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The Sierra spirit is alive with the sound of music.



<span class="bold">Order of the Thorne - The King's Challenge</span>, a musical quest to relive the days of glorious adventuring, is available now DRM-free on GOG.com for Windows, Mac, and Linux with GOG Galaxy achievement support.

Say what you will about the fairytale lives most rock stars lead, but writing songs is hard work. You must constantly expose yourself to the public, find inspiration in the strangest of places, and occasionally deal with bad-tempered, talking turtles. Yes, even while sober.

Finn is an ambitious bard, one of those brave enough to take on the King's Challenge: to compose "the greatest ballad ever", thus becoming Hero of the Faerie Kingdom. Basically what any decent songwriter is after. Play your magical lute as you follow Finn across the land, filling people's lives with entertaining noise, and your repertoire with all sorts of useful tunes. If you succeed, the King is willing to grant you any wish you ask of him. Like getting to relive the glory days of point' n 'clicks of yore, brought back by the people behind the beloved Quest for Infamy.



Enchant the enchanted land of Uir with your music and become the composer and subject of legendary ballads in <span class="bold">Order of the Thorne - The King's Challenge</span>, DRM-free on GOG.com.
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flashpulse: A lot of people use XP for many reasons and one of them is gaming. Just how people use 98 for DOS gaming.
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shmerl: Firstly, not a lot of people. Why would anyone use it now? And it's costly for developers to support an obsolete OS, especially open source projects like AGS shouldn't waste their time on it. If you want to add XP support to it because you critically need it - feel free to contribute your efforts (or sponsor such support): https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags
Actually it's not costly at all. I'm a developer myself. It's just as simple as compiling in XP and making any minor adjustments to the code for a newer OS if needed. Quite frankly, if it wasn't for unicode, you can compile an app on Windows 95/98 and have it run every OS up to Windows 10. All apps should support unicode though, so I don't recommend that. It's better to make separate exec's for 95/98/ME. Then one for XP and up. I've done it myself.
Post edited January 27, 2016 by flashpulse
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flashpulse: Actually it's not costly at all. I'm a developer myself. It's just as simple as compiling in XP and making any minor adjustments to the code for a newer OS if needed. Quite frankly, if it wasn't for unicode, you can compile an app on Windows 95/98 and have it run every OS up to Windows 10. All apps should support unicode though, so I don't recommend that. It's better to make separate exec's for 95/98/ME. Then one for XP and up. I've done it myself.
So, feel free to add that support to AGS, if you can convince project maintainers that it's needed. Even major browsers already dropped XP support and for a good reason.
Glad to see this is out. QFI was great, looking forward to playing this one.
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Blackthorne519:
I've just finished the game and I have to say, I quite like it. It's not the most difficult adventure game, but then, I started with King's Quest. (Before there was a number on it. I still have the old IBM PCjr box somewhere. *g*) Thanks very much for an enjoyable, old-school-style game.

I just have one question about the achievements: The "Drops of Juniper" one didn't pop for me when I got the berries. Is there a special condition or non-obvious way to complete the task in order to get the achievement, or have I encountered a bug?
I remember missing this on kickstarter and noticing the backerkit opiton to pre-order and support and had it open in a tab in firefox and never got around to going back and pre-ordering. I still have the tab open. How slack am I.

Well I guess I can just pick them up on GOG. If you want the full soundtrack, here is the bandcamp link and you get your FLAC option https://jamesmulvale.bandcamp.com/album/order-of-the-thorne-the-kings-challenge-ost
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Blackthorne519:
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penumbren: I've just finished the game and I have to say, I quite like it. It's not the most difficult adventure game, but then, I started with King's Quest. (Before there was a number on it. I still have the old IBM PCjr box somewhere. *g*) Thanks very much for an enjoyable, old-school-style game.

I just have one question about the achievements: The "Drops of Juniper" one didn't pop for me when I got the berries. Is there a special condition or non-obvious way to complete the task in order to get the achievement, or have I encountered a bug?
Thank you very much! I remember gaming on old PCJr's and Tandy 1000s myself. My cousin's neighbor had a PCJr we played KQ2 on all the time, and my grandfather had a Tandy 1000 that he played LSL on - and I used to sneak in and play too!

I'll check the drops of Juniper trigger in the code and make sure everything is okay.


Bt
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penumbren: I've just finished the game and I have to say, I quite like it. It's not the most difficult adventure game, but then, I started with King's Quest. (Before there was a number on it. I still have the old IBM PCjr box somewhere. *g*) Thanks very much for an enjoyable, old-school-style game.

