Progress Update Thread (formerly known as quest for glory 2)

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Brainiac
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Quest for Infamy

#76 Post by Brainiac » Tue Sep 11, 2007 7:29 pm

RoBBiE, the game you're referring to is Infamous Adventures' Quest for Infamy.  It was originally intended to be kind of dark tribute to the original QfG series, set a few decades after The Hero's travels, but has recently begun being redesigned as a wholly new story with just tribute to the style of QfG rather than the world of Gloriana itself.

Feel free to check out the website at www.infamous-adventures.com and drop by our forums, too!

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#77 Post by RoBBiE » Wed Sep 12, 2007 10:25 am

That's the game I meant Brainiac, didn't know adverting was allowed. I like the idea of the game and will certainly check it in the future!

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#78 Post by MacGyver » Sun Sep 16, 2007 5:20 pm

Just noticed that the main page's been updated and referred to this thread, which is great and hopefully it'll prevent people asking for the completion date. Also noticed in http://www.agdiforums.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11593 that it's only AGD2 and Erpy working on the debugging. What happened to AGD1? Is she done with her part in the remake? She's been really quiet in the forums, or perhaps I don't know her handle

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#79 Post by Erpy » Sun Sep 16, 2007 6:11 pm

Her handle is Milan Easton, but you're right, she has been very scarce around here. Fortunately, since she's never been involved with the programming department, her lack of presence isn't holding progress back.

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#80 Post by Erpy » Mon Sep 17, 2007 4:44 am

A couple more:

79) Ride the saurus to the caged beast screen, then dismount. Walk over the northern dune and the saurus will disappear behind it. Same thing happens if you enter the screen over the same dune.

80) When you say goodbye to Aziza, but you ask/tell her about less than 5 things she should say the line about not conversing longer.

81) When dismounting your saurus in Julanar's screen, the saurus should walk into a certain position before the hero dismounts (like in the oasis).

91) After escaping from the jail cell into the alley and walking south into the next alley screen, pressing ctrl-r to view the map places the hero marker either in the fountain plaza (or on the first street to the left when walking from the gates plaza to the fountain plaza)... rather than placing the hero marker at the correct street location (at the equivalent of Trabb Darb on the Shapeir map).


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#81 Post by BrianR » Mon Sep 17, 2007 11:19 pm

Probably should not assume but does this mean you have less than 100 bugs before the beta testing?

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#82 Post by Erpy » Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:32 am

Those numbers barely matter. Whenever new bugs arise, we simply give them the numbers of bugs that have already been crossed off the list.

(we started doing that a month or two back in order to avoid the psychological effect of having the counter over 1000)

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#83 Post by alerith » Sat Sep 29, 2007 1:17 am

Hi there!
Just wanted to let you guys know I love your Kings Quest work and I can't wait for Quest for Glory II VGA. I'm so glad to see the project isn't dead and that it will be finished soon. I'm sure you guys at AGDI know how much this project means to so many people.

Keep up the good work, can't wait!

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#84 Post by gueron2 » Sat Sep 29, 2007 6:19 am

alerith wrote:Hi there!
Just wanted to let you guys know I love your Kings Quest work and I can't wait for Quest for Glory II VGA. I'm so glad to see the project isn't dead and that it will be finished soon. I'm sure you guys at AGDI know how much this project means to so many people.

Keep up the good work, can't wait!
i  agree to all he wrote , great job , keep it up

thank you for a great site !

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#85 Post by Paladinlover » Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:01 am

I've been patient and uncomplaining for all the years that QFG 2 has been in production and I will remain so till the day it's released! :D I know, deep down, that it won't be long at all.

Till next time stay cool  :smokin

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#86 Post by Erpy » Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:38 am

A few more:

44) Right now, it's way too easy for a beginning character to beat Issur at arm wrestling on the first attempt. My thief with only 85 strength beat him on the first try.

73) I never noticed the "You're getting tired." message appearing at midnight when I was still awake. I noticed it only once when resting an hour at a time in my room. I woke up at midnight and then received the 'you're getting tired' message after standing.

The "You're getting tired." message is now appearing in the game when you stay up after midnight, as it should. However, it's also still appearing if you rest an hour on your bed in the Katta's Tail inn room and "night is young" mode clicks over to "midnight" mode. When you're resting  in your bed the "You're getting tired" message should never appear when you wake up at midnight.

