Capn_Ascii

Now I feel cheated.

Perhaps, but they did one thing right - they changed from Sierra's classic verb-centric icons (boo) to a noun-centric interface (yay!). Instead of having a limited selection of actions to apply to everything, you chose the object first, and then got a context-sensitive list of actions to perform on it. That part's important, because it opened the door for all sorts of hilariously specific things you could do to objects (and the resulting funny messages) that would never be possible using generalized actions. It's a brilliant idea; I've always been baffled why more adventure game makers didn't pick up it, instead insisting on classic verb/icon sets (or worse, the dreaded 'one click for everything' interface). Or you could take the SQ1 Slots-O-Death route, and just cheat. ;) I forget the actual buttons, but there's a key combo that removes the lid from Dewmi's dice cup, letting you see her dice rolls as well as your own. Because of the way the game works (you're trying to guess how many of a given die face is on the table in total), this makes it extremely easy to win - you can see exactly how many there are, and don't have to guess or risk calling her bluff. I beg to differ, good sirrah. At least one major reason for deaths is the potential for laughs. As a good friend of mine whom I'm sure we all know has showcased for us all, dying in cruel and/or ridiculous ways is one of the highlights of adventure gaming, Sierra's games in particular. This is the very reason why Lucas' lack of deaths annoyed me - it took away the ability to have those "Oops, you screwed up, hah hah!" moments. The retry button allows you to have them back, but without the risk of losing actual game progress. Just add an option to remove the 'retry' button for obvious masochists like yourself ;) and everybody's happy. Oh, absolutely. Sierra's adventure games were easily some of the most punishing, unmerciful ones ever made - not just in terms of unexpected deaths, but also with regards to classic 'dick moves' like no-win situations (forgot the translator from the Arcada? You're boned, sorry.). Admittedly, though, they were only following the design trends of their time - previous adventure games of the interactive fiction era were just as mean to the player. You were *expected* to die dozens of times - in their mind, death and dead-ends were part of the learning process. Puzzles were solved through trial and error - that's just how it was done in those days. Lucas's no-deaths, no-dead-ends policy was made specifically to *counter* this school of design. Speaking of which, this reminds me of the hairpin puzzle in LSL2. Al was a bit of a dick with that one - the 'puzzle' is specifically *designed* so that you can't solve it unless you have information from a previous 'life'. You have to fish a hairpin out of some food or else Larry chokes on it, but the game doesn't ever tell you the pin is there until *after* it kills you. Looking at the food, the plate, etc. gives no warnings whatsoever. You have to specifically type 'get hairpin', at which point the game is all like "Oh, hey, yeah! There *is* a hairpin in here. Wow, however did you know that?". The sarcasm is palpable. :rolleyes: Incidentally, those of you who *enjoy* that sort of meta-puzzling might want to look into the Zero Escape series. They're basically visual novels with 'room escape' gameplay intermissions, but the plots revolve heavily around meta stuff like that. Especially the second one...

Eh. Why even bother with DosBox? It'd be even easier to just use a better interpreter. ScummVM runs them, I think, and I have a program called nAGI that's basically a Windows version of the AGI interpreter that I got from god-knows-where years ago. Sierra was nice enough to seperate their AGI interpreter from the actual AGI game resource files on all of their releases; you could easily bundle the Gold Rush resources with an AGI interpreter that runs on modern systems and remove Dos from the equation entirely.

Blame the Two Guys for that one. The manual for SQ3 clearly shows Andromeda as a planet as well - indeed, SQ0 bases the look of the place after the pics in said manual. Either the guys decided that Andromeda was a planet in the SQ-niverse ahead of time, or else they themselves were confused about it when they chose their collective name. ;)

Would you like a Blattfruit Pie with that? YES / YES

Hmm. Now I'm curious as to whether the same thing happens on the non-lethal cliff drop next to the mailbox. Mind booting up the game and checking? :D An unfortunate symptom of SQ6's development hell. IIRC, Josh Mandel was the main man for much of the initial development, and we all know how he likes to think of everything, especially when it comes to random <verb> the <noun> messages. But then Bad Things happened (Troels is more qualified to elaborate on them than I am) and a lot of places and items were left without these specialized messages when the game was finally wrapped up. That's why some parts of the game (like the Ascend-O-Pad) are chock full of funny comments, while others are dry as a bone, full of only generic "you can't do that" messages. Oh, what could have been... :(

