Dat Engineer

Boy, with a thread topic like "Political correctness and feminism", one can hardly expect anything less than the greatest of forum theatrics - and this thread has certainly delivered. After all of the words and pages, what have we really learned here after walking away? I certainly haven't gleaned anything of value, and I read every post. :mellow: Again, I find myself agreeing with Drslashvohaul the most.

Count me in that group, although I must admit that it didn't work out as well as I had planned. I ended up in Space Quest XXVII. I may write a fanfic about it. Okay, I should probably make a serious post. So here it is. Count me as one of the skeptics. Knowing what I know about the gaming industry and their history of "reboots", it's clear to me that any attempt at rebooting a series will usually be done with the mind of targeting contemporary audiences, not the hardcore fans. Now, I don't expect they'll do something as dramatic as chuck out the whole canon and basically say "this was a different time and place in Sierra's history, it no longer applies". They did that with the Tomb Raider series (twice), and I was happy with neither attempt. I am also not in the group that believes that because it's no longer "point'n'click", it's automatically going to be Call Of Duty or Angry Birds. The people who are behaving like that on the Sierra Groups thread are behaving rather poorly in this regard, childishly even. And unfortunately, it's a select vocal minority blowing a questionably yet innocuously worded announcement way out of proportion. :)

Just wanted to pop in to say that I don't regret my $150+ pledge in the slightest, and I will patiently and happily wait however long it takes for this game to come out.

My money's still on Roger having a midlife crisis while raising a family with Beatrice and Roger Jr., and running off and becoming something akin to Leisure Suit Larry In Space.

Obviously you've not played SQ7. ;)

Thank goodness I know for a fact that you three are socially conscious liberal types, or we'd have to have words. ;) Okay, long quasi-academic post forthcoming! I don't think Space Quest 6 goes out of its way to deny the existence of Beatrice, nor her significance in Roger's life. I know that Scott took a sledgehammer to Mark's creation ("perpetrating a sequel without authorization"), but the game does drop hints, esp. in some of the click events in Roger's quarter, that he and Beatrice are still chatting - intimately, at that. I'm aware that conventional video game (and fictional) storytelling basically denies the feasibility of long-distance relationships, but it's not as if any conscious attempt was made by Scott or Josh to eviscerate said relationship, though pretty much any other trace of Space Quest 5 had been figuratively denied any sort of entry into the game. Furthermore, it's not evident at the end of Space Quest 6 that anything further is likely to transpire between Roger and Stellar. It's hard to be sure of that since there was an ending scene deleted from the game which seemed to hint at a closer relationship between the two, but as far as we know, Roger's general attitude towards Stellar is strictly platonic and professional. Contrast to Stellar who basically went out of her way to save Roger when nobody else would. Oh, sure, Roger goes out to rescue Stellar when he realizes the truth of the matter, but she saved his sorry butt twice. Methinks he felt slightly indebted, no? Oh, and looking back, throwing Stellar into the mix essentially muddies the waters even further since - as pointed out above - we know for a fact that Roger got together with Zondra at some point in the series. :P The question is when? Roger at some point presumably said to her that "he couldn't be tied down" and that "he had to be free to roam the galaxy". So, was this in-between sequels? Did Zondra and Roger date prior to Space Quest 1? Did Roger suddenly have a mid-life crisis between SQ7 and SQ10, where he abandoned all of his love interests and went cruising round the star systems with Zondra, at least up to the point where she decided that it was time for them to go steady? We also know for sure that Roger Jr. has to enter the equation, otherwise no one can go back in time to save Roger from the Sequel Policemen. Since Space Quest 4 was made by both Scott and Mark, there can be no second-guessing that. That means at some point, Roger and Beatrice marry and have a kid. Then something, presumably a life-altering experience, happens to both of them. I'm inclined to believe Daniel Stacey's sequence of events as outlined in Future's History. So that's two things we know as fact: At some point Roger dated Zondra, and at some point Roger had at least one child with Beatrice. All of these things hold true regardless of Space Quest 5's place in the series, because at the very least Scott and Mark agreed upon the aforementioned in Space Quest 4. Disclaimer: Regrettably I have not played Incinerations, but since it's a fangame it's not established canon anyway. ;) At this point we are simply left to our own imaginations what happened after the last released game in the official series. Incinerations is as good an interpretation as any.

