2012-10-xx
Touring Sierra On-Line
I thought I should write down what I can remember about vising Sierra On-Line because it occurs to me there are quite a few people out there who would find it sentimental.
It was the summer of 1988.
My family would go camping at least once a year. We used to go to a summer camp on Bass Lake, which happens to be near Yosemite and also close to Sierra On-Line. Since we'd been playing Sierra games for several years and were big fans, my dad took it upon himself to call them up and see if they'd be willing to give us a tour while we were in the area.
At the time, Sierra was mostly housed in the "redwood" building. This is the building depicted at the end of Space Quest 3 and pictured frequently in Sierra catalogues of the time.
The lobby had a high ceiling and there were big posters on the wall showcasing some of Sierra's earlier games, such as Apple Cider Spider, and others I hadn't heard of. I remember being surprised to see a poster advertising Frogger, as I'd never thought of that as a Sierra game. I would later learn more about that in the book Hackers by Steven Levy.
From what I can remember, only the left side of the building was used by Sierra. The other side was used by medical doctors. I only remember visiting the upstairs floor, which was almost entirely an open area divided into cubicles with the occasional support column. There are pictures of this office area in The Official Book of King's Quest (first edition) by Donald B. Trivette and probably also the Sierra News Magazine.
Ken Williams greeted us and shook our hands. We didn't know what to say, but we made sure he knew we were big fans. I remember being a little disappointed we didn't get to meet Roberta — but don't tell anyone we weren't grateful.
Developers were hard at work on King's Quest 4, which was a big deal at the time, as it was the first game to use their new "SCI" engine, which offered double the previous graphics resolution and supported PC sound peripherals. Supposedly, King's Quest 4 was the first PC game ever to support the AdLib music card. Basically we got to see a preview of Sierra's newest technology, which was exciting and a pretty big deal in those days.
I got to see some scenes in King's Quest 4 that were changed before the release of the game! On the title screen, underneath the title, a small Rosella would walk from the side to the center of the screen, do a little curtsey, and walk off, like it was a stage. Perhaps this was meant to follow in tradition the title screen for King's Quest 2, where Graham walks up and bows. The intro also showed a narrow castle tower where, at the door at the top of the stairs, someone could look through the keyhole to see the room inside. The raven also flew to or from the tower window. It was all rather cinematic. In the released game, I think you can only look through a keyhole elsewhere, and the tower rooms are different. Essentially I was watching a completely different intro sequence that portrayed a somewhat different story. It makes me wonder how the end of the game might have been changed as well. (This discrepancy between the scenes I saw at Sierra versus the released game must have inspired the game I designed in 1989...)
I got to sit next to a developer for a while. I watched him walk Rosella around, and on the screen south of the mansion, there was a blank grey rectangle over a part of the stream. He told me to just ignore that. I asked what he meant, and he explained that there was supposed to be an animation there, but it wasn't done yet. At the time, I didn't mind at all. Now that I think of it, I'm not sure what this guy was working on exactly, but based on what I know now, I'd say he was looking for bugs. He also occasionally jumped into the animation editor, where individual cels of animation were displayed, which is depicted briefly in The Official Book of King's Quest (first edition).
Farther into the middle of the office area, we got to see someone working on Helicoper Simulator 2. Sierra had previously released Helicopter Simulator, which wasn't particularly realistic, but since I enjoy simulators, I'd played the hell out of it (I remember buying it at Egghead). One of the new features of the sequel was the ability to fly these helicopters with jet engines, which must have been inspired by the TV show Airwolf. Polygons on the rear of the helicopter model would light up like afterburners, which was pretty cool at the time. This game was never released, so I doubt many people know about it. The developer who showed it to us was really excited about it, though. Poor guy. (Note: This happens far more often than you can possibly imagine.)
In the rear of the upstairs area I remember a dark, insulated room where a musician would work. They played some Roland music for us, which at the time seemed impossible for a PC game.
Our guide drove us to another small office where artists did paintings for box covers. One of the artists had also modeled for the woman on the box cover of Police Quest 2. They told us who modeled the Death Angel, but I can't remember; maybe it was Ken's brother?
Then we drove to their big silver "warehouse" building that was nearby. This was brand new at the time, and they hadn't moved in yet because the offices (on the right side) weren't finished. We only saw a large packaging room (on the left side) where diskettes would be duplicated and boxed. I've heard that since Sierra quit that building, it's been used by other game developers such as Codemasters...
At the end our guide asked us a couple questions to figure out what kind of game we'd like. We were presented with a free game just for being fans willing to come visit them. Thexder ended up being a pretty frustrating game, but regardless of that, everyone was very gracious to us. I regret that I don't remember the names of any of the people we met besides Ken Williams.
I later learned from Sierra News Magazine that other families also visited Sierra On-Line and were given a similar tour.
Although the experience was a little overwhelming at the time, it set a bunch of wheels turning in my head. I had to be a part of this stuff, and now I had a glimpse of what that could be like, and that was certainly a big influence. I spent a lot of time making my own Sierra game scenes...
Oh, I found out there are three editions of The Official Book of King's Quest. So you're probably wondering which one you should get. Here, let me answer all your questions.
- The first edition (ISBN 0874551552) was printed in 1988 and covers King's Quest 1 through 4.
- The second edition (ISBN 0874552451) was printed in 1991 and covers King's Quest 1 through 5.
- The third edition (ISBN 0874552745) was printed in 1992 and covers King's Quest 1 through 6.
These are mainly hint books, but they also contain some behind-the-scenes information and history.
The most notable difference is the pictures.
- The first edition has full-color photos of Sierra's offices (in the "redwood" building), some developers, and screenshots of the graphical software tools used to build a scene in King's Quest 4.
- The second edition has black & white photos of Sierra's offices and studios (mostly in the big silver "warehouse" building), some developers, and the process of digitizing a painting. But no screenshots of development tools.
- The third edition has half of the same black & white photos as in the second edition, but smaller and cropped. However, the third edition also has dozens of simple cartoon drawings of scenes from King's Quest 1 through 6 (for King's Quest 1, the drawings depict the "SCI" version of the game).
The first edition shows a few brief snippets of "SCI" code to illustrate how the games were programmed. The second and third editions provide a more human-readable summary of some programming logic instead.
The first and second editions have a crossword puzzle for each game just for fun. If you buy used copies of these books, the crossword puzzles will inevitably be penciled in already.
The second edition (1991) mentions that "SCI" remakes of King's Quest 2 and 3 will be available in 1992, but the third edition (1992) no longer mentions this. Those remakes were cancelled because the "SCI" remake of King's Quest 1 didn't make enough money.
