Messages

This is an excellent module. Really impressed with the effects it's capable of creating.

In the latest version, however, it seems that Smoothing the motion for distant objects in hi-res might have been broken.

I have a certain distant object (mountains) set up to use View 8, with the object's 4 offset frames assigned to Loop 0.

The effect worked in the previous version of the module, but after upgrading to this new one, the object seems to cycle through all 4 frames, rather than panning smoothly along.

I was just wondering if the character Baseline property was working as intended. If a character's baseline is 0 (which doesn't actually represent 0 in this case, but the character's current y-pos instead), would it make sense to set the baseline relative to that character's y-pos instead?

But yes, as you mentioned, manually setting a baseline relative to that character's y-pos also has the same result. So, either way, it's no big deal.

--EDIT--

Something else I noticed is that if you put code in the game_start function like:

Code: ags

if(IsSpeechVoxAvailable()==false) QuitGame();
if(IsMusicVoxAvailable()==false) QuitGame();

... and then use the test game feature, the game will quit because it doesn't find the .vox files in the "_Debug" folder. At present you need to copy them across manually for the test game feature to work.

Any chance that the test game feature could automatically check inside the "Compiled" folder for the existence of said files first, rather than the "_Debug" folder?

Speaking of baselines, I recently noticed that the following code doesn't seem to work:

Code: ags

cCharA.Baseline=cCharB.Baseline+1;

Additionally, if you call the -registergame parameter on your game's .exe file in order to make double-click loading of save-games possible, there seems to be a crash when restarting the game.

For example, load the game's .exe, save a game, and then quit. Go to the game directory and double-click on the recent save-game file to quickload it (this seems to bypass the creation of the restart point save-game file--especially if you placed SetRestartPoint in the game_start function or in your title screen).  

Click your game's "restart" button, or trigger any other place where RestartGame(); is called, and the game will crash out with:

Error: unable to restart game (error:File not found)

These likely aren't exclusive to 3.2 and probably existed in previous versions of AGS too.

[Update: September 12th, 2010]

Update: September 12th, 2010

King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones (Version 3.1) has been released for both PC and Mac.  You can get the latest builds from the King's Quest 2 page on the AGDI website.

Also, King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown (Version 4.1) is now ready for both PC and Mac. You can get it from the King's Quest 1 page.

Important: Remember to uninstall any previous versions of both games from your system prior to installing these new ones. Since we have changed installer software, the latest versions shouldn't be installed over an existing installation of the games, as this has the potential to leave ghost files behind when you later uninstall. Also, note that save game files aren't compatible between different game versions.

-------------------


Hey, all!

Over at AGD Interactive, we have just released Version 3.0 of King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones, a remake based on the 1985 original, King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne, by Sierra On-Line. We first released this remake in 2002, and over time have received feedback and comments which we have taken on-board. We have spent the past three years enhancing and embellishing the game to an even higher level of quality. We hope you enjoy the results of our hard work! Regardless of whether you've played this remake previously or not, Version 3.0 includes a great many new features and improvements. Be sure to check it out. There's new content for veteran players and newcomers alike!

To celebrate the brand new release, we've also launched a new KQ2 sub-site at:  

http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/kq2/


Here are a handful of screenshots which contrast the enhanced backgrounds in the remake (right side) to those of Sierra On-Line's AGI original (on the left).





And, for good measure, a few additional screenshots of just the remake:






VERSION 3.0 FEATURES
---------------------------------
This version includes many new features and improvements. Some of the major ones are:

-Fully enhanced backgrounds.
 Every screen has been completely re-edited and re-detailed to classic Sierra-quality.

-New dialog pictures
 Redrawn and edited to a higher level of quality (no more head-bobbing while talking!)

-A new professionally narrated voice track for all in-game comments
 A major feature that was lacking from previous versions. Over 3,800 narrator lines!

-Lip-synced character speech.
 For added detail and voice enhancement. Over 1,000 lip-synced character lines!

-Ogg Theora movies/cutscenes
 For smaller filesize and also better Linux & Mac compatibility.

