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There are four different spots. One on the northern beach area, one in the eastern part of the forest, one next to the path that leads to town and one near the south-eastern part of the forest.

Ah yes, that one. In the original game, the basket for Red Riding Hood's grandma could be found inside grandma's mailbox. (in front of her house)

We thought this was the only place where a basket SHOULDN'T be found and thus we made Possum lose her basket in a countryside screen. (there are 4 possible places where it can pop up)

Otherwise, there wasn't a whole lot of random stuff, but maybe I'm just biased. (heck, I probably am)

CAN MR. GENIUS FIGURE THIS OUT?
OF COURSE I CAN.

YOU SEE, THIS GAME IS NO MASTERPIECE AND I AM VERY ANGRY THAT YOU WOULD EVEN INSINUATE IT. THIS GAME IS GARBAGE COMPARED TO MINE, AND I MEAN THAT.

I AM NOT SAYING THIS GAME SUCKS, BUT WHEN YOU COMPARE IT TO A MASTERPEICE AS GREAT AS MINE, ANYTHING WOULD BE GARBAGE.

MY GAME IS BETTER (AND BIGGER) THAN YOUR HOUSE.


TRY THAt OUT FOR SIZE.

Size does not matter. (and how about ceasing that bragging until you have any way of backing up your claims with more than big words?)

Nevertheless, this game is flawed. Most of the major flaws are still due to the Sierra old-oldskool (IMO). I am talking about stuff like wondering around in immense woods

The old version of KQ2 had a looping map that made wandering around very confusing. We eliminated this aspect. Each to his own opinion of course, but I don't think the woods in KQ2+ are truly big. There are very few screens that don't serve a purpose game-wise. After playing for a little while, you'll know your way around.

random things happening

I assume you're talking about the random encounters with the sorceror and the dwarf. Those two had their roles a bit fleshed out, but the random encounters were there as some sort of an introduction before you got to deal with them further.

walking dead (where is that one walking dead, I wonder?)

We eliminated the sole dead end (not having the lion fur when Hagatha appears) in version 1.1.

too fairy taly

It wouldn't be a KQ without fairy tales. We did some work to integrate the fairy tales into the story a bit and make them less obvious contrary to having the fairy tale characters walk around somewhere and give you an item or a nasty death when encountering them.

Also, there were some puzzles with not enough hints.

It's quite a challenge to get the puzzles just right. People often said that the puzzles were logical. (sometimes too logical as most people beat the game without much help) There were a couple of obscure ones, but hardly any unfair ones.

You know, I am really hoping to see you make some original stuff (your'e talent in that field is clearly seen). Erpy, can you tell why you don't?

Tierra won't be making original games (before Tierra would be able to create and sell original games, we'd have to take all our remake-projects off-line), but maybe its members will some day. (under the banner of another group)

Anyway, very good game! Very professional looking! Good job!

Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed playing it.

We gave the technical testers a point list so they could jump through the game with relative easy and encouraged them to try as many things as possible. The beta stage itself took fairly long (because the 3D cutscene wasn't completed yet at that point), so the technical team had all the time in the world to locate scripting errors. We also had some technical errors, although I feel bad that we weren't able to detect that save-glitch and lockup-issue in the beta stage. (our technical forum was flooded with messages reporting that problem)

My own experience has been that you always stumble across bugs when you AREN'T looking for them.

One of the most interesting glitches we found was the so-called black-book-bug. When Graham would read certain books or notes in his inventory, he'd basically be transported to a new room while a closeup of the book/note was displayed. After clicking the mouse button, the player returned to the room he was in before reading the book/note. Unfortunately, upon returning, it was like Graham walked out of that screen and immediately returned. Example: if you read a note while the enchanter (who popped up randomly in certain areas) was about to catch you, the enchanter would be gone upon putting away the note. Also, at a certain point, Graham would get ambushed and cornered. If you read a book at that point, Graham would disappear, enter the screen from the south, walk past the lines of enemies and after a while, the enemies vanished and then re-entered the screen from the south. We worked around the whole thing by disabling the books and notes in those situations (or simply ditching them if they were no longer needed), but if the stat screen in QFG2VGA is going to be a separate "room", we'll need to have this issue corrected. (otherwise, it's possible to escape random monsters by simply opening the stat screen)

Pfff...hard to tell, really. There are about 140 rooms in the game as well as some close-up views. Don't know if 140 included or excluded them.(the upcoming patch adds one more)

I'm afraid I don't know about the sprites and views as I don't have the "source" and I never bothered to start counting the hard way.

