BlockMaster

I repicated it! In the debug.
 
How to do it :
 
1. Teleport to room 40.
 
2. Then, teleport to room 45. The yellow ship will be there.
 
3. Teleport to room 60.
 
4. Then, teleport to room 55.
 
5. Exit to the right while the Space Police shoots.
 
6. Enjoy Roger's new walk cycle. :)

The 5th episode is out, featuring BlockMaster, Akril, RogerWilcoFan2015 (Alan Luckachina), as well as those fine gentlemen of rock, MusicallyInspired (Brandon Blume) and Ken Allen.
 
http://traffic.libsyn.com/techjives/2013-12-11-SQ_Historian_Episode5Below_the_SurfacePtI.mp3
Also, only moments ago, I created a website for the podcast where you can always find the latest episode and, er, other stuff.  Yep -- http://spacequesthistorian.com is a reality.

I made a spider droid! Look at my attached files! The first one is a creeper that I put on top of a spider with mcedit. The second one is a creeper with an unlimited invisible effect on top of a spider. For the model that I will use, it will probably be a cave spider, so it follows you and attack you, while the creeper blows up. Anyway, I was proud of it, so I decided to show it.

Hey all,
 
It's been a while since I visited these forums. Years actually: back when I was coding a virtual sierra-related chatroom in 2003 or 2004. Didn't even remember my login credentials so the sign-in-with-twitter was a nice welcoming :D
 
Just for the fun of sharing, I was wondering if any of you SQ fans saw the EGA pics we made for laughs during the kickstarter?
 

 

 

 

 
We thought they'd make a good sq4-ish joke where the KS 2012 dome was in fact a remake of an old 1986 Sierra game - with time and space all getting mixed up and such.
Fun fact: Mark loved them but was afraid it would scare away new potential backers as it could make them think this was the new game they were backing ;-)
 
We posted these in the KS comments back when they were in high-rotation mode during the final days of the campaign (10 updates a second? What was it? ;)) so it probably got lost forever in the gap between everyone's page-refreshes.
 
So I thought reposting them here would hopefully be apprecated.
 
Cheers from a true sq-fan,
 
- Martin

Space Quest was not my first computer game but it was the first game I fell in love with. The last two weeks with all of the interviews and commentaries I revisited that part of my youth a little bit. I watched one of the play throughs on youtube with my 7 year old son watching over my shoulder. I was amazed at how excited he was about it considering the pretty awful graphics compared to what he is used to.
 
So I got a copy of the game and installed it on a spare XP laptop we had (installing that game on modern machines is quite an adventure in its own right, thank you whoever built those modern installers...).
 
I soon realized that this wasn't just entertainment for him but also education. The only games he has ever played only involve a Wii motion controller or maybe a PS3 or 360 gamepad where everything is more or less intuitive. Now all of a sudden all of that is stripped away. Moving the character is still fairly intuitive but now everything the character has to do requires thought, spelling and typing from him, skills he doesn't really have mastered yet. On top of that, the early part of SQ1 is timed, so he needs to learn to do those things quickly.
 
I'm so thrilled that not only do I get to share a part of my childhood with my son but that he also gets to learn valuable skills that he needs for life in the process.

Gary Owens' delivery for this is PERFECT in the SQ4 CD version - "I know you're lonely, but licking a robot's ear?"

It's exactly how it sounds.

No, there is only one FORMAT Countdown track because it refers to an actual computer 'format' (a complete wipe of a computer system). The countdown in SQ5 is for a self destruct. ;)

Haha mine isn't easy to pet-ify.

Okay. Fixed.
 

I'd love to do a voice for Incinerations, but I think Datadog said during the commentary that he didn't have time to organize a talkie project. Of course, he could always bounce the script and let the fan community sort that out.
 
Something tells me a huge fight would erupt over who gets to play Doomtron. ;)

Well, yeah -- apart from some great additional writing by Josh Mandel and Ken Allen's kick-ass soundtrack, the VGA version will always be the inferior one. In my mind, at least. Oh, and don't mention the VGA version to Scott Murphy -- he will LOSE. HIS. SHIT.

