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Fat Samurai posted:Also, oh, God, a timer in a Sierra adventure. This is going to be painful. The game wants you to think that it's just for your convenience so you can time Manannan's appearances and demands. It's a lie, as it's quite possible to eventually have gotten so many demands that fulfilling them is no longer possible. Hard timers to game over suck and it would have been a much better choice to only make it a schedule, IMO. Despite the timer, the stairs, and an even more bullshit climbing/pathfinding segment, this was one of my favourite KQ games. I'm not sure if that says more about the game or me. Prism fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Jul 17, 2017 |
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Jul 17, 2017 20:11
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It has a cool concept and the "you're gonna get killed until you figure out the right combos" thing manages to hit the Dark Soulsian sweet spot: courtesy of the timer, most of the time you feel like you've learned something when you die. This is not a trait king's quest games before or since possessed.
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Jul 17, 2017 20:53
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ytei6bu7kQ
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Jul 17, 2017 21:41
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Epicmissingno posted:Will you be using that cat hair to make a fake moustache? drat IT I was going to make that joke. <  >Anyway, this is a game that I didn't play in my youth. Or ever, actually. I did read an earlier LP on it though, during University.
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Jul 17, 2017 22:40
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mods, please
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Jul 17, 2017 23:23
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Police Quest 1 has a set of stairs just like that near the end, which you need to follow a guy up. I actually got stuck on them and lost the game unintentionally while trying to record that part. You'd think that of all the hazards in Sierra games, "goddamned stairs" wouldn't be near the top of the list, but, well. I think the reason stairs are difficult has to do with the fakeouts that the AGI engine does to pretend it has real layering, part of which involves where you're drawing the actual stuff on the screen. Basically, to render objects closer to the camera, you have to assign them a special priority, and what priority value is necessary can change depending on the positioning of the object, which means it can be hard to make a continuous object that moves a long way forward or backward on the screen, which stairs almost inevitably end up doing. Combine all that with the fact that the walkable area is only a few pixels wide and the stairs almost never line up exactly with the straight diagonal movement direction and every staircase becomes an impassible nightmare zone. You'd think they'd just learn to use elevators in their games instead. Incidentally, you actually created the priorities of different objects, along with the triggers that activated scripts, by drawing in a separate screen that mirrored the visible one but used different colors for different priorities. Here's what one screen from KQ1 looked like on the priority layer, for instance:  I believe there's a debug command that shows that in-game.
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Jul 17, 2017 23:33
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Small correction. Trying to escape the house, being caught in a forbidden room, not feeding the wizard when he demands it -- these things *won't* get you killed. They'll get you punished. With one of four (amusing) punishments, which I hope you'll show off. The only thing that will get you killed is if Manannan catches you with a forbidden item. Or, if you screw up too many times -- but the game gives you a lot of rope before it hangs you. I think if you take too long, and the timer gets high enough, the wizard will also kill you. (The manual makes a point that the wizard kills all of his slaves when they turn eighteen, and Gwydion is seventeen, fast approaching his eighteenth birthday. So there's some urgency to your quest, even though the game doesn't telegraph it well.)
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Jul 18, 2017 00:00
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What happens if you just screw around for a while after he gives you a chore? gently caress you, I'm not cleaning a chicken coop.
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Jul 18, 2017 00:29
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Bloops Crusts posted:Small correction. Not quite right. You get punished the FIRST time he catches you outside the house area, but after that he'll kill you for it. Also not feeding him does kill you because that's where the hard time limit is; there's only so many food items in the game (the remakes might be different, I don't remember).
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Jul 18, 2017 00:31
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whitehelm posted:Not quite right. You get punished the FIRST time he catches you outside the house area, but after that he'll kill you for it. Nope! I just brought up the game and checked for myself. (I feel like an old man waving my cane in the air, arguing over checkers.)
