WayneSikes56
Random nobody
Level: 4
   
Posts: 1/2
EXP: 152
For next: 127
Since: 05-05-14
Since last post: 8.0 years
Last activity: 8.0 years
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Hey guys - I just stumbled across this forum totally by accident but thought I'd contribute a bit. My name is Wayne Sikes. I'm the guy whose name you see in Her Interactive's early Nancy Drew games. I created the engine, all art processing tools, and all publication tools and formats including AVF's. Good job on starting to crack it!  Actually I find it a bit flattering that after 20 years you're studying my work. I've published many other games since then but I still have a fondness in my heart for the old Nancy Drew games. We had a blast making them. We almost went broke a few times since back then women didn't generally buy computer games but after the first few titles they really caught on. I left Her Interactive years ago and miss some of the awesome folks I worked with in creating those games. (I did the first 13 titles, then moved on to greener pastures....). Since the AVF format is proprietary to Her Interactive, I won't give the details openly. I did see a private messaging system in this site so just private me and I might pass along a few tidbits of code for you if you're still interested. Also, i'm at wayneloe@gmail.com
Wayne
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WayneSikes56
Random nobody
Level: 4
Posts: 2/2
EXP: 152
For next: 127
Since: 05-05-14
Since last post: 8.0 years
Last activity: 8.0 years
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| If you want to email me, I can help you out with a few things (wayneloe@gmail.com) Now you got me curious how long it took Her Interactive to get my name outta their code bank....hehe I'll have to snag a few new games and poke into them. I took a look at your CIFTREE analysis. Hey - you're pretty darn close... I wrote a tool for them called 'HIP' - for Her Interactive Processor - that was used for making CIFTREE's. They were the general storage system for all game scenes, static or animated art 'decals', etc. Everything in a ND game played (at least those games I did) as individual scenes. Each scene was defined by one location you could 'stand' in and each scene was defined by a 'HIF' file which outlined everything that could happen at that location including the conditional logic for possible things to happen. The HIF format was fairly primitive - almost a c-language script - and originally I had a fellow writing a cool editor to build every scene. Well....there's always drama with game companies and when Microsoft moved in and took over Her Interactive, the new Microsoft CEO immediately began firing much of the staff. The fellow that had written our great HIF editor was given a 1 hour notice to vacate and during that time he blew away all instances of the editor he'd worked for months on. So our game scene designers ended up using the primitive scripting system for all scene design from then on. I'm glad you like the old ND games. I had a blast making them. I remember the day one of our titles (Message in a Haunted Mansion) officially sold over a million copies. Made it feel worthwhile we were making people happy with the Nancy games. |
