Dat Engineer

On the subject of deaths: I vehemently, absolutely, completely, utterly disagree with the common consensus on TVTropes that Sierra games were unnecessarily hard and featured too many deaths. Really don't have much else to say about this matter, since I suppose it just boils down to personal taste. I'm of the school of thought that gamers are babied nowadays, especially in games like Call Of Duty or Heavy Rain, where the choice is essentially made for the player without an opportunity to interact.

Space Quest 5's soundtrack was actually very good, so no big loss, I suppose (except for you who no longer have the music :unsure:). I don't think we're quite so fickle as to turn our back on Ken Williams, either. In spite of all of the vicious jest he receives by the game designers, he basically built and managed a highly successful and prolific adventure game company.

I don't think Space Quest 5 did financially well enough to get a Mac port; kind of the same reasons why it never got a voice pack.

Wouldn't it be weird to hear the Police Quest 3 chase theme in Space Quest 5 when you're being pursued by WD40 on Kiz Urazgubi? I should try fiddling with the music resources and switching songs between games, recording videos of them to see if there's any dissonance.

And then in the SQ5 Beta, one of the Talk messages is copied over from Police Quest 1 VGA (and a developer comment even draws attention to that fact). Also remember that many of the unused SQ6 MIDI tracks were in the gargantuan SQ6 demo. I believe that "unused Orion's Belt" theme you refer to is actually the 8-Rear theme in the demo. Edit: Actually, I think I'm wrong about that MIDI theme. Never mind.

I don't think even in the history of SubChan has Mark Crowe posted on a SQ fan forum. :blink:

It's a real honor to hear from and speak with you, Ken. You're right at the top of my list of favorite Sierra composers alongside Aubrey Hodges and Mark Seibert. I loved your work on Colonel's Bequest in particular. I guess the only question I can think of to ask is what software and instruments you used in your work on the old Sierra soundtracks. I'm an aspiring composer myself, and I've been using only ModPlug Tracker in my composition efforts - no keyboards or anything.

Fixed that for you.

:huh:

People would take one glance at it and call it an Angry Birds ripoff.

Somebody must have opened the floodgate from the SubChan to the Janitorial Times. I've never seen this many reunions on a single message forum in such a short amount of time!

Just glancing through some of the old posts, since they were quite long: That game kicked my ass even with a walkthrough. What is it with the kiddy games being deceptively hard? Eco Quest 2 had this one section where I ended up reloading a save game dozens of times because I kept getting caught by Slaughter's goon...

I just want to let all of you know that I haven't given up on this and am developing a game as I speak.

Some of the "hologram of your future wife" strings pop up in the RESOURCE.AUD and script of the full game too. Obviously, they're never used because the player doesn't have control. It's funny how what Roger Jr says in the actual game is almost a cheeky reference to what would have been a hostile and ludicrous dialogue. "I'm ten times--wait, what am I saying? This is no way to start." You know, for the life of me, I haven't been able to figure out what triggers "blue frogs on my shoulder makes me hap-py...", even though "blue frogs" are referenced in the Time Pod script.

Are you referring to the floppy version? "Help me fertilize my mother's cat!" comes to mind. Do tell me about the alternate ending. I've never found it.

Played SQ2 Remake. I mean to play VSB, but I'm not sure whether to play through it as-is, or to do a Let's Play of it.

On the subject of alternate themes Spikey, were you aware that there's an additional theme in Space Quest 4 for riding the patrol craft from the Super Computer back down to the streets of Xenon (instead of vice-versa, which is Stowaway)? Even though the player is most likely never going to do this, it surprises me that it's been omitted from most complete soundtracks of the game. I like that you've included all (as far as I know) of the alternate themes from Space Quest 5, though. Personally I think the SQ5 alternate death theme sounds better than the original one. I've never heard the StarCon alternate theme anywhere in the game. I've found it in SCI Viewer prior to the soundtrack's release, but maybe I haven't tried everything? Is it supposed to pop up if Roger doesn't go to the class/crest in time?

Time for me to geek out. I know way too much about Sierra games for my own good... 1. You don't actually need the PocketPal to beat the game, and I've actually beaten it several times without it. All it does is give you a map and show you where the two security droids are. Once you get to the computer tunnel you can just disable the droids. 2. Unless I am mistaken, you can return the adapter to Radio Shock for a replacement after purchasing it. Perhaps you already know this, but the wording of your sentence indicates that you had to restart the entire game because you picked out the wrong adapter, which I think is a bit over-the-top. I never remember having any trouble with Skate-o-Rama when I played the DOS version. I did run into a timer issue fairly recently when replaying the game on DOSBox. The Sequel Police would show up way too soon on Xenon when going to the patrol vehicle.

Personally, I remember Police Quest - one of the archetypal Sierra adventure games - being nothing but police procedure with a bit of initiative sprinkled in.

Bit of an update: I've found that Inform is a bit irritating for my tastes, language-wise, so I'm using Quest and am finding the interface to be very intuitive and open-ended, almost exactly what I need. Will provide further info as I go along. For all intents and purposes, I've started my interactive fan-fic. :)

I've actually been tossing this idea around for a while myself, mostly to contribute to the fangame craze that's whirling around with the Space Quest series this year, so I too will give Inform a try tonight and, well... inform you all about the progress that I make with it.

Like others, I don't have much time for games. When I do play, it's usually Team Fortress 2 nowadays.

Scott hates us, so it was probably him. :)

"I guess that lil' beastie is good for something after all, cap'n."

Blunter than a 2x4. And I thought drslashvohaul was being comedically sarcastic. :?