Betrayal At Krondor

External Since: Jul 13, 2004 Posts: 12

An article is posted by Raymond Feist, who is old and wise,
and with the following gibber, the Holy Lord Kalten replies:

> I think the gaming experience in BaK is a sold one. The problem right
> now is as much legal as technical. Given developmental tools today, it
> would probably be easier just to take the old script, salvage the
> music, create new art assets and do voice recording, etc. as it would
> to try to salvage anything from that old code. Selling a 2-D came with
> what was essentially cardboard cut-out figures in the day of Diablo
> would be tough. Even tougher would be to find someone at Vevendi who
> even knew what we were talking about in terms of contract. Sierra just
> bit the big one coroprate-wise, and as Dynamix was folded into Sierra
> years ago, it's getting harder to even identify someone to talk to.
> I've got legal issues with these people that need to be resolved, and I
> can't even get an aswer to my agent's letters and calls.

I think I sort of agree with the general angle that Arcana is coming from
here. What distinguishes BaK above all other RPGs so far is the strong
emphasis on storyline and depth of characters and story as opposed to
randomness which is the kind of thing more experienced in games like
Morrowind.

Multi-player games often dilute the story and depth of the environment and
lean more towards randomness. When controlling Owen, you knew about Owen's
past - you new his strengths and weaknesses - you were curious about why he
was in the story and what he would become. As the story unravelled, you
knew more and more about Owen as you did about the three other characters.
This is because there are only 3 starting characters that are well developed
with fixed stories that unwind as you progress.

With Morrowind there are about 10 different races to choose from, loads of
different generic pictures to choose from for appearance and the same goes
for voices. There is a two page history of the character, but we all know
that the character does not develop or interact anywhere near as interesting
as that found in BaK.

What I am trying to say is that the movement towards massive multiplayer
on-line environments requires effort to be placed elsewhere in the
development of the game and therefore that which made BaK what it was is
lost.

One example of why many people liked BaK but got highly frustrated over RtK
is for example the 'you must do it in a certain amount of time' puzzles like
putting together the picture of the ship and rescuing the people from the
burning barn. A lot of players playing BaK loved the chess-like strategic
thinking of placing your next move rather than trying to play the memory
game with the ship picture. How would you implement this in a large
multi-player on-line real time environment? Does the game stop? The way
these games are developed today, all of these environments are Doom-like
environments where the speed of your reflexes takes precedence like a first
person shooter. But is this really what BaK games want? Is this really
what you want in your next RPG game? Or is your next game more of a first
person shooter?

> And that was the problem for years. The run-up time for games was such
> that by the time they were publisher, you were often creating games for
> old hardware. BaK should have been a Windows game and should have been
> portable to the Mac, but at the time, Dynamix wasn't convinced there
> would be a big enough installed user base in either Windows or Macs to
> make it profitable. 20/20 hindsight tells us they were backing the
> wrong horse. There were so many compromises made in that code, and it
> was such a bitch to even get the damn thing to run half the time ("go,
> and see how much expanded memory you've allocated . . .").

Whilst I am not a games programmer, I fail to see how these calls cause a
problem. All emulators simply emulate the hardware and software OS that the
game sits on and bob's your uncle. All the Elite remakes made use of a 6502
emulator to recreate the univese exactly the same as the original BBC Micro.
All games on MAME emulate the hardware so that the games run. I am sure
that if you put your mind to it, getting BaK to run is about as difficult as
getting Sonic the Hedgehog to run, which has already been done.

Still, its your call. :0)

Cheers,

Kalten~!!!

External Since: Jul 14, 2004 Posts: 3

"Kalten" <LordKalten DeleteThis @pandion.chapterhouse.eos> wrote in message
news:40f6cbb0$0$6447$cc9e4d1f@news-text.dial.pipex.com...

> What I am trying to say is that the movement towards massive multiplayer
> on-line environments requires effort to be placed elsewhere in the
> development of the game and therefore that which made BaK what it was is
> lost.

But it doesn't have to be that way. An imaginative developer will someday
come up with a way to develop a compelling story line with characters that
you actually care about in a world that is immersive, vast, and full of
interesting things to do, and do all of this in a way that works with a
cooperative multiplayer mode that can extend to MMOG. The explosive growth
of MMOGs and the corresponding perennial complaint of their shortcomings
tells me that there is a market here for someone who's smart enough to put
it all together.

> All games on MAME emulate the hardware so that the games run. I am sure
> that if you put your mind to it, getting BaK to run is about as difficult
as
> getting Sonic the Hedgehog to run, which has already been done.

But why would Ray want to do this as opposed to doing a new, and far more
exciting project? Even a re-write of BaK from the ground up using the old
scripts would be a more interesting project than trying to shoehorn the
existing DOS game into some emulator. And where's the financial incentive
for any of the parties? I can't see this ever happening.

> Still, its your call. :0)

Given the legal problems surrounding the recent demise of the company that
swallowed up the company that developed this game, and what would be
required to sort this out in the current context, it might not be clear
whose call it really is.

I'm just glad I had the opportunity to enjoy BaK while it was here. I have
an anecdote from this era. My son and I were so absorbed by BaK that we
could not accept waiting for the other to be done and we bought two copies
and played them simultaneously. At the time, Sierra was relocating folks to
the Northwest. The game's producer, John Cutter, was looking for a home in
the area and my family and I were just getting ready to move out of our home
and we had it on the market. One day while I was asleep on the couch, Cutter
came through my house with a real estate agent and passed through our
computer room and saw two simultaneous copies of BaK running on two
machines, with my son at the keyboard. I learned later from my son that the
guy who had come through pointed to the screens and said "That's my game!".
The real estate agent told me later that it was Cutter. Sadly, no one woke
me up to tell me at the time. Sad

--
Bob Perez

"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they
quit playing."
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes