King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella Retold

[JStryker47]

I seem to have discovered a new bug.

Spoiler

When clicking the hand on Cupid's bow, from the bottom of the pool screen, Rosella crosses the pool to get it.  Then she "falls" up a screen and makes a splash.

[close]

[cesarcoll]

Great work! In my personal opinion, that was the only kind of remake KQ4 could use, I find the original pixelated graphics so beautiful (unlike, the graphics in KQ1, KQ2, AND KQ3).

I was wondering if you plan to add speech. I think one of my favorite things about KQ6 is the narrators voice. It feels like someone is reading you a story. Max out those nostalgia points.

There are very good voice actors on fiverr.com. If you count the words that need to be said, you can easily calculate the cost and then start a gofundme campaign. I think it's quite doable.

Anyway, congratulations agan. KQ4 is my favorite of the series!

[DrSlash]

I seem to have discovered a new bug.

Thanks for letting me know! It will be fixed in the next patch.

I was wondering if you plan to add speech. I think one of my favorite things about KQ6 is the narrators voice. It feels like someone is reading you a story. Max out those nostalgia points.

There are very good voice actors on fiverr.com. If you count the words that need to be said, you can easily calculate the cost and then start a gofundme campaign. I think it's quite doable.

No, as stated in the F.A.Q., I don't have any plans to add voices to the game. It's an extremely tedious and time-consuming process, and it simply would not be worth doing at this point.
And attempting to crowdfund an unofficial non-commercial project is a whole other can of worms that I have no desire to open.

[mkennedy]

Good job on the remake, one slight comment about getting a perfect score -

Spoiler

apparently Rosella does not need to return Cupid's bow to him? Seems he would be a lot more deserving than giving the eye back to the withes.

[close]

[sthomannch]

Well done! KQ IV was one of the first graphical adventures that I played and the best in the whole series.

About a perfect score:

Spoiler

Cupid does not come back, no chance to return the bow, also not in the original game

[close]

[mkennedy]

About a perfect score:

Spoiler

Cupid does not come back, no chance to return the bow, also not in the original game

[close]

Yeah, It's just that if I remember correctly

Spoiler

she made a comment about giving it back which was kind of why I wondered about it.

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[cesarcoll]

I don't have any plans to add voices to the game. It's an extremely tedious and time-consuming process, and it simply would not be worth doing at this point.
And attempting to crowdfund an unofficial non-commercial project is a whole other can of worms that I have no desire to open.

Fair enough. I'm just so excited about your work, tho. Would you consider making the code open source? 

Anyway, I found a little discrepancy with the original version (not even a bug, really). On the river screen, one west of the starting screen, when you go up, the original game sends you to a different screen depending on your horizontal position. If you are close to the river, it takes you to the bridge screen. I personally like this, but I can also see that it can be confusing for people who are drawing their first map of Tamir.

[DrSlash]

Good job on the remake, one slight comment about getting a perfect score -

Spoiler

apparently Rosella does not need to return Cupid's bow to him? Seems he would be a lot more deserving than giving the eye back to the withes.

[close]

Yeah, as sthomannch said, there is no way of returning the bow in any version of the game. I included a text mentioning it in Retold so as to at least make it clear that Rosella does not intend to steal the bow, even if she never gets an opportunity to give it back. While it would be interesting to have an option to return the bow, I didn't want to make any changes or additions that would make the game incompatible with walkthroughs written for the original game. Besides, there are dozens of other things that I would love to alter or implement, but it would just delay the release a couple of years more.

Would you consider making the code open source? 

I have considered doing it at one point during the development, but it would be more trouble than it's worth. However, if someone is interested in some particular feature of my project, especially if it's something unique to Retold and not present in the original game (e.g. autosaves, lantern code, etc.), I might consider creating a thread where I explain how I did that.

Anyway, I found a little discrepancy with the original version (not even a bug, really). On the river screen, one west of the starting screen, when you go up, the original game sends you to a different screen depending on your horizontal position. If you are close to the river, it takes you to the bridge screen. I personally like this, but I can also see that it can be confusing for people who are drawing their first map of Tamir.

