Unused Material from the original King's Quests (and other Sierra games)!

[Akril15]

Hello all,

I plugged this site in another subforum, but with the recent announcement from Telltale that resulted in the addition of this nice new subforum, I figured that I'd advertise it again here.

Occasionally, I like to poke into the resource files of old adventure games to see if I can uncover anything interesting. Sometimes I find sprites, backgrounds and dialogue that never appear in the final product (sort of like deleted scenes on a DVD). I found so many interesting items in the files of Sierra On-Line's games that I decided to put together a small site to showcase them. Here's a trio of teaser backgrounds I found in King's Quest V, VI and VII:

Wow, the quality of King's Quest V's backgrounds sure improved a lot since this scene was made.

I don't remember this part of the Realm of the Dead...

...And I don't remember this part of Vulcanix either!

Here's a link to the page covering King's Quest V and VI[/URL] (along with several other Sierra games), and here are the first and second of King's Quest VII. I also have a page for "Inside the Chest" and "Behind the Developers' Shield", two programs that came with the first and second KQ Collections (but not the 2006 collections -- Thanks, Vivendi Universal). There's a lot of behind-the-scenes art shown in those programs, but there's even more of it hidden in the resource files. And it doesn't really need to be said at this point, but SPOILER ALERT!!! (And enjoy!)

(By the way, this whole site originally started out as a couple of pages full of stuff I'd found just in the resource files of King's Quest VII -- that game is bursting at the seams with unused material...including this. I don't know what the heck the story behind this picture is -- it looks like it's straight out of Space Quest 6!)

[ATMachine]

I do love your Sierra Resources site, Akril. It's so informative!

I think the mystery woman with the neck ruff from the KQ6 character portrait sketches in Inside the Chest/Behind the Developer's Shield has to be Valanice. Her hairstyle is the same.

Plus, she's dressed in an Elizabethan gown with a neck ruff. Likewise, KQ6 Alexander wears a variant on a Tudor-era men's doublet: green with slashes of yellow fabric. Besides Daventry, no "culture" in KQ6 has clothing resembling Elizabethan England, although each has its own distinctive Earthly counterpart.

(To break it down: the Isle of Wonder is based largely on the story of Alice in Wonderland, the Isle of the Sacred Mountain is modeled on Ancient Greece/Rome, the Isle of the Mists is Druidic pre-Roman Britain, the Isle of the Beast is Baroque Louis XIV France, and the Isle of the Crown is Moorish/Arabian in style. Beast's Isle being 17th century French in culture is particularly fitting, since that's when Frenchman Charles Perrault was collecting fairy tales such as Beauty and the Beast.)

I'll also direct you to this thread on another forum, in which I analyze the original appearance of the Winged Ones in these early portrait sketches.

[Akril15]

Thanks, ATMachine!

I actually saw your thread about the Winged Ones on the AGDI forums a while ago and I've been meaning to reply to it for a while. I never thought of those portraits of Azure and Aeriel depicting them as living statues. That would certainly have been a different experience if they had remained that way in the final draft of King's Quest VI.

I also think you might be right about that woman being Valanice. It's kind of interesting, since she resembles Valanice as she appears in King's Quest VII (the neck ruff, the hair style, barely visible earrings) a lot more than Valanice as she appears in most of the previous KQ games (hair in a bun, large hoop earrings, no ruff).

[Irishmile]

I love this stuff.

[philthethrill]

Me too. I especially enjoyed listening to the conversation between Attis and Rosella. I always wondered why this wasn't included in the actual game. Also, the kangaroo rat's rhymes for the items that couldn't be traded were funny.