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Jul 18, 2017 00:36
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MagusofStars posted:What happens if you just screw around for a while after he gives you a chore? gently caress you, I'm not cleaning a chicken coop. You get punished, of course. Thankfully you don't have to clean up after the chickens, only feed them.
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Jul 18, 2017 00:39
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whitehelm posted:Not quite right. You get punished the FIRST time he catches you outside the house area, but after that he'll kill you for it. Also not feeding him does kill you because that's where the hard time limit is; there's only so many food items in the game (the remakes might be different, I don't remember). In the remakes, one of them respawns, but it's one you have to go out of your way to get; for spoiler reasons I won't say what it is until it's picked up, but if you know the game you probably can guess what it is.
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Jul 18, 2017 00:58
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I'll be honest, that timer mechanic really seems interesting. This being a Sierra game though, I highly expect some bullshit to come out of that.
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Jul 18, 2017 02:35
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Lucas Archer posted:Is there anything in the documentation that explains what the asterisk means, or is that something you have to divine after dying x times to manny? Nooooope. The manual only has the game's backstory (which Bloops Crusts gave the cliff notes version above) and like 4-5 pages of copy protection. You just have to intuit that items marked with a * mean something special, and that you will get killed if caught while holding them. Also looks like I'm going to have to do a bonus update on trying to intentionally piss off Manannan, just to show how far you can press his buttons before he nukes you into dust. So look for that as part of the next update. 
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Jul 18, 2017 03:38
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And now we have a villain in King's Quest, after all the witches and hazards of the previous games were just around, they weren't actively planning to cause pain and death to you. Also, anyone know who the narrator is?
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Jul 18, 2017 05:22
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I really love the idea of an rear end in a top hat wizard just teleporting in, yelling at you for not doing his arbitrary chore, then killing you with magic, then fucks off via the same teleportation while atari 2600-esque beeps and boops plays 
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Jul 18, 2017 05:28
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Dr. Fetus posted:I'll be honest, that timer mechanic really seems interesting. This being a Sierra game though, I highly expect some bullshit to come out of that. I remember Darkseed had a similar mechanic with an in-game clock that would result in missing events if you were in the wrong place. Same with some of Infocom's games (mainly the mysteries like Deadline). also night trap
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Jul 18, 2017 05:46
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grandalt posted:Also, anyone know who the narrator is? The Lotus from Warframe.
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Jul 18, 2017 06:03
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Sel Nar posted:The Lotus from Warframe. Aka Space Mom.
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Jul 18, 2017 06:58
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Sel Nar posted:The Lotus from Warframe.
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Jul 18, 2017 09:33
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whitehelm posted:Not quite right. You get punished the FIRST time he catches you outside the house area, but after that he'll kill you for it. Also not feeding him does kill you because that's where the hard time limit is; there's only so many food items in the game (the remakes might be different, I don't remember). The first time he catches you on the mountain path outside the house, he'll just teleport you back to the entry hall. The second time he catches you, he'll punish you. The third time, I believe he kills you. In addition, getting caught in the study or master bedroom while you're not supposed to be there generally gets you a warning first. If you ignore it, you get punished. Failing to do your chore in time also gets you punished. Failing to feed him also gets you punished. Getting punished (i.e yellow cards) about 3 or 4 times eventually gets you a red card. (death) The hard time limit is not running out food to feed him, it's running out of yellow cards you get for failing to feed him. This limit is also present in the Infamous Adventurers remake, IIRC. The AGD Interactive remake has one particular food item that respawns so you never get into a dead end by running out of food there unless you time your save poorly and save far away from the spot where it spawns while the wizard is seconds away from returning, but that one's on the player. The manual doesn't tell you about the asterisk in the inventory screen, but since the game specifically tells you you're carrying forbidden items if you're caught and since said items are mentioned in the copy protection section as being ingredients, it's not exactly rocket science to figure out. Oh, and the wizard totally enters the kitchen whenever he decides to check on you. The description that the wizard rarely enters the kitchen is just flavor text that the game mechanics ignore when convenient.
