The SQ7.org Project

Icons

We wanted to give SQ7 a classic Sierra point-and-click interface, much in the style of SQ4.

This meant icons. LOTS of icons.

We fleshed out a basic version of the top-menu.
The way it worked was to drop down on-top of the window, partially obscuring it.
We had also played with hiding it, but I never liked the effect.

We actually setup SQ7.org to reflect this menu for a while.
While the action icons were cool in the game, they were more confusing out of context.

I still thought it was cool!

The final version was cleaned up, and rendered more tightly.

We set up the Slage engine to allow you re-arrange the interface buttons as you chose.
You can see the basic idea of that at This Flash (Warning, big).

If I were to do it today, I’d do things differently.

I’d do something more akin the Monkey Island 3 cursor, where clicking brought up a radial menu of options. (In their case 2. In ours, maybe more)
I think it scales better to what people can mentally keep track of. In SQ4, I was always worried that if I didn’t use EVERY option on Everything, I’d be missing the funny.

Cursor

Then again, that was part of what made it lovable.

We went through several revisions of the cursor as well, trying to make it visible, but not too garish.






I think we finally got it, though. More Subtle colors.

Window

Our window went through a few revisions, but was basically the same thing.
We wanted it to look like a StarCon communication panel.

One of the most fun things of doing this project, was watching the artwork evolve.

Not only did so many of the individual artists evolve their styles (Colin Panetta in particular!), but watching the characters come to life was spectacular.

One scene in the later game found Roger Wilco in a Jail cell, working with a bunch of low-lifes.
Colin Panetta put together a bunch of sketches, based on ideas that the team suggested- Primarily Josh and Matt.
Danny (MyFishBone) also made a bunch of sketches, some of which are included below.

Characters

During the Sierra Reunion, I recall one of the questions was about Space Quest 7- One of the details they joked about was having Giant Platapus. Of course, this meant we needed to do exactly that

Prison 4 and 5 were, if I recall, roughly inspired by Cool Hand Luke and JasonX.
Hrmm.. It looks more like George W, though.

LedHead rendered the character, and brought a really creepy vibe to it.
We were going for a sort of robotic friendlyness, almost reminiscent of Sebastian’s toys, in Blade Runner.

In particular, I thought he looked creepy as heck

Architecture

You can see our basic prison cell below- If you have a keen eye, you might recognize it from the animation above.
We were copying the writing style from the Space Quest comics, and the angular rooms fit in with our design for the prison ships architecture.
We also wanted a very mechanical feel, to offset the more organic look you’ll see in later pictures.

Danny did the first version, but due to time constraints people were always showing up, and dropping out again.
Colin polished it- We added a probulator, mostly because the click-events wound be funny, but also because a regular toilet seemed out of place on an Alien ship. These people don’t do things like we do!

Ledhead did another amazing conversion to 3d- The lightbeams are my favorite “effect” here, but the roundness around the edges on the bed is also a very nice touch.



We found we needed two versions of this room- The standard one, but also a side-scrolling version for our Heros to walk on the outside of, exchanging Whedon-esque witty banter.

As part of the SQ7.org project’s history, we created two video trailers for the project, showing off progress.

They were designed to give an impression of where we were, and to help in recruiting more people to the project.

The first one was particularly difficult to put together.
Chris Geibler put together a lot of the Roger footage especially for the trailer.
Scott M put together the flying Mallard, and Troels wrote the music.

This second trailer was put together years later.

The primary reason was because we had been discussing ideas internally about how to show off some more work.
Some people on non-SQ had wondered if we were actually creating anything, or just some sort of weird social art experiment.

The VSB people released a teaser-trailer with only a few bits of information in it, if I recall.
I figured it’d be fun to take the opportunity to respond to them, release more info, and reference the “Adult Swim” bumpers while doing it.

I created this trailer in an evening, which is why it’s not nearly as nice as the one above. It used existing screenshots we had sent to Vivendi, and music Danny had created for us.

I rescued each of these videos, and threw them on Youtube.

Something to keep in mind- When we first launched SQ7 and made these videos, Youtube wasn’t a thing yet.

When projects get started, everyone is fresh and full of energy.

They want to make a big contribution that’s felt right away

One of the ways people often jump into that is by submitting a new Logo for project.
Maybe it just meant our existing logo was pretty bad

Self Made

This was the first logo that I ever tried to make for the project, back when we were getting started in 2001. We needed something quick and dirty to go up on our nascent mailing list.

This comes from about the same period. I don’t think we ever used this one.

Outsourced

Akril made this one a few years ago.

After the project started growing a bit, I decided we needed something at a least a Little better. Since I wasn’t a good artist, and I didn’t want to waste the time of the real artists on the project, I did a paid contest at a site a lot like 99designs. As you can see in some of the designs, they’re back from 2004.