What about KQ appeals to you?
What do you love about KQ--What do you love most? What draws you to the series, what are it's best points/features/etc? What drew you to it originally, and with what game did you first meet the series?
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Bt
I know you're trying to stimulate some kind of conversation, but we're really going to have to dig deeper here. Maybe - what is your favorite background from a King's Quest game? Discussing the art, both AGI, SCI and VGA would be cool. What are some of your favorite musical themes from King's Quest?
I don't know. We've pretty much scraped the bottom of the barrel as far as King's Quest discussions.
Bt
When a series has been pretty much dead for 14 years, it leaves little to talk about. As you said we've gone over tons of stuff--favorite characters, villains, favorite worlds, favorite costumes, etc. Yes, I am just trying to spark some POSITIVE conversation here. We've been down this road with this sort of topic but I figured it was better than nothing.
I could make a topic about that, if it isn't considered discussing minutia.
This is just one small reason why I do want TT's KQ to happen. For better or for worse, if the game is good or if it is bad, it will still give us something NEW to talk about, discuss, debate, etc. For good or ill, it will inject life into the community and the series.
The sprite on the table next to the throne is 'light blue'. The small sprite as it flies through the air is 'light blue'. It's 'light blue' as it sits ont he ground from a distance.
The closeup as it spins through the air is mostly light blue, with an slight shaded edge of green. The closeup while sits on the ground is 'light blue' with slight shaded edges in green.
It was definitely light blue in the early games, KQ1, KQ2, and KQ3.
But ya, the sprites are mostly 'light blue' in KQ4, with some 'green' shading.
Also, to go from cyan (or blue-green) to simply blue in other games, again usually throws me off--especially in such as the closeup shots in KQ5 and KQ6. You can't say that the 16 color palette is the reason his hat is cyan because, as I pointed out, the window border is blue while his hat is not.
It's pretty much one of the only two options for 'light' blue in 16 color pallete. True light blue usually gets used for other things onscreen like the sky or water shading.
If you are slightly color blind it might look 'greener' to you, than towards the blue spectrum...
Infact, cyan has been used on Graham's hat since the early games, because light blue was used for water or sky instead.
Also the window border, is not even the same shade used in the 256 color games (or at least the dominate color)! They use a lighter powder blue, along with several other shades lighter and darker (depends on the game)...! Also those two shades of blue in the border are the ones you generally find in the sky or water in the 16-color KQ games!
This is about as early of a Graham you can go for as far as in the Artwork, from the very first release of King's Quest;
Also to say that 'cyan' is 'greenish' could be almost as mistaken as saying that it is true 'bluish' as well! It's certainly lighter than both blue, and lighter than green... But if you are comparing to other standard colors in the 16 color pallete... It certainly looks more like a 'light blue', than it does to a 'light green'... This is probably the reason why it was historically called 'cyan blue', rather than 'cyan green'.
It's also probably why that particular shade of 'cyan' is also in modern usage called 'aqua', which literally means "blue".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(color))
Funny thing is 'light blue' is up to interpretation! As it comes in different shades, tints, tones and hues!
https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=light%20blue&biw=1366&bih=623&sei=Jra5T-biBoaqiAL-v9zuBg
My point is this:
This hat color:
is not remotely at all like this hat color:
They are not obligated to use a different color for his hat than the sea or sky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue
So ya 'cyan' can be be a subcategory of blue (use of the term 'aqua), or in its own category!
There is actually a "green-blue" in some color lists, that actually looks more 'green' than than blue. It its often listed under "cyan' category as one of the variant shades, tints, hues, or tones...
Nah in the early games, if they used the same color as the sea or sky, Graham would turn invisible, or rather his hat and pants would (as the sky was pretty prominent part of the background (as Graham walks towards/through it to reach distant screens), and also lakes/oceans were everywhere)! Infact, there is an article that talks about designers trying to avoid using colors on animated sprites that are used in background to avoid that phenomena as best as possible... To make contrast.
Case in point, the problem actually occurs in KQ2, because the sand on the beach is the same shade as Graham's skin (they just reused the sprite form KQ1)! So Graham literally can turn invisible in certan spots... Although as his skin areas are generally surrounded by his animated clothes or have contrast with other details like his eyes, its not nearly as bad as a problem, as they give the illusion of a border around the sprite. However, even still, if he stands still, parts of his body, especially his arms 'disappear'.
Infact, its probably because of the need to have contrast with background elements, that Gwydion has such garrish color choice of cyan/magenta in KQ3! They start avoiding the issue somewhat, when they started adding dithering, and sprites with more details/colors/shading in Sci era.