The only collection that doesn't have the AGI original is the 2006 re-release. Anything before that is fine, with the exception of the Space Quest Trilogy and the Space Quest Saga which only contain the remake of SQ1, it looks like. Steam also only has the remake (as it's basically a re-release of the 2006 collection). It used to be on ActiVision's store as well, though I don't think it is anymore. Same deal at any rate. The best one to get would be the Space Quest Collection Series which has all 6 games, both versions of SQ1, a few bonus games, and a teaser trailer for SQ7. The Current Inside Copy, etc videos are on there as well. It's quite the pack on two cds. I highly recommend it if you can get a hold of it.
 
Most of us started with the AGI version so it has a special place of nostalgia in our hearts. I, for instance, prefer Mark Crowe's AGI artwork to the outsourced-to-Korea over-stylized 40's sci-fi look of the remake by far. I love Mark's view of technology. I love the yellow/brown, purple-skied desert of Kerona more than the red sand/rocked green-skied SQ1VGA. The remake is fun (and the soundtrack is great! One of SQ1VGA's higher points), but I just think the original's atmosphere wins out.

I have stupid nicknames for nearly everyone. Except for Brandon. His name doesn't lend itself to nicknames. At least I can't think of one. "Branny"? Nah. ;)
 
I have at least five for Frederik, though.

You do already. ;) One of them is "Snookums."

Roger DOES briefly swim on Estros...in fact more than once if he's *skillfully clumsy* enough ;)

Oops. Ahem*Skate-O-Rama*Ahem. Never mind.

I go by the opinion that Roger is actually extremely intelligent but also exceptionally under motivated. He's like one of those kids who was bored out of his mind in school because he was cronically underengaged, and rather than figure out that there was more to him, due to the extremely corrupt, shallow, and apperence obsessed nature of the SQ world, he was labeled as an idiot. And thus, he became an idiot, or at least an extremely convincing facsimile thereof.
 
I think his greatest problem, the one that lead to his fall from grace between SQ1 and SQ2, and again after SQ5 is that he really is not the hero the universe wants. He's awkward, not well spoken, and even if he's not an authentic idiot, he's still authentically bumbling. The the kind of hero the SQ world wants is QUIRK. He's superfically suave, superfically dashing, superfically chrismatic, and probably superfically brave. He's as real as his hair, but as long as he looks good on TV he's just what they wanted.
 
The very idea that a lazy, il-educated, bumbling janitor could be the greatest hero in the Galaxy is simply too offensive to bare and rather than face the fact they're wrong, they try and make him what they expect. Hell, the only character in the entire series who ever saw Roger for what he really is is Stellar, and I think the annoying irony is that she's a far better match for him than Bea who in SQ5, and even in the fangames, was never able to get past that bias.
 
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/AlternativeCharacterInterpretation/VideoGames
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ObfuscatingStupidity/VideoGames
 
I like his entries here.

I thought it was great. I actually think SQ6 was one of the funniest in the whole series. Including the whole Roger/Narrator exchanges. Some of the lines just crack me up. For instance:
 
Roger: "Hey, what the..."
Narrator: "While we await a fully formed thought from Roger, it should be noted that there is an unidentified gas filling the room from the ventilation system."
Roger: "Hey! There's an unidentified gas filling the room from the ventilation system!"
 
Yeah, it's a simple joke, but the delivery was just excellent. First time I heard it I actually laughed out loud. I rarely do that to a game. Smile maybe. At most chuckle.

Actually, I thought the Space Quest games were funnier in the SQ4 era, when Roger couldn't actually hear the narrator. I thought it was much funnier when he was actually narrating the game, like a separate entity from the plot, instead of directly involved like a voice in our character's head. I don't know -- the "what is that voice?" stuff at the end, and the arguing with the narrator inside Stellar's stomach, both in SQ6, just seemed sort of contrived to me.
 
I really shouldn't talk, though. My own game is full of "arguments with the narrator" stuff.

What's the difference? ;) The key to understanding the narrator's treatment of Roger is realizing that, for all intents and purposes, Roger and the player are the same entity.
 
In the early games, there basically was no "Roger", at least not as we know him now. He had no dialogue and no real personality beyond what characterization the story events (such as napping in the closet) and the narrator put on him. Although he started getting a little more characterization in SQ3 (mostly due to the increasing snarkiness of the writing around that time), it wasn't until SQ4 that Roger got any actual dialogue and personality. Up until that point, "Roger" was little more than an AFGNCAAP - an avatar for the player, with no real character of his own.
 
It's a holdover from the days of interactive fiction, where virtually all games spoke directly to the player as if they were the one personally interacting with the game world. It wasn't until adventure game protagonists started graphically appearing on-screen that designers realized they had to start defining certain basic attributes (gender, appearance, etc.) for the sake of designing character sprites. Over time, the trend continued, until adventure protagonists became their own entities.
 
Thing is, the second person narration ("You can't get ye flask!"), using "you" to refer to the main character, kept being used. Superficially, this would seem to indicate that the narrator is talking to the main character somehow - which of course is where the backtalk-the-narrator humor in many games (SQ6, the later LSL games) comes from. But on a gameplay level, the narrator is still talking to *you* - the person at the keyboard - which carries certain implications. ;)
 
Basically, when the narrator is snarking about how Roger is stupid, clumsy, useless, etc., he's not talking about Roger - he's talking about Roger as controlled by you. Think of Roger as a puppet (or a mech suit, if you're more of an anime fan) with you in the driver seat - everything he does is ultimately your doing. If Roger does something brainless (such as blow himself up with an unstable tank shell), it's because you were being stupid. If Roger blunders off the edge of a cliff, it's because you weren't paying attention or didn't have the finger dexterity to guide him around it. Akril's fanfic isn't far off the mark - it's basically a cute way to personify what would otherwise be an abstract game concept, impossible to portray in normal fiction.
 
Gary is ripping on Roger, sure, but only because Roger has the misfortune to be stuck with a shmuck of a player leading him around. ;) Arguably, if we were able to percieve a version of Space Quest where Roger acted of his own accord - one where there is no player, and no narrator - then we'd see him in his "natural" state - that of a lazy, clutzy, somewhat cowardly, but ultimately well-meaning average joe who's more dopey than he is dumb.
 
Then again, without the player's intellect to give him those sudden bursts of McGuyver-esque ingenuity and puzzle-solving insight, he'd probably have been blown up way back on the Arcada... <_<

Save early, save often. ;) And for god's sake, save in multiple slots. I've been screwed over plenty of times because I just kept saving over the one or two slots out of laziness. <_< Now I have the opposite problem - by the time I finish an adventure game, the save directory has some 20-odd savegames, numbered by relative game progress (Save1, Save 2, etc.). Not a biggie on the older games, but some of the more recent indie adventures and other AGS stuff has some surpisingly large save files. :huh:
 

I'm not sure which is worse - spending all that time and effort on an entirely optional puzzle, or doing it the right way and having Roger sashaying around in drag. :wacko:
 

God bless the Internet. :D I first discovered the online SQ community when I first got my copy of SQ6 and got stuck for six months on the endodroid freezing puzzle - I couldn't find the valve behind the bar (stupid pixel-hunting). Six months later, my family got our first Internet-capable PC, and my first stop was a SQ6 walkthrough. :rolleyes:

That means it's working! Oh, and if you want your kids to grow up to be the outstanding examples of human decency that we are -- i.e. morbidly death-obsessed sarcastic misanthropes and ne'erdowells -- then I say it's never too early to play Space Quest with them! :)

Hey I was 4 when I played the first SQ games. Taught me hand eye coordination and spelling/typing. Was playing SQ3 and SQ4 by 5/6.

Now I want some Roger-flavored Jello.  Thanks.  :wacko: