Decaffeinated Jedi

Those are awesome! During the KS I started trying to make the SpaceVenture dome in AGI just for fun (was playing around with it for the first time). The vector graphics and priority system certainly take a bit of getting used to. Anyway, I only got about part of the way through it before I realised how long it would take me to do the whole thing :) Also, it can be pretty draining to motivation when you mess up a colour fill and have to try to fix up the drawing instructions without destroying everything and having to start again :)
 
Anyway, here's where I got up to (posted in the pledgequest thread):

I actually got a lot further a couple of times but had to start over to get the priorities right etc. :(

Well, between life, the universe and everything going on therein, I've only just now gotten the chance to jump onto the forums and make my introductory blather.
 
My name is Brian, I'm 36, male, married and have a whopping six children. The first three are named "Roger", "Mark" and "Scott". The three daughters... my wife shot down all the SQ-related names, but one of them I managed a middle name of Bea.
 
I have been out of the computer game playing scene for quite some time, only occasionally managing to fire up some low-thought-process fare once in a blue moon. Most of my gaming is of the role playing type that involves character sheets, though not the cheeze-ball-stained-fingers while chugging soda and pizza variety that gets people around the same table. Thank heavens for the miracle of the Internet!
 
That said, I still have all the SQ games sitting close at hand, and I will bust them out and play them once more very soon.
 
For those that aren't familiar with me, I was a Moderator on the Virtual Broomcloset many moons ago, through several iterations and a lot of the words "the forums have crashed and we've lost a lot of posts". Thank you for keeping the ol' dream alive, and I hope I'll have the time to join once more in sharing the Janitorial spirit... even though the new game appears to be lacking in cleaning supplies to those of us with insufficient time to follow in detail... yet.
 
Returning as from the grave,
Brian

Hey all,
 
It's been a while since I visited these forums. Years actually: back when I was coding a virtual sierra-related chatroom in 2003 or 2004. Didn't even remember my login credentials so the sign-in-with-twitter was a nice welcoming :D
 
Just for the fun of sharing, I was wondering if any of you SQ fans saw the EGA pics we made for laughs during the kickstarter?
 

 

 

 

 
We thought they'd make a good sq4-ish joke where the KS 2012 dome was in fact a remake of an old 1986 Sierra game - with time and space all getting mixed up and such.
Fun fact: Mark loved them but was afraid it would scare away new potential backers as it could make them think this was the new game they were backing ;-)
 
We posted these in the KS comments back when they were in high-rotation mode during the final days of the campaign (10 updates a second? What was it? ;)) so it probably got lost forever in the gap between everyone's page-refreshes.
 
So I thought reposting them here would hopefully be apprecated.
 
Cheers from a true sq-fan,
 
- Martin

Okay, this is actually my issue with SQ6... not the new characters in Starcon. They're all fine (as much as I got to interact with them anyway) The way they're handled. Yes, SQ5 brought in character interaction with the other games hadn't had - notably lacking in SQ4. But... and this is the important but.. you were properly introduced to the entire cast. The player gets introduced to Quirk, Bea, Drool, Flo, WD40 and Cliffy in ways that make perfect sense and we get to know them along with Roger.
 
In SQ6 Roger is sent to the Deep Ship and... erm. Stuff happens. Off screen. He knows who Kielbasa, Stellar, the robot dude, the doctor, the hologram, those two guards are. Wow. Great for him. I have NO IDEA. All the introduction I get is basically Roger saying "Hey, what's up?" It baffles me entirely - especially with Stellar. Josh took issue with Roger having a girlfriend character looming over the series. So he ditches her and then introduces ANOTHER girlfriend character that he's gotten involved with before the game starts?
 
That's what I meant when I called it an alienating game. I have to wonder if some sequence on the Deep Ship was meant to precede Polysorbate VX because I can't imagine anyone could have thought giving so many characters no introduction whatsoever was a good idea .

Back in mid-'90s, the average SQ1 speedrun took over 46 hours -- and we liked it! ;)
 
Jess

Back in mid-'90s, the average SQ1 speedrun took over 46 hours -- and we liked it! ;)
 
Jess

I did quite well on the Skate-O-Rama considering that I hadn't played Space Quest 4 fully for a good six years. Only four or five deaths! My solution was a bit different from the last time I played it, too. Honestly, I think that section of the game is totally luck-dependent (assuming no outstanding timer issues). Imagine if something like the root monster was a timer-based puzzle.
 
That might be a good idea for a puzzle for a Space Quest: Lost Chapter Two. The root monster maze from Space Quest 2, combined with the crest-scrubbing puzzle from Space Quest 5, the Skate-O-Rama dodging sequence from Space Quest 4, and the acid drops sequence from Space Quest 1. In other words, scrub every pixel surrounding the root monster's roots on a difficult-to-handle Scrub-O-Matic, being careful not to touch the roots, all the while dodging Sequel Police laser bullets. Oh, and watch out for falling acid.
 
:wacko: Actually, that sounds more like Touhou or Ikaruga than Space Quest.

Just because we misspent our youths obsessively playing these games doesn't mean we're actually any good at them. ;)
 
Except for pcj. But he's a machine.

