Troels Pleimert

Trying to imagine Roger Wilco being played by Robin Williams ... wow. I wonder how many other actors were considered for the role? Both in the realm of possibility (who they auditioned) and impossibility (who they imagined playing the part). If PCJ isn't just making this up in bad taste (huh? well, he might! have you ever had a conversation with the man?), I'm definitely going to slide this in the next show.

This.

I'll wager pretty much everything that it wasn't a professional actor. Only the narrator and Roger Wilco were voiced by, quote unquote, professional actors. So it's highly unlikely it's the dude from Half-Life.

Hey, kids, I'm here to break hearts yet again. http://traffic.libsyn.com/techjives/2014-08-06_SQ_Historian-Episode15-Good_vs_Evil.mp3 Tackling some of the responses I got from the last episode's topic on episodic games, as well as, you know, Vohaul. And yeah, Purple, it actually kinda is a bit like that. :) Though not as "investigative," sure, but if you want me to go prod the Pope, I'll do it.

Wow, thanks, man. I'm really glad you enjoy it! I'll try not to disappoint you in future episodes. :)

Oh yes, and we had tons of fun debating endlessly whether Beatrice in fact was a bitch or not, and Chris Ushko passionately defending his portrayal of Beatrice (rightly so, in my opinion) that she's not a bitch; Roger's just not a very good boyfriend. But thanks for the blast from the past! :)

Thanks for your input, SteveBot. Want me to read that out on the next podcast episode? And, also, to respond: Well, how about what I said on the last episode about the even curves of suspense of episodic games versus the potential pitfall of the "bit in the middle" lull? I'm not saying that in defense of episodic gaming per se, but there is, in my opinion, something to be said for forcing yourself as a designer to even out the suspense and not let the narrative get bogged down.

Nope, still not funny. This just implies that women stick their fingers in their ears and go "la-la-la-la" when faced with counterarguments. It's still misogynistic as all hell. Also, some of those "strong female characters" listed are just bad male fantasy stereotypes.

This is the stupidest thing I have ever seen.

Obscure? Okay, now it's personal.

There's a jingle for Soylent Green in Space Quest 6 I could play, but, other than that, they would have to be somewhat sci-fi related to make any sense in the context of the podcast at least. The only ones that spring to mind are the commercials in the drug stores in Omikron: The Nomad Soul, and ... well, they're not really funny at all. ;)

Thanks for your comment, Frogacuda. Is this a comment that you would like me to read on the next episode? Of course I strongly disagree with your sentiment that "we'd never see a second episode" if SpaceVenture went episodic; that's just ridiculous. The game was Kickstarted on the promise of a full experience -- whether that experience may be cut up into pieces is another thing. Broken Age backers were given episode 2 for free; I'm not sure about Broken Sword 5 backers, but I'm pretty damn sure they weren't expected to pay full price for the second instalment. Should SpaceVenture be broken into episode, I can pretty much guarantee you that there WOULD be more than one episode -- just alone for the fact that so much work has already been done on the ENTIRE game, not just the 1/3 that Pope keeps talking about. Aside from that, I do completely agree with what I'm reading between the lines of your post, which is that if you ARE going to do an episodic game, set a schedule for when the following episodes are coming out. Having to cut out huge chunks of a game in order to push out a product, however, would not be in anyone's best interest. I wasn't familiar with Full Throttle being gutted, but I remember Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within suffering such a fate -- and it did make the transition between the second-to-last and last chapter very jarring and rushed. Cutting content is not an option. Or, at least, an episodic release, in my mind, would at least be PREFERABLE to having to cut content.

On a more light-hearted topic, episode 14 is now out: Episodic vs. Full-Length games! http://traffic.libsyn.com/techjives/2014-07-23-Episode_14_Episodic_vs_Full-Length.mp3 Remember, if you want to discuss this topic, there's already a thread for that on these here forums. But you can download the full episode here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/techjives/2014-07-23-Episode_14_Episodic_vs_Full-Length.mp3