Not as much as you might think. Beatrice explicitly mentions in SQ5 that Roger defeated the Sariens "a few years back". Assuming Roger had a year or two to attend Starcon Academy priot to the start of SQ5, that means he likely didn't spend more than two or three years in there, tops. So, no wishful thinking that he was out for decades and the previously-unmentioned Star Confederacy arose during the intermittent years. ;) As for the black hole issue, I'm pretty sure that the text in SQ3 says that it sent them to a parallel universe (ours). He's quite obviously back in his home universe by the start of SQ4, so we can assume that whatever trans-dimensional opening he slipped through, he was able to return the same way. Assuming it *is* a parellel universe, that actually makes the explaination for Xenon itself simple - it's the Earth of their universe. That is, their universe got an Earth-like world (and a human-like species) through evolutionary development just like ours did. The difference being that their universe's tech level is light years beyond our own. Variables and constants, indeed.

Hmm. There seems to be a bit of vitrol bubbling up in this thread. I was afraid of this; I still remember some of the same things being thrown around back in the old days. SRS BZNS and all. ;) For what it's worth, I prefer SQ1 VGA. There's a few reasons for this, but by far the biggest one is this one: Simple fact of the matter is, IMHO, Space Quest didn't really hit its stride writing-wise until SQ3. There's nothing *wrong* with SQ1EGA and SQ2, but like many of the other adventure game greats (especially Sierra's own AGI games), the writing was a bit tame compared to what they started coming up with in later games. Most of the written humor in SQ1EGA and SQ2 is either expospeak gags or dry wit; nothing bad about either of those, but it does make for less 'punchy', laugh-out-loud humor. Right around SQ3 is when the smartassery quotient (towards both the player and the sci-fi material they were mocking) really took off, which is easily the series' strong point. SQ1 VGA, being a later release, incorporated that more developed sense of humor - add Josh "Reward exploration! More random messages! MORE!" Mandel into the mix, and you get a game that gets me laughing as much as SQ4 and SQ5. :lol: Another reason: The music. Good god, the music. :blink: Easily my favorite score in the entire series. The bombastic new version of the SQ theme alone won my heart, and much of the rest of the soundtrack seems to be a loving homage to Star Wars's similar style of orchestral epic-ness. I mean, heck, go back and listen to the end-credits medley, and tell me they're not ripping off A New Hope. But, that's a good thing. ;) As for the art style...I'll admit, I think I like Mark's unique sci-fi designs (not just in SQ1, but in general) more than the raygun gothic look VGA went for. But like someone else said earlier in this thread, it's not unlike someone writing a cover of your favorite song. It's *different*, sure, but not necessarily worse than the original. Just...different. ;) I like the occasional foray into 'what if' scenarios, just for the sake of variety. As for the behind-the-scenes aspects of development...I'm not going to get into that. I make it a point to judge games based on their own merit, not because of its pedigree.

