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(re: re: Leisure-Suit Larry)
I received an advanced copy of the CGM article about LSL:MCL last night… and posted some of the good stuff in my own ‘preview’ article on LarryLives.com. You may want to read it. Josh Mandel (who is a good friend of Al’s and also has worked on previous LSL games) was also concerned about Al’s ‘undefined’ involvement. However, the article was nearly completely positive and he had some great things to say about it.
…one of my favorite things has to be the inclusion of Lefty’s bar in the game. Apparently they put in a fully 3D recreation of the game on campus. Now THAT will bring back memories 🙂
-Mongoose
(The best games Ever) LSL, SQ1,PQ : The best games ever made (forget your high tech 3D first person shite)
p.s
“try another word . Apparently “best” isnt in the Andromedan dictionary” SQ3(re: Leisure-Suit Larry) LSL8 without AL Lowe, is like a broken pencil…..pointless. Sorry but Al Lowe should be involved from the start.
(re: Daily emails caught by spam filter (temporary fix))
I forgot to mention the temporary fix for the problem. Just put “kenw@seanet.com” (the sender’s email) on your spamsoftware “Whitelist”.
(re: re: re: re: Worst Parser Experiences (may be spoliers…)) In PQ1 you’d been told “Ask her to help you with the hotel operation” and the required input has a similar grammatical structure (“help me with the operation” does the trick and that’s just dumb repeating). There were some lines, however, that had to be guessed. Like whatever you had to type in to finish Leisure Suit Larry 2 making a molotov cocktail out of some hair spray and the sick bag from the airplane.
I thing it’s a tightrope walk for a game designer working with a parser to just define which phrases work and which don’t and how many clues to give to the players. You’re either frustrating the players if you allow too little or worse, making it too easy for them if you allow too much.
What I’m trying to say is that the “impossible command lines” were probably not the result of too little, but too much consideration by the game designers (though in some cases limited vocabulary could just as well have been the result of a menacing release date hovering near… :o)(re: Space Quest EGA Original Disk) NewRisingSun:
>You cannot make a backup copy from your original disk because the disk
>is copy-protected. I take it that you only own the original disk for
>the game, not the “3D-animated adventure game reference card”, otherwise
Ah… thanks for your technical explanation… that’s really fascinating. Did you work at Sierra, or did you read this somewhere? Actually I have the game boxed and I have the reference card, but didn’t bother to read it, because I just recently acquired the game (as well as 2 and 3) near-mint on eBay. When I was a kid my dad had a cracked version on our old computer… so now of course I wanted my own legitimate and complete copy of the game… and to be able to play it without wearing down my original disk… and without using an emulator or something like that.
Steven:
>Anyway, there are unprotected versions of the AGI interpreter, some from
>Sierra’s own AGI demos or from the compilation CDs. And then there’s
Right… I’m sure I have some AGI demos stashed away somewhere. 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. I’ll have to re-read NewRisingSun’s technical explanation carefully to understand your suggestion better.
Oh, and King Rygar – I’m with you all the way! I read in the newspaper about this brilliant guy based out of Toronto, I think, anyway he makes computers out of all sorts of weird things – like bread boxes, and I can’t remember what else, but basically anything that looks cool and that he can use to house the hardware. He’s a hobbyist and makes the computers run very quietly and they don’t produce much heat. I’m sure this guy could make a system like you envision – that would play all the old Sierra games, and you just plug it into your monitor or tv or whatever, and you turn it on, see a Sierra logo, and pick which game you wanted to play.(re: re: Space Quest EGA Original Disk)
The old Copy2PC option board can write this kind of disk, although I doubt you’ll find one nowadays (let alone a PC which takes ISA cards :))
Anyway, there are unprotected versions of the AGI interpreter, some from Sierra’s own AGI demos or from the compilation CDs. And then there’s freeware/opensource interpreters.
(re: re: re: Worst Parser Experiences (may be spoliers…)) > Then there were always the magic words you had to recite oh-so-perfectly in King’s Quest III . . . right… except the wording in the documentation was wrong! i can’t remember any specifics… although i was replaying PQ2 recently and ran into that problem with the diving license. 🙂 emily
(re: re: Space Quest EGA Original Disk – How it works)
Brandon asked how the copy-protection is programmed. Here it is:
The copy protection consists of three files:
AGI: The actual program file. This file is encrypted to prevent you from renaming it to AGI.EXE or something like that and from evading the copy-protection. After it is decrypted, it is a normal .exe format file.
SIERRA.COM: The “Loader”. It loads AGI into memory, asks for the original disk, reads and executes CPC.COM to obtain the decryption key, then decrypts and runs AGI.
CPC.COM: A hidden file on the original disk. Called by SIERRA.COM, checks for the presence of the copy-protected track (side 0, track 6), reads the decryption key and passes it on to SIERRA.COM.
