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You also might want to include in the speech that this style of gaming was popular and considered incredibly high-tech 12-14 years ago but in spite of all the advents, innovations, and advances made in the gaming industry,

there's a select group of people in an underground network who wish to carry on this lost art of old-school point 'n click and lo-res/VGA graphics, through original stories, remakes of EGA and text-parser games, and parodies/crossovers of the classics.

This is an underground network that cares more about purity, not profit.

LucasMania was really awesome and I greatly enjoyed it.

Only dead end I found in the game was

Spoiler

Make sure you talk to Sophia in Zak's bedroom to get the orichalcum pearl before you use the ZakModule on her, or else you'll be stuck there.

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The game was originally in French and translated to English but the commands are pretty explanatory though a couple lines here and there slipped-- French is my second language so I understood it all but even if you don't speak/read it you'll still be able to play all the way through it-- and might learn a few words too.

But thing I'm really wondering though, in the Loom scenes the backgrounds were all VGA and gorgeously rendered. Was a VGA version of Loom ever put out? If so...where can I find it??!??!

Because all the other backgrounds and characters (the Loom characters were in original EGA too) were directly ripped from the LucasArts originals, and said so in the credits-- didn't say thatany VGA re-rendering was done. So does anyone know if a VGA version of Loom was released and/or available for download somewhere? Cuz if so, I really really really want it.

I say, some of the worst puzzles ever were--

1) Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, both of the Nazi mazes. I died SO MUCH during them. The one in Castle Brunwald was nothing compared to the second one but they both made me want to rip my hair out!

2) Night of the Hermit, whole game. I'm not dissing the game, don't get the wrong message, because it just looks so cool-- but it's just that nearly all the puzzles really made no sense and left me clueless. I like a challenge and difficult games but it truly was a bit much-- the endless combination of inventory items and not knowing what to do with them, what was expected and unexpected...never really got anywhere in the game as a result

3) That whole "Avvooozzlll" bug in Quest For Glory IV! Argh! Oh yeah, it's also really fun having to run it in both VDMS and DosBox and quitting out and starting up in them respectively to run certain puzzles because the processor speed warps it so badly that certain puzzles didn't work (I never played the whole game through because of this), or like when fighting the Wraiths, it'd drain my health in VDMS to 0 in half a second but ran fine in DosBox. But the processor speeds definitely screw up the whole "Avoozl" thing when you have to enter it in the pillar.
I wish I could just play it ALL through continuosly and get all the different endings!!

4) The Sequel Police in Space Quest IV, in the mall after you fry the Astro Chicken machine. I preciously covet that saved game of when I finally them beat them to the punch, because otherwise I only beat them maybe 3 times of the 240982490 times that I played SQ4.

I know this is slightly off-topic but just the perfect place to vent: Reading over this made me realize how much I really truly miss the games of yesteryear. And so glad that I found the AGS community who pretty much feels the same way. I mean, do modern gaming executives even THINK of things like storylines and memorable characters, or in this case, excruciating puzzles?

If my final exams weren't making me strapped for time, I'd totally love to enter a likeness!

But since I know I'm getting Xmas money, when will the Blackwell Trilogy be available for purchase?

PS- your games freakin rock! And I wish that I could get from Christopher St to Central Park in 1.5 seconds flat as shown in "Bestowers of Eternity", imagine the turnover rate the MTA would have.

Never mind, I just read through the past posts and I missed it at first- the date is

Spoiler

May 24, regardless of year

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Thanks a bunch, I got it and played all the way to the end! 

haha and good easter egg/death screen.

But I found the official walkthru from Yahtzee himself- at the very end, he said you find an easter egg if you played the game all the way to teh end but only if you set your computer's clock to "a date close to my heart"--what is it? Is it the Captain's Birthday?? Valentines? St Pattys? I wanna find out!

Got it! thanks a bunch!

i always got the window thing and did remember the blue cups...but was a bit unsure of what to do with stan as a pig and whatnot. the wt should help!

just as a sidenote and kudos to Mordalles, i think the lo-res graphics are making a comeback. as hard as VGA stylizing owns, I thought the sharp combination of the scrolling widescreen with the small areas was really cool and original. Very sharply different from Mordy 2! Which I got all 3 different endings to and definitely would love to see a Mordy 3.

Hey, don't you mean 7 Days A Skeptic?

BTW, what do you do when Barry rises from the dead wants to kill you? I'm armed with a deadly towel rack and Angela's stun gun and after I hit him with the stun gun just once, all that happens is that he follows me around and tries to kill me! The only safe havens appear to be the counsellor's office and outside in space. I hit a total dead end!

