Domain: allowe.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to allowe.com.
Comments · 51
-
Template resignation letterIf you feel like that, use the following resignation letter as a template:
Dear Mr. Baker,
As an employee of an institution of higher education, I have few very basic expectations. Chief among these is that my direct superiors have an intellect that ranges above the common ground squirrel. After your consistent and annoying harassment of my co-workers and me during our commission of duties, I can only surmise that you are one of the few true genetic wastes of our time.
Asking me, a network administrator, to explain every nuance of everything I do each time you happen to stroll into my office is not only a waste of time, but also a waste of precious oxygen. I was hired because I know how to network computer systems, and you were apparently hired to provide amusement to your employees, who watch you vainly attempt to understand the concept of "cut and paste" as it is explained to you for the hundredth time.
You will never understand computers. Something as incredibly simple as binary still gives you too many options. You will also never understand why people hate you, but I am going to try and explain it to you, even though I am sure this will be just as effective as telling you what an IP is. Your shiny new iMac has more personality than you ever will.
You wander around the building all day, shiftlessly seeking fault in others. You have a sharp dressed, useless look about you that may have worked for your interview, but now that you actually have responsibility, you pawn it off on overworked staff, hoping their talent will cover for your glaring ineptitude. In a world of managerial evolution, you are the blue-green algae that everyone else eats and laughs at. Managers like you are a sad proof of the Dilbert principle.
Seeing as this situation is unlikely to change without you getting a full frontal lobotomy reversal, I am forced to tender my resignation; however, I have a few parting thoughts:
When someone calls you in reference to employment, it is illegal for you to give me a bad recommendation as I have consistently performed my duties and even more. The most you can say to hurt me is, "I prefer not to comment." To keep you honest, I will have friends randomly call you over the next couple of years, because I know you would be unable to do it on your own.
I have all the passwords to every account on the system and I know every password you have used for the last five years. If you decide to get cute, I will publish your "Favorites," which I conveniently saved when you made me "back up" your useless files. I do believe that terms like "Lolita" are not viewed favorably by the university administrations.
When you borrowed the digital camera to "take pictures of your mother's b-day," you neglected to mention that you were going to take nude pictures of yourself in the mirror. Then, like the techno-moron you are, you forgot to erase them. Suffice it to say, I have never seen such odd acts with a ketchup bottle. I assure you that those photos are being kept in safe places pending your authoring of a glowing letter of recommendation. (And, for once, would you please try to use spellcheck? I hate correcting your mistakes.)
I expect the letter of recommendation on my desk by 8:00 am tomorrow. One word of this to anybody and all of your twisted little repugnant obsessions will become public knowledge. Never f*ck with your systems administrator, Mr. Baker! They know what you do with all that free time!
Sincerely
David Blocker
Network Administrator
-
Re:How?
This was an effective age verification before there was google.
When I asked my parents "who was Joe Dimaggio?"... They knew *something* was up. -
Re:should of killed the DRM system
http://www.allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.html
There's your questions for at least the first one. The VGA reboot and LSL3 questions are also listed on the right side.
Prime Examples:
O. J. Simpson is
a. an R & B singer.
b. under indictment.
c. embarrassed by his first name (Olivia).
d. no one to fool with.(At the time, answer was D. Rather prophetic question and answer choice, though!)
The germ that transmits syphilis is
a. Spiro Agnew.
b. Spirochete.
c. Spirograph.
d. Barbarella.(Answer C)
-
Re:DRM is the least of the problems...
LSL3 was one of the first games I bought, then I went back and played 1 & 2. The questions to ensure you were old enough to play were amusing, but also indicative of how a searchable internet has changed everything. In the early 90s, you actually had to know the answers, know someone who knew the answers, or visit a library. Now it's three words in a google search (lsl3 questions age):
http://www.allowe.com/Larry/3questions.htm
And an interesting history of copy discouraging techniques for LSL:
http://www.allowe.com/Larry/cluescheats.htm -
Re:DRM is the least of the problems...
