Thoughts on Gabriel Knight: 21st Anniversary Edition

My love of the old series of Sierra adventure game series called Gabriel Knight is on record. It's a series about a New Orleansian book store owner who starts researching local voodoo murders for a novel and ends up discovering the supernatural element is real and that he is from a line of Schattenjagers - witch hunters - who deal with the supernatural. It also helps that a lot of the lore in the game is painstakingly researched from real life (enough to make me get over my fear of the Deep South of America and want to visit New Orleans) and the game has a very mature sense of writing to it. The second and third games deal with additional cases involving werewolves and vampires he takes on after embracing his Schattenjager heritage.

Sadly the series ended as adventure games fell out of vogue and Sierra was abosrbed by one of the evil megacorp game companies. The creator, Jane Jensen, now has her own indie games studio and decided to remake the first game as a Gabriel Knight 20th Anniversary edition. Having just completed it I have mixed thoughts on it. I love Gabriel Knight and I hope the sales lead to a 4th game, though there is also the possibility they may remake the 2nd and 3rd games. The 2nd game was FMV game, and one of the better ones, albeit with few alternative paths as film was expensive. The 3rd game was really hampered by an ugly slow early 3D engine and I personally don't think 3D adds much to point-and-click adventure games unless it is very stylized like Telltale Games's various series.

My mixed thoughts on the 20th anniversary edition (which amusingly came out 21 years after the game) include:-

Death by telekinesis?

• It is interesting, and makes one feel old to realise, that Gabriel Knight is now a period piece. Still set in 1993 there's no mobiles or internet - you need to research things the old fashioned way. Thankfully the remake avoided making this too in your face - like say how when people now do 80s period pieces everyone has massive comedy mobile phones.
• While the backgrounds are often beautiful (and Schloss Ritter is more consistent with the later games) the 3D modelling is terrible. My Dr. Who fangame looks way, way better as I opted for 2.5D (i.e. prerendered 3D models). The sprites look fine when stationary but the bodies of the character contort in unrealistic manners and are clearly not interacting with the pre-rendered backdrops of the game, frequently ice-skating across the floor or walking through walls and curtains. Complex animations, such as a character changing clothes, are avoided by 'fading to black' and then showing the character in a new outfit, which is really lazy, or by new 'comic book' style cutscenes with very limited and often stuttery animation. The original 93 game used a few comic book style scenes, but had a lot better animations both in cutscenes and in-engine sequences. Most aggredious is that during action scenes some of the 3D models are clearly not in sync with each other, such as when Dr. John decided to murder me using his telekinetic powers.
• There are a few new puzzles added to the game, but these tend to be 7th Guest style puzzles that bring the plot screeching to a halt while you solve them. 
• There are a few minor tweaks to the storyline - for instance a puzzle involving using a bagel vendor to distract some cops while you raid an office is replaced with a more realistic sequence where you breaking into the police station through a back alley window. Once you get the swag you need the cops are all start inexplicably acting like zombies (I'd like to have found out how the voodoo cult did that) and scare you off in a sadly uninteractive cut scene. At least it explains why you don't call the cops at the end of the game.
• Some tweaks "streamline" the game. I personally miss the old point-n-click interfaces where you could choose a specific action on a target (e.g. try to  eat the door) and get a humorous or unexpected response. Now if one clicks on an object only the actions the programmer has decided you can do are offered (e.g. open/close the door is fine, but talking to the door is not offered). The original Gabriel Knight 1 had a ridiculous number of actions you could perform any mundane objects.
• There was an overwhelming number of locations to visit at the start of the game that served no initial purpose (such as Gabriel's gran, a bar and so forth). These are now streamlined and unlocked at the points in the game when they become necessary - something that simplifies the game but that I personally do not like (especially as you unlock your local bar by finding an advert in the local paper for a jeweller you must talk to who hangs out there and inexplicably gives the bar as his contact details, but who - as his dialog is unchanged from the original game - is long retired from the jewellry trade and thus wouldn't be advertising his services).
• Other tweaks are nonsensical. In the original a character, Dr. John, gives you the address of a voodoo priestess who helps you out. In the remake you find a flyer for her but the character still uses the originial script, making references to how you were sent by Dr. John.
• Even more stupid - Gabriel now appears as he does in later games of the series, but the dialog where people comment on his appearance (such as his spiky hair, which is now long instead of spiky) is still unchanged from the original game.
• There are game-stopper bugs in the remake that were not in the original - something I find unforgivable in a remake (the recent Baldur's Gate remakes had similar issues). I found myself being unable to progress on Day 3 despite having solved all the puzzles and had to download a save game to get unstuck.
• The original game had Tim Curry, Mark Hamill and Michael "Worf" Dorn amongst its A-list voice cast. Sadly the recording were relatively low quality and had to be redone with... let's just say "other" actors. Generally the voice acting is ok, but I miss Hamill in particular.
• The new music in this remake is probably the best thing about it. The old game had midi music that can't compare with the synth-electric guitar of the Schattenjager theme.

