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Thanks! You just made me want to replay the game

Brilliant!

The voices are excellent (anyone who's only played it without them should really do a replay) and the concept works well.

Found this via the AGS Awards and will be voting for this in its categories - most of the other contestants I've reviewed so far haven't left as good an impression, at least not so quickly.

Well done!

Ah, good to know. Looking forward to the demo

Good call on the title change.

I'm a bit confused about the "It's SQ7, but not Space Quest 7" aspect, though. It seems weird to include a specific number that happens to be that of the latest Space Quest game plus one, and at the same time make the Space Quest part less specific.

"Space Quest: Time is of the essence" would be a more logical choice, in my opinion. Or even "SQ: Time is of the essence". But the number is still creating a very strong association with Space Quest 7, even if you say it's not.

As for further feedback, I'm not a big fan of the overall look and feel of the game.
It probably took a lot of time and effort to create these 3D scenes and work out all the details, and it's looking better than anything I could produce, but at the end of the day, many of these screenshots still look a little dull (especially the outside shot of the bar).

I guess the thing is that it's pretty damn tricky to make 3D look good in an adventure game. Incinerations managed to pull it off somehow, but for most games like these, it's far easier to get a natural, fitting look with 2D graphics.

There was a time when VSB had a lot more 3D content in it, and a lot of it had similar quality to these screenshots. Over time, we replaced most of it with 2D graphics and also removed some cutscenes entirely. Most of the 3D content left in VSB was created at a later time by Chris, who used similar techniques as in Incinerations.

I'm not sure how helpful this comment is - it seems you've already created a lot of 3D content and suddenly switching everything to 2D isn't an option. I guess one option is to play Incinerations and study the backgrounds to maybe pick up some rendering techniques that make them look more natural.

Heh, this reminds me a lot of the early years of VSB.
In fact, the team even used to be called "SludgeSoft Interactive", but at some point we dropped that.
I hope it takes less than 9-10 years to complete this one, though

The idea of making a playable demo first is a good one - it'll give you a good idea of the amount of work needed to produce a fully functional game. One of the reasons VSB took so long was a combination of too much ambition and too little experience in actually completing something. In other words, we bit off more than we could chew (without it taking huge amounts of time, that is).

And I'll second pcj's comment (I'd actually typed out most of this before he posted) - calling it SQ7 may be more trouble than it's worth, as it increases the risk of the project getting shut down.
The main reason many fangames get shut down seems to be that the copyright holders don't want players to mistake fangames for something they're legally responsible for (e.g. "I saw something in a Space Quest game that I didn't like! Let's sue Activision and teach them a lesson!").
So they have two options - either evaluate the fangame, make sure there's no unsuitable content, spend time working together with the team, etc... or just take the simpler, cheaper and safer way of shutting it down.
A good example is The Silver Lining - when it used to be called King's Quest IX, the copyright holder saw it as very easily confusable with their intellectual property and they had it shut down. But eventually they reached a compromise by calling the game "The Silver Lining" and dropping the "King's Quest IX" part.
There was a time we were calling our game "Space Quest 8: Vohaul Strikes Back", but dropped the number (and in many situations, the "Space Quest:" prefix) for the very same reason.

Also, grabbing the exact number and title of a planned official sequel would put a lot of pressure on the game's quality. It may easily turn a numberless game's "It's a good game and a fun adventure for Roger" review to a "It's not bad, but doesn't really live up to the expectations I had for a proper Space Quest 7".

The game has been reviewed by Adventure Gamers (along with Space Quest: Incinerations):

http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,1424/p,2

Awesome

The game that most of the article is about, Space Quest: Incinerations, is also an AGS game and has a thread here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=45119.0

This game (as well as the "SQ1 remake", in another thread of this forum) is mentionned in this week's French video games magazine issue "Canard PC".

Nice
Any chance of a scan or just a photo of that?

Thanks to bero, VSB now also has a Linux port!
Head over to the download page and check it out!

Alright, I finished it now

Nice game, looking forward to new episodes.

As for the "get closer" thing, I'd also prefer it to just make Jerry automatically walk to the correct hotspot.

I didn't even get that far

Trying to get the axe handle from the other shore, but it says the long cane is too smooth. And I'm out of ideas for making it less smooth.

how do I get the

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pie?

[close]

Spoiler

You need to get Forksmith out of the room and prevent him from coming back.

[close]

Spoiler

Also, after adding the plunger and mallet to the inventory and consequently talking to the stupid bird without McSlappy interrupting, what's the next step? Where's this red floor room with guitar picture?

[close]

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You've already been to this room, but you can't go back there until you get the pie.

[close]

Thanks! But now I've run out of things to do on the

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moonbase

[close]

break time methinks.

Well, one thing you can do there is defeating Vohaul.

...crap, I forgot to use the spoiler tag. Now everyone's gonna know this game involves Roger defeating Vohaul.

Could you release some of your old materials and finally open your Wiki for everyone?  I think everybody will be interested to have a look at them.

We won't be opening up the entire wiki, but we do have plans to post some behind-the-scenes stuff on the website at some point. It'll be a while, though - right now we're busy getting the word out as well as resting

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saw the Easter Egg (really cool addition guys!)

[close]

Which one?

Having fun so far, but I've run into a couple of problems/bugs: ...

Thanks for the report, we'll try and get this fixed in the next update.
I've also re-posted it on our bugs subforum.

Holy crap, I remember recording some VO for this...then somehow kind of stalled ( which is unusual for me, I usually record everything I promise to). I'm so glad you guys finished this. Downloading now!

Heh, your name just went up on the website (in the team credits on the updated about page) about half an hour ago

Wow! That's a nice Christmas present 
On your website the direct installer isn't available:

Not Found

The requested URL "/Installer_VSB.exe" was not found on this server.

All others download fine..

Fixed! And added an even more visible link to our forums.

And merry christmas to everyone from me as well!

We wouldn't have made it without AGS.

Awesome!!!
Question: this game is it a sequel of original Space Quest saga, like a Space Quest 7?

In the timeline, it takes place an unspecified amount of time after Space Quest 6.
There was a time when we considered it a sequel to the fan-made SQ7. But that was cancelled and ultimately we decided to just leave it numberless.

Just tested on an HTC Desire Z with Android 2.3.3.
Mouse cursor didn't appear at all, tried tapping and dragging but no effect on any hotspots. And after a short while it just crashed every time I tried - sometimes sooner, sometimes later, without an obvious trigger.

But apart from that, having the title screen appear at all was epic
And the music worked.
Looking forward to the next updates.