my phantasmagoria 2 problem. I just wanted to make sure I wasnt the only one who couldnt get the game to work on XP. I have gotten the first phantasmagoria to run under xp tweaken it with run under windows 98 mode. I’m just suprised that the sequel cant run under XP being that its newer than the first game. Whoever finds a way to run the game on XP please respond with a tutorial of how to do it.
