Space Quest III art timelapse

Because old Sierra SCI engine games store background art in a vector format it's possible to open them up and flip through at high speed to watch them being "drawn".
I don't know the process they used but I like to think it's like looking through time and seeing the original artist at work.

Can you spot Mark Crowe's signature in this video?

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Space Quest
• SQIII
• SQ3
• timelapse
• Sierra
• SCI

[fredrickpendragon]

This certainly does seem to be the drawing process, seeing as how mistakes in the art are sometimes fixed later as though the artist noticed it later and fixed it.

[RavingKunaiX]

You get a SLARG/10.

[Hempulix]

This is fantastic!

[HybridMindGames]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane! I played everyone of the King's Quests, Space Quests, Leisure Suit Larrys.. all so good. Space Quest was always my favorite. This gorgeousness of this art really stands out still today given the limited palette the artist was working with. Loved the song you put this too--very funny.

[XjohnnycolettaX]

Dude, that is so cool...what is that background music?

[JDoucette]

Beautiful artwork.. just amazing... it's just not like this anymore... it lost it when they moved to 256-color digitized artwork.

[JDoucette]

I had King's Quest II on my Tandy 1000 SX and the drawing was slow enough you could see it being drawn and filled. However, I had Space Quest III on the same system, which much more complex artwork, at double the resolution (320x200 instead of 160x200) yet I don't recall being able to watch it be drawn. Perhaps King's quest drew in Video RAM (meaning it could be seen, and was slow, as reading VRAM [for flood fills] is slow) and Space Quest used RAM (meaning it couldn't be seen and was fast).

[matthewdoucette]

this is when their artwork was the best...

[matthewdoucette]

this is awesome

[LordMADevlin]

@Radxix Man, that sucks. Is the source to FreeSCI available? maybe you can have a look at their code to inspire you or somethin'