Space Quest II remake
There is a remake of Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge out on PC. Oh, and apparently it's free.
I know this is technically the King's Quest forum but I sort of see it as a Sierra related news hub too.
I know this is technically the King's Quest forum but I sort of see it as a Sierra related news hub too.
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http://www.vohaulstrikesback.com/
Should I just play the original versions or are the remakes worthwhile?
The remakes often deviate from the storyline or add occasional new puzzles. You also get to see the game as the original Sierra designers intended, along with the fan's reinterpretations...
As for the new remake, I haven't been able to start it yet, its quite buggy on my system...
VSB, works fine though.
The original games are definitely worth it. That's why they were remade in the first place! Not because we wanted to make them better (well, we did feel the need to improve CERTAIN parts, but not everything) but because we loved the originals and just wanted to make a worthy tribute to them. The originals are totally worth it.
Now you're just splitting hairs.
Well there is there is the upcoming Gold Edition... It's more polished, and adds handpainted artwork... like the KQ1 and KQ2 enhanced versions by AGD.
I'm not splitting hairs, there's a big difference. Especially among text adventure groups.
I may be biased, though.
Bt
But what's with that resolution crap? I had to play it windowed and that's really annoying, especially when trying to click the pointer at the edge of the screen.
And also I wasn't too happy with the voice-acting of the narrator. He also has a very bad voice which is poorly suited for narrating. Wilco's voice is decent though. Compare it with Bell's narrating in the KQ AGDI remakes, now that is excellent narrating.
SQ2 was made in 320x200 native resolution. AGS isn't capable of specifying specific resolutions. All it can do is double, triple, and quadruple the resolution size. So that gets you 640x400, 960x600, or 1280x800 with the scaler options in "winsetup.exe". These are very non-standard resolutions on modern displays.
There's an alternative, though. You can enable "Force alternate letterbox resolution" in winsetup.exe which changes the native resolution to 320x240 instead of 320x200 by adding 20 pixels to the top and bottom of the game window (black borders). Then when you add the scaler options you get 640x480, 960x720, and 1280x960. Those resolutions are a little more recognizable and tolerable by most monitors.
I just wish AGS had a mouse-locking feature which you "lock" the mouse inside the game window when playing in windowed mode. I hate clicking on the edges as well.
Wish that would work on us with computers that have dual HD Intel and Nvidia Mobility 500M series cards on Windows 7 and i5/i7 cpus (not sure if this is related or not)... For whatever reason, even with the 'force alternate letterbox resolutions", these particular systems are just rejecting the 'full screen mode' (all out) and even the 16-bit color modes (this can be bypassed by switching monitor to '16-bit').
AGS and non-native resolutions are starting to cause problems with certain laptop native resolutions...
Vohaul Strikes Back appears to work fine in fullscreen because it uses a still standard 800x600 resolution.
The default minimum is now 800x600 in the 'resolution config' screen!
However, this may not necessarily be windows fault, it might be that the video card companies themselves have put 800x600 as the standard 'mininum' in their cards and windows is just reporting that.
320x240 is essentially dead now, and no direct way for windows to switch to it natively. Windows will sometimes report an error saying that it can't handle that mode on older programs (emulators and other programs apparently have ways of getting around it though)...
1: In the very first scene, when you're out in an EVA-suit exposed to the space but in an open section of the space station, you can die by walking of the edge and floating into the vast nothingness of space.
However, surely if you did that, the crew on the space station would notice the crew member floating away from the station and send a ship to retrieve him. So how come nobody does? Why does Wilco keep floating away to his death? People go EV all the time, and also there should be a communicator inside the EVA-suit so he could comm the station, so there's absolutely no reason he shouldn't be rescued.
2: Secondly, when you're on Vohaul's space station towards the end of the game, when you're at the restrooms, there are two doors leading into separate toilet facilities; one for bipedals and one for quadripedals/tentacle-species/slugs etc. Obviously you enter the facilities meant for bipedals, but when you later are once again standing outside those two doors, you might want to peruse the toilet with facilities for other species. However if you do click on the other door, while you can clearly see Wilco entering the other door this time to, he ends up in the exact same room he was in before; namely the toilet for bipedals.
How can this be? Clearly 2 separate doors would lead into 2 different rooms, not the same one!
So instead of having a sense of accomplishment from beating the game, I'm left with a sense of utmost confusion. What were Infamous Adventures thinking when they designed this game with such blatant logic flaws?
Definitely know what you mean there, but I'm moving this to General Chat on the basis that we wouldn't leave, for example, a Grim Fandango thread in the Monkey Island forum. I'll leave a long redirect for this thread on the KQ forum though.
Both of those are true to the original Sierra SQII. Nobody bothers to retrieve Roger probably because nobody really cares about him. As for the bathrooms... Yeah, I don't know why both doors lead to the same room, but they did that in the original game too.
This is a joke, right? Cause the door thing is... y'know... a joke.
The whole point of a remake is to make the original game better. You can make changes for the better while still staying true to the original game.
Oh and "Nobody bothers to retrieve Roger probably because nobody really cares about him"? That's ridiculous. Just because you don't like a person doesn't mean you just let him die if you see him in a predicament, such as in the process of floating away to his death. That's criminally negligent at best.
