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I wrote an article about this game for adventuregamers.com about three years ago. At the time, it was two brothers working on the project. I think they're left the project altogether and a whole new team is involved. As with most fan sequels, though, I have to wonder why not just make an original game of their own? But that's another debate altogether.

I really think "hand drawn" is exactly that. You used natural mediums (not digital) to draw a background/sprite/whatever. If all you did was colour/touch it up on the computer, I still consider that hand drawn and I think no matter what the quality, people should be able to call it hand-drawn.

Agreed completely. However, hand-drawn is only one particular style anyway, and it doesn't necessarily indicate "quality." Grundislav is right that a hand-drawn screen is only as good as the hand that drew it...

For example, I consider the screens in my upcoming game to be hand-drawn. I like the look that that creates and the organic nature of drawing, scanning, coloring, etc. I think it looks much different than a completely computer-generated screen, and personally I happen to prefer the texture of that kind of screen. But if the drawings you start with are bad, you're kind of defeating the purpose of using "hand-drawn" as a selling point.

Just my two pence.

D'oh, sorry for the mistake! Thanks for moving the post.

Just popping in to say hi and show off a little sketch that I  posted on the Chapter 11 Studios website. Get thee there!

http://www.chapter11studios.com/newsupdates.htm

And there will be a new Adventure Architect this month as well... 

[nostalgia rant] You may be requesting the fan-made remakes, but I personally recommend the original KQ3 from Sierra. I can't imagine what a remake could do to make this game better, aside from obviously improving the graphics. But, if you were around back in the early 80s playing adventure games, THIS is the game made the KQ series go from "get carrot and give to goat" to an actual living, breathing story and world with characters we could care about. Just my two cents. [/nostalgia rant]

I think it comes down to how "good" your art skills and background screens will look. If the art is great and the colors are amazing, and you don't want to lose any of that, then go with the hi-res (like an 800x600, tru-color). But if not, there's no need to go hi-res, and the low-res method is actually a bit more forgiving. Plus, it runs faster. Good luck!

Thanks, shbazjinkens. Looks like the URL got messed up by the board somehow. Much obliged for the fix.

-Josh

I have been to those Paris catacombs, and let me just say.... it is really creepy. Awesome, but creepy. And sobering.

hi gang-

some of you may recognize me as the guy who writes the adventure architect articles over at adventuregamers.com, or the guy who's making that wild west game at chapter11studios.com.... (or maybe you dont recognize me at all...)

but anyway, by day i am also a travel writer (aka my fulltime job) and i just published a new article that i want to pimp out... basically if it gets lots of clicks and finds an audience, i will get to do more of them.

here is the link! it's about adventure travel in maui, hawaii:
http://www.smarterliving.com/advice...ice.php?id=7241

thanks for checking it out!
-josh

Excellent article! Some good things to keep in mind in there.

Hey everyone,

Just a quick note to let anyone who might be interested know that the good folks over at AdventureGamers.com have posted the newest installment of my design journal, Adventure Architect. It's a bit more newsy than development-related this month, but I promise next month I'll get back to a design focus.

http://www.adventuregamers.com/underground/article/id,407

Anyway, enjoy if you so desire! And thanks for reading.

-Josh

Hey guys, thanks for the help. Which category would this fall under if not tech....? (Seemed like a tech question to me, in a roundabout way.)

I have a question about what to do re: background art vs animation on the quick sketch below.

Basically, when the character walks into the room, the ground is flat and the stairwell that you see on this sketch is hidden. After a few actions, he manages to drop a stalactite from the ceiling onto the ground, smashing into ground and busting open the hole with stairs that you see below.



My question is, if you were creating this screen, would you:

a) draw it with the ground flat, and then animate the falling stalactite and the stairs appearing?

or

b) draw it with the stairs showing up as is, and cover it with separate element image of flat ground on top of the stairs?

p.s. ignore the layout of the screen, it's just a quick sketch that I did to illustrate the question. the actual screen will fix the proportion problems etc.

I start off with a story outline, and then turn it into a "shortest path" walkthrough so that I know what the most linear gameplay possible is. Then I begin to flesh it out, add options and side quests, and adjust the document accordingly. For dialogue, I've been setting it up in a tree format, although I'm still trying to perfect it. But in general, Word or Notepad is fine, I think.

Is there an approximate date you think when the game will be completed?

Right now we're leaning toward releasing the game in four periodic episodes, each with a cliffhanger ending reminiscent of the old Saturday afternoon adventure serials that inspired this idea. We're looking at Summer 2005 for Episode I. (We don't plan to release it until it's perfect, so we're being conservative with the date at this point.)

Look for the next Adventure Architect design journal at AdventureGamers.com in August.

Hi there,

I was wondering if there is anyone out there who has devised an organized way to map out dialogue trees in your game design document who would be willing to share your method with me?

Basically I'm getting ready to start writing the dialogue for a huge chunk of the game I'm working on, and there's a lot of things like "If character A has acquired object X, say this; if character A has not, say that; If character A talks about such and such with character B, he can talk about this and that with character C as well." So I'm just looking to see if anyone else has devised a logic tree kind of thing for dialogue in general already, or if I should go find my own system. I just didn't want to duplicate effort if there's already something useful out there that other people are using. I'll probably tailor anything that's out there to my needs anyway, but I think it would be easier to start with something than invent a thing from scratch.

Anyway, thanks in advance.

-Josh

Hey, thanks for those links. I've downloaded some of the GUIs. All I want to do is look at them, basically. They are file type .agt. Can anyone tell me what program is best to view them in? (I apologize for what is probably a stupid question...)

Thanks again!

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for someplace where I can download some Sierra-style GUIs. I checked out the AGS resources page and found this link:

---GUIs with AGS (German) - GUIs simulating SQ3, SQ4, SQ6, KQ5 and MI1 for you to try out, by Lucasfan.

But unfortunately that link is broken.

Can anyone help me out?

Thanks in advance.

-Josh

Yay! I have bookmarked your site. Please finish this game. I want to play the whole thing!