Akril15, I like the video you uploaded on YouTube of the storyboard for "Land Beyond Dreams" from KQ7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52a6t_IPxn4

I also like the trailer for your KQ9 game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WILRh9LHdo

I skimmed through your fanfic to see the animations and pictures. I like them a lot. http://akril15.com/kq9/

By the way, have you been to this channel on YouTube? http://www.youtube.com/user/MusicOfD.../0/YVs-SwtjB6g
It's the entire soundtrack for KQ7, and what's neat about it is that it contains several unused and alternate tracks. http://www.youtube.com/user/MusicOfD.../0/YVs-SwtjB6g

MusicOfDaventry explains how he got the music: "I used a program called SCI Resource Viewer/Sierra Extractor which finds specific audio files in the actual KQ7 Directory. The song titles are all from me or from other people who have made attempts at the soundtrack in the past."

[Akril15]

Thank you very much, Phil! (Hmm, I wonder if I should be paying you to advertise my stuff like this... )

I actually didn't know about that YouTube channel. Thanks for pointing it out to me. Given how much other unused stuff is in KQ7, I'm not surprised that there were several unused music tracks as well.

[Sarendor]

This is an unused death animation from King's Quest V. And gosh, thanks for it! I died this way so many times, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to see it each time.
NOTE: This is not graphic, disgusting or violent. However, it is the most scary thing related to King's Quest that I have ever seen. (And King's Quest managed to startle me many times.)

[Simo Sakari Aaltonen]

I think the most scary thing to me in King's Quest is Alexander's self-induced "heart attack" in KQVI. It is quite visceral and very effective.

[philthethrill]

(Hmm, I wonder if I should be paying you to advertise my stuff like this... )

I'd rather pay you just to see the storyboard intro you have for KQ7, and an actual KQ9 game based on your fanfic. Have you ever considered doing it with Flash? Your Flash animations are quite good.

[thom-22]

Originally Posted by Sarendor

This is an unused death animation from King's Quest V. And gosh, thanks for it! I died this way so many times, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to see it each time.

Hmmm... I am replaying KQV right now, from GOG.com, and that scene definitely *is* in the game.

[Irishmile]

Yeah I have not played 5 in a really long time... but I am pretty sure that I had seen that in my old old big box version of the game.

[ATMachine]

Originally Posted by thom-22

Hmmm... I am replaying KQV right now, from GOG.com, and that scene definitely *is* in the game.

What's changed is the picture in the Restore/Restart/Quit screen. In the original game IIRC it shows a simple tombstone. However, this guy hacked the game files to use an alternate image from the KQ5 resources, which shows the innkeeper's face leering at you (with a gold tooth glinting).

[Akril15]

Originally Posted by Sarendor

This is an unused death animation from King's Quest V. And gosh, thanks for it! I died this way so many times, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to see it each time.

I've seen that video before, and if that animation of the innkeeper's face had been in the game, I definitely would have remembered it. Brrr.

Originally Posted by philthethrill

I'd rather pay you just to see the storyboard intro you have for KQ7, and an actual KQ9 game based on your fanfic. Have you ever considered doing it with Flash? Your Flash animations are quite good.

Heh, thanks again. I've tried making adventure games in Flash before, but it wasn't really my cup of tea. I've gotten a lot more comfortable with Adventure Game Studio now. As for making an actual game out of that story...who knows? Maybe someday.

[ATMachine]

This may not be quite the right thread, but here's something interesting:

This is an early screenshot of Alexander confronting the Lord of the Dead in KQ6.


In the final game Alexander's sprite was completely redrawn and his costume altered slightly.


In the WIP screenshot, Alex's costume is modeled more closely on this drawing seen in the KQ6 hint book. Interesting that the image seems to show Alex with longer hair.


There are also four early concept sketches for Alexander's costume, which likewise show him with a mane of long, flowing hair.

Much as KQ7 Valanice's appearance reuses some things from an early sketch of her for KQ6, Alex's early long hairstyle was later given to Edgar in KQ7:



I should also mention that, as can be seen in the Making of KQ6 video found on the game CD, the actor who played Alex in the motion-capture sessions seems to have had long hair tied in a ponytail (visible at 2:36 in this video). Perhaps this was a remnant of the "long-haired Alexander" idea? Or was it just the actor's actual hair, and thus always meant to be edited out later by the artists?

