King's Quest III+ (call for testers)

[Radiant]

Hi there,

KQ3 enhanced!! Well, it had to happen sooner or later
I've been working on an enhanced version of the Sierra classic King's Quest III. The game has now progressed to a playable stage, and I would really appreciate everybody's opinion of it. In particular, that of testers and proofreaders.


This first public version allows you to play most of Llewdor, about fifty rooms or so. The plot has been enhanced and deepened (which is one of the things I'd like feedback on). Also there are more puzzles, and less items just lying on the floor. And Manannan is as bad as ever.
KQ3+ was created with AGS. uses the original AGI graphics (with a few new ones), but has a mouse-driven interface. Also, the music sounds a lot better in MIDI than it ever did on your PC speaker.


beta-4 Just a meg and a half! Downloadable version here.
(edit: this is the FOURTH beta)

(includes teleport cheat and the usual debugging features, with Insta-Logging (tm) as well)
Please find some bugs for me? Thanks!

[Radiant]

no it doesn't. At least not on my system. If you wait, you get the intro, and if you press ESC, you get the hallway of the wizard's house.

[TheGoldeagle]

Looks good so far. Downloading it...

[deltamatrix]

---------------------------
Adventure Game Studio
---------------------------
An error has occured. Please contact the game author for support, as this
is likely to be a scripting error and not a bug in AGS.
(ACI version 2.61.747)

(Room 11 script line 218)
Error: StartCutscene: already in a cutscene

....occurs when you empty the chamberpot.

Also, so far, when I re-entered the wizard house, gywdion went straight thru the door and it didn't open itself and I think I spotted a little mask error on the door frame.

EDIT: Another ALREADY! The game hung when I pressed esc to try and skip the opening. Maybe an infinite loop or something similar?

EDIT: How odd, third time run and now the game just gets stuck on the title. The III doesn't appear and it just sparkles.

EDIT EDIT: Ok I found the cause, it don't seem to like running at 640x400 however when I died by falling off the cliff and restarted, it hung at the title screen again.

When Gwydion fell off the cliff, he fell through the pathway where you enter the room. And there was no message for how and why you died.

When I fed the chickens, they gave no reaction. Don't they like the chicken feed?

An enhancement to suggest, make the house appear bigger on the outside. Its tiny!

Also I didn't like the music when Gywdion was exercising. Plain classical piano music is meant to soothe and relax, not energize you. The music needs to be rockier. Add some drums and bass to the midi if you can or choose another.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Error in the hallway when you look at the portrait, look for yourself and you'll see what I mean.

The note I took from manananns trashcan didn't have a description when I looked at it so I can't read it.

When you're outside the wizards house at night, the grass and tree below appear as though it is still daytime. Needs much darkening.

I couldn't work my way down the mountain, he kept falling even though I stayed on the path.

One more final thing. On the scrreen, please please please get rid of that AWFUL large rock that blocks the view of the path almost guaranting a fall. I hated that in the original!

I like the day/night idea, that is interesting.

[deltamatrix]

Two more bugs.

When you drink the test potion, when the death GUI appears, the mouse cursor doesn't reappear.

It seems that Manannan can magically appear when you are lookin under the bed.
The time for Manannans appearance started while Gywdion was MoveCharacterBlocking to the bed. Then the manannan theme played and the game hung. stuck on the busy cursor.

[Hollister Man]

You think they had 'rocky' music in fantasy games?  In fact, Gwydion can't hear the music anyway, so who cares?  I'll have to DL this one.

[dreammaster]

Absolutely brilliant new game.Ã,  Here's the results of day 1 of my beta testing:

Bugs
------
* If you leave the second floor of the house going down the stairs at the very right hand side of it (ex. at EGO 210,160), the screen flashes and then you suddenly re-enter the same room again
* The mouse disappears when you get the ending after drinking the potion of contentedness. This means you can't click on any of the buttons, so the game is effectively hung
* When suprising Manannan in the basement lab, you're meant to walk down most of the steps and then get killed when a pebble falls. However, most of the time Manannan notices you immediately and does the "You're up to no good" zap death routine and turns you to ashes. But then it tries to take you through the "pebble" death routine, with Alexander moving with a sitting down image. The result is that Alexander dies a second time, but the waiting hand is left on, meaning you can't click on any of the buttons, effectively hanging the game.