You have a very good point here. Let's face it, folks - the majority of the fun in adventure games is in the interactions. Walking around, exploring the game world, talking to people, poking and prodding at every hotspot to see what sorts of reactions you get - those are the things that really make the game experience unique. Space Quest proves that this sort of design can make for a great game even when the actual plot isn't exactly award-winning material. :rolleyes: KQ, QfG and the like had stronger plots, yes, but they too were more about world-building than story strength - more about the experience than anything else. Indeed, that's why the early KQ games were so heavily 'fairy tale' - the whole idea was to bring those tales you remembered to (virtual) life. This was actually a strong running theme in the early KQ games - they often gave you the ability to *kill* certain monsters in your way, but then also gave you a less overtly violent means of dealing with them, with the latter always worth more points. The dragon could be killed with a thrown dagger, but could also be driven away using water. The troll/ogre/whatever in the cloud area could be felled with a sling, or you could hide from him and wait for him to fall asleep, then steal the chest from him without waking him. The lion in KQ2 could be killed with a sword, or fed with meat. The idea was that Graham the knight *could* be violent when he needed to be, but his kind nature preferred not murdering everything in his path by default. Sometime around KQ3, they started phasing these sorts of options out completely, making the clever, non-violent solutions more or less mandatory - this lead to the 'guile hero' archetype that almost all future adventure game heroes would adhere to from then on. Lucasarts beat them to that one - they had the 'click on verb' system as early as Maniac Mansion. Sierra's icons were basically the same thing. Also, don't forget the removal of the whole 'walk to X' system. The old games required you to physically move your character to where they needed to be to perform an action - a system which, while revolutionary at the time, was also wholly unnecessary outside of arcade or maze sequences (hello, root monster!). Lucasarts' mouse-based controls simply moved the character to where they needed to be when you tried to perform an action, which greatly streamlined interacting with the environment. This is part of the reason the interfaces for Grim and MI4 are so clunky - they *removed* this feature and forced you to manually walk around all over again. <_< Absolutely. Space Quest 5 made use of a radical new technology in adventure gaming that Sierra was only just learning how to properly apply - something called a 'supporting cast'. ;) You poor, dexterity-challenged fools. ;) Some of us are perfectly comfortable with a little ACTION!!! mixed in with our puzzle-based gaming. Still, I can see how such things would be supremely annoying for those who don't spend far more time than they should playing more traditional, actiony video games. :unsure: IMHO, neither Sierra nor Lucasarts had the right idea at first. Lucasarts' 'no death' design, while certainly user-friendly, also only really worked because of the tongue-in-cheek nature of their games - you could only get away with not having any lethal consequences for in-game characters because creating contrived ways of having them *not* die was hilarious enough to fit with their style. Sierra's more ICly serious worlds demanded more serious consequences for failure to make them believable - but then people feel afraid to experiment for fear of getting the dreaded RRQ1 screen. Sierra actually hit upon the perfect solution towards the end of their adventure gaming days, with games like SQ6 and LSL6. In those games, you could die or get game-overs...but when you did, you'd get a shiny new 'Retry' button that put you right back before you screwed up, good as new. It's the perfect system, IMHO - the in-character consequences (and potential out-of-character humor) of death, but with no real inconvenience to the player. It saddens me that the system isn't used in more adventure games even now...

Well, there's... --The 'It's named Sierra and has the old logo so it's automatically going to be awesome! NOSTALGIA!!" camp --The 'Sierra's current corporate owners are douchebags and I hate them and this is a heartless cashgrab attempt! JADED VITROL!!" camp --The 'I've been hurt before but I still believe in miracles so I'll hope this turns out well! CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM!!' camp --The 'Who the hell is Sierra and why should I care? KIDS THESE DAYS!!' camp. ...among others. So, I guess she calls him...Grahampa? :rolleyes: On a less groan-y note, given that both of Graham's kids had love interests the last we saw them, I wonder whose child she is? Given her name, I'm tempted to think she'd be Alexander's little girl, and he named her as a clever jab at his old identity...

