Before few of you leap in the air with joy, this isn't an update. We've just replaced the two installation files of the full game and the voicepack with just one extractable file which means you no longer need to install it. Just extract it with a program like WinRar or 7Zip to a destination of your choice. This should fix any of the problems we've had with the voicepack when installing separately. It's a slightly big download but in this day and age we should all have broadband so it shouldn't take too long this time!

To download King's Quest III with the voicepack, click here.

Don't worry though, we will eventually update KQ3 fixing all the bugs and adding a few more features but right now we're concentrating on Space Quest II which is almost complete. I'd say we're just weeks away from going beta. No release dates yet but production has been going great and once we've fine-tuned this I would expect to see Space Quest II very soon. So, keep checking back for more updates and new happenings.

Bah.  I should hope it's not an updated version, or I'd have to destroy you and erase this new version (ah, gee, I'd better put an emocon in so they know I'm joking;  right) cause, see, I only just finally broke my cherry on the current one.  Now don't get me wrong, though burgeoning talent was evident, half of the game needs a lot of work.


Just Don't Ever Do it!
No.
Nuh-uh

Now if I may, here are the things a new version would need (hypothetically):

Just because you want to keep a 1:1 plot, doesn't mean you can't expand dialogue.  Like you already have but more More MORE.   It essentially feels like what it did in 1987 (though back then it seemed like enough), that is a moving story driving characters we don't know and therefor lack sympathy beyond their basic archetypes.  Alex's biggest gush of speaking is in an easter egg, but he seems like he'd like for us to take him seriously; some bad attempts of flirting with the barmaid, some history of Lywdor from baby bear (aiding credibility to Papa bears' concernes about pedophelia) , a serious heart to heart with Manannan after he becomes a cat, etc.

Not to say that the story and puzzles couldn't use a facelift too, but like you say, if it ain't broke...

More ways to fuck up, there used to be a series of steps to remember in preparing the spells which would still be much easier to do graphically rather then parser.  As it is to much is automatic (recipes, pushing the lever/sliding the book combo, locking the cabinet, magic map teleports you to the top of the mountain rather then the bottom)  and point and click saves one so much more time that even new players (I'm guessing) would be left with too much idle time at the house waiting, or making all the spells to soon.  One of the best things in the original was the ever present threat of the clock, thinking "will I be able to clean up all this before he wakes/returns", but that seems lacking in the remake as the clock goes on pause when you open the spell book. 

And there should be more things that piss big M off, like wouldn't he notice the stuff that goes missing from his room?

There's no list of spell components, except extrapolated from the directions.

The ability to use spells at the wrong time without the opnipotent narrator saying wait.  I may be wrong, but couldn't you become an eagle at any time in the original, and control the movements?

Manannan never (seems to be) using his telescope, though it was fun to watch him plot and rave.

Either clean up the Daventry screens to be a lot sharper, or make the first half of the game look much shitier, can't have it both ways.

I see you didn't have the guts to try to program Rosella following you down the mountain... I don't blame you, keep that how it is.

   

Well ok, do it, but wait for a month, and for your own safety make sure no one has played recently,

Can't wait for space quest and your other games to come to term, just for God's sake, get them right the first time cause I can't wait, I will likely combust if you force me to play it twice.

I'm not sure whether to thank you for your comments or tell you to fuck off. I err more towards thanking you for your comments and responding with my thoughts on your ideas.


It's a design choice, we wanted to honour the game as it was, and we wanted to make something we enjoyed. In the end, as much as some people will tell you it's all for the fans blah blah blah, it's not. It's for us. We loved KQ3 back in the late 80's and think the game's story still stands up as an adventure game now. We really just wanted to update the graphics and add a voice pack. Everything else we did was just because we wanted to. We added in the scene between Graham and Rosella because we wanted more lines for Josh Mandel. We added in the scene between Mordack and Manannan because we liked Andy Hoyos and he was happy to reprise Mordack for us, as well as voice Manannan. We didn't do these things because it added to the story (it does which is pretty cool) but because we thought it'd be fun. So yeah, the whole game story and puzzles could use a facelift, but in the end it just becomes a new game. We like the old one.


I made the spell book too easy. I admit that now. At the time, I considered it copy protection, which it is. But it seems to be the thing people liked / hated most about the classic game. So I'd probably do it differently now. Maybe a Freddy Pharkas style combine the objects thing. Who knows?


Again, back to the original vs remake thing about the story.


Yes there is.


Yes you could. We tried filling in a dead-end there but not allowing it to be wasted.


Yep, he does.


What's wrong with the Daventry screens? I like them. The only screens I really don't like in the whole game is that stupid path down from manannan's mountain.


Guts? It's a pointless part of the game, all the points are already given, it's just an extended ending that doesn't do anything that couldn't be done on automation. The precedent is set by Sierra with their KQ1 remake, they turned what used to be a playable start to KQ1 into the introduction. We did the same with the ending here.   


I'll remember to keep you at the top of my thoughts when I look for bugs to fix. That's surely great inspiration for not sending out a buggy product.

It's all good dude, I was just going for constructive criticism wrapped in a warm gooey layer of false arrogance and rudeness, which ultimately makes me sound like an idiot...cause I thought that's how you did things here.  I hoped I was being obvious enough, and maybe I was, since you responded in length; but I guess I can't take as good as I can give, cause even at the prospect of being told to fuck off I get all apologetic and explanatory.

So to elaborate:


I actually did like many things in the game: almost all the art is gorgeous, everything in Llewdor, castle Daventry itself and the portraits is very good, the rest is mostly acceptable.


Actually I looked again at the daventry countryside and it's not that bad, it just seems a bit more blurry then the rest, or rushed and maybe more green (less ravaged) then I expected.  And I don't like how it uses screens from kq1 and scrambles them around, but then that was a problem with the original to.  Honestly, the only screen I really didn't like was the one with the dragon.

The music was incredible, though some scenes (like the 2nd mountain) were too silent.  Most voices were great, props to Alex, Manannan, the Squirrels, Chech and Chong, but not so good were the barmaid and Rosella and even Josh sounded like he was bored or angry with his daughter, so maybe something was lacking in voice direction.


Oh.  Where?


Oh.  I went back and forth to that screen many times without him there, so maybe the code needs a higher probability...thing.

 
By "keep that how it is" I meant in the current remake, not the original.  Once again I was TrYiNg to be funny .  Though I did miss the whole birthmark discussion, and how you kept talking to Rosella as you walked back.


Maybe sarcasm isn't my forte.  Unless YOU weren't being sarcastic, in which case Thank you.

KQIII was our first outing - and not bad, I say.  Sure, there's points that I'd clean up and things I'd redo, but for the first out of our gate, it was pretty awesome (and ambitious!).  I will say that our Space Quest 2 is leaps and bounds above the work we did on KQIII (mostly because we were able to attract better talent BECAUSE of KQIII).

All in all, I had a blast making KQIII.  It was, as they say, a learning experience.


Bt

SQ2 rocks. I wet myself every time I load it up. That's why it's taking so long to make. Damn pee.

Oh no. I hope that doesnt happen to me.
Then I  would need a janitor to clean up my "vessel".