Troels Pleimert

Mein Gott, you're such a wuss. E-ver-y bloody Space Quest fan loves a nice arcade challenge. It's you who has to spoil the fun for the rest of us with those misplaced YouTube video's, only inciting young people to start drinking cheap Danish red whine. I'm a disappointment. Very. And that's no typo. ... I need another glass of whine. :D The only SQ arcade sequence I was ever any good at was the floor scrubber in SQ5. Arcade sequences can lick my sweaty ones. :)

Oh, shit! I'm sorry. I've retracted my outburst. Uh, my memory's a bit shot after 15 years and, er ... my pants aren't that easy to fold.

Hi, guys. I'll get straight to it, then bore you with the details: Can anyone recommend some good software, preferably costless, that will enable me to do simple text adventure games? I've checked out a few "text adventure creator" apps, but I'm trying not to over-complicate matters. I don't want to do anything fancy. I just want to be able to do: Room descriptions Look, Get, Operate, Push, Pull, whatever Inventory puzzles Dialogue trees for NPC's The "dialogue tree" thing is probably what's going to trip up most of the already-available solutions. Anyway, here's what I want to use this for: In light of the Two Guys reunion and the resurgence of the long-slumbering SQ community, I feel the fan fiction itch start to, er, itch again. But I don't just want to do standard text fan fictions, because frankly, I'm a bit embarrassed of those I did ~15 years ago. I want to do interactive fan fiction. I want to do small, content-driven text adventures starring our friend Roger Wilco. I have a number of story ideas ready to go. But I'm not much of a programmer (case in point). So what I'm really looking for is an easy-as-pie GUI-thing that lets me concentrate on writing crazy shit and less time learning a new scripting language. Any help? Anyone?

[*:17mpgj9k]Infamous releases SQ2VGA. [*:17mpgj9k]Team VSB releases Vohaul Strikes Back, the first fully animated fan sequel to the Space Quest saga. [*:17mpgj9k]Chris (Datadog) releases Incinerations, a game that's just too kick-ass for words. [*:17mpgj9k]The Two Guys reunite after 15 years of not speaking to each other and announce they're making a new game. [*:17mpgj9k]The old VSB team kiss and make up, on this very forum, no less. [*:17mpgj9k]I reconnect with Daniel Stacey (Cadbury Wookie) after 12 years of estrangement. [*:17mpgj9k]Akril starts drawing Space Quest fan-art again. These events all happened within the space of a few months, completely independently from each other. Seriously, is someone spiking the water supply?

No one's late to this party, and extra points for attending the party with your pants down.

As long as they get the timer code right ... :D

That game fucking cheats, man! :D All right, you do better. Seriously, film yourself doing better. We'll call it The Astro Chicken Challenge. The prize: the friggin' honor! I'll put it on the G+ page. As if you haven't got enough happening around you.

The Space Quest series pioneered the arcade sequence in adventure games. SQ1 was, according to the Collection manual, "the first game to use the position of the on-screen character as part of the puzzle." So, really, we have The Two Guys to thank for all those annoying arcade sequences we've had to suffer through, in their games as well as others. ;) I wouldn't call the Skate-o-Rama an arcade sequence, though. Nor was evading the droids in the Super Computer, for that matter (it's exactly the same, yet people seem to dislike that one less - maybe because it's actually beatable). Even The Two Guys let up by letting you skip the burger sequence. So I think, yeah, I'm up for some arcade fun in the new game, definitely. It's all part of the sadistic branch of game design The Two Guys were famous for. But, of course, for playability's sake, they should probably make it skippable, or at least include a "cheat" somewhere - like with the slot machine in SQ1VGA.

. When I played SQ3 the first time, I played the Astro Chicken game exactly ONE time, crashed and burned three times within the space of 20 seconds, and headed straight for the Mallard. I had no idea why I was suddenly rescuing The Two Guys, but I didn't care. ;)

My ... that was a really, er, tragic story to lead in with. We're all about reconcilliations at this point; haven't you been paying attention? ;) Seriously. Good to see you, Personman!

Last post on the topic, I promise, but - thank you! Allow me to stroke your back in public and say that, coming from the guy who penned the Incinerations script, that means a huge deal. Seriously. That game blew my socks off. Then spun them in a circle. Then slapped me around with them. Then made me love it.

