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Akril

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Everything posted by Akril

  1. Akril
    I'm not really an "expert" in this particular field by any stretch, but I still thought that I'd toss in my own thoughts: I admit that as of late, there have been times when I've been writing and thought, "Maybe I should change this so it isn't interpreted as being sexist/offensive somehow" over and over again, until everything pretty much grinds to a halt. Sure, my writing tends to be pretty tame, but the way some people have voiced their complaints about elements they've perceived as sexist/offensive in video games has made me feel very self-conscious about it. As a rule, in fiction I've been far more interested in raw ideas than actual characters and their interactions with one another. If I were to voice a complaint against the Damsel in Distress cliche, it wouldn't be necessarily because it's sexist, but because it's overused. A prevalance of highly attractive, young women starring in adventure games was reason why I decided to make a not-so-attractive, old(ish) woman into an adventure game protagonist -- not because I was thinking, "Hey, this would strike a blow against sexism in gaming", but "Hey, this would be something different to try". "Be the change you wish to see in the world", that sort of thing. (And this may sound pretty naive, but it seems a lot of this debate seems like it might be better spent actually coming up with ideas for games that both avoid sexist/anti-PC tropes (without coming across as overly forced or pandering) and have some level of innovation and enjoyability as well. There seem to be a lot of walls being put up between segments of the gaming community when all that energy could be used to build something much better.)
  2. Akril
    Working on the latest SQH podcast prompted me to make some major changes to my Sierra's Resource Files site. I've taken a closer look at some of the games' text in SCI Viewer, and I'm starting to get a much better sense of where and when some of the things I've found were supposed to appear in their respective games. I've discovered several things which I didn't add to the pages for one reason or another, nearly all of it from SQ4 and SQ6. With this influx of new material, I've had to do a lot of shuffling around. The SQ series are now on a page of their own rather than the Miscellaneous page, and I ended up adding so much stuff from SQ6 that I had to create a separate page just for it (as well as its demo). I've also moved the content from my Secret Sounds of SQ6 to this new SQ6 page, since A) the Secret Sounds page is woefully outdated, B ) other games on SRF have audio on their pages, and C) it's slightly tidier this way. You've probably seen/heard lot of these new additions already, but for the most part, I've never seen many of these things gathered together in one online location. Even the SQ Omnipedia and The Cutting Room Floor Wiki don't have the clips of Roger reading the Radio Shock Catalog (though now, the latter probably soon will; they've borrowed a lot of stuff from SRF already). I've also played through the SQ4 beta and posted some of my more interesting finds here, which include Zondra without her boots during the torture scene, a slightly annoyed comment left by a programmer, and a glitch that actually has to be triggered in order to progress in the game. (By the way: If any of you are particularly fond of Maebot's voice and demeanor, you might end up feeling a little confused once you've learned how this particular character appeared in the beta. Also, the outro is amazing, and has to be seen to be believed.)
  3. Akril
    I'm glad this podcast came out as good as it did. Putting something together for it was certainly an interesting experience.
  4. Akril
    Are these the parts you were talking about? If so, I already said that they do appear in the game several posts ago. Watch the animation of the Deltaur exploding and you'll see them (10:43).
  5. Akril
    The bottle of morphin has two separate inventory graphics and descriptions in the game. It changes in appearance after it's used on the donut ( ).
  6. Akril
    A bit late, but yes, if you do take too long to escape Ortega, (skip to 2:30 in this video). That's from the code from the scene with the snake. I'd think typing "bridle snake" would trigger it, but I haven't been able to make that happen in the game.
  7. Akril
    With SCI Viewer, I'd say your best bet is to either copy+paste the contents of the file you're viewing into a program like Notepad, or just save it as a .txt file. That's what I typically do.
  8. Akril
    I haven't done any serious looking into this info, but I found this page when I did a seach for "space quest 6 debug".
  9. Akril
    I just replied to Blockmaster, and I proposed keeping my segment confined mostly to discussing resource-viewing tools like AGI Studio, SCI Viewer, and the like, with only a small amount of time spent on discussing the sort of things I've found. I also suggested recording a rough version of this speech and sending it to Blockmaster, so that he could talk about whatever I didn't talk about (I could also delete topics that he wanted to talk about instead). In that case, I may not be all that helpful...I'll still give it a try, though. I think the frames showing the Deltaur breaking up are just that. A lot of 2D game animations are broken up into separate pieces, which allows for a lot more flexibility, especially when very large, complicated sequences are being scripted. The animations of Roger without his helmet are played where he picks up the remote that controls the star generator's force field from the Sarien guard's body and turns off the force field.
