I don't like to intervene, but I think you guys are not thinking it through. In terms of what happened 1987-94, some chambers could be designated levels one, two or three. But the game changed in 2013 when we played adults in, in an adventure that could not possibly go past level 2. All I was trying to do was to present a genuine game in a somewhat artificial circumstance. So in these terms it mattered little if clue rooms etc were borrowed from different levels (historically).

I am blown away by the fact that you all care about such details 20 years on, but the over-riding aspect of Knightmare is that we strive to make the greater game just that - a genuine challenge in an artificial world. We did that again in Norwich in August. If we carry it forward, and who knows what is to come or not, it will be under the same principles. Its easy to fake these things, especially in a TV environment, but the result if you do it, just makes the whole thing not worth a candle.

It’s not a director’s cut. Much simpler explanation.

Google YouTube didn’t want anything longer than 25 minutes. That was quite hard (well very actually) to do without the sort of butchery which would have made a complete nonsense of the sub plots and storylines. As it is they took a bit of savaging and quite a lot of excellent team interaction had to be lost together with three more dungeon chambers, and quite a bit of Lord Fear, Lissard and Theodora Snitch delivering game information which related to parts of the game we were no longer able to see.

The main purpose of the re cut is to produce an effective selling pilot for a new broadcast vehicle

If you look at the shows on Challenge TV...Fun House, TNA wrestling, Bullseye, Who wants to be a millionaire, all these and more appear on YouTube (and have have done for some time) in either clip or full episode form and this has not stopped Challenge TV from buying the rights to show them.

I appreciate that this is no argument against the legal/copyright side of things however, that of course must be respected.

You usually make good points Insider, but not here I'm afraid.

The shows you quote are gameshows, all of them mass produced in their hundreds and even thousands, with very little residuals to pay, and therefore cheap as chips ro rerun, with their simpler production values. No big decision for outfits like Challenge or other niche channels in the market for moving wallpaper with a soundtrack. Knightmare, as I don't have to tell you was a hybrid - a dramatised adventure game -engaging the talents of a cast of actors who would have done justice to a full blow drama. Expensive to make and very expensive to rerun, especially in comparison to gameshows.

To those of you who have made the point that priracy could be excused as a last resort by genuine fans who would always prefer to pay for the product (if only they could), I do most genuinely sympathise, but that doesn't mean such action is not self-defeating, which is why I pointed it out.

Some perspective on the recording and posting of whole Knightmare episodes on YouTube. I imagine some of you on this site may well have done this without necessarily thinking things through.

Firstly its illegal. Completely illegal. It’s also illegal to post Knightmare clips, but as the primary intellectual rights holder, I have always regarded the posting of clips as ‘promotional’ to the format and its ‘made programmes’, and therefore turned a blind eye. I’m also well aware that its done with affection and in homage to the concept. I think my colleagues at ITV feel the same. I know that most of the long term Knightmare cast concur

So what’s different about the result of recording and posting whole programmes?

Well by doing so you rob the entire cast, not just by the revenues they should have received by an act of piracy, but also you damage and devalue the programmes that were copied, making networks like Challenge less willing to shell out for them, and pay the cast, writing and music residuals. Furthermore you make it even less likely that a new broadcast undertaking would consider the heavy investment in format needed to bring about a fresh version of Knightmare. No-one likes to compete with freebies.

So in summary: if you record and post whole programmes, you stiff the cast, you stiff the composer, you stiff me, and if you’re one who counts themselves part of any bring-back-knightmare campaign, you stiff yourself.

For those already asking, a full edit of and including all the material shot and played in Norwich on July 24/25 will be completed by september and will be made available via an Internet link in due course. This includes the Fountain of energy - described by Theodora Snitch (but deleted), allowing leaks from the Fountain in Level One to fall into Levels two and three, providing emergency energy renewal.

Its a feature you are all going to like, but as a gamestmaster, its partricularly useful for one can place it in perilous positions, forcing the players to take the risk, or not. Look on the end credit screen of the Youtube version and you will see it previewed.

OK: some notes on the reprised Knightmare.

Google didn't want us to show them what a new show would look like, and although they wanted the players to be adult geeks, they were hooked on nostalgia, They also wanted me to take full advantage of two new members of cast who were brought in by them at no small expense. Actually I thought both new girls were excellent.

When it became clear that we had neither the time nor cash to rebuild the live set, I opted for a virtual one as the only choice. We had no time in which to build anything more than basic, so to conceal its deficiencies I packed the opening with a few special effects (like Treguard's transformation) to 'busy' things up. Unfortunately this had the side-effect of slowing things down, and the front of the programme lacked pace. For those of you who remember the Knighmares of the 80s with the aid of 19 years worth of rose-tinted glasses, I would remind you that those programmes often had less pace than a tortoise.

