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I get that. What I don't get is why Sierra didn't. Nobody took a look at Cedric at some point during development and said "Okay, this is a problem. We can't possibly release the game like this."?
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# ? Feb 27, 2021 13:04 |
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I imagine they meant to flesh his role out more later, and then later never came. Happens often enough in game dev.
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In the original version Cedric wasn't really a problem, the issue came up once the CD version with it's... interesting... take on voice acting came along. To say more will have to wait for us to get to the game.
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Missing key moments to screencap? Fraps or otherwise capture the footage, then go through it and screencap at leisure.
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Xander77 posted:Missing key moments to screencap? Fraps or otherwise capture the footage, then go through it and screencap at leisure. Technical difficulties the entire night. ScummVM, it turns out, doesn't like Sierra VGA titles. It straight up skips entire audio clips completely at random. I also had far more trouble than I should have with capturing the game at my desired resolution instead of being upscaled to my monitor's native. I had a third of the game recorded and had to scrap all of it because of the first issue.
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DoubleNegative looked at the ruined footage, sighed wistfully, and turned off the computer. "No more for today."
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This was my second adventure game, right after Monkey Island. The design philosophy completely blindsided me, to put it midly.
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Fat Samurai posted:This was my second adventure game, right after Monkey Island. The design philosophy completely blindsided me, to put it midly. I'm pretty sure this is the one and only KQ game I've ever played. If it is the one I'm curious to see what complete bullshit I missed that would have let me get through the mountain pass without either being eaten by whatever the gently caress it was or freezing to death. I could manage one but not the other at the point I decided I was having no fun whatsoever and gave the drat thing back.
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Fat Samurai posted:This was my second adventure game, right after Monkey Island. The design philosophy completely blindsided me, to put it midly.
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Poil posted:Well it's no wonder since you play like a dairy farmer. Even BEFORE they smell your breath? Wait...
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Fat Samurai posted:This was my second adventure game, right after Monkey Island. The design philosophy completely blindsided me, to put it mildly. I don't think I could imagine a bigger whiplash between two games of the same era and nominally the same genre.
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DoubleNegative posted:Technical difficulties the entire night. ScummVM, it turns out, doesn't like Sierra VGA titles. It straight up skips entire audio clips completely at random. I also had far more trouble than I should have with capturing the game at my desired resolution instead of being upscaled to my monitor's native. ![]() ![]()
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That's my name! ![]()
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DoubleNegative posted:That's my name! ![]() ![]()
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Oh good, now it's time to see my childhood struggles validated.
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Anime Reference posted:I don't think I could imagine a bigger whiplash between two games of the same era and nominally the same genre. I went from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to Loom.
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Anime Reference posted:I imagine they meant to flesh his role out more later, and then later never came. Happens often enough in game dev. Do you reckon the same philosophy was used when it came to designing the puzzles? ("How about this? To find the second key, the player has to put a not-very-obviously magical bridal on a random snake to make it turn into a pegasus! Huh? What kind of sense does that make? Pffft, we'll worry about that later! Now, let's talk about that bridge you're only allowed to cross a limited number of times before it breaks and your save file becomes worthless...")
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And a lack of bug-testing, which led to the infamous Air-sick Bag puzzle in the Lesiure Suit Larry Series - where they wanted to make sure the parser can read the extremely specific instructions, but forgot to implement the common shorthand words (so you have to type air-sick bag, not just bag and you're running on a timer)
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The issue with the airsick bag was that 'bag' was being interpreted by the parser as a verb instead of a noun. Still really unforgivable that's it's a key component of the final puzzle of the game and there's no point in the game where you would use bag as a verb...
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Eshettar posted:Do you reckon the same philosophy was used when it came to designing the puzzles? ("How about this? To find the second key, the player has to put a not-very-obviously magical bridal on a random snake to make it turn into a pegasus! Huh? What kind of sense does that make? Pffft, we'll worry about that later! Now, let's talk about that bridge you're only allowed to cross a limited number of times before it breaks and your save file becomes worthless...") In a case like this, I cannot imagine why someone didn't have the idea to make it that, if you talk to the "snake", he neighs like a horse. That doesn't tell you the answer, but it's a solid hint.
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Eshettar posted:.........Owl's Quest? On the one hand, actually playing as Cedric. On the other, there's no possible way his sidekick could be anywhere near as obnoxious as him. They decided to lift a page from 90s-era microsoft. ![]()
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quote:In a case like this, I cannot imagine why someone didn't have the idea to make it that, if you talk to the "snake", he neighs like a horse. That doesn't tell you the answer, but it's a solid hint. Okaaaay, you just blew my mind! I've played the Kings Quest games several times and this is the first mention I've ever seen of any sort of hint about the snake/bridal situation! How could I possibly have missed that for all these years? I don't think the Kings Quest companion even mentions the snake neighing like a horse... quote:They decided to lift a page from 90s-era microsoft. Ha ha, oh yeah! Clippy was totally a thing that existed at one time, huh? Was he really as annoying as Cedric? I can't remember that much about him.
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Eshettar posted:Okaaaay, you just blew my mind! I've played the Kings Quest games several times and this is the first mention I've ever seen of any sort of hint about the snake/bridal situation! How could I possibly have missed that for all these years? I don't think the Kings Quest companion even mentions the snake neighing like a horse... It doesn't. That was just a suggestion for a hint that a sensible game designer would have put into the game to make it a puzzle rather than a sales vector for the hint book.
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Eshettar posted:Ha ha, oh yeah! Clippy was totally a thing that existed at one time, huh? Was he really as annoying as Cedric? I can't remember that much about him. Clippy was incredibly obnoxious, but Cedric predates him by, like, seven years. Also having experienced both, I'd say Cedric is worse on the basis of having voice acting. And once Clippy actually did a helpful thing. Also you can change Clippy into other things like a dog, or a wizard.
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You could also turn it off, which was it's best feature.
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Fun Clippy fact: He was the brainchild of an entire Microsoft research team specifically dedicated to creating "smart" office assistants. Another one they did was a genie who searched through your emails for dates to add to your calendar. I guess it never took off.
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raminasi posted:Fun Clippy fact: He was the brainchild of an entire Microsoft research team specifically dedicated to creating "smart" office assistants. Another one they did was a genie who searched through your emails for dates to add to your calendar. I guess it never took off. Then we got Cortana (as optional feature) after this. Also Alexa but she's not that "deep" AFAIK.
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Don't forget Bonzi Buddy, who did all of that and MORE!
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What didn't help Cedric is his warnings happen when you already stumble onto a death and he's useless otherwise.
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Is the "thanks for playing.." thing in the floppy version or just the CD? And did anyone ever find out if "to Lisa from O" could be done on the CD?
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hyphz posted:Is the "thanks for playing.." thing in the floppy version or just the CD? And did anyone ever find out if "to Lisa from O" could be done on the CD? The Easter egg isn't in the CD version, unless it's in a very early CD release that probably isn't readily available anymore. If you've got separate Walk and Travel cursors in your version, then it should work. I don't think most people are even aware that that was ever a thing.
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hyphz posted:And did anyone ever find out if "to Lisa from O" could be done on the CD?
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Xander77 posted:Wot. An easter egg. You'll see it.
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Prism posted:An easter egg. You'll see it. Depends, what version is being played?
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Deathwind posted:Depends, what version is being played? It will likely be linked when the time comes even if it's not in this particular version.
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![]() This game opens up with a wizard appearing out of nowhere to steal Castle Daventry, and Graham is the only member of the royal family not in the castle at the time. Graham was out on a walk, presumably as part of a health regimen for recovering from his near-fatal heart attack in the previous game. Technology-wise, the game is now back in the VGA era. You remember my King's Quest I LP, with the beautiful backgrounds, the mouse-driven interface, and voice acting? Yeah, we're back in that era now. Also making their triumphant return are puns: gloriously awful puns as the nominal reward for dying. And we'll be dying a lot because King's Quest V is somewhat infamous for being bullshit hard. Spoilers? If you have to talk about the plot in the game, then use spoiler bars. Otherwise the same "don't be a dick" rule applies. The Updates #1 - Going to Serenia #2 - kings_quest_5_town_theme.mid #3 - Making Up for Lost Time #4 - Ahh! Life-giving water! Nectar of the gods! #5 - Plot Dump! #6 - The Dark Forest #7 - The Rat Puzzle #8 - Trading Sequence #9 - Cedric and the Mountain #10 - Queen Icebella #11 - The Yeti Puzzle #12 - Harpy Island #13 - The Island of Mordack #14 - The Maze of Mordack #15 - Inside Mordack's Castle #16 - Crispin ex Machina DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Oct 27, 2017 |
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![]() King's Quest V - Sierra Fanfare It's time, everyone. Allow me to be the first to say... ![]() Welcome to King's Quest V. We're in for quite the ride. While not the first Sierra title I ever played, King's Quest V is one that I actually played when I was a kid. ![]() We're given the option to skip the intro. While I would be quite happy if I didn't have to look at it again for a very long time, we'll be watching it regardless. ![]() We're given the option to skip the intro twice. This warning actually pops up before every major cutscene in the game. Including, inexplicably, the ending. It is nice if you're replaying the game just for the puzzles ( ![]() ![]() Click this for video King's Quest V - Intro & Story There is a lot to complain about with this game, but the art is not one of those things. This game is beautiful. It's been upgraded to 256 color VGA graphics and you can tell. It's quite the departure from previous games. That second link, by the way, is a soundtrack link. Going forward, I'm going to try to link to them more. The King's Quest IV soundtrack was just a single video that was something like 30 minutes long with just every track in the game. The soundtrack for V is a nice youtube playlist that I can quickly copy from, so it's a lot less hassle to link to. Also the soundtrack is a lot nicer sounding than the PC speaker stuff that was happening with IV. Many individual screens have different tracks that help give a lot of character to the world. ![]() For a fun time, try to see the edit points in the above gif. It's about half as long as it used to be. ![]() Thankfully, one person managed to avoid being abducted along with the castle. It wouldn't be much of a game otherwise. ![]() For the third, and final, time in the series, Graham will be our protagonist. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Our witness, as you can see, is an owl. You can tell he's an owl because he draws ouuuuuuuuut some voooooowel souuuuuuuunds. Typically O's and U's. You know, because owls intelligent enough to talk need to imitate hooting. Constantly. I'm going to pre-empt the game a little bit and introduce him now. This is Cedric. I really hope you don't like him. Because along with the loving moon logic puzzles, he will be the source of a lot of my complaints about the game. King's Quest V is the worst game in the series by a wide margin, and Cedric is a lot of the reason why. Ask any random person what they know about the game and the answer is probably going to be "Cedric" "a poooooisonous snake" and "the loving rat puzzle". By the way, you really ought to click on the video link up above. Just to really get a taste of how awful this character is. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I'm not sure who is supposed to laugh at that. Pratfalls can be funny if done right, but Cedric is decidedly not funny. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sitting here and transcribing the text, I've started to develop a dull ache right at the base of my skull. Every time Cedric draws out his "ooooh" sound, that ache throbs. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Serenia is the land to the northwest of Daventry, on the same continent. Traveling there on foot would take an incredibly long time, so temporary flight is a pretty handy way of crossing the miles. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() How Graham didn't die from that fall I have no idea. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sounds like the Society is pretty useless. Merely suspending membership of someone who is abusing power is about the most worthless thing they could do in any situation. We're not going to get any "Society" support in this adventure, and this line is the last time they'll ever be brought up in the entire series. ![]() ![]() I don't want to keep harping on this, but the Society of Wizards knows that Mordack is evil and, at best, all they do is give him a slap on the wrist and make him super pinky swear promise he'll be good in the future. Out of the four wizards we've met in the series so far, three have been evil douchebags. From this sample size of four, I'm being led to believe that the Society is most likely a bunch of evil wizards and Crispin who is too dumb to notice. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I could have sped that gif up. I didn't. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It checks out. Kinda. Alright look, a snake was one of the ingredients at least. ![]() ![]() Recall that ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() And with that, the long intro is finally over. But before I close out this introductory update, let's go over the interface. ![]() Luckily I did all of this back in King's Quest I. So if you want in-depth coverage, just go re-read the first update of that. For a quick refresher, the four important icons are... ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Options menu is largely identical to the AGDI KQ1 remake. In this game, we're going to set Graham's speed at maximum and it will never leave there. 260 points are this game's maximum. Unlike the previous four LPs of the series, we won't be able to view our points at a glance anymore. I've got a list of points open in a tab in Chrome that I'll be referring to for totals. Also for the love of God and all that is holy do not touch the volume slider. I will actually be turning it down a ways a few minutes into the game proper. There's a somewhat infamous music track that feels like it gets louder the longer it goes. Also Cedric's voice is known to cause involuntary eye twitching, and that doesn't need to be any louder than it already is. ![]() Something neat is that you can click the walk icon on a door and the game will intuit that you want Graham to walk through the door. So let's go talk to Crispin again. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() That's cute. Cedric thinks he has any input on where this crazy train is rolling. Anyway, think of this like the VGA version of >talk to cedric. It's something I'm going to try out for this game, and see how it works out. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() So let's call the first update there. NEXT TIME: The game starts in earnest. DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Nov 13, 2017 |
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Ooooohhhh, boy. This one. Retsupurae already covered this one (absinthe makes the game more tolerable) and is a pretty good rundown of this game in motion. But this will do a much better job of breaking down exactly why this one sucks, I believe it in my heart.
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# ? Feb 27, 2021 13:04 |
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DoubleNegative posted:
So now I just picture King Graham singing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyF8RHM1OCg
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