I think it's due to the timer for whether Manannan appears to kill you not being turned off immediately when you enter the lab room, resulting in it going off in the middle of the pebble death automatic walking down the steps
* Frequently when I start KQ3 the startup sequence hangs. The music continues until the point when the screen should change to the credits, and then just stops. The sparkling continues but thats it. This happens most frequently if I quickly start up KQ3 again after having to previously use the AGS abort function. It also frequently happens if I press Escape to try and bypass the startup sequence. It also happens after using the in-game Restart button
* Once when I was being stoned by Medusa via the telescope, Manannan appeared as I was turning to stone. It didn't screw up the death message, but the image for the stoned Alexander got replaced with Alexander as normal

Nitpicks
--------
* The walk icon should have it's clickable range extended down a bit so that you can click below the area picture (but above the action icons) to leave a screen to the south; currently I keep having to click multiple times because I don't click within the area picture
* In the entrance room of the house, the pathfinding doesn't work between the top of the stairs and the bottom. ie. I need to click on the landing and then click on the top of the stairs
* The look text for the portrait in the entrance room takes up two screens, and is split in the middle of the word "distinct"
* In the drink of contentedness ending text, "an wise" should be "a wise"
* In the kitchen's apple bucket use description it calls it a "basket"
* When you perform sweeping the kitchen as a task, it says "you're too busy sweeping"? Maybe a betterÃ,  Ã, message would be "You busily sweep the kitchen"
* A clipping problem - on the mountainside, if you stand at EGO position 86,88 and push PgUp (for NE travel), Alexander falls downards behind most of the mountain and then suddenly falls in front of the rocks at the bottom
* It would be better to have a more explicit death message when you fall off the mountainside at nighttime. I spent some time with both the cursor and keyboard trying to get past EGO position 90,90 before realising it was a built-in stop to prevent you from reaching the countryside too early.
* When you feed the chickens as your initial task and then click on the gate, you walk through the fence and open it from the inside
* When you've seen that there's something metallic on the top of Manannan's bedroom cabinet, if you click on the top of the cabinet with the hand, you'll move over to the cabinet but it will then say "You're not
close enough". You have to click a second time to get key. I presume the first message shouldn't happen.
* When you click the talk bubble on Manannan when he first appears to give you a task, it says "You feel pretty silly talking to a wizard". A more appropriate comeback from the wizard would be appropriate
* On the mountainside clipping errors occur around EGO positions 96,84 and 167,92
* The toadstool looks awfully white after picking it - ideally it should remain the same red and grey as it is when it's on the ground

Comments
-------------
* As a matter of personal preference, would it be possible to have the game controls at the top of the screen rather than the bottom? It's just that it breaks the convention of all previous games I've played - I keep moving the pointer to the top of the screen without thinking about it, then have to move to the bottom
* Speaking of the game controls, would it be possible to program in middle button/mouse wheel controls? Ie. the middle/mousewheel button toggling between walk and the last previously selected action, and the mouse wheel movements letting you cycle through the actions
* Places where I think a custom message would be appropriate:
Ã,  The second floor window at nighttime currently has no look message
Ã,  If you try using the knife on the stuck drawer in Manannan's bedroom (it would be logical for someone to try it to unstick the drawer)

EDIT: PS. I just read deltamatrix's post mentioning that he couldn't read the paper. This threw me at first until I realised I could "use" the paper to see it's contents. This action really should be mapped to look as well.

[deltamatrix]

I wouldn't call this game enhanced due to the MANY modifications.

This is just YOUR interpretation of the story. You haven't add things but CHANGED things.
This is more of an alternative version of KQ3.

Personally I like the main GUI where it is.

What am I supposed to do with the orb from the mirror?

[Radiant]

Hi there!

Thanks for the bug reports. I also noted that the autologger isn't working. I'll get on it.

I wouldn't call this game enhanced due to the MANY modifications.
This is just YOUR interpretation of the story. You haven't add things but CHANGED things.
This is more of an alternative version of KQ3.

That's true. I'll think of another name.
By the way I would like to know what people think of the plot so far with wizard, oracle, bandits and all.

What am I supposed to do with the orb from the mirror?

Nothing yet. You'll see in a later version that lets you play beyond plot point #14.

EDIT: Another ALREADY! The game hung when I pressed esc to try and skip the opening. Maybe an infinite loop or something similar?
EDIT: How odd, third time run and now the game just gets stuck on the title. The III doesn't appear and it just sparkles.

Yes, this is probably what went wrong with Blackbird as well.
I'm not actually sure what's causing this, but it seems that if you have multple cutscenes in sequence, an ESC can skip through any or all of them. What may be happening is that the game is playing through the intro and it hangs there, or something. I'll see what I can do.

