Adventure Gamers - Forums

From the combined talents of Andrew McCarthy and legendary filmmaker David Lynch* comes an epic adventure that plunges headlong into the very core of the unknown. And takes you with it.

Whew! This account is dusty.

*blows off cobwebs*

I’ve been away a long time. But I can make up for that… with some impressive news.

“All these long years it was in the Shire! Under my very nose.”

I’ve learned that Brian Moriarty’s version of The DIG (long a personal Holy Grail of mine) exists… and is, in fact, ready to be released.

It’s coming out very soon, in fact.

As Brian Moriarty himself will no doubt tell you.

He’s got an account here, you know.

You might remember him better as former AG forum moderator, and current “senior member,” Kurufinwe.

Kunst der Fuge, indeed.

A hostile world… full of foreboding… uncertainty… and hope.

*as well as everybody at Lucasfilm/LucasArts, Sierra, and Infocom, et al.

Three Brothers joyned.

     

Of course I know that! I know many things.

“I know such things.”
—Neil Gaiman, 1602

I’m currently composing a PowerPoint presentation of sorts which will make things clearer.

Here’s a small sampler… a Passport to Adventure, if you will.

“Ladies and gentlemen… May I present Nur-Ab-Sal… the Atlantean god of… of…”
“Deceit!”
“Deceit! Thanks, Indy.”
—Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

SCUMM Advice
Brian Moriarty
Dave Grossman
Jennifer Sward
—closing credits, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

GHOSTS OF DIGS PAST
...
Dave Grossman
...
Brian Moriarty
—closing credits, The Dig

Art and Animation for Disk 22
Jenny Sward
—closing credits, The Secret of Monkey Island disk version

“Believe what you like. I’m taking as many of these crystals as I can carry.”
—Ludger Brink, The Dig

...

“Why is a half-Elf like a fallen star?

They both rest in the shade of Willow trees… and they often appear to have put the rong wend in front!”
—Lewis Carroll, probably

     

Right. Here goes.

GDC Postmortem 2016:
The Secret of Monkey Island

OVERTURE

CHAOS
You ignorant fools! Do you comprehend what you have done?

None of us can pass across this rift your Weaver mischief has so blindly created!

Your pious meddling has brought the end of my dream…

You will hear for all eternity the cries of those you have abandoned, Bobbin Threadbare.

You will always know that you have left them under my rule!

BOBBIN
We abandon no one! When our side of the Pattern is mended, we will return and put an end to your evil!

—LOOM talkie CD, with dialogue by Orson Scott Card

MAGGIE: Was this Eye the doorway into the place where your people went?

CREATOR: A door that can be crossed only one way.

MAGGIE: You don’t know that! If someone has a strong enough tie to reality—

CREATOR: Do you think you are stronger than ALL my people? Even they, the strongest race known, could not overcome the temptation before it was too late.

—The Dig, 1995, by Sean Clark, with dialogue by Orson Scott Card

Chaos: Ignorant fools! What have you done?(Close up) None of us can pass across this rift your Weaver mischief has so blindly created! Your pious meddling has foiled my dream of an eternal empire, bound together under One Rule ... MINE!

Cygna: (Close up) The Dead One is correct, my son. Your final draft tore the Pattern in half. This is a sad fate indeed for the innocents trapped on the other side. However, it is also a chance for we on THIS side to begin a second Pattern, cleansed of wickedness! Come. It is time for us to weave our destinies anew.

Bobbin: But we can’t just abandon half the universe!

Cygna: I fear we have no choice. Until our side of the Pattern is mended, we cannot return to the other. Take your rightful place among us now.

—LOOM, 1990, by Brian Moriarty

CHAOS
Fly away while you can, Weaver boy!
One day we will meet again.

—LOOM, 1990, by Brian Moriarty

CHAOS
Fly away while you can, young Threadbare. And know that we will most assuredly will meet again.

—LOOM talkie CD, with dialogue by Orson Scott Card

Act 1
Scene 1

If we asked Indiana Jones what he thought the Secret of Monkey Island was, what would he say?