I always found it weird and unintuitive how this is the only screen where this happens in the original game. So, no, this is one discrepancy between my remake and the SCI version that I have no plans to fix.

[mkennedy]

Good job on the remake, one slight comment about getting a perfect score -

Spoiler

apparently Rosella does not need to return Cupid's bow to him? Seems he would be a lot more deserving than giving the eye back to the withes.

[close]

Yeah, as sthomannch said, there is no way of returning the bow in any version of the game. I included a text mentioning it in Retold so as to at least make it clear that Rosella does not intend to steal the bow, even if she never gets an opportunity to give it back. While it would be interesting to have an option to return the bow, I didn't want to make any changes or additions that would make the game incompatible with walkthroughs written for the original game. Besides, there are dozens of other things that I would love to alter or implement, but it would just delay the release a couple of years more.

Spoiler

Maybe just add an extra line of dialog at the end where Rosella gives the bow to Genesta and ask her to give it to Cupid next time she sees him?

[close]

[Nowhere Girl]

King's Quest IV was (...) the first adventure game to feature a female protagonist

And this is scary: that for so long men have considered us Uninteresting People.

OK, now I'll move on to what I came here for. I wanted to comment because I have just played the game. Some of my loose thoughts about it:
1. I have discovered it quite accidentally! Why isn't it promoted everywhere where there are game developers who "admit" to retro inspiration?
2. When I first discovered "King's Quest 4", I greatly enjoyed checking how do places change after nightfall... and was very disappointed to see that, apparently, at night you just can't return to Genesta's island. Rosella would just get tired and drown. (At some point I complained about it somewhere and someone commented, something like: typical Sierra - don't want to do extra graphics? Block a whole area off in an implausible way! ) Thanks a lot for fixing that flaw.
3. Obviously, also thanks for reworking the cave section. In the original, the fragment with crossing the chasm was unfair to the point of being just ridiculous. Now it's much better.
4. Although, the "readme" file seems to indicate that there is some way of getting rid of the troll, or having him let you pass. I haven't discovered it - any hint?
5. Therefore (?), I also had "only" 228 points, unlike in the original.
6. Improvement idea. I actually liked the new text on the note found in the whale's mouth, but I was a little disappointed that there's nothing more. Perhaps it could promote other retro games, particularly EGA/EGA-ish ones - you'd of couse need to talk to their developers. "The Crimson Diamond", "Betrayed Alliance", "Snail Trek", "Cascadia Quest", and just now a guy from Powerhoof is making some little EGA game for Adventure Jam, I hope that it will be available... (Actually, I checked out the Adventure Jam site, but haven't seen any information about this game - and I can't contact omost game developers directly because I only use social media "passively"- (that is, I read some profiles without having any accounts.)
7. As most players probably know, the SCI version didn't have the "Beam Me" room. I wondered if you had nevertheless recreated it for this version. And if yes - how to get there without a text parser?
8. I love good-quality EGA, although I still prefer VGA (if I had to choose a single favourite game, it would probably be "Foxtail") and I still hope that a VGA version of "King's Quest 4" will be made some day. I regret that one of the people who attempted a remake died, but I don't regret that remake itself - I'm open about disliking 3D and I didn't like how Rosella looked too sexy in the 3D version... really, can't we have female protagonists without catering to horny men? I know we can, but I just dislike this direction of development.
Just some of my thoughts, thank you in advance for commenting and answering my questions.

[Nowhere Girl]

However, hypothetically speaking, I would love to see someone remake Quest for Glory III more than anything else. QfG3 doesn't need any significant updates to its visuals or gameplay mechanics, but its story could definitely be fleshed out a bit more and there just isn't that much stuff to do in the game (especially for the Thief class).