I finished the entire game, I got all the gemstones...

but I always keep ending with 347 points! I want the cool ending! What are the points that I'm missing!

I saw a lot of people who are stuck, I can give hints to get to the end but I have no clue on where the missing 12-13 points are.

Oh, I had this SAME EXACT problem when I ran Quest For Glory 4 1/2-- using DosBox/D-Fend won't work with these, but using VDMsound requires some tweaking with it. Here's what I did and I recommend this for

1) Go the game main exe's Properties window and set the compatability for Windows 95. In my experience this made it run smoother 95% of the time.

2) Select the program to run with VDMS if you haven't already done so. Accept the defaults for now, quit the game.

3) Now you'll see the VDMS Shortcut for that DOS exe in that folder. Right-click it to go its Properties.

4) Sometimes, just changing the sound driver from General MIDI to Roland MT-32 actually works believe it or not! It was precisely how I got my old copy of Kyrandia 2 to work. (Though I can't get Kyrandia 3 to work for the life of me it ALWAYS says it cant find the westwood001 file though it's sitting right there...okay, to go back to topic--) When I had General MIDI selected it made these gross croaky noises with no sound or music, but I changed it to Roland and suddenly it ran beautifully. So change the driver to Roland or leave it at MIDI, just see what works and/or if the sound changes and sounds better or worse.

5) The next is all tweaking and experimenting, just seeing what works the best-- click on the "Advanced" thing in the VDMS Shortcut Properties. You can try to raise the numbers in "Compatability", and change MIDI mapping devices if need be. Sometimes trying to get reduced CPU usage as well can also work-- pretty much, just tweak those and see what works.

I thought I'd NEVER get QFG 4.5 to have sound and music but I did with that method.

As regards scripting: all you need to do is be able to think logically, in an "if-else" way. If user does this, then do that. After that, you just need to learn how to tell it to AGS. The way it worked with me: I knew what I wanted to do, and I read the manual until I found the function(s) that let me do it.

You need no previous programming experience, as AGS uses a language by itself. You just have to learn the syntax - using ints, Strings, functions, importing/exporting, using brackets. And that is just practice, practice, practice.

I think this is getting warmer-- it DOES sound very similar to Visual Basic. I haven't done any hardcoding or writing in years, not since I had that class. I think I really need the language explained: at least I had a class that discussed VB and basic C++ and I was told what everything did, if I look at a list of commands with no explanations it kinda doesnt help.

That or I need to find something that hasn't been listed in the Tech Forum for a ridiculously slow learning level/those who don't learn easily out of books.

FamousAdventurer77,
Sorry about that, there was a bug there in the very very first version but that has long since been fixed. You could try going into the Manual and changing the 'Slow Computer' flag. If that fails PM me and send me a saved game with the error. It should be mentioned that if you change the version you are playing you can't use any of your old save games, they might appear to work, but this sort of crash can be caused by that.

I tried the Slow Computer option...still quit out on me! I've only had this version of the game, I never had any of the older ones. I don't know what keeps causing it, but I really wanna finish the game!

Believe me...I've pored over the tech forums and tried searching for specific answers and had a hard time with it. There should be some AGS University or something, or something more interactive on how to script instead of just being referred to one manual after another.

Unless I'm THAT retarded.

When I opened the Global Scripting, I just read through it without altering and it looks vaguely like a cross between rudimentary C++ and Visual Basic. Am I right? Problem is, I had those languages in my ancient-ass CS class EONS ago in high school so I really don't remember just about anything except how to form a basic If-Then-Else statement. Do you think it's fairly close to VB at all? If it is I might not be too hopeless...I've got a copy of the Visual Basic Bible hidden somewhere and the computer club at uni might actually help out.

As for forming sprite animations...pretty clueless there. I have a JPEG of the main character's walking cycle, with a lot of different frames, but don't know how to put it into the actual game.

I'm not too concerned about sound and music, I know I can improvise there, the internet's big enough.

At this rate, doing VGA and Sierra-influenced backgrounds is probably what I do best. It's setting up this GUI, mainframe, and figuring out how to script that looks impassable. Especially since I want an interface with a "travel screen", similar to Simon the Sorcrer 1 where you click on a dot and it automatically takes you to a location. Once again...no clue where to go from there.

I am completely lost.