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Jul 18, 2017 09:46
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whitehelm posted:Also not feeding him does kill you because that's where the hard time limit is; there's only so many food items in the game (the remakes might be different, I don't remember).
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Jul 18, 2017 10:01
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Fat Samurai posted:Let me guess: you need some of them to finish the game, so you can become a dead man walking in the first 5 minutes. No. Once you deal with the wizard, food is no longer necessary and any excess food items in your inventory stop serving a purpose. (though you can always eat them yourself) Erpy fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Jul 18, 2017 |
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Jul 18, 2017 10:40
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Erpy posted:No. Once you deal with the wizard, food is no longer necessary and any excess food items in your inventory stop serving a purpose. Hmm. Are you sure this one's a Sierra game?
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Jul 18, 2017 10:43
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Erpy posted:No. Once you deal with the wizard, food is no longer necessary and any excess food items in your inventory stop serving a purpose. (though you can always eat them yourself) The worst Sierra game.
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Jul 18, 2017 10:44
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KQ3 is a pretty fair game all around. About the only tricky thing is learning Manannan's schedule. The puzzles aren't bad. There isn't any moon logic. There aren't even many ways to get caught walking dead, unlike other games in the series. (*cough KQ5 cough*) Well... Let me rephrase. There are ways to get caught walking dead in KQ3, but they're all blatantly obvious and clearly telegraphed by the game and the manual, so if you screw up it's pretty much on you. There's a reason why KQ3 is usually looked on as the second-best game in the series. On top of everything else in its favor, it's debatably got the best story in the King's Quest series too. Not exactly a high bar, given the era these games came out in, but KQ3 is clever in a way none of the other games are. btw, sup Erpy.
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Jul 19, 2017 00:03
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Bloops Crusts posted:KQ3 is a pretty fair game all around. About the only tricky thing is learning Manannan's schedule. The puzzles aren't bad. There isn't any moon logic. There aren't even many ways to get caught walking dead, unlike other games in the series. (*cough KQ5 cough*) Well... Let me rephrase. There are ways to get caught walking dead in KQ3, but they're all blatantly obvious and clearly telegraphed by the game and the manual, so if you screw up it's pretty much on you. I have this strange fondness for your cough, above, that I cannot explain. I can only chalk it up to the graphics that I find very charming, the fact that it was my first real adventure game and the owl, whom I also love. I'm not going to mention any of the things that are wrong with it because I want neither to spoil nor to type a short novel, but I will say that I clearly must have the digital equivalent of Stockholm syndrome.
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Jul 19, 2017 01:16
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I am fond of it too. I grew up playing all of the King's Quest games in the mid-90s, so it's hard for me to hate any of them, or even the genre as a whole. (I'm actually really glad to see adventure is enjoying a mini-renaissance right now.) I have a special place in my heart for cough, it's kind of got a Dagger of Amon Ra so-cheesy-it's-good thing going on, lots of moments of unintentional hilarity. But even when I played it for the first time in 1995, a seven-year-old kid who didn't know poo poo about game design and actually liked the loving owl, I could tell it was pretty bad compared to some of the other games in the collection... so I tended to gravitate towards those other games. Even games like KQ3, which were older than I was and looked like total poo poo, but were actually way better.
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Jul 19, 2017 02:12
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KQ3 is a cool game. Also the first KQ game I beat on my own, the other two were my brother and me (mostly my brother considering he's older, but Gawddangit I helped)
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Jul 19, 2017 02:17
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idonotlikepeas posted:every staircase becomes an impassible nightmare zone. You'd think they'd just learn to use elevators in their games instead. Or just have you step onto the staircase and then transition instantly to the next screen. Making you walk all the way up (or down) has got to be an intentional challenge.
