-- Did he paint anything that wasn't used in the end?
Subject to confirmation from David Rowe himself, the answer appears to be yes.
Hmm, perhaps they didn't feel like creating a real curved staircase to match that one!
...Not to mention dealing with the H&S implications of having a blindfold kid who can see a little of what's below walk down a curved staircase, given how much some struggled getting down a few straight stairs under such conditions

Having just watched the pilot, I do like the way the riddle is actually a riddle rather than a general knowledge question like the riddles always were in Knightmare. Good acting throughout, although Ward's delivery felt a little stilted. This may be deliberate, and his performance certainly wouldn't put me off watching the show when you manage to get things up and running.

Indicating who's talking, if the advisors are on set, it might simply be a case of 'point a camera at them and occasionally cut to them talking/putting an in-vision view of them,' not sure how that would work with the lore you set up, unless Ward's magic connection to the advisors is done by creating magic realm where they can see what the dungeoneer would be able to see... And if that sort of thing doesn't fit with the lore, it might improve the overall product if you bent the lore until it did - It might even be solved simply by having the dungeoneer name the advisors so that Ward can establish a connection with them.

"I can establish a connection to two people from your world, but you have to visualise them in your mind, and name them," that sort of thing certainly helps for figuring out who's who in audio podcasts, and should also helps establish a connection between Dungeoneer and advisors, even if no such connection exists in reality, which I suspect will help the lore of the show. Otherwise it's a bit of a case of 'who are these people Ward's randomly put the life of this unfortunate person in their hands, and why would the dungeoneer trust them' as far as the show's internal logic is concerned - This will also help establish a connection between the advisors and the dungeoneer in the viewer's mind, even if no connection exists in reality. This helps the verisimilitude of the viewing experience, which for semi-fictional sorts of things is probably more neccessary to help us buy into the fiction by making it easy to suspend our disbelief than pure drama. (As for them sounding a bit similar - I hadn't even realised there were two until reading this thread)

For darkness of environment being different on different computers, this both can't be helped but you can easily help deal with it. There are brightness/contrast callibration guides online, I'm unsure which are good and which aren't, but if you callibrate according to one of those, design on the assumption that the viewer will be watching standardised to it, and then provide a link to the callibration, that at least allows viewers to know how they should be adjusting their monitor settings for best viewing experience, even if they choose not to, a bit like a test card, really. (And, yeah, some people's monitor's factory defaults aren't that hot, and if they decide to adjust for your show, it might improve their computer experience across the board)

Yeah, I know a revival is extremely unlikely at this point, but still - can be fun to brainstorm, so... Here's my current thoughts on one (The TL;DR version - Basically the riddles of S1-2, the floor puzzles of S5-8, and the presentation of S3 combined into one, while using motion capture for a sort of live puppetteering to allow for more dynamic monsters and less human looking characters if that's technologically feasible)

Overview: Knowledge, navigation, problem solving and quick-wits are the primary things that I feel a revival should test. Possibly 'and interaction' but it's difficult to actually test that as opposed to allowing teams to screw themselves over if they choose to, though stuff like Cheer Up The Gargoyle is a fun, if fairly insignificant in terms of challenge, obstacle.

Riddles: Not necessarially just be in the form of characters asking questions, and certainly shouldn't require as high a percentage as S3 (Nor should there be nearly as many as it felt S4 had). A winning quest should be possible without resorting to luck or exceptional amounts of roleplay with around a 75% success rate across all riddles, though the allowed mistakes should lean towards the early levels. About 8 riddles total - including stuff like scrolls hinting but not stating what should be taken - feels right.

Floor Puzzles: Should be present, and should involve puzzles rather than just the password/solution of the S5 and (occasional) S6 causeways. Can be used for pure navigation tests (Causeways with passwords), and probably for pure problem solving tests.

Life Force: Should exist as a soft clock, that can be used to force teams who made an error causing damage but not death to do something a little challenging to continue (Food in a bomb room, dodging a to get a pie, etcetera, or just navigate an otherwise simple for the level challenge quickly) and to act as a timer for the end game. Tension only comes with peril, so teams should be able to starve to death, but it actually happening should be extremely rare and, outside of using it as a time limit during the end game, only actually possible if a team made a mistake that causes life force damage but not death.

Story Structure: As much as I love Lord Fear as a character, the early year's more exploritory nature rather than defined alliances feels more interesting, and allows for more nuanced characters - Hordriss could be ally or enemy in the early years, but even before he joined the Powers that Be properly once Lord Fear came aboard Treguard had to admit that he usually chose to align himself with the Powers that Be rather than the Opposition, a far removal from his 'Dark Grey' origins. I think either approach is valid, to be honest, but have a slight preference towards the former than the latter.

