Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I agree. I’ll get it fixed by tomorrow afternoon.
Two steps forward, then roll the dice, and move 1 to 3 steps back.
-Ken W
Chris has done extremely well.
At one time Sierra had an office in Tokyo. Chris visited Tokyo with Roberta and I from time to time, and decided he liked it. He went to four years of college there, and has now moved back to work as a software developer (as I understand it, he’s porting Linux to a small dedicated device). He’s 100% fluent in Japanese.
Roberta and I were just in Tokyo a few weeks ago to visit him.
Although he’s a genious with computers, his real love is Japanese Anime. In addition to working, he is a full-time student studying animation at a school in Tokyo. His “goal” is to return to the US and open an animation studio that would focus 100% on Anime.
We’re extremely proud of him.
-Ken W
I don’t know where I pulled up R4 and R5. You are right L4 & L5
He must have been extremely overweight to be refused surgery. But I am sure they would have done surgery if they thought it was life threatening.
The doctor made it clear that it is not a safe thing to do to operate on overweight people, but in this case he has to.
Aren’t those sort of agreements legally unenforcable? I mean.. I would think most companies wouldn’t give a hoot if someone uses something they signed away AS LONG AS they didn’t actually make any money off it. 😉
You probably mean the L4 and L5 lumbar area. There are three regions of the spine: Cervic, Thorasic and Lumbar. Not to dampen your spirits but I had a friend die who was over weight and had liver problems. They could not do surgery until he lost weight. He died just after a group of friends built a ramp onto his trailer.
Hope you get better.
Update:
Well it seems I will have to have surgery to repair the worse disc between R4 & R5.
He wants to try a steroid injection into the area of R4 & R5 first.
I am an overweight man and he really does not like to perform surgery on an overweight person. All the equipment is made for normal weight people. There is a greater risk of heart attack during the procedure for someone who is overweight.
He gives normal weight people odds of 1% for something to go wrong and for overweight 2%. The incisions he makes have to be larger for a big person. Hopefully I will get the steroid shot next week. The doctor says I should know within 72 hours if it reduces the swelling and the pain. He didn’t say so, but my wife says (she is a nurse), the shot is just a temporary relief measure.
Surgery will be coming, but before that he will send me to a cardiac doctor to make sure my heart is healthy. He also said more surgeries would be coming also as I get older; I would still have 2 bad disks left.
He said to stop going for Therapy, it would be a waste of time. The damage is done and only surgery will help at this point. The disks are about as damaged as they can get, so I am beyond Therapy.
I will have to stay in vicodin happy land for a while yet.
Quote:
“… (by Johann de Waal) Thanks for the info, Chris. But are you sure about only the PCjr having the capability to display the extended palette? We only had a bog standard IBM-compatible PC with an Intel 8088 CPU and CGA graphics adapter.I remember reading somewhere (on this site perhaps?) that it was some kind of smart software thing that Sierra did.
Later, when we got VGA, and could now play the AGI games in EGA, the graphics was a big improvement even over the extended CGA. The EGA and CGA graphics looked very different, and not similar as you mention.
…”
Yes, I’m sure. When you played the old Sierra games on a PCjr or a Tandy, they looked identical to the EGA version you remember. Remember, the original AGI engine was WRITTEN for that oddball graphics card to showcase the PCjr. The problems came when I tried to take those old AGI games and play them on my new computer with VGA. Since there was no support for EGA on the orginal AGI engine, the graphics got kicked down to 4-color CGA – a blinding sight for me since up to then I was quite used to the full 16 color palette.
[Updated] I have an email from Sierra support that stated that the “divide by zero” error can be corrected by deleting the sierra.ini file. They stated that some of the old programs like mine did not recognize the newer processors. Attached is the email from tech support.
Sorry, couldn’t find the problem. But thanks for letting me know it’s not isolated to me, and that there is a way to fix it.
If anyone can think of something, I would really appreciate it.
About the divide 0 problem… You know you can skip the compatibility tests! The setup asks you if you really want to skip the tests or something and then continues with the installation. Just try it. So you didn’t waste your money 😉
About King’s Quest 6…
Did you try to use another resolution? 800*600 or even lower? Also try to use the 256 Color option instead of 16 or 32 Bit.Hope this helps 😉
i have a problem a bit like that. i have KQC on cd and i tried installing KQ6 it installed but didn’t run. it went blck for 1/2 a sec and quit back to the dektop. i tried the compatibility settings but that didn’t help. anyone know how to fix this
Quote:
“… (by Johann de Waal) Thanks for the info, Chris. But are you sure about only the PCjr having the capability to display the extended palette? We only had a bog standard IBM-compatible PC with an Intel 8088 CPU and CGA graphics adapter.I remember reading somewhere (on this site perhaps?) that it was some kind of smart software thing that Sierra did.