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Jul 19, 2017 07:55
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Tiggum posted:Or just have you step onto the staircase and then transition instantly to the next screen. Making you walk all the way up (or down) has got to be an intentional challenge. That's it exactly - remember, King's Quest I was the first adventure game that put your character on the screen and made position an important element. No longer were all objects in "the room" accessible by default. They were able to use positioning to do things like have monsters chase you around the screen or make the player navigate narrow paths, and so that's exactly what they did. It seems almost ironic that when they switched to entirely point-and-click in King's Quest V, they added an automatic ability to navigate those paths, even though the winding paths themselves persisted as part of the design of the games.
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Jul 19, 2017 14:44
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 Welcome back to King's Quest III. So let's do that again, this time without pissing off the wizard.  I lied, by the way. I'm deliberately trying to provoke him here. This is Manannan's room. By all accounts he should have appeared by now, but he hasn't.  It took him a full extra minute to appear and glower at Gwydion. Seriously, that's all he does here. He doesn't even acknowledge that you did the chore. He just poofs into the room and stares at you for like 4 seconds. At this point we may as well wait the next minute out. As a whole, I'm not fond of the timer mechanic. There are five items we could be getting right now. We could be progressing the story, such as it is. We could be engaging with the copy protection, for that matter. Instead, we're stuck wandering back and forth in a tiny hallway waiting for the 0:05:00 marker.  Manannan is punctual when it comes to this matter.  : Gwydion, I have decided to take a journey.We now are free to loot the poo poo out of everything for the next 25 minutes. Manannan will return from his journey at the 0:30:00 mark, and we have a lot to do between now and then.  : Gwydion, Manannan is not appearing on sensors. You are safe for the time being. I will let you know when he is close to returning. First things first, the third floor. You can kinda see a few pixels on the ground, as well as the telescope centerpiece. So let's take a closer look... >look telescope : Manannan has the brass telescope pointed out a window. It is well polished. He uses the telescope to keep tabs on the citizenry of Llewdor.>look floor : There is nothing on the dusty floor but a dead fly. Gwydion picks it up and drops it into his hand with no small amount of disgust. He carefully removes the wings and discards the body. : Carrying around a dead fly is disgusting. The wings, though, could come in handy. : The fly wings are remarkably beautiful for having come from such a disagreeable insect. Next, we need to loot the hell out of Manannan's room. >open drawer (while in front of the nightstand) : In the vanity drawer are many uninteresting items, although the wizard's hand mirror may come in handy. Gwydion grabs it and closes the drawer.>open drawer (while in front of the dresser) : Gwydion finds baubles and trinkets which do not interest him. Suddenly, his eye falls on something that does... a vial labeled "Rose Petal Essence," which he eagerly takes.Alternatively if you stand too close to the dresser... >open drawer : Gwydion bangs the drawer against his shins repeatedly. Try backing up!>open cabinet  >look in cabinet : In the cabinet there are voluminous velvet robes, satin slippers, peaked hats, and soft linen gowns.>search cabinet : Gwydion is startled to discover an ancient parchment scroll. Its ink has faded, but it seems to be a map. He takes the treasure and leaves everything else exactly as it was.This next item is unncessarily hard to find for no particularly good reason. >close cabinet >look on top of cabinet : Gwydion runs a hand along the top of the closet. Suddenly, he touches something metallic. Grabbing it, he discovers a small brass key! What could it unlock?We're going to need this in a minute.  : The mirror is set in a round, oak frame with a long handle. You peer into it and see your rather dirty, but handsome, face. : The little vial of rose petal essence has a delicate, sweet aroma. : The small brass key is brightly polished.Finally, rather than show a picture of the map...  This is map of Llewdor, which gets filled out as we explore the land.  It's also a magic map that can teleport you to any map square you've visited previously. Naturally, this comes with significant limitations that I'll cover several updates from now.  