Games PC KING S QUEST VIII-MASK OF ETERNITY User Manual

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	King’s Quest I :
	Quest For The Crown (1984)
	Originally commisioned by IBM as a
	showpiece for their ill-fated IBM PCjr, Roberta
	Williams’ King’s Quest would only become an
	industry bestseller the following year when it
	was released for the IBM PC and new Tandy
	1000 computers. Being the ﬁrst game to fully
	support the newly introduced EGA color card,
	King’s Quest clearly demonstrated the superior
	16-color capabilities of the then $400 optional
	video card. The player directs game action by
	way of text-based commands (example:
	“OPEN DOOR”) and use of the keyboard
	arrow keys to control the hero’s onscreen
	movements.
	This original King’s Quest game was released
	later in an updated version as King’s Quest 1:
	Quest for the Crown. The new version (a
	contemporary of King’s Quest IV), allowed the
	use of icons rather than a text parser interface,
	and had updated graphics and sound to keep
	up with the games of that time.
	Synopsis:
	The King of Daventry is nearing the end of his
	life. Tragically, he has no heir to carry on the
	royal line, and he worries that his kingdom will
	be left without a leader. Daventry is already a
	shadow of its former glory, as the three
	treasures of the realm have been lost to the
	ages. And so the king summons his bravest
	knight, Sir Graham, and sets him on this quest
	— return all three of the lost treasures, and the
	throne will be his. Not an easy task, but the
	recovery of the Mirror, the Chest of Gold, and
	the Shield will take Sir Graham through
	mythical perils and magical dangers, and forge
2	a new kingdom from the ruins of the old!
2

King’s Quest II :
Romancing The Throne (1985)
This sequel to the original King’s Quest
provided not just a second look at the life of
King (formerly Sir) Graham of Daventry, it also
began a tradition of using King’s Quest as a
training ground for future designers. Future
Space Quest series designers Scott Murphy
and Mark Crowe joined the development team,
making this game an even bigger hit than the
original.
Synopsis:
Sir Graham is now King Graham, inheritor of
the Daventry throne. But he is a king without a
queen, and his subjects fear the heirless fate
which befell his predecessor. Until the day
when Graham beholds a dreadful sight in the
magic Mirror — a beautiful woman held captive
in a secret tower! Smitten, the king vows to
release her. His search for three magical keys
will lead him to an enchanted land on the other
side of the world. To claim his future bride,
Graham must explore underground caverns,
eerie towers, and ocean wonderlands; ride
ﬂying carpets; and meet and mingle with
legendary characters like King Neptune and
Count Dracula!
King’s Quest III :
To Heir Is Human (1986)
The release of this product in 1986 was quickly
met with loud protests from gamers claiming
that this King’s Quest wasn’t really a King’s
quest at all. Because it focused on a young
slave named Gwydion and his attempts to
escape his evil master, players didn’t grasp the
connection between Gwydion and King
Graham of Daventry until they ﬁnished the
game some months later. (This was before	3
	3

Sierra began offering hint books or a hint line.) It was here that a programmer named Al Lowe, the future designer of the Leisure Suit Larry series, learned the internals of adventure game programming. An exciting feature of King’s Quest III was “automagic mapping”. This feature was widely promoted on King’s Quest III’s introduction... however, it was not included in future King’s Quest games, since players’ feedback indicated that it reduced the challenge. This mapping feature was later built into Roberta Williams’ Mixed-Up Mother Goose adventure game for children, where it was better appreciated.

Synopsis:

Step into the tattered shoes of Gwydion, a young slave whose existance has been spent serving the powerful and evil wizard Manannan. But now your usefulness to him is ending, and a landmark birthday approaches

— you are certain that Manannan will choose to end your miserable life that day. With nothing left to lose, you must ﬁnally dare to learn the wizard’s magic spells, explore the world outside the tower you’ve called home, and ﬁnally challenge the wizard himself to save your own skin, and discover the awesome secret of your own past!

	King’s Quest IV :
	The Perils of Rosella (1988)
	This innovative epic invited players to step not
	into the boots of the now familiar adventure
	hero King Graham, but instead into the soft
	slippers of his young daughter Rosella - a bold
	step for 1988, when the audience for
	computer games was almost exclusively male.
	Designer Roberta Williams’ move to attract
4	more female players to adventure gaming was
4

a success, and King’s Quest IV went on to be one of the most successful games of the year. From a technical standpoint, King’s Quest IV also scored big as the ﬁrst commercial entertainment product to support optional music cards. Hollywood composer William Goldstein (Fame) provided the stereo soundtrack, adding new dimensions and motion to the presentation. King’s Quest IV was the ﬁrst 3-D Animated Adventure to use Sierra’s improved graphics system, and allowed the player to use a mouse to move their character around the landscape.

Synopsis:

King Graham is hanging up his adventurer’s cap for good! With his beautiful queen at his side and his kingdom momentarily at peace, he prepares to pass that symbol of his questing youth to one of his two children. But before he can speak, he collapses, struck down by a fell magical disease! Now his fate lies in the hands of his daughter Rosella, who must journey to a faraway land on a frantic search for the one item that can save your father from certain death. But when Good and Evil vye for the throne of Faerie, you can bet that no task is as simple as it seems. Soon, the ailing Faerie Queen has Rosella on a quest of her own, to stop an evil sorceress from taking over. Only by saving the Faeries can Rosella save her father — but who’s going to save Rosella from ogres, witches, and ghosts?

