Latley I've been playing a lot of the old classic Sierra games, including Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest and Space Quest; mostly games I have never played.
I began to realise something, AGS has abilities to make games such as ones like these, but I feel that it is slipping more to the Lucas-Arts side of the genre; much like the games I make. I really do miss some of the classic text-parser games, where some puzzles reside within the wording.
I play a lot of AGS games nowadays, and although not have some of the best, biggest adventuring knowledge I'm still a fan. I think that alliance can usually be spread by the first adventure game you pick up, which for me was Hugo House of Horrors, followed by Monkey Island 1. Because of this I chose lucas-arts games - the graphics were better, the humour was more enjoyable, guybrush had such a funny name, and I was a n00b on the adventure scene and didn't enjoy dead ends or death.
Most of the community seem to have forgotten about all CJ's hard work in implementing the text parser, so somebody please use it, I really enjoy sitting at my keyboard thinking up things to do :)
My main argument in this post, is really to get you thinking, which way are you swaying, and why? - is it because of the first game you ever played?
Why does it seem that Sierra style games aren't as popular?
Thanks for reading my random outburst of jibberish :D
I preffer Lucas because I see silly that you can die by clicking in a cliff or something like that. Sierra games were not reallistic in that aspect. Do you remeber how Laura Bow died everytime we click in the road? Is she stupid? can´t she see the comming cars? And what about King Graham? Can´t he see the cliffs, why don´t he stop? Lucas´ were better, and there were not dead ends. Ron Gilbert said: It is stupid that when you´re in an adventure game in New York you can´t go on in the adventure because you forgot to pick a pencil in Los Angeles... There are no pencis in New York? I agree with him.
New York is full of Pencils...
^_^
I think that deaths in adventure games can be badly done, but sometimes I like a little death, e.g you have 5 minutes to disarm the bomb and if you fail you die. I think that all adventure game characters should have built in common sense, how many times have you played Kings Quest and fell off a cliff or drowned? and how many times have you tried to pick up an object and he says he doesnt need it? If he has the common sense to see into the future and know he's not going to need the object, surely he knows that cliffs are dangerous and water is wet.
Dead-ends can be even more frustarting. In a game I am currently planning there are suitable dead-ends, where if you miss something, you have to do another puzzle somewhere to make up for it, and that only happens once.
hey, I made a textadventure recently, in multimedia fusion, and you can play download it at my website ;) Im planning on making a textadventures in combination with panorama pictures.
I started playing King's Quest and I loved them, that's how I got into adventure games. Then came Space Quest, Police Quest, Quest for Glory, Gold Rush! and so forth.
But boy, when MI came out, they changed the concept of adventure games - no dying, no dead ends, no guess-what-word-the-programmer-was-thinking-of... MI ruled!
I still think of sierra games with affection, but I have to agree with Farlander. Lucas imporved upon sierra's concept.
stop telling people to use the parser, my game wont be as special!!
Lucas bitterly stole Sierra's concept and ruined it.
Just my opinion.
Troll.
Raggit, care to elaborate? Im just curious, not attacking you.
My first adventure game was Moop and Dreadly, wait no, it was Monkey Island, back when it first hit shelves, and I was just like 7 years old. It was amazing. Growing up with more LucasArts goodness, I then learned about Sierra's games, and they really never interested me, mostly for the said reasons above, nor do I have any interest in playing them now. I would though play one made by our friends here with that style in mind, but I'm always a sucker for games styled in the ways I grew up with.
The simple fact is that you can't rightly compare Sierra and LEC games. They are completely different, and pretty much the only similarity is that they're adventures.
LEC tended to make humourous games, with little serious content (Indy excepted, obviously), Sierra made more serious games (with a few more humourous exceptions like SQ and LSL).
LEC wouldn't let you die (usually), Sierra was FULL of deaths.
LEC games tended to be a bit easier, and easier to play and complete, finishing a Sierra game was quite an undertaking, filled with deaths and dead-ends.
Although I love both Sierra and LEC, I don't think you can really decide who's 'best', given just how different they are. If you like LEC's games, but not Sierra, then great, but that doesn't make LEC the better company, it just means Sierra doesn't appeal to you.
Quote from: Farlander on Mon 21/07/2003 10:06:55
I preffer Lucas because I see silly that you can die by clicking in a cliff or something like that. Sierra games were not reallistic in that aspect. Do you remeber how Laura Bow died everytime we click in the road? Is she stupid? can´t she see the comming cars? And what about King Graham? Can´t he see the cliffs, why don´t he stop? Lucas´ were better, and there were not dead ends. Ron Gilbert said: It is stupid that when you´re in an adventure game in New York you can´t go on in the adventure because you forgot to pick a pencil in Los Angeles... There are no pencis in New York? I agree with him.
New York is full of Pencils...
