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(re: vintage-sierra.com)
Hehe, I’ve seen that picture before, and that’s surely an awesome collection too! 🙂 I’m sure you own more than just Space Quest stuff as well, but you can’t have as much stuff as Josh, can you? 😉
(re: vintage-sierra.com)
Hehe, did anyone say “Sierra collection”? 🙂 Check out the attachment of my post, that’s what I call as collection ;). Anyway, Josh did a terrific job on his website. Hope to see updates soon!
uploaded 6/5/2003 6:02:36 PM(re: vintage-sierra.com) I just have to say that I think you have a great website! And seemingly one of the most impressive Sierra collections in existance! 🙂
(re: The history of Sierra…) Ken,
out of curiosity I bought the book you suggested here. I’m now at the part which relates more to Sierra and to you and it has indeed some insights that make me keep reading and turning pages. For sure it adds a lot the fact that from a distance, this involves part of my own life, as a kid and young person, when I was looking foreward to play the next Sierra adventure… and still find now many of them amazing.
Nice suggestion, thank you,
Giovanni(re: Game Sound) If you are running Windows 98, as it is based on DOS and does not totally prevent direct hardware access, you do not need VDMSound. Windows ME is a revision of the Windows 98 core, ergo the same there.
You need your BLASTER environment variable configured correctly, however, and your audio card should be working correctly under Windows as well.(re: Game Sound, HOWTO) Hello,
To avoid right-clicking every time, install VDMSLaunchpad, a companion to VDMSound. I have found that by creating a BAT or CMD file for each game, right clicking on the icon, choosing Properties, and configuring the VDMSound tab only once, is the most flexible and quickest way to get a game running. Same for modifying any settings later on.
Be sure to first run the game setup with VDMSound loaded (no need to create a BAT file since you’ll do it only once), and save the configuration.
Note that to get the best sound quality, you might want to choose General MIDI emulation in VDMSound, as well as choose the General MIDI driver from the installation program. The MT-32, although superior to Adlib or SoundBlaster, is a precursor to General MIDI, so you should choose the latter when available.
By the way, when you are running Windows XP, it is possible not to use VDMSound for music synthesis at all if your audio card has an OPL chip for FM synthesis — most newer cards *do* not — as Windows XP has a built in emulator for SoundBlaster 16 for this case (presence of OPL chip). But the quality could be poor — so get VDMSound with VDMSLaunchpad, configure General MIDI and start gaming 🙂 Plus, it will sound the same on any machine running VDMSound.
Best regards,
VeskoP.S.
This is my first post here, but I’ve followed all discussions from the beginning. Cheers to Ken and Roberta! I’ve got a lot of ideas playing their games, and I’ve refined my English, too. This was more than 10-15 years ago.
And yes, there was something special in *some* of these games — the much more sensible plots than the ones present in today’s games, the emphasis on thinking while playing — not simply showing off graphics and sound. These games are still different than any adventure games of today, in the positive way, and I’m not saying that because of nostalgia.
Will post again here in the future.(re: Game Sound)
What if you’re not running Win2k, NT or XP? I have Windows 98 with an AMD Athlon processor. Is there any program simlar to VDMSound compatible with my computer?
(re: Game Sound)
You say you are using VDMSound. When you start the game, are you right clicking on the game icon and then clicking on ‘Run with VDMS.’ I’ve been playing many of the old King’s Quests games and they work fine on an XP with VDMS as well as on an ME machine using the alpha version of VDMS for 9x.
(re: Game Sound) You wonder where Al Lowe is in these days? Look at http://www.allowe.com for the answer!!
(re: QfG3 – Fighter’s test) Here’s what you need to do; Go to the game’s INSTALL.EXE program, and set the colors to black and white. This will probably get you past the bug. You could also set the music to PC Speaker.
If that doesn’t work, quickly click on Yesufu’s head many times in the area with the pit and the tree.(re: Legality of Fan AGI/SCI games) I didn’t know we registered game copyrights. Legal must have “just handled it” without my involvement.
