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[Proper Progress Percentages:]

It's happening! Aliens are RIGHT here, PROPER alien invaders, and they are planning to take over Earth. Mean and green? Yes. Hatching their troops from gooey eggs? Oh, yes. And that whole thing with the plant pods, the body snatching, the screeching and
the acid blood, the telepathy and that invulnerable extra sphincter? Check, check and double check.

Lost Craft optimistically resurrects:


An alien fleet makes their home right under a ramshackle asylum because you gotta have a sinister home base. It's a matter of style. And they have a plan. An evil, secret plan, deliciously overcomplicated and with just enough wriggle room to fail.

Enter Willow, Earth's last- and best- hope.
She knows the plan. She can save us all if she plays her cards right. Unfortunately, she's several cards short of a full deck, and an ace up your sleeves isn't much help when you're in a straitjacket.

So, er. Hi. It's been a while... and here I am again, with an old idea and some fresh optimism. I recently got back into AGS; and what better way to properly get back than, you know, making a game maybe? It's a thing I'm looking forward to. t's really been a while.
Some of you may remember an old prototype of Collateral Jelly, which started life as a 640x480, hand-drawn point-and-clicky thing that never got anywhere. And I found a way to fix that- just going full retro. It's what I do best.

Some early WIP screens for your consumption- more to come. I'll make this a proper project with dev diary and everything.


Alien body snatchers, teleporter mishaps, and offscreen flying saucers- the 80s called; they want their tropes back!


Meet Willow- a perfectly fine lass with impeccable fashion sense. Cotton never goes out of style!

Proper Progress Percentages:
Story - 95%
Scripting - 30%
Graphics - 10%
Sound/Music - 0%
Collateral Jelly will be available for puny human earthling enjoyment end of 2019.

Developer's Diary - Febuary 24
The game's  reached a point where it's worth showing around. It's basic stuff but robust, reliable and I even found my favourite speech fonts on an ancient USB drive.
I got back into scripting by making a custom "BASS" once more, just to see if I could still do that. The boilerplate stuff is out of the way, there's two rooms and some objects to play around with, and at least static views for the main characters. It's looking promising, and this time I do have a simple plot with a couple of interesting challenges that come from the nature of the protagonist. Willow has only limited inventory space and can logically not fully use her hands, which makes for logical restrictions I'm really happy with; restrictions like that lend themselves to really, really oldschool stuff like stashing items somewhere, and having to convince people to help. I have also set up the code for a "mood system"(which I already played around with in the first build)- Willow will react to alien invaders and everyday challenges mostly depending on her current state of mind, so there is a lot of room for puzzles that are not your traditional use x on y.
All said and done, this has really got me excited again. Coming back after such a long time, I feel like a noob again, and just making and not caring too much for "perfection" seems the way to go.

Developer's Diary - March 03
The week has been good- I got most of the plot sorted into a nice sequential order and the first "chunk", which serves as intro and tutorial for the game, is completely scripted. I'm playing it very safe here and included different types of puzzles to showcase how some stuff in the game is non-traditional (and hopefully fun!). I know that I tend to be very, very wordy and did my best to hand over control to the player as soon as possible, too.
The whole process is still very "rough-and-ready"- I don't make final graphics for rooms and that means there's not too much cool stuff to show yet.
Made a nice little speechcycle though; take a gander!
[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/OeqkHeG.gif[/imgzoom]

I did a lot more drawing all over 2015 and at some point came across this odd little thing where you do a 100 day "marathon": At least 30 minutes per day, you work on one single comic. No matter what. That doesn't mean the thing has to be completed within 100 days, it's just one of these "form a positive habit" challenges. I did small-scale "daily challenges"in 2015- "monthly themes" and stuff, but this is going to be a long haul.

I started my run with the 1st of January and, as per the norm, keep an online diary. Not that much to see there (yet) but I hope it'll become an entertaining little blog, so have a look if you like comics, stories, drawings, or whimsical fonts.

http://ghost100daycomic.blogspot.de/

[/shameless_plug]

Happy Halloween, guys! Take care tonight!

you make lemurnade.

[Spellcheck'd]

A guy starts to make a game. Soon, he knows, he'll have an awesome game.
13 years later, he's done, and makes a nice little video about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b0tSu0QDQ0#t=396

Take a shot each time you say, "Yeah I was there too!". Make it a stiff one of you use(d) the same toolkits.

__
edit:
And since the video is only 90% awesome, the game's there, too: http://tobiasgame.co.uk/

Extrapolate.

[Alien Cow Rampage: Orion Needs Your Milk!]

Orion is home to a peaceful race of blue-skinned aliens who have made it their mission to provide the most delicious, refreshing, enjoyable drink to all of the universe: Milk, from Earthling cows. The Orionese are respected as the biggest providers of this creamy-white essence of all that is tasty in the universe.
As great as this sounds, your job as an Invader is much less glorious. But there's nothing else you'd ever want to do than visiting Earth, meet the benevolent cows on their own turf, and ensure that there is always milk.

Your last mission has just gone bad. After a crash you find yourself stranded- the mothership's far away and you have hardly any gear. But you're an Invader. You can still make this work.