Well, geez. You get all lazy and don't check the SubChan for a few1 months, and then something like this goes and happens. Now the cheeping, winged piglets nesting in the tree behind my house suddenly make more sense. After reading everything posted so far, I'm personally in the 'wait and see' camp here. I approve whole-heartedly of the idea of using the Sierra publishing brand constructively in this manner; the name certainly still means something even outside of our little cabal, and leveraging it in the right ways could have some interesting results. Somewhat more worrisome is the idea of classic Sierra adventure game franchises possibly being dug out of their graves and butchered in a misguided attempt at appealing to the nostalgia market. Will this be the case, or will this new King's Quest (and possibly other games) actually be quality spiritual successors to their namesakes? Only time, and sequels, will tell. I will say up front that, personally, I hope that Space Quest doesn't get that treatment. Besides Troels' comment about the 2.5 Guys from Andromeda2 needing to be involved (which I agree with), I feel that SQ already got a tasteful (and amazing) resurgence and send-off with the latest round of fan games. Incinerations, especially, is the perfect cap-stone to the series IMHO, even if it is technically 'just' a fan game. If this new Sierra were to try and ressurect the series without the Guys, I doubt they would be able to do as good a job as our own dedicated fans have done - we'd end up with a cash-grabby, sub-par Space Quest zombie instead of a series that, though essentially dead, is at least resting peacefully in a beautiful hand-carved mahogany casket after having been lovingly laid to rest at a lavish-yet-tasteful funeral attended by everyone who ever knew and loved it dearly3 , who even now cherish its heartwarming, un-zombified memory. I love the series too much to want to see that happen to it; if it comes to that, I'd rather let SQ lie and focus instead on Space Quest: The Next Generation (aka Spaceventure). ...buuuut, as for ports of the existing Sierra games to current OSes? *Hell* yes. Port the hell out of them. Whore those bad boys out to every smart phone, tablet, and VR headset there is. B) More exposure for the classics is never a bad thing. Nintendo figured this out - they sell their own classic library on their current-day consoles, and make money hand over fist from it. You don't have to do anything fancy to 'em - just keep circulating the tapes. 1) Eight. Eight months since I last posted. I need to get off my virtual ass more often. 2) We love ya, Josh, really. 3) I'm suddenly recalling the end scenes of Full Throttle here.

Speaking of hilarious parser responses to player-provided obscenities, LSL1 has the funniest response to any typed line ever: >MASTURBATE Larry, the whole point of all this was to STOP doing that! Al Lowe once demo'd a build of the game for some folks, and that one was suggested by an audience member when he asked for random commands to try for them. He wasn't even aware that particular response was in the game. The crowd reaction was, reportedly, priceless. :lol: Your friend sounds like a really cool, badass, and altogether awesome individual. I say this as a purely objective outside observer, and not because my own name happens to also be Steve Jones. :ph34r: We Steves have to stick together. Although it does present certain problems...

This. I've commented about Bea and/or Stellar in other threads before, so I'll just summarize by saying that Troels' summary is the perfect summarization of what my summary would be summarizing were I to be summarizing it again here. :huh: But, yeah. Especially in the writing for SQ6, Bea is meant to be less "bitch" and more "violently jealous for comedic effect". I.E. She's the sort of woman who genuinely likes Roger, but does *not* like him getting pseudo-romantically entangled with other women, and the whole thing is played for laughs at Roger's expense (due to his...less than macho personality). Bea is a strong, authoritative woman who Gets Things Done and doesn't take any crap, while Roger is a (relatively) laid-back, dismotivated guy who usually needs some outside motivating factor (such a life-threatening crisis) to get him in gear. They really are a perfect match, in that sense. ;) Meanwhile, I actually really like Stellar, and think that she's *also* a good match for Roger, albeit in a different way. I rather liked the multiple endings of Incinerations, and part of me kept hoping that, even if the whole fiasco with Bea fell through, he might end up with Stellar instead for an unexpected, but still happy, ending. That didn't quite happen, of course, but I did love the Stellar ending regardless - it put a nice bow on their friendship-turned-unresolved-romantic-tension-turned-friendship again relationship, Again, Incinerations did a great job of doing justice to her character and her relationship with Roger without playing favorites or bashing anyone's character along the way.

This topic needs bumping. And I'm just the stubborn, never-leave-well-enough-alone guy to make that happen! B) If I had to pick one line from the aether that perfectly encapsulates the smart-assed nature of The Narrator in a single paragraph, it's this one, one of my favorites from SQ4: "Hmm, that's odd...this pipe tastes strangely like blood. ...oh, wait, that *is* blood. You've shredded your tongue. Your mother should have warned you about licking strange areas..."