Have you realized that almost every playable character sprites (or characters who would follow your player) in the early KQ games (or other Sierra AGI games in general) either wore 'cyan', or one of the other unused colors (lots of magenta, blacks, whites, and greys). Or NPC sprites were placed in screens and and on paths in which they wouldn't pass over a element on the screen with a matching color. So there was always contrast (no disappearing sprites).
It seems in other games, the background colors were chosen carefully to keep contrast. For example in PQ because the police uniform and sonny's denim pants use a regular blue, the backgrounds tend to use alot contrasting colors. Including many buildings that are 'cyan' or 'magenta'! Plus black and grey 'blacktop/concrete'. Almost the reverse of what was done in the early KQ games color choices.
Anyway, carry on lads! The debate over blue/green/cyan rages on!
Bt
It wasn't until MOE that his hat finally turned green. :P And that was only because of texture colour limitations. In-game, anyway. The KQ2 box art had him with a green hat and green tights.
...and the only other time it was done in green intentionally was on the King's Quest Companion 2nd Edition cover (he had blue on the first edition cover btw);
Of course on the Amiga KQ6 (which had color limitations);
Course how about a black hat?
Or a white with purple?
Or tan?
Hey, Graham can look stylish in any color?
Ya, this this may be true.
A little explanation is needed, based what Mark Seibert has said. Basically each area in the game has a limited color pallete. There are basically two sets of color palletes going on, the one used for the game world, and the one used for character models (Connor may or may not have his own pallete as well thus why he can change into various armor types in every world). Basically this is why Daventry is made up of alot grey, dark, greens, blues and some browns.
Barrens is made up of alot reds, oranges, yellows, and browns, etc.
Frozen reaches lots of shades of blue, white, grey, etc.
However, I'm not entirely sure this excuse works for Graham's mugshot! Because in the same room of the castle, and other locations are clearly textures that have blue in them. Blue in several shades that would have worked for Graham's hat. I'll get you screenshots of the examples later. Which makes me think they actually knowingly chose to 'tweek his colors' intentionally. It's also not a straight color 'reverse' (white becomes black, other colors turn into other colors, etc), because his shirt or face complexion didn't change!
On the other hand, I suppose maybe the two pictures (both Graham and Valanice) may have been put on the character model pallete instead of the level color pallete (Graham after all is a moveable/animated feature, as the painting is on a wall that can be moved)... Perhaps the character model pallete had its own limitations in that that particular level (but not sure why as there aren't that many animated character models in Daventry) I'm not sure the stone characters count as 'character models', unless designers intentionally chose to use the separate character model pallete for them (in the Kingdom of Daventry level, at least the Wizard, who is half stone, would have used the character pallete)...
I said exactly that.
Hmm, anyone played Amiga KQ5? What does the limited color pallete do Graham's sprites in that game?
Edit: found some (hope ATMachine doesn't mind hot linking);
Actually doesn't look like it was affected too badly (other than being 'light blue' and 'dark blue' depending on those scenes)... Not sure if his sprite color changes depending on the background colors of the area you are in the game (Like Alexander's sprite does in KQ6 Amiga).
Looking at the axe, is graham finally fed up with Cedric (represented by the goose)?
I had been trying to work out a way to do similar 3-D animation on an 8-bit computer, where a character could travel behind and in front of objects based on vertical positioning, but the way I was approaching it was way too CPU-heavy, redrawing items repeatedly within the horizontal region where animation was happening. Sierra's AGI engine was a much more elegant solution, using an additional layer of background data to drive the masking and taking advantage of the PCjr's additional memory and color palette to make that happen. I played through KQ II the first time mostly because I wanted to see how the technology worked; the ability to walk up a spiral staircase was really amazing at the time.
I skipped over KQ III and KQ IV, favoring Police Quest III and Space Quest III at the time. Then I was drawn back into the series with KQ V, twice actually, as I bought it on floppy for the sake of VGA graphics and again on CD (I think there was an upgrade option available) to hear the voices. I played KQ VI primarily because of the improved voice casting, the CG intro, and the hi-res character portraits in the Windows version.
Beyond the cutting-edge technology at the time these games were released, and having gone back later to play through the whole series, I think what I like most about King's Quest is its grounding in shared pop mythology, and the player's ability in most of the games to just explore the world and see who lives there before we start tackling any of the puzzles. The alternate solutions were also appreciated, when available, and yes, I did get a kick out of the death animations. AGI Graham's poor little face was always charming:
o o
_O_
From one of the rumors, someone said that the file was the regular blue hat version of the artwork from the KQ6. For Graham, and it was simply changed color ingame...
