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(re: Cant get Phantasmagoria 2 to work at all?)
I’m not sure if this game will run on XP. I tried installing it on XP about a week ago and had a similar problem (except I had an error message that popped up before the window closed).
In a lot of cases, it’s not the power of the machine that’s important, so much as the way the program uses the operating system. Some older games run in XP just fine; others don’t work at all.
If anyone has gotten Phantasmagoria 2 running in XP, I’d love to hear how…
-emily
(re: Why was there never a third game?)
I know that on the back of the Manhunter boxes, all three of them are shown with cloaks on. All of their names are also listed in the caption of the picture.
(re: re: Larry 8 officially announced!!!) So it’s finally going to happen is it? I just read about this on another forum. I spent like 20minutes trying to find out as much as I could from sites. The only thing that worries me, I need to find out the system requirements when it comes out. My PC can’t run everything at good speeds and those graphics might slow down. Maybe I’m better of going after the PS2 version….since it’s been said that it won’t be toned down. I’ll be watching this closely you can count on that!
LONG LIVE LARRY! 😉
(re: Larry 8 officially announced!!!) I’m very excited about this. Hearing that the original LSL wouldn’t feature in this new game had me worried for a moment, but after seeing the trailer, I’ve come to the conclusion that this may very well turn out to be a great game.
Go Sierra! 🙂(re: re: Old games under DOS) Hi there
I also had the problem with the Full Screen until I downloaded the frontend for Dosbox (Dosboxfro). Have a look at:
Link: http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/download.php?main=1(http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/download.php?main=1) What is nice about this is that you can have multiple game setups and then just select the one you want to start. I got KQ V working with CD-ROM and speech in full screen so I am pretty impressed.
Michael(re: Gabriel Knight 1)
If you are using VDMSound, be sure to check “Enable low level CD-ROM support (MSCDEX)” in your VDMS shortcut properties so that the game can see your CD-ROM drive. The resource file with the speech is on the CD.
(re: re: freddy pharkas – talkie version?) a-ha! i checked the sierra.ini file, and those fields are in there — but i just realized i had the freddy pharkas CD in the E: drive (i have two CD drives on this machine). haven’t tried playing with the CD in D: yet, but i suspect that will solve the problem…
thank you!
🙂 emily(re: re: re: re: re: Why was there never a third game?)
“Here’s something really strange: I double checked that it was the Murrays that produced Manhunter (which it was) but what is a little bizarre is that all the articles I found through Google refer to the Murrays as a trio – Barry, Dave and Dee Dee. Obviously, I knew Dee Dee – but, the honest truth is that I can’t remember her. Darned if I know why. I remember the guys, but can’t remember her at all. Weird.”
I don’t think she was involved in all of the games. I don’t know about Manhunter, but Championship Boxing and all the Ancient Art of War games do not list her in the credits. Probably worked on some of their later games.
(re: re: re: Why was there never a third game?)
“The Murrays (it was the Murrays who wrote Manhunter, wasn’t it?) did the first two Manhunters, and then starting working on a game called “Ancient Art of Way”. I had them planned for Manhunter 3, but when they spoke about their idea for Ancient Art of War, it sounded great – so I encouraged them to work on it.
“Umm… I’m a little confused. My version of Ancient Art of War (Broderbund) says 1984, which I believe was before Manhunter. Perhaps you’re thinking of Championship Boxing, which they made under Sierra (also in 1984)? Or maybe you mean the sequel to AAOW, called Ancient Art of War in the Sea (made in 1987).
They also made one in the air, not sure which company published it.
“Unfortunately, during development, Broderbund somehow got into the loop, and convinced Dave and Barry to publish War through them. One of my “rules” was to never be the “high bidder” on anything (it’s a long story). They never returned to Sierra.”
Great piece – thanks.
Here’s an interesting side story:
Broderbund’s initial box for Ancient Art of War had a picture of an ancient vase on the front. The vase had a lot of oriental writing on it – that no one knew what said. Oops – the writing was in chinese (or, Japanese) and to those who could read it, it was x-rated. Broderbund had to recall all the copies of the game that had been shipped to retail.
-Ken W
(re: re: re: re: RPG’s as opposed to Adventure Games) Personally I don’t pay money for sidequests or i should say sidequests that have their own stories (not that i’m against sidequests), but i’m paying for the experience, and if I have to go off and it takes me away from the immersion of the game then that game isn’t as fun to me because it broke it up. Technically most adventure games are full of the “proper” sidequests because they only have one goal in mind, and that’s to get to the end of it’s story. It’s sort of like reading two fictional books at the same time. As a rule of thumb I don’t like to do that, because it breaks the integrity of the two stories. This isn’t to say I don’t ever do it. Usually if I can’t stay interested in a book and i’m partway into and i stop reading for a whilte, i’ll sometimes read a more interesting book… but most of the time I don’t
Keith(re: re: re: RPG’s as opposed to Adventure Games)
if a side quest is done well, it’s a story in itself. For example, Majora’s Mask (action RPG) had a very great side quest for a particular mask. Of course, the side quest ended up having a better story than the actual game, but that’s another story. Summoner has some great side quests. Final Fantasy doesn’t have very good side quests. Xenosaga has no sidequests.
