Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
PC Adventure Game - Tech Demo
Welcome!
The gods have decided that it's closing time for our universe, so the regulars at Callahan's Crosstime Saloon can either drink up and go home or do something about it. But Callahan's is no ordinary neighborhood bar. Think of it as a cross between Cheers and the Star Wars cantina -- it's the place where every being knows your name, even if you're from another time or another universe.
--Blurb for Legend Entertainment's "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" PC Adventure Game
About this demo
The purpose of this website is to explore the feasiblity of playing PC-style adventure games using modern web technologies. The author has attempted a near pixel-perfect recreation of the user interface for the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon PC game by Legend Entertainment. As a result, copyright for just about every bit you are about to interact with belongs to Legend Entertainment or Take 2 Interactive or Josh Mandel or some combination of the above. The author of these pages is just an adventure gaming enthusiast and Spider Robinson fan who was swept up in his own obsession.
How to play
You play the role of Jake Stonebender, intinerant folk singer and all around good guy (or, at least, you cohabitate his brain for some time). Interaction with Jake's world takes place through (from top to bottom) a menu bar, a viewport window, an inventory bar, and an information box. Other screens allow you to converse with other characters and interact with puzzles.
The menubar at the top of the screen provides the player with several options not directly related to gameplay. Some of these options have yet to be implemented in this demo. The Introduction menu option shows a shorter, smaller version of the introductory video from the PC game. The video has no impact on gameplay in the earliest stages of the game (those covered by this demo), but does serve a short introduction to Callahan's Crosstime Saloon.
Left-clicking near the edges of the viewport windows will cause the viewport to pan slowly to the side, allowing you to see more of the area you are standing in. The viewport will continue to pan for as long as you hold the left mouse button down (and the cursor remains near the edge of the viewport) An arrow will appear next to the pointer when you are near enough to the edge to pan, indicating that a click in that location will begin panning instead of presenting a menu of verbs (see below ). Right-clicking near the edges of the viewport will cause the viewport to quickly jump approximately half a screen to the side. Repeated right-clicking is therefore a faster way to move around the viewport than left-clicking.
Interaction with people, places, and things happens through a point-and-click interface. When your pointer is located over an active 'hotspot', the name of the hotspot will appear at the bottom of the viewport window. When you left-click the hotspot, a pop-up menu will present you with verbs representing ways you can interact with the hotspot. Right-clicking will dismiss any open pop-up menus without selecting an option.
Special Note
Because this demo's graphics are based on the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon PC game, all of the game screens are designed to run at 640x480. Therefore, the best way to play the game is probably at 800x600, inside a decorationless pop-up window. A future update of this demo may attempt to scale the graphics, but pixel-perfect faithfulness to the original is the current priority.
Known bugs
- The inventory system has not yet been implemented. This does not affect gameplay in the demo.
- The voices and SFX from the original game are not used at this time.
- Only modern web browsers are fully supported by this application. Every effort has been made to preserve the interface from the original PC game.
- Mozilla, Firefox, Camino, Safari, and IE/Win have all been tested successfully. Safari does not support using the right-mouse button (by suppressing the context menu). IE/Mac 5 probably does not work because this application is not compatible with its event bubbling/capturing model. Feel free to report problems to me.
Disclaimer
The original game designers are not responsible for this unauthorized port of their excellent PC adventure game. The use of their game assets in this demo should not be considered a challenge to their copyright. In other words, if you're looking for someone to blame, blame me...
Special Thanks
On the other hand, I want to extend my thanks to the Legend Entertainment folks who worked hard to create and program every bit of creative content in this sorely unappreciated PC adventure game. Special thanks to the game's designer Josh Mandel, whose love for the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon setting is (clearly) quite infectous. And of course, a gigantic thank you to Spider Robinson, who made this all possible.