When Gwydion fell off the cliff, he fell through the pathway where you enter the room. And there was no message for how and why you died.

Which cliff, exactly? You can press ^C to pop up gwydio'n's coordinates, that would help.

When I fed the chickens, they gave no reaction. Don't they like the chicken feed?

I don't think they did in the original, either. But it's a good idea.

An enhancement to suggest, make the house appear bigger on the outside. Its tiny!

Also a good idea, but my drawing skills aren't up to the task.

The note I took from manananns trashcan didn't have a description when I looked at it so I can't read it.

That's a bug. But try clicking it on gwydion to read it, for now.

I couldn't work my way down the mountain, he kept falling even though I stayed on the path.

Hate that path scene   you can ^T teleport to room 45 for now (that's bottom of path)

* The mouse disappears when you get the ending after drinking the potion of contentedness. This means you can't click on any of the buttons, so the game is effectively hung

Not really, you can use F7/F9 or L,R,Q keys.  But it's a bug of course.

* In the entrance room of the house, the pathfinding doesn't work between the top of the stairs and the bottom. ie. I need to click on the landing and then click on the top of the stairs

Correct. This room is a bit tricky because it's one of the few true 3-d rooms in adventure gaming. E.g. it is possible for one X,Y position of Gwydion, to mean two different locations on the stairs. What it does now is toggling walkables on/off when you step on the left hand part, thus you require two clicks. I'm open to bettter suggestions.

* When you perform sweeping the kitchen as a task, it says "you're too busy sweeping"? Maybe a betterÃ,  Ã, message would be "You busily sweep the kitchen"

Yes I used the msg from the original but it's less fitting in this way.

* On the mountainside clipping errors occur around EGO positions 96,84 and 167,92

Okay, thanks.

* The toadstool looks awfully white after picking it - ideally it should remain the same red and grey as it is when it's on the ground

<grin> correct. Both images are actually the mushroom from KQ1, as an inside joke.

* As a matter of personal preference, would it be possible to have the game controls at the top of the screen rather than the bottom? It's just that it breaks the convention of all previous games I've played - I keep moving the pointer to the top of the screen without thinking about it, then have to move to the bottom

At this point, I'm afraid not. It would mean moving the room graphics (and assorted walkable/behinds/etc) down thirty pixels, manually, in every room.

* Speaking of the game controls, would it be possible to program in middle button/mouse wheel controls? Ie. the middle/mousewheel button toggling between walk and the last previously selected action, and the mouse wheel movements letting you cycle through the actions

Sure. Good idea.

[dreammaster]

Stand by for day 2 of my testing experiences. 8)Ã,  I do want to point out right at the top here, that I found the wizard's lab room to be particularly buggy. I wasn't able to get to day 3 because of it, because the game kept prodding me go visit the lab. So I eventually used the teleporter to force it change to day 3 so I could continue testing.

Bugs
----
* Swim out into the ocean from the stream, and then return back to the previous screen - you won't stop swimming and will swim across the land
* On Night 2, not having tried to go into the basement before, I use the key on the safe to get the wand, and then immediately click the hand on the bookcase. The dialog sequence for opening the trapdoor is interrupted midway by the safe-opening sequence, even though I'm nowhere near it. It also reoccurs when I come back up from the basement.
* Attempting to get the toad splittle causes a fatal error "Room 25 script 233, Error: SetCharacterFrame: invalid frame specified"
* Clicking on any of the buttons or the book when in the close-up view of the spellbook causes the wait-hand cursor to appear and the game to hang
* Looking at the bookcase on the right-hand side of the lab causes a fatal error "Room 25 script line 131, Error: IsObjectOn: invalid object number"
* You can place the wand back in the safe when you're nowhere near it, although it doesn't actually get removed from your inventory
* When you look at Manannan in the observatory on Night 2, in addition to the description dialog you see a second blank dialog
* I'm not sure if it's a bug or not, but when the cat finally turns up on the stairs, I can't get some hair from it. Also, I'm not sure if there's meant to be a puzzle to getting past it; it keeps moving to intercept me and trip me up, and repeatedly going back down to the lab screen and returning doesn't get rid of it
* Going into the tavern, there's nobody there. Yet if I try to get the tankard on the counter, it says that the barmaid scowls at you
* Clipping problem - in the tavern, you can effectively walk on the table when it should be obscuring you
* Clipping problem - if you walk up to the fisherman, your body will be behind him, but your legs will be in front
* I can't get Night 2 to end without using the teleport cheat to force it to daytime - when I sleep it keeps complaining that I should check out the celler, which I've already done. But of course I can't read the spellbook with it hanging the game, and I can't see any way to get past the cat when it appears (since all my belongings have been previously stolen)
* Day 3, in the treehouse, the bin (which I'm presuming should have all my stolen items), doesn't - it's empty
* If you wake up the mugger in the treehouse, you can, if you're quick, then click on the bin and get the opening sequence, complete with "doing it quietly to prevent the mugger waking up"... he's already awake and chasing you
* The room description for outside the treehouse once again takes up two dialogs with a split in the middle of a word
* I can't get close enough to the flask outside the treehouse to get it. I'm not sure if this is intended as a puzzle or not (like navigating the mountainside at night). Unfortunately, I'm not able to get back all my possesions to try other objects
* If you wake up the mugger and immediately exit the treehouse, the mugger will suddenly be high up in the branches. You'll then immediately fall to the ground and die
* Going into the three bears house, you appear in the room by the fireplace, rather than by the front door
* Clipping problem at 92,137 of the bear's house - you walk behind a staircase pillar that you should be walking in front of
* Clipping problem at 112,112 of the upstair's 3 bears house - if you walk straight south to go downstairs, you walk in front of the landing graphics. Also, if you go down the stairs from 117,112, you get same problem as with the stairs in Manannan's house - the screen flashes and you're returned to the upstairs room. I presume the exit of the staircase top isn't properly aligned to the exit in the downstairs staircase.
* Leaving the 3 bears house, you suddenly find yourself in the top-left hand corner of the outside screen, and the door closes