So, mixed bag really. Amusingly the original game is a mere £3.60 while the remake will set you back £12.99 and clearly still needs some work.

RPG Maps 5: Sotturm Finished?

Missing a few gates and possibly some relatively minor tweaks like a sensible scalebar and mapkey, but otherwise Sotturm is good to go. The full thing in high-res is available here.

Sotturm, mapped in Campaign Cartographer 3 with City Designer 3

More Screenies

Starting to get there with this game lark...

HP Lovecraft's Insomnia

I have to give a big shoutout to this very simple and yet elegant game based on a synopsis H.P. Lovecraft once wrote

“The man who would not sleep—dares not sleep—takes drugs to keep himself awake. Finally falls asleep—and something happens. Motto from Baudelaire p. 214.”

Very cool free game. Grab it here.

Newest Batch of Renders...

... are not about to all be posted here. I have been really busy lately and I should make like this guy...




(Alright - here's one. Spoiler Alert!)

This Week's Renders

And this weekend's shorts are...

Meanwhile Inside The Gothic TARDIS

Relaxing weekend where I got round to playing with rendering this scene in Lightwave 9.






TARDIS interior by Brian Taylor from www.smartdesign-u-need.com

Computer Game Project Update

And some more screenshots charting the evolution of this game...



I've created a GUI with appropriate icons (though I need to stop it obscuring the action text onscreen), as well as fully animated the 8th Doctor sans coat.




There's also my first NPC, Stohl the Sontaran, who will act as the companion in this adventure in lieu of any blond chavs or posh received pronounciation radio stars.

More Game Mucking Around...

In case you were wondering if my Daz3D graphics are paying off...

Evolution of a 3D Model Part 2

Yet more tinkering with the 8th Doctor model. It seemed it didn't look much like the character so with some advice and a morph file provided by CD2010 for reference I rejigged the face (and thankfully I would add, saved the resultant morphs).

Although I felt the morph I was given looked a little like it was more like Rocky Balboa I used it as a reference to modify my original model... (here's a morph video that shows how far CD2010's morph was from my original model)



Then I had a complete Daz3D crash (probably due to me trying to rearrange all my assets into a logical filing system) and had to work from the ground up again - which in the long run was good as I used a slightly different ensemble to create a more accurate costume...



which I then modified the material of to make it appear to reflect light and give off a more subtle green (or any colour I wished)...





Then I played around with lip-syncing, although rendering these movies was an overnight job.





Lately I've replaced the hair with... er... one that fits. It's a little too OTT on the curls for my liking but it seems to do the job - especially when you play around with the lighting on Daz3D to create some rather nice scenes.

Couple of More Models

Here's a couple of more models I may use in my game... if I don't stop playing in Daz3D.

One is a potential companion for the Eighth Doctor who's costume is designed to compliment his...



... and the other is this guy. Hmmm...



(Actually I used a morph made by a nice chap called Charles or CD2010 for this one but getting the rightish clothes took a while.).

