Hi Sopfen, good to see you back.
To address your first concern, if a new generation player hasn't experienced the old sierra games, and isn't planning on experiencing them, then there's no harm in letting them play it now. I haven't been able to find any KQ's games for sale in quite some time now, and assume that a person who's never played the series won't spend more time than myself looking for them if they don't know what they are missing. This VGA remake of ours may be the only chance they will ever have of being able to experience a classic Sierra adventure game. And, maybe they'll even be turned on to the idea of looking for the old games (and hopefully, they'll have more luck finding the games than I've had)...that was our goal in making these games. To rekindle and interest in the old Sierra games to get people playing them again. If the demand for such games go up, maybe Sierra will think about making more adventure games.
You highly underestimate our skills. We have very talented artists on our team. We've spent months creating backgrounds, animations, character dialogue pictures, sprites, etc. If we "ripped" all our graphics, then how in the world do you think we could possibly finish Royal Quest, when almost every animation in there is entirely original, and several of the characters are not found in the King's Quest game? It's dangerous to assume things before you know how we went about making these games. I admit, Graham IS the real Sir Graham, from the latter King's Quest games. But, the reason we decided to use his already created animation wasn't because we couldn't make one ourselves, but instead, because our storyline called for doing this. Originally, we didn't plan on releasing our game to the public, and found it funny that Sir Graham was really running around Daventry again. It was a very important aspect of our parody.
Making two games to enhance our skills in writing dialogues, using Photoshop, scripting, drawing, animating, learning to work as a team, and to learn project management, website design, PR, and so on is not what I call a waste of time. It's called learning. Although we'd love to be able to say we made these games with you in mind, we didn't. Our first aim was to learn how to make games. And being able to offer them to people who would enjoy them is something we thought would be nice, although it takes more time on our part..
i personally like the outdated look of 256color Sierra games, as well as many people wanting to be able to play old style games again. In fact, there seems to be a big demand for that look, and you can observe this by looking at all the fanmade adventure game projects out on the internet. The method we used to make backgrounds is the method we found that gave us the look that most closely resembles the old games. Although you think it was easy to make those backgrounds, it was anything but. It took months of three people working everyday in Photoshop to create the whole world for KQ, and if you haven't created such a world, then you have no credibility to be talking about how it is to make them. Although you seem to think we just took old Sierra graphics and rearranged them on a new screen, I can assure you, we did not. In fact, it's interesting that you assumed we did that, and I wonder if perhaps you could be reacting defensively towards our project from something that happened to you in your past involving such types of backgrounds. We did use textures from old sierra games. For instance, grass textures, bark textures, tree leave textures. I consider the method we used to make our backgrounds the equivalent of making 3D art (which isn't my favorite, but, the method works to make a pleasant looking picture). For example, if we wanted to make leaves, we would use the lasso tool to encompass the area needed to be filled, and we would use various leave textures to fill this area in. Then, we would use the paint tools, blur tools, dodge and burn tools (to make highlights and shadows), etc, to further enhance the look of the screen. I'm quite proud of the results to tell you the truth. When I play the game, I feel as if I've truly returned to KQ world, but on a totally new map! This technique is the only way I can think of making the backgrounds that would give the player the real feeling of playing a King's Quest game. And, additionally, there is no way that I was going to paint an entirely new picture on a canvas, by hand, of a world that was designed by somebody else, when I was only planning on making the game for myself, and I was not going to make any money. I would lose money if I did that. I'm sure anybody would understand the logic behind that.
And, I agree with you. AGS is a GREAT tool to make games. In fact, adventure games are very simple to make no matter what tool you use, although it take a LOT of time and effort to complete one. Not many are finished these days, due to the fact that making a game is such an immense task with a todo list that seems neverending. So, I recommend you take a try at making your own game if you are unsatisfied with ours. Or, better yet, just ignore our games, and don't make your own game, and continue playing your old games.
And don't worry, you really don't need to play our remake. We're not asking you to. We already have hundreds of people signed up...we'll probably need to get a new server anyhow to be able to allow for all the traffic we will be receiving. If you're not trying to discourage us, then I don't understand the logic behind posting harsh and untrue comments on our forum. But, don't worry. We're a group of highly motivated individuals that are excited to be able to bring adventure games back to people that have waited so long to get a taste of them again. So, no amount of unthoughtful comments can bring us down.
So, play our finished game if you'd like, and remember, our job is not trying to impress you. It's to finish a high quality adventure game to keep the spirit of the old Sierra games alive and well. And please stop assuming from now on. If you don't know how we're doing something, just ask...we won't bite!
Anonymous Game Developer #1
P.S. I've played the Space Quest sequal, and it was AWESOME. Just goes to show how two different people can have majorly varying opinions.
Edited by: Milan Easton at: 5/18/01 11:07:33 am