All I can say about the views is; A LOT. Nearly every action is animated. (and yes, it was a massive job accomplishing that)

I checked out some RM2K-sites (for those of you who are unaware; rm2k was originally a product from a commercial company that was never released outside of Japan until someone ripped it, translated it and distributed it under the name rm2k.) and most games I found there were pretty short and small. (size was usually smaller than 3 MB with a few 10 or 20 MB exceptions) I don't know what username you're using there, but if your claim was not some sort of joke your game or demo would stand out like a diamond in the rough. I couldn't find any trace of your uber-project however. Are you sure you're not blowing things out of proportions? Your claims are so big they're hard to believe. Who would WANT to solve a puzzle that takes a day to complete?

About dead-ends:

In KQ1VGA: yes. This was a literal make-over.

In KQ2+: Only one and it's unlikely you'll ever stumble across it.

And yeah, Relight did a great job with the 3D cutscene.

In the end, it doesn't matter if you guess it. Guess it and you get to climb the allmighty beanstalk from hell that will introduce you to the green soil of Daventry more often than you are willing to try again. Get it wrong three times and you'll get to climb the easier walkway inside the mountain. Be careful though. The mountain cave is inhabited. Keep magic rings ready. The name is either nikstlitselpmur or ifnkovhgroghprm. Both of them work.

Lessee:

Don't cut the rope of the well after lowering it.

Don't allow the dwarf to steal anything from you.

Don't eat the magic beans.

Don't give your major treasures away.

Don't forget to check out the fields or help the peasants before interacting with any big birds who might pop up.

After dropping down near big holes in the ground, explore first and don't be too eager going in there yet.

Whoever they are anyway, they must have already made their money, if they can spend over a year creating a quality game, for no money, They obviously love what they do. Therefore are probably people who have worked on other sierra games, and money isn't an object to them anymore (bastards)

Well yeah, our development team loves what they're doing. If you don't put love into your game, you might as well not release it at all. (as it'll suck)

But you're wrong about the AGD's being retired ex-Sierra workers. They are most certainly not. Just adventure fans (in pretty much the same age group as most adventure fanatics) who spend a lot of time keeping the classics alive.

It's true that the AGDs don't want to take credit for a game that's not theirs. It would be naïve for us to think that just an anonymous internet name would keep an angry company at bay.

Speaking of Sierra sueing; they did indeed contact the QFG4.5 project once and demanded it to be shut down. The creator sent them a sarcastic reply back and told them they'd be welcome to sue. Sierra appearantly never got back to them. I DO believe they had to move once because their host kicked them off, but I can't tell if Sierra had anything to do with this.

We asked a 3D-artist to do the cutscene for us. And it took way too long. In fact, if we would have left out the cutscene, we would have released the game a month or so ago already.

That's a better way to voice an opinion.

Too bad you didn't like it. It was a daring move on our part and will be an interesting experiment regarding how much changes fans will tolerate without seeing it as an oddball in the series.

I'll admit that the game contains some elements that weren't exactly taken from the KQ-games. The "dark part" for instance is more like QFG4 than any KQ-game.

If you surf the web, you'll find that most people haven't given KQ2 a very high rating. I've already mentioned some of the weak points. The plot itself is rather thin. A 1:1 remake wouldn't be a problem with a deep game like QFG2. There's hardly anything we'd be able to improve in Trial by Fire. I think lots of people would have been disappointed if we just upgraded the music and graphics for KQ2. It would have been like giving a caveman an expensive 900 dollar suit. Good-looking on the outside, but still primitive within. After getting used to the graphics, people would start scoffing that the game was still bad.

Ah well, I find it hard to believe that you finished the game already at this time, so maybe you should try to beat it nevertheless. (the game definitely gets better as you proceed...) Even if you don't regard it as a genuie KQ (a point I disagree with you on), you could still try to see it as an adventure we put a lot of love into.

(end of rant)

There's one thing we kept in mind during the entire development (that Raggit doesn't seem to understand). If you remake something; don't duplicate the flaws of the original. KQ2 had lots of flaws. Dead end situations, places where you could fall down by taking a wrong step, no antagonist, no dialogue, illogical puzzles, randomly chosen characters and a rather thin plot. We decided to create a game that would match the quality of KQ6. If original aspects had to be removed in order to improve the final result; so be it.

We don't give out estimated release dates (like for QFG2VGA) anymore. The deal with KQ2+ was; the game was finished a month or so ago already. But there was one thing we called "the mystery feature" (a VERY spiffy intro movie) that took ages. We were forced to hold off the release despite our earlier estimations and some of the fans were starting to press us...

It's highly unlikely KQ2+ will have a voicepack. There's a crapload of dialogue in there and it would take ages to record everything and edit it into the game.

If you don't download the music pack, KQ2VGA will resort to MIDI music instead. But we don't encourage it. The digital score is to the MIDI-soundtrack what VGA is compared to EGA.

Yup, but not just size-wise.

Tierra's latest and greatest project is now available for download and is ready to rock the fangame world.

(our new site is at www.tierraentertainment.com)