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[moral]

I draw a really good picture of Batman, and I stick it on the internet to show people how good I can draw.  Then DC Comics comes along and slaps me with a law suit cause I drew a picture? 

They would be within their rights to do so. Now for a single picture they're not likely to bother, in part because it would be a public relations nightmare. But if you were to do a full comic, or a short movie, or a computer game, and they found out about it, they would probably hit you with a C'n'D faster than you can spell 'infringement'. That, to them, is competition and potential loss of revenue. Never mind practicalilty, it's a matter of principle, and lawyers aren't particularly nice people.

Copyright and permission to use someone elses characters/world/ideas are really two different things.

True. For the moral right to create a derivative work, you need permission from the author, which generally is a friendly and respectable artist. For the legal right to create a derivative work, you need permission from the copyright owner, which generally is a big corporation with lots of lawyers. Good luck on the latter.

I think when it is a parody or the creator uses different names they can claim the story "is based" on the original and they have less problems, but I'm not sure about it.

Nobody can really prove their idea is totally original, unless there was a time journey involved somewhere...

Absolutely and entirely wrong. First, they can prove their idea is theirs because they released it first. Second, changing names around won't save you from any kind of copyright lawsuit as long as you're using the "distinctive likenesses" of the characters. And third, yes, parody is protected but you could still be dragged to court while you have to explain why exactly it is parody (for instance, QfG:4.5 is obviously parody and was C'n'D'ed nonetheless)

YANAL.

Okay, since this turns out to be harder than I expected, here's the list of games involved...

Day of the Tentacle
Gold Rush
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
King's Quest VI
Larry Vales
Loom
Monkey Island II
Police Quest II
Quest for Glory II
Space Quest 0: Replicated
Space Quest V
Zak McKracken

Five of the sidekicks are human.
Three are somewhat human, but not entirely so.
Four are animals, only one of which actually exists irl.

Use Netscape.

Not a virus per se and nothing to do with the AGS forums, but this looks like a malware browser hijack to me. That, of course, is why you shouldn't be using internet explorer, and should stick with Netscape or Firefox or Opera.

To get rid of junk like this, google for Ad-Aware, that'd probably zap it.

Good point. Scanning the web for walkthroughs is cheating (although I doubt that these names are particularly locatable through google).

Last day for entries is Sunday, June 11th (giving people some more time because of the festivities this weekend).

If more people think this is hard, I'll post some hints in a day or two (the names of the games in question would help, I suppose).

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=26855.0

[The Rules (tm)]

As discussed here and here, there seems to be sufficient interest in having a Trivia Quiz. Hence, I'm going to post some questions to get people going.

The Rules (tm)
* This is a quiz about adventure gaming trivia. Each installment has about a dozen questions with a common theme, about well-known adventure games, either classics or from the more famous "indie" games. Suggested themes include but are not limited to inventory items, music, easter eggs or forest creatures.
* Each question is worth two points if correct, one for a partial answer, and three if you have a better answer than the person who made up the question.
* This thread is for hints and feedback, as well as noting your participation. Please send answers by PM to prevent people from peeking. The quizmaster will post all answers when the quiz ends.
* As with most activities, the winner of this quiz will be the quizmaster of the next one. In case of a tie, the person who submitted earlier is considered the winner.
* I'm setting a deadline of a week, then give me a few days to look over all answers, and give the winner a few days to come up with something new. The result should be a biweekly quiz, or thereabouts.

This week's Quizzening: Sidekick Special
I'm naming twelve sidekicks (and I use the term loosely, although they all more-or-less help you during a game) and twelve attributes. Match each sidekick to the corresponding attribute, and to the game it appears in.

Example: Cedric -- you have to rescue him twice but he never helps you -- KQV

The sidekicks:
1.Charlie
2.Hetchell
3.Jake
4.Keith
5.Marty
6.Roget
7.Participle
8.Spike
9.Sushi
10.Ted
11.Trottier
12.Xavi

The attributes:
A.Always wrapped up
B.Bedside companion
C.Chain smoker
D.Green-skinned
E.Found among trash
F.Hard of hearing
G.Just hangs around
H.Long lost sibling
I.Old foster parent
J.Partner who lets you do all the work
K.Purple-skinned
L.Scared scholar

There's a Mittens Quiz, at Mittens/Brittens.
Roger on the IRC channel used to do trivia.

Other than those two, I wouldn't recommend another.

So you're saying we're only allowed one quiz a year?

There is a remake.

If you're curious: It's called "Fade to Black" and it's fun. A 3rd-person 3D shooter/puzzle game with horrible camera/controls, but nice story and atmosphere from '95.

No, there is an actual higher-res remake of Another World, which is still called Another World and is presently being sold. Personally I didn't find it all that impressive, but ymmv.