Nitpicks
--------
* The oak tree room description screen is also two dialogs worth, with the first dialog cut in the middle of a word
* In the lab, why does it say "Manannan would notice the book is missing" if you just look at it. A better message would along the lines of "a dusty old tome rests on the table"
* Why aren't I able to talk to the fisherman? When I try it says he doesn't mind that I'm unable to speak
* The save/load dialog doesn't have a border with scrollbars. This means that with more than one screen worth of savegames, I have to manually use the keyboard to move through the list
* The description for the sleeping mugger in the treehouse says "They", but there's only one there.
* The firewood inventory graphic needs some work; I thought it was a cup to begin with
* The cookbook currently doesn't have a description
* The upstairs drawers in the 3 bears house needs some descriptions
* Given that there's the sitting down animations for the 3 chairs in the 3 bears house, you'd expect the upstairs beds to have a similiar animations if you use them

[Radiant]

Okay, beta-2 is now online:
http://www.liacs.nl/~psimoons/kq3b2.zip

Just about all bugs fixed that were mentioned so far, except for those in the post by dreammaster above since I'm just reading that now
In particular, the title screen crash is fixed. Or it should be.

[fluxmaster]

I disagree with deltamatrix's comment:  I think that this is an enhanced version because it basically keeps the same story while elaborating on certain things and adding more details.

I tried to log a bug, but it didn't get added to the log file, so I'll simply state it here:  In one case a long narrative message was split into two boxes, but the point at which the message was divided was not the natural point to divide the message.  It got cut off in the middle of a line, both syntactically and typographically, before being continued in a subsequent box.

Does this game have dead ends in it?  I am currently stuck at the point where Mannanan gives Alexander the cup to drink.  Without telling me the solution, can you tell me whether I can get past this point in the game or whether I have to load a saved game.

[iron_man]

hello Radiant

I am Zeus. Check my retouched pic
located at AGDI forums (Game making forum).

[dreammaster]

fluxmaster, you're not stuck. Keep at it.

[just a random]

hey guys, i'm new to the forums but not to the ags world.

i must say that this game so far looks amazing!!!!! the bugs that i have noticed have already been found and put on the forum.

just thought i would give my compliments to the creator


CAN"T WAIT TILL THIS ONE IS DONE

p.s. is there a website you have for this game?

[Radiant]

Flux -> logfile should work in the second beta (see link above). I understand your bug, but if you don't tell me where it happens I can't fix it.
The game is not supposed to have dead ends at all. However you can't currently play past plot point fourteen, which is the time you get sent to the countryside to get wood. That's because it's not finished yet. But yes, you can get past the red potion.

Ironman -> thanks!

Random -> no, I don't have a website (yet?) because there's nothign to put up there.

[dreammaster]

Well, it's time for the day 3 installment of by beta testing report.Ã,  :. Since I'm up to the stage of getting the firewood, I guess I'll just muck around some more in the first three days looking for bugs. BTW: todays bug report includes two fatal crashes of AGS itself, that you may want to pass on to "CJ".

