Hidden Treasures in the King's Quest VII Resource Files (Part 1)
When I skimmed the contents of Space Quest 6's resource files with SCI Viewer, I didn't find too much aside from many of the graphics I had already seen in the game. Consequently, when I first opened King's Quest VII in SCI Viewer, I wasn't expecting too see much aside from the usual graphics either.
I couldn't have been more wrong. KQ7 is full of unused art and animations. I think this is due to it being one of Sierra's first SVGA games, with everyone still getting used to this new engine. Here is a compilation of some of the more interesting finds I've made in the Views and Pics folders. Since most of the Views are animated, I've only described their appearance, but there are lots of graphics to look at on the Pics page. Needless to say, KQ7 SPOILERS BELOW:
EDIT: I'm adding some of the animations, and some still frames from some of the more complex ones as well.
Views:
15: This is an early hi-res version of the Sierra logo. It looks like it was carved out of granite (as opposed to the title used in the game, which was golden).
871: I don't think Rosella ever ran anywhere while she was a troll, yet there is an animation of her running as a troll (from various angles) in the resource files.
960: This view contains low-res action icons, like the ones in KQ5 and 6. It looks as if KQ7 might have been designed to use those icons at first, but then plans were changed (yeah, yeah, obvious comment, obvious comment.)
1209: (Desert) Rosella gets harassed by the jackalope in this view. I don't think this ever happens in the game...
...luckily for Rosella.
1211: The jackalope sticks his head out of his burrow and starts crying. If this is in the game, I don't know what causes it. This happens if Valanice approaches the jackalope's hole after she is able to reach Etheria, when most of the inhabitants of Eldritch are in a panic over the volcano's iminent eruption.
1503: Valanice dies a horrible death, apparently from getting too close to the sandstorm around Farwalker's body (there's even some text in the script describing her getting killed by the storm). I haven't seen this death recorded anywhere, and since there's no fitting death message and it seems impossible to stay in the storm too long, I'm guessing it's not in the game. This actually does appear in the game, but not at the screen with Colin's body. Apparently, if Valanice tries wandering into the desert after drinking a pot of fresh water, she is killed by another sandstorm (near the rocky wall to the north).
2153: (Etheria) This view shows the magic web that Oberon, Titania and Mab string across the volcano getting torn to shreds by the surging torrent of lava -- is this a bad ending that we never got to see? Let me rephrase that: it was my understanding that none of the deaths in Chapter 5 involved the volcano actually erupting, but I might have been misinformed. Boogeyman confirms that this does occur in the game if Otar is not revived in time to stop the volcano's eruption (which I really should have deduced by myself :P).
2559-2561: (Vulcanix bridge) More weirdness. These are small animations of a hooded Edgar and Valanice, running, jumping and swaying on their feet. There are also several animations of cracks appearing in some solid substance and small rocks falling from a great height. It looks as if these were meant to be part of another cutscene where Edgar is hurrying with Valanice to the Volcano Control Room, most likely in the underground itself. One animation seems to show Edgar catching Valanice as she leaps over a large fissure in the ground (not visible in this animation). Maybe Edgar was being too heroic in these cutscenes? :) Although another animation seems to show Valanice rescuing Edgar (this one doesn't seem complete, though).
2606: Rosella trying to get a scale from the crystal dragon's tail and getting squashed by it -- this can't happen in this newer version of KQ7 (which came with the 1997 and 2006 (*bleah*) collections). Here's what Rosella says after getting squashed.
3003-3004, 3052, 3260: (Bountiful Woods) These views show Rosella wading into the River of Life and then back out -- I thought going in the river was fatal for both Valanice and Rosella. These views do appear in the game, but only on the leftmost river screen. If you click on the river once, Rosella wades in and back out, click on it a second time and she jumps in. There's a bug in KQ7 that sometimes "drains" the river of life in Chapter 4 even if Valanice has restarted it in Chapter 3, so these views are easy to miss.
View 4268, 4277: Rosella and Valanice descending the spider web leading to the Ooga Booga kids' house. Neither character can do this in the game. This is possible, but neither character can descend the web all the way, since they get stuck in the web and killed by the giant spider. (contributed by Boogeyman)
4269: (Ooga Booga) This is a pretty bizarre animation of Rosella strapped to a lighted rocket, sailing through the air. It looks like a death scene involving the Ooga Booga kids I never had the misfortune to see.
4501: The Boogeyman jumping on Rosella and grabbing her instead of pinning her to the ground. This View is in the series of Views that are seen in the Boogeyman's home. (contributed by Boogeyman)
4558: Rosella getting snared by a tentacle-like stem from the three-headed plant and eaten by it after getting too close to it -- only without her cloak on. Rosella can't enter the swamp without the cloak. (contributed by Boogeyman)
4563, Loop 1: This shows Rosella knocking on Malicia's door without the cloak on (again, impossible since she can't walk about freely in the swamp without it). Oddly, the other loops in this animation show her holding out Otar the scarab and talking to him and knocking on the door with the cloak on (both of which can or must occur in the game). (contributed by Boogeyman)
4653: (Swamp) The first loop has Rosella (without her cloak) yanking on a thick, thorny vine with a pink flower sprouting from it -- I don't think we ever saw this in the game.
5310: I'm not sure about this view. It's three frames, one contains a bush, another a signpost, and the third a bizarre purple tree. I don't THINK I've seen them in the game, and by the looks of them and their location in the views, perhaps they were meant to appear in the foreground of Falderal, but scrapped later.
The third loop of 5317 (the first two loops of which show Valanice getting the wooden nickel out of the mockingbird's nest) shows Valanice running her hands through her hair, sticking what looks like a hairpin into it, then looking either relieved or exhausted.