Fade to Black is the sequel (not remake) to Flashback, which really doesn't have anything to do with Another World at all but is called its sequel mostly because it was made by the same company.

Isn't it really easy to cheat at this game?

Just wait until someone comes and gets all the hard ones, and then post right after them

True, but people can always submit answers via PM.

I seriously doubt that Google would turn up the answers to most trivia questions, especially if the questions are about AGS games (nobody said it would have to be restricted to Sierra/Lucas classics). Even then, the first question set had several questions that are highly unlikely to be answered in walkthroughs (and some that didn't mention what game they were about).

Well, maybe somebody should start a thread in General Discussion then. It should probably a general adventure-related trivia quiz, not limited to names. On the other hand, there are almost too many competitions already.

Done.  I agree it should be general trivia, but it'd be nice if each 'edition' had a theme to it.

Well, we've just had a quizzening about character names in adventure games. It seems there is some interest for a contest about adventure gaming trivia.

If people like the idea, I would propose that this be held biweekly in the contest forum, with about 10-15 questions each time, preferably with a common theme, and the winner of each gets to hold the next contest (just like with most other contests).

Just for the fun of it, of course, but feel free to make pixelated awards for people.

It may be best if people use PMs to answer it, and use the contest thread for hints/feedback/etc. Then the one who designed it should post everybody's responses when time's up.

What I used last time is one point for a partial answer, two points for a full answer, and three points for an answer that's actually better than the questioner had in mind.

Good idea? Bad idea? Feedback please? Or should Anym (who won the first one) just start a new thread for the next round?

Wow, way to resurrect a two-year-old thread

That was a great game: Out Of This World.  It is one I wish they would remake for the next gen systems-but it'll probably never see the light of day in the mainstream again.

There is a remake.

there was a very unstable program, scumm-ripper or somthing like that for that. for sierra and other companys? printscreen and capture programs.

I'm quite sure that scummripper doesn't rip Sierra games since they don't use SCUMM There's always AGI studio and SCI studio, that'd get you most of them. But frankly the Instagame pack would be a prettier solution.

[Last Crusade]

Hehe, I actually nailed the Police Quest-ions.

You should have sent them in then You would even have gotten you an extra point for mentioning Leroy Pierson, since I had forgotten about him.

I digged Laura Watts, and hoped to get Sonny hooked up with her instead of Sweet Cheeks.

True enough. In the first game, Marie is pretty much a ditz

Woohoo! I won without realising that it was supposed to be a competition. 8)

And there was much rejoicing!! If I could draw, I'd make you a trophy like for the sprite comps.

I wouldn't mind hosting one of these, but somehow I doubt that there'd be interest in a regular feature like this. What do you think?

I think it'd work. This one got enough of a response, and many contest thingies only get between five and ten entrants in the first place. It's a bit like puzzle time. I'd say try it for a few sessions, it's pretty harmless (besides, I want a chance to win too )

Sophia only appeared in one Indiana Jones game. Wasn't Henry Jones Sr. playable in Last Crusade at some point?

Sophia isn't playable, though (well, ok, in two scenes she is, but that hardly counts compared to Maniac Mansion's or Zak's multi-characteresness). I don't recall being able to play Henry Sr, but I didn't score full Series Points so I may have missed something.

[shameless plug]

META

[/shameless plug]

Scores... (out of a possible 35)
Anym: 11.5
Babar: 7.0
Yodaman: 6.5
Pablo: 6.0
Krysis: 4.5
Puddin': 4.0
Redwall: 1.0
Stranger: 1.0
Scotch: 0.5


A partial answer is worth half a point. A correct answer that is actually better than what I thought of myself is worth an additional half.
Since I was asking for names, not titles, omitting a 'doctor' or 'professor' or somesuch (or adding one where I did not) is not taken into account.
Questions marked * were not answered correctly by anyone; questions marked + were only partially answered.


From Maniac Mansion...
(1) the female singer. Razor.
*(2) the publisher from the infomercial. Mark Eteer. Most definitely NOT "Mark Eteor"!
(3) the car. Weird Edsel.

From Zak McKracken...
(1) the phone company. Ironically, it's simply called The Phone Company, TPC for short.
*(2) the coeds. Leslie and Melissa.
*(3) the evil aliens. The Caponians. The Skolarians are the good guys.

From LOOM...
(1) the protagonist. Bobbin Threadbare. Turns out some people don't know what "protagonist" means   (and I'd like to see a picture of Anym!)
*(2) the guildmaster of the glassblowers. Crucible, who is the man who talks to the bishop about the Spheres. Goodmold is just a member, who incidentally "looks sadly at the screen when he... y'know".
+(3) the young blacksmith. Wellwrought Nailbender. Half a point for "Rusty Nailbender", which is his nickname. No points for just "Rusty".