Evolution of a 3D Model

Recently I bemoaned my inability to produce some decent graphics for my games and twittered about finding a decent package to render walkcycles (making the walkcycle for TARDIS Trouble was tough using a pretty awful freeware walk cycle editor for AGS). Thankfully Korvar aka Big Mike of DURPS fame came to my aid - he does visual effects for the USS Intrepid fan films and like many of the other Star Trek fan films the special effects are state of the art - and recommended Daz3D.

The main drawback of Daz3D is that it comes with minimal content preinstalled - Victoria 4.2 - their female model - and a few (skimpy) outfits for her to wear. Daz makes most of its revenue off the model addons it produces and vends for 3rd parties. Thankfully the base models were free for the moment so I was able to install a male model (Michael 4) and with some browsing on their site I was able to find the content I needed for my model.

I decided to model the 8th Doctor, Paul McGann. Surprisngly there's a derth of Doctor Who models on Daz3D.com and other such places - I've seen a really good Chris Eccleston model, numerous Tennants and even a really good Matt Smith, so I decided to give the neglected 8th Doctor a whirl.

Here is where things went a little squiffy - oddly (IMHO though in Naomi's opinion this is unsurprising) there is a lack of male clothing packs for Daz3D compared to the dearth of female packs. You certainly don't get any male stuff with the default Daz3D install - though the Daz3D book I have later acquired gives you a lot of base stuff to work with.

Firstly I installed some packs allowing me the use of a frock coat, frilly shirts and waistcoats. I then fit these to the 3D model and after being told by Korvar how to prevent the "bleed" problem that persists when you try to dress a model in multiple layers of clothing.

My next problem was that despite the effectiveness of my ensemble my model looked like Ken from Barbie:-





(As an aside I do like the pose in the last image there - very Ascension-like).

However the good people at Daz3D were able to give me some hints (the face should be thinner, the chin longer etc.) Truth be told it would really be the hair that made or broke the model, as Doctor Who is a hairjob.

I then morphed the face - which basically involved turning dials until it thinned the face and made the chin more pronounced. I got carried away...



Then I managed to go from that baseline to something looking a bit more realistic...


And here is a comparison with images of the source face... which I think shows I did a fair job for someone who'd never used Daz3D before.





After that it was mostly touching up the model - changing the hair colour slightly, reworking the clothes. I decided I didn't really like the original waistcoat I'd given the model so I swapped it for a silvery "tuxedo" vest. I even found some ready made walk-cycle poses which has enabled me to generate a walkcycle...



and FYI don't ever have a character wearing a frock coat... talk about a nightmare to make a walkcycle...



Next I want to make a better cravat, create more animations for the character and trying to get rid of the jaggedy edge on the transparent renders.

Mincing About

In this wintry climate I've been bored rigid and have taken to playing a remake of Elite 3: Frontier First Encounters. As a testament to how little there is to do I've made it to the Elite ranking of Below Average and have bought a new ship, which in true Kerrigan tradition is the most silly looking thing on the market.

Ladies and Gentleman - in the tradition of such great ships as the Millenium Falcon I present a Cobra Mk 1, the Mincing Leopard...



Not all the other models look so... camp... in the remake.

Let's Play Ultima V Lazarus - Warriors of Destiny

Over the past few months I've been amused by a Let's Play of Ultima VII - one of my all-time favourite games as long-time viewers will no doubt be aware. A Long Play (LP) is basically a semi-humorous commentary when playing a game, a bit like Rifftrax or MST3K.

It looked like fun so I decided to try one for Ultima V: Lazarus - the fan remake of Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny. Feel free to watch as I find new ways to plumb the depths of dorkiness. Here is a link to the full playlist - I've posted over 10 videos to date.

The 100 Best Computer Games Ever?

Ok, been reading the Empire Magazine Top 100 games list and thought I'd weigh in on it. I never owned a console prior to my Wii, so the games I have played on this list are mostly limited to PC, Amiga and Commodore 64.

