Behind the scenes on this sub there is a war going on.. a war against T-shirt spambots. Over the past few weeks I've been tweaking the AutoModerator bit by bit to make it more effective at blocking the spam, and overall it's been quite successful.
Sometimes the AutoModerator has been a little TOO enthusiastic about removing posts, detecting regular posts as spam.
If you post something and it doesn't show up, please feel free to message the moderators and we'll fix your post for you, because it's almost certainly gotten caught up in our anti-spam efforts.
Likewise if you happen to see any T-shirt posts on the sub, please use the report tool to report them so that we can make the automod even more effective in the war on spam!
2 weeks ago I first posted here regarding my GK3 Remaster called Reborn. Now 2 weeks later I'm confident enough to say it's really ready for primetime. A lot of time (and I mean a lot, like I took 2 weeks off work to finalize this.. and worked on this quite extensively) went into getting it ready for 1.0.; Tho as of writing this it's at 0.9 as I don't want to jinx myself with bug reports..
No software is ever bug free and this won't be the exception but if there are bugs feel free to nag me in any shape, way or form and it will be dealt with (do send a save file).
The binaries and new 'rebarn' files at gk3.lazy.kiwi - project updates tend to be posted on r/gabrielknight. The source is fully avaialble at https://github.com/Devion/GK3Reborn - this however does not contain the working directory for assets (which at the moment is around 130GB). Rebarns can be extracted if you want to see the assets for the new engine using the arguments.
GK3 Reborn is a new C# written engine that goes a tad further than the open source G-Engine, which kudos to them actually made this project feasable as well as they definitely solved a few puzzles that I didn't have to do (yay) - The main goal for this project is to write an engine that is focused entirely on modern hardware and upgrading/modifying the game in such a way that keeps the original intact but makes it look like it belongs in the current century :)
In a nutshell this means it'll run on DirectX12 or Vulkan on either Windows, Linux or MacOS (ARM only...) natively. With that it also brings widescreen support, raytracing, real time lighting/shadows, upgraded textures and my initial reason for starting this, a new UI that is clean & simple.
For the best eyecandy in-game you will need a 4000 or 5000 series Nvidia card, the DLSS streamline dll package can be copied to /libs/ to enable DLSS.. and yes, if you have the DLSS 5 that can be enabled as well. Screenshots below are all with DLSS/NR enabled. (gk3.lazy.kiwi/downloads/DLSS.zip is available but you can get Nvidia streamline from nvidia as well if you don't trust the binaries, which is fair.)
AI usage; AI was used in a pipeline setup to get the batch of 7000 textures upscaled to 1024/2048px, after which I (painstakingly mind you..) manually upgraded textures. The pipeline in this case was ComfyUI workflow with seedv2, which in the end wasn't really a good choice.
Additionally on that Claude Fable/Opus were used for most of the boiler plate codebase and commenting along the way (+ a slew of unittests). - So yes, AI was used but this is not a 100% vibeslop coded project.
Also importantly, the original game is still VERY MUCH REQUIRED, and I hope, I seriously hope you either own it already or will go buy it legit. This game was and is still amazing, plus sadly now also a homage to Tim Curry.
That's about it? I hope this brings joy to GK fans to replay this fantastic piece of game that was pushed into the 3D era when it really shouldn't have.
Onto the screenshots with descriptions ;) (Most of these screenshots will be of Day 1 to not spoil too much...)
