Talk:Knight Lore/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Ritchie333 (talk · contribs) 12:59, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

As requested, I'll take this one. Never liked it as much as later things like Sweevo's World and Head Over Heels, but it is historically important. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:59, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

General

• A number of spellings were US English. As this is an article about a game produced by a British software house, I think it should use UK English and have changed things accordingly.

Lead

• General convention is for a 15K article to have about 3 paragraphs, so some stuff might need to go. I think the technical description of Filmation could be dropped and the final two paragraphs combined.
• The prose in "Reception" suggests contemporary reviews of the game have been mixed. That should be mentioned in the lead.

Gameplay

• "Some of the castle's monsters only attack Sabreman when he is a Werewulf" - I seem to recall this is mainly the cauldron in the Wizard's room that you had to enter as Sabreman - what else?
• "The castle consists of a series of 128 rooms" - as this is cited to an Amstrad magazine, can you confirm it was 128 screens for all formats?
• "Sabreman jumps higher when in werewolf form" - really? I didn't know that!
• "the player must return 14 objects" - worth mentioning the order changes every game?

Development

• "and released the other two [Knight Lore and Alien 8] soon after" - I seem to recall there was about a six month gap between them
• "Prior graphics drew one image sprite atop another" - I believe the technical term is "planar sprites", here is Crash giving Ultimate's earlier game Jetpac as an example
• "[[logical conjunction|combining]]" - while I realise this is running bitmasks against several planes, another term for the link might make this more understandable to non-techies. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, though.
• "Ultimate did not circulate screenshots of the game in its press materials or cover art" - do we know why they did this? To avoid people copying the idea, to increase suspense and excitement at playing the game for the first time, both or something else?
• "Knight Lore was later released for the BBC Micro (unofficial)" - I'm sure there's a better way of writing "(unofficial)" but I can't think of anything off the top of my head

Reception

• Can you explain what a "Crash Smash" is - not everyone will understand the term
• "They noted how the game's masking technique addressed issues of flicker and attribute clash" - this sounds like repetition, the "development" section already covers this
• "Amtix noted the colour additions over the monochromatic original" - noted what, exactly?

More later.... Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:50, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Legacy

• "Edge branded their version of Filmation" - what does this mean?

• I've covered this. It was called "Worldmaker", but tbh, I'm not sure it's essential to the article. Chaheel Riens (talk) 12:53, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

• "it [Gunfright] was more robust than its predecessor" - meaning Nightshade?
• What does the source "Rare Gamer n.d." mean?
• "They sold Ultimate to US Gold in 1987" - I thought it was earlier than that
• "The developer of The Great Escape saw Knight Lore as a rival that spurred him to work for nine on Where Time Stood Still" - what does this mean?
• Did the release of Doom help kill off the Knight Lore clones for good, I wonder?

Images

• The caption for File:Knight lore 3.gif is a bit squashed, could it either be trimmed or the image expanded?

Summary

• I've gone through the article and can't think of anything else to report. I've done some copyediting of the minor issues. It doesn't look too far from meeting the GA criteria, so I'll put the review on hold. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:07, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

@Ritchie333, thanks for the review! I think I've covered everything, but let me know if there's anything else.

• I tagged the article to use British English when I wrote it (British coverage of major British-made game in Britain—otherwise I would not have bothered), so feel free to convert whatever I missed.
• Lead length should be a rough guideline here. I think it's still condense enough to the guideline but I'm happy to trim what you think might need trimming but since Filmation is the technical advancement that gave the game the lengthy Legacy section, I thought I would be remiss had I not explained its basic technical function.
• Retrospective reviews are already in the lede (found its controls outdated and frustrating in the thirty years since its release) unless you wanted something else.
• Re: attacking Sabreman in werewolf form: I went with the source, which indicated a plurality.
• Re: 128 rooms—earlier mags didn't indicate and I have no reason to believe the port was different in content except where noted, so the citation should be fine. If I recall correctly, only one source of the whole lot alluded to the random sequence of the 14 items, so I think it's fine as put. Actually, I went with what the source said on the rest of these. They're mostly online, if you want to verify that I paraphrased correctly, but let me know if you need help verifying a statement or need me to provide any offline reference.

• I'll just add here that the items weren't random, but were in a looped order, and starting at a random point. Once you'd collected three of the items you could compare them to a list and know in what order you had to collect the next eleven. This was similar to the not-in-fact-random locations of the amulet in Sabre Wulf. ISTR that the sequence was noted on a KL map - CRASH, I think. If WOS plays ball, I'll try to find it later, or mention elsewhere - YS's Hack Free Zone may also have listed them. Again though - is it necessary to make this point, as the current version says "14 objects in a specific order" Chaheel Riens (talk) 13:04, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

• I don't recall any source talking about planar sprites (tried to minimize jargon with these technical areas).
• On the nondescript box art—I haven't read an official answer. Anyone who has commented just called the Stampers hardworking and private people who possibly enjoyed their more secretive demeanor.
• I had tried to explain Crash Smash the first time around. I think it reads straightforward that it's a recommended title of that issue of the magazine, let me know if you think more needs to be said.
• The Reception section repeats the attribute clash because it's one thing that the devs said they addressed it and another thing that reviewers at the time noticed and called it out specifically. Also the reviewers called out how they addressed flicker, which wasn't in the dev source material.
• "noted the colour additions" I don't think they said anything non-obvious about it, but they both noted that the game had more colors (so I thought it worth reiterating).
• Re: Nightshade, yes. "Rare Gamer n.d." is "no date" as in the interview has no listed date and I still wanted to give it a short footnote for consistency.
• Didn't see any Doom connections in the legacy pieces, but perhaps it's waiting for you to write it? Thanks again – czar 15:43, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I've condensed the lead down a bit - have a look and see what you think. I'll also have a look through the comments above and check I'm happy with all of them. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:32, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I think it puts the events/importance out of order but if it works for you and the purposes of the review, it'll do – czar 17:27, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I've gone through a few more things, but basically we now have a comprehensive and well-written article that describes the game and its background in detail, so I'm happy to pass the review now. Well done. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 18:52, 20 August 2015 (UTC)