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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