LSL3 was one of the first games I bought, then I went back and played 1 & 2. The questions to ensure you were old enough to play were amusing, but also indicative of how a searchable internet has changed everything. In the early 90s, you actually had to know the answers, know someone who knew the answers, or visit a library. Now it's three words in a google search (lsl3 questions age):
http://www.allowe.com/Larry/3questions.htm
And an interesting history of copy discouraging techniques for LSL:
http://www.allowe.com/Larry/cluescheats.htm -
Torin's Passage
If you're looking for a good old school point-and-click adventure game, I highly recommend hunting down a copy of Torin's Passage: http://www.allowe.com/Torin/index.htm
Lowe designed the game so he could play it with his daughter - he's most famous for working on the baudy Leisure Suit Larry titles. That having been said, there's some sly humor there that only adults will understand. But at heart, it's a fun family game - there's even a hint system so little kids don't get too frustrated with it.
The Windows version never worked well even on Windows 95, but the DOS version should run perfectly in DosBox.
-
Questions and AnswersHow about an opening screen with multiple choice questions to verify the kid's age? It's, like, totally foolproof!
Who was banned from "Saturday Night Live" because he lost a telephone poll?
a. John Belushi
b. Dan Akroyd
c. Chevy Chase
d. Andy KaufmanMork was from the planet
a. Ork.
b. Vulcan.
c. Krypton.
d. Pluto.A nehru jacket is
a. made from tanned nehru hides.
b. out of date.
c. a Middle Eastern prophylactic.
d. around a car's radiator.If a physician were stranded on a desert island with Bo Derek, he would probably
a. build a boat.
b. take two aspirins.
c. overcharge her.
d. thank God.More here.
-
LSL
I always wanted to make a spam-filtering method based upon the age-verification questions in Leisure Suit Larry 1.
-
Re:Old-style adventure games
You can download the SPA and some other Al Lowe's old games here: http://www.allowe.com/More/download.htm
-
Re:Leisure Suit Larry
Leisure Suit Larry's anti-piracy measures are still the best, though!
-
Re:In other words:
-
Re:In other words:
-
The genre is still alive......albeit more in europe than in the US
- Funcom's (Norway) The Longuest Journey and DreamFall are nice example of a very well written narrative (by Ragnar Tornquist), and are considered as the major work which brought back the genre into interest.
- Another prominent example is Benoit Sokal (France), who after doing the Syberia duology, founded his own game company White Bird Production which works on either adapting graphic novels from renown European artists or helping them create new worlds for the medium.
- Pendolino Software (Spain) is another example with the two volumes of Runaway in their sleeves.
- House of Tales' (Germany) The moment of Silence.
Meanwhile, the USA industry is working hard of producing yearly crops of hockey/soccer/whatever sport game and doesn't understand while player are complaining about lack of stories...
No actually I'm exaggerating : USA is also represented with Telltale Games which have made marvel in the episodic adventure game genres. And they are mostly composed of former LucasArt employee before that brand was turned into a giant lemon press for StarWars franchise.
The only main problem those modern game tend to suffer is that they are very linear. This is mostly due to them being the work of writers (which make really great stories, but then the stories are just made word by word into games).
As opposed to classical games - like Monkey Island and Space Quest - which are mostly designed from the ground up as series of puzzles and jokes assembled together (Space Quest 3 is notorious for completely lacking an over all story until very late into the development cycle). Those games aren't much linear for the simple reason that they didn't have a story to strictly follow, but instead are a string of separate events which could be completed in an almost random order.
Currently we DO have great writers in the video game circles (Dreamfall almost made me cry).
What we need is good game designer which could translate those wonderful stories into great games. (Otherwise there's a risk that the adventure games start to look like really well acted movie, but with as much interactivity as... well... interactive movie during the early FMV age). If they want to get out of it, they need to go give Ken and Roberta Williams a few millions dollars and bring back the adventure game. In addition of all runaways from LucasArt at Telltale :
TranSolar Games (the team at Sierra responsible for the Hero's Quest/Quest for Glory frnachise) is still around and still interested to revisit the franchise.
