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diegoJdawg445Lady Kestrel

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Devs/Sequels jump to a modern outlook

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TimovieMan - 18 July 2020 07:39 AM

Best jumps: Gabriel Knight - 3 games, all 3 using very different technology (from classic 3rd person graphics to FMV to 3D), yet all consistently praised.

Worst jump: Simon the Sorcerer 3D - originally planned with normal animation, the overall jump to 3D made them make the switch as well, but production troubles lead to the game looking horribly outdated on release and very buggy. I never finished it because of a game-breaking bug relatively early on. Which is a crying shame, because the story and jokes were as good as in the first two games…

I’ll maintain that GK3 looks worse than Simon 3. I’ll grant you that Simon isn’t exactly the prettiest game ever, but they did adapt the characters to work. (I should give Gabriel 3 a try some day as it is well regarded, but at the time I bounced right off the demo and couldn’t get over how ugly it is.)

But talking about the move to 3d characters, we have to acknowledge how brilliant the character design was in Grim Fandango! Perfect example of working with the technical limitations.

It is cool how we’ve now reached the point where the technical limitations basically no longer matter to how a game looks. Unless we’re talking about a huge studio like Bioware, the developers will hit other limits long before bumping into that roadblock. Now all games can look the way they’re meant to (assuming the skill and time to get it there, of course).

     

You can play my game Frasse and the Peas of Kejick for free! (AG review here.)

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Trumgottist - 18 July 2020 01:41 PM

But talking about the move to 3d characters, we have to acknowledge how brilliant the character design was in Grim Fandango! Perfect example of working with the technical limitations.

I agree about character design (and everything else concerning graphics) - if Grim Fandango was a sequel to imaginary Grim Fandango 2D game, it would be on top of the list for Advie’s question in the first post of this thread. Smile However, I don’t think technical limitation is of concern here - the original game aged quite fine. The remastered edition polished little bit of it, but I would still consider the original Grim Fandango a pretty game.

Trumgottist - 18 July 2020 01:41 PM

It is cool how we’ve now reached the point where the technical limitations basically no longer matter to how a game looks. Unless we’re talking about a huge studio like Bioware, the developers will hit other limits long before bumping into that roadblock. Now all games can look the way they’re meant to (assuming the skill and time to get it there, of course).

No technical limitation but there’s the financial one. Or I think there would be bigger number of 2D hand-painted games today in the vein of Curse of Monkey Island or The Whispered World.

     

Recently finished: Four Last Things 4/5, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout 5/5, Chains of Satinav 3,95/5, A Vampyre Story 88, Sam Peters 3/5, Broken Sword 1 4,5/5, Broken Sword 2 4,3/5, Broken Sword 3 85, Broken Sword 5 81, Gray Matter 4/5\nCurrently playing: Broken Sword 4, Keepsake (Let\‘s Play), Callahan\‘s Crosstime Saloon (post-Community Playthrough)\nLooking forward to: A Playwright’s Tale

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GateKeeper - 18 July 2020 01:39 PM

OK. So you would include even those two Larry Lovage spin-offs, which have a different protagonist in a different genre made by different developers? Which almost everyone, including Al Lowe, hates?

Yes. We can have our own preferences (of course I’m on the “classic” side) but they’re part of the Leisure Suit Larry series - they have “Leisure Suit Larry” in their title, and they’re made under the official license - enough to warrant a place in the series. I wouldn’t consider them adventure games, though.

GateKeeper - 18 July 2020 01:39 PM

Also, why are not Softporn Adventure and Las Vegas part of the series? Softporn Adventure has always been included in most official Leisure Suit Larry collections too? Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards was just the second remake of the same story.

Just because company includes it in the collection doesn’t warrant for a place in the series - first of all, the title doesn’t include “Leisure Suit Larry”, and Larry isn’t even presented or mentioned in the game. It is obvious that at the time of the release, Sierra had no knowledge that they would be producing start of a “Larry” series with that game, which started with “Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards”, so I cannot think of one reason why it should be considered part of the series. Inspiration, yes, but not part of it. There’re a lot of examples like it - Black Mirror 1 was basically remake of the original Czech game, but no one ever considered it part of a series.

GateKeeper - 18 July 2020 01:39 PM

Larry and the Long Look for a Luscious Lover is a fan game.

Well, you obviously know the series better than me Grin Scratch that one, as well.

GateKeeper - 18 July 2020 01:39 PM

Al Lowe has never owned any licence for anything. He couldn’t even sell his own development floppy disks on eBay without some lawyers making him stop doing that.