King’s Quest V :

Absence Makes the

Heart Go Yonder (1990)

A computer game on a CD? Unheard of! No
game since the original King’s Quest had the
impact of King’s Quest V, which redeﬁned	5
	5

adventure gaming in game play, design and overall presentation. It was Sierra’s ﬁrst million- dollar-plus development effort. Designer Roberta Williams assembled an unequaled team of animators, artists, musicians, and programmers to make the project a reality. A new interface was designed to appeal to a larger audience, and extra efforts were taken to make the game an attractive entertainment venture for every member of the family. No more typing ‘open the door’ — now the player could simply use their mouse to click a ‘hand’ cursor on the door.

Sales of King’s Quest V during its ﬁrst year shattered all known records for computer games. Led by Emmy award-winning producer Bill Davis, King’s Quest V made the leap in graphics resolution to full 256-color VGA. Animations and backgrounds advanced from “computer art” to true handpainted, life-like scenes inhabitied by life-like and ﬂuid-animated characters. Over ﬁfty voice actors lent their talents to the effort, making King’s Quest V the most elaborate and cinematic game to date.

Synopsis:

A year has passed since Princess Rosella’s journey to Tamir, and King Graham’s health has been fully restored. The Royal Family of Daventry is whole once more, and all is well with the Kingdom. But unbeknownst to Graham, his beloved family will soon be in grave danger! Somewhere far away, a powerful presence watches the castle of Daventry with evil intent. Mordack, a wizard even more powerful than the late Manannan, has concocted a dreadful plan: to capture the castle of Daventry, and the Royal Family within. He waits for the right moment to strike - when

King Graham will be helpless to stop him. On that fateful day, King Graham will return home to ﬁnd that his castle and his family have disappeared. Graham must don his adventurer’s cap once again and ﬁnd Mordack before harm can come to Rosella, Alexander, and Valanice. With Cedric the owl, his relucatant guide, Graham journeys through forests, across deserts, over mountains and oceans in search of the evil wizard who holds the Royal Family and the castle in his grasp.

King’s Quest VI :

Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (1992)

From the opening sequence of the game, there could be no doubt that if King’s Quest V redeﬁned what computer gaming actually was, King’s Quest VI provided the quality standard for the next generation. The state-of-the-art “ﬂoating camera” sequence that opened the game, featuring young Prince Alexander as he sets out to ﬁnd his “girl in the tower,” gave computer gamers the world over a real view of what the new age of multimedia computers could bring to classic storytelling. The character graphics were based on motioncaptures of real actors, giving the game an unprecedented ‘feel’ of reality.

The King’s Quest VI love song “Girl In the Tower,” a soulful duet featuring the voices of Bob Bergthold and Debbie Seibert, rivaled the best motion picture anthems of the year. Continuing in a long tradition, Jane Jensen, who would go on to design the industry bestselling Gabriel Knight”!: Sins of the Fathers, assisted Roberta Williams in game design of this epic.

Synopsis:

Prince Alexander sits in the throne room of Daventry, longing for the beautiful Cassima. Suddenly, just as it had done a score of years ago for his father, the magic Mirror sprang to life to show him an image of his beloved. But one look at her distraught face made it clear that something terrible had happened to her! Immediately, Alexander sets off by ship for her home — the Kingdom of the Green Isles.

Rather unfortunately for Alexander, the Green Isles are surrounded by rocks and reefs, and he is shipwrecked. Washed up on the shore with little more than his signet ring and a single coin, he must unravel the twisted schemes of an evil vizier, restore the kingdom to its rightful rulers, and win back Cassima’s heart... before she is married to someone else!

	King’s Quest VII:
	The Princeless Bride (1994)
	King’s Quest VII featured an innovative chapter-
	based design, an intelligent bookmarking
	system for saving games, and an easy point-
	and-click interface, making the game more
	intuitive for the novice gamer, while still being
	challenging for those who had enjoyed the
	series for the past 10 years. This was the ﬁrst
	King’s Quest game which could not be
	released on diskette, as the number of disks
	which would be required to hold the ﬁles would
	never ﬁt in a game box, or even multiple game
	boxes! The graphics were breathtaking in
	scope, created by a team of animators who
	drew individual images, cel-style, and then
	digitally added color and sequenced the
	images to produce motion. The resulting
8	animation not only set new standards for game
8

graphics, but also rivaled or surpassed the animation available on TV or ﬁlm.

Synopsis:

Rosella of Daventry is reaching marriagable age, and her mother Valanice hopes to ﬁnd a suitable match for her daughter. Unfortunately Rosella has no interest, either in the men her mother has chosen, or in marriage itself! As the two of them walk in the woods, discussing this very subject, Rosella sees a small dragonsprite leap from a pond, leaving behind it an image of a fantastic castle ﬂoating in the clouds. Intrigued, and feeling mischevious, Rosella dives into the pond and disappears. Valanice leaps in after her, and the two ﬁnd themselves drawn into a vortex of magical energy, and seperated.