We're down in Manannan's study. On the way down, I stopped by Gwydion's room to grab all the stuff from under his bed. Now, the little cabinet in the bottom left corner is incredibly important. It's locked, and we just so happen to have found the key. >unlock cabinet : Gwydion unlocks the oaken cabinet with the brass key. Inside he finds the wizard's magic wand. He takes it, knowing that it will mean his death if the wizard finds it missing. After closing the door, he carefully relocks the cabinet.Gwydion is smart enough to cover his tracks in this one case. Now for the next part... >look bookshelf : So many books line the bookshelf, that you wonder when Manannan has time to read them all. Titles cover many subjects: from "Ancient Arabic Mythology," to "A Study of the Heavens," to "The Philosophies of Socrates.">get book : Gwydion glances at the titles of the books, but none of them interest him. Wait... was that a glint of metal behind one large book?: This bears further investigating...>move books : Gwydion pushes the large book aside, revealing a metal lever attached to the back of the bookshelf.>pull lever  : A trapdoor opens, revealing steep stone steps leading into darkness.  Ahh, the copy protection room. This next bit doesn't happen in the game, but makes sense narratively... : On the large preparation table, Gwydion finds a series of recipe cards. The recipes, however, call for all sorts of ingredients, some of which are decidedly sinister sounding. He collects the cards. One in particular stands out. So this is the copy protection, more or less. A lot of the crap you collect in this game is used for casting magic spells, thus why Manannan freaked out at finding Gwydion in possession of cat fur. There are seven spells in the game, and we're going to use all seven of them in the course of this playthrough. I've deliberately slapped the copy protection together in a facsimilie of a recipe card, because that's all it is. The exotic ingredients like Saffron can almost all be found on Manannan's shelf in the background. So in order to prepare this first spell, all we had to do was find the rose petal essence and the magic wand. So to that end... >get saffron : Gwydion searches the shelves for the jar labeled "Saffron" and removes it to carry with him. : Inside the jar, you see the saffron, an orange-yellow, powdery substance.While standing in front of the table... >turn to page iv : With trembling hands, Gwydion turns the pages of "The Sorcery of Old," and prepares to follow its instructions precisely.Precisely is right, too. The instructions on that little recipe card I made are almost the literal string you need to type into the game.  >put saffron in essence : Gwydion carefully sprinkles the precious saffron into the vial of rose petal essence. Here's the copy protection bit. Magic needs an incantation to work properly, and we have to type it in. One option is to type it with the exact punctuation the manual has.  It's a lot easier to just shitpost the incantation. >wave wand : Gwydion waves the magic wand over the vial of rose petal essence. Having successfully completed the spell, he looks again at the wizard's laboratory. We're done with the copy protection for now. I'm refusing to call it spellcasting. It's the principle of the matter. Anyway, let's get the hell out of here. We've wasted nearly 5 minutes of our precious free time, and we have so much to do yet...  Yeah, that's enough for now.  Now let's enter the bonus zone. Here we're going to try and deliberately piss of Manannan until he kills us.  The easiest way to do so is to try and leave the mountain.  Manannan will always catch you at around this point. : Manannan's eyes narrow to slits.: Gwydion!! You are forbidden to be here! I've a good mind to...: HIs face softens as he continues.: Well maybe next time. For now... GO HOME! First time is a warning and you get sent back to the dining room.  Second time... I fall to my death. Whoops! Let's try that again. : You are forbidden to be here!: The old wizard's voice is a hiss. His face is stony, emotionless, and cold.: Try hanging around in the kitchen a while, Gwydion. : You feel the blood rushing to your head as you realize that you are upside-down. Straining to look up, you notice your feet have been magically attached to a kitchen rafter. You struggle, but can't release yourself. What a vexing situation.The narrator by default uses second person pronouns for protagonists, and since this is non canon with the actual LP run, it's as good a time as any to use them. Anyway, we're now stuck hanging on the ceiling for a full realtime minute. Typing any command has the narrator acting weird. : .won taht od t'nac uoY : You feel dizzy and anuseated at the sudden changes in body position. It's at least some consolation to find yourself on the floor again. So the third time's not the charm. : Boy, do you hate these little sessions. But, "No pain, no magic." Another minute of varied exercises. It was at this point that I was beginning to realize that it was impossible to piss Manannan off enough to die at the start of the game.  But becauses Manannan suspended us from the ceiling and made us do exercises, we've missed our deadline on completing the chore. : Gwydion! You were assigned a chore. You know what happens to lazy boys!: Manannan shakes his head in disgust.: The kitchen is still dirty. When will you learn to OBEY!: Up goes the dreaded finger. And we're back here. Manannan has four punishments, and I was super unlucky because I kept getting hanging out in the kitchen.  