Al Lowe had much to do with the creation of the character Leisure Suit Larry, but like said, otherwise he was simply making a remake of someone else’s game.

When Al Lowe worked with Larry for the last time, making the remake-remake-remake-remake version Reloaded, everything was owned by Codemasters, Paul Trowe and his company negotiated a licence for a remake, and Al Lowe was just a paid designer. Like he has always been.


I just mentioned Al Lowe, as I really have no idea, nor any research to trace the history of the Leisure Suit license. I know it was owned by Sierra, later by Vivendi, Activision etcetera. The point is, again whether we like it or not, that if it’s not a fan-made game, but a game made by a company who obtained the legal rights to make the game in that universe, it should be considered part of a series, or spin-off in this case, but still part of the series. Again, there’re numerous examples like this. Some folks still don’t consider Tales of Monkey Island part of the series. ( HELL, some don’t consider anything after the first two games part of it!)

     

Recently finished: Four Last Things 4/5, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout 5/5, Chains of Satinav 3,95/5, A Vampyre Story 88, Sam Peters 3/5, Broken Sword 1 4,5/5, Broken Sword 2 4,3/5, Broken Sword 3 85, Broken Sword 5 81, Gray Matter 4/5\nCurrently playing: Broken Sword 4, Keepsake (Let\‘s Play), Callahan\‘s Crosstime Saloon (post-Community Playthrough)\nLooking forward to: A Playwright’s Tale

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diego - 18 July 2020 02:16 PM

No technical limitation but there’s the financial one. Or I think there would be bigger number of 2D hand-painted games today in the vein of Curse of Monkey Island or The Whispered World.

Question: How much finances does it take to paint a pretty picture? Van Gogh painted better art than Bill Tiller while he was dead broke and spending the little money he had on art materials.

     

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Problem is that currently there are very few Van Goghs that would draw and paint for free.

     
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Trumgottist - 18 July 2020 01:41 PM

I’ll maintain that GK3 looks worse than Simon 3. I’ll grant you that Simon isn’t exactly the prettiest game ever, but they did adapt the characters to work. (I should give Gabriel 3 a try some day as it is well regarded, but at the time I bounced right off the demo and couldn’t get over how ugly it is.)

 

While there I am not questioning your taste, I do have to say in many ways Simon 3D should have looked way better than it did. Gk3 came out in 1999, which reflects on the art quality in low-resolution textures and boxy 3D models. Despite the tech limitations, the game does make good use of 3D. I do think it’s not a particularly nice looking game though. Some bits of GK3 look downright ugly thanks to low-res, compressed textures and low-poly models.

Simon 3D, on the other hand, came out in 2002, which in those days was an eternity what came to the development of 3D tech. In fact, both games were already highly outdated as far tech went considering Unreal had came out in 1998 and by the release of Simon 3D, Unreal tech was widely used in games, setting the bar on graphical fidelity.

What I am really getting here is, that by the end of the 90s, Sierra wasn’t the industry leader in the gaming tech it had once been. In the 80s and early 90s, Sierra had set the tone others had followed, but by the end of the decade, other companies had taken the leading role, forcing Siera to quickly adapt, which is very visible on their games. Like Mask of Eternity, which runs on a considerably clunkier 3D engine than tomb Raider that had came out 2 years before it. The way I see it, Sierra never really did manage to get their ducks in a row what came to 3D engines.

 

     
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diego - 18 July 2020 02:16 PM
Trumgottist - 18 July 2020 01:41 PM

But talking about the move to 3d characters, we have to acknowledge how brilliant the character design was in Grim Fandango! Perfect example of working with the technical limitations.

I agree about character design (and everything else concerning graphics) - if Grim Fandango was a sequel to imaginary Grim Fandango 2D game, it would be on top of the list for Advie’s question in the first post of this thread. Smile However, I don’t think technical limitation is of concern here - the original game aged quite fine. The remastered edition polished little bit of it, but I would still consider the original Grim Fandango a pretty game.

That was the point I was trying to make. It still looks great today despite being an early 3d game, and a large part of why that is, is the design. They found a look that worked with the simple polygon shapes instead of trying to work against it.

That’s also why I found it easier to accept Simon’s Minecraft-like look than Gabriel’s.

(And yes, I am deliberately ignoring the sequel aspect of the question.)

Luhr28 -

]Question: How much finances does it take to paint a pretty picture?

It takes time. More time to paint translates to either a longer development time or more people employed to do it. In either case, that’s an expense. And there’s another aspect of time that people tend to forget when talking about artists and musicians: It takes a lot of time to learn the craft. (If I play a two hour concert, there’s a lot more work involved than just the two hours.) If people are fairly compensated for their work, that will always be the most expensive part of a game.

     

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i bought a new laptop finally, now i can Play Syberia3, Heavy Rain, BlackSad and many games i couldn’t run, anyways, i started Syberia3 and for the last 2 years i have been put off by the constant comments about how terrible the controls are, and how you couldn’t rely on the classic Mouse/Direct-Control with this game, and i found out we are but whinny little B****es, the game can be played even without direct control once assigned the automatic hotspot revealer in the menu, there is not a problem at all, i cant believe i let my self down by other’s comments, but that’s a lesson for me, Syberia1 was the game that renewed my love for adventure games after Sierra’s Death and thanks God that was not ruined.

I enjoy the Jump with it, the only turn off is that the animator didn’t know Kate Walker at all, she always has at (Syberia3) that over the top facial expressions, hysterical sometimes, that do not go at all with my imagination of her cool identity.

     
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You know that games get patches, right? Without those whiny b***ches you would no doubt be playing a game full of bugs the devs didn’t care enough to fix.

     
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deleted, not needed but someone ppl really gets on my nerve, being nonobjective and only wanna oppose for no reason as if this can make them be or feel better.

     

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Advie, just know that you are making the best threads on this forum, the ones that are provoking meaningful discussion and thinking about genre as a whole, not just bunch of praises for new, low quality games that are overhyped as we want to condole ourselves that the genre is not on the outside borders of the mainstream gaming.

     
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VoodooDerina - 19 July 2020 11:18 AM

Advie, just know that you are making the best threads on this forum

thanks, but that’s something i don’t think of, and i don’t think its accurate, there are some other last living threads that i truly admire, i just love the site and it feels like home and with many intelligent ppl here i learn much from them, and have great opinions that would even cross my mind, i just hate to see all these adventurous minds silent, so its only something i enjoy. but thank you surely for your encouragement.

VoodooDerina - 19 July 2020 11:18 AM

we want to condole ourselves that the genre is not on the outside borders of the mainstream gaming.

true to that, amen!

     
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Advie - 19 July 2020 07:37 AM

i bought a new laptop finally, now i can Play Syberia3, Heavy Rain, BlackSad and many games i couldn’t run, anyways, i started Syberia3 and for the last 2 years i have been put off by the constant comments about how terrible the controls are, and how you couldn’t rely on the classic Mouse/Direct-Control with this game, and i found out we are but whinny little B****es, the game can be played even without direct control once assigned the automatic hotspot revealer in the menu, there is not a problem at all, i cant believe i let my self down by other’s comments, but that’s a lesson for me, Syberia1 was the game that renewed my love for adventure games after Sierra’s Death and thanks God that was not ruined.

I enjoy the Jump with it, the only turn off is that the animator didn’t know Kate Walker at all, she always has at (Syberia3) that over the top facial expressions, hysterical sometimes, that do not go at all with my imagination of her cool identity.

I’m glad Advie that you’re now able to play Syberia 3 & am interested on your opinion of the game.
I do have this game but I didn’t get too far due to technical problems - nothing to do I’m sure with any patches needed - just to do with not having a good enough graphics card &/or enough memory. Not issues that can be fixed with a patch - I know that!

     
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Advie - 19 July 2020 09:57 AM

deleted, not needed but someone ppl really gets on my nerve, being nonobjective and only wanna oppose for no reason as if this can make them be or feel better.

Would you like to be specific? It’s pretty non-objective to me - there were issues with Syberia when it was released, huge issues, just read the reviews. People complained (who you called whiny) and they were fixed. So I see no need to attack those people.

     
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chrissie - 19 July 2020 02:54 PM

I’m glad Advie that you’re now able to play Syberia 3 & am interested on your opinion of the game.
I do have this game but I didn’t get too far due to technical problems - nothing to do I’m sure with any patches needed - just to do with not having a good enough graphics card &/or enough memory. Not issues that can be fixed with a patch - I know that!

yeah, i can see even with the new laptop the fan doesn’t stop working, meaning the turbo boost lined in my RAM-memory is always running.

 

Luhr28 - 19 July 2020 03:49 PM

Would you like to be specific? It’s pretty non-objective to me - there were issues with Syberia when it was released, huge issues, just read the reviews. People complained (who you called whiny) and they were fixed. So I see no need to attack those people.

listen i am of those whiny ppl, i said “we”, and that mustn’t be exactly of that situation, but anyways, patches do not fix gameplay controls problem, man

     

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