I just have one question about the achievements: The "Drops of Juniper" one didn't pop for me when I got the berries. Is there a special condition or non-obvious way to complete the task in order to get the achievement, or have I encountered a bug?
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Blackthorne519: Thank you very much! I remember gaming on old PCJr's and Tandy 1000s myself. My cousin's neighbor had a PCJr we played KQ2 on all the time, and my grandfather had a Tandy 1000 that he played LSL on - and I used to sneak in and play too!

I'll check the drops of Juniper trigger in the code and make sure everything is okay.

Bt
Man, that reminds me of a time, back in the early 90's when I found a magical file buried within my parents C: directory called 'LSL1.BAT.'
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flashpulse: Actually it's not costly at all. I'm a developer myself. It's just as simple as compiling in XP and making any minor adjustments to the code for a newer OS if needed. Quite frankly, if it wasn't for unicode, you can compile an app on Windows 95/98 and have it run every OS up to Windows 10. All apps should support unicode though, so I don't recommend that. It's better to make separate exec's for 95/98/ME. Then one for XP and up. I've done it myself.
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shmerl: So, feel free to add that support to AGS, if you can convince project maintainers that it's needed. Even major browsers already dropped XP support and for a good reason.
Game making tools are cool for those starting out but I prefer code. Smaller and faster exec's plus it's easier to fix bugs quickly then relying on someone else who develops a game maker app. I just wish more developers who plan to sell their apps/games would use code.

Anyway, XP is still good for gaming. ;)
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Blackthorne519: Thank you very much! I remember gaming on old PCJr's and Tandy 1000s myself. My cousin's neighbor had a PCJr we played KQ2 on all the time, and my grandfather had a Tandy 1000 that he played LSL on - and I used to sneak in and play too!

I'll check the drops of Juniper trigger in the code and make sure everything is okay.

Bt
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fortune_p_dawg: Man, that reminds me of a time, back in the early 90's when I found a magical file buried within my parents C: directory called 'LSL1.BAT.'
HAHA... this is, like, my new favorite post on the internet.

I totally identify with ya!


Bt
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flashpulse: Actually it's not costly at all. I'm a developer myself. It's just as simple as compiling in XP and making any minor adjustments to the code for a newer OS if needed. Quite frankly, if it wasn't for unicode, you can compile an app on Windows 95/98 and have it run every OS up to Windows 10. All apps should support unicode though, so I don't recommend that. It's better to make separate exec's for 95/98/ME. Then one for XP and up. I've done it myself.
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shmerl: So, feel free to add that support to AGS, if you can convince project maintainers that it's needed. Even major browsers already dropped XP support and for a good reason.
the good reason is just because the big developers want 'new toys to play around with' , thats the secret story, there is no moral behind, not that it is not safe anymore because of leaks and more like that (cause these can be fixed), after a while kiddies also get bored of there 'old' toys , so they want new ones :D
Unfortunately this goes for all people including the big smart developers (microsoft) all they want is new, new and new.

Anyways: people are a lot like this aswell: divorcing / leaving partners after x number of years cause they 'felt they were up to': a 'new challenge', well i dont like visions like that my only vision is' never change a winning team' or simply said, stick to the things that work and deliver and do not tempt to create new things just because they look better or modern.

Thats all :D

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shmerl: So, feel free to add that support to AGS, if you can convince project maintainers that it's needed. Even major browsers already dropped XP support and for a good reason.
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flashpulse: Game making tools are cool for those starting out but I prefer code. Smaller and faster exec's plus it's easier to fix bugs quickly then relying on someone else who develops a game maker app. I just wish more developers who plan to sell their apps/games would use code.

Anyway, XP is still good for gaming. ;)
it most certainly is, just like win7 who will be the last good win os standing cause 8(8.x) was bad... (lots of games not working complaints)
and win 10 = pitiful, just awful and a big shame to all the previous windows system.
Win 10 = a big piece of junk.

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Blackthorne519:
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penumbren: I've just finished the game and I have to say, I quite like it. It's not the most difficult adventure game, but then, I started with King's Quest. (Before there was a number on it. I still have the old IBM PCjr box somewhere. *g*) Thanks very much for an enjoyable, old-school-style game.

I just have one question about the achievements: The "Drops of Juniper" one didn't pop for me when I got the berries. Is there a special condition or non-obvious way to complete the task in order to get the achievement, or have I encountered a bug?
Well you can play at least i have been messing around (wasted time) yesterrday for 4 hours
and another 4 hours today, the game wont work...
So i reinstalled QFI and luckily that one did work...
so i have 8 hours wasted , which i should have been playing OOTT
I am going to ask support if its possible to refund this game in store credit cause wasting more (game) time and getting frustrated even more is not good for me.
Ofcourse this sadly removes my goal to never have to ask for refund for a full game, all the games i bought >450 all work, with the exception of OOTT.