Look and Feel: You should be able to compromise between the beautiful, hand drawn, environments of S1-3 and the benefits of CGI to change camera angles (Seen, iirc, in S8) via what I've seen referred to as 2.5d matt paintings which I believe is projecting a mat painting onto a rudimentary, simple, 3d archetecture. The eye shield should be absent, it just slowed proceedings down. If it's desired to bring things out of the dungeon more than the Dwarf Tunnel's of S3 did (And even they slowed proceedings down somewhat), just do it by stating that doors and threshholds are magical portals within the dungeon dimension, where you leave from here and wind up... There. Sometimes there is a mere room away, as you would define geography, other times the distance spans what you would view as entire continents, or even further. (This also can be used to 'explain' inconsistencies in the layout of the dungeon)

Difficulty: I'd mainly make Level 1 a series of introductory exercises, warming the team up for the actual challenges of Level 2 and 3, but also test the essentials - An unprompted clueroom with an obvious red herring (possibly a literal one, as some S1-2 teams got, more likely a weapon) here, a slightly tricky navigation challenge such as diagonal gap path in S3. Stuff that's fundamental to a successful journey, but in a way that nothing should result in the death of more than about 10-20% of teams. The bulk (Entirity?) of the allowance of wrongly answered riddles should be here.

I think ideally about half, maybe a slim majority, of dungeoneers should die in Level 2. If there are 13 quests over the course of a season, the difficulty should be catered so that about 7-8 will die in level 2, around 2-3 in level 1 (Which, as I indicated, should basically just be stuff that they should be able to do but which they might slip up on due to the pressures of a studio environment) and of the 3 teams who make it to level 3 only one should win. Don't force the issue on any team via making it particularly hard because there's already been a winner or particularly easy because there hasn't. And select for personality and ability to interact with characters as well as problem solving, some of the early dungeoneers were... Very awkward when interacting with characters. Sometimes painfully so.

Season End: Editing the boring bits but into a coherent view of the game, possibly across a couple of quests (So you just don't show a team who successfully navigated a causeway and then died in the next room of something else crossing the causeway, for example), but showing the entirity of any winning quest, and the vast majority of all quests, to fit the entirity of the final quest into the episode length constraints you have rather than cutting a quest short (S4) or god forbid including short cuts, however brutal the challenge on the short cut is.

Other: I think it's possible to do live motion capture, these days. Virtual puppetteering, if you will. If so, this can and should be used in a revival, to allow more interactive monsters than the giant animals of the past and less human-like characters than the slight bit of monster makeup.

Not compiling my list as of yet, but the But death was a fair one in my view - That they should cast it was quite clearly indicated, albeit somewhat crypticly - Merlin told them it was a humble spell, followed by Mordread going on about them being humble before him or something like that.

Goodness knows what it would have done, however.

...Wouldn't vertical blades, provided they were placed fairly (i.e. in a position the advisors could see coming up the the dungeoneer) have been easier to dodge than horizontal ones on the CoB? Depending on where they were, they'd either be dodgable by going further into the left or right than the blade was, or wouldn't need to get as far to the left or right to clear.

Not quite myths, but things I remember about the show from my childhood that simply aren't the case:

I have distinct memories of a Level 4 as a child, my memories of the transition to which matches up with the Series 4 transition to Level 3 (Which was... Actually quite subtle, on rewatching, especially compared to basically every other level transition in the show) And no amount of knowing that that can't have been right is quite able to shift this memory of a team advancing to level 4. The memory is a funny old thing.

Again not really a myth, but I really didn't notice how different S4 and S5 were from each other as a child, and upon recent reviewings have learnt that I'd sort of merged S4-7 into a single entity in my memory with a variety of floor puzzles (Causeways that weren't simply solved essentially with good navigation and a password, with Level 1's being clear of Fright Knight 'hurry up' - ala S5 causeways, Level 2 having the slow ones, and Level 3 having the speedy Fright Knights, Trial By Spikes, Play Your Cards Right and the teleportation pads) Oakley, the door monsters, Lord Fear, spyglasses and scrolls, the room of choice from S6 and Pickle. And, of course, the Corridoor of Blades. I must say, this combination is somewhat stronger than any of S4-7 seems to actually be on rewatch [Although I haven't gotten to 7 yet... But the loss of Pickle, even if it brings a variety of floor puzzles that all causeway's all the time simply doesn't provide, doesn't have much hope of being superior to my memory's version of the hypothetical mega season].

We don't even know if the quest objects STAYED in the winners posession after a quest was completed!

Anyone remember the succesful quest for the Cup that was followed by... The quest for the cup?