We're past 5 minutes. He should have left on his journey at this point. But nope, here he is making life difficult. And we're hanging like a bat for a third time. So that's four punishments in five minutes and he has yet to kill us. So I'm going to call the experiment a failure here. I tried this process several more times, and all I ever got was hanging from the ceiling and rarely the exercises. Never once did I manage to piss the wizard off enough to warrant death. So I was completely wrong about everything in the first update. Piss the wizard off as much as you like. If you do things correctly, it will not matter an iota. For the record, I'm unwilling to wait around for the 30 minute mark to try my luck some more. The emulator I'm running this on, ScummVM, forces the game to run in realtime regardless of speed setting. I would have to literally sit around for 25 real time minutes in order to get a single chance to piss the wizard off. NEXT TIME: We actually leave the old house. List of Points +1 - Fly wings +1 - Gwydion the vain +1 - Rose petal perfume +7 - The faded map +3 - The small brass key +4 - Stealing the wand +5 - Finding the hidden lever +1 - Raiding Manannan's spice rack +10 - Yer a wizard, Gwydion Total: 45/210 Register of Deaths Tripped by the loving cat x2 DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jul 21, 2017 |
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Jul 19, 2017 15:14
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Can't you circumvent the copy protection today by finding a pdf of the manual for this game somewhere and going off that? Also, next time the wizard poofs in but doesn't wish to turn you into a pile of ash, you should try to "kill" him. Or at least "talking" to him and see if that warrants a reaction instead of the game saying it doesn't recognize those commands.
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Jul 19, 2017 16:34
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I doubt the game even gives you a chance to react when the wizard warps in.
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Jul 19, 2017 19:27
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PurpleXVI posted:I doubt the game even gives you a chance to react when the wizard warps in. IIRC it doesn't (though I could be misremembering, it's been a while), but you can definitely walk into a room when he's already there if he's not out on a trip. Sometimes he takes a nap in his room. Prism fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Jul 19, 2017 |
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Jul 19, 2017 20:04
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Prism posted:IIRC it doesn't (though I could be misremembering, it's been a while), but you can definitely walk into a room when he's already there if he's not out on a trip. Sometimes he takes a nap in his room. Shame there's no magic marker to go with the magic wand.
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Jul 19, 2017 23:07
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Sage Grimm posted:Shame there's no magic marker to go with the magic wand. Not in this Sierra game, anyway...
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Jul 19, 2017 23:28
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I might be remembering this wrong, but I think the game gives you extra messages if the in-game sound is turned off when you look at Manannan's spellbook and when you screw up the copy protection.
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Jul 20, 2017 00:42
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Your luck with the punishments was about average. You missed the lamest one, but you also missed the funnest one. Shame you got stuck hanging upside down all those times though. The game does allow you to enter inputs when Manannan appears, but you can't kill him because "he's too powerful for you."
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Jul 20, 2017 01:51
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EorayMel posted:Can't you circumvent the copy protection today by finding a pdf of the manual for this game somewhere and going off that? This game actually predates pdfs! When this game was published the most common ways to pirate software was BBS and passing around physical disks. Scanners were extreemly expensive in the late 80s and not something an ordinary person would have access to. Also, image files were huge relative to the most common media at the time -- 1.44MB floppy disks. Your best bet was to find someone with the manual and copy it, which was a giant pain. Cheat sheets for these games would come eventually; but they were spreading a the speed of BBSes and could take a very long time to reach your local one.
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Jul 20, 2017 02:11
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