King's Quest II SCI - Gameplay videos and new BGs

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MusicallyInspired
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#76 Post by MusicallyInspired » Tue Nov 20, 2007 1:55 am

That's a completely different animal altogether. I honestly don't think it's entirely possible with SCI. At least not in the scope of my current SCI abilities. KQ1SCI didn't even have Graham reflecting in the water. Well, except for the beginning when he's walking over the bridges but that's only possible because he's walking on a fixed plain (he can't go much higher or lower on the screen when he's on the bridge) and he never gets anywhere near his reflection. Lakes is a different story.

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#77 Post by maestro » Sat Nov 24, 2007 2:38 am

Actually, producing a reflection is not difficult at all.  If you remember, in KQ3, when Alexander walks by the mirror in Mannanan's bedroom, you can see his reflection move with him, and very realistically at that.  When I first saw that, I figured that it must have been very complicated to do.  But then when I disassembled the game while producing my own game, I saw how very simple it all was.  Think about it for a moment.  How could you do a reflection very simply, using only the basic tools that you use to create the game?  If you give up, check the spoiler below:

[spoiler]The reflection is simple another sprite.  In the case of KQ3, it is another sprite of Alexander that moves behind the mirror in tandem with Ego.  To produce a reflection in a lake, you would have to create an upside-down sprite of Graham, then position it antipodally with Ego.  It might even be possible to do this with only one sprite.  Simply create a sprite of Graham with his upside-down reflection already attached to his feet, but with the bottom half invisible due to being behind the ground.  I'm not sure whether this would work, but doing it with two different sprites would certainly work, as that was how it was done in KQ3.  If you wanted to show ripples in the water, place a ripple sprite over the reflection.  There is no simple way that I know of to produce distortions due to ripples, though.[/spoiler]

MusicallyInspired
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#78 Post by MusicallyInspired » Sat Nov 24, 2007 2:59 am

Yeah, I thought about that but for that to work the sprite would have to be beneath EVERYTHING including the lake ripple animations. I guess it would be possible to make everything on the screen except for the water at the lowest possible priority colour and make the reflection sprite one number less than that to ensure that it stays beneath everything except for the water. But then everything that uses that smallest priority colour on the screen would have to be inaccessible for the Ego to reach otherwise you'd risk the chance of the reflection sprite appearing somewhere on the screen other than the lake. Hmmm...it may be tricky but it could very well be possible now that I really think about it and read the points you've made. The biggest thing is, though, that the lake animation isn't simply an opposite reflection in a mirror that goes up when you go down and down when you go up. The sprite would have to go in the same directions and I wasn't sure how good that would look considering I'm no artist and I'm not sure I'd get the perspective quite right, as I'm guessing it wouldn't be just a straight upside down reflection of the original because the camera angle is quite higher than ground level.

Still the idea is a lot more understandable now. Although I'm not sure the game really NEEDS it. KQ1SCI got away with it well enough, for sure. We'll see how it goes anyway. Thanks for that post. Almost sorta convinced me :). Good points!

Hah! Listen to us. Two forum posters with music-related jargon as our handles yet we're talking about art specifics and coding an adventure game!

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#79 Post by Lambonius » Sat Nov 24, 2007 8:59 pm

Nice.  Those last two posts really highlight the beauty of forums like this.  The free exchange of intelligent ideas between like-minded folks.  Good times, all.  Good times.  ;)

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#80 Post by MusicallyInspired » Fri Feb 29, 2008 4:53 pm

More progress on KQ2SCI. This time a background of the Church. It's been redesigned by my good friend LilBlueSmurf of Infamous Adventures. He's graciously lended his talents to produce a few black and white sketches of background reimaginings for me to trace over. Here is the current progress alongside the original AGI screen:

Image Image

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Re: King's Quest II SCI - Gameplay videos and new BGs

#81 Post by DrJones » Sat Jan 24, 2009 11:51 pm

Did you grow tired of making this game? It sure looked fun.

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Re: King's Quest II SCI - Gameplay videos and new BGs

#82 Post by MusicallyInspired » Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:51 am

Nope. Just haven't had time to work on it lately. I still plan to finish it. But as it's a spare time project, when it gets work done on it could be anyone's guess. If I had a hand, however....

Here's the finished screenshot of the church, though, that I apparently forgot to post here way back.