I believe it should stay, as it's an indicator that it may be time to get some extended sleep. I've made it now so that the message won't appear if you slept until night and got up after sunset. (as well as fixing up a few things in the sleeping system) Note that it's not possible to avoid the negative effects of no sleep by continously resting one hour, nor is it possible to diminish them that way. You need a certain amount of consecutive hours of sleep in order to do that.

87) On night 15, the night gate guard says that "the caravan will depart the morning after this day"... even though it's still only day 15. The night gate guard should not say that line until it's passed midnight on night 15 (effectively, day16).

A couple of things:

A) If you enter at "night is still young" on night 15, Abdallah only barks "The caravan to Raseir will leave here at the light of dawn in two days time"  the first time you enter. He should repeat that particular bark every time you enter the saurus lot on night 15 when the night is still young. The day guard should also repeat this bark whenever you enter the saurus lot at day.

B) If you enter the saurus lot at midnight on night 15, Abdallah will still bark "The Caravan traveling to Raseir will depart the morning after this day, oh Hero." He should not say this bark until 'Not yet Dawn' on day 16. And that's the only time he should ever be able to say it.



110) The torches on the back wall of the EOF room need burning flame animations added during (and after) EOF battle with Walid.

They will also need LOOK descriptions: "It is a flickering flame."

116) On day 9 (perhaps other days when it's present too) the astrologer will bark about the wind in the city even after you have captured the air elemental in the bellows.  If any elemental has been caught, he should not bark about them when the hero enters. I noticed this for other elementals too. If the elemental threat has been dealt with, Abu should just revert to saying his generic bark.

Two things:
1) Abu no longer barks about the air elemental after you've defeated it, but when you enter in that scenario now, he doesn't say a generic bark either. After defeating all of the elementals he should at least say a generic bark when you enter rather than not barking at all.

2) I noticed that when you enter Abu's screen while an Elemental is present, his generic barks (i.e. the dart throwing and book reading etc.) will have priority over the elemental barks IF the generic ones haven't been heard yet. If an elemental is present, then he should always bark about that as his first priority. He can go back to saying the other generic barks on later days when nothing important is happening. The ONLY thing that should have priority over his elemental barks, is if you return to receive your fortune from him on a day when an elemental's on the loose.


117) When you talk to Omar on the evening of Day11 at the katta's tail inn, "Earth Elemental" shows up on his P&C menu under "Daily News" even though it has not appeared in the game yet.

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#87 Post by Keenermart » Mon Oct 08, 2007 10:31 pm

Y'know, I've never engaged in programming/game-creating, and I probably never will... but I find all this trouble-shooting stuff that you've been posting incredibly interesting, and I'm glad you decided to start sharing some of these things with us... I really had no comprehension of what all went into making a game ready to put out to the public (at least one without 4 million bugs, ie - QFG 4).  Ok, that's all.. keep up the good work, ladies and gentlemen. :)

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#88 Post by Almagnus1 » Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:15 am

Actually QFG4's bugs are a bit interesting (to say the least).  Actually why they are there is interesting.

Ever notice how the game works flawlessly in DOSBox?

Well, that is to say, as flawlessly as a game does in DOSBox :D

What happenned (back in the day) was that games were written assuming a constant processor speed, so drawing and doing ingame stuff was based on how many cycles elapsed (as opposed to time elapsed like every game today).  This is why the VGA version of QFG1, QFG3, and QFG4 have speed problems when running in Windows natively.  DOSBox fixes this by emulating (essentially fooling the games to thinking) that they are on the processor they were designed for.

When QFG4 is ran on newer machines, some of the code dependant upon having X cycles elapse occurs too quickly, so we start getting erratic errors.

It is interesting to note that QFG1 (Original) and QFG2 work just fine in XP where the others do not.

Hopefully that bit of technical rambling was more enlightening than confusing.

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#89 Post by Lambonius » Tue Oct 09, 2007 3:31 pm

I've found QFG4 to be quite buggy even running under dosbox at proper clock speeds (I've done a LOT of experimentation to this effect and found that the game is simply flawed, no matter what speed it's set at.)  There's a lot of various event-timing and conversation bugs that still happen no matter what (actually, many of these are quite similar to the bugs Erpy just posted.)  You can get the game running in dosbox without any of the speed-related issues to be sure, but it's still a long way from bug free.  :)

Also, even in dosbox, the game still requires the NewRisingSun patch before all those clock speed problems are fixed.