-Ken W(re: re: Dagger of Amon Ra) Don’t bother purchasing the game separately. You should be able to use Windows Explorer to view the files on the CD and isolate the game if you think that would help.
Try installing VDMSound. On the older SCI games, I don’t know if this option works, but on the somewhat-newer versions, it’s worth a try.(re: Legality of Fan AGI/SCI games)
Very cool, seems like most registration dates are after the game has been released – I assume those are game release dates – are they correct?
(re: Legality of Fan AGI/SCI games) Ok, I checked the links to the sites I mentioned.Search here for trademarks:
I just did a basic search for Sierra On-Line (as owner) and came up with 220 hits.
The copyright archives can be searched here:Link: http://www.copyright.gov/records/(http://www.copyright.gov/records/)
A search for Sierra On-Line here got me 163 hits. Check out the details of the records for fun additional info.
BTW: Ken, when you registered a game copyright, would you do it before development started or just sometime before the game was publicly announced?(re: Legality of Fan AGI/SCI games) Cool!
I searched for “Williams, Kenneth A.” and “Sierra”
and found three patents under my name – that really are me.
There should also be one under WoldStream .. but, I haven’t checked it yet.
-Ken W(re: Legality of Fan AGI/SCI games) Hehe, go here and type in “Williams; Kenneth A”. You will find patents like “Device for cleaning the human body”. Thanks Ken for keeping us clean 🙂
(re: Legality of Fan AGI/SCI games) Both the American copyright and trademark offices can be searched online by anyone. I remember doing this some time ago to find all things Sierra-related. Some of the things that came up were really interesting. For instance, it is possible to estimate the release dates on very old games by looking at the dates in the databases, and trivia stuff such that Sierra doesn’t own the Space Quest trademark can be discovered. I don’t recall seeing anything AGI or SCI-related though, but I’m not sure. I haven’t searched for patents, and I don’t know if you can do that online. I don’t remember the links to the search pages either, but they should be easy to look up if anyone is interested…
(re: another qg4 problem) Use CPU-Killer again to slow down the game. Also, before climbing up to the final altar, set speed to maximum and detail to the minimum.
(re: Legality of Fan AGI/SCI games) Quote: “I’m a programmer who works with a community of individuals who make fan AGI/SCI games using all non-Sierra intellectual property *except* for the interpreters. The old AGI/SCI interpreters still work under most versions of Windows, and many excellent projects like Sarien and NAGI work on all versions of Windows as well as Linux/Unix (and I think BeOS, too, as well as Solaris, but not MacOS 8-9).”
Hey Andrew. Just wanted to add I’ve had got a Sarien not too long ago which ran SQ1 on my Macintosh with OS X.(re: The Sierra Pest) Hey Ken,
I’m flattered you remembered me! Please tell Johnny I say hello. It sure does sound like a different business then Sierra that he works at. You could tell that he just adored Sierra. I remember him showing me around one day and sniffing the air and saying “someone has the popcorn machine on, lets go grab some”. I sure wish you guys would have stayed in with Sierra long enough for me to get a job there 😉
It sounds like you and Roberta are living it up! As the Aussies say, “Good on ya”. You guys deserve it. Why is it I have this funny feeling you’ll be back in games some day? <big grin>
All the Best, and if you decide to drive the Titanic over to Australia, drop in for a “cuppa” at my placeDaniel
The Sierra Pest!===>all grown up(re: The Sierra Pest) Daniel:
Of course I remember you!
My brother John is working with a company (
Link: http://www.alkinetworks.com(http://www.alkinetworks.com)
) that does the software on gas pumps that allows them to display advertising while you buy gas. This didn’t sound very exciting to me until John explained that there are something like a billion transactions per day at gas pumps. Because gas pricing is so competitive, many gas stations make more money selling snacks than they do gasoline. It’s important for them to drive gas purchasers into the store. John’s company writes software that allows someone at corporate, for an entire chain of gas stations, to set what gets advertised. There’s a lot of cool features – but, it’s not games. I think John misses the old days of Sierra.