But if you are silly enough to click off a cliff you should fall off, which is more realistic to start with, and as for pencils, what if you were stuck in a cage in New York and you forgot to pick up the Magic Marker in Brisbaine, cause you forgot to order it from Amsterdam, you'd be stuck in the cage without being able to draw a magic door, even if there was a magic marker in sight just out of reach at your present predicament.
Personally, I grew up with Sierra games, and didn't really play any LucArts games until later on, I prefer not dying and walking deads can suck, but what it comes down to is Sierra designed games that could really bug you and make you stuck, more for adults really.
LA designed more for a younger generation, but the games were just as good, I like them both, cause you get different feelings from playing them all, plus it gives you twice as many games to enjoy.
I haven't played too many of LEC's games.
I would have to say I preferred Sierra's style.
Actually I preferred the really old style where you didn't use the mouse. I liked typing in commands and using the keyboard to navigate. There was a certain magic involved with it.
I didn't like how easy it was to die, but that just added to the challenge.
Hey, that's just my opinion!
dm
Magintz, I think you are wrong in dividing between these two styles in relation with our games. Most games here are neither LEC, nor Sierra, but somewhere on the line between the two.
Well, I guess I just get sick of people constantly going to war over the two.
Does it matter wich one we preffer??? Isn't it enough that we just like adventure games?
I phrased my first post wrong. But what I mean is that in all rights Sierra had basically invented the graphic adventure game, and in my eyes LEC copied the idea.
But hey, if you like LEC that's fine and if you like Sierra that's fine. It'd be better if we could all get along becuase we LIKE adventure games, not WHOSE adventure games we like.
But having preferences is not wrong either.
Deja vu?
Basically, there are two types of people in the world:
Those that want to categorise everybody/thing into one of two categories and those that don't
I'm in the latter :P
I didn't mean to start wars between the two companies, and isolate anyone because of there choice. All I wanted to do was get peoples opinions, see what they prefer and why, and which style they "sway" towards when making their games. Obviously everyone ahs there own unique style and most fall between the two.
With me I tend to sway more towards the lucasarts side, having actions such as walk-to, pickup etc, rather than the cycle through right click or text parser, as that involves far more work in my opinion.
I think that most people are bigger lucasarts fans purly because of the timing when their adventure games where released. The games were aimed at teenagers (mostly) and so fell into our category, while Sierra aimed for the older generation, before some of us where born :P.
I don't want people to make choices and reject one company just becasue you "prefer" the other, but I want to see if you understand why you are leaning to one alliance, whether it be loyalty or enjoyment.
My game sways more toward the Sierra style, simply because I am more familiar with it. My first adventure game, after Hugo I, was Space Quest IV, and then King's Quest V. Then, I got into the other Quest games, while my dad got into LSL ::)
My first LEC game was (not surprisingly) Monkey Island I, which I first played (surprisingly) about 6 months ago. Until I joined the AGS community early last year, I had only known about Sierra adventure games; I didn't even know LEC existed. Therefore, my game uses a Sierra-style menu interface. I wasn't intuitive enough to create my own. :P
SSH - No!!! There are THREE types of people in this world. Those who can count and those who can't.
I think both styles are acceptable. I don't have a problem using one or the other, I just perfer the old-old-school stylings of the godfater of adventure games, Sierra.
Can't we all just get along???
dm
I agree (slightly) with DM, Sierra is almost like the creator of adventure games, they were the first big company to really take adventure games seriously as a genre. They developed the first generation of addiction, which later spawed into what we see today.
Lucasarts can be more enjoyable than the Sierra games, but that's becasue it's been refined to suit a more modern audience, unlike Sierra which still remains a long away memory of the past which we all miss and cherish deep within our fat encrusted hearts.
Yeah, Sierra invented the graphic adventure, but LucasArts instilled some theory and a sense of cinematics into it. Sierra games didn't really have much of a plot, they were more like serials or something. In the 90s, though, they started taking a little inspiration from LucasArts, and made some great games, like Gabriel Knight...
QuoteMost games here are neither LEC, nor Sierra, but somewhere on the line between the two.
Y'know, if you think about it. There's sort of an...AGS style.
Lucasarts dialog, Sierra interface, Not many games have death or walking deads.
I've always considered AGS purely neutral juast because it's so versatile. No creator is commited to following any particular style of game making.
Plus, I really dislike walking deads and experience makes me want to burn things. Really, that's the only reason I don't play Sierra games.
I always preferred LucasArts, I think their 'Game Design Philosophy' you read in all their manuals was spot-on about 'buying games to be entertained, not to be punished every time you make a mistake'. But they probably missed the point that all the people who bought Sierra games probably liked the hard aspect of it. I can appreciate that the big undertaking that Sierra games often were, having to have oodles of saves and being careful around cliffs etc., made them an attractive challenge to many gamers.