Firstly, there is no clear indication how the Top 100 were assessed. I personally think it should be on durability technical merit and originality. Looking at this list there are too many FPS games - Doom and Quake are fair enough. But Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Halo and so on? I suspect like "Who is the best Doctor Who polls" there is a slight bias to newer games.

Secondly there are too many series of games salamaied. While I agree Resident Evil or Grand Theft Auto (probably) merit mention I don't think a series should count more than once unless the game is sufficiently distinct from its predecessors. So GTA 1 and GTA 4 are fair game, but GTA 3, Vice City, 4 and so on are all essentially the same game tarted up slightly.

#100 Speedball 2 - I never really saw the appeal of this game. I guess it was Grand Theft Auto for the 90s.

#98: Worms 2 - Worms is pretty good isn't it?

#95: Alone in the Dark - no, not the new quasi-emo version Atari made, this is the 1920s era Call of Cthulhu inspired masterpiece that basically launched the 3D survival horror genre. Personally given this ground-breakingness I would rate it higher than any subsequent 3D horror game.

#93: Dungeon Master - this was similarly groundbreaking, the first 3D realtime RPG. I personally preferred Eye of the Beholder or Knightmare but this clearly belongs here on this list.

#91: Another World - actually really surprised to see another Amiga game. This isn't particularly significant in my mind beyond some pretty graphics.

#88: Thief II - Thief defined the sneak 'em up genre, while Thief 2 was pretty much the same game, only prettier and with more sneak 'em up type missions and less Raiders of the Lost Ark scenarios. This game came with medieval robots. And some neat fan missions.

#87: Lemmings - surprised this is so low. Good game. Loved the music.

#86: IK+ - this was an awesome game. I have it on my Wii. Should be higher in the list. Should also be remade... hmmm.

#81: Sim City - this is too addicitive and too lowly rated here.

#77: Day of the Tentacle - great game.

#72: Diablo 2 - never really saw what people saw in this game. Diablo 1 & 2 seemed very shallow dull games to me.

#71: Quake - never got into Quake like I did with Doom.

#70: Guitar Hero - not sure this belongs on this list.

#69: Secret of Monkey Island - should be higher. Recently remade, with (I wish) MI2 to follow.

#61: Gauntlet - classic!

#54: Silent Hill - this was quite a scary surreal game. I really need to reinstall this and finish it. The movie wasn't bad (despite what everyone else thought).

#53: Tie Fighter - a good solid flight-sim that was much much better than X-Wing.

#49: Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion - I have to admit I was hooked on Oblivion for a while, but after completing both the Knights of Nine expansion and the main plotline I began to by the Shivering Isles feel it was a bit repetitive and samey feeling, with any characters you meet lacking any depth. A bit like how Elite gets if you play it for waaay too long. Not really a classic, but very very pretty - I also find its predecessor Morrowind lacks any real direction in how to get started which makes it difficult to play.

#43: Sensible Soccer - Despite a lifetime aversion to football I believe I found this quite fun on the Amiga, although when I played it there were absurd scored like 42-26. Good football simulator and actually fun as well.

#41: Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem - This is probably the game on the list I've played most recently on my Wii. It's really quite good and has the distinction of being a game that made me scream like a little girl whilst playing it in front of Naomi and Claudia. Lovecraftian horror agogo with time-hopping sections involving characters going from Ancient Rome to the Gulf War and the ability to suffer insanity. It starts with screaming in the background, then you start walking into rooms upside down. Flies crawling inside your TV. Phantom ammo and hallucinated enemies. Messages telling you that you must buy the sequel or that the game has crashed. Scary stuff!

#34: Resident Evil 2 - yes, this is a serious scary game, but is it scarier than Alone in the Dark was?

#31: Knights of the Old Republic - this is the best RPG I've played in a long time with a plot to rival Empire Strikes Back. Slightly hampered by a dodgy rushed sequel that promised an as-yet undelivered 3rd installment, which is now going to be the MMOO.

