18th September 2006, 3:59 PM
I've read all I can stand to read from that. Assuming that data is accurate, then I can sum up my opinion of these collections very simply.
Ugh.
I may not pick up the KQ collection (the others yes, because I only have Police Quest and Space Quest 1 from the long long ago, none of the sequels (I did play a demo of SQ6 once).
Apparently, all this time, the only thing they actually bothered to do was slap DOSbox onto a disk and run all the games from that. Did they even optimize a special build of DOSbox (since it is open source, which I guess would require the source code of their modifications to be released to the public domain) to overcome the shortcomings of using such a method? Hmm... That's the sad thing really. They didn't even take away KQ4's copyright protection (I guess the code is just SO old they probably don't even have the original source code for that game any more and that would require hex editing). This is compounded with the fact that they didn't put either Mask of Eternity in the KQ collection or the last of the "good" LSL games in that collection (I'm not even talking about the horrid 3D one, I'm talking the one from 1996 or so from what I've been reading).
Further, no details at all on the presence of any extras beyond the emulator and the instruction booklets on the disk. The only conclusion to reach until otherwise noted is that's because there IS nothing else on the disks.
And there's one other thing to add: instruction booklet on a disk is not a very useful option. It's one thing if they include all you need to know right inside the game, so that there's always a helpful context sensitive help option at your finger tips depeding on the menu you are in or a very detailed tutorial or massive in-game help menu with demos of how to do things (later Final Fantasy games for example did a really good job of not needing an instruction booklet). It's another if they didn't change a thing. Now I have to tab out of the game to read stuff. Well, no big deal in some cases. In the case of KQ3 and KQ6 though, that's not really a decent option. In these two games, important information like excerpts from a magic book of magic wizard powers and a guidebook to the land of the green isles are things I'll be holding in one hand as I solve puzzles with the other using said information and clues. Tabbing back and forth in real time, especially in the more time sensitive parts, well you can guess the results.
So what do we end up with? Well, I wonder what happened here? This took years to finally release after they first announced these compilations. What were they doing this whole time? What about just sticking the existing games, an instruction booklet, and DOSbox (as well as tiny apps to load DOSbox with the games) could have taken so long? Well, one possibility is that the team hired to do the port job simply couldn't figure out how to "crack" the old games, perhaps never having been given the original source code or the rest of the original assets, and after so long attempting to actually convert the original code, and with the threat of their project being cancelled and them being fired, they decided to please the big guys above them (who probably are just working there for the money and aren't gamers at all) by just doing a last minute slapping of DOSbox in there and calling it a project complete. Once they decided to emulate it all through DOSbox, the rest would be about as simple as a copy and paste job, and making the app that installed it all (which isn't a tough or long thing to do at all). This may just explain the absense of the LSL game, since maybe that last one was not also released with a dos version to begin with.
But I'm just blindly guessing at this point. I can only say that if it's all just DOSbox, I could have done that, and I did do that (as did others in this very forum), and it does beg the question of what took so long if this is all they bothered to do.
That said, as mediocre as these pathetic samplings are, I'll still get the ones I don't already have at least simply because I don't already have them, and if I don't like the dosbox emulation, I can always just run the default installer and go without dosbox.
Ugh.
I may not pick up the KQ collection (the others yes, because I only have Police Quest and Space Quest 1 from the long long ago, none of the sequels (I did play a demo of SQ6 once).
Apparently, all this time, the only thing they actually bothered to do was slap DOSbox onto a disk and run all the games from that. Did they even optimize a special build of DOSbox (since it is open source, which I guess would require the source code of their modifications to be released to the public domain) to overcome the shortcomings of using such a method? Hmm... That's the sad thing really. They didn't even take away KQ4's copyright protection (I guess the code is just SO old they probably don't even have the original source code for that game any more and that would require hex editing). This is compounded with the fact that they didn't put either Mask of Eternity in the KQ collection or the last of the "good" LSL games in that collection (I'm not even talking about the horrid 3D one, I'm talking the one from 1996 or so from what I've been reading).
Further, no details at all on the presence of any extras beyond the emulator and the instruction booklets on the disk. The only conclusion to reach until otherwise noted is that's because there IS nothing else on the disks.
And there's one other thing to add: instruction booklet on a disk is not a very useful option. It's one thing if they include all you need to know right inside the game, so that there's always a helpful context sensitive help option at your finger tips depeding on the menu you are in or a very detailed tutorial or massive in-game help menu with demos of how to do things (later Final Fantasy games for example did a really good job of not needing an instruction booklet). It's another if they didn't change a thing. Now I have to tab out of the game to read stuff. Well, no big deal in some cases. In the case of KQ3 and KQ6 though, that's not really a decent option. In these two games, important information like excerpts from a magic book of magic wizard powers and a guidebook to the land of the green isles are things I'll be holding in one hand as I solve puzzles with the other using said information and clues. Tabbing back and forth in real time, especially in the more time sensitive parts, well you can guess the results.
So what do we end up with? Well, I wonder what happened here? This took years to finally release after they first announced these compilations. What were they doing this whole time? What about just sticking the existing games, an instruction booklet, and DOSbox (as well as tiny apps to load DOSbox with the games) could have taken so long? Well, one possibility is that the team hired to do the port job simply couldn't figure out how to "crack" the old games, perhaps never having been given the original source code or the rest of the original assets, and after so long attempting to actually convert the original code, and with the threat of their project being cancelled and them being fired, they decided to please the big guys above them (who probably are just working there for the money and aren't gamers at all) by just doing a last minute slapping of DOSbox in there and calling it a project complete. Once they decided to emulate it all through DOSbox, the rest would be about as simple as a copy and paste job, and making the app that installed it all (which isn't a tough or long thing to do at all). This may just explain the absense of the LSL game, since maybe that last one was not also released with a dos version to begin with.
But I'm just blindly guessing at this point. I can only say that if it's all just DOSbox, I could have done that, and I did do that (as did others in this very forum), and it does beg the question of what took so long if this is all they bothered to do.
That said, as mediocre as these pathetic samplings are, I'll still get the ones I don't already have at least simply because I don't already have them, and if I don't like the dosbox emulation, I can always just run the default installer and go without dosbox.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)