“They’re digging in the wrong place.”
—Raiders of the Lost Ark

Behold the True Secret of Monkey Island!

This is Cob(b) from LOOM, sitting in the SCUMM Bar, selling his own game.

At the bottom of the screen, in the inventory area, the word ADVERTISEMENT (stored in the game’s text files) is shown in flashing green letters.

But there is another version of this animation, hidden within the resource files of Monkey Island 1.

In this version, not only does Cobb’s lapel button glow and flash… the ADVERTISEMENT text is rendered as a graphical object, in the background on the upper part of the screen.

Remember, before he moved to LucasArts, Brian Moriarty worked at Infocom, where he designed interactive fiction… what they used to call text adventures.

Scene 2

Screenshot from the original EGA release of The Secret of Monkey Island.

Note the text-only inventory with green verbs.

Screenshot from Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge.

Note the graphical inventory with its purple verbs.

Screenshot of the Macintosh version of The Secret of Monkey Island. This version used the same graphic inventory and purple verbs as in MI2, and the MI1 PC CD re-release.

Scan from issue #3 of LucasArts’ official magazine, The Adventurer... showing an unreleased early version of the Macintosh port of MI1, with a text inventory and green verbs.

Screenshot from an early slideshow demo of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge.

The text inventory and green verbs seen here are not featured in any currently available version of the game.

Screenshot from the Passport to Adventure demo of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

“Tami B.” is LucasArts employee Tami Borowick, named here instead of Sandy, the damsel in distress from Maniac Mansion.

Scene 3

West of Asteroid

You are floating in the open space next to a white Space Shuttle, with a sealed airlock. There is a Flying Pig here.

Ludger Brink is here.

Maggie Robbins is here.

>define parameters

You open the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy app on your PenUltimate and read the first entry that comes randomly on to your screen.
Alternate Reality Game

An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive networked narrative that uses the real world as a platform and uses transmedia storytelling to deliver a story that may be altered by players’ ideas or actions.

>inventory

You are carrying
Rising Sun (novel)
Jurassic Park (novel)

     

Scene 3: The System of the World

>read Jurassic Park
Under the light of your eyes, a quote leaps off the page into your brain.

ERROR: Search Params: 300 Animals Not Found

“An error,” Hammond said, nodding. “I thought so. I had the feeling all along there must be an error.”

But a moment later the screen printed:

Total Animals 292
Species Expected Found Ver

Tyrannosaurs 2 2 4.1
Maiasaurs 21 22 3.3
Stegosaurs 4 4 3.9
Triceratops 8 8 3.1
Procompsognathids 49 65 3.9
Othnielia 16 23 3.1
Velociraptors 8 37 3.0
Apatosaurs 17 17 3.1
Hadrosaurs 11 11 3.1
Dilophosaurs 7 7 4.3
Pterosaurs 6 6 4.3
Hypsilophodontids 33 34 2.9
Euoplocepbalids 16 16 4.0
Styracosaurs 18 18 3.9
Callovosaurs 22 22 4.1
Total 238 292

The radio crackled. “Now you see the flaw in your procedures,” Malcolm said. “You only tracked the expected number of dinosaurs. You were worried about losing animals, and your procedures were designed to advise you instantly if you had less than the expected number. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was, you had more than the expected number.”

“Christ,” Arnold said.

“There can’t be more,” Wu said. “We know how many we’ve released. There can’t be more
than that.”

“Afraid so, Henry,” Malcolm said. “They’re breeding.”

>get idea
whte_rbt.obj: Taken.
chariset.obj: Taken.

Scene 4: The Confusion

“The idea inventory was an idea that Brian Moriarty and Bill Eaken came up with for The Dig because they were making a serious game and they wanted the player to be able to use large objects like a ten foot long metal beam. So they came up with this idea of examining the object and getting the idea and then applying the idea to a problem and then we’d see the character go back and get it and then apply it.”

—interview with Bill Tiller, Adventure-Treff, 2008

“Now you see the flaw in your procedures.”
—Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

Scene 3: The System of the World
>whte_rbt.obj

Insert Disk 36 and Press Button to Continue.