-Ken W(re: I have to say Sierra sucks now) As much as I agree with you, it should be noted that this doesn’t mean the people working for Sierra today should be blamed. I’m sure they are devoted and talented people, and it cannot be very fun for them to hear that people think they are working for a company that sucks.
I don’t mean that you or anyone else has suggested this, but we should take care to blame the downfall of Sierra’s old philosophy as an unfortunate effect of several things, not that it was deliberate or anything.(re: Login in required) Ken, I think a lot of marketing people would disagree with your philosophy, as it’s their job to turn uninteresting things into something people will like all the time. But the numbers speaks for themselves. Sierra was built on this philosophy, and who can say it wasn’t a successful company? Also, the many websites devoted to the old Sierra and games that were released not only 10, but 20 years ago speaks for themselves. Such devotion doesn’t come out of nothing.
(re: Legality of Fan AGI/SCI games)
Here’s my personal opinion, which may or may not reflect the opinion of Sierra. I have no idea what the current owners/managers there think.
Generally speaking, there are only three categories of protection for software: copyright, patent and trademark.
· Copyright – Copyright law has to do with copying – and, unless you do a byte-for-byte copy, it would be pretty tough for anyone to allege. I’m not a lawyer, but would be surprised if anyone could win a copyright case based on creating new code to perform the same function as existing code. Certainly, I would have considered this a case not worth pursuing in my day.
· Patent – Patent law has to do with protecting “inventions”. To obtain a patent, you apply to the patent office and describe what you believe your invention to be. The patent office reviews your application, and matches it against other patents on file – and, if they believe it is unique enough, they issue the patent. Sierra was early in the industry and did file several patents – not a large number but I remember 10-20 of them. Some had to do with SCI, and some were broad enough to have used in litigation against competitors. I believe all the patents having to do with SCI had one of the following names on them: Bob Heitman, Jeff Stephenson, Elon Gasper or myself. Sierra never filed a patent claim against anyone, although there were competitors I believed at the time we could have shutdown. Prosecuting a patent claim is time consuming, difficult and expensive. It also doesn’t make you very popular with your competitors, employees or customers. Had I been 100% certain we would win, I might have considered it – but, usually, there are many different ways to accomplish the same thing, and even with victory I probably wouldn’t have been able to pull a competitive product off the market – I just would have been able to force them to change one small implementation detail. Ultimately, I wanted to win through breaking new ground – not through trying to protect existing territory. Litigation made no sense to me, and we never sued anyone over a patent. My recollection of the patents of most interest to you are: we did file a patent on the simulated 3d we used, the method of using dithering to simulate colors and the methods we used for lip-syncing to audio.
· Trademark – Trademarks protect the name of things. I don’t know that we ever attempted to trademark either the name “SCI” or “AGI”
Both AGI and SCI are nothing more (or less) than programming languages. Prior to starting Sierra I had worked in compiler development, and liked the idea of creating my own language. Most of AGI was my “invention” and most of the “big picture” guidance for SCI came from Jeff Stephenson. In both cases, we borrowed heavily from other languages. AGI was a simple procedural language like C, Algol, PL/1, Fortran or Cobol. I borrowed liberally bits and parts from several languages. There really wasn’t a lot of originality in the code. Most of my effort revolved around implementation, not invention. The same is somewhat true for SCI, although there was much more pioneering with SCI. No major object-oriented programming language existed at the time. This was pre-C++ by many years. Literature existed and efforts were underway to develop object-oriented programming languages, but I don’t know of any other object-oriented language that was in wide commercial use at the time. I’m convinced that we were years ahead of the world in our use of objects, classes and methods. But, that said, we didn’t invent them – we just implemented them. If there was anything which qualified for patent protection about what we were doing, I don’t know what it would have been. The patents we filed have to do with code developed using SCI or AGI, but not with the language itself.
Once again, keep in mind that we are talking about events and code from over a quarter of a century ago. I have forgotten a great deal about those days, and am not a lawyer. These are issues that only someone with much greater legal knowledge than I should comment on.
-Ken W