Later, when we got VGA, and could now play the AGI games in EGA, the graphics was a big improvement even over the extended CGA. The EGA and CGA graphics looked very different, and not similar as you mention.
…”
Actually, Johann you were ‘nearly’ correct.
The IBM-compatible CGA modes that Sierra used only supported four of the colours from the total palette, but also used a technique called dithering to make it look like a richer palette was being used. The CGA mode used was 320×200 with 4 colours, and each horizontal pixel was two pixels wide. Dithering meant some parts of the scene had two colours painted next to each other in these “double pixels”.
For example, when you fill a rock like this (basically a whole series of vertical two-colour stripes) the colours start mixing together and looking like they are a different colour shade. The human eye tricks your brain into thinking it is a different colour on the screen.
I too loved the Sierra AGI games because it made my four-colour CGA look way better than what most games made it look like.
One of the reasons this couldn’t work effectively with SCI was because SCI didn’t have the blocky two-pixels-equals-one screen layout and thus the dithering would only work in areas that had large filled areas. The much more detailed graphics in the SCI games meant that a lot of screens wouldn’t have been able to make use of this technique.
As a side-note there was also a way of hacking the CGA to get 16 colours at a resolution of 160×100 (I think). A couple of games such as Moonbugs used this mode. There is more info about it on mobygames.
Thanks for the info, Chris. But are you sure about only the PCjr having the capability to display the extended palette? We only had a bog standard IBM-compatible PC with an Intel 8088 CPU and CGA graphics adapter.
I remember reading somewhere (on this site perhaps?) that it was some kind of smart software thing that Sierra did.
Later, when we got VGA, and could now play the AGI games in EGA, the graphics was a big improvement even over the extended CGA. The EGA and CGA graphics looked very different, and not similar as you mention.
Yay! A reply. Geez, I wrote this so long ago, I have to read it over before I start Act III lol. Coming soon, act III!
I am very impressed. I like the way this is going, It is cool to see Laura in a different position than the last 2 (colonel and amon ra) chapters. She is the hunted. I look forward to Act III!
Quote:
“… (by Ken Williams)So .. to answer the question .. It wasn’t the sale that hurt Sierra. What killed Sierra was that it was acquired by criminals. I still believe that based on the information I had at the time, the decision I made was in Sierra’s best interests. Unfortunately, I got scammed.
…”
I’ve been wondering about that. Were the terms they promised you (Sierra stays creatively independent) written in the sales contract? If so, was there talk about suing the aquiring company for breach of contract when you saw where things were going?
Also, before the sale, was there any movement in Sierra to tackle the new 3D platforms that were rolling out because of the introduction of the Voodoo card? I know that KQ: MoE addressed this, but I thought the whole development of that game was done after the sale. I guess my question is, would it have been done without any outside pressure from the parent company?
All in all, I would have to say your agreement to sell was pretty much compulsory. I’m sure the shareholders would have revolted on you if you turned down what those guys were offering. What was it, 50% above asking price per share?
Ken/Roberta
Thanks a lot for the detailed response! That’s great stuff. You’ve been very helpful.
And as a gamer, I’m geeking out about actually getting in contact with you guys. I’m gonna have to break out some King’s Quest.
Kris Graft
Next Generation
Future Network USAQuote:
“… (by Johann de Waal) Slightly off topic, but Sierra’s AGI games TOTALLY ROCKED in CGA compared to what the competition was doing.Usually CGA games are limited to displaying only four “colours” on screen at once (the techies among you are free to correct me on this) from a total palette of seven (white, black, turquoise, pink, red, yellow, green. Sierra however used a nifty trick whereby its games had access to the full CGA palette. Meaning all of these colours could be displayed on screen at once, whereas a Lucasarts (or anyone else for that matter) title, when running under CGA, only had access to four colours at a time (and they always had to use one specific combination meaning either black, white, turquoise and pink; or black, yellow, red and green). As an example, compare Maniac Mansion (or what have you) to Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards or any other AGI game (DOSBox has a CGA mode, though I’ve never tested it).
Now, a question: why didn’t Sierra continue using this trick for its SCI games?
…”
You are correct about the palette of a CGA adapter, but the early Sierra games didn’t use CGA – they were exploiting an extended graphics mode that was specfic to the PCjr. That is 320x200x16c (http://mail.magnaspeed.net/~mbbrutman/PCjr/pcjr_hardware.html ), which is pretty much the same as EGA. If you played the games on anything other than one of those adapters you’d get the game in “glorious” 4-color CGA, a total nightmare to behold. The AGI engine actually painted the screens at 160x200x16c. I think this was done for size/memory considerations rather than an actual limit on the display adapter. The Tandy also had this adapter and also supported the same 16 color modes.
The PCjr got this special treatment because IBM approached Sierra to make a game that showcased the capabilities (16 color graphics, 3 voice sound) of the PCjr.
***Sidenote: DOSBox (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net ) is capable of emulating the old 3 voice sound generator in the PCjr. So if you want to hear your old AGI games in all their 3 voice musical glory, check them out in DOSBox.**
IBM pretty much financed the development and marketing of the game, which was called King’s Quest. Eventually, the PCjr and Tandy dropped by the wayside and the AGI engine was updated to support the industry-standard EGA adapter. Sierra didn’t use the CGA “trick” for SCI games because they didn’t need to anymore. The EGA display was industry standard and Tandys and PCjrs didn’t have enough memory to meet the requirements (512K!!!!) of the new engine anyway.
I remember when that happened. I was cruising along with my PCjr and read in a mag that KQ4 was coming out. I got pretty excited until I found out my computer would need a ton up upgrades to play it, if not outright replacing. Money wasn’t exactly coming out of my ears since I was 12 or 13 at the time, so I wrote a letter to Ken. Much to my surprise, he responded, but sadly did not feel like changing the course of the company for me so as to keep making games that would run on my PCjr. He did say that they were rolling out an AGI version of KQ4, but come on – SCI was what I wanted. So I bothered my dad until be shelled out for a 386/16 with 40MB HD, 256K VGA card, and 1MB of RAM to the tune of $2500. Not much has changed in that games STILL drive the hardware market 🙂
You’re probably thinking of InterPlay’s excellent Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and/or the sequel, Star Trek: Judgement Rites.
Then there was also Spectrum Holobyte’s (I think) STTNG: A Final Unity.
Response from Roberta Williams:
The ‘rape’ scene was between a husband and a wife – which, however, does not negate the fact that it was a ‘rape’ in the fact that her husband was not really her husband at that particular moment in time: instead, he was under the influence of an evil entity. However, he was still her husband and not a stranger. Does that somehow make it ‘better,’ not necessarily a true rape? No, but, it was part of the decision making process as he was her husband who she loved and, obviously, had had sex with in the past. In fact, the act itself began lovingly and she was into it; it only turned into a ‘rape’ as he began to be overtaken by the evil entity of the story.
Why do I go through that explanation? It’s important because it was necessary to show how evil this evil entity was and how it was changing her husband and changing their life. What better way to convey the horror of what was happening to her and her husband than by having it affect even their own loving relationship? Remember, this IS a horror story. I could have had him hit her, or throw her to the floor, or stab her, or some other abusive type of thing to convey how he was being overtaken by this evilness, but, I felt that, in order to really make it understandable how this evil was really infecting him, like an insidious virus, was to have it affect their loving relationship at its very core…during an act of love. There’s nothing more evil than to take an act of love and turn it into an act of pure evil. Is there? Some people have tried to claim that it was gratuitous, that that scene was only put in to shock or to sell more copies of the game. Nothing could be further from the truth. I felt that it was very necessary from a story point of view to show how this was affecting our heroine emotionally and to really show how evil evil can be. It was a very effective scene from that standpoint and very necessary to the story.
As to my concern about sex in computer games: Ken and I were very concerned about gratuitous violence and sex in computer games. As a matter of fact, we were among the first to insist on ratings for computer games. Even though it wasn’t required at that time, we went ahead and put a big “M” on the front of the ‘Phantasmagoria’ box – for Mature Players – just because we wanted to make sure that only adults played this game. Also, in all of our advertising for the product and in every interview I did, and in all marketing, sales, and PR pieces, we went out of our way to tell everyone that this game was not for kids…and we meant it!
Also, I have to say that “Phantasmagoria” was not a kid-type game anyway in that it really was an interactive story and not a cutesy, ‘fun’ type of computer game in the traditional way that most people think of computer games. It was very sophisticated and, probably not the sort of game that the average kid would enjoy playing anyway. I believe that there is room in the computer gaming world for mature subject matter as long as it’s marketed as such and very plainly stated on the packaging so that buyers will know what the content is. Then, it’s up to parents to monitor what their children play. The key is in giving parents all of the information that they need before they buy. With Phantasmagoria, we never misled anyone about its contents or ‘candy-coated’ it. We stated up front what it was and stated in no uncertain terms that it was not for kids. Anyway, that ‘rape’ scene was no worse than scenes that are seen everyday on soap operas, movies – even made for TV movies – or TV shows. Computer games should have the same consideration as other forms of entertainment although I do believe that all forms of entertainment should be more honest as to what they are. Many TV shows are not. Movies, at least, have ratings. We did the same as the movie industry; we rated it ‘M.’
Roberta Williams