---

Akril, a few notes on miscellaneous things on your site:

The early "granite" high-res Sierra logo from the KQ7 resource files is actually the one used in the Windows version of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers.

The motion-capture animation of a StarCon red-tuniced officer waving around a stick from SQ5 seems to be intended (in my guess) to be an officer cleaning a window with a wiper, as seen through the glass from the other side. It was probably scrapped because the guy isn't wearing a spacesuit.

[Irishmile]

Originally Posted by ATMachine

What's changed is the picture in the Restore/Restart/Quit screen. In the original game IIRC it shows a simple tombstone. However, this guy hacked the game files to use an alternate image from the KQ5 resources, which shows the innkeeper's face leering at you (with a gold tooth glinting).

you're pretty much a superhero..

[Akril15]

Wow -- your attention to detail is amazing, ATMachine. I always enjoy reading your observations on various obscurities.

Originally Posted by ATMachine

Akril, a few notes on miscellaneous things on your site:

The early "granite" high-res Sierra logo from the KQ7 resource files is actually the one used in the Windows version of Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers.

The motion-capture animation of a StarCon red-tuniced officer waving around a stick from SQ5 seems to be intended (in my guess) to be an officer cleaning a window with a wiper, as seen through the glass from the other side. It was probably scrapped because the guy isn't wearing a spacesuit.

I actually knew that logo was from GK1, I just never added that to the description for some reason.

That's also a pretty good guess as to what that officer is doing -- it's better than anything I could have come up with, anyway. I'll add both of those comments to the site when I have the chance.

[ATMachine]

Thanks, Akril!

Interestingly, the KQ Companion describes Graham in KQ1 and KQ2 as having a long, flowing mane of dark brown hair. This is also seen in the Companion's illustrations; the 3rd edition replaced the illustrations from the 1st/2nd editions with new ones, but the various editions' drawings always kept Graham's hair quite long. Maybe that's where the idea for proto-KQ6-Alexander's and KQ7-Edgar's long hairstyles came from?

[ATMachine]

Here's an early version of Cupid's pool, in King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella, as seen in Sierra's InterAction newsletter magazine.



Notice the fountain in the upper part of the pool. In the final game there's no fountain there; instead, the north end of the pool is where Rosella can climb out if she's fallen in.

Here's the pool as it appears in the initial release (ver. #1.000.111, with green menu buttons) of KQ4 SCI.


Much of the background has been generally redrawn, including the small twin trees in the foreground.

Here's Cupid's pool as it appears in later releases of KQ4 SCI, which have different graphics (and white menu buttons).


Like many backgrounds in the game, it's been very notably altered from the original release. In this case, it's especially noticeable, because the two trees in the foreground are now gone!

Also note that the tree branch in the upper left corner is now depicted in shadow instead of being fully colored. In the later versions of KQ4, the art was altered so that the day and night versions of scenes could share art resources, which resulted in changes like this one. The original version of the game had included separate backgrounds of each location for day and nighttime.

[Akril15]

I remember seeing a post about those two shrubs being removed on the Sierra Help Pages forums (I think). That one scene really has had a lot of alterations.

[ATMachine]

It's not just that one scene, Akril--just about every background in the game was redrawn in some way between the two versions of KQ4. Some were retouched only slightly, but most have very notable changes when you compare them.

Even some of the animations are different; for instance, the sprite of Rosella walking through the troll cave with her lantern lit is remarkably different in the two versions.

Interestingly, the earlier version changes Rosella's walking speed based on the scale of her sprite, so that if she's seen from far away on a particular background, she'll walk more slowly than when seen from closer up. In the later version she walks at the same (relatively fast) speed all the time, regardless of the size of her character sprite on-screen.