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GENERAL DISCUSSION / Everything Sierra / Athyr - Sierra Entertainment's Lost Game
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on: December 17, 2010, 04:00:56 PM
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Marten has amazingly kept a post from over a decade ago regarding the music links below. I've now added all five tracks in addition to the Main Title Theme I originally shared. Thank you so very much, Marten! In the spring of 1998, my wife and I were asked by Sierra's music and writing staff to critique a new soundtrack and a new story line. You've probably heard of Sierra's infamous "Un-named Game"? We were given a CD of the music written for the "Unnamed Game", as composed by Gary Spinrad -- the man responsible for the soundtrack of "Phantasmagoria 2". Cindy Vanous, who had written two preliminary scripts for the game, gave us a copy to read so we'd better understand the music -- and so we could give her some feedback on the plot.
Actually, the 'un-named game' has had several names.... The first working title was "Ascension", but was soon dropped when Origin Software released a game of the same name. It was then changed to "Athyr" (which is when I became involved in the game.) Unfortunately, because of some less-than-above-board-politics at Sierra, Cindy's first script was canned. Things became a bit heated and Cindy ended up quitting Sierra. She later returned -- sort of on a 'consulting' basis -- and she wrote another script. The game title was changed again as well, to "Raven's War." Once again, things became very nasty (as she puts it) and Cindy hit the road.
At this point, the whole project has more or less been scrapted. Cindy says it's now "dead". I have a couple of screen shots (well, 'pictures' anyway, since it wasn't on the screen yet) from the game which look similar to QFG5, though a bit more primitive. In the very rare event this project is picked up at some later date, I'm under a non-disclosure agreement so I can't discuss any of this publicly. But now, because this probably WON'T happen, I thought it would be alright to share one of the songs from this game with a couple of people.
I've encoded a MP3 of one of the CDA tracks Gary created and sent me. This is the ORIGINAL version of the Un-named Game Introduction (Athyr). The music was later changed a bit, but I like this version much better. After hearing quite a bit of Gary's non-published music, I realized this guy must have studied a bit of Scottish music theory during his musical training. You hear it in a lot of his songs. When I was asked to critique the game, my first comment was that the story must be set in Scotland, based on the music. I was later told that's why Gary changed the music, trying to weave out the 'Scottish' feel, since it had nothing to do with Scotland.
I think you're really going to enjoy this music; it's a real shame it will probably never be heard except by very few people. There's only five tracks that were written for the game before it went belly-up. By the way, NONE of the instruments you'll hear are real - it's a combination of various MIDI synths, including the Sound Canvas. I had a list of the synths used, but I can't find it at the moment. Sierra FanfareAthyr Title ThemeMountain SceneThe SwampThe Forest
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GENERAL COMPUTER DISCUSSION / Computer Hardware/Software Q&A / Re: Audio Distortion when viewing Full-Screen Videos on YouTube and Vimeo
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on: November 10, 2010, 02:36:35 PM
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Hmmm.... My antivirus (AVG) software flagged it as Malware and removed the CCCP software. But I know I have over 300 audio & video codecs listed from various sources: Nero, Adobe, Corel, Ulead, etc.
I had thought I previously tried all browsers, but I forget about trying Internet Explorer, since I never use it. Full-screen videos play back fine in IE v6 (which is what I have installed.) Generally, I use Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, and the distortion happens in both of those browsers. I have the latest version of Flash, DirectShow and DirectX installed.
This would obviously point to a browser-related problem, so now I have to find out why full-screen video playback affects these two browsers. Guess I should try Safari, as well.
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QUEST STUDIOS INFORMATION AND SUPPORT / News & Information / Embedded Video Now Supported!
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on: November 09, 2010, 02:29:52 PM
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Embedded videos from sources like YouTube and Vimeo are now supported on this forum!
Please respect the family-based nature of this forum and use proper judgment in your embedding selections. Please do not embed links to porn and other inappropriate material.
You need simply place YouTube video links to enable YouTube.com videos, and Vimeo provides their own embedding code that will function on this forum. I haven't yet tested video embedding from other sources.
Enjoy this new feature and let me know if you're experience problems with it.
Tom
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GENERAL COMPUTER DISCUSSION / Computer Hardware/Software Q&A / Audio Distortion when viewing Full-Screen Videos on YouTube and Vimeo
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on: November 09, 2010, 02:13:13 PM
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Hi guys...
Say, for a while now, I've been having terrible distortion problems when I view a full-screen YouTube or Vimeo HD (720p) video. Sometimes, even at 420p the audio will distort when viewed at full screen.
Naturally, I figured my audio drivers were at fault. I was using the built in mobo audio (Realtek HD with latest drivers), then disabled it and began using my Santa Cruz PCI card. For a while, that seemed to solve the problem and the audio played fine in full-screen. But then, after installing a few other programs...some that loaded new audio and video codecs, Boom -- it's distorted again on my Santa Cruz and Realtek devices.
I'm suspecting it could be the ffdshow video or audio codec (used extensively with Corel's Video Studio Pro X3), but I really need that codec -- I do a lot of HD video editing and ffdshow is the bee's knees, as far as I know, of HD codecs. Of course, it may have nothing to do with ffdshow codecs.
I also installed Adobe Premier Pro Extended CS5, which probably added things. I really don't know what to look at or where to start in trying to solve this problem. I love watching videos on my 24" widescreen in full-screen mode, but can't handle the distortion.
Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions on how I should go about troubleshooting this? I love my Santa Cruz card and would hate to lose it because of this...and it DID work fine, earlier. But who knows what updates have been done on Vimeo and YouTube that may be contributing to the problem. I can't update my Santa Cruz drivers beyond the last XP version released 6 years ago; no more driver development since then.
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GENERAL DISCUSSION / Anything & Everything / Re: Leisure Suit Larry 3 soundtrack (version 3)
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on: October 17, 2010, 09:27:14 PM
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Tom, would it be possible to place the new soundtrack in QS instead of the old Fantom XR version?
Yeah. If you've kept all the same file names, I can just overwrite what's there now. (I know, these tracks have the 'V3' spec added, but I think the remaining nomenclature is the same.) Probably be next weekend, though. The few tracks I've listened to (quite a few, actually) sound really good. It's really refreshing to hear the new sounds!
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QUEST STUDIOS INFORMATION AND SUPPORT / Support / Re: Feature Request: Embed YouTube videos
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on: October 15, 2010, 02:15:22 PM
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My first attempt at inserting this Aeva Media code crashed the forum -- (I always make backups, so restoring the altered files worked...thankfully.) I really want this feature so I'll try again. Support for this mod seems a bit on the lax side. Though, I'm sure it's something stupid that I forgot to add or change.
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