I have to admit the rpg turn based style of combat is not very exiting, but its not entirely boring either. Then you have action RPGs like Ocarina of Time (probably my favorite game of all time) and action FPS’s like Deus Ex. But you’re right Adventure games are RPGs, but they aren’t RPGs in the traditional video gaming sense. There are plenty of RPGs that have puzzles. But now that I think about it, Action RPGs are like a mix of RPGs and Adventure games with the addition of combat. If the controls of KQ8 and the tone (for lack of a better word) of the story (too midieval, especially with the diction the characters used) were improved upon, KQ8 would be a great game.
(re: re: Gabriel Knight 1) GK1 DOS just work fine under XP. Only the voices are missing. Its not a big problem, the game is playable. But it will be better with voices.
Can I play my dos game, just putting the sierraw.exe launcher in my GK1DOS folder ?
Have someone the win version ? Can he send me the win launcher ?(re: re: re: re: Game Design Methodologies) One thing I haven’t considered was the costs. With just me, the only costs are my time since most of my development tools are either free or too old to be compiled as a list of financial costs. If I do any cartoon animation, I suppose i’ll most likely need to keep track of how much I spent on paper, etc… Although the development tools themselves (scanner, computer, etc) are old… Probably materials cost would need to be considered. I guess if you’re working in a team and have a working company you need at least some budget outlines, projected costs, manhours etc… I’ve just never really thought about it when making my own games because it’s still just myself.
Keith(re: re: re: Game Design Methodologies) Shoot 1000 page design documents,…
Keith:
I couldn’t have said it better. I did “project reviews” every 90 days to see how products were going during development. When someone handed me a thick document, but couldn’t talk about their project – I got frightened. Developers sometimes hide behind thick piles of paper. They have 1,000 pages of design document – but are unwilling to commit on what the cost will be to build the game.
I used to take comfort that people had done the thick documents – but then not allow them into the project review meetings. Leaders should KNOW their products, and be able to talk about them without their notes. If I asked a question, and someone had to look for 10 minutes though their notes to find the answer, we were almost always in trouble.
One of my “Ken Sayings” was always “I hate bureaucracy”.
-Ken W(re: re: Game Design Methodologies) Shoot 1000 page design documents, that’s pretty darn huge. I keep finding when I try to write out some sort of design document I ultimately end up getting bored with it. Not that I wouldn’t write anything, in most cases I end up with alot of stuff written down (when the game is finished), but it’s usually not in a formalized way. In any case my plan is to have a story outline, and the locations mapped out, and then to start working on puzzles and characters.
As far as “fun”, it’s hardly easy to quantify. I do agree however if you spend “X” amount of hours solving a puzzle that’s not really fun then the whole experience can be ruined. But then I guess you don’t really know what fun is until you have it in a playable form and can test it out.
Thanks for your comments
Keith(re: Gabriel Knight 1) I think it’s ‘common’ knowledge that you’ll not be able to get the DOS version of GK1 working under Win2K/XP. I think your only option is to track down a copy of the Windows version. This will definitely work with the following known issues: you cannot save anywhere in the game except on the map screen (it’ll just crash if u try….) and there are one (maybe two) timing issues with ‘modern’ CPU speeds.
(re: Game Design Methodologies) I wasn’t really sure how to title this, but I guess this is as close to what i’m asking about as I can think at the moment. I wanted to ask about A) how you went about judging playtime in those games (or depending on how involved you were you could ask Mrs. Williams how she went about doing it). What I mean by playtime is how long a person plays. If I knew where everything was in Space Quest 3 – I can finish it in a couple of hours (or less depending on what I did)… Also timing some old lucasarts games, they came out to about 6-8 hours when I knew all the puzzles and where all the items were. But I hear of today’s games takeing up to 30-40 hours, etc… What i’d like to know is how you decided something was long enough, did you strictly keep to a time limit, or did you just develop it, and whatever ended up, ended up?Â
Also B) How was the process (more in the early to mid days of Sierra) of creating a game like? Did everyone end up with a fully fleshed out formal document (design document or whatever), or did you sort of start from an outline and kind of play it by ear? I read somewhere that The Secret of Monkey Island (yes I know this wasn’t sierra <g>) basically developed by the guys just putting in funny things and sort of having fun with it, not sticking to anything formal. In fact I looked at the interview at The Virtual Broomcloset with Mark Crowe where the way he described making space quest is that, they mostly went out for pizza and beer <grin> Basically telling me that they weren’t really into formal processes either (of course this was their first game, so I suppose we all have to start somewhere – and I only mean first, as the first they worked together on their own game for Sierra ). So you’re thoughts on formal processes/design docs, verses outlines and organic/evolutionary design process?
