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Post by mausmerryjest on May 30, 2016 6:35:22 GMT
It'd be an understatement to say that I've been waiting for this project to hit beta for years. I have been coming to the site irregularly to check up on the project and now... well, I'm ready to join the Beta!
Short info on myself- professional opera singer, I played Sundog in the late 80s on my 1040ST and it has always been one of my favorite games of all time. I can't wait to help with the Beta!
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Kailef
BETA MANAGER
Vanguard of the leading edge
Posts: 423
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Apple
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1985 (I think)
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Post by Kailef on May 30, 2016 13:46:52 GMT
Welcome to the beta test! I'm confident you'll like what you find, the team has gone through great lengths to make the game as similar to the original as possible.
Professional opera singer, eh? That sounds pretty interesting. You don't happen to have anywhere on the Net that we can go to hear you sing, do you?
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Post by mausmerryjest on Jun 1, 2016 7:35:42 GMT
As for the links- I sure do! I've got a soundcloud over at soundcloud.com/maus-merryjest, and my youtube channel is over here: www.youtube.com/user/tenorpabloromero I had a half hour tonight to take a peek at the Beta- I had the 'won't launch' issue, but updating Java worked like a charm for me, and then I was able to launch the game. Oh, my nostalgia. Sundog, old girl, you've never looked better. I took a very meticulous half hour to repair her systems... and, yes, I drove around town just to take in sights I hadn't really seen since I was a child. Tomorrow I plan on starting my thorough beta testing. It's good to be aboard
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Kailef
BETA MANAGER
Vanguard of the leading edge
Posts: 423
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Apple
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1985 (I think)
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Post by Kailef on Jun 1, 2016 13:42:40 GMT
Okay: 1. Wait, you sang your own version of The Baron of Eastmarch. Now I know where I've seen your alias before. Over on the Shroud of the Avatar forums and on the Poets' Circle roster! I'm the same Jarrod Kailef, the GM of Poets' Circle that wrote a bunch of the SotA soundtrack. 2. You have a great voice, and clearly have an extreme amount of skill as well. Impressive! 3. Back to the main subject, I'm glad you like Sundog Resurrection! As you've looked around for a while you'll be be able to clearly see that it was crafted to be as similar to the original as possible. There are plenty of improvements, but the team has tried very hard to make sure you'd get the very rush of nostalgia you experienced.
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Post by mausmerryjest on Jun 2, 2016 6:41:29 GMT
1. Ahaha! Yes, that is me! Small virtual world, isn't it? I haven't been terribly active in the SoTA forums as of late, mostly because I am keeping to myself so as not to spoil too much when launch comes. I had to record the Baron of Eastmarch, though, when I heard Iolo perform it, I fell in love with the song. I hope he likes my version, I sort of went the Enya route by overlaying vocals. It's a pleasure to meet you here, too. I would say that, in my childhood, there were four formative games that I have always loved to come back to. The Ultima series, Sundog, the Quest for Glory series, and Monkey Island. And now I've been able to connect to people and fans (and in some cases the creators) linked to those series through the internet. We may not have our flying cars yet, but the future is pretty awesome chances are if you see a Merryjest or a Maus Merryjest out there on the internet, it's me. 2. Aw, thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed! 3. I think that was an excellent decision. The look of the game was very unique, and modernizing it while still keeping it true to the source is the best of both worlds. I love the addition of the e-mail server and other functionality in the ship. I have to say it does my heart good to see this project now in Beta. I'm also happy to do my part towards helping it reach full release. You know, you would think that with all our advanced technology, we would have gotten a game on the vein of Sundog- with all of the different things that make the game so great. But.. we really haven't. Then again, there's really only one Sundog.
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Kailef
BETA MANAGER
Vanguard of the leading edge
Posts: 423
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Apple
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1985 (I think)
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Post by Kailef on Jun 2, 2016 13:31:58 GMT
1. Yeah, small world! I know what you mean about SotA. As a major contributor to the soundtrack, I should probably have a bigger in game presence during the SotA beta, but I just don't want to spoil things for myself by playing a bunch of the game before official release. I'm with you regarding Ultima and Sundog, they were very much the formative games of my youth. In fact, the Ultima series directly affected my career path, because as a youth I saw Richard Garriott as my idol, and wanted to grow up and work for Richard at Origin Systems. Ultima is the reason that I learned to program and embarked on my career path as a computer network engineer. (The cool part is that through writing music for SotA, I actually accomplished the childhood dream of working for Richard, albeit just temporarily with Portalarium rather than a permanent position)
2. You're welcome. Truth be told I'm a bit envious of your skill. I have always wanted to be able to sing, as I'm told I have a good voice for it, but it takes (at least for me) so much time to practice and I've got so much other stuff going on that I haven't been able to dedicate enough time to it. So you blink and twenty years of me saying "I'm sure I'll have time in a month or two after this project ends" to myself goes by, and I'm not any better at singing. C'est la vie, I guess.