I read the manual. I read the tutorials. Believe me, I did. Maybe even too many times. But they still make no sense to me. They're not really answering my pleads of "How in the living f**k do you DO this?!" I'm more of a hands-on person who has a hard time learning straight from a book/manual without being told or shown what to do with it.

Since this doesn't really belong with the technical posts...I figured this side of the forum might be where I could seek help and perhaps a partnership(s). It appears impossible to tackle these things alone.

On and off for the past year I've been trying to make a Sierra-style game called "On The Prowl", which is something like a Leisure Suit Larry type of game only it has a female lead instead and well, not QUITE the same "flavor" obviously. The storyline is about a working class girl in New York City in her late 20s who's run into some rough times by getting fired from her job just when some insider trading and illegal activity have taken place, so she decides to live it up for the night (or so she thought.) Puzzles will vary from medium-easy to tough. I have some artwork for the introduction cutscene (if I ever figure out HOW one even animates or gets a cutscene in), a bunch of backgrounds, walking cycle sprites for the main character, and a TextEdit file with a bunch of dialog planned that I have no clue what to do with in the mainframe.

It's that scary-looking mainframe and all that scripting. The scripting vaguely reminds me a tad of those Visual Basic modules I had in CS many many moons ago. Still...how can I get them to do anything? What about making up my own that these impersonal tutorials aren't helping me with?

Please, if anyone out there would like to be a part of this and/or can help, please reply by all means. If you'd like to collaborate, believe me, your name is most definitely going into credits and acknowledgements, you will not go unrecognized. I can also be Private Messaged if you'd like to talk on AIM (I don't publicly post my SN.) Thank you for your time. R/FamousAdventurer77

Now for the biggest conundrum EVER: A bug!


Feather Spoiler/Comment:

Spoiler

I finally figured out how the feathers work: And I got my first one in the Faery's forest on the tree above that screen, when the chicken race started-- I didn't get one at the witch's house or Igloo! The fetahers basically work like teleporters after you get the bird whistle, I got that all down pat.

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Is 2.72-something the latest version? Because that's what's available on Wretched's site and what I've been playing.......and I am now at the part past the Demon Bridge with the Spiders. After I made the baby spiders go away....if I go through the door I get a system error!!  :o NOTHING has worked to help this so far. Are there any patches available for the game? Or is there an upgraded version available elsewhere for download? Please help!

Here's the demi-technical spoiler for those who want the answer dead-on:

Spoiler

I found that what worked the best was just using the speed control-- set it to the slowest one! Who knew the Control Panel would be part of the puzzle.

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Okay...I just started playing this game. I'm already pretty stumped and only just started!

Now this question may sound stupid: Is this game supposed to be silent? Because I have NO sound whatsoever coming in at all.

I am quite confuzzled here. Yes, I feel you on the brain being fried thing as after a long day at work then eating a bag of Cheetos for dinner...and I'm STILL up playing this game. lol. I visited the igloo, clicked that switchy thing a few times but I don't think it did anything. Took the crystal then put it back. After I figure out how to get him back down, guess I better take Bog around where the feathers were and figure out where the first pick-up-able one is! And I have no clue what version of the game it is either.

famous adventurer

Spoiler

My brain got fried when I was playing this game lol, and now its fried again trying to remember, so I had a peek at the walkthrough, and it says go to the igloo (thats inside the mountain, after going over the carcass) and pick up the feather, have you tried that one? I didn't think I got my first feather there though, of course it might depend on what version of the game you are playing maybe? I know wretched changed some things I don't know if this is one of the things he changed or not. I think I got mine by going into the forest where you left the fairy, you can go up in that scene, have you been there? I have a feeling I got my feather up there. Of course I could be totally wrong LOL

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Thanks a bunch!! Glad to see HOTU has remained in its original form. Though still I'm ripping my hair out trying to figure out a bugfix for QFG 4.5, or find out if an updated version was ever made. Or am I emulating this wrong somehow??? Here I was thinking I was a total DOS expert and this has me utterly stumped...

Thanks a bunch Joyce! I think I got it now...Now The Chicken Feather Conundrum. How do those things come out, Bog always keeps saying he'll break the feathers if he tries to pick them up.

Famous Adventurer

Spoiler

After you cross the icy river when you walk to the right through a forest, I can't remember exactly how many screens over it is but maybe about half way through forest you can go up (North) this is where the hole is. When you put the rock, then go back to icy river to where the same little creature was and you should be able to pick up the ring.
You use the nuts later to leave a trail for this little creature to encourage him to go somewhere else

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