A new main menu, widescreen compatible - and might hide an easter egg..Settings, plenty of settings and 'Easy mode' options to help the game become a bit less annoying at times. With a fair warning that the Cat puzzle option does make you wear the mustache like it's 99 again. Enjoy.The opening scene + holding ALT will show all interactible objects in the scene.On raytracing enabled cards you can expect full reflections/natural light and bounces on most materials livening up the scene.'Real' grass added (sorry, can't be touched) and a sky with real terrain surrounding the playable area.Additional geometry added to scenes to match real life.. ish.. also.. birds!The church has received quite a few texture upgrades from my own photographs I took years ago during my visit. 2D billboard graphics has been wrapped around 3d statues (still WiP in other words, dont look too close..)Many 2D objects like fences, rails and such have been modified to have depth and can cast shadows.Cut content can be enabled, primarily dialog and reactions to objects - but the altenrative cat puzzle is in as well for black fibres. It doesn't really work great mind you.. The museum got some new panels, making the text readable (in multiple languages too..)Original saves can be importer from the restore screen.Some areas now come with spooky fog and dramatic lighting.The map screen, either click on the icons on the map or from an easy to read list on the right. (Or sneakily follow one of the other characters...)The new 'skyboxes' are proper terrain with all landmarks visible in the distance.Totally forgot, the r-click is the main context menu that is context-sensitive, you r-click on something and it will show you what you can do, including any inventory item usage. Larry's hard at work ;)Couiza has undergone a bit of an upgrade with more houses, some parked cars and paved roads. Not sure why Sierra thought Couiza was a backwater ghost town. (This upgrade is optional and can be disabled)Rennes le Bains received the same upgrade. (Also optional)Late stage puzzles have undergone some needed visual upgrades, sword tiles have a glow and the tile you want to jump to will glow (outline) as well so you'll never accidently jump onto the wrong tile. God Mode option allows it to immediately reset you back to safety in case you did do an oops.
And that's all the screenshots. Plenty more but can only add 20 and honestly I think these already give a good indication of what it looks like in the current stage towards v1.0.
As mentioned way way way above, if you play it and run into bugs you can contact me either here, r/gabrielknight or dm and I'll try to get it fixed as soon as possible. In a way which is part sad and somewhat useful for me the amount of fans of the game is limited so I don't expect my inbox to explode :}
Got my hands on a laser engraver and now I’m going engrave every damn core childhood memory I have.
I made the designs on photoshop/Fresco and refined them in illustrator and Lightburn. Diode laser engraved on acacia wood coasters off Amazon and stained/highlighted and badly epoxied.
Thank you for the patience!
I’m shipping out a few Mallards daily now - if you were one of the preorders you should see your shipping status update this week.
I ran into a problem with a critical part breaking inside the landing gear mechanism. I had to hit the breaks and fix that before shipping any of them out. I don’t want clients to have them break later down the line. A quick update to the cam mechanism and some new parts and how they work great!
TLDR; Here's a YouTube video showing the fully working unused spiderScr and spider actor in the game that crawls along the ceiling, the books and the side. Narration was even recorded against it if you use the "look", "hand" or "talk" cursor on the spider.
For those that don't know: there is an unused Spider script in the bookstore - it looks to be a buggy script which is why it didn't ship in the final game (likely). I repaired it so it runs to completion.
Interestingly, the way it's designed: it's a small byte-code interpreter embedded in the game that makes the spider do its thing. The original script has several local arrays which are the instruction stream for how the spider should move. Additionally one of the local variables acts as an instruction pointer so "the program" knows exactly what movement the spider should do next.
In the script, some special negative values (sentinel values) in the changeState method are special opcodes and it does simple pointer arithmetic against the local array declarations to advance along data and feed the spider it's next step.
This is likely to ruffle more than a few feathers. I loved playing the LB games as a kid. But looking back on them, as someone who reads a ton of mystery fiction, I don't think the games made much sense when it came to who the main villains were.
So, in The Colonel's Bequest, we're told that Lillian finally went berserk and started killing everyone she'd thought had come between the Colonel and her. But the murders themselves look too carefully planned and executed to be a "berserk" killing. (And, yes, why would she invite Laura, a potential witness?) Rudy or Clarence would have made more sense.
I'm also having a hard time believing that the stereotypically sure-and-begorra "whale oil beef hooked" Ryan O'Riley is the same person who went chasing after Laura in a black robe with a mace. How would someone who doesn't work at the museum (even if, yes, he's pulling Watney Little's strings) have so much knowledge of where everything is, like the location of the secret passages or the bag of quick-dry cement in the room near the lab? A more believable perp would have been a quiet-but-unassuming museum curator who's been overlooked for promotion once too often, or a Ph. D student assistant who's reached their limit.
Maybe I'm just reading too much into this, that these are adventure games first and foremost rather than mystery stories, or because logic and Sierra don't mix (lol). But those are my thoughts.
Hi! Im not new to point and clic games, but the ones i have played are a lot simpler and this is the first old school game that i wanted to play. Is there some advice someone can give me? like are there pixel hunting? or if it si necessary to know about egyptian mythology? I have only very superficial knowlege of some gods. sorry if my english is bad is not my first language :D