3. Yeah, we may have advanced technology now, but honestly I'm missing the fact that we don't have HAL, brain-to-computer interfaces, hoverboards, and flying self-driving cars. It's 2016 man, this is "the future"! But seriously, it may be a sign that I'm getting old, but I find myself preferring to play (in the rare instance that I get free time) older games than the stuff that's driving the gaming market today. It just seems that the complexity and depth of so many modern games isn't there. Yes, there are flashy 3d graphics, but 'back in the day' game designers had to rely on cool ideas and clever game design to make a game fun, because they didn't have fancy graphics as a crutch to lean on. Bah. Pretty soon I'm going to start waving a cane around and yelling at kids to "get off my lawn!".
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Post by mausmerryjest on Jun 3, 2016 23:04:09 GMT
1. It’s awesome that you were able to fulfill that dream- I’ve never had the chance to interact with Richard Garriott directly, but I’ve always thought he was a pretty awesome and rather crazy (in the good sense of the word) guy. I have such respect for his work that I’d gladly sing whatever he wanted me to do for SoTA for free. The same goes for Lori and Corey Cole, the creators of Quest for Glory- I have had the fortune to interact with them regularly and I backed their upcoming game, which is one of the things I am really looking forward to alongside SoTA’s release. Who would have thought that the same games I was obsessed with when I was 16 would suddenly come back or spawn spiritual successors by their original creators twenty years down the line? When Origin was sold to the cancer that is EA and Sierra On-Line shut down, I thought that would be the last I’d ever see of my favorite creators. 2. Oh, I know what you mean- it’s taken me more or less ten years to get to where I am now, technically speaking, though it could have been a lot less if I had run into the right teacher right away. Right now I am very fortunate to be studying under a retired soprano who had a huge career ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBY5CbgEhP0 )and is one of the best teachers in the United States… it is thanks to her guidance that I’m finally singing close to my full potential, but it’s been a long and often discouraging history of practice and disappointment. We singers have a bit of the masochist in us, it’s the only explanation for why we put ourselves through all of this The best way to grow the discipline, though, is to hire a voice teacher and pay them in advance for, say, three months. Then, you *have* to make yourself practice and find time for it. Otherwise, if you’re like me, my pocket starts burning with regret 3. No HAL-Brain… Siri and Cortana will have to do for now but there’s also all sorts of really amazing things we hadn’t even thought about- like the fact I can carry a library of 600+ books on a tiny Kindle (which explains why I am usually broke…) Now, a lot of triple A games are very linear and not as expansive… this is mostly due to the sheer expense that is involved in creating modern AAA games with all the bells and whistles… But the indies? They’re doing a lot of good things. Starbound, for example, is getting close to having a level of complexity close to Sundog’s in its own right. As a backer of that game (I back a lot of games… another reason for why I’m always broke) I have seen how it has been evolving from a simple Terraria clone into something that looks absolutely terrific
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Kailef
BETA MANAGER
Vanguard of the leading edge
Posts: 423
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Apple
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1985 (I think)
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Post by Kailef on Jun 4, 2016 3:21:22 GMT
I've heard mixed reviews about Starbound, but haven't taken the plunge due to a lack of time. However, with your recommendation, I think I'll give it a try. Also, I don't think I've played Quest for Glory - My youth was spent with an Apple ][+ followed by an Apple //e, and I wasn't a huge fan of adventure games on that platform. But I see you can get Quest for Glory 1 through 5 on GoG for ten bucks....
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Post by mausmerryjest on Jun 4, 2016 5:37:27 GMT
I highly recommend getting it! QfG was one of the few games that managed to blend adventure and RPG well. I'm trying to locate a copy of the QfG retrospective I made for a gaming website which has just rebooted... it was along the same lines as my Inherit the Earth retrospective: kickstartadventure.com/pcr/mausback-inherit-the-earth-retrospective/ ... if I find the QgF one, I'll let you know!
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biglos9d
Beta Tester
Posts: 150
Home Planet: W'orrad
Played SUNDOG on what OS?: Atari ST
What year did you first play SUNDOG?: 1985
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Post by biglos9d on Jun 4, 2016 16:01:07 GMT
QfG 2 was remade in VGA by AGD Interactive, another fan based programming group similar to yours. I'd recommend getting that one as I feel it is the definitive version, although unvoiced.
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Post by mausmerryjest on Jun 5, 2016 5:02:14 GMT
Agreed, and if I recall correctly it does support importing and exporting characters.
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