Turns out this isn't true... The extracted bmp file, definitely has the green hat. Interesting. Still as discussed I'm not sure if this is truly due to texture colour limitations because correct blue appears elsewhere in the castle see the flag/tapestries.
Heh I think this proves there is no texture limitation in that room! It seems that blue hat graham would have been easy to include (with no more color loss than was lost in KQ6 itself)!
I did a simple modification to the bmp file. I took the KQ6 artwork from the Omnipedia and shrunk it down a bit and put it over the KQ8 Graham, in the ROYALS.BMP file. Making sure to leave the black space below the images, and correct division between the two images.
Now, call this a blind experiment, as I know nothing about programming. But I discovered that the way that KQ8 accesses BMP files directly. I thought this might work! It did!
Now just think, if it was this simple to edit! Anyone could practically create new textures for the game! As long as they remain in the general size limitations!
Frankly, if someone wants to 'fix' their Graham! I'll try to upload my modified file if anyone is interested! You just need to copy the file into the CDaventry, 8Bit (trivia wise the 8 in 8bit and 8gui folders appears to be a reference to KQ8 bitmaps, and KQ8 graphical user interface, rather than '8bit' technology) folder.
Hey this is fun;
Either way, it could be that they just wanted it that way for stylistic purposes.
The trick would be change the green shades back to blue in the original file, and find out how that works....
Use Pot on self? Genie pops out and seals you in there.
Use Pot on Witch? Trap her for 500 years and steal her stuff. Just because.
Those Retsupurae guys make me wanna play these just for the sake of seeing how much of a loser the hero will be. Maybe then you could pop out a Dark Seed 3?
To me, the King's Quest series is more of a technological wonder. And the problem with technological wonders - they don't always make good games. Just look at Crysis, for one of the more modern examples. Maybe the reason why I actually like III and VI is because, by the time they were in development, the creators got comfortable enough with the technology they could actually properly design the games now.
So, yeah, I think the series is pretty much a mess that still hinges on the nostalgia factor. Space Quest, Quest for Glory, Conquests and other Sierra game series - they deserve a sequel much more than King's Quest does. And King's Quest... the only thing that I care about TellTale's King's Quest is for it to be a classic adventure game.
Maybe I am too harsh on the series. It's not that there aren't good things about KQI, II, IV, V, VII (and, well, I'll put MoE on the list too since it isn't exactly a great game), but I think they all need an AGDI KQII+ treatment. Because, if you think about it, KQII+ is still what KQII is - a collection of fairy tales and stories, but instead of just being meshed up into one garble, it got carefully interconnected and spun in an interesting way. That's also what KQVI has done and, to a degree, KQIII. And I guess this is a factor that actually appeals to me in King's Quest (yay, writing this post made me realize what appeals to me in KQ!
Seriously... There isn't much story in III, even if you count the manual... I suppose it picks up once you see the oracle..., and talk to the gnome, and Rosella... Who fills on on some backstory... Of course 'listen in' on the animals who also make up most of the game's backstory... But general interaction was simply a mish mash of fairy tales really... Just like the previous two.
But KQ4 actually has probably one of the most detailed scripts in the entire series, and definable characters with actual motives in the land for the most part... The villain actually has quite a bit of dialogue (manannan didn't do much except leer at you and punish you), plus the 'saving your father' and "genesta" plotline brought alot of urgency to the game.
KQ4 is probably among the best of the games. It has a pretty much coherent story which is neither too simple nor too overly complex; It has a great structure with two interwined storylines, the sense of urgency you mentioned (as well as a sense of foreboding/horror in the night segments). It's a well put together game with a good level of depth, especially for the genre and for 1988.
They even managed to toss in a bad ending, with you marrying Edgar!
I also like if you choose to interact with the dwarves besides cleaning, as in actually talk to them, that Rosella is willing to open up to them about her plight, and they even manage to offer her some emotional support!
"Alexander pulls out his Magic Map."
"LOOK OUT GRAHAM, IT'S A POOOOOOIIIISONOUS SNAKE!"
Replay KQ4. Solid game.
Bt
Amen. You don't have to throw out the baby with the bath water. KQ1 and 2 were revolutionary at their time and they were as advanced storywise as they could be with the technology and space available, and seeing how deep KQ became later, it's obvious if Roberta had the technology in 1983/1985, KQ wouldn't have been so "random". You can have the "fairy tale land" idea and still have it be a family experience, and have a coherent, solid story with it. People dismiss fairy tales today because they're so light and escapist--but I think that is their charm. KQ4-6 are examples of having fairy tale lands without it being overly dark and dramatic, or tied in with overarching storylines.