5325: Snake oil salesman forcibly grabbing Valanice by the shoulder and directing her away from his shop...I don't think I've ever seen this in the game. This interaction only happens if Valanice shows the salesman her comb instead of hearing about his salve from Attis.
5343: (Falderal) Rosella bending over to the left and sticking her tongue out at something -- a mirror?
6010-6012: "Full-sized" animation of the Edgar riding Necromancer and picking up Valanice. Much tinier in the game.
14590: Valanice tucks something that looks like a stake away.
14600: Valanice running towards giant scorpion with a stake in her hands, striking at it, missing, and dying from its sting.
<--This is a fake cel I cobbled together from the two loops in this animation. EDIT (9-18-09): I finally realized that SCI Viewer has an GIF export function (I was taking screenshots of each frame and compiling and positioning them individually before this). I exported the two animations and was easily able to put them together in Flash (though I had to remove the shadows because the scorpion's were covering Valanice). I also included a clip with only Valanice, since the scorpion obscures her a lot in the combined animation.
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22305: The first frame of this animation has two cels of Oberon and Edgar that look a lot like colored versions of their character sketches:
26042: Troll Rosella using the hammer and chisel on the dragon's tail. Nothing unusual about this except that the animation is about four times as big as the animation in the game. It looks like the animators merely resized the animations when the characters were farther away from the "camera" instead of creating tinier animations.
26044: Animation of the crystal dragon's tail dropping down (left over from the earlier version of KQ7). There's a similar animation of her lashing her tail and twisting her head as well.
41125: This one shows the Boogeyman walking along, then placing his arms on Rosella's shoulders (while she is disguised as Lady Tsepish) and whispering in her ear in a rather...romantic manner.
Well, maybe not whispering. It's creepy, whatever he's doing.
45581: Rosella getting snared by a tentacle-like stem from the three-headed plant and eaten by it by either getting too close to it or trying to pick the flower growing underneath it without wearing the cloak. Similar to 4558 (above). (contributed by Boogeyman)
52531: Valanice opening a rough door that's just a rough, black outline (this is just a single frame from the loop). Maybe a template of some sort?
53290: As far as I know, if Valanice tries talking to Treasure before meeting Fernando, the Snake Oil Salesman changes her into a statue. However, this view shows him turning her into a doll. The frames in this view are much less "polished" than the statue transformation view.
And lastly, 8021 through 9015 have to be the weirdest views I've discovered. It's a series of animations showing Rosella as a troll, performing various actions and/or expressing various emotions, and each view shows her doing it at a different angle (front, back, side, diagonal facing the camera, diagonal facing away from the camera).
There are animations of her kneeling down (and getting up from that position), getting thrown backwards, sitting down (and getting up from that position), looking up and down, jumping forwards AND backwards, glancing from side to side, reaching out and tugging on something, reaching up, out or down and grasping something (numerous variations on this), falling on her face, staring at her hands, lowering her hands to the ground while they are cupped together, lifting one open hand as if she were releasing a butterfly, looking enraged, gasping in fear, looking irritated, smiling, looking sad, laughing, scheming, and -- perhaps most bizarre of all -- lifting the hem of her dress and showing off her feet (See below).
Some of these animations are missing crucial details (Rosella's bangs disappear in a couple of frames, in a couple of loops there's no hair on her feet), and I was utterly confused by them until I discovered that there were hundreds more animations showing Rosella in her normal form and Valanice* doing similar things (except for the thing with the feet...brr)! Views 8021-9015 are nothing but animations of Valanice and Rosella doing things.
Only a tiny fraction of these animations are featured in the final game (e. g., Rosella and Valanice hopping across the rocks in the dry river, Valanice's startled/annoyed/enraged reactions when the clay pots disintegrate when she touches them, the frightened stances that both of them go into when confronted by various foes), so why on earth was every possible angle for every one of these actions painstakingly animated? To get a sense of how each character moved? You could put together a whole new SVGA game starring Valanice and Rosella with the character animations that didn't appear in KQ7! For those of you who are interested, I've typed up a list of the various animation loops.
*in that order, I was starting from the bottom of the list and working my way up.
This isn't an oddity from the KQ7 resource files, but from the KQ7 non-interactive demo. This demo came with the 15th Anniversary KQ Collection and includes various scenes from the game and clips of Valanice interacting with various creatures in the desert.
One of the first scenes shows Valanice freeing her dress from the cactus* and watching the kangaroo rat and the jackalope bound by. The kangaroo rat's animation looks completely different than it does in the final game; his glasses are missing and he is much larger and paler. Here's a large GIF showing him hopping by, which also shows the demo's incredibly unattractive menu bar. Oddly, the animation of him hopping by that appears in the final game also appears in the KQ7 demo's resource files.
*Oddly, her hair is several shades lighter while she's doing this.
Scripts:
4200: Even though the mouse in Dr. Cadaver's house is named Mr. Nibbler, he is called "Hannibal" in this script.
Script 6700 has some non-code notes apparently added by the programmers. The first one reads: "This game is over. Thank you... thank you very much."
Apparently, the final scene between Rosella and Edgar was meant to be an in-game cutscene rather than an AVI (there are lines of dialogue from both of them in resource.aud). The script for this scene (6800) has a couple of interesting additional notes:
"Oh how beautiful all this is bla bla bla."
A few lines down, there's this one:
"Kiss kiss."
I've pointed out a few lines of interest in this script (6900) (Graham's presence continues to haunt KQ7!).
To the Pics Page -->