PS: I switched over to using beta 2, so all these bug reports apply to it.

Bugs
----
* Attempting to pick up some acorns on Day 2 gives the fatal error "Room 62 script 174; Error: AnimateCharacter: invalid loop number specified"
* Any time you try talking to the wizard, you now get an appropriate response dialog, but then immediately after the old "You'd feel pretty silly talking to s wizard" dialog appears.
* That medusa is vicious! I left the desert to escape her, and it didn't stop her! She started chasing me across the countryside. Given the original KQ3, I'm assuming this is a bug
* If you travel between the oak tree and the screen south of it on the very left hand side of the screen, you can get stuck in a loop of being bounced between the two rooms. It's easiest to demonstrate if you go north to the oak screen from x position 7.
* Clipping error - you walk in front of the big tree stump in room 72 (ex. at EGO 132,150)
* Clipping error - if you walk east of the cliff in room 74 from 198,67, you start falling through the ground, before been moved to the beach screen to die
* The position you walk to before opening the door outside the general store isn't anywhere near the actual door
* When you pick up the fish that the fisherman has caught, you then immediately automatically walk south off of the pier
* If you climb up the ladder on the pier, you can then no longer walk. You can, however, click on the ladder again and walk after climbing back down the ladder
* Looking at the drawers in the 3 bear's bedroom now tends to cause a fatal error "Global srcipt line 90 Error: Cannot display message with extended characters in SCI font". Either that or nothing is displayed. This also happens if I try and look at the empty bottle
* A doozy occurred when I tried clicking the fish on the dog, when it was outside the general store. It also occurred when I tried clicking an object on myself in the same screen as well:

---------------------------
Illegal exception
---------------------------
An exception 0xC0000005 occured in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x0042B4A5 ; program pointer is +6, ACI version 2.61.747, gtags (10,10)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and notify CJ on the Tech forum.

(Global script line 73)
---------------------------

I also got another fatal AGS error when I try using the hand on the empty bottle:

---------------------------
Illegal exception
---------------------------
An exception 0xC0000005 occured in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x004491B0 ; program pointer is +1007, ACI version 2.61.747, gtags (0,7)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and notify CJ on the Tech forum.

(Global script line 2571)
---------------------------


Nitpicks
--------
* The windows for Alexander's bedroom and kitchen at night don't currently have a description
* There's no description for looking at the milk
* The cinnamon sticks graphic could use a little work
* I'm surprised that Manannan doesn't kill you for carrying around the piece of paper you stole from his study trashcan. Even if he doesn't think you can read.
* I'm wondering what the deal is with the eagle feather dropping. Unlike the original, it only drops the feather into the river, and no matter how much I try and grab it (even at low speed), it always says I'm in the wrong place. And even if I follow the river after it, it's gone. I hope it's not a dead-end situation, despite your earlier reassurances, if you can't get it immediately


On a final note, I think I've just found a newly introduced easter egg. One time when I went upstars in the 3 bears house, there was a weird character on the bottom right-hand bed. It vanished after a secondÃ, 

[fluxmaster]

Bug report:  When the wizard places the cup on the table and tells Alexander to drink, Alexander pretends to drink it but instead spills the liquid on himself.  Then, in an attempt to distract the wizard and make him believe that the potion is working, Alexander places food on the table for the wizard to eat.  The wizard eats the food, but, as soon as he is finished eating, the cup appears on the table again, and the wizard orders Alexander to drink it.  The wizard then anihilates Alexander.

[fluxmaster]

Okay, I've just downloaded Beta-2.  Are the saved games from Beta-1 supposed to work with Beta-2?  I tried to load a couple of saved games, but in each case I got the following message:

An error has occured.  Please contact the game author for support, as this is likely to be a scripting error and not a but in AGS.
(ACI version 2.61.747)

Error: Restore_Game: Game has changed (inv), unable to restore position

It would be a nuissance to have to start the game over from scratch every time a new beta comes out.

In my own project (which is not AGS), I have stored a version number in each saved game file, so that, during development, whenever I change the format of the saved game file the game will read the version number and still recognize old saved game file formats.  This feature can easily be removed from the final version.

[dreammaster]

Hey, fluxmaster, it's probably just as well to start from scratch with each beta. After all, there's no guarantee that any fixes that Radiant has made won't have any adverse affects, so it's a good practice to retest everything again. And given that he's already stated that the current beta doesn't let you go beyond plot point #14, it's only a 3-day (in-game) timefrime to be testing. Not exactly the whole game yet.