Ron Gilbert (of Monkey Island's fame) is working at Hothead (Norway) and has contributed to Penny Arcade's game.
Al Lowe is still around too.
I'm sure that there are some terrific games to be made once you marry the perfect skill (good writing and good game design).
Specially now that platform like the Wii and the DS are widespread and have perfect input interface for adventure games. -
Two possible replacements
1. HEYA. Leisure Suit Larry never allowed minors to play the game, by asking trivia questions that only adults would know, like:
"Who lost a daughter but gained a 'meathead?'"
Of course, make the user type in the answer, instead of giving multiple choice.
2. KNOWYA. Only allow new users recommended by existing users. Secure the recommendation process, like asking for confirmation using carrier pigeons with one-time pads. -
Re:Three words:
That's why I said "real larry game", Al Lowe was totally shut out of that game.
-
Re:Why is it "Nintendo's" Job?
Why did Sierra (Leisure Suit Larry, Kings Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest) and Lucasarts (The Dig) ever give up on the Adventure game in the first place, and why can't they save it?
Well, this is how it worked:
LucasArts noticed that it made a lot more money on mediocre Star Wars titles than they did from their best selling adventure games... although the move away from point-n-click with Grim Fandango and Escape From Monkey Island probably didn't help their sales.
The creative minds behind Sierra, Ken and Robert Williams, sold the company in 1996; leaving the company altogether in 1997. Since then, Sierra has made four "adventure" games:
1998: King's Quest: Mask of Eternity - a King's Quest game that was really more of an FPS than an adventure game
1998: Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire - a Quest for Glory game that was more of an RPG than an adventure game
1999: Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned - The only good one of the bunch... not surprising, as it is the only one whose series creator was still with Sierra
2004: Leisure Suit Larry: Magnum Cum Laud - a third rate Leisure Suit Larry game derided by series creator Al Lowe, who was not involved with the game's creation
Vivendi bought Sierra's parent company in 1999 and, over the years, shut down all of its studios, including Sierra's main branch in 2004.
Sierra is dead, even though Vivendi continues to use the name. Rumor has it that you will never see the name Vivendi on any products in North America; they will all be published under the Sierra name instead. -
Re:Google Goes Nuclear; Microsoft's Pants=Brown Al
"Google Now Officially a Nuclear Power; Microsoft Sets Pants to Brown Alert"
Oldie but goodie. -
Re:Banning mnors from social networking sites..
-
Please don't comment unless....Don't comment unless you can answer the following question:
What can you get in a "red light" district?
a. in many cases, trouble
b. the Blue Plate Special
c. outdoor lighting fixtures
d. lingerie -
Re:That reminds me... (warning: a little offtopic)You can download "Mickey's Space Adventure" and a few other classic Sierra titles directly from Al Lowe's webiste here.
Enjoy!
-
I'm not worried
Developers make games, yet they are treated poorly.
Therefore they must really like making games.
Therefore they probably spend some of their free time making games.
Therefore games get made outside of the industry.
Therefore those games are not necessarily subject to the worst failings of the industry.
Therefore, assuming the world doesn't end first, you can expect games that overcome these flaws to arrive, but they won't necessarily be in a box on a shelf at EB.
The lack of convenience of gaming at a workstation can be overcome by physically moving the computer to the entertainment center, buying a couple of aftermarket joysticks, and downloading the joystick input emulator.
Honestly, gamers have everything they need to make their own games right now. Not a programmer? Get the source off sf.net for the game that most resembles what you'd enjoy and mess with it. Not a voice actor or musician? Sample sound bites from your favorite media. Not a 3D modeler? Google Poser, people make some of their models freely available and you can tweak them without getting in too deep. Not a lawyer? Don't make the game available to anyone but yourself. Would anyone else really understand it, after all? -
Re:numbers
Or Leisure Suit Larry 4 for that matter...