Nope! I actually prefer it by far over the EGA version, though in my case it was the VGA one that I played first. I didn't get a copy of the EGA version until *years* later - and when compared to the remake, the jazzed-up writing and great music of the VGA version leave the EGA version in the dust. Personally, I also liked the pulp, 'Buck Rogers' design aesthetic, but mostly because, as a remake, they have a bit of license (in my mind) to have some fun with making new versions of the old graphics. Straight upgrades of existing assets are all well and good, but I always enjoy new, creative takes on existing concepts. That's the Tranformers fan in me, I guess...after you see dozens of versions of the same characters and concepts across successive continuities, you start to gain appreciation for the ones that take the paths less traveled. :P

As a lifelong fan of Legos, and of the creative mindsets that they tend to encourage, I approve wholeheartedly of this entire endeavor. :D Reminds me of one or two Lego-related SQ things I did once upon a time, though for politeness' sake I won't intrude the links for those into BlockMaster's thread here. I particularly like the re-creation of the SQ4 boxart (i.e. Roger plungering Vohaul's face), the "Roger in Stellar's arms during rescue" scene, and the rather clever method of recreating the Two Guys' distinctive mohawks with creative use of single-stud bevel pieces. ;) If there's one scene I'd love to see recreated in Lego, it's the climactic duel between Roger and his new nemesis at the end of Incinerations. It might be hard finding a Lego mop, though... <_<

So far, Larry Reloaded is the only Kickstarter I funded that's actually completed its project. Overall, I'm satisfied with it - LSL was always one of my favorite game series of all time, and seeing it back in action has been a real treat. :D There are a few more that I funded, but so far they're all still In Progress: Tex Murphy, Hero-U, and of course, Spaceventure. There's also a couple of video game based ones that, while I didn't fund them (ran out of cash ot throw around, heh heh), they did *get* funded and I'm eagerly awaiting the results. But, yeah. So far, it's mostly been one big waiting game. Fortunately, I'm a patient man. ;) I'd rather the various teams take their time and work on it Until It's Done than try to meet some deadline or other and screw up these potentially important spiritual series revivals.

No. Just...no. Go down that road, and before you know it fan creations everywhere will be having annoying adverts forced on them by corporate lawyers. One very important thing to realize here is that the whole trademark/copyright thing ultimately has *nothing* to do with money, at least not directly. After all, VSB, Incinerations, SQ7-Fan, and the like are *free* games - no money is changing hands. The whole 'taking away sales from the company' argument doesn't fly here. The *real* issue here is one of legal precedent. The idea is simple: if Activision or whoever gives out the rights to bandy about their intellectual property in a fangame, and make a habit of doing so, then they eventually lose *control* over those rights. You know the word 'xerox'? It's a verb, used to refer to making a photocopy of something. Once upon a time, the Xerox company was a huge presence in the world of photocopiers - so much so that people began to use the name of the brand (Xerox) to refer to the act of making copies. The Xerox company hates - *HATES* this, because it dilutes their brand name; people now use the word to refer to *any* photocopy stuff, even when it's not actual Xerox brand. That's what a lot of copyright law stuff is about; if you don't make a show of acting like you're trying to protect your IP, you run the risk of losing control over it in the future. Every so often, Activision or whoever has to flex their legal arms over stuff like this, or else the lawyers of the future might be able to point back at this time and say "Hey, they didn't take action then, what right do they have to do so now?" Sometimes they'll pick on fan stuff for absolutely no logical reason beyond them crossing some obscure line in the legal dirt - one that makes no sense to us, but means everything in the courts. I agree that the fact that the game went around calling itself "Space Quest 7" was probably a big part of why it got shut down. 'Tangent' games like VSB and Incinerations are one thing, but if someone releases a game called Space Quest 7, then the legal SQ copyright holders can't release one of their own and potentially get screwed over should they decide to make one in the future. It's a lot like how businesses will often reserve Internet domain names *years* in advance, in order to make absolutely sure that no one else can have them - even if they themselves aren't using them yet either. In short - it's a legal thing. It doesn't have to make sense to regular people like us; it just has to *exist* so that some lawyer somewhere can make a point in court. :P

Okay, so recently I came into possession of my very first home. :lol: Not a rental, but my own, honest-to-goodness house. Granted, it's a single-wide trailer and a bit worn around the edges, but it's still mine, dammit! :angry: ...ahem. Along with this relocation came a new cell phone - one that, unlike my old phone, has unlimited calls and text. More importantly, it's a smart phone - my very first one. ^_^ Having never had this level of technology before, I've been absorbed in all the myriad of ways to abuse its power and/or waste my time more productively than ever before. It's an Android phone - an Electrify-M - and I figured I'd come on here and ask you folks what sort of geeky games, apps, and other goodies I should put on this thing. I'm already working on getting ScummVM going with my favorite adventure games, but are there any other killer apps I should be on the lookout for?

