Reckless wrote:

avatar_58 wrote:

Only Larry 7 isn't included, and yes the 'talkie' games do work in dosbox. In fact every dos sierra game out there works in dosbox.

Is it really confirmed [by someone with the CD in their drive...] that Larry 7 isn't included?

AFIK no one has it yet. However read the Sierra.com description of the larry collection. It gives detailed descriptions of Larry 1-6 and Larry 7 is not included. The boxart also says "5 games" to further close the case. 😢

Yet there is still a LSL7 shot in the gallery, but that could just be an oversight.

http://forums.vugames.com/thread.jspa?threadI … =31839&tstart=0
They mention an emulator being packaged with it.
So I suppose it still can be the case.

It is a nice thing that those games can be bought again.

Yeah, the emulator is dosbox 😜 Unfortunately, in their very PR way, they didn't mention the later games. I sincerly doubt they are running the SCI games (especially SQ6 and KQ7) through DOSBox and listing a P3 as recommended. I'm willing to bet my left nut the windows versions are included, though once again we don't know if they are still 16-bit or not.

avatar_58 wrote:

AFIK no one has it yet. However read the Sierra.com description of the larry collection. It gives detailed descriptions of Larry 1-6 and Larry 7 is not included. The boxart also says "5 games" to further close the case. 😢

Yet there is still a LSL7 shot in the gallery, but that could just be an oversight.

I think you're right and 😢 is a spot on state of mind!

avatar_58 wrote:

Oh lord....seems Mobygames attempted to add their two cents but then accidently looked stupid in the process: […]
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Oh lord....seems Mobygames attempted to add their two cents but then accidently looked stupid in the process:

http://www.mobygames.com/forums/dga,2/dgb,3/dgm,39026/

"Also, the newer "talkie" games in these collections have been left out, and it's probably no coincidence that they don't currently run in DosBox."

Only Larry 7 isn't included, and yes the 'talkie' games do work in dosbox. In fact every dos sierra game out there works in dosbox.

What's equally troubling is this quote:

I've always personally had trouble with LSL6 on DosBox, and have heard similar rumblings about other Sierra talkies. LSL6 is listed as "broken" for 0.62 on the DosBox site.

Sigh...Mabye we should add a disclaimer to the DosBox compat site that just because a game is listed as not working in an ancient version of DosBox and not listed AT ALL in a newer version DOES NOT MEAN THE GAME DOES NOT WORK IN THE LATEST VERSION.

Isn't it fun to be the only few people on the planet who know how to operate dosbox? 🙁 I just don't get it, people refuse to listen. C'est la vie.

All right, I've got all four boxes this morning. Larry 7 is not included 🙁 All collections are in standard small boxes. The artwork seems to be rehash of the past big box collections to the point that Police Quest box says "Special limited edition with 4 products in one box" -- yeah, right, there are so many edition around! Overall, I don't have any problems with exterior appearance. Inside each box is one (in case of King's Quest - two) CD in paper sleeve and a single slip of paper describing some problem with KQ colleciton installer. Apparently, that one is broken and does not handle two CDs well. Nice work, QA team! Optimists among us can treat that as an old-school touch 😉
Now, DOSBox. The version included is 0.63 🙁 The emulator is preconfigured to 8000 cycles and dynamic core. Fullscreen 1024x768 may not be ideal for some games but it's sensible enough. Full DOSBox source code is included on every CD, there is also a copy of GPL. The now-omnipresent license screen in installer starts with rather lengthy paragraph about DOSBox. I would say, they've done what they were expected to do. No copy protection, and CD is not required to play. The installer just extracts games, emulator, and manuals in separate folders. There is very simple launcher which is actually configurable through its own ini file.
Installed game timestamps are seemingly original except for CFG files. Those were modified in March, 2005 (I did not check all of them, but all on Larry collection are like that). So, it did take 18 months for Vivendi to get those collections out. Actually, this is not surprising. Those are budget (low budget) titles and they still had to go through some QA and ESRB certification.

EDIT: The problem with KQ is related to autorun -- the autorun app does not exit after starting setup resulting in odd side effects when switching CDs. Sadly, KQ6 intro is broken, KQ2 message boxes leave traces 🙁

So even SQ6 and the SCI games run via dosbox? 8000 cycles on dynamic should be more than enough, from my own tests. 😀 Are they the talkie versions of SQ4 and etc? Since its using dosbox, I assume its unedited and we can just tweak the configs ourselves right?

Are both versions of some games included, or just the VGA remakes (KQ1,SQ1,LSL1,PQ1)?

That paper sleeve news bothers me, its like VUgames outright refuses to use dvd or jewel cases. In fact the only 'VUGAMES' stamped game I own to come with a case is Simpsons Hit & Run, everything else (Even FEAR's Director's Edition!) is paper sleeves.

