Quest for Glory I in flash
Posted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 12:07 pm
My favourite game from my childhood was Quest for Glory I. As a fairly experienced independent game developer, this weekend I decided as a fun project I'd see how I go porting Quest for Glory I to Flash.
Currently I have the entire land of Spielburg ported over, and I can happily walk through the (unpopulated) forest, reliving my childhood memories.
Now I'm thinking, before I continue this project, I should probably work out whether it's worth investing my time in.
There's a lot of benefits of having Quest for Glory I in Flash. For starters, people can play the game through any browser without downloading files or install the game, and they don't have to navigate DosBox. The game is very viable as a flash game thanks to the low resolution and low colours of the game, meaning the entire library of graphic files is on par - filesize-wise - with any standard graphics intensive flash game.
The drawbacks that I must determine are mostly focussed on copyright infringement, use of the original graphics/music and whether allowing people to play this game online for free will impact on sales of the original (if infact this game is still sold).
And the final reason I would want to port it over to flash is I can play around with fun stuff such as a 'co-op' mode, which would allow multiple players to complete the game together. Technically this isn't a huge challenge for me as I've created multiplayer Flash games before (although each game does present its own challenges).
Before you yell sacrilege, this wouldn't mean drastic changes to the gameplay. This would just mean different players could collect different items and trade them. Combat would probably remain the same (four players can't gang up on one monster), although penalities for not sleeping would have to be removed (otherwise the game will desynch if one player sleeps for 1 hour and the other doesn't). Death will just result in you reappearing at the last safe screen, which is a better option to the incessant saving and loading. To explain the multiple hero clones wandering the same screen I can make reference to a multiverse malfunction as kind of an in-joke.
Many of the sequences such as Brigand's Lair and Kobald's cave would still need to be completed once for each player to complete the quest. I couldn't imagine having four player running around the Brigand's Lair without drastically changing the gameplay.
So my questions are.
1) Should I continue developing this, or will copyright infringement inevitably see this shut down?
2) Would you like to see a co-op mode in Quest for Glory I, or do you think it will dumb down the gameplay too much and spoil the magic of the original?
Currently I have the entire land of Spielburg ported over, and I can happily walk through the (unpopulated) forest, reliving my childhood memories.
Now I'm thinking, before I continue this project, I should probably work out whether it's worth investing my time in.
There's a lot of benefits of having Quest for Glory I in Flash. For starters, people can play the game through any browser without downloading files or install the game, and they don't have to navigate DosBox. The game is very viable as a flash game thanks to the low resolution and low colours of the game, meaning the entire library of graphic files is on par - filesize-wise - with any standard graphics intensive flash game.
The drawbacks that I must determine are mostly focussed on copyright infringement, use of the original graphics/music and whether allowing people to play this game online for free will impact on sales of the original (if infact this game is still sold).
And the final reason I would want to port it over to flash is I can play around with fun stuff such as a 'co-op' mode, which would allow multiple players to complete the game together. Technically this isn't a huge challenge for me as I've created multiplayer Flash games before (although each game does present its own challenges).
Before you yell sacrilege, this wouldn't mean drastic changes to the gameplay. This would just mean different players could collect different items and trade them. Combat would probably remain the same (four players can't gang up on one monster), although penalities for not sleeping would have to be removed (otherwise the game will desynch if one player sleeps for 1 hour and the other doesn't). Death will just result in you reappearing at the last safe screen, which is a better option to the incessant saving and loading. To explain the multiple hero clones wandering the same screen I can make reference to a multiverse malfunction as kind of an in-joke.
Many of the sequences such as Brigand's Lair and Kobald's cave would still need to be completed once for each player to complete the quest. I couldn't imagine having four player running around the Brigand's Lair without drastically changing the gameplay.
So my questions are.
1) Should I continue developing this, or will copyright infringement inevitably see this shut down?
2) Would you like to see a co-op mode in Quest for Glory I, or do you think it will dumb down the gameplay too much and spoil the magic of the original?