I always forget how beautiful (especially the music in this game!) and the story is (so rare, the main character’s love interest is a love triangle). The arcade sequence with the ice – was too much. Even when I figured out what to do – I felt like it was too many screens. The timing of the boars and spear was a pain – because it was difficult to get that right – and not being able to save the progress was a further pain. The Black Knight took a few shots to figure out how to knock him off his horse. I liked the riddles and the references back to the goddesses – but that’s why I probably didn’t play this as much as I always did other games – because there’s a lot of referencing back to the manual (which until I got it on gog, I didn’t have an easy way – now I have the pdf).
I made two versions – the first is my play through, including where I hit a dead end (which was after the ice bit, sigh) – when I didn’t have enough money to book passage to Gaza (which was 2 hours and some change into the game!). The second one, I did something different – after the prayers – I went back to the treasury and refilled the bag full of coins again. I also didn’t give as much money to the hunter in the woods. The second video is obviously shorter, since it doesn’t include the dead end.
For those waiting on the sidelines for the bigger, better deal …
… Today is the day!
If interested in an immersive re-imagining of the very first adventure game Colossal Cave 3D, we are presently running a variety of stellar discounts for this holiday season. Take a look!
If still on the fence, be aware of the “Try Before You Buy” option through the Meta Quest 2. In addition, both GOG and Steam also offer demo options. Try the first few levels for free!
Hey everyone, we hope you’re all having a good holiday season. We wanted to do a quick update on the project. We have been in the process during most of this year, trying to move SpaceVenture onto the newer Unity platform. We had built SpaceVenture on an older platform due to the licenses that we purchased back years ago before Unity changed their licensing model. Of course, this was the newest platform back when we purchased the licenses.
What we did not expect was how extremely different things would be on the Apple/Android operating systems during the time period of finishing the game. We originally had licenses for Windows, Linux, Android, Mac, and iOS, however, at this point, the out of date Unity engine that the game was built on, can only produce SpaceVenture on Windows and Linux.
So in order to fulfill the game being released on the other operating systems, we are in the process of moving into the newer Unity engine. As you can probably guess, this has been quite an undertaking due to there being so many changes to the newest engine and the code it supports. We are going scene by scene and fixing all the issues found after the upgrade. Ken Williams’ Cygnus team started to help earlier in the year with this, but due to their game “Colossal Cave Adventure” experiencing some slow downs on its various platforms, they had to switch gears and focus fully on it instead of SpaceVenture.
The SpaceVenture team is now utilizing the newer Unity engine and tools to get everything straight. We are fixing bugs along the way and addressing many of the complaints that we got from our previously released build. We realize that a lot of you would like us to go ahead and release the game onto Steam. It’s important to understand that we only get one shot at making a positive impression with players on Steam, and hopefully get decent ratings/reviews there. We are counting on income from Steam in order to pay for reward shipping to everyone. That being said, if we release on Steam and players are unhappy with the results, it will be tough to make the money we need for the shipping. We don’t want to release the game there until we’ve got it stabilized on the newer Unity platform and have finished addressing concerns from the earlier build. Also once we’ve got things stable, we’ll release an updated build to all of you as well, not to mention Steam keys when the game goes on there.
As always, thank you all for your patience! This has been the longest haul of our lives, but we’re still hauling and not giving up! We hope all of you have a great rest of 2023 and a happy new year!
KEN AND ROBERTA WILLIAMS/ CYGNUSHAVE RELEASED COLOSSAL CAVE
Get it now on all the following platforms and locations!
Some minor changes, and revised the “fan fiction/enhanced ” cutscenes yet again — cleaned up the writing to make it flow better. The major change was now there is a Version Update log at the end, and includes where the most recent version of the PDF can be found.
This is likely the last update; there won’t be another one unless something earth-shattering happens, like Peter Sarrett or Cynthia Vanous contacting me with new information or to tell me I’m wrong about something. I wrote a physical letter to Peter in care of Bungie Games in Seattle a month ago, but there has been no reply yet. I’m not even sure he received it; you know how big conglomerates can be… Cynthia used to have a blog post, but that’s been gone for a couple of years
Spikey, over at the Sierra Help forums, started a High-Resolution project for Gabriel Knight 3. And it’s pretty simple to do!
For example, the left is from the game, the right is Spikey’s adjustment:
So how does it work?
Glad you asked!
Installation:
Create a new folder within your GK3 folder and name it anything, put all the files from the zip in it (for example: hirez)
Edit (or create) gk3.ini with a text editor and put the line
CUSTOM PATHS = YourFolderName
Unzip the following into that directory (hirez, in my example)
Note: You may get a warning that the file/download is not secure. That is because I have not purchased the SSL certificate from the website provider as it has additional fees for maintaining.
This updates the wallpapers found in the various rooms
Additionally – did you know that Gabriel was originally set to change his shirts as the days passed by? For reasons unknown, Gabriel ended up remaining in just his white t-shirt.
If you want Gabriel to wear the green or yellow shirt on day 2, drop the corresponding files in the folder and overwrite. Note that you will have to overlook the BNK video late at night when Grace goes from her date with Wilkes to Mosely’s room, where Gabriel wears the white dirty shirt. He does have plenty of time to change into that of course for whatever reason, but he’ll be back in either yellow or green at Day 3 2AM before reverting to the clean white shirt for the rest of day 3.
Unzip these files into the folder you created (for example hirez). Make sure the files are unzipped there. When you choose where to unzip the file – make sure it’s not creating sub-folders in the directory you created – but actually placing the files there.
Next?
Launch Gabriel Knight 3 and enjoy.
PS: If you still don’t see it – go into GK3’s options in the game, make sure the textures and lighting are set to “High” – see below.