Now each woman must pursue her own quest

— Rosella to save the Volcanix Underground from the evil witch Malicia, and Valanice to ﬁnd her daughter. Before they can be reunited, each must cross the land of Eldritch, face the dangers of Ooga Booga, delve into the world of spirits and legends, and ﬁnally confront Malicia in the heart of an active volcano!

History of the King’s Quest Series	........................2
Installation ..........................................................	12
Main Menu ..........................................................	12
New ....................................................................	12
Load ..................................................................	12
Save....................................................................	12
Options ..............................................................	12
Replay Intro ........................................................	12
Quit ....................................................................	12
Back to Game ....................................................	12
Options Menu ....................................................	12
Graphics Mode ..................................................	13
Performance Issues ............................................	14
Games Controls ..................................................	15
The Interface ......................................................	15
Controlling Connor ..............................................	15
Controlling the Camera ......................................	16
First-Person/Third-person ..................................	16
The Cursors ........................................................	17
Conversations ....................................................	18
Pushing ..............................................................	19
Jumping ..............................................................	19
The Rope and Hook............................................	20
Rocks ................................................................	20
Hand Weapons ..................................................	21
Ranged Weapons ..............................................	22
Armor..................................................................	23
The Magic Map and Teleporting ..........................	23
Gold....................................................................	24

Inventory Items....................................................	25
Health and Magic Items ......................................	25
The Mask ............................................................	26
Health and Experience Meters ............................	27
The Lands ..........................................................	28
The Kingdom of Daventry....................................	28
The Dimension of Death......................................	28
The Swamp ........................................................	29
The Underground Realm of the Gnomes ............	29
The Barren Region ..............................................	29
The Frozen Reaches ..........................................	29
The Realm of the Sun ........................................	29
The Monsters ......................................................	30
Hints ..................................................................	37
Credits ................................................................	38
Team Mask ........................................................	38
Additional Credits ................................................	38
Cast ....................................................................	39
Customer Services..............................................	40
Limited warranty..................................................	41

Installation

Start Windows 95/98.

Insert the King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity disk into your CD-ROM drive. If you have disabled AutoPlay, click on the start button, select [Run].

Type “D:\SETUP” and press [ENTER].

(If your CD-ROM is not named “D:,” substitute its letter instead.)

Main Menu

New

Click on this or press [ENTER] with the “Mask” icon next to it to start a new game.

Load

Click on this or press [ENTER] with the “Mask” icon next to it to go to the load game screen. Once there, you can load a previously saved game.

Save

Click on this or press [ENTER] with the “Mask” icon next to it to go to the save game screen. Once there, you will be able to save your current game and/or multiple games.

Options

Click on this or press [ENTER] with the “Mask” icon next to it to go to the options screen. Once there, you will be able to set many of the game settings.

Replay Intro

Click on this or press [ENTER] with the “Mask” icon next to it to watch the opening movie. Once the movie starts, you can exit it by clicking or pressing [ESC].

Quit

Click on this or press [ENTER] with the “Mask” icon next to it to quit the game.

Back to Game

Click on this or press [ENTER] with the “Mask” icon next to it to return to a currently running game.

Options Menu

	Here you can select a number of different game options.
	When you ﬁrst install the game, the install will attempt to
	set all the options speciﬁcally for your machine based on
	your hardware. Here’s what can be adjusted:
	Graphics: This will take you to a new screen where you
12	can adjust your graphic options.

Graphics Mode

The three graphic modes available are Direct Draw, Direct 3D, and 3DFX. If you have a 3DFX card, Direct 3D will be grayed out as you’ll want to run in 3DFX mode. If you don’t have a 3D hardware accelerator then both 3DFX and Direct 3D will be grayed out.

(Note: Some 3D cards don’t support the full set of 3D features required for King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity For more information about this, check the readme ﬁle.)

Resolution: 640 x 480 is available in all modes. 800 x 600 is available ONLY to Direct 3D and 3DFX and then ONLY if your card has at least 4 megs of available texture ram.

Dynamic Lighting: On/Off. This feature is suggested only for Pentium II/266 or faster. This makes many of the lights in the world dynamic, effecting the objects near them.

Connor Shadows: On/Off. Available in all modes, this casts a shadow from Connor.

Monster Shadows: On/Off. This feature is ONLY available if you are running in Direct 3D or 3DFX mode. Like Connor’s shadow, this will cast a shadow from all monsters.

Character Shadows: On/Off. Available in all modes, this casts a shadow from all characters.

Object Shadows: On/Off. This feature is ONLY available if you are running in Direct 3D or 3DFX mode. Like Connor’s shadow, this will cast a shadow from many of the objects in the world.

Brightness: Allows you to set how bright the game looks on screen. If this option is grayed out, then your card does not support this kind of gamma control.

Keyboard: This will take you to a new screen that will allow you to remap a number of the game key controls.

Sound Volume: Individually for music, sound effects, and speech.

Subtitles: On/Off. Take a guess . . .

+ 29 hidden pages