Didn't one of the seasons block out the option to Quest for a Quest Option that had already been chosen? The one where the choice was via bridges to portals with the quest object symbols over the four portals, as I recall.

Two minds about this - One the one hand the main problem Series 8 had was it involved too much change too rapidly, so yet more change might be seen as even worse, on the other - The eye shield didn't really have much of a point in S8, since S8 was back to almost being inside the dungeon, so just slowed the game down.

Loving the new layout, though poster details on the right rather than the left will take some getting used to, not used to that on any forum.

Definitely not!

As the maintainer of the BBK website, I see all the comments that get sent in for the petition.

Almost every single one is a strong opinion of what a new season of Knightmare should be like. Very few of them agree and fewer still actually provide a sensible reason for the justification.

The problem is that you just cannot isolate individual facets of the show. For example:

1. Due to the level of technology used in season 8, combined with the 'medieval' perspective of the show, you could make a season 9 of Knightmare identical in style to season 8.

But because technology has moved on so far, you could just as easily make an even more technologically advanced, better graphics version.

2. The idea of a dungeoneer wearing a helmet is classic to Knightmare. But let's not forget that it was mostly accidental. The original requirement of the helmet was because the dungeoneer could not see the dungeon. But with VR helmets, advanced computer systems and FPS games, that's no longer the case. The dungeoneer COULD see the environment.

So do you keep it 'retro' or do you advance the technology? Does that decision change if you consider your answer to question 1, above?

3. If your dungeoneer can see the dungeon, does that affect the number of advisors? After all, you don't need anyone to guide you if you can navigate around yourself.

The questions really go on. Whatever your answer to one question, another three spring up. Unless you were to keep things exactly as they were (which, let's face it, you wouldn't), the tree of possibilities just becomes far too difficult to manage.

The questions go on whatever method. Now... I'm not saying we should, in general I seem to find shows that the creators have a certain distance from the fandoms tend to come off better (which isn't to say that audience reactions are a bad thing, or that creators should never communicate/etc with fans, but... Look at the mess that 'listening to the fans' made of Heroes, for example)

Saying that:

I'd go with a combination of 3d environments and handdrawn ones. I believe the term is '2.5d matte paintings', where a matte painting is overlayed onto a simple 3d model, allowing dynamic camera movement within a matte painting - Thus getting the hand drawn goodness of the first three seasons combined with the ability to do dynamic camera angles which I believe has been stated was the reason for the shift to CGI environments. Also - A dungeoneer that can see the dungeon seems to not quite work 'right', based on the KMVR pilot, in my view.

Keep the three level rolling structure, and don't go for live I think. Either reinstate the life force to its dominance in the first three seasons or drop it and come up with other methods of hurrying teams along. And there shouldn't be any filler rooms (And I think I'd include dwarf tunnels as in S3 in that category, if you want to go for the more varied vista, just call them 'magic portals connecting there to here, sometimes there is is a single room away from here, othertimes a continent', and I'd certainly include Eye Shield segments in that.)

Merlin - Would start spellcasting Rejuvinate and have finished by Christmas.

Post 2000 however, the overall quality of CITV's output began to drop considerably

Somewhat biased, I think, especially for a wiki article. The 00s CITV output did see some very good gameshows...

What happened to ITV? Well, the decision to not make cITV shows for teens dented the variety of the output, and OFCOM's decision to ban junk food ads pretty much killed cITV's funding (Which, apparently and bafflingly surprised OFCOM despite being pretty obvious to everyone else). the CITV channel therefore broadcasts pretty much just repeats... Meanwhile CBBC has new programming and... Uhh... Pretty much ignores the 12-16 year olds and has done since CITV stopping counting them (but that is picking up, in response to the same OFCOM report that prompted to Channel 4 started looking into doing 12-16 year old aimed shows. As far as I'm aware the BBC have now one show aimed at that range, while channel four have none yet)

In one quest of Series 7, troll footsteps were used to hurry a dungeoneer up in a dwarf tunnel. How would a troll fit in a dwarf tunnel?

Very carefully.

Did Lord Fear and Treguard secretly enjoy playing Squash together?

Only as part of The Greater Game.

They didn't do it for fun like Mario and Bowser do with their karting when Bowser isn't kidnapping the princess.

And why does putting a single egg in the knapsack provide the same amount of life force as an entire roast chicken?

A wizard did it.

...Granted if KM was based on D&D directly rather than computer RPGs which at that point were mostly based on D&D themselves, it would be 'prankster wizard'.

Goodness knows why a wizard would have done that, but given that Knightmare wizards include the likes of Merlin and Hordriss...

Well, as I recall from watching it, the main difference was when the next bit of food would be found. The life-force clock seemed to be there to motivate the dungeoneer to keep moving, like the hunger in some videogames of the same era (Rogue, for example), but unlike those videogames wasn't designed to kill, because that would have been a really naff ending.

