| Sep 13th
2005 |
- Not much news this week, but I
thought I'd just let you know I'm still here. :)
- I just read 'A Tale's End' in
gamesTM issue 36, starting page 80. It
covers the old story of the alleged "death"
of the adventure Genre. Very interesting stuff.
And sympathetic, too. I thought their main point
was a good one: that adventures, being more
complex, suffer from being linear and so have
less replay value than a shooter/racer/strategy
game/sim/etc. The linear problem is not an insult
to adventure games. It is a simple case of the
limits of AI. Zombie battles and car races have a
limited range of moves, and over the years the
games industry has honed these genres so that
almost every event is controlled by either AI or
a physics engine. Meanwhile, adventures still
have to be coded by hand, so it just takes longer.
Result: adventure games are more linear and have
less replay value. That was the only thing I didn't
like about Zak: the game ended! I wanted to keep
exploring and discovering new things, but there
came a time when there was nothing new to
discover! I hated that. The good news of course
is that we adventure gamers will have the last
laugh. The article did not talk about the future,
but I will. As computers and software improve,
there will come a time when complex human
interactions and stories can be automated as
easily as today's zombie battles. When that day
comes, watch out!
- Finally, my daughter was using
the walkthrough and we found a small error, so I
corrected it. Look, I told you it was a slow news
month. :)
|
| Aug 19th
2005: |
- Looking for the Japanese
version of Zak? For copyright reasons, my
official answer is "sorry, keep checking
eBay-Japan and be prepared to pay a lot of money."
But unofficially, I just received a very
interesting email from a very helpful visitor. So
if you want to email me about - to, er, chat about the
weather or something - feel free...
- Whoops! the last news item had
"Feb" instead of "Aug." It's
fixed now. Apologies for any confusion!
|
| Aug 4th
2005: |
- SCUMMVM has been unofficially ported to the Nintendo
DS! Which means you
can (in theory) play Zak on your little dual
screen stylus thingy. Cool, eh? I agree with
everyone else that the DS is a fantastic platform
for classic (and new) adventure games. Hey
LucasArts! Why not adopt this port, release your
back catalog for the DS, make some easy money,
and make a lot of fans very happy!
|
| July 28th
2005: |
- Ron Gilbert, in his blog, talks about the commercial aspects
of Money Island. OK, it's not news, and it's not
Zak, but it probably applies to Zak as well. The
commercial aspects interest me.
"MI was considered a success (at the time),
but we never sold as well as Sierra did. Much of LA's
success came in Europe. If I remember
correctly, more copies of MI were sold in Germany
than in the U.S. But keep in mind that MI cost $135K
to make, and even adjusted for inflation, that is
much less than you could make a commercially viable
game today. [The reason is] Art. The art in MI1&2
[and Zak] was simple. Guybrush [like Zak]
was basically one animation that faced in 4
directions with some talking and a couple of generic
reaches. We use to call them walk/talk
actors. You could not get away with that
today. Plus very little animated in the
game. A couple of spot animations here and
there. Most of that was driven by disk
space, not time and money. I've seen indie Adventure
Games that have graphics at the same level as MI1&2,
and they look very dated. You would have a
hard time selling that to a consumer. There is also
voice, which we did not have."
- Regarding the Zak movie
project, have you noticed how many unofficial Star Wars films are being made? (LucasFilm,
LucasArts, same people, remember?) But to make a really good one takes a lot of professionals
working for nothing. It can be done, but it ain't
easy.
|
| July 9th
2005: |
- This news isn't Zak related -
or maybe it is. Zak is all about saving the world
in a global, non-violent way. And so it my new
blog - How to save the world (my blog) - If you like it, why not link to
it? And let me know, so I can link to your site
in return. If you don't like it, then ignore it.,
and accept my apologies for wasting your time. If
you want something less political, here's my sister's web site - it gives a good flavor of the
place where I live (I live 20 miles away from her,
also on the north coast of Scotland)
- And here's a little link to the Zak-inspired
game I'm working on
|
| July 4th
2005: |
- Remember Mindbent, the
original big Zak McKracken web site? It
disappeared a couple of years ago when MixnMojo
crashed. But it may be coming back from the dead.
Watch this space...
- This site gets a brief mention
in GamesTM magazine (issue 33, page 177). I
bought the mag for the first time a couple of
months ago, and liked it a lot, especially the
retro section. So I emailed the editor with some
praise. And got a nice reply, bought a
subscription, and thought nothing more of it. But
it appears that they printed my letter, including
the URL of this site. Cool ! :)
|
| June 20th
2005: |
|
| June 14th
2005: |
- Great news! The original Zak
Fan project has
finally released a demo! http://www.zak2project.net/tech.html . I like the style - it provides a
good contrast with the retro look of LucasFans,
and the Polished lines of 'Between Time and Space.'
Variety is good. It is interesting to compare the
demo art with some of the earlier art. It seems
like the project has been dogged by the need to
change its art style every time an artist leaves.
Hopefully the endless changes are now in the past,
and we can look forward to a finished product...
some time!
- The movie
project is still
looking for help!
- The forum on this site has
been down a lot. Last week I kept on getting Spam
attacks, and now the whole 'Voy' site seems to be
down half the time. I hope they get it fixed. I
tried a couple of other message boards, and I
like what Voy offers.
|
| May 26th
2005: |
More news on the Zak movie project: 'Steg Osorus' (the guy behind the movie
project) has some big name contacts. And I mean big
name. Think music industry for a start. No names
yet until something is more definite, but various avenues
are being explored. Watch this space! |
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| Older
news |
Older news
(pre-2005) is incorporated into various pages on this
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