Scene 4: The Confusion

The Flaw in the Plan
—final chapter (#36) of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Scene 3: The System of the World

>get idea
Elder Wand: taken.
Complete Works of Richard Wagner: Taken.
Sonnets of Shakespeare: Taken.

>listen to wagner
Through your ear canal, a quote sails out of the music and into your brain.

Wer meines Speeres Spitze fürchtet, durchschreite das Feuer nie!

(Translation: “Whosoever fears the tip of my spear shall never pass through the fire!”)

>get idea
You already have it. Check your inventory.

>inventory

Scene 4: The Confusion

Back in February 2003, Just Adventure’s PDF magazine, The Inventory, featured an interview with Bill Tiller in Issue #5.

Tiller was feeling quite expansive, and discussed at length the history of Brian Moriarty’s The DIG.

Among other noteworthy statements, he dropped two previously unexpected bombshells.

One, that the fourth character in Moriarty’s The DIG was not a “female Japanese physicist,” as had been rumored, but rather Toshi Olema, a male Japanese businessman.

Two, that LucasArts had worked on a cancelled Indiana Jones game in the wake of Fate of Atlantis, which had never before been mentioned once in public: Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix.

In a later interview, Hal Barwood indicated that Iron Phoenix was cancelled after being debuted at the ECTS trade show in Europe.

I’ve scoured old French and German computer game magazines for years… and while I saw in them plenty of early alpha screenshots from LucasArts adventure games, including Brian Moriarty’s The DIG, I never once found anything related to Iron Phoenix.

Here, for instance, is an image I DID find during that quest… of Boston Low entering the Klein bottle, the device which flips his subatomic particles into a mirror image.

A gentle voice whispers in your ear. “It’s time.”
—Brian Moriarty, TRINITY

“I feel as if someone turned me inside out twice.”
—Ludger Brink, The DIG (probably)

“One day, I know, I must smash the emerald.”
—Dream of the Endless, The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman

Scene 3: The System of the World

>break elder wand
*RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE*

An idea appears in your head! And not just one idea… IDEAS IN ABUNDANCE.

“In the dead of space, something is alive.”
—Marketing slogan, The Dig

Meanwhile, on a stage in Bayreuth, a one-eyed god picks up the shattered pieces of his spear and walks quietly offstage without further protest.

     

I don’t know what all of this is but I’m kinda diggin’ it. Whoops did I just go there?

     

Scene 3: The System of the World

>speak
You open your mouth.

“I left the Chamber – and the Island, and my old life – and joined the flock on our side of the Pattern.

On the other side, Chaos followed my example.

I hesitated, wondering if I had any other choice…and realized, finally, that I wanted no other choice.

For the last time, I raised my distaff…

...and wove the threads of the Draft of Transcendence upon myself.”

Scene 5: The Age of the Great Guilds

CITY OF THE GUILD OF GLASSMAKERS

46. INT. ALDERAAN - CRYSTAL CHAMBER

Three SITH LORDS are on their knees praying before a shining crystal placed on a tall altar. They mumble a strange electronic chant.

1ST SITH
Darth, did you feel that?

Darth stands and stares at the crystal.

2ND SITH
Was it an omen? What is it?

VADER
Something old has been awakened. The Force has suddenly grown stronger. We must travel future paths with caution.

They file out of the chamber.

—Star Wars, 1975 (written and directed by George Lucas)

Scene 3: The System of the World
>whte_rbt.obj
A rip in the space-time continuum appears.

You now know what you must do… and where you must go.

>forward

The Shore of Wonder

A strange crystalline lake hangs in the void of empty space. Beside it is a lone tree, itself made of crystal as well. Numerous swans are swimming on the lake.

One of them speaks.

“Welcome back, Bobbin.”

You wonder how the swan can speak English.

“In Spacetime Six, all living minds communicate perfectly. Your language is my language, and my language is yours.”

“Now choose at last to do what you came here to do! Speak, and be not silent!”

>chariset.obj

The space around you articulates.

The Eye

You stand once more at the doorway between worlds.

