May 5th, 1997 Dear Adventurer, Welcome to the fourth edition of the Famous Adventurer's Correspondence School! This is just to let you know of some new upcoming things going on with Quest For Glory V: Dragon Fire. Quest For Glory V: Dragon Fire at E3 Quest For Glory V: Dragon Fire will be at E3 this June in Atlanta, GA. Lori Cole and Jay Usher will be there to present our latest fully interactive demo. Expect lots of surprises, multi-player action, character dramatizations and more. The fully interactive demo will be available by mid June and will include samples of Chance Thomas's music. Speaking of Chance's music, Chance will contribute a regular column called The Conductor's Platform in every issue. The New Interactive Demo Available in June, the new demo will feature: The Particle System: This is probably the coolest effect -- you have to see it to believe it. It allows bubbles to trail our hero while he/she swims underwater. During a battle blood splatters and sparks fly. Explosions are absolutely realistic and spectacular. When a fireball is thrown a particle trail follows it. To fully appreciate our particle system you must see it at night. Our day to night system is in. Windows gradually illuminate as night arrives, stars become visible and increase in brightness. Torches and fireplaces flicker. Nine rooms are featured: Westgate, Townsquare, Thieves Guild, The Famous Adventurers Correspondence School, The Docks, Dead Parrot Inn and Casino, Gnome Ann's Land Inn, the Bank and an underwater scene. You'll be reacquainted with some old friends and meet many new characters: Elsa, Wolfie, a mysterious man who has a thing for daggers, the head of FACS, Pholus and more. Animated backgrounds such as waterfalls, twinkling stars, torches and incidental incidents. You'll get to battle a couple of bad guys. Lots of sound fx and samples from some of the themes. And of course, the Dragon AVI is included. The Conductor's Platform Wow, what a response to the music, so far! My mailbox is overflowing and I love it! Thank you for your many compliments and comments. We have posted many of them on a hallway bulletin board at our research and development site for all to see. And now, I have a very important announcement to make: (Timpani roll, please...) Based on your feedback, I'm going to rewrite the Overture and include the classic Quest For Glory V main theme from the previous games. Yes, I know, it should have been an obvious inclusion anyway. So thanks to those of you who brought this to my attention! In other music news, we have completely revamped the audio download page. You're gonna love the new format. We'll have Real Audio files that play almost instantaneously, and download versions of every single cut. Oh, and by the way - some of you suggested using various types of proprietary compression on the high quality files, so that a person doesn't have to wait HOURS and HOURS for it to download. So, we've found a compression that reduces these to a fraction of their original size, while still delivering close to CD quality sound. You ask - we deliver! One final piece of news for you. We said that the download page would be updated from time to time. Well, when the new page gets posted there will be 4 new pieces on it. Two of these are for MAJOR events in the game - "The Rite of Freedom" and "Encounter at Minos' Island". I'd like to know what you think of them. Really. As you can see from this communication, I take your comments very seriously. Until next time... Chance Thomas Quest For Glory V Composer Chance Thomas, Quest For Glory V: Dragon Fire Music Available on CD of all the themes from Dragon Fire will be available for purchase when the game is released. Some of the tracks will contain a "Mystery" vocalist to be announced. Web Page Update I know you're anxious to see everything I'm talking about and June seems like a long time to wait for the demo and the web page seems to be lost in time… The updated web page should be up by May. May?! Yep, May - I think you'll find the wait well worth it. When in May? Sometime in May is all I can say for now. Just a reminder: 1) We've added some music to our web page in both RealAudio format as well as a high quality downloadable format so you'll be able to hear some of the music that's really going in the game. To hear the RealAudio pieces you'll need to be using either Netscape 2.0 (or higher) or Microsoft Internet Exporer. Both of those browsers will need the RealAudio 3.0 "plug in" available from the RealAudio home page: http://www.realaudio.com It's free to download and we suggest you get it since a lot of the audio on the web is now in RealAudio format. 2) We're updating the Image Gallery to get you some of the latest screen shots that will be in the game. The game is changing fast so some of the images on the existing web page are already obsolete. 3) We also added a "F.A.C.S. Newsletter archive" for those of you that have missed one or more issues of this newsletter. 4) I'm still going to remove the sketches from the existing page, so don't forget to save them. Chat Session? What Chat Session? As many of you know, the chat session lasted about 5 minutes after Lori came online. We sincerely apologize to everyone who waited and tried in vain to log in or crashed once they actually made it. We're currently seeking a third party since we just can't handle the load. We've noted from your email the many great suggestions concerning the chat and will hopefully be able to hold the session in about a month. What's up With the Contest? Yes, Quest For Glory V: Dragon Fire is still having a contest!! We can't release any specifics yet, but we wanted to let all of our F.A.C.S. members know about it so you can keep checking the web site (both http://www.sierra.com and http://www.sierra.com/entertainment/qg5) for details. It will be happening really soon (honest!), so stay tuned. (p.s. you might want to practice your drawing ability!!) What's Up With Paul? You may have noted that Paul Trowe's indelible stamp is missing from the newsletter. Well, Paul has left for shaky town L.A. leaving yours truly, Robin Bradley, to basically catch up. And just in case some of you guys try to email me directly with hate mail and such I leave the following adieu, Well, that's about it for this edition of the Famous Adventurer's Correspondence School. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please feel free to email them to qfg@sierranet.net. Some of you have been emailing me directly and unfortunately you need to send everything to the above address since that is the only email account we use to answer mail. Also, please allow some time for us to get back to you since we are now receiving a ton of email from everyone. Thank you for being a member of our F.A.C.S. newsletter, and we'll catch you in a few weeks with some more info on Dragon Fire. Until next time, Robin Bradley Web Boy/Quality Assurance QFG V: Dragon Fire