Personally, I'm more a casual hobbyist when it comes to games, and LucasArts do give more immediate gratification, and are easier to get through. It always seemed to me you got rewarded more often with new areas to explore, new characters to meet, new jokes, more often. With Sierra games I find that sometimes there's too much of the game open to you to begin with, the goal (or what you should do first) isn't clear enough, and there aren't enough people to interact with.
I have reassessed this view a bit, as I have discovered the Quest For Glory series this year, which is fantastic. QFG2: Trial By Fire must be one of my favourites now. But just as a general rule, I think LucasArts made 'em best.
As for the LucasArts copying Sierra idea, yeah I'm sure graphic adventures were picked up by LucasArts after Sierra, but it remains that they really did their own thing with them (and helped popularise them). This thread wouldn't be here if they'd ONLY copied Sierra, they're very distinct styles.
Personally as far as UI goes I prefer the Broken Sword style, nice and simple, keep the concentration on the puzzles and story (and lurverly graphics ;D ) In the game design style I will always hark back to that MI theme tune and just think of the bliss (I keep my old SB Pro around just in case I wanna hear all those old DOS tunes, but thats a different thread), I guess the games you play when you're young are magnified in their perceived brilliance I loved the humour then and I still try to fit "You fight like cow" into the odd conversation every now and then (how sad :-[) That said QFG is the best mixed genre series EVER
I grew up a Sierra man. I played King's Quest and Space Quest when they first came out. I remember Space Quest very well, I walked Roger out of his closet and down the hall about two months before Sierra released the game. My dad used to go to this Atari ST club that basically traded pirated software back and forth. He bought all of the Sierra games though. I remember playing Loom once, long ago. Then I played a Demo of Monkey Island 1 once. I hated it. I don't know why. I just hated it.
Well, over a decade has passed and I find that I just can't play Sierra games anymore. I now like LucasArts games. I just completed Monkey Island 1 a few weeks ago. I loved it. I thought it was the greatest game I've ever played. Sierra games take a lot of time, time that I just don't seem to have anymore. Even with a walkthrough. LucasArts games are just easier for me now. It is a funny twist since everyone is saying that LucasArts games are for teenagers. Maybe I got dumb or lazy as I got older.
So far I have made two games with AGS. The first was pretty Sierra point & click style with all messages in pop up boxes. My second was Sierra point & click with LucasArts dialog (I agree that this seems to be the AGS-style). My current game uses a modified DOTT(switching characters)/FOA(design) GUI(Thanks Proskrito!). I believe I now prefer LucasArts GUI's, but I'm sure that will change when I finish this game and start another...
later,
-junc
As a lec fan, my game will probably have a lot of LEC style to it. However, from playing AGS games I've gotten to like some of the sierra features like text windows and the interface.
So the gui style is a combination of the two. the actual interface is based on Monkey Island 2's but simplified to a sierra style, but you can still scroll through actions using the mouse wheel.
A while ago I read a thread where some sierra fans said that they didn't like the way LEC games made you move all the way to the object to look at it or two say that you can't use it (I think it was PUMAMAN/CJ actually who said that). Anway, I've worked hard to code so that the player walks to the hotspot only if it's necessary. the character only turns to look at the hostpot at look at, and a text window pops up, but it describes eveything in 3rd person like some kind of narrator. When you try to interact, tho, the character does say "I can't do that" or whatever. the little guy's got a mind of its own.
As for conversations, it's very LEC based. After all, it's a very lec trademark to have dialog and dialog in adventures.
So I strongly believe that a blend of the two is the way to go... there's so much style you can do these days with mix and matching.
As for dying, you can't die in my games, but I wouldn't mind experimenting with it so that it works in a good sort of way. (maybe like halo where when you die you load to the last checkpoint, but that would mean linearlity, so I'm not sure :P)
Unless you wanna go to pure nostalgia, then I think it would be great to have some classic sierra styled games like KQ1 /2 VGA and so on...
That's almost my sentiment exactly, netmonkey. Bits of both Sierra and LucasArts, mix very well.
It seems to me that the commercial scene of adventure games is now very narrow, Monkey Island 4, Sam and Max, 2 Broken Sword 3, Full Throttle 2 seem to be going the way of action/beat-em-ups.
Were in the minority, and its really up to us to try to revive it, thats why AGS works so well for us, as the fans are creating the games, so we take the bits we like from what we've seen and make a pleasant mix.
