King's Quest II Remake v3.1 Released! (now with Mac Version)

[Anonymous Game Creator 2]

Update: 18 November 2010:
Patch Update v3.1 to v3.1b. (Windows only)


Update: 12 September 2010:
King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones (Version 3.1) has been released for both PC and Mac. Again, a big thanks for Les Wavrychuk for assisting with the Mac version!

You can get the latest builds from the King's Quest 2 page on the AGDI website.

Important: Remember to uninstall any previous versions of King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones from your system prior to installing version 3.1. Since we have changed installer software, v3.1 shouldn't be installed over an existing installation, as this has the potential to leave ghost files behind when you later uninstall. Save game files are, unfortunately, not compatible between different game versions.

CHANGES TO VERSION 3.1
----------------------
WARNING: GAME SPOILERS AHEAD

- Fixed: a crash on the title screen triggered by reloading the game in Vista and Windows 7 without Admin privileges
- Fixed: a crash when loading save-game files by double-clicking on them and then clicking restart
- Fixed: a bug where character and object tint/shade levels displayed incorrectly under Direct3D mode
- Fixed: potential freezing of the video stream in the introduction Magic Mirror movie sequence
- Fixed: a bug where the mouth icon became active in the final Cloud Spirit test instead of the arrow
- Fixed: a bug which made it possible to walk using the arrow keys when the walk icon was disabled
- Fixed: a bug when reading the bible which caused the wrong background frame to appear behind the page
- Fixed: graphics filters in the winsetup.exe program crashing the game
- Fixed: an oversight where the Count could appear during the swamp wolf ambush scene.
- Changed: the visibility of Graham and the seahorse as they near the fake wall in the Sharkee's realm
- Changed: the appearance of Graham's hair in the dialog portrait without his adventurer's hat
- Changed: save-games to be saved in the game directory again rather than in My Documents/My Saved Games
- Changed: the game's installer to use Inno Setup for better compression and performance
- Added: an Apple Mac port of the game
- Added: a checkbox to the installer asking whether the user wants to create a game desktop icon or not


Update: 14 March 2009:
Hey everyone! Following in the familiar footsteps of its little brother, King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown v4.0, we at AGD Interactive are pleased (and very relieved) to finally announce the latest and greatest version of King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones for your playing pleasure!

Like its recently released predecessor, this version is less of an update and more of a complete overhaul. You will find that many of the same aspects have been improved, enhanced, and updated, as was the case with the King's Quest I remake. However, given King's Quest II's strong story-driven plot and memorable characters, the improvements really have a chance to shine in this game! We're all very happy with the final result, and hopefully the few little quirks that existed in previous versions have been ironed out, so that this game can stand alongside the classical greats like King's Quest VI, as far as quality and gameplay enjoyment are concerned.

Like King's Quest v4.0, this King's Quest II v3.0 remake was originally slated to be included on Vivendi's King's Quest Collection, but those plans were not passed onto their new project manager when the internal team working on the collections was changed. Consequently, we decided to finish Romancing the Stones and release the new version via our own website instead.

Again, the most noticeable visual improvement in the new version of King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones, is the exceptional graphical overhaul of the background artwork by John Paul Selwood (Kqartist), Emily Selwood (rose1), and Johan Botes (Gronagor). Thanks to these very talented artists, the land of Kolyma is now more captivating, detailed, and colorful than ever before! So many intricate details have been included in the backgrounds to bring them up to par with the quality work of Sierra's most esteemed VGA artists of yesteryear. The enhanced artwork truly brings a whole new level to the King's Quest II remake that simply wasn't there before! When you play the game, you'll see that it now takes on more of a storybook fairytale feel. Somehow, the melding of the enhanced artwork and the narrator vocals make it seem more immersive and "complete".

Voice and Radio actor John Bell has, once again, generously recorded the entire narration vocals for the game. That's right, over 3,800 (count 'em!) lines of narration audio now grace King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones (while happily contributing to bloating the filesize of the download!). Anyone who has played previous versions of Romancing the Stones will recall that narration vocals was a key element missing from the game -- particularly in light of the fact that we did include speech for King Graham and all of the NPCs. The new narrator track plays a heightened role in Romancing the Stones, however, since unlike King's Quest I, an actual story is being related as the game unfolds. Therefore, the narrator track is aimed at bringing the gameplay experience much closer to that of Sierra On-Line's King's Quest V and King's Quest VI. We think that being TOLD the story, rather than having to read it manually, feels more personal to the player and helps to include them as part of the game world, rather than merely painting them as an outside observer. Please take a moment to check out John Bell's podcasts at Bells in the Batfry. Or even just let him know that you enjoyed his work on his forums!

Along with the narrator vocals, all of the character speech has been enhanced and amplified for Version 3.0. In the previous speech pack builds, the speech audio files were optimized for smaller filesize and a faster download speed. This means that the quality and clarity of the sound took a significant hit, and resulted in the speech files being somewhat distorted, tinny, or muffled, due to the very low bitrate they were encoded at. In Version 3.0, however, every line of speech has been remastered from its original .wav source file (Lucky I kept those suckers, whew!). All audible background humming and hissing ambiance noise has been removed, pops and clicks in the audio have been muted, and the speech files have been amplified, and encoded at a higher bitrate. While all of this has inevitably increased the game's filesize significantly, it also brings the rest of the game's vocals closer to the high-quality of John Bell's narrator recordings. It also makes the clarity of the speech crisper and easier on the ears. I think players will agree that the trade-offs were well worth it!

On top of that, over 1000 character speech lines have been completely lip-synced for Version 3.0. Britney (AGD1) and myself have also re-edited and refined all of the dialogue portraits, given them matching lip-synced talking frames and fixing any proportional discrepancies that formerly existed the artwork -- oh, and YES, the "head-bobbing while talking" effect that so many people complained about in previous builds has finally been neutralized (what WERE we thinking?)