From Monkey Island...
(1) the sword master. Carla.
(2) the sheriff of Melee town. Fester Shinetop. Also, I would have given full points to any smartass to point out it's actually LeChuck.
(3) the cartographer of Scabb. Wally B. Feed. Most people seems to forget he has a last name (which, admittedly, isn't mentioned all that often).

From Indiana Jones...
(1) the protagonist. Trick question... his real name is Henry Jones Junior; Indiana is actually his dog's name. This is explained in The Last Crusade. Sophia Hapgood is a sidekick; half a point for mentioning both her and Indy.
(2) the nazi professor. Ubermann (with an umlaut, if you must). Bonus point for pointing out his first name is Hans, since I didn't recall that myself.
(3) the last king of Atlantis. Nur-Ab-Sal.

From King's Quest...
(1) the previous king of Daventry. Edward the Benevolent.
*(2) the shopkeeper's dog. Kenny, after Ken Williams. That would be KQ3, which is the only game in the series with both a shopkeeper and a dog. If I were really nasty I would have asked after the town's name, which is never actually mentioned in-game.
(3) Crown Isle's captain of the guard. Saladin.

From Space Quest...
*(1) the Sarien battleship. Deltaur. Arcada is the Xenonian ship.
(2) the owner of ScumSoft. Elmo Pug.
(3) the planet with the female battlebot. Kiz Urazgubi ("kiss your ass goodbye"), where you meet WD-40.

From Police Quest...
*(1) the guy with a flower tattooed on his nipple. Marvin Hoffman the drug dealer, aka Jason Taselli. Either name is good, since the game does not specify which name is the real one.
*(2) your first partner in the homicide division. Laura Watts.
*(3) the sleazy cafe next to the coffee house. Wino Wally's.

From Larry...
*(1) the girl at the elevator. Faith. The other girls are Fawn and Eve, and the unnamed hooker.
(2) the evil professor. (Doctor) Nonookee.
*(3) your divorce lawyer. Susie Cheatum. She's with Dewey, Cheatum and Howe.

From Quest for Glory...
*(1) the centaur girl. Hilde Pferdefedern.
*(2) the Shapeir apothecary. Harik Attar. Salim is the apothecary in Tarna (and Silmaria).
*(3) the Simbani's chief's son. Yesufu. Simba is Uhura's son.

And if it wasn't obscure enough yet, a few bonus questions...
*(1) the bad guys from Future Wars. Crughons, frequently called Croutons.
(2) Hugo's girlfriend. Penelope, from House of Horrors.
+(3) the blue gobliin. The typo is the clue... Winkle. The other one is Fingus.
(4) the prophetic pig. Hen Wen, from The Black Cauldron.
(5) the priestess that gets turned to stone. Brynn, Brandon's sister in Kyrandia. For some reason I had the name 'Brenda' in mind, but she is really called Brynn. Hence, bonus points.


This is hardly statistically relevant, but it appears that people are more likely to remember LucasArts characters. I don't find this surprising considering the Lucas games have almost always had superior dialogue.

At any rate, thanks for participating. If people are interested, it may be nice to put up a (bi-weekly?) quizzening in the activities forum. But maybe a smaller one; 35 questions seems to be pushing it. If so, then Anym gets to do the first one since he won this.

Freeware? Ok. Sorry if I can't resist a shameless plug, but have I mentioned SubTerra yet?

http://geocities.com/p_simoons/

There's this mine, you see. There's lots of gems there, waiting unhappily fortheir rightful owners to come and dig them up. It goes without saying thatthose gems would be much happier in your pockets.
SubTerra has 450+ challenging levels, some which reward smarts and some whichrequire lightning reflexes. It features a huge variety of tricky traps,creatures, and power-ups, guaranteeing plenty of variety on the way down.Meet the munchkin, evil skull and duplicator!
Also featuring demo recording, on-line help and a level editor with a yearly design contest.

I agree that adding a new specific verb other than a hand icon would be nice. However, if added it should be utilized enough to make it commonplace to use it (i.e. There's no reason to have a "punch" verb if you're just going to use it for one puzzle).

I have quite an innovative GUI design for this. I'll post a module in a week or two when I find a couple of hours to work it out.

Bullshit.

There are indie developers. The internet is rife with them. The point is that most of them lack the skill to get widespread recognition. But from last year, we've had such hits as Cave Story (doukutsu monogetari) and I'm O.K. (from Thompsonsoft) that came entirely out of nowhere and got widespread recognition. Then there's indie games that actually are published and make money, such as Caravel's DROD and Spiderweb's Geneforge. And there's always the buck-a-flashgame market which isn't quite near saturation point yet.

So what if it's not big business? Most of us are here for the fun and the challenge. And most commercially made games aren't big business either, only you tend to never hear of those that aren't.