The Making Of The 7th Guest (Part 2)

This is part 2 of the Making Of The 7th Guest video. Check my other videos for part 1.

This tape was included with certain copies of the ground breaking computer game, "The 7th Guest". T7G was the first game to really take advantage of the CDROM medium when it was released in 1992. Full motion video, a beautifully rendered environment and creepy atmosphere drew the player into the complex and interesting story line. The player travelled through the mansion of demented toy maker Henry Stauf solving logic puzzles from the easy to the complex all the while unravelling the mystery of the guests and indeed his own existence. Stauf taunts the player though the game with a mixture of insults, clues and fragments of how the mystery is playing out.

On the technical side the game was a real triumph of the time. Full screen full motion video was used to advance the plot. The environment was a breathtaking pre-rendered 3D mansion, and the high quality (both MIDI and non-synthesized) audio added to the feeling of reality. Note that to all you MYST fans, The 7th Guest did it first and better.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• the
• 7th
• guest
• 11th
• hour
• 13th
• doll
• collector

[TheMightyFatMan]

You can find the sountrack album as "7-11" by The Fat Man and Team Fat

[TheMightyFatMan]

That's my name, Wear it Out!

[quicksilvercinema]

The music in this game really influenced my life... hearing it now, again after a long time immediately brings me back to that time. Thanks to The Fat Man and crew, well done.

[aaroncake]

@Roxor128 Not really that GIF was slow, more that processors themselves were slow and video acceleration was in it's infancy. I remember using the DOS program "cshow" to view GIFs at about that time and it would take 1-2 seconds to fill the 640x480 screen. :-D

[Roxor128]

@aaroncake I didn't know GIF was so slow. Always good to learn something new.

[aaroncake]

@Roxor128 The minimum requirements on the box are a 386DX. I actually played it on a 386SX but had to run the game in 320x240. Which is remarkable, because with the DX being a 32 bit chip and the SX being 16 bit, it's not like the SX was only marginally slower. It was a LOT slower. Trilobyte developed their own compression for T7G. Don't forget, back when T7G was released it would take a full second to show a 640 x 480 GIF. Their compression was able to show 15 FPS at 320x240. Pretty impressive.

[Roxor128]

@aaroncake Huh. Funny. I thought it was designed for a low-end 486. At least, that's the hardware I had when we got our first CD-ROM drive.

PNG actually uses the same compression algorithm as ZIP, and PKZIP was definitely around when T7G was made. GIF was also around at the time, and that format also uses lossless compression. Also, keep in mind that decompressing data tends to be significantly faster than compressing it in the first place.

[aaroncake]

@Roxor128 Remember though, this game was designed to be played on a 386DX. It doesn't have the power to handle the impressive compression we have today. It would actually play on a 386SX in 320x240 mode as well.

[Roxor128]

@LanIost Well, if the image data is quantised to a 256-colour palette first, there's plenty of room for lossless compression to reduce the file size. PNG is lossless, and I've seen some massive compression ratios with images stored in the format. I created a 4096*4096 image containing every colour in 24-bit RGB colour space. The original binary PPM file was 48MB. Conversion to PNG shrunk it down to 58KB.

[DarkF00L]

The music for this game was BRILLIANT. I've carried this soundtrack throughout the years on CDs and MP3s. To this day, it is STILL in my ipod. The Fat Man and Team Fat ROCK!!!

[ilovetosing013]

i remember playing this game when i was like 6 or 7 years old , the only thing in the game that scared me was the lady in white beckoning to you in the hallway and cellar , to this day she STILL freaks me out , and i'm 16 ! xD