Before you are two strange yet noble-looking beings, whom you have just rescued from Spacetime Six. One of them is tall and leonine, masculine of feature, and anthropomorphic in body shape. The other has four arms, two legs, and a horned goat’s head, and is definitely female.

They are the leaders of the two warring planets: Cocytus and Ozymandias, now at peace.

They speak to you, in unison though with slight differences of wording.

“Our peoples have their bodies, their bones, their lives again. We owe you a great debt, Commander Low.”

You reply sadly, “All I want… now that my friends are dead… is to go back to Earth and tell the story of how they died.”

“Why not let them tell their own story?”

“I wish!”

Smiles break out on the mouths, wildly disparate in design, of the two creatures.

“YOU knew the way home—but we know all the other paths through time and space.”

Your heart leaps in your chest at this unexpected new hope. But somehow, some part of you does not want to let this happen—does not want your newfound friends to risk their lives once more in the shifting sands of Eternity.

And so you speak against your own desires:

“Wait! Don’t go back there—”

But the two aliens are already gone.

Scene 6: The Magic of Pure Thought

LOW: All I am is a guy who wants to get back home.

COCYTAN LEADER: Already my people are preparing a great crystal starship to take you there.

BRINK: But we can come back, can’t we?

COCYTAN LEADER: You and any others who wish to come.

—The DIG (project leaders: Sean Clark, Brian Moriarty, Dave Grossman, and Noah Falstein—with some additional coding by Andrew McCarthy)

Scene 7: The Sundering of the Ways

West of House

You are standing is an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

>open mailbox
That’s funny… the mailbox is bigger on the inside.

>look in mailbox
You’ve got mail!

Wait a minute…

My God, it’s full of games!

>examine games

Too many to list concisely… though certainly not infinite.

Among the titles you can make out are LOOM and The DIG.

>play loom

Which one? The trilogy has three games, you know: LOOM, FORGE, and THE FOLD.

>play LOOM

Which version?

You have the original EGA PC release; the FM Towns release emulated on ScummVM; the PC Engine 64-color release; the VGA talkie CD; the remastered EGA PC release with extra content; the 256-color VGA PC release without dialogue; and the remastered VGA talkie CD with extra animation.

>play The DIG

Which version?

You have Sean Clark’s The DIG, from 1995; an alternate version of Sean Clark’s The DIG which runs at 640x480 screen resolution; an early version of Sean Clark’s The DIG which uses five inventory icons; Brian Moriarty’s The DIG; and Noah Falstein’s The DIG.

Spoiled for choice, are we?

>examine games
On further examination, you see one titled Quest for Glory V: Hero’s Crown
>play hero’s crown

I’m sorry, Boston, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

>wear hero’s crown
You place the crown on your head.

A wild Erana appears!

She speaks to you:
“It is time for you to fulfill your final destiny. You must use your sword to free my mistress from her imprisonment.”

You get an idea.

“I’ll take The Pen is Mighter for $400, Alex.”
PenUltimate by Olema: Taken.

And there was much rejoicing.

End of Act I

     

I don`t know what this is… but it`s kind of cool. HL 3 confirmed ?

     

Epigram:
THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN THE HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!

So you really thought the head of the company didn’t play his own adventure games?

He did, and not only that, he went one better: he made one of his own.

It was called Star Wars.

The asteroid has been named Attila, after the war leader of the Huns, who devastated Europe just before the fall of the Roman Empire.

—The DIG

King Etzel, AKA Attila the Hun, from Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen, a film adaptation of the Norse legend of Siegfried.

Note in particular his shaved head and topknot.

Kriemhild, AKA Gudrun, from Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen

Early concept art by Jean “Moebius” Giraud for the character of Sorsha in George Lucas’ fantasy film WILLOW (1988).

Note her shaved head and topknot in the rightmost image… and her long hair in twin braids on the left side.

In this early concept art, Sorsha was actually a half-Elf, like Arwen Undomiel in The Lord of the Rings.

Joanne Whalley as Sorsha, now a human woman, in the final film version of Willow.