Name one person who would be willing to risk losing his job and going to prison just to stand by and do nothing while a person he doesn't care about anyway dies for no reason. That makes no sense and you know it. They may not care about Wilco but they surely care about their own best interests.
Well, if it's a joke, then I'm not laughing.
Just type "spoiler" in brackets to make the spoiler tags.
And yeah, IA has done a great job overall on this remake, it's really funny and it really brings me back to way back when I played the original text parser game.
Also, the deaths are immensely entertaining, so you should explore every possible death there is in the game! Just like in King's Quest.
You've either clearly never played the original SQ2, don't have a functioning sense of humor, or some combination of both.
A remake is not necessarily going to be a rewriting of the original. We wanted to stay true to the original in all of the respects that we loved most about it, namely the sarcastic tone and dry humor of the game, as well as the original non-hand-holding Sierra adventure game design. To that end, we left in many of the things from the original (such as a number of the dead ends) that some would decry as archaic and in need of improvement. The only major puzzle change early in the game was changed because maze puzzles of that sort really don't work well in point-and-click, and the asteroid was redesigned because in the original it is essentially a bunch of the same repeated corridors over and over again.
Anyway, we're sorry you didn't get the humor and didn't like the game. We'll happily refund you the full purchase price.
That's a good point, and well made. Seems pretty obvious when you think about it like that.
As I have said, I played the original SQ2 way back when games came on floppy disks. I've even played the original 1986 SQ1, which is why I fully appreciate the artistry of the old classic Sierra adventure games.
I don't understand how you can possibly interpret my previous post to be the equivalent of me not having played SQ2 before.
And what I've said before has absolutely nothing with having or not having a sense of humor.
Did I ever say that I opposed dead-ends? I didn't. I have said many times that I am a big fan of the old Sierra design, where you could get yourself hamstrung later in the game because you didn't pick up an item earlier. That's a great thing, and one thing I particularly liked in Leisure Suit Larry 2.
I've also suggested it many times on these forums that dead-ends and time restraints is something Telltale should adopt into their games. It makes games challenging, and challenging is good.
That's my point exactly. You changed the maze and the corridors for the better in the remake. So why couldn't you do the same with other things in the game too? Like fixing the logical flaws of Wilco going through the wrong door or him not being retrieved by the space station crew when he "accidentally" walked off into space. Not everything that was in the original game is applicable in the remake, and you can stay true to the original and still change things around, including puzzle design. The maze was done very inventively, but there are many puzzles that would surely benefit from the same treatment.
But that's hardly the point, is it? My original argument was the blatant logical flaw of Roger not being retrieved by a rescue craft at the start of the game, and the bathroom doors, where it wouldn't be hard to add either a barrier to prevent him from entering the quadripedal facilities or just simply have him enter the same door no matter what you click on.
I don't know why, but you seemed intent on starting up a completely different issue and leading this thread even more astray than it already is.
When did I say I didn't like the game? You have a strange way of interpreting facts. It's like me saying I want apples and you giving me oranges.
See that you do.
As for the EVA suit thing....seriously? You're pointing out plot holes in a SPACE QUEST game? Space Quest has never been about story. But if you really want it explained, in the world of Space Quest it's perfectly reasonable (and humorous) to assume that nobody cares about Roger. It's funny because it's true.
And as was said, both are in the original game and in my opinion have no need to be "improved" for the remake. In fact, I'd think both are integral parts of the humour of the original game. If you don't like them, maybe Space Quest isn't your thing.
Either you failed to notice that there are two doors leading into the same bathroom (that's the joke), or troll rating 3/10, would not rage.
It's Space Quest - it's meant to be silly. There's little logic or reason to things.
Boy. People argue over the strangest shit.
Bt
WOW!, guys, I mean, just WOW! Everything was terrific -- art, sound, music, writing, humor, etc. I loved it!
I have to confess, though, that I get pwned by SQ when it comes to points on first play-through :eek:. I think I finished with the bare minimum for completion.
Thanks very much for bringing this to us. I can't even begin to imagine how much work went into it. You should be very proud of your accomplishment.
However the issue of Wilco walking off the space station in the first screen and not being retrieved is completely unreasonable and I've yet to see a proper explanation for that.
There is no reason that I can perceive why the crew on that station would let an innocent person die in the vacuum of space. Wilco should have been retrieved shortly after going EV and there is absolutely no reason to believe otherwise. Thus there should be no death screen in that instance.
That said SQ2 is a great game and I've enjoyed it immensely. If you are planning to make a remake of SQ3 then I would approve of such an event.
It's a game. It's a silly game. It isn't freaking Dune, you know.
Bt
And half-cyborg aliens don't really exist, and why would anyone think sending genetically engineered life insurance salesmen as a revenge plot against an entire planet was a good idea. And apes don't talk! WHAT THE FUCK?!?! :rolleyes:
Very serious.
Bt
Nobody likes Roger. Nobody cares if Roger dies. Roger is a nobody. If he floats out into space they won't even notice he's gone. You're working off the assumption that the people on board Roger's space station are decent human beings. They're not. Roger rarely runs into decent human beings let alone decent aliens. He's a screwup and in the world of comedy a screwup is better off dead to nearly everyone around him.
1. Nobody likes him anyway.
2. There's not really any difference, they both go to the same room they just don't allow two-leggers and 3+ leggers to use the same door.