[HN Gopher] Making Sierra Pay
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Making Sierra Pay
Author : doppp
Score : 67 points
Date : 2021-08-06 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.filfre.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net)
| [deleted]
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I vividly remember Phantasmagoria. It turned out to be rather
| boring. Still, the novelty of full motion video was striking when
| I played it for the first time.
| nkozyra wrote:
| I recall this being very much the case with Mad Dog McCree.
|
| The novelty of live video wore off pretty quickly once you
| started attempting to play the game.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Of all FMV games, the only one that clicked for me was the
| Rebel Assault. Star Wars visuals were impressive, even if
| space combat was nowhere near as interesting as in Tie
| Fighter.
| smhinsey wrote:
| I live one town over from Oakhurst part of the year and it's
| really just astonishing to think of it as any sort of tech hub at
| all. It's too bad that Sierra took all of that when they failed.
| cgearhart wrote:
| I've seen a few of these kind of articles lately on here, and I
| really enjoy them. I put a _lot_ of hours into the Quest for
| Glory franchise as a kid, and always wondered what happened to
| it. Sierra just seemed to vanish in the mid/late 90s. Very
| interesting to read about the history now.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I could never play VGA versions of Quest for Glory 1&2. Combat
| was so much better with the keyboard than with that mouse-
| driven abomination.
| deckarep wrote:
| Also for anyone wanting to learn the history from the man
| himself Ken Williams recently wrote a book on Sierra's rise and
| fall as one of the industry's top gaming studios.
|
| Obviously he wasn't there for the tail end of things during the
| acquisitions and fraudulent period but what I found most
| interesting is how Sierra was bootstrapped in the first place.
|
| Ken is a brilliant thinker and had the foresight to build a
| game engine that Roberta could plug and play her game content
| in because she admitted to not being a great coder.
|
| Later Ken wanted his next generation games to be built as a
| virtual machine (The Sierra Creative Interpreter) which meant
| they only had to make the game once and build the VM for
| different architectures. Again a brilliant move.
|
| Check his book out: https://kensbook.com/
| tfandango wrote:
| It's worth noting that he's also working on a new game.
|
| https://kensgame.com/
| x0x0 wrote:
| Hey, in case you're unaware -- the Coles have released a all-
| but-in-name sequel to quest for glory
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/375440/HeroU_Rogue_to_Red...
| cgearhart wrote:
| Whoa! Thanks--I'll try this out ASAP.
| m0ngr31 wrote:
| The Quest for Glory series was my favorite as a kid. I'm not
| sure how many times I beat QFG1. I never did beat 2. But I
| clearly remember staying home sick one day from school and
| beating 3 in one sitting. Too bad that was probably the worst
| of the bunch.
|
| Another favorite of mine was Conquests of Longbow. I think that
| one was a little more obscure?
| sokoloff wrote:
| I worked at Papyrus during the Sierra acquisition; Sierra was a
| great parent company and Ken a sharp and fair CEO. It all went
| pear-shaped when Sierra was acquired and then had a series of
| transactions with financial rather than gaming companies shortly
| after the end of this story, unfortunately.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| > Even the much-vaunted look of King's Quest VII, although
| impressive in its individual parts, made for a rather discordant
| jumble when taken in the aggregate, being the work of so many
| different teams of animators.
|
| It always really bummed me out that the beautiful oil painting
| style of KQ 5 and 6 and SQ 4 and 5 got thrown out for the
| cartoon/primitive CG style of the sequels.
|
| Like compare the atmosphere of the main town in QFG4 to the main
| town in QFG5:
|
| https://r.mprd.se/media/images/94592-Quest_For_Glory_Iv_Shad...
|
| http://speed-new.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/3253453.png
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| This happened alot during the early transition from 2D to 3D.
| Consider the unreleased Project Dream for the SNES/N64:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w72kj20YNA0
|
| Specifically, compare how the top-of-the-line SNES isometric
| sprites looked: https://youtu.be/w72kj20YNA0?t=76
|
| versus the primitive 3D N64 model:
| https://youtu.be/w72kj20YNA0?t=246
|
| It's no comparison, IMO. But 3D was the new shiny thing, and so
| they went with it.
|
| At least until the whole things collapsed and morphed into
| Banjo Kazooie, anyway.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| I concur, the only series I can think of that really nailed
| that transitional era in a way that still holds up are the
| PlayStation Final Fantasy games and their use of prerendered
| backgrounds that clip 3D character models.
|
| I really wish Sierra had taken the same path, hand painted
| backgrounds with 3D models for Kings Quest would have looked
| something like Bravely Default does today.
|
| https://images.nintendolife.com/8c22804858abd/bravely-
| defaul...
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