And finally i checked for bugs using google and noone has what i have, so i guess i am the only one, even steam who usually has always some posts about bugs hasnt shown any problems like i have.





update: problem solved by OOTT dev: thanks again for the quick reply and solution, i can now play this great game.
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Snorpp: I've contacted you by chat, so I hope you see that! We'll work to get this resolved for you!

Bt
Post edited January 27, 2016 by gamesfreak64
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flashpulse: Game making tools are cool for those starting out but I prefer code. Smaller and faster exec's plus it's easier to fix bugs quickly then relying on someone else who develops a game maker app. I just wish more developers who plan to sell their apps/games would use code.
AGS is a game engine that Order of the Thorne is using. Not sure what you mean by code here. AGS contains lot's of code.
Post edited January 27, 2016 by shmerl
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flashpulse: Game making tools are cool for those starting out but I prefer code. Smaller and faster exec's plus it's easier to fix bugs quickly then relying on someone else who develops a game maker app. I just wish more developers who plan to sell their apps/games would use code.
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shmerl: AGS is a game engine that Order of the Thorne is using. Not sure what you mean by code here. AGS contains lot's of code.
i am not a developer/programmer i dont know anything about that at all.
I always wanted to make games myself, even on the c64 using Gary Kitchens Gamemaker, amos /amos pro on amiga, seuck (shootemupconstruction kit), blitzbasic, and so on...
i have tried so many programs but without any luck so i stopped trying to create them.

I think he means like the games in the 70-80s, the games were relatively smaller, more optimised and maybe better to debug ( i dont know for sure cause i only bought games since my 12 , never disasembled nor debugged any code so i dont know)

But, i think that nowadays things are done with 'frameworks' / engines, / unity stuff and more like that, because this way the games/programs can be distributed/developed also for other platforms ( mobile/apps)

Cause we have to admit, apps/ mobile seems to have taken over priority, example: websites:
mobile first , thats the motto, in the past you would make a simple mobile site,and generally spend much more time designing a cool website for desktop users.
But today and the rest of our lifespan will be mobile first i guess , then scale it up for desktop users, cause mobile is taking over i guess.

Anyway its like vinyl , dutch guilders and more, todays population dont even know what they were :D
Strange but true, some kids never saw a cd, cause its mp3 now on the mobile/players, so they most certainly dont know what a vinyl record is.
Post edited January 27, 2016 by gamesfreak64
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shmerl: AGS is a game engine that Order of the Thorne is using. Not sure what you mean by code here. AGS contains lot's of code.
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gamesfreak64: I think he means like the games in the 70-80s, the games were relatively smaller, more optimised and maybe better to debug ( i dont know for sure cause i only bought games since my 12 , never disasembled nor debugged any code so i dont know)

But, i think that nowadays things are done with 'frameworks' / engines, / unity stuff and more like that, because this way the games/programs can be distributed/developed also for other platforms ( mobile/apps)
Game developers have two options. Either create their engine in-house or rely on existing third party engines. Both approaches have pluses and minuses. Making your own engine is great because you really have full control over quality, features and porting. And developers are very familiar with all inner workings of it, so it's easier for them to find issues. However it comes at a cost. It requires expertise, time and resources to make a good engine, especially for high end demanding 3D graphics and other common features like physics and etc.

It's great when you have all that, and indeed such games tend to come out technically better. However not all can afford it, that's why many use third party engines. In such case developers don't need to spend time and resources on the engine, but focus on the game proper. The downside - many bugs and issues are left to engine developers to fix, it takes longer time to iron out issues because of this indirection and the fact that developers are less familiar with all the inner workings of the engine itself.

I don't think either approach is always better. It depends on situation and resources.
Post edited January 27, 2016 by shmerl
exactly it depends on many factors.
the one downside i mostly experiene with games is (over)heating/performance

50-75% of the (casual)games i have are great games, but let down by 30-50% cpu and gpu usage, sometimes 67% continously if the dev from unity can fix that, then unity is great, i have at least 5-7 games with the gpu/cpu problems
maybe a little more.
Fallen Enchantress is also too heavy on cpu/gpu on my pc...


Some unity games that i bought have normal usage like: Celestian Tales - Old North.

Pillars is way too much gpu/cpu usage, maybe if you have the best gpu/cpu available (to costly for me )
then i assume they dont have any problems, but my gpu is 1 GB ram GTS 250 nvidia, quad core 2.67 with 8 gb ram thats it. i dont have 4 to 6 fans in my c pc, thrre isnt room for that :D (and no cash aswell )
Since most games reviewers online seem to have big fat PC they seldom mentions oevrheating cause they have top of the hill equipment.
But a standard laptop /desktop will be working overtime...
Post edited January 27, 2016 by gamesfreak64
For those having problems with fullscreen preventing Alt+Tab on Linux in Order of the Thorne, see https://www.gog.com/forum/general/general_linux_faq_and_troubleshooting/post541