Hey, guys. I apologize for spamming this forum about the podcast; really. But this time, I have got a creative challenge for you guys. Listeners of the podcast will already know that all throughout season 1 and for the past two episodes I have used some unused takes from Space Quest IV of Roger Wilco reading product descriptions from the Hz So Good store as commercial breaks. But, for the upcoming episode 15, I have officially run out of these takes. But I'm not ready to give up the running gag of useless products in the commercial breaks. That's why I want to solicit ideas from you about products to advertise that don't actually exist. Would any of you be interesting in submitting your faux commercials for idiotic products in the vein of the Hz So Good products for me to use? All you'd have to do is record yourself giving a spiel of a product you've come up with that has some obvious design flaw or which is just simply unavailable for some contrived reason. And if you actually do have a product (like, a game, or a podcast, or a video series, or something else that would be of interest to our listeners) that you want to push, I would also accept those kind of submissions. (You'll notice I've been plugging some of my favorite podcasts and video series in season 2's commercial breaks.)

Maybe he just wants an apology.

Well, it didn't start out that way with the video series -- but when it became a podcast it started going out on Pope's TechJives network, so I guess that makes it kinda official. :) In any case I'd be happy to prod, but I won't be able to do it for the upcoming episode (which comes out tomorrow). Should I use your above post as an officially worded question to send the Pope, or do you want to record one of your own? Or do you want, as Gareth suggested, to have your question Toleman-ified?

Yeah, the Halloween countdowns are spectacular. I'd like to think I'm quite the horror buff myself (my wife and I watch Cronenberg's The Fly every anniversary) but I've never been much into the classic horror films. So it's nice to be educated on the matter without actually having to sit through the films themselves. ;) I also really liked his short-lived series You Know What's Bullshit. The ones on DVD packaging are especially poignant.

No one's dismissing criticisms. We're just trying to keep a level head here. If the project was seriously going down the tubes, they would've told us. I mean, it was for a while there and they've been pretty up front about it.

I have no control over the segments Pope sends me, or anyone else's segments for that matter. People send me shit and I put it on there. I actually try really hard to let people be autonomous with regards to what they want to say on the show; a privilege that Gareth in particular takes pleasure in abusing. I would love to talk more about the game myself but, for kinda obvious reasons, I can't. Pope does listen to criticism and he would address it if you asked him. Hey, here's a thought. Why don't you record your grievances, I'll send them to Pope, and I'll let the two of you duke it out on the show?

I did a Let's Play of the game last night: http://youtu.be/_Fu-GFN2GhA

Oh, cheers, man. :)

I beat Still Life last weekend. The game was alright -- absolutely beautiful looking, good soundtrack, kind of lame dialogue (probably as a result of being translated from French to English), hammy Canadian actors pretending to be Americans, ridiculously hard fucking logic puzzles that seriously bogged the whole thing down. Oh, and what a fucking rip-off of an ending. I know Brian "Demodulated" on Twitter loves it; he can have it. If I'm playing a murder mystery, at least give me the satisfaction of letting me know who the murderer was. The game just ends with you shooting the killer, he falls in the river, and that's it! Oh, there's a little epilogue that says that divers have combed the river and can't find the body -- that's fine with me; that's exciting -- but at least let me know who the fucker was! I was on my way to play The Last Door and actually got through episode 1, but it's on hold until next weekend where my buddy Leonard (we co-wrote the SQ novel Lone Voyager together) comes to town. We're gonna turn down the lights, have some red wine, and see if this thing can scare us. Last time we tried a horror game it was Project Zero for the PS2 (Fatal Frame for you Americans) and we nearly shat ourselves during the opening sequence. That game was SCARY and the story still haunts me to this day. Too bad the game itself was so outrageously difficult. I basically had Leonard play the game while I watched and made useless suggestions.

Hah! Well, I've already pimped this game a couple of times. But I suppose one more time wouldn't hurt. It's called A Life Worth Losing and you can get it here: http://pleimert.dk/lwl I actually plan on doing a playthrough with commentary on it one of these days. Maybe tonight.

Wow, I don't remember seeing this before: http://www.spacequest.net/archives/sq3/patches/index.shtml Does anyone know who made the fixed SoundBlaster driver for SQ3? I want to credit the crafty genius on the next podcast episode.

Man, I feel embarrassed -- I must've looked at that soundtrack page a million times while sourcing background music for the podcast, and I never noticed the Amiga theme on there. Thanks, Joe! But, yeah, if anyone has the rest of the soundtrack, including World-o-Wonders and the Scumsoft hallways in particular, that would be great. Oh, and The Black Hole.