Setting the game difficulty level for a team of highly intelligent adults (no matter what some of you thought of them - they were just that), was also problematic. And I thought we got that about right. Few of the best children's teams would have survived the 18 odd minutes of game-play we threw at them, let alone the scenes you did not see. They coped faultlessly with most of the logic puzzles, and were cruising towards a point when we were planning to freeze time and give them an honourable draw, when they suddenly did something quite silly and killed off their dungeoneer. The credit for this goes to 'Slice Me Dice Me' simply one of the best puzzles we've ever used in Knightmare, and one which also offers immense flexibility and genuine threat.

This team of adults were so intimidated by the giant blades that they neglected to 'shuffle' Stuart to the edge of his 'safe' pallet, from which point the jump to the next causeway was practical.

Given the unexpected bonus of a dramatic ending to the show, I then had to chop seven minutes from the adventure scenario in order to accommodate it, and I don't regret doing so, even if some of the edits did inevitable telegraph themselves even to an inexpert audience. Losing a couple of strategic cut-aways to a software glitz when encoding, didn't help either.

It was interesting and intriguing pitching game at adults, the more so because there is little chance in today's market for Knightmare re-emerging as a children’s show. Neither is it likely to re-appear in a half hour format, because today even game-show formats eschew this, and a dramatised adventure game of any ambition will need more time and space to breath.

The short form also renders them financially prohibitive.

I understand why some of you felt moved to criticise, but believe me when I claim pre-eminence in the matter of criticism. Although I’m saddened that some of you didn’t like the new show, it doesn’t particularly surprise me. It wasn’t made only for you, but to address the demands of a commercial client who had their own legitimate agenda, and no vested interest in the future or otherwise of the format.

TC

Dear Canadanne,

This is an easy one.

I'm The Opposition me. That means I'm against the Powers that Be, The Ruling Classes, usually the ruling government, broadcast monopolies, and anyone else who wants to stop people like me from having their say, or wants to charge them good gold for the privilege of doing so.

Sure YouTube is mainly crap but at least that's traceable to the fact that its mainly produced by a bunch of amateurs, whilst Broadcast media is also mainly crap and its all produced by a bunch of overpaid media professionals.

The funny cats are best though.

Dear HobGoblin,

Don't be so revoltingly humble. You should know by now that I don't do humility.

As for demography (I prefer demonography by the way), I don't care a goblin's wart if they're toddlers, teenagers, baby boomers or geriatric ITV executives. Just bring em on I say. The more the messier..

Will the Internet showing indicate the shape of things to come? You'll have to ask the Deus Machina about that one. Haven't a clue old Hob. I do know that we had some prime moments of terror when we took on the Internet heroes, and one ecstatic moment when one of them appeared to loose his bowels. Such fun.

Should there be another season in the dungeon, would one be in command of the nasty bits? I'm not sure. It depends on finding worthy opponents to revive a jaded appetite.

Lissard's probably up for it.

LF

Dear Hstorm,

When one has a brain the size of a planet, one needs a helmet the size of a galaxy.

Not something I suspect you'd appreciate.

LF

Dear Malefact

How does it feel to be back? One simply rolls back the years and rolls all over the opposition. Also I missed the gloating bits.

As for my message to your new ITV masters?

Keep up the good work,

Keep weeding out all the tossers, bean counters and dysfunctional nonentities who've been running that failing empire for the past two decades and put younger brighter folk in their place. The improvements are beginning to show.

Anyway I prefer younger people. They make the best victims and they squeal more energetically when plunging to their fates.

LF

Just because you were once lucky enough to catch me on an off-day Mystara, doesn't mean you can indulge yourself with rhetorical questions. Rhetoeric, old thing, is my perogative!

Of course you and your lot have already done the business.

What greater sacrifice could any youngish person make than to waste one's youth hanging about on a previously obscure bulletin board for a major proportion of one's days on this planet?

Beware Mystara. It is Lissard's perogative to ask the bleedingly obvious questions to which I will inevitably know the answers, and if you persist you will just make him jealous.

And you wouldn't like the Old Newt when he's jealous.

Others will no doubt judge my latest sublime performance, and you and others will be best off awaiting that judgement.

So - Welcome watchers of Illusion - to your very own Agony Uncle Column.

This is where I, myself, Lord Fear, answer all your questions, as you agonise over the future of Knightmare, and what the intervention of Google/Youtube portents.

Actually, now that I'm on it, so to speak, I'm having this portal renamed MeTube, in my honour.

So - ask away Old chums, and knowledge shall be yours. Not that Knowledgte is Power in this case, for I reserve that for myself.