So, whether the game starts up or not with your backup disk depends on whether CPC.COM recognizes the disk as an original disk or not. CPC.COM looks for the following things on side 0, track 6:
1) sectors 2 thru 8 must have a non-standard sector size of 1024 bytes per sector (a normal DOS sector has 512 bytes).
2) sector 1 must have a non-standard sector size of 8192 bytes per sector. This sector contains the decryption key.
3) sector 1 *must* have a CRC error. (BTW: This is what prevents the copy-protection from working under Windows 98, because Win98’s Int13 handler returns incorrect error codes (0Ah instead of 10h for CRC error))
4) all sectors on track 6 must overlap, i.e. the data for sector 2 also contains the beginning of sector 3, and so on. The data from sector 1 contains *all* the following sectors.
5) The checksum of the first 128 bytes from sector 1 must match a certain value (1Ch or something like that).1), 2) and 5) can be reproduced with an advanced diskcopy program, like copyiipc or Teledisk. 3) and 4) can NOT be reproduced, because the PC’s floppy controller doesn’t allow you to write “bad” sectors (with CRC errors) on purpose, and it’s doesn’t allow you to write overlapping sectors (it wouldn’t make any sense, except of course for copy-protection purposes).
(re: Space Quest EGA Original Disk)
You cannot make a backup copy from your original disk because the disk is copy-protected. I take it that you only own the original disk for the game, not the “3D-animated adventure game reference card”, otherwise you would know this. Sierra stopped using disk-based copy-protection sometime in 1988. Programs like CopyIIPC can defeat SOME copy protection schemes and create working copies, but it can not defeat Sierra’s CPC.COM, because the PC’s floppy controller can not write the copy-protected track.
Concerning software emulators: Yes, they *could* emulate the copy protection, but NOT by mounting the game directory as someone suggested (the copy protected track is not allocated to any file), and not with the file format all emulators (MESS, Dosbox, Tand-EM) use to hold disk images. The semi-popular TeleDisk file format could hold the necessary information (even though TeleDisk can not create a working duplicate of the disk itself), but no emulator supports this format.
(re: re: Worst Parser Experiences (may be spoliers…)) Then there were always the magic words you had to recite oh-so-perfectly in King’s Quest III . . .
(re: Worst Parser Experiences (may be spoliers…)) Hheheheh,
I can’t remember which game it was or what made me so mad, but I couldn’t get past this one part, and started cussing (typing it in) the game, when I typed in one phrase, it responded “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”
I laughed away my rage and continued playing…! 🙂(re: re: Space Quest EGA Original Disk) Why not try mounting the Space Quest directory on your hard drive as a floppy drive in DOSBox? Just launch DOSBox and type in:
MOUNT A C:SIERRA\SQ -t floppy
This will mount the folder “C:SIERRA\SQ” as floppy drive a: in DOSBox. Just modify the path to match your Space Quest folder. This game is one that I don’t have, yet, so I can not try it myself. If you try this, please let me know if it works.
You might also try copying your Space Quest folder into NAGI and see if NAGI will run it OK. Also you might try
Link: SUP Sierra Unprotection Program v2.01(http://dl.fileplanet.com/dl/dl.asp?ClassicGaming/agisci/sup.zip)
from The
Link: Ultimate AGI & SCI Site(http://www.classicgaming.com/agisci/)(re: re: Space Quest EGA Original Disk) I feel ya, Brandon…
I have been thinking about this for about 2 years now, after finishing rebuilding and upgrading my old PCjr specifically for older Sierra games. I rebuilt it with all new parts, had it working blissfully, and guess what? A few months later the drive not only fails, but would kill any disk I put in it. Needless to say I severly damaged quite a bit of my ancient 5.25 disk Sierra collection, not to mention the DOS PCjr boot disk itself. Rage is not a word for my emotions then.
It got me thinking, why don’t I build a stand alone unit, with it’s own front end, that is built ONLY for the old Sierra games. Imagine… You hook this box up to your TV or Monitor, turn it on, and are greeted with the Sierra opening logo. Then, you are at a selection screen, where you merely choose the Sierra game you wish to play and “there you are” No sound issues, no installation, nothing. Sort of like a video game console. No need for CD support, it’s all on HD…
I have been working on this for awhile, and it would seem relatively simple, except that I have no programming skill whatsoever.
But I can dream!
In this day and age where there are emulators for almost every videogame system out there, it is sad that there is no common emulator that we seek. Vivendi or Sierra studios are blind to not realize that they could make a profit by making these games not only available, but PLAYABLE without hassle, on today’s computers, hell, even X-Box or PS2. And think of the development costs??? More profit than anything. Look how much the collections go for on eBay?