QfG3 is buggy, first of all. I have tested running it in ScummVM a few years ago and it helps a lot, but is not perfectly smooth either.
1. When playing through DOSBox, I never get any extra dialogue topics when I meet Harami again. Always the same ones as on the first evening.
2. There is one major bug with ScummVM: day/night cycle not working visually. That is, all nighttime events happen as they should, but visually, it doesn't get dark.
3. There will probably always be some bugs in the currently existing version, regardless of the emulator. I often don't get new responses at the bazaar (the same ones as on the first day), the last time I played it, if I remember well, I couldn't "catch" Janna telling the hero that Khatib died. And randomly placed events in this game (finding the honeybird, the blue orchid, meeting Johari and Manu...) can take a lot of time, which is very frustrating.
Altogether, these bugs prevented me from getting a perfect score regardless of whether I used DOSBox or ScummVM. But the latter seems to allow bypassing more bugs.

QfG4 is less buggy, but has a famous bug at the very end:

Spoiler

Ad Avis respawns after having been defeated. In my experience, possible to bypass only by simultaneously slowing the game down a lot in-game (the menu game speed option) and using Ctrl-F11 in D-Fend Reloaded to further slow the emulation down.

[close]

[DrSlash]

1. I have discovered it quite accidentally! Why isn't it promoted everywhere where there are game developers who "admit" to retro inspiration?

Well, it's not a commercial project, so there isn't much point for me to actively promote it. The goal was to create a game, not to reach an X number of downloads. My thinking is that if someone really wants to play a remake of KQ4, they'll eventually stumble upon this project one way or another.

2. When I first discovered "King's Quest 4", I greatly enjoyed checking how do places change after nightfall... and was very disappointed to see that, apparently, at night you just can't return to Genesta's island. Rosella would just get tired and drown. (At some point I complained about it somewhere and someone commented, something like: typical Sierra - don't want to do extra graphics? Block a whole area off in an implausible way! ) Thanks a lot for fixing that flaw.

In that case I've got more good news for you!  All backdrops for Genesta's island post-nightfall will be updated in the next patch. The ones used in the current build are very rough first drafts found in the original game's files. Here's a comparison between an old backdrop and its updated version:

4. Although, the "readme" file seems to indicate that there is some way of getting rid of the troll, or having him let you pass. I haven't discovered it - any hint?

What I meant in the readme file is that it is now possible to outrun the troll. In the original game this wasn't an option.

5. Therefore (?), I also had "only" 228 points, unlike in the original.

Did you check it before or after the ending cutscene?

Spoiler

The last 2 points are scored when Rosella returns the magic hen to Genesta, which happens automatically mid-cutscene.

[close]

6. Improvement idea. I actually liked the new text on the note found in the whale's mouth, but I was a little disappointed that there's nothing more. Perhaps it could promote other retro games, particularly EGA/EGA-ish ones - you'd of couse need to talk to their developers. "The Crimson Diamond", "Betrayed Alliance", "Snail Trek", "Cascadia Quest", and just now a guy from Powerhoof is making some little EGA game for Adventure Jam, I hope that it will be available... (Actually, I checked out the Adventure Jam site, but haven't seen any information about this game - and I can't contact omost game developers directly because I only use social media "passively"- (that is, I read some profiles without having any accounts.)

Yep, giving a shoutout to other AGS games was something I had considered, but I didn't want to leave anyone out, so I ended up with a more blanket and, frankly, underwhelming message. To be honest, now that I think about it, I should probably give this idea another shot. Thanks for the feedback.

7. As most players probably know, the SCI version didn't have the "Beam Me" room. I wondered if you had nevertheless recreated it for this version. And if yes - how to get there without a text parser?

No, none of the easter eggs unique to the EGA version are currently in the game, and I don't really have any plans to add them later. That would be beyond the project's scope.

_______________________________________________________

Maybe just add an extra line of dialog at the end where Rosella gives the bow to Genesta and ask her to give it to Cupid next time she sees him?

I feel like that would mess with the pacing of the ending. To be honest, I think the bow thing isn't such a big deal. Adventure game protagonists "borrow" unattended items all the time. 