Of course, in some cases the extra food items were placed in positions that required risk taking to get, so, in a way I suppose it did, although unless anyone died while acquiring food I'm not sure said effect could be described as having 'real' impact.

As for a description of the 'sucked in by Granitas' in the gamebook - I guess that would have been doable in the first few seasons. Freeze frame of the dungeoneer, editing effect of him or her spinning and shrinking into the open mouth of the wall monster, Skull animation appearing as the mouth closed...

...Or cut to the snake stomach room for the life force to accelleratedly run out for less implied gore.

Don't you think bribe-scenes in Knightmare are just completely implausible? You know the scenario, Gumboil or Olaf or Fatilla or Skarkill are stood on a cavern ledge or between the dungeoneer and a wellway. The dungeoneer doesn't have a password so he offers them a bar of gold or a ruby, which the guard accepts after making a protracted and utterly unconvincing display of reluctance, before stepping aside and allowing passage.

...Wasn't Olaf more about 'robbing gold of dungeoneers or bashing their heads in for pleasure' than 'bribe'?

Personally, I don't mind the lack of realism of that element, especially considering it comes straight from the fantasy videogames of the time , pretty much, doesn't it? Well, maybe more Interactive Fiction (unless you want to scream/screw [limited parsers causing that rather cute eccenticity - it was programed as scream, but at least one person trying for full points got fed up and typed 'screw the bear' into the parsor. "The bear rears back in fear and falls off the cliff." being a bizarely appropriate response for a bug due to a technological limitation, really) than RPGs, but...

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AWizardDidIt

In this case, Merlin. He had a so-called hot date with Lillith, in her rocky domain, and wanted to win her affections by conjuring up a homely yet tasty dessert. Unfortunately, when he tried to invoke an apple pie, he became tongue-tied and instead ordered "Pie an apple". A pineapple appeared. What's more, Lillith's chamber was unusually echoey that evening, so several pineapples appeared. I don't know if Lillith saw the funny side - if indeed there is one.

More Ultimate Knightmare Riddles welcome.

We already know that there's a connection between the dungeon and 20th century earth (How else to you explain all the late 20th century kids who wandered into Treguard's castle, and how we were watching [and Treguard knowing that we were])... What's to say that it's only humans who wander down into the dungeon from our time. Maybe animals, do too, or even fruit falling into the dungeon?

...Although I think the original D&D had the best ever invokation of "A Wizard Did It" - The explanation for cursed -x weapons that no-one in their right mind would think would be useful enough to forge? "Prankster Wizards."

In fact, Knightmare's explicitly shifting geography makes it far from ideal for mapping. (Not just across series, but within: for example, I doubt that there was consistency in the areas Smirkenorff flew over to get from A to B in Series 5.)

...I must admit, when I first heard of this idea I thought it was insane on account of the Chaos Architecture involved in the dungeons and surrounding landscape... But there does seem to be something successfully charted.

Maybe a topographical map [think London Underground map] of dungeon interiors rather than a geographical map would make more sense for them?

Very intriguing

Obviously it'll be Knightmare-related I presume? DVD release? Repeats on ITV in same time slot? (How nostalgic would that be???)

I hope the new Knightmare VM or whatever it was called hasn't been commisioned, lol.

My guess, all along, has been either there are talks about Timegate, or more likely that as part of either the BBC or C4's intention of serving the currently unserved 11-16 year old demographic they're expressing interest in Knightmare.

I suppose there is a fine balance in Knightmare when it comes to artwork and CGI graphics. You don't want too much CGI (See KmVR!) And too much artwork (although good in its time) simply gets too boring after a few years. Suggesting why they probably expanded their horizon in Series 4

The trouble with the colour-modified photographs is it never felt 'real' to me, somehow, and I preferred both the [somewhat dodgy due to it being mid-90s] CGI and the artwork to it.

[Warning - The next paragraph contains information gleaned from watching Doctor Who Confidential. Please don't laugh at any inaccuracies or screwing up of terms. Also take any terms I use with a pinch of salt, I'm trying to convey the information, and corrections are welcome for those who know more about the topic than I do]

I'd actually argue, personally, that the ideal would be to use what I believe is referred to be some as 2.5d Matte Paintings. Go with Matte Paintings (i.e. hand drawn 2d art, basically the sort of stuff S1-3 used, only presumably drawn somewhat differently due to not being static), and project them onto a simple 3d geometry, essentially giving you 3d hand paintings that you can position camera angles anyway you desire, and move the camera around them live. You then use whatever effect will generate the best stuff for whatever you happen to be doing within that environment.