#30: Resident Evil 4 - wow, they really like Resident Evil. Certainly a better game than RE2 I wonder, was it really scary and such a big advance? Fuelled my fear of masked men with chainsaws.

#28: Tetris - should definitely be higher in the list. This game's got some serious durability and replay value.

#25: Resident Evil - ok, this list is definitely overdoing it on RE. This is not as scary as 2, but does have 'excellent' voice acting in the original version.

#22: Grand Theft Auto 3 - I presume they are going to have IV or Vice City (my favourite), San Andreas (2nd favourite despite the gangsta talk subtitles really needing their own English subtitles!) show up later.

#19: Baldur's Gate 2 - excellent RPG, though I feel it is a little too high in this top 100.

#17: Mario Kart - the original. Me-likey. Wii version is a fixture in my household.

#16: GTA IV - haven't played this but I told you it'd be here.

#13: Elite - oh hell yeah! But why isn't it in the Top 10? Or is Elite 2: Frontier going to be there?

#11: Planescape Torment - surprisingly higher than BG2 this is a game I continually start to play and end up stopping. Perhaps I find Planescape too weird for my tastes compared to conventional D&D (Baldur's Gate) or Star Wars (Knights of the Old Republic). I need to reinstall it though and give it a 20th chance.

#10: Goldeneye - personally I thought this game was overrated.

#7: Doom - I was wondering when we'd get to this. Technologically I would say Wolfenstein 3D deserves an honourable mention too!

#6: Street Fighter 2 - I used to be a master at this, tanning all and sundry when I was a teenager and hearing cries of, "Stop using the same sets of moves on me." Definitely a fair ranking.

#3: World of Warcraft - haven't played it (which is why I occassionally see sunlight and feel the sun on my skin) but this is overrated. Ultima Online was the first successful MMO and should occupy this spot if you have to include an MMO. Which you shouldn't IMHO.

#2: Final Fantasy 7 - suffers from Planescape Syndrome - I keep promising myself to play through it fully so I can watch the Advent Children movie. FF7 personally I find less immersive than Knights of the Old Republic or Baldur's Gate 2 (which in turn are less immersive than Ultima 7 or Ultima 5 Lazarus). Good game but massively overrated, including sadly in this poll.

#1: Super Mario World - again good game but overrated! Is Mario World the greatest game really? It's fun, but it's not exactly a classic as its superceded by later Mario games.

What's missing?

Personally I'm sad Frontier, Elite 2 didn't get in. With a realisticish physics engine, a good representation of our solar system allowing you to fly from London to Tokyo, or off to Alpha Centauri and beyond it's a classic I still reply.

If Mario World is #1 surely Sonic should be in there somewhere. (Personally I think Super Mario Bros was more significant than any further Mario spin-off).

Ultima Underworld - the first ever game to use proper 3D rather than the 'cheat' that Doom or Wolfenstein 3D, allowing you to swim under bridges whilst maintaining the ability to walk over the bridge, not to mention its relatively more sophisticated interactions.

Ultima: My New Project (2)

Posted a youtube video of the game.

Ultima: My New Project

For the last month or so I've been experimenting with XNA and C# to see how difficult it is to write a complex game. I've decided to remake Ultima 1 - the old RPG that launched my favourite series of games.



Ultima 1 was programmed by Lord British, the cool yet eccentric game-pioneer who is now so rich he is one of the first space-tourists and lives in a castle full of secret doors and medieval memorabilia. (Who wouldn't given the option?)

He had a bit of a kitchen sink approach to Ultima 1 - it was a learning exercise in programming rather than a commercial product. While ostensibly a fantasy game there are definite sci-fi elements. You can pick up a pistol or a laser gun, at one point you must enter a space-ship and shoot down 20 enemy craft and so on. I probably won't remake the space portion or include the 'sci-fi' elements - except as an easter egg - rather I will try to reconcile it with later Ultimas which became much more fantasy and less sci-fi.