  10. Akril
    All right -- I'll try to put together a discussion on Sierra's resource files (text or graphics only) that isn't too tedious. Is there a time limit you'd like me to stick to, Troels? I'll also be sure to check out where that icon appears in the SQ1 VGA resource files when I can -- that might provide some insight as to what exactly it is. I don't recognize it myself, but it's been years since I've played SQ1 VGA. EDIT: I looked through SQ1 VGA's resource files and figured out that that mystery icon is the gas grenade.
  11. Akril
    I have a feeling that we should either keep the topic for this podcast confined just to "stuff we've found in the resource files" or break the podcast up into one block for debug mode discussion, one block for Easter Eggs and one block for resource file stuff. I was wondering whether having this podcast that focused on unused graphics and text while the next one focused on unused music and audio, but that probably wouldn't work, since a lot of unused material consists of both graphics and speech (SQ4 and 6, specifically). Anyway, here's a short list of some of the stuff which I might touch on:
  12. Akril
    That sounds good. I've never really played around with debug mode that much, so I can't really contribute too much to that particular topic. I'm more than willing to talk at length about my delving into the games' resource files, though. We could talk about how easy it is to edit Sierra's AGI games (or possibly used to be, it's been a while since I've done it), how for some time there was no easy way to view the resources of SCI1-2 games until a few years ago, that sort of thing. I'm not an expert in hacking any any way, shape or form, so I'll probably spend a lot of time just saying things like, "Wow, this is interesting! I wonder what it is and where it was going to be put in the game." Are we going to be talking mostly about Space Quest with a few other games mentioned on the side, or is it going to be a fairly equal mix of Sierra's various titles? Also, if you need any more unused voice files, SQ6 has a lot of them: http://www.akril15.com/sq6sounds/SecretSounds.html
  13. Akril
    I found a copy of that clip on a little SQ website that some of you might have heard of... In a similar vein, I got this line to play when I tried talking to the big, one-eyed red guy in the Galaxy Galleria. I think he was standing on the moving walkway at the time, but I don't recall any other details (this was several years ago).
  14. Akril
    Hmm...good question. Is there any particular outline for this show you had in mind?
  15. Akril
    Sure! Also, is ATMachine still active anywhere? His site showcases some of the unused material he's found in many games (admittedly, most of them LucasArts) as well as a lot of lesser known versions of Sierra's games (Space Quest included).
  16. Akril
    You don't need to take my word for it -- there are a couple of videos on Youtube that show the two scenes that I mentioned: Ending scene (starting at 1:07 -- this forum apparently can't process Youtube links that have the video begin at a time other than the start) There doesn't seem to be a VGA equivalent to the SQ1 EGA death where Roger gets disintegrated by the robot droid after he loses his helmet. That burning animation could be a scrapped animation from that death, but it seems a bit unlikely, especially there doesn't seem to even be any text describing that death in SQ1 VGA's resources. Also, both of those animations have been added to my site.
  17. Akril
    There is a lot of overlap in Sierra's games from around this time. The temple interior in KQ7 appears in Torin's Passage's resource files (only much larger than it is in KQ7), a frame from one of the movies in GK2 appears in Phantasmagoria's resource files, a death animation from LSL6 shows up in SQ6...seems like graphics-wise, there was a whole lot of intermingling going on.
  18. Akril
    I had a look through SQ1 VGA's resource files, and the only sprites I could find that (as far as I know) aren't used in the game are the chainsaw and incineration deaths. The "robot" is actually one of the turret guns on the Deltaur that kills you if you leave the screen the airlock is on, the various Sarien sprites are used for the Sariens that are inside the observation ports that the turret guns are mounted around, and the large heads are from the crowd scene in the outro. It's interesting, though -- Roger isn't wearing his helmet in either of those death animations, and there aren't any versions of those animations that show him with his helmet. I also couldn't find any unique death messages (or graphics) that corresponded to either animation. This makes me think that either those animations really were scrapped, or there's some extremely well-hidden Easter egg in SQ1VGA that can only be triggered after Roger loses the helmet. I'll post those animations to my page when I can. Nice work finding these, Blockmaster!
  19. Akril
    That line is actually sung by the narrator, but I have no idea what triggers it.
  20. Akril
    Hopefully, I should have something ready by tomorrow. EDIT: Thanks to an unforeseen change to my schedule, it looks like I won't have anything to show until Wednesday.
  21. Akril
    Yikes -- I'm sorry to hear about that.
  22. Akril
    Well, it's been a couple of weeks...any updates on the commentary schedule?
  23. Akril
    I'm guessing that's 11:00 AM PST, which should work just fine for me.
  24. Akril
    Hmm, that does sound like a good idea.
  25. Akril
    Sorry, I almost forgot about this topic. I should be free on the weekend of the 20th-21st as well as the 27th-28th.
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