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NEWS IN THE WORLD OF GK

GK3: Blood of the Sacred - Blood of the Damned News
by Nico Sels

Main points of interest from the last month:

Computer Games Online spreads official information on Sierra's reorganization. The production of Gabriel Knight III will not be affected by the decisions.

The Interaction magazine was not so lucky. The final issue is released, it contains a four page article on Jane Jensen and Gabriel Knight 3.

~ Official Website ~

Sierra Studios updates the Official Gabriel Knight III Website. The site update features a new progress report, 10 all new screenshots showing off the latest improvements to the engine, new voice-over samples, new links and a new character portrait (Madeline Buthane).

~ Jane Jensen ~

Jane Jensen announces the official release date of September 1st in her Designer Diary [which Gamespot hasn't bothered to post yet :( ]

She also releases a synopsis and a preview bookcover of her upcoming novel: MILLENIUM RISING (available November 99) Both may be found at: The Unofficial Gabriel Knight Homepage.

~ The Team ~

Aubrey Pullman, GK3's "lead environment artist", does an interview for the fans. This interview can be found at: http://www.thixo.com/Sidney/mar22.htm

~ Beta Testing ~

First rumours of beta-testing start to spread on the GK3 Message Boards. Adam Bormann, assistant to Jane Jensen, responds to the rumours: "We haven't started beta testing yet. We are almost to the point where beta-testing will begin. And the way we're going to split the beta-testing up, the first couple of months of testing will only be day 1 of the game. So yes, it's exciting, but don't get too excited yet, we've still got a lot of game to finish."

Later during the month Adam said that the first group of beta-testers had been selected for GK3, the team is not sure however when the actual beta-testing will start.

~ The Music and Sounds ~

From the GK Forum by David Henry (GK3 co-composer and lead sound designer):

"Music in GK3 will loop forever, but not in the way you will expect. It 'builds' the music as it goes out of chunks of music that work well together in any order. 'Looping' is not really an accurate term for what we are doing. Sound tracks are usually made up of combinations of complementary musical material that can be combined in almost any way. So, although a soundtrack will loop, you will probably not hear the same thing twice. Plus, player actions can update a soundtrack. In some cases we do loop in the more traditional sense, too - it depends on what works best for the scene."

"There are also cases where a scene is 'scored' much like what you see in a film (in fact, this is what Robert and I are working on most right now). This really adds to the dramatic intensity during gameplay. So, as to 'full' compositions vs. 'ambient, background-ish', it depends on the situation. Basically, it's whatever works best. A lot of the time, it's extremely effective to use short sections of a theme, and bring in the full composition at the most dramatic moment. Then, a soundtrack can transform to include other parts of the full piece, effectively saying to the player 'hey, remember when this happened?' Pretty cool stuff!"

"BTW, it's all digital audio, and you can set it to 44k, 16-bit stereo (if your machine can handle it - most should). As I said, pretty cool stuff!! Between Robert and I, we've worked with a lot of different sound systems in games, and this is the first we can really do whatever we want whenever we want, and still maintain absolutely top-notch sound quality."

"Currently, the game works well with A3D and Direct3D hardware, and we have extremely good software emulation if your soundcard does not support the hardware stuff. We are planning to add A3D's 'special' calls to further accelerate the 3D audio. I'd highly recommend their chipset."

~ Misc ~

Misc. Tidbits from the GK3 Messageboards:

-GK3 will take place in 3 days; day 1 has 5 timeblocks, day 2 has 5 timeblocks, and day 3 has 7 timeblocks.

-GK3 will take around 3 cd's.

-All dialogue affects the out come of the game. It is handled sort of like dialogue in GK1, except that Gabriel/Grace will decide what to ask each person about.

-GK3 will have around 30 "verb" icons, like "look", "inspect, "open", "operate", "pick up", etc.

-GK3 will have some scenes that will be pre-rendered, but they are set up to look very much like the game. There are also a few sequences where you won't be able to take control of the camera (for a variety of reasons). But for most of the game, you will be able to set up exactly what you want to look at during a conversation, or let the preset cameras show you what/who we think is important for each scene.