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#90 Post by Paladinlover » Tue Oct 09, 2007 6:15 pm

Just hearing about all those bugs you people are smashing out makes me happy beyond all belief. Words cannot express my gratitude. :) But enough of the melodrama. :p
I really had no comprehension of what all went into making a game ready to put out to the public (at least one without 4 million bugs, ie - QFG 4).  Ok, that's all.. keep up the good work, ladies and gentlemen.
It's a business and they got deadlines to meet. That's why games are sent out before they're fully bug proof. Back in the old days of gaming, before the mass use of the internet, you could trust a game to be relatively bug free before it was released since there was no way of making a patch that would be easily obtainable by most people. Now that the internet is here, many games are chronically sloppy, but at least the patches are made to fix them up and anyone can download them easily. Methinks the reason why games are released with so much bugs is to reduce development time, and as such reduce the cost of hammering them out before they can turn a profit. Also it reduces time for bug hunting since the gamers would encounter the bugs and come to the forums to complain about them, the developers note this and the severity, then patch it up accordingly.

QFG 4 had bugs, for sure, but the truth is, with the exception of Error 52, I don't think most of them were serious and were easily averted (you don't need to touch the ghost in the stairwell and you can set the detail, sound and difficulty to minimum while maximizing the speed to get past the slide). With DosBox around, the problems are pretty much manageable, and I should mention that I've seen a lot of contemporary games that have more annoying bugs than error 52 and with less remedy.
It is interesting to note that QFG1 (Original) and QFG2 work just fine in XP where the others do not.
They work, but without the sound. Also if you turn up the player's speed to maximum he goes warp speed and I don't think it was intended to be that fast. :p Anyways, one notable thing that shows how fast the game runs in QFG 2 is during Shema's dance... notice the Katta musician's animation is practically light speed. :p

Till next time stay cool  :smokin

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#91 Post by Ekinatial » Tue Oct 09, 2007 11:19 pm

On the topic of dosbox... I was able to get qfg1-3 to work beautifully on it (namely there was SOUND in qfg1 and 2, and the sound in 3 wasn't all messed up). However, I can't get qfg4's sound to work right. On windows, I have the 2 types of sound (in the intro, the music and the howling is how I always tell), but the sound is messed up like in qfg3, where it's low quality and skips parts. With dosbox, the sound works correctly like qfg3 does, but I can't get both music types to work - only the music (no howling). I've attempted messing around with setup, but nothing seemed to work too well.  Has anyone had this problem and overcome it, or otherwise have a solution?

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#92 Post by The Guy » Wed Oct 10, 2007 12:23 am

I used to have a problem with QFG4 sound as well, but I think it had more to do with an older version of Dosbox. I'd get a stutter every other second or so. Since the latest updates for it, the sound & music works flawlessly for me. Also, I use the soundblaster or SB Pro options for use with the game.

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Bugs and patches

#93 Post by Brainiac » Wed Oct 10, 2007 4:37 am

Paladinlover wrote:
Keenermart wrote:I really had no comprehension of what all went into making a game ready to put out to the public (at least one without 4 million bugs, ie - QFG 4).  Ok, that's all.. keep up the good work, ladies and gentlemen.
It's a business and they got deadlines to meet. That's why games are sent out before they're fully bug proof. Back in the old days of gaming, before the mass use of the internet, you could trust a game to be relatively bug free before it was released since there was no way of making a patch that would be easily obtainable by most people. Now that the internet is here, many games are chronically sloppy, but at least the patches are made to fix them up and anyone can download them easily. Methinks the reason why games are released with so much bugs is to reduce development time, and as such reduce the cost of hammering them out before they can turn a profit. Also it reduces time for bug hunting since the gamers would encounter the bugs and come to the forums to complain about them, the developers note this and the severity, then patch it up accordingly.
True.  After all, the costs and deadlines were what resulted in the oh-so-buggy QfG4; a mere two weeks of QA does not a stable game make.

With the internet, it's far easier to obtain patches but it's still detrimental for a company to release highly buggy products; it reflects poorly on them professionally.

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#94 Post by Lambonius » Wed Oct 10, 2007 6:10 am

A quick off-topic response to the sound issue with QFG4 in dosbox:  I've had the same problem, and the only absolutely foolproof solution that has worked for me is installing the game from the cd first, then doing a complete disc to harddrive copy, and then setting that directory as the cdrom drive in dosbox.  The sounds that don't play (I believe,) are the ones that are supposed to be read straight off the cd when they are played.  So having the complete cdrom copy there is the only thing that consistently works.  I've repeatedly had this problem with downloaded versions of QFG4, so I finally just went over to my parent's house and dug out my old QFG Anthology disc.  

