AG Community Playthrough #12: Gabriel Knight 1
 

Welcome, fellow Schattenjagers, to the AdventureGamers Community Playthrough #12, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father


As always, some preliminar forewarnings.

The adventure is old and may prove difficult to install and play on modern machines. However, the Sierra Help Pages are full of useful tips on how to overcome these problems, and, more importantly, the mighty Collector has provided a wonderful DOSBox Installer that really works like a charm and allows you to setup and play the game in no time. On the other hand, if you want to play the game in Windows, you can use the equally powerful Endroz' Installer for the game, although I don't know if this method is fully compatible with 64bit OS.

Once you have installed the game, try it. Everything OK? If not, don't panic! If you're having audio-related problems, you can check out this page, and this page will certainly come in handy if you're experiencing one of the nasty speed problems that unfortunately plagues almost every old game.

Like in my previous GK3 playthrough, all the images I will post come from the wonderful Belbor and his amazing site, The Pendulum of Life, a must for every Gabriel Knight fan. This time around, I will also use as a reference the extremely interesting material put together by Almirena and other dedicated fans for the Gabriel Knight 4 Campaign.

Now, as soon as all the partecipants have the game up and running, we can effectively start the playthrough.

I would love to get in on this. I have GK1 up and running, but not sure how a community playthrough works exactly. Could Andrea or someone provide me some details thru a PM or something similar?

Sounds like a great time. Very much looking forward to progress on this.

Oh god, I'm having problems to run it on my 64 bit OS. I'll try using the dosbox.

By the way, i'm so happy to play this game with you guys. It's my first community playthrough, so please be patient with the newbie! :D

Unfortunately, this installer/patch doesn't work on 64-bit; however, if you have a 32-bit XP installation available, I strongly recommend installing it this way. It does a full install to the hard drive and properly fixes all of the timing bugs which can ruin the game on Days 6 and 9, and it's offered a more stable playthrough than even when I originally bought the game back in 1998.

I recently completed a Let's Play of Sins of the Fathers for another website, which ended up giving me a whole new level of respect for this game and for the series as a whole. Something like 85-90% of the information you learn on Voodoo is factual, and the hints to the mystery are so cleverly layered that it really rewards multiple playthroughs once you know what the hell's going on.

One of the things that struck me is that even after more screenshots than you can choke on and dozens of bonus videos, there are still loads of funny and interesting things to show off that I just couldn't possibly get to, and I'm still finding things I never knew about to this day. Sins of the Fathers is an absolute standout of its time and I think every true adventure game fan should give it an unspoiled playthrough if they have the means.

I'm set up and ready to play. :) Thanks for hosting this playthrough, Andrea.

Used the Endroz' Installer, works like a charm! I'm ready to go.

I was wondering if anyone else has the novelization? I was lucky enough to find a copy some years back, though I can't remember where exactly I got from. I've been looking for a copy of "The Beast Within" novel ever since, but it's like they only ever released ten copies or something.

I've been wanting to read it again, but never got around to it. I remember it wasn't all that special, just cool to read this oh-so-familiar storyline.

Andrea is quite right. The Windows version will not run on 64-bit Windows. No 16-bit program will. The Hendroz installer is 32-bit, so will install the game on 64-bit Windows, but the game itself is 16-bit. Also, I have not tested the Hendroz installer on Vista or Win7, but his installer has not been updated for quite sometime, and may have permissions issues on Vista/7. Anyone that has 32-bit Windows Vista/7 and wishes to use the Hendroz installer should not install the game in a system folder, like "Program Files". Even if there are no problems with the installer itself, you may have issues with the game itself with the limited write permissions in these system folders.

The DOSBox installer that Andrea linked to above does work on all modern Windows, even 64-bit XP/Vista/7. It does everything that the Hendroz installer does, except it sets up the DOS version to run in DOSBox, so it can be started from a Windows shortcut. It addresses all speed related issues, via a patch created by NewRisingSun. All that you need to do is insert your CD and run the installer. The CD will not be needed for game play.

I have Vista and used Hendroz. Didn't notice any problems. Of course I do install all my games in a special "gaming" map, so that might automatically avoid those permission problems.

I did notice I have a different version of that menu screen:
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shot...7371729-00.jpg

I had a lots of problems when I was trying to set it up on 64 bits W7 yesterday, but finally, the game is working. The only way I'm able to execute it is dragging the sierra icon from the GK1 directory to the dosbox, otherwise the "64 bits error" pops out. I've used the collector's installer. Finally I think I'm ready, I wonder if this installer is patched with the bug fixes?

Yay Andrea! :D

I'm all up and running and ready to go!

To anyone struggling to get the game working properly, it can be a fair bit of work on a newer system but be assured it is well worth it, including taking the time and trouble to get voices & sound up and running - don't miss out on the full experience of this gem!

Even if the link doesn't work, I can say that you surely have the right version of the menu screen. The one I used for ambiance values was used in the disk version of the game, while, if you have the CD version, you should see this picture, which I'm not particularly fond of, I must admit.

On the other hand, even more atmospheric is, in my opinion, the Menu Screen used only in the demo:

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...KQ/gkdemos.png

PS: Thanks to ATMachine for the pictures! If you are lurking, please do come back and say hello! ;)

Anyone else on Windows 7 has graphical glitches with dosbox sometimes? Sometimes they are there, but after a few restarts they're gone. I guess that has to do with the windows color scheme?

I'm using the DosBox installer from Collector... not having any issues so far. Running Win7 x64 as well.

Ready for the playthrough as well... sign me up Andrea!!!

-ozymanhattan

All set to go!

The Dosbox GK1 installer presented me with the choice between original or smoothed graphics - which one would be best? (I chose original)

Aye, I have the Windows and DOS versions ready and waiting. I actually had them installed way before there was talk of a new community playthrough. :D

As for the Hendroz installer only working properly under 32 bit systems - well, that makes sense as my version of Vista is 32 bit. But I could of sworn I was using 32 bit when I had XP. Anyway, if I encounter any problems with the Windows version at least I can revert to the DOS version.

And before we begin, I think I'll give the comic book a re-read.

If, by tonight, everyone's ready, I'll set up the first block for us to play.

As for the graphic novel, do you all have it? If this is your first time through the game - I doubt it, but still - I recommend reading it only after a certain point in the game, which I'll of course signal. Otherwise, feel free to re-read it when you fancy ;)

It took me hours to get the game installed, no kidding. Tried it several times on 3 computers, both the Windows installer and the DOSbox one, and also simply from the CD in DOS on my old Win98 computer. Every single time I got error messages during or after installation. :frusty: And then all of a sudden it worked! So I played a little, to see if everything was okay. Got wrapped up in the game, but after an hour the screen froze and I even had to restart my computer. Damn.

On the bright side, I love it. ;) Just like GK2, the game is much better and interesting than I remember it.

First time I played GK1 I used the Sierra Originals rerelease. Now I am the proud owner of the lovely trapezoid boxed version, which comes with a nice hint booklet, as I discovered today. Or is that included in all releases?

I can't answer your question. I'm busy drooling over your trapezoid box.

My collection, in my gaming room. Well, most of it. A total of 274. Plus downloads of course. Trapezoid box in top left corner. Drool away! :P

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/6...00527ad.th.jpg