Unlike King's Quest I Version 4.0, this new build doesn't contain a "No-Dead Ends" feature, as the game design of Romancing the Stones never contained any walking dead-ends to begin with.

Other featuers are Windows Vista support, Native Ogg Theora movies (meaning in-game cutscenes/movies will now play under Linux and Mac emulators like Wine). And as mentioned above, the digital Speech and Music are now included as part of the download, rather than being separate downloadable files.

Hats off to also to Prio, Thepal, Deltamatrix, Renodox, and Angelus for beta testing Version 3.0 and enduring more playthroughs than any person who wasn't forced at gunpoint could muster. And thanks to Chris Jones for consistently coming through with the goods when AGS issues presented themselves and helping to quickly resolve them!

Last but not least, we've launched a sparkling new King's Quest II sub-site to compliment the release of the game. Eriq Chang has worked tirelessly to get this online, and it looks a million bucks! Check it out, spend a bit of time navigating and you'll find all the familiar information as well as some new sections. Another fine website production that has been Chang'ed to perfection. Thanks Eriq! And thanks team!

Just remember to uninstall any previous version of King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones (as well as previous Voice and Music pack add-on packs) from your system before installing this new version. Go get it!

http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/kq2/

[Brainiac]

First response. Woo-hoo!

Glad to see it; I'll give it a look right now.

[Broomie]

Downloading. Artwork looks stunning.

[1234567890]

W00T! I am playing now!

[DrJones]

This one overhaul was done ultrafast, are you a robot or what?

Downloading now before the digg effect destroys your servers.

[1234567890]

DONE! what an amazing game! Beat it! *wow, I'm good!*

[Broomie]

Fantastic, so far. It's been so long since I've played it and I intend to play it from start to finish, hopefully getting the full points!

Is the Murray easter egg still in there? I repeatedly talked to the skulls outside Hagatha's cave and although I got a response from Bonehead I didn't from the other skull. Is he still there or did a legal issue pop up?

[MusicallyInspired]

Woohoo! Beautiful!

[1234567890]

Woohoo! Beautiful!

'tis! And, just as KQ1, it works great in Wine!

[Brainiac]

Is the Murray easter egg still in there? I repeatedly talked to the skulls outside Hagatha's cave and although I got a response from Bonehead I didn't from the other skull. Is he still there or did a legal issue pop up?

I'm betting it's not; I tried a lot of times on the eyeless skull with no luck while Bonehead triggered very quickly (nice redone voicework for him, by the way). Legal issues may not have cropped up, but given LucasArts' penchant for legal action, it makes sense to remove a voiceclip bodily ripped from one of their games. It still stinks, though.

I would recommend Morte as a replacement, but technically, he's better endowed than both Murray and Bonehead (he still has his eyes).

[1234567890]

I think they got rid of it. I looked for it too. Oh well, rather you didn't get sued.

[AGP]

Thanks a lot, AGDs, for another improvement. It should be great.

[Anonymous Game Creator 2]

Yes, the Murray voice sample and Easter Egg was removed from this version. It's one of those things Vivendi would not have been happy about, so we removed it long before we ever sent them a review copy.

[Boogeyman]

Doesn't matter if they're unhappy about it, they can't legally do anything.

[Anonymous Game Creator 2]

Aside from LucasArts hitting us with a copyright infringement lawsuit and Vivendi preventing us from releasing the remakes, nope, nothing at all!

[Broomie]

Lucasarts would probably sue you if you wore a Guybrush Threepwood costume to a party.

Anyway, great game as always! Completed it just now and it looks and sounds a lot better than it did. I was wondering if there'd be more AGDI guests at the ceremony at the end. Oh well, I enjoyed it!

[eriqchang]

Lucasarts would probably sue you if you wore a Guybrush Threepwood costume to a party.

That was very funny. Made me chuckle.

[Brainiac]

Lucasarts would probably sue you if you wore a Guybrush Threepwood costume to a party.

Unless you ask very nicely in advance (like that one kid who put on The Secret of Monkey Island as a school play).

[Erpy]

Apparantly, the Germans don't care.

(these photo's were made when Brit visited Europe and we travelled to Bonn, Germany for a day. We noticed the poster while we were having lunch there. Apparantly it was a dance party or something. I don't think it was affiliated with LA. Anyway, this discussion reminded me about this.)



EDIT: (Crap, sorry about the stretched thread)

[Brainiac]

HA! That's brillliant! Germans get away with so much in the adventure market (I think because they're currently the biggest).

[Gronagor]

Hehe. And not even an attempt to change it a little. Remind me of a new restaurant that opened here 1 month after QfG5 came out. They blatantly used the cover of the QfG5 box as their logo (the shadowed face with the sword). They closed 6 months later....

Been waiting for this release! Fantastic!

[Boogeyman]

Aside from LucasArts hitting us with a copyright infringement lawsuit and Vivendi preventing us from releasing the remakes, nope, nothing at all!

It's not copyright infringement if the game is free!

[Erpy]

Actually, it is. Copyright infringement has nothing to do with making money off of something. It's simply using a copyrighted element without permission from the copyright holder. (an example would be software piracy...which is illegal regardless of whether the pirate sells the pirated copies or whether he distributes them without asking money)

[1234567890]

Actually, it is. Copyright infringement has nothing to do with making money off of something. It's simply using a copyrighted element without permission from the copyright holder. (an example would be software piracy...which is illegal regardless of whether the pirate sells the pirated copies or whether he distributes them without asking money)

and THAT is why TSL almost got cancelled.

[Gronagor]

Ah! Let's not start that discussion again! Just accept that if you use anything without permission you can get into trouble.... anything!