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I did ask Roberta the question.
She said she would read it again tonight, but her answer at lunch today was “How would I know?” She never continued the story, and really hasn’t thought beyond what is written.
She wanted a chance to read your question again. I’ll post back here again if her answer changes after she re-reads your question.
-Ken W
fender_17, you do not need to post your question twice. Ken will have seen it the first time, and will make a reply if / when he is able. I am deleting your duplicate post.
Brandon Klassen ~ SierraGamers.com admin/dev team ~
Thanks for replying! Both your’s and Roberta’s projects sound very interesting! I wish you both the best of luck.
I have been handed down an old Sierra Boxing Champions game. It is easy to use an old computer and play an old game but it is very hard to move that game from an old computer to a new computer. I have looked into connecting up a new hard drive to my PS/2 but the old thing uses a “scuzy” connection. I played an old “Alf” game on my 486 but lost the game once I started the game.
It seems to me that Sierra went through a rough time with the release of a game where a woman was attached in the game. I don’t remember the name of the game but Roberta had some rough interviews over the game. I had a sample of the game in a group box with the old Kings Quest games, Mother Goose, and others. The big news now is the game NARC that has a player getting high. I remember a geni in Kings Quest VI that would get drunk eating candy.
Kings Quest was a great collection of old fairy tails and could be made into a movie blockbuster. The music score was great with the Sound Blaster sound card. I don’t think the 3D games of today can compare to the games of yesteryear.
I don’t recall how those Sneak Peek CDs were distributed, I haven’t heard of them being shipped with the InterActions though if you say so, they were distributed in other ways too. I have one of those I luckily found once at a software store, I think between a few of us collectors we’d have all of them. Again, that’s content that will certainly become available for everyone, but it’s not necessarily something that makes sense to include with the InterAction set.
To me added value would be to included copies of the supplemental CDs that came with the original magazines. I remember there was a great sneak peaks CD that I would love to own again.
Quote:
“… (by Ryan Nicotera) Dear Ken and Roberta,I am a new member on this site, but I first want to say thank you for all of the great games you’ve made such as King’s Quest. The first computer game I ever played was King’s Quest V when I was 5 (I am 15 now) . I have games I-VII (and I still play them today), the Space Quest series and two of the Quest for Glory Games. My question was have you ever considered buying back Sierra, especially now since it is “dead” and perhaps trying to revive it and some of it’s series?
…”I thought about it a few years back — but, I don’t see it ever happening. If Roberta and I ever work again, it will be something that we can do while maintaining our busy travel schedule.
We are into boating, and waiting to take delivery of a new boat. Once it arrives, we are going to spend several years circumnavigating.
That said, Roberta is hard at work on a book. Actually, to be more precise, she is hard at work creating a world, characters and a story. Whether it will be a book, a screenplay, or a computer game, is too early to say.
I also have a book that I’m working on. I published a book last year ( http://www.kensbook.com ) about Roberta and I crossing the Atlantic on our boat. My new book has nothing to do with boating. Like Roberta, I really don’t want to talk about what I’m working on – yet. But, it is in the fiction category, and people here will like it.
Both Roberta and I are focusing on books because it’s something you can do without needing a company and employees. We like going new places, and the idea of sitting still for the 3-5 years it would take to do a game, or run a game company, doesn’t fit our life (anymore). Plus, we did that for 20 years. It’s time for the next generation.
And, of course — I have my http://www.talkspot.com project. It keeps me MORE than busy.
Thank you,
Ken WilliamsKQ7: You’ll need to use the sierraw.exe executable copied from the cd into your kq7 folder rather than the sierraws.exe executable that is installed by default. Also, run in 256 color compatibility mode. If you want the game to run full screen, use run it from a batch file using Multires (free from http://www.entechtaiwan.com). Here’s the batch file I use:
c:
cd multires
multires.exe /640,480,8 /exit
d:
start /w C:\SIERRA\KQ7\SIERRAW.EXE c:\SIERRA\KQ7\RESOURCE.WIN
c:
multires.exe /restore /exitwhere my cdrom drive is d:, multires in installed on c: i the “Multires” folder, and the game is in the c:\sierra\kq7 folder.
The Win version of King’s Quest 6 takes the most to get going on XP. You’ll need to have VDMSound and the VDMS Launchpad installed on your system to do it, but you will need it to play the older KQ games with audio, anyway.