-
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong...
"Writing: Ratchet and Clank 3. Most of the nominees have really terrible writing. HL2? Give me a break. The game was awesome, but the writing? R&C3 was funny and quirky, and did quite a bit to make the overall experience of the game more fun."
How LSL:MCL made the writing list is beyond me. Especially when you consider that the original creator is pretty much disappointed with Sierra's blasphemous creation. The writing was horrid from what i've heard, which is a major departure from the series since it's always had top notch writing and humour.
WoW being on the visual list is impressive considering that it has the least cutting-edge graphics out of everything on that list.
I think you nailed most of the winners dead on. -
LSL: MCL is _not_ Leisure Suit LarryGet one thing straight: LSL: MCL is nothing but a collection of fark jokes and jigglies without any plot or character.
Al Lowe, the creator of the original (and who had absolutely nothing to do with this POS) said this about MCL:
It is not an adventure game.There are no real puzzles, no interactive dialog, no narrator, no character development, and nearly no plot. Much of the dialogue is uninspired and trite. There's more profanity in the first scene than in all the previous Larry games combined. Women cuss like sailors. The F-word is repeated so often the writers must have used a macro.
-
Re:Remembering the hype
-
Re:Remembering the hype
-
Re:LOVAGE??
It was Laffer...but maybe they change it because they completely left Al Lowe out of this one!
-
Re:Bob and ClippyClippy was a less useful version of Bit in Tron. OLD idea, deceptively difficult to impliment in a non-trivial or non-aggrivating manner.
Concur.
They gave it their best shot, but they got it wrong.
But then again, so did many others. Clippy notwithstanding, a day will come when personalized interaction with computers will not only exceed what now obtains between humans and pets, but also what now obtains what now obtains between humans and other humans. When this finally happens, there's gonna be some seriously weird shit going down along the lines of the ancient curse about living in interesting times.
-
Larry Laffer?
Wait, Larry Laffer is choosing the ads for us? I hope they have a PG version.
-
Re:Leisure Suit Larry(TM) Magna Cum Laude
The last update doesn't sound too promising. "Considerable turnover at VU Games", and "we're regrouping". Al Lowe update
-
Re:Abandonware
I remember reading (can't find mention on the site though) that Al Lowe, creator of the Leisure Suit Larry series, released the copyright on various old games (the ones owned by him rather than the publishers) for abandonware, since otherwise they would have died out... Confirmation would be good though.
-
Re:The nerd in me just has to point out...It's the eighth installment if you count the VGA point-and-click remake of Leisure Suit Larry 1.
;)For what it's worth, here's Al Lowe's explanation for the why he chose to skip LSL4 and how, in the process, he "invented" online gaming. Not exactly modest, but interesting nevertheless.
-
Re:In other words...
And from Al Lowe's web page:
A peek at the first (cancelled) LSL8 project. -
Just in case you wanted to see the questions
and the answers, they are all right here.
Most of them are easy, though I can see why a young kid wouldn't know them. Some of them I still don't know, just because I don't have the right chronological frame of reference. -
Sierra
Let's hope they don't wind up the way Sierra did (Once a company with quality releases, now a crappy-publisher-house).
What happened to them AFAIK was pretty much the same. - Key developers (Al Lowe, Roberta Williams, etc.) from Sierra left the company (or put on crappy games).
The death of Sierra as a game-developer pretty much meant the end of adventure games as a mainstream-genre... It's hard to think of the same happening to the RTS (Real Time Strategy) genre, but then again if someone told me X years ago, that the adventuregames genre would be dead now, I would have laughed. -
Re:Alternative business models?Good point on reusing engines--even if they aren't cutting edge. After all, that's how Sierra On-Line managed to turn out six or seven best-selling adventure games per year and profit like crazy throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s.
DecafJedi
-
Leisure Suit Larry Questions and Answers
Funny this, they are available at Al Lowe's own site.