Could be a leftover from the days when SQ4 had a text parser. Perhaps you would input "bluefrog" into the parser, trigger that message, and then it would pull up a warp menu (which is also in the Time Pod's internal script file). There's a few messages which have been written (and even voiced by Gary Owens) into the SQ4 code but there's no evident way of triggering them.

I think the trigger phrase is "bridle cruncher". Why they call it a cruncher, I have no idea. The synonyms "crusher", "grinder", and "shredder" also work.

Well, don't hurry to tell us now how you did that.

I'm inclined to believe that SQ4 also was originally supposed to use the text parser. Checking the resource files and finding the "VOCAB" resources which include nouns and adjectives for certain items in the game confirms this.

The "bird" line is specifically referring to what the narrator says when you view the status monitor in the Aluminum Mallard, and all the parts are completely functional.

The "legal reasons room" simply lifts the Treasure Room music from King's Quest 6 (composed by Chris Brayman).

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 about 45 or so minutes in, I think. The line occurs immediately before some of the narrator description text for the Super Computer inner sanctum. I can get you the exact time when I get home. I believe that the "blue frog" message is in the Time Pod because I was looking through some of the game programming script a while back, and in the Time Pod script file there's a program call line called "bluefrog", and amidst some of the description text for the Time Pod (e.g. click events like "taste" or "smell"), that line appears, but without any apparent context.

If I knew, I wouldn't be asking. :P

So has NOBODY yet discovered how to trigger the "Blue frogs" message in the Time Pod?

I don't know, that sentence sounded right in my head when I typed it out, and I certainly can't think of a better way to phrase it. I was going to just say "reminds me of a shrooms trip" but that would imply that I had actually been on shrooms, which, unlike you, I have not. ;) I can't imagine it would sound any different, nor would it need to. :lol: Also, I am now visualizing the concept of your couch morphing into a lava lamp.

I believe you are confused and, at worst, being insulting.

Wow, I completely glossed over that. It was such an entrancing song, though. Reminded me of what a shrooms trip must be like...

Hoo boy, this is a hard question to answer since I enjoy the games mostly equally. Space Quest 5 is one with a troubled history. It was the first game with "minus one guy", and as we also learned, is infamous for having one of the fastest-developed soundtracks (yet still pretty good sounding) in music game history due to contractual shenanigans. Methinks that if the game had none of the Sierra/Dynamix politics surrounding it, things might have been more favorable? With all that being said, I will not bestow it the title of "least favorite Space Quest" since it's actually among my top 3, if not my most favorite with just how atmospheric and sci-fi-esque the game is. I first played it when I was 3, back when I was completely unaware of the concept of Star Trek parody, so perhaps that had something to do with it. My least favorite Space Quest must be Space Quest 2, actually, if only for its unforgiving difficulty. However, even then I am still not ready to condemn the game as bad. Something tells me that the game was designed to be extremely difficult.

Would you say that he's a... Trowe-jan horse? (Sorry, I had to go there)

I think it's in our best interests to deal with this matter positively, as suggested above, by expressing our appreciation for the 2GFA and for other adventure game designers. Then, we have to move on from this as quickly as possible. The last thing we need is to drag this out to extra innings by pursuing a vendetta against Paul Trowe. No matter how much we might revile him, as DrJ said, the adventure game community has struggled for long enough to gain traction again, and we do not need any further drama to take the stage.

This is the liveliest I have ever seen this forum in months, I must say.

Have you ever heard of this theory that time travel surely must be possible if you receive an E-mail or a visit from your future self traveling back to the present time? A paradox I came up with is that, if the "disk-at-the-bottom-of-the-SuperComputer" theory is correct, that must mean at some point in time in the infinite future of the universe, someone would have to revive Vohaul and he'll eventually try to find a way to travel back to the past to kill Roger Wilco (cause he's irrational like that). Based on the fact that Vohaul has not shown up yet since SQ4 (SQ12?), we can conclude that there is no disk at the bottom of the Super Computer, and Vohaul is well and truly dead. ;)

Actually... I don't think that's the case. Even if you return to the streets of Xenon later in the game to get the ordinance, there's no way to get back on board the SP patrol ship unless you go back into the sewers - which triggers the death. As I understand it, the only way to get the ordnance is to trigger the glitch.