15. COURTYARD - PALACE OF LITE - AQUILAE

A large, four-seat speeder sits gleaming in the sun-soaked courtyard. The PRINCESS LEIA, about fourteen years old, possessing a soft beauty and iron will, is embracing her mother, QUEEN BREHA, a warm, silver-haired matron. There are tears in the princess’ blue eyes. Biggs and Windy jump around inside the speeder, disrupting the efforts of the one-armed Amber to pack several plaxiform cases.

Leia embraces the king as he approaches with the general.

LEIA
Oh, Daddy, I’ll miss you so.

KAYOS
The semester will be over before you know it. You’ll have a grand time. There are so many new things to learn. I wish I were going.

He gives her a fatherly smile, and she hugs him again. The general stands rather formally to one side. The princess, her long auburn hair tied in braids, moves to the general and he bows before her.

—introduction of Princess Leia and her father, King Kayos, in the 1974 rough draft of The Star Wars

Note that the 1974 version of Leia has red hair… just like Sorsha.

Or, for that matter, Sophia Hapgood in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

“How odd.”
“You can say that again.”

“BEHOLD!”

The PenUltimate from The DIG.

Note the tilted angle at which Boston holds it… meaning that any text on the screen has to be rendered as a graphical object, instead of being simply written in plain characters into the game files.

A PenUltimate graphic screen from Brian Moriarty’s The DIG.

Oddly, this image seems designed for a version of the PenUltimate which was pointed straight onto the screen… rather like the way written letters were simply shown the audience in silent movies, rather than being read aloud by the characters.

The spellbook from King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow.

The background is drawn so that the spellbook faces the screen directly, allowing the characters to be stored easily in the game’s text files.

>cast
You already have. Aren’t you getting bored with this bit?

An alternate version of the spellbook from King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, as seen in a making-of video on the game CD.

This version of the background is drawn to show the spellbook at an angle… which, had it been used, would have forced the artists to actually write the words on the page in the graphics, as opposed to the convenience of storage in text.

“In a graphic adventure, you can’t do anything you can’t show, and you can’t afford to show very much!”
—Brian Moriarty

There’s an odd synchronicity here.

“I’ve just locked an open door! Strange, yet symbolically compelling.”
—Manny Calavera, Grim Fandango

“Manny, until now we scraped along the ground like rats, but from now on, we soar! Like eagles! Yeah! LIKE EAGLES…ON…POGO STICKS!!!”
—Glottis, Grim Fandango

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”
—Walt Kelly, Pogo

“You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!”
—The Eagles, Hotel California

“We once revered a great inventor, because he opened the door to unchanging eternity. But YOU opened the passageway back into true life.”
—Cocytan Leader, The Dig

     

I heard Advie is really Peter Molyneux and is about to release the secret Lionhead version of Space Quest II: Vohaul’s Fable.

Also Karlok’s (really Roberta Williams) version of Doom will be released on Windows Phone on the eve of Midsummer.

It’s about time that some of you other game developers masquerading as forumites came forward and confessed your releases before this brilliant thread exposes you.

     

Intense Degree - 18 March 2015 06:31 AM

I heard Advie is really Peter Molyneux and is about to release the secret Lionhead version of Space Quest II: Vohaul’s Fable.

Also Karlok’s (really Roberta Williams) version of Doom will be released on Windows Phone on the eve of Midsummer.

It’s about time that some of you other game developers masquerading as forumites came forward and confessed your releases before this brilliant thread exposes you.

Why not take your own advice for once, Corey?

     

ATMachine - 18 March 2015 06:50 AM

Why not take your own advice for once, Corey?

Hey, I thought we agreed - no mention of my version of SuperMarioBros: Quest for Peach on these forums I WILL NEVER RELEASE IT.

Also don’t tell people about Telltale’s secret version of Quest for Infamy or BT and Lambo will have a meltdown.

     

Hi, guys. Nice thread. Just wanna let you know that I’ve groomed my moustache today.

Ken Williams

     

I’m confused.. does this mean I’m Bill Tiller, and that Curse of Monkey Island 2 is nearing release?