[mkennedy]

...QfG4 is less buggy...

When running in ScummVM is it possible for the character to max out his skills? When I tried with the old dos version my save games all got corrupted.

[Nowhere Girl]

When running in ScummVM is it possible for the character to max out his skills? When I tried with the old dos version my save games all got corrupted.

I don't know. At some point ScummVM didn't support QfG4, so I had to stick with DOSBox and I'm not sure if I tried running it in ScummVM.
There is one more problem with ScummVM, at least to double-left-handed users such as myself: it's harder to get it to "see" the character save. When I was doing it (QfG2 VGA remake ---> QfG3 ScummVM), I had to change ScummVM's save paths and I messed up my default settings for saving stuff in ScummVM. Since then, I have no idea where do my screenshots end up when I play a game which has a ScummVM profile in D-Fend Reloaded (earlier it was Alt-S and all neatly ended in D-Fend Reloaded\Capture\game title) and I need to use Irfan View for screenshots from ScummVM games instead.

A postscript not about games. The captcha is ridiculous. Now I got a new question: "Are you not a robot?". I wanted to humbly point out that, as far as I know, English (and also Polish) lacks something for example German has: a positive answer to a negative question (in German: doch).

[JStryker47]

According to PushingUpRoses' youtube video, Space Quest 1 was originally going to give the player a choice of gender for their character.  I kinda wish they'd kept that idea, since I personally only really like the first three.  The ones after that are kind of... eh to me, and I'll always be curious to see what the series would be like, if they could be played with a female protagonist.  Maybe they could've given 4-6 more interesting stories.

I bought the QFG series on GoG, when it was on sale for $3.99.  Those versions of the games have most of the bugs squashed, except for...

Spoiler

- Franz introducing himself by saying "Igor's death must be avenged", in Ivan's voice
- Bonehead's lines about Punny Bones getting skipped automatically
- the game occasionally freezing after killing a wraith (though waiting about a minute or so will usually unfreeze it)
- and the wizard being told he's "too busy" to summon Erana's staff after killing Ad Avis (though I think turning the detail all the way down fixes that)

Also, not too many people know this, but the thief also has two ways of killing Ad Avis.

1.  Tell him the joke and then throw a dagger at him.
2.  Take the staff out of your inventory, tell him the joke, and then do an acrobatic jump on him.  (You will, of course, have to jump back onto the space you were at before, to use the staff on the crystal.)

Wizards can also cast the reversal spell before cooking the Elderberry pie, to avoid being turned into a hedgehog by Baba Yaga.  (It won't backfire on her, like her frog spell previously did, but her reaction is pretty funny.)

[close]

There's also a fan-made patch for QFG3 that makes some minor enhances, including some cut content, like

Spoiler

going to the Simbani village, after the peace meeting, and consoling Uhura over her uncle's death.

[close]

Here's a link:  https://github.com/AshLancer/QFG3-Fan-Patch

I think in order to find Manu,

Spoiler

you have to go to the area with the waterfall.

[close]

If you're referring to Johari's capture by the Simbani,

Spoiler

fighters or paladins have to get their throwing skill up to about 175 and then have Uhura challenge them to a match.  You don't have to win, but you do have to play against her, in order to trigger Johari's capture, as you do have to compete against Yesufu later, to become a Simbani warrior before you can "buy" Johari.  Wizards have to gain their magic staff, which they need to compete against the Leopardman shaman in a wizard duel.  Thieves just have to go to the waterfall area to trigger her capture.

[close]

[SansSouci]

Hello,

I wanted to ask whether it would be possible to play the KQ4Retold under ScummVM?