1) Go to http://ntvdm.cjb.net/ , download VDMSound and the VDMS Launchpad and install both.
2) Go to the KQ6 shortcut in your stary menu and right click on it and choose “Properties”. Copy what is in the “Target:” box and paste it in Notepad. Save it in the games folder as KQ6.bat.
3) Copy the file “RESOURCE.AUD” from the CD to the installed game folder on your hard drive.
4) Open your game’s installed folder on your hard drive and delete the file “HDLOGO.AVI” and open the file “SIERRA.INI” (it may be in a sub-folder named “WIN”) in Notepad. Look for the lines:
audpath=D:\
audio=D:\
movieplayer=1
(Note, yours may be different, depending on what letter drive your CD-ROM is.) Chang this to:
audpath=.\
audio=.\
movieplayer=0
5) Right click on the file in the installed folder, “SCIWV.EXE” and go to the Compatibility tab and choose Compatibility mode for Win 98 or Win 9, 256 colors. do the same for the file you made earlier, “KQ6.bat”
6) Now all you have to do is right click on the .bat file you made and choose “♫ Run with VDMS” (the one with the musical notes) and the game should run.
You will find a new file in the installed folder — “KQ6.VLP” When you want to play the game after this, just double click on this file. You can copy this file to your desktop, your start menu or where ever you fid easy to get at to run the game. If you have any trouble with this, just post any questions here.You’re pretty unlikely to find any of Sierra’s CD games for download – they’re too big.
There are tons of copies of Torin’s Passage on eBay in various conditions for various prices.
Yeah, I’d assume AGI and SCI were programmed in Assembly, but don’t quote me on that (one of the experts around here could confirm?).
I’m fairly certain that Adventure Game Studio written by Chris Jones, a program for making adventure games in the Sierra and LucasArts style, is programmed in one of the C languages. But again, don’t quote me on that.
I am a big fan of the Sierra programs like King’s Quest and Space Quest. I have a copy of two .avi files that Ken and Roberta made about the company and their games. If the King’s Quest games were created using AGI or SCI, how were these IDEs created? Did they start out with assembly code? The programming I am learning so far only outputs text to the screen. That is more like Zork. One of the .avi files states that Mystery House was the first game with graphics. I have heard that the old computers you could address the graphics buffer directly. I know this is probably more technical questions than the web page is set up for.
As a fan, I started getting interested in computers when I saw the Atari 64k on display at a local store. At a place where I worked, IBM brought in the PS/2 and showed the employees one of the Kings Quest games on their new system. I bought a computer and Kings Quest III. I have sence purchased KQ IV, KQ V, KQ II, Space Quest, and many more. It is said to see these games no longer working on the new PCs. I still crank up the old computer to play Kings Quest V.
To Ken and Roberta, thank you for the memories from such great games!!!
Ken,
I was wondering if you could get an answer to the question it is a question that has been bothering me for many years now and every time I complete kq7 The same question pops up in my mind. Well any way enough of me blabering about it. Heres the question. At the end of kq7 does Rosella marry Edgar or does she just go home back to Daventry? (Its the good ending by the way)
If any one knew the answer to that it would be you or your wife Roberta.
Thanks on any reply that you can give me.
From what the sales person told me, the “Pre-2004” only applies to PC games (new OR used). Although I know GameStop has begun to phase out the original NES and GameBoy games. Reasons being obvious: It’s too easy to just burn a PC game and sell it back, and #2: People have emulators for almost all of the old consoles on their PCs now and can download almost evey game at less than a meg apice. So nobody’s interested in “booting up” the old console, having to blow on the games, etc. Just us nostalgic types! 🙂
Yeah, it’s true that people *MAY* just dump their stuff at Goodwill, but if they’re not going to get any money for it, it’s easier to dump them in the trash outside EB Games than it is to drive to a goodwill for some people… 🙁 It’s the same if anyone wants old editions of virtually any textbook, just check the trash outside college book stores on “buyback days”
Tom.
Quote:
“… (by JT Harkey) Doing Sierra tech support over the years gets to me sometimes..
then dont do iti see the logic in using vdmsound even with older windows games. these games were designed to run with old soundblaster, adlib, and midi systems, so todays new soundcards probably present some incompatibility, even with the nice hardware abstraction that the windows programming model presents. the windows functions that outputed sound back in the win16 days were designed to work with those old cards. im sure that microsoft has made every effort to make them run in the win32 environment, but that emulation might be flawed in a way that vdmsound could help fix. who knows. certainly not you or i since neither of us developed windows or vdmsound. i haven’t taken the time to look into the source of vdmsound, so i cant say for certain if it helps or not. i doubt that you have either. you are just being rude.
and if someone prefers the windows version over the dos version, good for them. does it really matter to you?