I've also found that different frontends (if you're using one, that is) can interfere with the sound setup, especially if you aren't completely familiar with them (I had issues when I switched from Dfend to DOG, but solved them once I figured out DOG's intricacies.)

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#95 Post by Erpy » Wed Oct 10, 2007 4:07 pm

Since this is the thread that's being linked to from the main site as the thread containing updates, may I ask that people remain on topic as much as possible in here? That way, it'll be easier for casual visitors to browse through.

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#96 Post by augie1111 » Wed Oct 17, 2007 5:21 pm

I haven't been here for a quite a while and I'm glad to finally see a centralized thread on the progress even though I understand nothing about the nitty gritty of game making. There's another 9 page thread here which I'm not going to even touch, I have better things to do.;) It's good to see the progress being made on the way to a beta and I really appreciate the time taken by the makers to keep us informed. I guess it's time to get reacquainted with QFG1 in anticipation. Thanks all for your great work!

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#97 Post by DonQuixote » Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:51 am

I'm also very pleased that there is a centralized thread for the game's progress and that there has been a wealth of information as to it's status and even what's currently being worked on.  Before I personally knew that if there wasn't a new journal entry out yet, that there was information to be found in a variety of threads but I also felt that new-comers might get discouraged trying to find a specific answer to questions regarding progress.  

In addition to my gratitude for this thread I want to thank the team members who are posting, especially Erpy.  Keep up the good work.

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#98 Post by Erpy » Thu Oct 25, 2007 10:46 am

A few more:

135) In the open desert, when casting Force Bolt's at the Ghoul, it doesn't seem to do any damage when it explodes on him whatsoever. However, casting Force Bolt during combat against the Ghoul does. Flame Dart deals damage to the Ghoul when cast from afar, so I guess the fact that Force Bolt doesn't register any damage with him is a bug.

I had trouble damaging the ghoul too, but there's nothing wrong with the damage registration...I tweaked the dazzle spell to freeze the ghoul in place too, so I could get a clearer shot at him and the force bolt damaged it as usual. So I guess the issue is just that since the ghoul can't normally be dazzled/calmed, it's a lot trickier to actually hit it.

I lowered the overlapping value, making it easier to hit with force bolt. You still need to lead your target, but I was able to hit the ghoul succesfully with a force bolt. (without freezing him)


138) I killed a pack of 4 jackals from afar in the desert. But when walking over the bodies, the hero appeared behind one of the corpses. Whenever you kill monsters from afar, particularly jackal groups, none of the corpse baselines should not allow the hero to be drawn behind them.

Did that body happen to be near a rock/cactus? Because if they're within the desert object's vicinity, the game alters the baselines so the monster won't be drawn partially behind/partially in front of it. I guess this one's a slight side effect, but I'm not sure what I could do to change it...messing with the baselines causes the aforementioned issue to return.

144) If you witness the Ugarte arrest scene and then walk down followed by left into Raseir alley room 402, pos 831 (where the 2 guards are blocking the street), casting ANY spell and also throwing daggers/rocks or using the magic rope, should all be disabled in this room while the 2 guards are present.

148) If you kill a monster from afar in the desert (with a dagger/rock/spell) and then throw any daggers at the dead corpse, it will not be possible to retrieve those daggers. They should be retrievable if you click the HAND on the ground. Not sure if the same thing happens if you throw a dagger at an easter egg char

150) If you enter the katta's tail inn from your room at night on night 11, after the hero accepts the reward from Omar, while he walks to the table to sit down, the flame on the hero's table temporarily gets drawn behind the table's walkbehind mask.

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#99 Post by MacGyver » Thu Oct 25, 2007 4:21 pm

Thanks for the updates as usual, Erpy.

I don't recall Force Bolt capable of doing any damages in QFG games. Perhaps I'm having some memory leak here.

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#100 Post by techie775 » Thu Oct 25, 2007 5:04 pm

The more I keep reading about these bugs, the more I just want to play the original QFG2. I forgot how much stuff is in that game. Thanks for the progress info.

And I remember in qfg3 force bolt was one of the spells if you had magic you could use on the battle screen. Yes it does cause damage. Seems like every game you got a new projectile spell: 1;Flame Dart
                                              2;Force Bolt
                                              3;Lightning Ball
                                              4; Frost Bite
                                              5; There was a bunch... I remember the one with the skull...

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