Point & Click ... The Black Cauldron

[Cloudee1]

Ok gang I have started a new summer project. I have always been disappointed with the playability, or lack thereof, of Sierra's old AGI version of Disney's The Black Cauldron. At this point I highly doubt that I will ever have the time or energy to ever redraw all of the graphics so I am not planning to. There are a couple of rooms and views that I will have to I think just because but my real goal here is to simply make it playable. I have already got all the original inventory items created and ready to go, as well the first 24 rooms of the game can be explored, not necesarily completed but you can travel the map. I may add a couple of new puzzles, I haven't really decided on that yet.

[MusicallyInspired]

Nice! I look forward to this.

[Collector]

I must say that I am more intrigued by SCI remakes of Sierra AGI games than I am of new SCI games. Perhaps it's because of the Sierra's own remakes like KQ1SCI.

[Cloudee1]

Yeah hopefully real work will let up soon, 13 hour days even on Saturday are killong me and it doesn't leave much time to work on it. Momentum is a terrible thing to lose when it comes to summer time projects and mine has gone to about nil over the last two weeks.

[Cloudee1]

So I just realised something. Unlike Sierra, I do not have an artist, a musician, or even a programmer working to get this done. It is just me doing everything and just between me and you, the project leader is a lazy piece of shite. No, but really even when I get some done, there is still so much left to do that it doesn't feel like the project is moving forward.

[Cloudee1]

Aw crap. So I was tooling around in my game today testing out a couple of new things I have been adding when I decide to check out my inventory, can anyone guess what happened... Out of Heap!!! Are you kidding me. So I have gone back to the drawing board and have already begun rewriting how my rooms major functions operate. The rooms I have applied the changes to are heap error free, but I'm still losing some heap here and there... need to track those  bytes down and get those resources back otherwise it is only a matter of time before trouble strikes again. The worst part is I thought I had the heap space puzzle cracked, but I suppose, do new stuff and encounter new delimas.

[Collector]

Oh well, even Sierra fell victim to Out of Heap errors occasionally.

[Cloudee1]

It's awfully early to be running into this issue. I'm missing something but I haven't figured out what yet. There is over 60 rooms and I've only got about half walkable and far fewer which are actually playable plus I want to do more with  the pnc menu. That'll burn up space in every room it's used straight off the top.

[Cloudee1]

So work is actually progressing right along. I would give an updatw to how far along the story you can play till, but that might give some of the game away. Has anybody else here even had a go at the original or will my version be the first time anyone else has played it?

[MusicallyInspired]

I've played the original but not beaten it. That said, I have seen the movie so I'm not worried about it being blown.

[Cloudee1]

I've never fished the game either.

[Cloudee1]

Even worse still is there are no diagonal buttons on the laptop and you need them to cross a rope. I have programmed up to that point. Now I guess it's time to lug out the dinosaur desktop and switch everything over to that.

[MusicallyInspired]

Does your laptop not have a Function key combination with some letters to emulate the numpad?

[Cloudee1]

Probably but I have been to lazy to even bother with looking. I've got him climbing the rope now in mine, I just don't know where he is climbing to. That is officially as far as I have ever played till.

[Collector]

If you don't want to play the original, you could read a couple of walkthroughs.