Every Sierra designer had a different style, but, generally, they all produced HUGE design documents. Roberta’s designs were usually 500 to 1,000 pages.
Typically, there were distinct steps to the design of the adventure games.
1) A two page story idea
2) A map showing the locations
3) A longer design document – perhaps 30-40 pages
4) Artists would get involved at this point
5) Character sheets – to show each character
6) Pencil sketches of each location
7) A much longer design document – perhaps 500 or more pages
For the 3d games we did later, it was even more complex.
As to playtime, I had a rule of thumb that people would feel good about paying $5 per hour for fun. If they pay $50 they are going to be upset if they don’t get at least 10 hours of fun. Ultimately, people would rather pay $1 per hour for their fun, that $5 per hour – so, additional playtime is certainly better.
My people used to confuse this sometimes, and give 25 hours of playtime. The key isn’t playtime – it’s fun. Spending 10 hours trying to solve one puzzle may or may not count as 10 hours of fun. 1 hour of non-fun can completely kill the whole game. I’ve seen games where the designer said “the first 5 hours aren’t fun – because you are building up your character – but, then it gets really exciting” .. I don’t buy into that theory. Anything that isn’t fun isn’t constructive. Focus on fun – and, don’t worry about the clock (generally speaking). The $5 per hour was a guideline not a hard and fast rule. For instance, let’s compare to a trip to Disneyland. It can cost $100 or more (all included) for a day at Disneyland – that might be consumed in  under an hour of actually going on rides. Theoretically, it could be argued that your cost per hour for fun is not only $100 – but, all the grief to get there (parking, traffic, etc). No one complains. Why? Because the fun is good when it happens. The better the fun, the higher the cost per hour people will pay. Boredom isn’t worth paying for. Fun is. The higher the fun, the more they’ll pay. It’s simple.
-Ken W
Â(re: re: freddy pharkas – talkie version?)
i’m running the windows version. i’ll check the sierra.ini file. i’ll also check it on my win98 laptop to isolate whether it’s an XP issue…
-emily
(re: freddy pharkas – talkie version?) Are you running the DOS or the Windows version? It sounds like the game can’t find the audio resources that are on the CD. If you are using VDMSound be sure to enable low-level CD-ROM support. Also, be sure that the “SIERRA.INI” file (if you are running the Windows version) or the “RESOURCE.CFG” file (if you are running the DOS version) has a “resAUD=” line in it. It should point to a FREDDY\AUDIO folder on your CD, ie:
resAUD=D:\FREDDY\AUDIO
if “D:\” is the letter of your CD-ROM drive.(re: re: RPG’s as opposed to Adventure Games) Never been into rpg’s, fooling around with stats, and turn based battles, where you have to decide what many weapons/spells to use, and then watching hitpoints count down, instead of actually seeing a decent battle, isn’t my idea of fun. Plus pointless side-quests that are used only to gain experience points and gold, aren’t that fun either, since in effect it takes you away from the main story. That’s what I like about adventure games, most of the puzzles and stuff (if done correctly) contribute to the main story. Plus you don’t have to get bogged down in a lot of non-fun details like stats and item choice. As far as whether they’re related, of course they are 🙂 an adventure game is essentially role-playing, and an rpg is essentially adventure, since adventure would include “venturing” but more specifically exploring. I prefer to think of adventures as “streamlined rpg’s” in that the things that rpg’s use that take you away from the story are dropped, and it’s pared down until you essentially have an interactive movie/fiction (or a cross-breed of the two). But in both you still play a role (player character’s) and you still do some adventureing (exploring).
Keith(re: RPG’s as opposed to Adventure Games)
Thanks for the recommendations! I’ve been really looking forward to trying out Deus Ex. It’s too bad that I can’t rent computer games.
But what do you guys think of RPG’s in respect to adventure games (I think they’re very related.)? What do you think of RPG’s in general?
(re: re: re: Question to Roberta/Ken about King’s Quest inconsistencies) Aye, I just think it’s depending on the mythos of the current story…
(re: re: Question to Roberta/Ken about King’s Quest inconsistencies)
We just want to be sure of what we are doing as we want to please both King’s Quest and mythology fans.
(re: Question to Roberta/Ken about King’s Quest inconsistencies)
I imagine, it’s because it’s fantasy, and ya go to the “Land of the Dead” based on the mythos. For example, if in KQ9 (yeah right), the adventure had you in Asgard, when you ventured to the Land of the Dead, you would probably end up in Hel or Valhalla.