[Nowhere Girl]

DrSlash - could you perhaps tell when, approximately, can the patch be expected?
And I thought... I'm no artist, I lack a steady hand, a good mouse (it tends to perform double clicks when my finger does a single click and I often somehow can't hold the button - it too seems to be murine* fault, not mine) and visual imagination... but a model already exists in form of the AGI version. Maybe I'd try drawing a SCI version of the "Beam Me room"? In fact, I even have an item-related idea: the golden ball remains on the ground after Rosella lures the frog with it and the turns it back into a prince, and can be picked up again. Maybe it could be used somewhere in Lolotte's castle in the morning to be sent to that room?
I remember when I wrote to the developer of "Betrayed Alliance" and complained that the arcade game in the cave is too hard (and it's needed to get an item! By the way, it has a lot of Sierra cameos, such as 'Enry the 'Ermit, Rosella, Erasmus, Roger Wilco, Aziza, Larry Laffer, Laura Bow...  ) and I had an idea about how to improve it for the double-left-handed. In "Space Quest 1" you can attach a little magnetic device to a gambling machine in Ulence Flats and win every time until the machine overheats. And the developer included my idea.

*"Mus" is "mouse" in Latin and "murinus" is the adjective from this noun. Actually used in scientific texts, one can find phrases such as "murine DNA fragment". So why not use it here?

[DrSlash]

DrSlash - could you perhaps tell when, approximately, can the patch be expected?

It's very close to being finished, actually! I'm planning to release it by the end of next week, around June 6.

And I thought... I'm no artist, I lack a steady hand, a good mouse (it tends to perform double clicks when my finger does a single click and I often somehow can't hold the button - it too seems to be murine* fault, not mine) and visual imagination... but a model already exists in form of the AGI version. Maybe I'd try drawing a SCI version of the "Beam Me room"? In fact, I even have an item-related idea: the golden ball remains on the ground after Rosella lures the frog with it and the turns it back into a prince, and can be picked up again. Maybe it could be used somewhere in Lolotte's castle in the morning to be sent to that room?

Unfortunately, even beyond the more obvious reasons to not include the easter eggs from the AGI version (i.e. the need to remake the old AGI graphics and the impossibility to adapt the commands "kq rap" and "beam me" for point & click controls), I just don't see much point in adding these into the game. One of them describes the development of the original game, which is irrelevant to this particular remake. The other is a tribute to the original team behind the AGI release, which has nothing to do with this version. Moreover, Sierra themselves did not deem it necessary to include either of the two in the SCI release. And most importantly, the whole point of easter eggs is the search itself (at least for me), so I don't see any reason to include an easter egg that has already been discovered decades ago.

Hello,

I wanted to ask whether it would be possible to play the KQ4Retold under ScummVM?

Hi, SansSouci! Is there any particular reason why you would want to run the game under ScummVM in the first place? To be honest, I don't really follow how that would help with anything, considering that the game should run under Windows, MacOS, and Linux without an emulator. To answer your question, from what I understand, only the ScummVM team themselves can help you with this issue, there is nothing I can do, unfortunately.

[SansSouci]

I wanted to ask whether it would be possible to play the KQ4Retold under ScummVM?

... Is there any particular reason why you would want to run the game under ScummVM in the first place? ... To answer your question, from what I understand, only the ScummVM team themselves can help you with this issue, ...

Hello. I simply had been using ScummVM a lot lately and Iove to have one program to run all my King's Quest games. I have read that ScummVM supports AGS, so it seemed to me that it would be easy to run KQ3Retold. I guess I was wrong.

[Hobbes]

I wanted to ask whether it would be possible to play the KQ4Retold under ScummVM?

... Is there any particular reason why you would want to run the game under ScummVM in the first place? ... To answer your question, from what I understand, only the ScummVM team themselves can help you with this issue, ...

Hello. I simply had been using ScummVM a lot lately and Iove to have one program to run all my King's Quest games. I have read that ScummVM supports AGS, so it seemed to me that it would be easy to run KQ3Retold. I guess I was wrong.

It's working fine for me over here. Just be sure you're using the daily build of ScummVM (link on their download page). The game isn't recognised (yet) but you can just click "Add Anyway". Works like a charm! (And the easiest way for me on my Macbook)