…”
I do it; because usually I can provide a simple, concise answer and fix a simple problem. The concept of ‘making tech support a challenge’ annoys me.But yes, I was rude. I think I apologised.. or if I didn’t, then shame on me. 🙂
Today’s new sound cards are rubbish. I hate the new Creative lines, they’re really not much of an improvement, especially when you look at other audio devices on the market, and especially especially when you see an Audigy costs more than a hundred buckazoids!!
VDM Sound is awesome for sound cards- love it. I think you must’ve misread earlier posts.
Then again, you shouldn’t have bothered replying at all.. 🙂Yes, you’re quite right with your last comment. I think I already made the same point, however..
Regards,
– AlistairThe early KQ games were programmed with Sierra’s propriety AGI system. KQ4 was released in both AGI and Sierra’s next propriety system, SCI. For these games, KQ1-4, the graphics were drawn in the computer. Starting with KQ5 and beyond, the graphics were painted by Sierra’s artists and scanned into the computer, where they were then programmed into the game using various updated versions of SCI over the years.
Ken and Roberta,
I am really excited about this site! I have a question to you both about hardware. Which hardware was your most and least favorite to work with, and why? You can do various hardware, such as different sound cards, different computers (PC, Mac, Amiga, Apple II series, etc), and consoles (such as the Nintendo Entertainment system’s version of KQ5 and the Sega Master System’s version of KQ1). Your games were (and still are) excellent on every system.
When you say EB’s not going to carry games pre-2004, do you mean just new (retail) games, or preowned ones also?
Either way, that’s a pretty narrow focus! (Is it me, or does everybody have REALLY short attention spans nowadays?) The good news, I suppose, is that people who used to sell their old games to EB will now (in theory) be dumping them off at Goodwill… 🙂
Quote:
“… (by johnred9474@aol.com ) hello im John. I love kings quest games. Can you write to me at johred9474@aol.com .…”
Hi John. I really don’t do much writing to individual people. I’m hopelessly outnumbered by people who used to buy Sierra products. If I spent just 1 minute to write a thank you to each one, I would still be writing hundreds of years from now.
A group THANK YOU will have to suffice.
-Ken W
Hi John, and welcome here! Who are you asking to write to you?
If you want to chat about King’s Quest, you can create topics in this forum and chat with everyone here.
hello im John. I love kings quest games. Can you write to me at johred9474@aol.com .
Quote:
“… (by Ken Williams) (by Claireobijedi@msn.com ) … I would like to know how to contact Roberta Williams for permission to use the King’s Quest world and characters;…Claire:
You’ve found us!
The bad news is that all rights to Kings Quest are owned by Vivendi. Roberta and I have no right to authorize anyone to do anything related to Kings Quest.
I wish you luck in getting a response from Vivendi.
-Ken W
…”
Over here PCs represent the de facto standard for gaming. Consoles are cheaper in the short term, but people have come to realise that in the long term a decent PC is much better value for money than a PS2/GameCube/XBox. Not only are PC games far cheaper (here you’ll easily pay two to three times as much for a just released console game as opposed to the same game on PC), but as a rule PC games offer far more depth and a far greater variety of choices.
And sure, some people will complain about the cost of (Microsoft) productivity software, but seriously, if you don’t mind searching a bit you’ll find a free (usually released under the open source banner) version of whatever type of program you need.
In conclusion, as long as there are intelligent gamers, there will be a need for intelligent games. And those you usually don’t find on the consoles.
Sad, sad news:
I went game shopping a couple of days ago, and EB GAMES has officially removed “over 10,000 SKUs” from their computer, which includes ALL of the collections, and pretty much anything PC befre 2004. So as a source for Sierra games, EB GAMES is out. 🙁
Also, GameStop… is phasing out their PC section. The store in my area is pretty much down to the titles nobody wants. So there’s strike two in the used game market.
Rhino Videogames and CyberTron don’t have anything PC anymore.
I guess computers are just turining into internet access ports and places to dump your media files now 🙁
Tom.