Then you're obviously not a writer. Many writers can and do think that such a story setup is a good idea; so many, in fact, that there's a specific name for it: In Medias Res. The entire point of this storytelling maneuver is to *skip* things like character introductions and get right to the meat of the story. Sometimes things are illuminated in flashbacks later on; other times (like in SQ6) you're simply expected to accept that the lead-up happened 'offscreen'. There are a number of reasons to do something like this, but in SQ6's case, the reason is obvious - to escape the corner than SQ5 wrote the series into. As Josh has said before, SQ6 needed Roger to be put back in his old role as Average Joe-slash-janitor-slash-hapless semi-bumbling space hero. SQ5 was an interesting diversion into new territory, but keeping Roger as a captain created problems with maintaining the 'feel' of SQ for future games - it's hard to take Roger seriously as a comedically-downtrodden Everyman and universal chew toy if he's commanding his own starship and being hailed as a galactic hero. If you'll recall, SQ2 did the same thing - Roger's hero-ness from SQ1 is revoked by the time of SQ2 to allow him to return to his slated role. Now, you *could* spend all of SQ6 with 'Roger being busted back down to janitor' as the driving plot of the game...but then it becomes more of a drama-based story. Instead, the SQ6 writers decided to do a bit of a time skip - we leave SQ5 on a high note, then come in to SQ6 to find that while we've been waiting between sequels, Roger's lot in life hasn't really improved the way we thought it would. Boom, comedy gold. ;) Again, SQ2 did the same thing - the only difference is that in SQ6, there are other characters around after the skip that he presumably met during it. The real question is...do we, the players, really *need* to be formally introduced to these new characters? As a writer, I say...no, we do not. You (the audience) don't necessarily need to 'meet' a character at the same time the main character does. In some cases, you don't even need to know the specifics of how they came about at all. The idea is that you're supposed to *infer* such details - pick them up as you go. You don't always need an Introdump or an Establishing Character Moment to spell out everything a character is up front - sometimes it's more interesting to learn about them a little at a time, by observing their behavior in the provided framework of the story. Does Stellar have any sort of proper origin? Nope - she just shows up in SQ6 unannounced, yet Roger behaves as if she's a close personal friend. Do I need to know the details of their first meeting or their history to *accept* that she really is Roger's close personal friend? Nope - their interactions with each other and his behavior towards her solidify their relationship in and of themselves. Kielbasa is clearly the irritated boss who barely tolerates Roger's presence; Sydney is obviously the Data-esque, straight-laced Robot Buddy that the somewhat work-shirking Roger tends to take minor advantage of, and so forth. Personally, I had no problem accepting these characters' presence - especially since they were filling roles that, prior to SQ5, had been completely empty to begin with. SQ5 got good to us with its risky 'supporting cast' strategy - for SQ6 to carry on that daring theme without being tied down by SQ5's plot, we had to be asked to accept that we're not always privy to everything that goes on in Roger's life. Besides, the way I see it, it makes some degree of sense - as a serviceman who's been bouncing between posts for most of the series, it's logical for Roger's supporting cast to change without warning. We just have to learn to deal with it. ;) ...wait, weren't we talking about something before I started ranting? Oh, yeah, hard SQ games. :P Unlike most SQ players, I had no problems with the various arcade sequences and stuff like the Skate-O-Rama (barring timer glitches). In my case, the biggest problems were those of the pixel-hunting variety - not being able to find important things that need to be interacted with. The biggest puzzle I ever got hung up on was the hookah hose from SQ6, but not for the reasons most people give - my problem was that I couldn't find the right hotspot to connect the hose to the pipes behind the bar (specifically, the spot you have to click to break the pipe open). I spent months not being able to figure out what to do there, until I eventually realized that, hey, this weird new Internet thing that's just showed up might have the answer! I found the SQ6 walkthrough that Jess rushed through the game to write ;) on his relatively new site, and thus did I first discover the SQ fan community. :D Side note: Personally, I had no problems finding the glass shard in SQ1 - mostly because I played the VGA remake long before I got my hands on a copy of the EGA version. The remake has the shard clearly visible and obvious in the sand next to the pod. Just another reason the remake is superior to the original. :P *is beaten soundly by Frans*