Look at Nintendo. Coming soon is a Gamecube bundle that has a Zelda disk, that contains playable Zelda I and II (NES), and Zelda Ocarina of Time, and Majora’s Mask (N64)…
If there was a King’s Quest disk that I could just put in my XP based computer and be confident that all games would run, I’d pay $200 for that disk alone.
Nuff said.(re: Game Design Methodologies – Various stuff from Roberta) By the way Ken, Phantas Interface Design 6 appears small, not the same size as others, hard / impossible to read.
The singular responses to this are definitely characteristic of the response I anticipated: “That’s like asking the Pope if he wants to go to Heaven!” and “This is what true Sierra Fans crave!”
I don’t wish to approach this rashly, as I may have done in my first disorganized post. So I am drafting a proposal which I will post on a webpage and give the link in a new topic when I’m done.(re: Space Quest EGA Original Disk) I can label the disk just fine, that’s not a problem. And now for a bit of rambling…
Thanks for the suggestions of diskcopy or programs to use… yes, I do have the actual real disk. That’s not my concern either though… But I’m sure I will try those in order to make a backup copy… I was hoping more for an idea from a programming point of view of how it works. Obviously someone knows, because I’ll admit when I grew up I did not have a legit copy of the game, but a cracked version that someone figured out how this works. What if in 10 years floppies are not used anymore? Laptops for example often come now with CD drives but no floppy drive (true, you can buy a plugin). Some would say the floppy won’t die, just like an audio tape – but it will become less used. Well the purpose of my question is whether I can avoid this without using a floppy at all (I guess I didn’t make that totally clear) – what is happening from a programming perspective?
This is obviously one of many issues relating to old hardware, old processors, the DOS operating system, that are making it hard today to play the old Sierra games. As I said in another thread, I got an old computer so I can still play the old games, and I will make a backup disk as you have suggested I might to use on that old computer. But what happens when the disk drive in that machine dies? Heh, you can see lots of arguments to my questions – but I just wanted to bring up this issue that hasn’t been discussed before, whereas other issues such as speed problems and timer bugs and the like have been brought up a lot already.(re: re: re: King’s Quest 6, and illogical puzzles… (mini-spoiler)) I always made sure to get the hint books with a game, knowing at some point I would get stuck! I still do that to this day.
Nothing worse than getting severely stuck on a great game, when it’s your night off from work! I remember dialing up the Sierra BBS quite a bit for KQ4…..
But I never jumped ship for Lucasarts, their games just never did it for me, except for the Indiana Jones games! I just couldn’t get into anything else, until KQ7, which broke my love for KQ…. I didn’t like the mega-huge inventory bar stuck on the screen, nor did I like the Disney approach.
Torin’s Passage worked out well though!(re: re: King’s Quest 6, and illogical puzzles… (mini-spoiler)) It may be funny, but it was also a major pain-in-the-butt. That’s why I converted to Lucasism 😉 I’m not afraid to say it here either 😀
Keith(re: King’s Quest 6, and illogical puzzles… (mini-spoiler)) That´s funny, i´m sorry, but it is, i was reading and laughing at the same time. Did it ever happen to anyone the first time you played SQ 4 you get in the time machine for the first time in SQXII and your suposed to write down the strange navigational codes, so you could come back almost at the end of the game. And by the way it varied every time you started the game, man everybody had to start all over!!!
Ahhhhhhhhhh, Good old times………
(re: King’s Quest 6, and illogical puzzles… (mini-spoiler))
What always got me was the airsickness bag in LSL2. You had to get that while on board the plane. I kept forgetting it. This happens especially when the game design splits it into multiple sections and there’s no way to go back to another section (LSL2 being a case in point).
(re: Game Design Methodologies – Various stuff from Roberta) Here are some old pages I “borrowed” from Roberta’s design documents.
I have lots more of this – let me know if people want it posted…
-Ken W
Seriously Ken! That’s like asking the Pope if he wants to go to Heaven! If you find the time to “borrow” and scan anything else from Roberta for all of us to see, you have our eternal gratitude! This is wonderful! Personally, I’d be especially interested in King’s Quest-related material.(re: Kings Quest novels) They’re OK. To me, they’re the typical fantasy stories. Of course, I haven’t read them in years.
I did write reviews for them at my web site, though, so you can go to
Link: http://ugarte.sierraplanet.com(http://ugarte.sierraplanet.com)
and go to the King’s Quest section. You should find them there. 🙂(re: Daily emails caught by spam filter) Thank you for the info – I’ve noticed that my spam filter is also catching the messages. I’ll try to figure what I can do to fix it.
-Ken W(re: Space Quest EGA Original Disk)
Hi, again!
You can finding the “CopyIIPC v5.01 + Snatchit v1.11” at
Link: http://retrograde.trustno1.org/programs.htm(http://retrograde.trustno1.org/programs.htm) ZSchooley