I don't particularly care to lump myself into a category. However, there's no real way to put it other than saying that even if I had no idea what company published what games, I would end up preferring a lot more LucasArts games than I would Sierra games, even considering how many more Sierra made. As far as the dying thing goes, I think there's nothing wrong with players being punished for doing something obviously lethal and stupid, but simply clicking on a cliff? Give me a break. It would be a different story if this was the case:
Player clicks on cliff, character walks over to cliff
Player clicks on cliff again, character teeters precariously on the edge
Player clicks on cliff again, character begins to lose footing
Player clicks on cliff again, character falls to his bloody doom and the game displays an error message saying "YOU ARE A BIG IDIOT. WHY ARE YOU USING A COMPUTER?"
That's obviously exaggerated, but at least it encourages the explorative nature of adventure games by promoting rather than absurdly punishing investigation.
I had more to say about the difference between the two companies' games, but I think I've probably said enough for now. :P
That's a great idea. Give 'em fair warning.
text parsers suck
>use gun
I don't konw what you mean by "use"
>aim gun
i don't know what you mean by "aim"
>shoot gun
i don't know what you mean by "shoot"
>fire gun
i don't know what you mean by "fire"
>quit
are you sure you wan't to quit?
>yes
i don't know what you mean by "yes"
and as for sierra vs lucas. i liked lucas because you didn't have to worry about saving as much as you did in sierra, there's nothing more frustrating than getting far in a sierra game, and then dying in some "humourous" way and then having to start again 50minutes before
That bit about saving is very interesting, Taryuu. The reason why I like Sierra games is BECAUSE there's so many opportunities to go wrong. It really forces the player to think.
As an example, the I got really involved in The Colonel's Bequest because there was a real sense of danger about the game. In the Monkey Island games (the only LEC games I've played) I never really worried about what was going to happen next. There was never anything to worry about, because Guybrush can't die.
Guybrush would always be safe, but Laura could die, and frequently did. I grew attatched to each Laura- this one might have found the cigar butt in the secret passage, that one may have had an important conversation with the lawyer. My family had notebooks filled with maps and notes about where certain things could happen.
Guybrush was going to be a pirate... and I couldn't really care less. It seemed like an inevitability. Laura might- or might not- solve the mystery and make it through the night. We had to get to the end of the game (more than once) to find out whether she got it right or not.
Back on topic, I'd have to say my games tend to be more Sierra-influenced. I've only played three LEC games (one of which I haven't completed) as compared to the 25+ Sierra games I've played to the end, so I don't have enough experience with LEC to be really influenced by them.
Out of curiosity, where could I find the LucasArts Game Design Philosiphy? I'm curious as to what it says.
Wow. That's a long post.
Well, when you watch a movie you can almost always bet that the protagonist won't die. It's been established that LucasArts focuses on cinematicism (is that a word?) rather than being a traditional "game", whereas with Sierra I'm surprised they didn't have a high score table on all their games.
Back to the whole "falling off cliffs" subject. In my 'classic KQ' spinoff in progress, I am thinking of including an aspect noone ever used before. What are the three treasures for if you can't use them? You can pick up the magic shield for protection from all pointless deaths, the mirror for gentle hints at the puzzles, and the with the chest you can buy any item you missed once you find the right vendor (well, the easy to miss pencil at least.) I have changed the way I wanted to do this several times, but I think it is coming together now.
I like both styles, by the way. I prefer dying when I do something stupoid, though. "Gee, what happens if I fall off this...'You can't walk there'...Crap!" :)
Quote from: remixor on Tue 22/07/2003 10:09:23
Player clicks on cliff, character walks over to cliff
Player clicks on cliff again, character teeters precariously on the edge
Player clicks on cliff again, character begins to lose footing
Player clicks on cliff again, character falls to his bloody doom and the game displays an error message saying "YOU ARE A BIG IDIOT. WHY ARE YOU USING A COMPUTER?"
Hahaha! That reminds me of LSL2 when you're walking along this really narrow path and it's almost impossible to stay on the path, but when you fall off, the game dislpays something like "woah, that was a close one", and you don't die, but it keeps giving you points (for surviving I guess). It's like Al Lowe was making fun of the way characters die in an adventure game. Hilarious :D
Quote from: Hollister Man on Sat 26/07/2003 19:19:52
Back to the whole "falling off cliffs" subject. In my 'classic KQ' spinoff in progress, I am thinking of including an aspect noone ever used before. What are the three treasures for if you can't use them? You can pick up the magic shield for protection from all pointless deaths, the mirror for gentle hints at the puzzles, and the with the chest you can buy any item you missed once you find the right vendor (well, the easy to miss pencil at least.) I have changed the way I wanted to do this several times, but I think it is coming together now.
I like both styles, by the way. I prefer dying when I do something stupoid, though. "Gee, what happens if I fall off this...'You can't walk there'...Crap!" :)
Wow. That is a very original idea, Hollister Man! The three truly invaluable treasuires of Sierra-style adventure games. Why didn't *I* thin kof that! D';oh!
/me slaps himself repeatedly for being unoriginal
:P