The key is keeping those mentions of Al Lowe as modest as possible.
 
"From the game design duo that once worked down the hall from the legendary Al Lowe, it's Ace Hardway in SpaceVenture!" ;)
 
Jess

I struggled mightily with large chunks of Space Quest 6 -- and still do, as evidenced by my performance during the first Super-Fan Hangout.
 
Still, that accursed glass shard in Space Quest 1 may be the longest I've ever been stuck on an adventure game puzzle.
 
Jess

I remember you gave up outright. I mean, I had trouble with Space Quest 6 too, but wow... Rather surprising performance from the custodian of the Virtual Broomcloset. ;)

The key is keeping those mentions of Al Lowe as modest as possible.
 
"From the game design duo that once worked down the hall from the legendary Al Lowe, it's Ace Hardway in SpaceVenture!" ;)
 
Jess

I love @Datadog's list, but I have a hard time picking the most frustrating SQ game. From a technical standpoint, at least, it's an easy toss-up between SQ4 and SQ6, and both for the same reason: the timer. (Yes, the sickbay bug in SQ6 is technically a timer issue. I know, it makes no sense.)
 
But gameplay-wise, it's a different story. All the games had some elements that drove me up the wall. Let's have some fun with those, and our "spoiler" tag, shall we? :)
 
Oh, and if Scott or Mark is reading this, then by no means is this a list of "bad design decisions" that the Two Guys beat themselves up for on a regular basis. Rather, it's a list of things that happened to me while playing the games that made me feel stupid for not paying better attention. ;)
 
Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter (EGA)
 
 
 
Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter (VGA)
 
 
 
Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge
 
 
 
Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon
 
 
 
Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers
 
See Datadog's list. :)
 
Space Quest V: The Next Mutation
 
 
 
Space Quest 6: The Spinal Frontier
 
 

It's too soon to go into much detail, but I have a feeling we'll see Pledge Quest's Bea back in action sooner or later.
 
Jess

I've channeled all that excess post-Kickstarter energy into revisiting adventure games I haven't played in ages (or at all, for that matter). So far, my selection has included Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkess, Sam and Max Hit the Road, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Next up is the iOS version of Broken Sword.
 
It's like methadone to replace my addiction to checking the Kickstarter numbers every three minutes for a month straight. ;)
 
Jess

The redwood building in 2003:
 


With bonus "Talking Bear" interaction!
 


Jess

Snouts at the ready,

reunited after split.
It's SpaceVenture time. 
 
Behold, Ace Hardway!

Poultry-obsessed space plumber.
"Sit, Rooter! Good dog."

Thanks again, s_d! I just updated the front page with the new version.
 
Jess

I love your animal analogy. I just disagree with it applying to Roger. :)
 
Roger never struck me as stubborn or particularly dogged. He struck me as someone who is thrust into a situation he has no business being in, and has no real interest in, either -- except for his desire to somehow get out the other end unscathed and get back to whatever it was he was doing (in this case, sleeping in a closet).
 
Roger's only tenacious because he has to be in order to survive. He's the best kind of lazy: the kind that's so committed to being lazy, they'll go to often ingenious lengths to remain lazy. :)
 
But I think it's safe to say we're getting into personal interpretation territory here, though. ;)

Snouts at the ready,

reunited after split.
It's SpaceVenture time. 
 
Behold, Ace Hardway!

Poultry-obsessed space plumber.
"Sit, Rooter! Good dog."

Both of these had music for Tandy 3-Voice:
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2Dqsz69hpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZS0_IYgzTk
 
 
Not throughout the whole game like SQ3 onwards, but definitely for the intro, and short pieces here and there (such as when Vohaul appears to Roger for the first time).

It's too soon to go into much detail, but I have a feeling we'll see Pledge Quest's Bea back in action sooner or later.
 
Jess

Snouts at the ready,

reunited after split.
It's SpaceVenture time. 
 
Behold, Ace Hardway!

Poultry-obsessed space plumber.
"Sit, Rooter! Good dog."

It's too soon to go into much detail, but I have a feeling we'll see Pledge Quest's Bea back in action sooner or later.
 
Jess

Space Quest was not my first computer game but it was the first game I fell in love with. The last two weeks with all of the interviews and commentaries I revisited that part of my youth a little bit. I watched one of the play throughs on youtube with my 7 year old son watching over my shoulder. I was amazed at how excited he was about it considering the pretty awful graphics compared to what he is used to.
 
So I got a copy of the game and installed it on a spare XP laptop we had (installing that game on modern machines is quite an adventure in its own right, thank you whoever built those modern installers...).
 
I soon realized that this wasn't just entertainment for him but also education. The only games he has ever played only involve a Wii motion controller or maybe a PS3 or 360 gamepad where everything is more or less intuitive. Now all of a sudden all of that is stripped away. Moving the character is still fairly intuitive but now everything the character has to do requires thought, spelling and typing from him, skills he doesn't really have mastered yet. On top of that, the early part of SQ1 is timed, so he needs to learn to do those things quickly.
 
I'm so thrilled that not only do I get to share a part of my childhood with my son but that he also gets to learn valuable skills that he needs for life in the process.