King's Quest

I'm not a big fan of just repeating what I see on the Linux Game Tome so I'll be brief about these two: Warzone 2100 version 2.0.7 and X-Moto 0.3.0 got released. The former is a bugfix release (which was sorely needed) and the latter quite a lot of new features (notably hotseat multiplayer) and a new maintainer.

A few days ago I lamented about Adventure Game Studio not being available for Linux. I really should do my research before making such assertions... it is. Not only that, there's this groovy project to take all the hassle out of finding and installing AGS games - the Adventure Game Goddess.

Forget about boring hand tasks and enjoy the games ... One click: the game is downloaded, installed and set up. One click: you are playing

How cool is that? You can even run Kings Quest VGA I using the AGS Linux version, with a few tricks. How cool is that as well? I wonder if the same process works with KQ VGA II? So many questions...

For those unfamiliar with the King's Quest series of games, it is probably the most promininent series of the genre. There's a lot of history and a lot of hardcore fans, many of whom were disappointed when Sierra was consumed by Vivendi Universal which eventually caused a rift with the lead author and the demise of the series after 8 games.

The Silver Lining

Some fans felt so strongly that they went on to create the The Silver Lining, a spectacular looking fan-made project to create a 3-game (or 3-chapter) continuation of the series. It was formerly entitled King's Quest IX before Vivendi Universal made them ditch the official affiliation. Sadly, The Silver Lining is closed source (but freeware) and Windows-only. I did lobby a while back to make them open source it and use OpenGL instead of DirectX but it fell on deaf ears. I must say, I was not enamoured by The Silver Lining tech demo either, whilst the stills look great the animation and scene transition was shakey at best, and there was a lot of aimless wandering around with very little to interact with. Still, it's just a tech demo, so I shouldn't be too harsh.

There's even a remake of KQ III (complete but Windows only and freeware) and KQ IV (in progress - although I'm not in the mood to read up on it but I bet Windows only and freeware). Project X looks interesting - produced by the same people behind the KQ III remake, Infamous Adventures.

I would do a KQ article with more information on and screenshots of each game, but it's too much freeware and not enough open source for my liking, so this little ramble will suffice and you'll just have to take my word for it that everything I mentioned looks at least ok or possibly even rather lovely. I reckon there are enough links to keep keen adventure gamers happy. ;-)

ScummVM gains AGI support

There is a new release of ScummVM out. The adventure game engine that brought classic Lucasarts titles to Linux and other modern operating systems, now supports Sierra and other AGI based games through the latest version 0.X.0 (or 0.10.0 in standard numerical format). This brings a plethora of freeware titles, that previously could only be run on Windows or through WINE, to Linux.

There are a lot of AGI fan games out there. A lot. Of course not all are high quality but there are some gems out there. Since the games themselves don't tend to be open source I'm not going to delve too much into it so if you know any cool AGI games please comment and share them.

I was under the false impression that AGD's King's Quest remakes were AGI games, when they are actually AGS games. So you won't be playing those natively on a non-Windows system any time soon. :-(

Too many AG* acronyms... anyway, briefly back to the AGI stuff and here's an article giving an overview of AGI code. It looks pretty obvious so any budding adventure game makers - and there are few around, this is a dying genre :-( - might want to look there.

Somebody challenged themselves to come up with an original game mechanic/concept per day for 300 days. Some of the ideas are dubious at best but still a good source of inspiration.

Finally, Julius in the FG forums posted a few more sound resource links, so there's no excuse for creating quiet Free games any more since there's so many options for you to give your game some ear candy.