-Speech & Music Packs now included as part of the download.

...Plus all of the other familiar enhancements that are unique to King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones, like the revampled plot, deeper characterizations, additional puzzles and quests! All that and more awaits players in Version 3.0.
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For in-depth information, you can check out the King's Quest II Announcement Thread here at the AGD Interactive forums.


Visit our games page to download your Enhanced copy of King's Quest II Version 3.0 now! The filesize weighs in at 321 MB.

Hope you guys like the improvements. Have fun!

Does it never end?

At this point, that's what I'd like to know too! 

Ah well... onto the next one.

[VERSION 4.0 FEATURES]

Hey, guys,

Today, AGD Interactive has released Version 4.0 of the King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown Remake, to accompany our new website launch and makeover at: www.AGDInteractive.com

The screenshots below show Version 4.0's enhanced backgrounds (top), compared to the same backgrounds in Sierra's EGA remake and the AGI original.




VERSION 4.0 FEATURES
---------------------------------
This version includes many new features. Some of the main ones are:

-Fully enhanced backgrounds.
  Every screen have been completely re-edited and re-detailed to Sierra-quality.

-New dialog pictures
  Redrawn and edited to a higher level of quality.

-A new professionally narrated voice track for all in-game comments
  A major feature that was lacking from previous versions.

-Lip-synced character speech.
  For added detail and voice enhancement.

-A new (optional) "No Dead-Ends" gameplay mode.
  Designed to be kinder to new players so that they cannot get hopelessly stuck.

-Ogg Theora movies/cutscenes
  For smaller filesize and also better Linux & Mac compatibility.

-Speech & Music Packs now included as part of the download.

...And more!
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For in-depth information, you can check out the forum thread here at the AGDI forums.


You can also visit the new game site to download your Enhanced copy of King's Quest I Version 4.0 today! The download filesize is 102 MB.

Enjoy!

If you're trying to follow the walkthrough for the EGA game while playing the remake then that explains the discrepancy. The Thief encounter with Khaveen in the Antechamber was not in the original version by Sierra (and thus, the solution won't be mentioned in the old walkthroughs). 

The scene you describe was added to the remake as an alternate method of dealing with Khaveen as a thief. When you're outside the Palace gates, if your thief doesn't have enough throwable projectiles (rocks & daggers) nor a Magic Rope with enough charges to successfully beat Ad Avis after going through the harem, he'll be taken to the Antechamber instead.

The objective here is the same as usual. Deal with Khaveen so that you can get past him and make it through the door to the ritual chamber. As a thief without magic, you'll need to be sneaky and deceptive about it. Watch Khaveen carefully and wait for the right moment.

Keep in mind that if you're forced to go through the Antechamber as a thief, you cannot obtain full game points.

Congrats, Dave! Seems like it's going to be an excellent game. I'm looking forward to this. Good luck with everything!

The website's not broken, it requires IE7 or one of the later versions of FireFox to take advantage of some features.

SierraFan: Unfortunately not. This decision was voted on in a public poll very early in the pre-production stages. There are a crazy amount of Hero sprites in the game so making alternate versions of them all would be no small feat!  Plus, the winter attire and cape from QFG1 isn't well-suited to the hot desert setting of the second game.

At any rate, version 1.1 of the Quest for Glory II Remake has now been released and is available from www.AGDInteractive.com

In addition to many bug-fixes, the new build also makes monsters slightly slower to react on 'easy' difficulty level, as well as adding a random 1-point damage bonus to player attacks on 'easy'.  Additionally, the thief now has the ability to rapidly toss daggers during battle, like the Brigand can. (Note: This ability is thief-only.)

Finally, for anyone who's interested in participating, we currently have an art contest running. Feel free to enter. Prizes include copies of the original QFG2, QFG2 Anthology, limited edition QFG2 posters and prints, as well as a bunch of other stuff. Odds are pretty high that entrants will win something, so submit your entries today. You can read more about the Art Contest and the prizes here:

http://www.agdinteractive.com/fans/contest1/contest1.html

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure how thoroughly you played the remake, but if you went through it based only on your pre-existing knowledge of the original EGA version, chances are you probably missed quite a few side-quests which were added into the game.  Since they could be considered non-canonical events, however, we took measures to ensure that they wouldn't stand out like a sore thumb, meaning that you'll need to do a little exploring to uncover them. But rest assured, they're in there.

Perhaps you could walk down a dead-end alley and have to fight off several thieves who try to mug you or something.

Funny you should mention that actually... 

Hey, Cornjob! Good to hear from you again. Thanks for the comments, it's great to hear you found your way back for the release!  In case anyone's curious, Cornjob created most of the in-game inventory item graphics (he has a real knack for cramping a lot of fine detail into a small amount of space), as well as working on several screen touch-ups, detailing some dialogue portraits, and all the dialogue and GUI borders in the game. A very worthy contributor whose artistic skills benefited the game for the better, I must say.

BlackDragon1200: That icon-bar turning off bug, is a known issue which occurs when you leave Aziza's house in the alleys. You can work around it by pressing F7 to turn on the Restore GUI and then press Escape (or click the Cancel button) to turn it off again. That will fix things and you will only need to do it once.

As for combat, you have 16 days to kill, so there's really plenty of time to train your combat skills to perfection and still have days to spare.

On the other hand, if you choose to play as a thief, you need not ever have to fight a single monster for the entire game. Fighters really DO have to fight in the remake, while the other classes have alternate measures to bypass monsters or make dealing with them easier. There's more of a distinction between classes in that respect...

DizzyDancer: I'm not sure what you mean. Are you able to post a screenshot of what you downloaded next to a screenshot you saw in the website to demonstrate the difference between the two?


ProgZmax: Some of those combat stats still seem relatively low. Remember, when you first start the game you're weak. It's not so much a matter of getting used to the tactics as it is building up your stats and skills. As you train Strength and Weapon Use, your attacks will do more damage, and by the time you get them approaching 200, you'll really be able to make short work of most enemies.

Every enemy requires a different approach. It's not the same as the original EGA version where spamming the attack key could kill pretty much any monster. For example, Brigands can toss daggers, so it's best to stay closer to them and concentrate on defense, though you can also block their tossed daggers with your shield, or sidestep them.  Brigands can't throw daggers in melee range, though. With Ghouls, on the other hand, it's best to keep your distance from them.  You just need to figure out the best strategy for the monster you're facing. Ask at the Guild Hall for advice.

If you're low on health in a desert fight, pressing ESC allows you to get out of combat before you die (and keep whatever stat gains you accrued in battle).  And if you keep dying in desert battles, you can instead go to the Adventurer's Guild hall and train with Uhura to build your stats higher before tackling the desert dwellers. It's also recommended that you complete Uhura's combat tutorial. As you learn all the basic moves, and additionally, new moves and combos will also be unlocked to you once your stats pass certain levels.

Remember that the combat has been based on the collective feedback of many people who played the game from beginning to end to determine how it balances over the course of the entire game and with with respect to stat growth.

At the start, your stats won't be very effective. Your dodge sidesteps might not fully register or your shield might not protect you and you'll still be injured. Building your stats (primarily Weapon Use, Strength, Intelligence, Parry, Dodge, and Vitality) are key to outlasting the monsters in combat. Vitality is important because it allows more health and stamina to fit in your bars. Intelligence decreases the chances that enemies will dodge or defend.  But until then, the ESC key is your friend!

To view the site you need IE7. Or the latest version of FireFox (or whatever browser you use) will work.

Yes, someone else reported this obscure bug, too. We haven't been able to replicate it yet. You don't, by chance, happen to have a savegame prior to entering WIT which demonstrates this glitch, do you?  If so, could you please email it to info-at-agdinteractive.com (replacing -at- with @). That would be handy. Thanks.

Yes, this is a feature we added to the game at the very last minute. You'll now be able to change your class if it gets recognized as the wrong type upon importing it into the remake.

Just another few things to mention:

1) The unrecognized phonemes UW and H get added to .pam files. Instead, they should be UW0 and HH. There may be others, but those were the ones I noticed.

2) If you have a file named EGO200.wav and then you right-click on the speech file in the lip-sycning tool and assign it to another character (or even the same character), it'll rename the file to EGO1.wav (or whatever the character's script name is). In this case, would it make more sense to simply keep the same number?

3) A way to view/edit the phonemes animating with any character's dialog picture view, without having to rename the speech file in the process, might be handy.

4) Will the final version allow you to highlight a bunch of files and then click once to generate all the .pam files as a batch (rather than having to do them one at a time)?

Hmm, I've been trying to get it to occur again, but now it seems to be giving me fairly consistent results with both ogg and wavs.  I've turned off that "Background adaptation" option that GarageGothic mentioned since then, so perhaps that may have had something to do with the varying results before.

I'll keep messing around with it, and see what happens. It will be interesting to see how much the accuracy improves when the tool can also use the text as a guide. When I tested text syncing in Annosoft, having the text present seemed to make a huge difference.

[not]

Hmm, that's strange. I don't have any problems opening the pam files with Pamela. Even playback seems to work with mp3s, only oggs are messed up.

Sorry, I didn't actually test this with mp3s, only with an ogg. And when the ogg didn't work I just assumed mp3s would be the same. I just tested an mp3 in pamela and confirmed that it works. My bad.  It may just be oggs, then.

That's currently not possible with Annosoft. Female voices could be recognized better if you add a new profile in Control Panel->Speech and let a woman train it (then you have to switch the profiles manually for male/female voices). Echoed voices may be possible if I add some cleaning stuff after the recognizion. I haven't test it yet and I'm not very optimistic about it.

Where exactly is this control panel>speech setting accessed from to train voices?  (I also discovered that temporarily lowering the pitch of female speech files so that they sound roughly as deep as a male voice, can sometimes give better phoneme results.)

I just noticed that it's not female voices that cause the inaccurate phoneme placement.  The inaccurate placement actually seems to occur when you have an .mp3 or .ogg speech file listed, then you right click and choose "Create .pam file". It seems that somewhere in the process of converting it to a .wav and then adding phonemes, it barely places any phonemes along the waveform.  Yet, if I place a .wav file of exactly the same speech file in the directory, right-click it, and choose "Create .pam file", then it will add many more phonemes across the entire length of the waveform, all of them being much more accurate.  This is the case with both male and female speech.

I only just had time to test this out now. Fantastic job on getting this tool up to it's current usability in such a short time. This is really good, Smiley.

Here are some things I noted:

1) When watching the .pam preview in the audio editor, my dialogue pictures are drawn half outside the right-most edge of the box and there's no way to view the full dialogue picture. Having the ability to make the .pam preview pane at full-screen mode and auto adjust to fit in the width and height of any given Sierra-Style dialogue portrait would help.

2) I second GarageGothic on the request for some type of audio playback feature like Pamela has. For example, when clicking on a particular phoneme, it could play the audio segment between the phoneme you clicked and the next one, as Pamela does.

3) When you generate a .pam file from an .ogg or .mp3, and then look at the 'preferences' section of the .pam file, the path will list the file as an .ogg or .mp3.  However, Pamela can only open .wav files, so if you try to open this AGS-generated .pam file in Pamela it will give an 'incorrect path' error and refuse to open.  I guess auto-generated .pam files should always have the filename pointing to .wav in the path so that the backwards compatibility with Pamela still works.

4) The auto-lipsyncing seems to work quite well with male voices and I only had to tweak a few phonemes. However, female voices (or voices with echo) seem to give very inaccurate results.  Doesn't the Annosoft SDK allow you to specify whether it's a male or female voice file you're syncing, prior to doing the auto-generation of the phonemes?  Any chance of including that feature?

That's all I have for now. But really great work once again. Once this is finalized, it'll be a total breeze to lip-sync a game's worth of lines.  I'm really looking forward to seeing this with the text-based lip sycning support implemented!