I did send him a tweet about the reunion. He didn't react, but then, he's probably off partying with his new friends, The Nostalgia Critic and Spoony. ;) No, in all seriousness, the guy still remembers us. He helped me out a few years back when I did a fan-game about the That Guy With The Glasses/Cinemassacre review community.

And LordKat, although it's not like he really left ...

:shock:

:D 2012 seems to be all about reconcilliations and new beginnings so far. Until the Mayans fuck it up. :P

I have no idea what that was all about, but I'm all for reconcilliations and moving forward. Just a couple of weeks ago, Daniel Stacey and I buried the hatchet that left us estranged for the past 12 years, and we're back on track again. I can't wait to start making life miserable for you all in the "New SQN" forum. :P

I am literally wetting myself with excitement at the prospect of a revitalized Broomcloset, powered by the wet, fertile minds of Space Quest die-hards. The thought of merging SQN and VB into a singular, powerful entity sounds like just the sort of thing that could really kick-start the fan environment all over again. I've started a separate thread about what we could do with the Broomcloset relaunch. I know I'm off on the wrong foot showing graphics right from the start; I just got excited and went with the imagination first. Right, I'd better get some sleep. It's been a fun first day in the new Andromedan year. Thank you everyone for your continued enthusiasm! I can't wait to see where this will all lead us. The good times are back, oh yeah! :)

Awesome work. I can't resist opening up Photoshop for an hour or so and toying with some ideas. Just for my own amusement's sake. I promise to share anything I come up with, even if it's total garbage. :)

In any case, someone should register virtualbroomcloset.com before it gets squatted. :)

Ooh, multiple authors. It'd be like the old days, except I wouldn't have to send you poorly formatted Microsoft Word documents. :) I think Wordpress would be ideal for a community/staff-driven Broomcloset. As it happens, I have some experience building custom Wordpress themes. Actually, that's one of the things I get paid for nowadays. The downside is that they pay me so well (cough) that I barely have time for any of the million things I want to do in my spare time. So I don't think I could find the time to do it on my own - sad to say; otherwise I would have done so, gladly, pro bono, with a boner, and everything. But I'd love to pitch in with a redesign/re-imagining of the Broomcloset in any way I can. The Virtual Broomcloset - Web 2.0 Edition.

Mark Crowe just tweeted: I knew that The Two Guys had been in contact with Gary Owens' agent, but nothing was finalized yet. Apparently, things are more solid now. Honestly, can you imagine anyone else narrating the Spaceventure? :)

Maybe Jess should hold auditions for someone to take over and run the Virtual Broomcloset. I was going to write "put that broomcloset in some sort of order," but then I realized how apt it is that it's sort of a kitchen sink of facts, fan-games, interviews and odd original material. That was the charm of the old Broomcloset. It was more than just a fact-oriented fan site. Not that I'm knocking SQ.net or anything ... oh, uh. I can see I'm painting myself into a corner here. Oh, hi, old friend! :) Good to see you again!

That looks pretty cool. I'm gonna hold off plugging it until there's a demo available, though. I've seen too many projects get announced and then crash and burn, or stall in hopeful limbo.

Ooh, famous people doing game soundtracks. I actually dig that - when it's done right. Like in the case of SQ3. Jan Hammer doing PQ3 was cool, too - although I didn't play that one as much, even though I'm a big synthesizer music fan. Michel Legrands score for Torin's Passage was really great and adventurey - even though, as I understand it, most of the actual in-game incidental music was done by Mark Seibert or in-house composers. Actually, it must have been hard getting famous composers to do game soundtracks back then. Once they found out how the final product would sound with conventional home sound cards (my Sound Blaster 16 and I go waaay back :) ), it must have been hard to see the bigger picture. I remember Trent Reznor saying that if id Software had decided to go with MIDI for Quake, he wouldn't have done the soundtrack. Er ... This got off-topic, didn't it? Sorry for perpetuating that. Maybe this should get its own thread in the off-topic forum.

Ugh. There are no redeeming qualities whatsoever in the Box Office Bust and Magna Cum Laude games. I remember reading that the inspiration for those abominations was to "make the American Pie of video games." But not even American Pie was this vapid and devoid of any entertainment value. Escape Factory's Space Quest looks like it might have been a fun game, if it hadn't borne the Space Quest name. I like the graphics and it looks like it would have been a fun little action game, like the Futurama game.