Image

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Re: King's Quest II SCI - Gameplay videos and new BGs

#83 Post by MusicallyInspired » Fri May 07, 2010 9:04 pm

I've actually been working on this lately. The game is almost at alpha stage. That is, completable from beginning to end with all the very basics programmed in. I've finished Dracula's castle yesterday and am working on fishing in the tower realm. After the game is completable I program in the fancy stuff and then it's all artwork from there. Something I'm looking forward to less than programming and scoring the music.

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Re: King's Quest II SCI - Gameplay videos and new BGs

#84 Post by pbpb33 » Sat May 08, 2010 1:28 am

Will this game have a text parser interface? I don't think I've ever played a new remake that had the SCI style and EGA graphics. I'm looking forward to this... especially the new MT-32 music!

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Re: King's Quest II SCI - Gameplay videos and new BGs

#85 Post by MusicallyInspired » Sat May 08, 2010 1:36 am

Yes, it will (must, actually) have a parser because it's being made in the SCI engine as opposed to the AGS engine. So you'll also need DOSBox.

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Re: King's Quest II SCI - Gameplay videos and new BGs

#86 Post by pbpb33 » Sat May 08, 2010 11:32 am

You had worked on IA games that used an icon interface, right? Or had you mostly done music work? Anyway, do you find that it's harder/more challenging to design a game for the text parser, as oppsed to the icon interface... or is it just different? I was just thinking about the difference... and I feel like you could come up with all kinds of fun responses with the text parser that wouldn't be possible with the icons.

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Re: King's Quest II SCI - Gameplay videos and new BGs

#87 Post by DrJones » Sat May 08, 2010 12:46 pm

After having tested both systems, I think it's easier to use a parser. As soon as you add icons, players start to expect more from you (such as having all icons working on everything).

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Re: King's Quest II SCI - Gameplay videos and new BGs

#88 Post by MusicallyInspired » Sat May 08, 2010 3:21 pm

pbpb33 wrote:You had worked on IA games that used an icon interface, right? Or had you mostly done music work? Anyway, do you find that it's harder/more challenging to design a game for the text parser, as oppsed to the icon interface... or is it just different? I was just thinking about the difference... and I feel like you could come up with all kinds of fun responses with the text parser that wouldn't be possible with the icons.
I'm only a composer at IA and I've only ever worked on Space Quest 2 with them. I've dabbled in AGS on little projects of my own but have never seen one through to completion yet. I'd say that working with a parser in SCI is more difficult than working with an icon interface in AGS. Unfortunately I've never worked with a parser in AGS so I don't know its process. I can tell you that working with and programming with the AGS syntax is much much easier than programming with SCI, which is a little less user friendly.
Dr Jones wrote:After having tested both systems, I think it's easier to use a parser. As soon as you add icons, players start to expect more from you (such as having all icons working on everything).
Heh. Well, you could say they are equally as hard to please for either interface. You may have to come up with responses for EVERY object on the screen for every icon, but wouldn't you also have to do the same for the parser? Come up with every single response for what a player could ever think to type in? That's a little more daunting than programming a pre-defined finite list of fewer responses.

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Re: King's Quest II SCI - Gameplay videos and new BGs

#89 Post by pbpb33 » Sun May 09, 2010 1:42 pm

I like it when the responses give hints (albeit VERY vague ones... something I have an idea MI is pretty good at, considering another thread on there) about what you are supposed to do in certain situations. It gives me an incentive to examine a lot in the scene (or type "look at..." often) and get more info about the people and objects in a room... which can make the settings seem richer, in addition to vaguely pointing me in the right direction when I might be lost. I am sympathetic to the plight of game designers having to come up with responses for everything, but there is nothing more annoying sometimes than getting the dreaded "You see nothing special" or "You just can't do that!" canned lines when you try to do something as basic as look through a window or climb a tree. I'm sure players can be a bit demanding, but I think all the hard design work is definitely appreciated!

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Re: King's Quest II SCI - Gameplay videos and new BGs

#90 Post by crayauchtin » Sun May 09, 2010 6:06 pm

That's so true!
I'm a big storyline person, myself, and the immersion into the world of the game absolutely helps with that. I want to look at everything in every scene! And that's almost always how I discover the solutions to things (except in KQ5, which drove me nuts :P) "You see nothing special" aside from being totally unhelpful, isn't true (in my opinion!). I mean, I see something special from outside my computer, how come the little guy inside the computer can't see it? :P

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