Gabriel Knight 1 on gog.com

chrisis · Post by **chrisis** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:14 am

While not (yet) fully supported by ScummVM, I still wanted to let you know, that "Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers" is now available on gog.com for $5.99. Best buy it via the "Buy Supported Games" Link at the top so you help ScummVM too

Nikioko · Post by **Nikioko** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:11 pm

That is good news, though i always preferred the Broken Sword series.

scoriae · Post by **scoriae** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 4:45 pm

At what point did it become an Activision game?? I get an email from GoG introducing the 'full" Activision catalogue, and one of the two games used to illustrate this is gabriel knight? A thoroughly Sierra game... I guess they bought the rights to it at some point..?

Longcat · Post by **Longcat** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 4:52 pm

You guessed right. This is good news, it means we will probably see rereleases of the whole sierra lineup.

jimbob0i0 · Post by **jimbob0i0** » Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:01 pm

Yup Activision have the publishing rights for the Sierra/Blizzard catalogue if I recall correctly....

Given the progress on the SCI engine(s) will be interesting (and great) for Space Quest and other similar games to come... Along with legend of Kyrandia... and come to think of it a whole bunch of ScummVM compatible games could get a fresh easily and legally obtainable appearance...

Freddo · Post by **Freddo** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 10:15 am

scoriae wrote:At what point did it become an Activision game??

Sierra was bought by CUC International back in 1996 (CUC also bought Blizzard the same year).
CUC merged with HFS Incorporated in 1997 and became Cendant Corporation.
In 1998 it was sold to Havas Interactive.
Vivendi acquired Havas in 1999.
Vivendi Games merged with Activision in 2008 to form the Activision Blizzard, currently the largest game publisher in the world.

scoriae · Post by **scoriae** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 3:58 pm

well hell, if they can release a working copy of Kings Quest 6 (the high res version), then they will make a small fortune. That has got to be one of the holy grails of emulation. Dosbox can't run it since its a windows only game, vdmsound couldn't run it, virtualpc and other virtualization software couldn't run it.

Last I checked, about a year ago, there was not a way to run that game on a XP or newer system. The closest I got was getting it going but the cursor always disappeared, and it ran in a fairly small window too.

md5 · Post by **md5** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 4:17 pm

scoriae wrote:well hell, if they can release a working copy of Kings Quest 6 (the high res version), then they will make a small fortune. That has got to be one of the holy grails of emulation. Dosbox can't run it since its a windows only game, vdmsound couldn't run it, virtualpc and other virtualization software couldn't run it.

Last I checked, about a year ago, there was not a way to run that game on a XP or newer system. The closest I got was getting it going but the cursor always disappeared, and it ran in a fairly small window too.

The hires version of KQ6 CD was essentially an upscaled version of the lowres version, where some graphics were replaced by hires versions (the bar on top, the logo in the menu and the character portraits). The data files used were the same, only the interpreter changed, and the hires portraits were added separately (inside the actors folder). It should already run pretty well under ScummVM (with some glitches)

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 4:18 pm

Ever try in compatibility mode?

Either way, it IS playable in DOSBox, if you still have your Win 3.1 disks. Just install Win 3.1 in DOSBox (there are guides out there) and install KQ6 inside Win 3.1 inside DOSBox. It works rather nicely. I had screenshots online at one point...don't think they're there anymore now. I've gotten all Sierra Windows versions working this way in DOSBox.

Collector · Post by **Collector** » Fri Jan 29, 2010 8:23 pm

scoriae wrote:well hell, if they can release a working copy of Kings Quest 6 (the high res version), then they will make a small fortune. That has got to be one of the holy grails of emulation. Dosbox can't run it since its a windows only game, vdmsound couldn't run it, virtualpc and other virtualization software couldn't run it.

Last I checked, about a year ago, there was not a way to run that game on a XP or newer system. The closest I got was getting it going but the cursor always disappeared, and it ran in a fairly small window too.

The windows version does run on 32-bit Vista and Win 7 with no trouble. It can also be made to run on XP. What it cannot be made to run on is 64-bit Windows, natively. It can be run in emulators/vitualizers. As MI said, in DOSBox, if you first install Win3x in it. It runs without trouble in Virtual PC. Granted, these solutions require an older copy of Windows, but they do work. My King's Quest VI installer will install the game on modern Windows. It will detect which version of Windows you have and install the appropriate version of the game for you. Only if you have 64-bit Windows will it install just the DOS version in DOSBox.

scoriae · Post by **scoriae** » Sat Jan 30, 2010 4:30 pm

Yea, well - I have win 7 64 bit, so no luck there. And I was aware of installing windows 3.1 in dosbox, which I did try for this once, but the sound was way off.

I also tried windows 98 in a virtual pc environment, but the sound drivers were never right there either.

In XP I could never get the mouse cursor to appear, or at the very least to stop incessantly flickering.

I wasn't aware that it worked in vista/win7 32 bit... thats interesting and unfortunate for me.

ScummVM has been my primary hope for playing this again, and so I patiently watch the SCI progress.

scoriae · Post by **scoriae** » Sat Jan 30, 2010 4:53 pm

I just went and fired it up using ScummVM and was impressed at how playable it was. I also got a great laugh at the distorted music that sounds like a drunk orchestra - lol.

edit:
I also thought i'd go check out the various versions of LSL6 - floppy, cd, and cd w/ high res.

The floppy and the cd (low res w/ voices) both worked pretty good, but the high res one goes nutty. Unlike the KQ6 w/ high res graphics, it looks like the did more then just swap the art resources.

edit2:
Minimal research showed that the high-res LSL6 game was a different version of SCI, unlike KQ6 which was the same version. Makes sense now.

fischkopf · Post by **fischkopf** » Sun Jan 31, 2010 1:18 pm

Now we know who has the Gabriel Knight rights someone should contact Jane Jensen she wants to make GK4 for us.

Longcat · Post by **Longcat** » Sun Jan 31, 2010 1:36 pm

Was it not known before?

I'm afraid it's not as simple as that.

Freddo · Post by **Freddo** » Sun Jan 31, 2010 3:17 pm

fischkopf wrote:Now we know who has the Gabriel Knight rights someone should contact Jane Jensen she wants to make GK4 for us.

Jane Jensen is already busy with Gray Matter, supposingly released in may.

And even if she wants to make a GK4, I doubt Activision Blizzard wants to spend money on developing it. If it's not a 100 million dollar franchise, they won't work on it.