-Every card supporting Direct3D should be supported by the game (including the new G400). Currently, the game only runs in 16-bit color modes, and I'm not sure if that will change. Yes, you will be allowed to choose which of your many video cards the game will be run on.

Current Release Dates

Millennium Rising ~ November 1999

Gabriel Knight: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned ~ September 1, 1999

Fan Website News

~ New Sites ~

The History of the Schattenjägers

if you know of other fan website news, please tell the ... Email ID: gkwriters @Domain: thixo.com

FAN FICTION NEWS

New FanFic

Child of Destiny
by Lady Seraph

This is not a new story but it began last July and the author is now adding to it.

Read the current chapter here:

Blake Backlash Mysteries

Or start at the begining here:

Official Gabriel Knight Fan Fiction Archive

Lady of the Manor
A short story by Maya

Read it at:

Blake Backlash Mysteries

The revenge of the Phantom Clown.
by Veluan

No introduction, this story has to read to be understood :)

Blake Backlash Mysteries

Shamrock Killer
by David de Sola (author of the Voyernich Manuscript)

TEASER: Gabriel is reaping the rewards of his novels, finally getting some kickbacks on book sales and movie rights. Together with Grace, they are digging in the Schattenjäger library for new book material and general reference out of curiosity, and to be better prepared should a case come up. A politically explosive case is developing in Ireland, and they are called in to investigate. Ancient family secrets, paganism, brutal murders, and the IRA. And Gabriel is caught in the middle of it.

Read the first two chapters at:

Blake Backlash Mysteries

When the Roses Turn Black

Intro: To Lacey Ritter, the Shadow Hunters were just a game she perused in her spare time. But without warning, Lacey's double in another universe--who happens to be a Schattenjäger--traded places with her. The reason is that Lacey's universe had no one to fight an insidious evil clawing its way up from the darkness. The terrible price for both girls is that neither of them will ever be able to return home. Now, to keep alive the new world she is beginning to care for, Lacey must become a Schattenjäger herself, balancing her heart and mind lest the shadows she hunts seduce her.

The beginning of this story can be found at:

Blake Backlash Mysteries

When Wolves Meet in the Moonlight
by Silver

This story is a -slash- story. This means that is deals with a homosexual relationship between two males. In this case between Friedrich von Glower and Gabriel Knight. It also contains certain sexual actions between the two of them. For now, they are rather harmless, but they sure will become more intense in the course of the story. If you do not wish to read such things: do not proceed.

Blake Backlash Mysteries

News

The Attic

~The Old Poll~

"I'm surprised. At first it seems like Wolfgang's winning in the Polls for a while, then suddenly Von Glower caught up. I guess this is a wake-up call to all those fanfic writers out there -- the fans want more Von Glower stories. So, if you want responses, write more Von Glower stories."

"Hell, write more stories, people!"

MadWoman

~The New Poll~

The Attic has a new poll. Vote for your choice of the actress to play Grace in GK the Movie :)

~Blake Backlash gets a face lift~

The Fan Fiction Message Board now has a slightly different format. It only loads the last 25 messages. To go back further there is a scoll menu at the bottom of the page. Since the time strings are kept on the board no longer affects the loading time, MW has decided to keep the messages for the previous 90 days :)

1999 Annual Fan Fiction Contest

Six months have passed since the last contest, so 6 months remain till the next one. The Advertising for the contest begins mid-September with the voting commencing the 15th of October. The winners are announced on Halloween.

Why then? Because Halloween is a fun theme to do a webpage around, and summer is a better time to write/finish fanfic :)

Just a friendly reminder. The page from the previous year is still around in case you want to check out the categories etc. We don't know if this year's categories will be exactly the same or not, but they should be fairly close.

More on this next issue perhaps we can even vote somewhere. I do see definite possibilities for the addition of four categories:

Poetry
Hiaku
Fic Challenge
Jokes?


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