Everything except KQ7 is played through DOSBox, even if some games actually have Windows interpreter. Only KQ7 uses the original interpreter, I was surprised to see that it still works in XP SP2. Sadly, no DOS executable is included with KQ7.
All games appear completely unedited to the point that they come with junk -- for example, SQ6 folder includes an installation of Video for Windows, demo movies for Torin's Passage and Woodruff, generic SVGA driver for Windows 3.1 (now, that may be useful), and the entire set of VESA drivers!
Only one version of each game is included, VGA remakes for games that had them, KQ1 is SCI remake as well. Most games that had talkie versions have those included with the exception for LSL6. IIRC, the same happened in some past collections, there may be something about that particular game that we don't know, maybe some legal aspect.
Paper sleeves part does not bother me, I actually prefer paper sleeves over certain jewel case designs, those with particularly hard center. But... those collections really should've been released in DVD cases. Ideally, in one case on one DVD 😉 You know, this is not going to happen for one simple reason: such a collection would have to be released at M rating, generally considered too restrictive for most publishers.
A few more oddities: three collections have Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP on the box but KQ collection has only 2000/XP. LSL collection lists "requires 60 MB of hard drive space," it actually takes over a hundred. All manuals are in PDFs, the included reader is Acrobat Reader 5.0.5, quite old by now.

Larry 6 isn't talkie? Is it the high rez or low rez version? I'm actually glad they still come with that 'junk' because its basically the same as buying the past versions, only with dosbox being an added bonus. I'm still up in the air about getting them, as they are incomplete. I might still get them, since I no longer have the disks/boxes for many games and it would be of some value to me. It's not like they are expensive either.

LSL6 is low rez version. Of all four, LSL collection is definitely lacking.

These compilations are also bringing out the ignorance in people. I keep seeing the words "I can finally play these games again!" as if something was stopping them. People actually fail to noticed that the games use dosbox, and don't seem to care.

Also - KQ7 works fully in XP? I ran it not long ago and the videos were screwed up, so if they work now I'd assume something was done to fix them. Ironically thats probably where most of the effort ended up.

Ta for the feedback (which I've cross posted/linked vasyl's comments to JA+ as there was a thread there [as well]).

I personally think these releases are just way too half arsed to be worth supporting... hey, that assumes that they'd even consider releasing them in the UK! I own all of the Series 2 'quest' collections and a lovely LSL Ultimate Pleasure Pack. These are worth having even though you have to mess installers, resources files, swapping in DOS interpreters, etc. I thought if they had retooled the interpreters or at least put some effort into the re-releases - maybe wrote/pre-configured a front-end for the games in DOSBox? then I'd support it. I think I'm still on the fence with this set 🙁 Why bother is my thought!

Keep in mind this is also a good way to bring in new fans, not just the old ones. The older collections are obviously worth buying over these, but lets face it: they aren't produced any more and the places you can find them are asking for rediculous prices. Amazon has the Larry collection listed at $200!! I'm sorry but even as a Sierra fanboy I can't see myself ever paying that much.

So basically these become the only option for some people, save piracy/old warez websites. Since the latter isn't a real legal option anyway, these compilations will have to do.

I personally feel the C&C collection was well worth my money as a non-C&C fan, it was basically the only way I'd be introduced into a series I had missed. So the minor annoyances and nitpicks are easy for me to look over. I imagine people who have never owned a King's Quest or Larry game will feel the same way about these.

Least thats how they come off to me. 😉 Will I personally get them? I don't know....I have so many nitpicks as a longtime fan. However I just might end up shelling out anyway because I no longer have the disks as I stated previously.

kq2 text boxes is a dynamic core issue. I think there is something about it somewhere.

Also - KQ7 works fully in XP? I ran it not long ago and the videos were screwed up, so if they work now I'd assume something was done to fix them. Ironically thats probably where most of the effort ended up.

Here's the interesting part. The included version is not the latest -- I have the original "enhanced" edition marked as version 2.00b, the one included in the collection is significantly older 1.4. It does some odd stuff like switching the entire desktop to 8-bit (at least, it looks that way) but runs fine.

kq2 text boxes is a dynamic core issue.

And kq6 is vga renderer timing issue with known fix. With a little effort they could've make those games work flawlessly.

> kq2 text boxes is a dynamic core issue

That should be fixed, iirc. way before the 0.65 release.

yes. but they included 0.63 and made dynamic core the default.

Why is Dynamic the default anyway? 8000 cycles actually isn't that high for even a modest PC, but I'm guessing they want as large an audience as possible. However I've gotten even the slowest of Celerons to pull 10000+ on normal, so they could have avoided stability issues by using normal instead.

I guess they chose it because of the lower processor usage.