-
Creating
I was actually thinking about this topic the other day, so here's what I decided.
I would start out by having him (male for the sake of simplicity) play old games... games like Jetpack, Al Lowe's games, text-based games like Tradewars, Zork, Adventure. There are three reasons for this: One, these are games I remembered playing as a kid, and loved. It'd be great to rediscover them through your kid's eyes. Two, they're cheap. Every single console cost $100-$200 when it came out, with its games costing ~$50. These games are all free (and if they're all your kid plays, then he won't even know what he's missing until he gets to school). The third reason, which is the most relevent to this discussion, is that all these games would be very simple to code. If he plays and enjoys text-based adventures, it'd be much easier to code Tommy's Adventure than it would be to code Super Mario World 1024.
So, once he's been enjoying these games for a while, I'd ask if he wanted to make his own. For starters I'd just ask for a description of the game, which I would then code. Three reasons: one, it'll be easier for me to make the game than to teach him to program (when he's still very young); two, he'll learn the value of writing design documents; and three, when he's ready to start programming, he'll have ready access to the source code to games that he's designed.
Of course alongside all of this I'd be giving him constructive toys like Legos and encouraging him to create. Personally, problem solving is easy for me to do, but completely original design is quite a bit more difficult. Learning that would be much better than simply learning to program: it'd give him motivation to program. -
Re:Sierra dead?GameSpy claims in this article "...but now their days as a game developer are pretty much over." Is it really that bad?
It is. Here is the scoop on how Sierra was sold, then castrated and left pretty much useless (FYI, Half-Life was produced by Valve, Sierra is a distributor).
Also here Leisure Suit Larry's man Al Lowe gives hints that managements talks of old Sierra's rebirth are just that - talks:
-
"Feb. 1, 2002, I met with [Sierra's president] Mike Ryder in his office. He said he was interested in "reviving the franchises that made Sierra," including Larry. I was ready, but skeptical. There were many details to consider. We agreed to work via email that week and get together again soon.
After hearing nothing from him for the next month, I emailed him to see what had happened. It took him a month to email back that he was really busy and would get to me soon. More than four months have passed since that email and I've still heard nothing more from him."
This is how the company treats one of its most successful game creators; you can figure out the rest.
Andrius
P.S. While we're on Al Lowe, his CyberJoke 3000 jokes mailing list is highly recommended. See archives.
-
"Feb. 1, 2002, I met with [Sierra's president] Mike Ryder in his office. He said he was interested in "reviving the franchises that made Sierra," including Larry. I was ready, but skeptical. There were many details to consider. We agreed to work via email that week and get together again soon.
-
Re:Sierra dead?GameSpy claims in this article "...but now their days as a game developer are pretty much over." Is it really that bad?
It is. Here is the scoop on how Sierra was sold, then castrated and left pretty much useless (FYI, Half-Life was produced by Valve, Sierra is a distributor).
Also here Leisure Suit Larry's man Al Lowe gives hints that managements talks of old Sierra's rebirth are just that - talks:
-
"Feb. 1, 2002, I met with [Sierra's president] Mike Ryder in his office. He said he was interested in "reviving the franchises that made Sierra," including Larry. I was ready, but skeptical. There were many details to consider. We agreed to work via email that week and get together again soon.
After hearing nothing from him for the next month, I emailed him to see what had happened. It took him a month to email back that he was really busy and would get to me soon. More than four months have passed since that email and I've still heard nothing more from him."
This is how the company treats one of its most successful game creators; you can figure out the rest.
Andrius
P.S. While we're on Al Lowe, his CyberJoke 3000 jokes mailing list is highly recommended. See archives.
-
"Feb. 1, 2002, I met with [Sierra's president] Mike Ryder in his office. He said he was interested in "reviving the franchises that made Sierra," including Larry. I was ready, but skeptical. There were many details to consider. We agreed to work via email that week and get together again soon.
-
Consoles?