The image in the first post is showing a broken link. I get the feeling I missed something hilarious... :( Oh, and happy birthday, France! ...no, wait, I mean Frans. B)

Here's something for the Powers That Be - I've recently obtained a smartphone, and have been considerign getting the Android port of Minecraft. Some questions: -Is the port any good? It's been hard to find info on how the pocket edition stacks up to the original, in terms of features and functions and such. -Can the Android version of Minecraft connect to this server? Or indeed, *any* PC-based Minecraft server? Or does it have its own little universe apart from regular Internet-accessible stuff?

I remember having a major crash in SQ6 for years - the game would repeatedly crash during the cutscene after Roger's escape from Polysorbate (when he and Stellar are talking in the transporter room). I tried for ages to find out what was causing the crash, but I never did. Then, one day, I decided to back up all of my old PC games, especially the ones on floppy and CD-ROM. Imagine my surprise when my PC fails to copy all of SQ6 off of its CD - I get a read error halfway through. That's when the horrible, stomach-lurching truth hits me - my SQ6 is *damaged*. Juuuuust scratched enough in exactly the right spot to corrupt a small portion of the speech resource file. The reason the game kept crashing during that cutscene is because the program was trying to pull Roger and Stellar's dialogue and couldn't read that part of the file. :blink: So...yeah. My one and only copy of SQ6 was buggered. :( The only reason I wasn't *totally* screwed is because that that point in time (before GOG came around), Frans, in his infinite wisdom, had arranged for copies of the SQ games to be hosted on SQ.net as abandonware and/or for historical archiving purposes. I downloaded the copy of SQ6 he had provided on the webspace and burned that to *two* CDs - one for me to use to run the game, and one to store as a backup. The whole incident *terrified* me - it was the first time I'd ever had a CD game crap out on me (I usually take very good care of my optical discs). I wound up going on a backup binge - copying every non-DRM PC game I owned. CD games each got duplicated onto a CD-R, and all my floppy games were backed up onto another CD-R (which I named the "Legacy Archive"), which *itself* was then copied to a second CD-R. The entire stack of clone CDs now resides in a fire safe right there alongside my important legal documents and other items of sentimental value - never to see the potentially-destructive light of day again, until and unless the originals bite the big one. In case it isn't obvious, I'm a little paranoid about protecting my game library. :unsure:

I just got an Android phone myself, and getting ScummVM on it was one of the first things I did. It really does run surprisingly well, at least for the moused games - although as always, the touch screen is a poor substitute for a real mouse IMHO. The direct-mapping option (where the pointer moves to the spot where you touch) *would* be awesome on a tablet, but on a smartphone screen, hotspots are usually too small for a big, meaty finger like mine to hit them accurately. :P And there's no zoom function to solve this, either. As for the non-moused games, I've been having a problem that many other Android users have also been having. ScummVM, by default, uses a 'predictive typing' interface not unlike an old-school cell phone keypad. It's possible to bring up your device's virtual keyboard to type commands that way...except that the Android port of ScummVM requires you to hold down the MENU button to bring it up while the app is running. Problem is, many Android devices (like mine) won't let you do this - holding down the button is mapped to system functions. So far, the guys making the Android port have yet to offer an option to fix this beyond basically saying "set up your own exterior macro to bring up the keyboard", which is a rather half-assed way to do it IMHO.

As a long-time console gamer, I can teel you that trying to get older-generation games running on current hardware *without* emulation is usually an exercise in futility. In all liklihood, those old do-it-yourself game engine games (like K&P) rely on elements of the Windows OS of their day - elements that probably don't even exist in current-gen Windows anymore. You may as well commence ta emulatin', cause getting Windows to cooperate with anything older than a few years is like trying to...well, get Windows to run anything else, really. :wacko: