Adventure Gamers - Forums

Since most people seem to be done with Pyotr’s chapter and no one has mentioned this yet, the (non-)manual that came with my copy of the game (The Adventurer’s Survival Guide) has a section called Fun Things to Try. Check pp. 42-43 but be careful not to see too much (this is right after what seems to be a full walkthrough of the game). There isn’t all that much there that you wouldn’t have gotten by trying everything on everything but there are hints for repeated interactions with different results and the like (SYCOBABL.TXT makes an appearance too).

Jim Montanus - 11 February 2013 02:40 AM

Good news - I just checked - I do happen to have a posterboard of some some PR shots of the bar and chocolate story screens. (Thank you Josh for that present!) Not the original digital art, but I can take a photo of the board and post it when you get into the chocolate (Josie’s) story. The bar scene is missing the people - I think you will find the color transitions to be smoother and the scene to be warmer and richer..

Yes, please! That would be absolutely magnificent. On that note, I have a quick question (which is likelier to expose my utter ignorance than anything else): when were the art assets completed? Was it before Josh started writing (and you scrambling to provide him with the necessary code) or after you were done with that part? To my feeble mind, this seems like a chicken-or-egg problem. And thank you so much for taking the time to check on us, the playthrough is infinitely better because you and Josh are around!

TerminusEst - 11 February 2013 10:30 PM

On that note, I have a quick question (which is likelier to expose my utter ignorance than anything else): when were the art assets completed? Was it before Josh started writing (and you scrambling to provide him with the necessary code) or after you were done with that part? To my feeble mind, this seems like a chicken-or-egg problem. And thank you so much for taking the time to check on us, the playthrough is infinitely better because you and Josh are around!

Here’s my understanding/remembrance - Josh feel free to elaborate: Josh would write a design/programming spec. and an art design spec. for the minimum required game interactions. In theory they could go out in parallel, but in practice the art spec. would typically go first, since the turn around time on the art was the project’s critical path. The programmers could stub in some phony art, write handling for the required code, and swap in the final art later (which I did consistently for later Legend games), but the tools were not yet in place to make this a regular practice. So instead Josh would get the art, identify corrections as needed, and then we would start coding the minimum path based on the approved art. While we were doing that, Josh would be adding all sorts of crazy object handling, by identifying regions in the art (about 4 pixels apart) based on background items that were in the art. It is part of Josh’s genius, his ability to take some object randomly thrown into the background by an artist and weave it meaningfully into the adventure.

Like the astrolabe - please be sure to ask Josh about that.

Sorry it’s been so long since I checked in. Leisure Suit Larry is in the home stretch and I’m crankin’ on it.

Jim did a great job of explaining the “which came first, the art or the text?” conundrum. I can only add that he is being unfairly complimentary. One of the (many) things that makes me difficult to work with is my obsessive need to try to provide feedback for every little thing on the screen. I like to let the artists have as much free reign as possible, which means that I can only scratch the surface of the messages—the “critical path” messages—until I see artwork that’s finished, or very nearly so. So I have a nasty habit of burdening the programmers with the kind of exhaustive message-writing that keeps them busy right up ‘til the gold master. Jim was inordinately patient with me, much moreso than some of the other Legend programmers.

Josh

TimovieMan,

You mean the other subgames in Callahan’s have fewer hotspots? Or other Legend games have fewer hotspots?

If the other subgames in Callahan’s have fewer hotspots, that’s not due either to design or to the programmers. I think it has to do purely with the settings involved in the Pyotr game (stores, a creepy mansion in the midst of a move, etc.) and the approach the artists took in filling the screen with stuff. I didn’t go looking for trouble; I don’t recall ever asking the artists, “We need more stuff!”, I just sort of responded to their efforts with as many messages as their art seemed to call for.

Oh, here’s a tidbit: the voice of the York-Easter dispatcher was none other than Kathleen Bober, who cast and directed the voiceovers!

Josh

TimovieMan,

Other designers at Legend simply had different designing styles. I was most obsessed with messages and feedback, and I don’t think any of the other Legend designers shared that particular passion. So they put fewer hotspots in their games.

Freddy Pharkas was one of those instances where there were simply a lot fewer things visible onscreen on which to click, so there were a lot fewer messages. It was also lower res than Callahan’s, so objects that the artists put in the backgrounds were no longer very distinguishable (once they’d been scanned and added to the game). Also, that was the first game I co-designed, so I was just beginning to develop my approach. At the time that I wrote it, Freddy actually had far more text and responses than any other Sierra game…especially when you factor in the inventory-on-inventory messages, of which there were hundreds.

Although I didn’t end up writing all that much text for Space Quest Six, the Turboshaft was one area that I did write, and it’s immediately apparent. You could probably spend twenty minutes in that one tiny room finding everything that could be clicked on.

Josho - 12 February 2013 05:21 PM

Oh, here’s a tidbit: the voice of the York-Easter dispatcher was none other than Kathleen Bober, who cast and directed the voiceovers!

I find very interesting the fact that the narrator is voiceless. How come? Was it purposely because of the fact that the person he/she would have an incredible amount of lines to work? It would have been amazing if every pun, quote or comment in the game was voiced…

rtrooney - 12 February 2013 07:36 PM

Transylvania is the richest environment you will mine.

diego - 12 February 2013 07:02 PM

I was just going to ask if other “sub-stories” feature this many hotspots, as I suspected Pyotr’s story might be the richest in that regard - it’s insane!

Pyotr’s story in general is by no means the most abundant in hotspots. The other stories are full of hotspots and clever quotes as well!! Perhaps Transylvania is the richest environment in the game however (environment meaning a place where the game allows you to wander freely). I can only think one such another rich environment in the game that we will meet in later stories Squish’s spaceship.

Sefir - 13 February 2013 02:46 AM

I find very interesting the fact that the narrator is voiceless. How come? Was it purposely because of the fact that the person he/she would have an incredible amount of lines to work? It would have been amazing if every pun, quote or comment in the game was voiced…

There are a number of issues that make full vocalisation difficult:

- Additional expense and time of recording, implementation, and testing
- Audio is slower than text and so not always desirable
- Makes localisation more expensive (not necessarily an issue for CCS)

But most importantly in my mind, it makes the finished project more rigid - it is much more difficult to make last minute changes (and worse, the need to track and update last minute changes). Since Josh is a perfectionist (a character trait we tend to share, although he is more perfect at it than I…) he needed the freedom to make last minute changes to improve whatever he could. That goes from fixing typos, rewording jokes, but most importantly, adding transition narration to help the flow of the story when necessary. If we had done full vocalisation, his ability to polish the game would have been severely hampered. As it was, we had trouble ensuring that everything that should have been recorded was. Another question for Josh, along with the Astrolabe.

BTW, regarding the comparison of extreme interaction compared to other games: CCS was the first game I’d been the lead programmer on - as such I didn’t have a good expectation of what the proper handling “should” be. As such, I had my hands full implementing tools and system level coding and dialog systems and audio implementation and…etc. Actual story implementation was mostly delegated, until things started breaking, at which point I became aware of the problem. I made some system level changes to help assist the programmers by keeping track of game states automatically (how many times have you clicked on the same object?) which helped speed up coding and make it more robust. Personally I prefer to have additional effort primarily focussed on main path interaction, but definately wanted to support Josh in his effort to make the game more enjoyable to those who wanted to explore.

It’s interesting to note that probably the bulk of adventure game sales today are in games that take exactly opposite the approach from the one I took with Callahan’s: games with absolutely no feedback or exploration in the game at all other than main path interactions.

Gulp.