I've stuck to using a 2D tile engine, even going so far as to use the original map bin files as a basis of recreating a detailed map of Sosaria.



This was relatively challenging as the information in the original map files was so crammed (2 tiles per byte) that the C# libraries were relatively poorly equipped to hanlde them. They can read bytes, but I found it difficult to read in a 4 bit number. I can't remember how I got round this, but I did.

Character generation is almost finished.



You can create a fighter, druid (who used to be clerics in Ultima 1 but changed as there are no clerics in later Ultimas but plenty of druids), thief (who'll be good at stealing things) and wizards (who'll be pretty powerful spellcasters but weak at everything). I won't include the option for changing races, except possibly as an easter egg. So there will be no playing elves, dwarves or bobbits (hmm!) as the protagonist in later Ultimas is revealed to be a human from Earth.

Currently you can wander around all of Sosaria (though I plan on doing a major inclusion of details to make it a little more interesting) and both towns and dungeons are awaiting placement.



Limited combat is possible, as is the inclusion of wandering monsters.


However this will not be a 1:1 remake - the plot will be different. In the original you had to collect 4 gems to use in a time machine. In this plot you will have to find the gems and summon a silver moongate. There will be subplots and the hero will initially be confined to Lord British's lands.

I still have to build towns from scratch, implement some sort of dialog system and ideally have guards patrolling 'civilized' areas. I also really need to find some way of getting my own tiles - the ones here are modified from Ultima 6 and really need replacing to take advantage of the higher resolution XNA offers. Sadly, not being an artist myself (obvious by some of the screenshots) that could be a while.

Stuff I Like: Turrican 2

Okay, it's well documented on this blog that I owned a Commodore 64 and from it inherited a deathly phobia of giant worms that burrow out of the ground. I should point out I am dealing with this phobia - I now own Forbidden Forest 3D for the PC and there is nary a worm in sight. Ironically it's two giant acid spitting serpents that keep sealing my doom, but that's another story for another day.

My family were fairly loyal to Commodore. We had a VIC-20 in the loft, a C64, and umpteen Amigas because basically my brother and I couldn't share one between the two of us. Of all the games I acquired for the Amiga Turrican 2 is one of the two games that I still dust off and play with WinUAE (the Amiga emulator). I'll post about the other one, but Alex might be able to guess what it is...

The basic plot of all the Turrican is that you are a guy who gets into a powersuit and goes off to kill mutants because they killed your chums. It's a multi-directional 2D platformer in the old school fashion - you kill monsters, grab powerups and choose from an array of weapons to aid you in your quest. Repeat and rinse.

I didn't say it was deep.

Also at about the midway stage of the game you also find a space ship and fly around in a suspiciously R-Type-esque set of stages. Which are amongst the most pretty space levels I've ever seen.

Its fair to say Turrican 2 is a relatively superficial game - indeed what makes it in my mind so great is the graphics and the music which really pushed the envelope in terms of the Amiga's capabilities. I even bought the soundtrack to Turrican on CD a while back.

This review shows the main points of Turrican 2 with some annoying commentary and also in sheer randomness soundbytes of Bruce Campbell in it - which I suppose is worth some bonus points.



Turrican 1 is pretty much more of the same, but just doesn't feel as classicly polished as its sequel. Turrican 3 is a major disappointment and the fact it was developed first for the console makes it

Remakes are available here for the PC but in my not-so humble opinion nothing beats the original.

More Wing Commander

I just wanted to post this video as it's so cool - these games put almost as much effort into their losing videos as they did their winning games. There were 2 losing endings in Wing Commander 3 - the grovelling ending and a pretty cool if downbeat ending. Here is both of them:-

New Wing Commander

Yes, believe it or not there is a new Wing Commander coming out of nowhere - Wing Commander Arena. As the name suggests it will be multiplayer geared, and I suspect there won't be much of a plotline. And it's XBox only currently.

In the meantime here's some of the coolest bits of Wing Commander 4, again:-