I really find it hard to believe that someone would have gone to this much trouble just to play Richard and Alan's Escape From Hell or Hillsfar.
But as for your suggestion for using an Atari or Calico -- there was no Bard's Tale for the Calicovision, nor Space Quest. For DOS, however, we had Wing Commander, and a whole series of Leisure Suit Larry. By 1991, we had the original BattleTech and BattleTech II, not that wierd MechWarrior similator thing.
Hmm...I wonder what I did with the scratch and sniff card from Leather Goddesses of Phobos?
Hmm...it's times like this when I'm glad there's places like emulation.net so I can find something interesting to play with.
(yes, this is partly sarcasm...it's up to you to determine what part) -
Leisure Suit Larry 4
To read the story of the missing LSL4 game straight from the developer's (Al Lowe) mouth, check out Lesiure Suit Larry 4 and Why Larry 5?.
Fairly interesting story -- What was supposed to be LSL4, ended up morphing into The Sierra Network, and then getting sold to AT&T for $100 million (and then getting resold to AOL for $10 million). -
Leisure Suit Larry 4
To read the story of the missing LSL4 game straight from the developer's (Al Lowe) mouth, check out Lesiure Suit Larry 4 and Why Larry 5?.
Fairly interesting story -- What was supposed to be LSL4, ended up morphing into The Sierra Network, and then getting sold to AT&T for $100 million (and then getting resold to AOL for $10 million). -
Re:What ever happened to Leisure Suit Larry?
Yep...it was Time Magazine's review of Softporn that put Sierra on the map.
Here's some more info on softporn.
Ken Williams, Sierra's founder, swears that at a time when Apple had only sold 100,000 Apple ][ computers, Sierra had sold 25,000 copies of Softporn.
But soon thereafter, Sierra had the chance to acquire the software rights for all the Walt Disney characters...if they dropped that "nasty" game from the catalog. So of course they did.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. -
Re:What ever happened to Leisure Suit Larry?
Ask the man himself, Al Lowe, creator of the series.
-
Already been done.
Check out the finished product. Who wouldn't like to get their hands on one of these?
-
It was Al Lowe!
Al Lowe (the genius we all know and love as the creator of the Leisure Suit Larry series) and Ken Williamson humorously claim to have invented internet gaming while working at Sierra Online. Read the entire article here.
-
Re:Sierra Game Timeline
Haha. Actually, I just found Al Lowe's (creator of Larry) website and it has an article about the pre-history of Larry Laffer.
-
Now the real question is...
...will they bring back Softporn, the precursor to Leisure Suit Larry.
For that matter, when are we going to see an OSS release of all of this stuff? :) -
Copyright Enforcement and OSS?
What I don't understand is this: They claim that even though the company may not be making any money on a product (like Elder Scrolls: Arena), they need to enforce "piracy" in order to protect their right to make a sequel with the same brand. But OSS is copyrighted AND distributed freely... That doesn't invalidate the copyright... right? It's not like someone else is making Joe's Own Elder Scrolls, which would likely be a Trademark violation.
In any case, even if they are correct under present law, I think these game companies (most of which are now owned by EA) have a social and moral obligation to make these old games available in some form or another. And if they refuse to, I would think they are obligated to not prevent others to fulfull that role.
I play a lot of these abandonware games, as an aspiring game programmer/writer/designer, they provide a lot of inspiration as well as nostalgia. I pay for the classic games/collections when I can find them (Ultima 1-8, Wizardry 1-8, etc...). But I'm sure as hell going to download them for free if that's the only way I can get them. That's what I would want people to do if I had written them (which is basically what we heard from the game developer side in the article).
I went to Al Lowe's web site and he said to order the LSL collection: To order it, go to Amazon.com. It's shipping now! Purchase Leisure Suit Larry's Ultimate Pleasure Pack. Guess what? Availability: This item is out of stock.
What would be really great is if some of these companies released their hardened grip and opened some of the source code for these games. I'd love to hack around on that stuff...
-If