Note that in my occasionjal absense, your requests may have to be answered by my secretary, Lissard.

Yours, your Mentor and Friend,

Lord Fear

-'Personally, I preferred both the Rowe art and the CGI to the colour-adjusted castle photographs'-.

..and so did I, but we were desparate to get more movement into something that was looking increasingly static.

Robert Harris's ability to overlay David's artwork with a black stencil, and then airbrush through to create different lighting effects, helped with atmosphere, but things were still too static.

Perhaps we'll know some of these answers soon?

Solving this mystery may be beyond you so I'll help, although you're probably not going to believe this.....

Whilst teaching an artificial intelligence that it was an Orc/Goblin, I named it Beveryafraid (after myself).

However, as I taught it and it got cleverer, it wanted to know who was teaching it?

As I'd made it suspicious of humans, I told him that his teacher was another Orc called Garstang.

Sometime later - and perhaps because I was inexperienced in teaching an AI, he got confused, and decided HIS name was Garstang.

Rather than argue with him, I gave in and continued teaching him as Garstang.

..told you no one would believe it.

I've been looking at this argument, and there is something missing.

By series 8 we were seriously under pressure to increase production values and deliver more game per studio day. that meant on-the-fly switching to close up cameras. Then you needed to apply instant close up backgrounds to characters.

That is very difficult and sometimes impossible when the only graphic reference you have for a scene is a 2d A3 painting.

However, when the scene was created in 3d, you could fast render a correct single frame viewpoint and put it behind the NPC or encounter character without stopping.

Remember - Knightmare was an expensive show in 1993 - costing £48,000 per episode. One reason for that high cost was that we seldom created more than one show's worth of game per studio Day.

Another factor - if individual games (or quests) were to protracted, even the best gamers started to lose interest and concentration. It wasn't fair for us to be slow.

And a final factor - the cost of a slow-to-make series was one of the reasons why Knightmare stopped altogether.

BVA

When Illusion has time to do site upgrades, the Orc will be ready to become the site news announcer.

His name is Garstang.

To find out some of the ways he can work, open the link above once more, and when the speech is finished, click on products, and then Flashnews.

However - none of this is very much to do with what's stirring.

http://www.intermedialab.eu/iml/featurespeak/demo/knightmare.php?userid=Knightmare

Well, it really is very early days, but nonetheless. it does look as though you will have something to talk about in 2008, and perhaps something to beguile you in 2009.

BVA

The Televirtual artificial Intelligence work has now reached the point when we can put it to use.

Its time to move on or abandon Knightmare to its current position as a piece of Television history.

If TV returns to it in the future fine. But I detect no signs of it happening.

Meantime I'd like to put the legend and the bestiary to work again.

So I am thinking of a new kind of on-line entertainment.

Not Television - as we know, or knew it.

Not a video game either.

Knightmare was always a cool world. Not too big, not too small, and not too safe. I can also use some bits of the later 3d dungeon who so many of you disliked so much.

Anyway, watch this space.

Want to learn about linguistic based AI?

goto www.jabberwacky.com and talk to George. You can even tell him about Knightmare.

Some of you will have noticed that the Knightmare development material has been removed from view on the Televirtual website.

That's because, after a long period of expensive software development, we've been forced to concentrate on moving the RAP system into production, and trying to relaunch a classic 20th century kids TV show isn't the quickest way to do that.

Others of you will be surprised to learn that after giving it much thought, I have decided that any new version of Knightmare would be best as a mixture of VR and live action, i.e. a real dungeoneer and a helmet, and blindfolding, and (once again) a blue studio. There are a number of reasons for this, but principally I believe and accept that whilst a much wider gaming pattern is available via full virtual reality, the essential dynamics of the exercise may not match the original.

All monsters and dungeon-based cast would however be virtual.

Believe me, there are very good reasons why it would be better otherwise, for although real-time compositing or keying has improved, we stand today at the threshold of HDTV, with future TV pictures six times the size of those currently in use, and fidelity levels which mean the slightest errors in clipping and keying will be critical.

In any case it may all be academic. To date there has been no real interest expressed from any UK broadcaster. No one is clamouring to schedule a revised Knightmare in either form. I do have interest from abroad, but without a UK budget, we could not service it. For this , its easy to blame the Fightbox fiasco which cost the BBC millions and poisoned the well for technology-based programming, but it's maybe its equally fair to admit that the pilot exercise, conducted on a limited budget with limited resources, perhaps did not do justice to the subject? I know some of you thought this.

So is this finally the end for Knightmare? I really couldn't say. Somehow it keeps coming back. Maybe it's just sleeping?

BVA