Development
This was allegedly the first adventure game featuring auto-mapping, with a "magic map" found in the game that can be used to teleport to most locations that the player has visited before. This feature was unpopular among some fans who claim it made the game too easy; hence, magic maps in future Sierra games were more limited in their teleporting ability.
Roberta collaborated with a team consisting mainly of the same people that worked with her on the previous two games, but more people were involved in the production this time. Al Lowe, who made the music in King's Quest II, became the lead programmer of King's Quest III, while his wife Margaret made the music instead. This was the game on which Al Lowe cut his teeth before moving onto his own series, Leisure Suit Larry.
King's Quest III was the biggest and most ambitious game Sierra made up to that point. Roberta Williams said that "My previous games, from Mystery House to King's Quest II, were all great. But they were essentially glorified treasure hunts...your object being to win the game by finding and collecting items. It was not possible to have bigger and more complex plots than that thanks to technical limitations."
By the mid-1980s, the new generation computer platforms such as the IBM AT, Amiga, and Macintosh were faster and sported more memory as well as standard hard disks. Thus, it was now possible to develop games of greater complexity than had been possible on 8-bit machines.
The Apple IIGS version had improved music and sound effects.
The game was released on five 5.25" floppy disks and three 3.5" disks. It became Sierra's second largest game after Time Zone (six disks). It was almost 50% larger than King's Quest I or King's Quest II. KQ3 had 104 screens, whereas KQ1 had about 80 and KQ2 had about 92.
The developers also introduced a real-time clock, with actions based on the clock. The developers also introduced an automatic map; although it was panned by critics and was never used in future King's Quest games, it was later re-introduced in Mixed-Up Mother Goose.
Read more about this topic: King's Quest III: To Heir Is Human
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