Lost Craft presents:
Alien Cow Rampage: Orion Needs Your Milk!
A single player board game

Get ACRONYM Version 1.0.1!

In an original boardgame that could be described as the jumpsuit-clad cousin of Chainsaw Warrior and Munchkin, you're an alien on the run. Within 12 hours you need to make it through a mazy suburbs, abduct cows from heavily guarded pastures, and brave an Earthling military base in order to catch a ride on your mothership.
There is little time.
There are many dangers.
But you CAN make it, and there are always cows.

Roll dice! Flip through cards! Find the cameo! Play an actual board game, only on your computer!
No choking hazards despite small parts, and no cleaning up the table afterwards!


No, really, we totally come in peace! Want a milkshake?


Be an Invader! Pick your class, roll your stats, and crash-land into adventure!


Abduct cows! Their milk is udderly delicious!


Fight, Stun or simply charm trigger-happy teenagers, gun-crazy ranchers, and the Men In Black!


Avoid devious, nefarious, ingenious Earthling traps!

Please note that this game was made for MAGS (June 2014, theme "Alien Invasion") It was literally invented, designed, and written within 4 weeks. It's a robust and fun little game but it lacks the balance that any solo board game needs in order to really shine- I hope to add much of that based on player feedback, and would love to improve this little romp through a world where the milk must flow.

Lots of thanks to all my brave testers, and a big hooray for JasonB, who provided some kickass music!

Enjoy

Let's Have Another Fortnightly Writing Competition!
MUTATE!

According to a popular survey, 100% of all humans are 100% human. That's the way it is. But fiction likes to play with the idea of a human changing into something else, partially or completely. Mutation, Transformation, Evolution, Curses and Aliens are often to blame. There's many a reason to play with the theme- it can be disturbing, shocking, sad, but also a hilarious road trip. All up the the writer.

This is what this FWC is about. Write a story about a human who, for whatever reason, goes through a change of shape and play it out to your heart's content. Please note that this is not about writing a story merely featuring a "shape-shifter". The central element is the change as it takes place the first time.

Will it be a grisly body horror story? A light comedy featuring an unknown X-Man? A dramatic exploration of the first change into a werewolf? A tongue-in-cheek take on the "wizards made me a frog" thing? A finely written first-person musical based on Hellraiser?

All up to you, and you have two weeks to get your story in (we close this on Saturday 12th July).

Have fun

__
edit
Will put in trophies later. Gotta have trophies, right?

Okay, you all know the saying "Guns don't kill people. People do."

It's arguably true (with the possible exception of Robocop, who is a cop, and cops are people, but he's also a gun.)

Now can we transfer this rule? Does that mean that toasters don't toast toast, but toasts toast toasts?

And... do game programmers not program games... program games game programmers (or game them)?

I feel I can't tackle this alone. I need philosophers here.

Some guy sat down and made a recreation of Monkey Island 2's memorable locations using the friggin CryEngine. It's beautiful and made me smile so here it is.

http://youtu.be/3bInZ7_y4Lw

The video also has voodoo bananas. And EL POLLO DIABLO.
Weaponized, of course.

[So go get creative. Become part of AGS.C.A. and send a creation of your own out there. Print-and-cut out your hero. Make a papercraft. Then put it somewhere and post a photo! Make your CHAR a CA!]

This just in: The average AGS hero doesn't go out much. Yes, they have all kinds of awesome adventures in space and time, they see lava rivers, get to steal newspapers and talk people to death... yes, they may even have magic, be an android or a ninja pirate or have a cool robotic buddy...
But when their game is over it's over.

Do they ever get to have a nice vacation? Do they get to meet new people?

No. And that is a shame!

Thus allow me to introduce AGS.C.A., the AGS Characters Abroad initiative. It's my goal to make people send their creations out there in as many ways as possible.

To test the principle, our very own Tabata helped me to get Pepper all the way to Italy:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/LM7zSOv.png[/imgzoom]

All it took was a sketch, a printer, and a caravan! Look how happy she is! That's a video game character enjoying a bit of a fresh breeze! She may even eat some pizza over there!

So go get creative. Become part of AGS.C.A. and send a creation of your own out there. Print-and-cut out your hero. Make a papercraft. Then put it somewhere and post a photo! Make your CHAR a CA!

Can you make AGS.C.A. happen?

[SPRING BREAK]

Back in April 2013 there was a "Spring Cleaning" MAGS. I started work on a game but didn't make it within the deadline. For a while it sat there on my hard drive gathering dust and being laughed at by the defragmentation subroutine. But waste not want not, and things did improve a good deal!

SPRING BREAK
An Interactive Spring Cleaning
Pepper is a wind-up doll living a happy life in Candyland- each day a cheerful summer day with her friends, playing and having adventures. One day, however, she finds her clockwork stuck with candy and syrup, and that IS bad when you rely on winding yourself up once per day.



Pepper sets out to restore her gear-box to former glory in a rather literal spring cleaning. And she'll need all the help she can get.



Fortunately she's not on her own, and toys do come with a manual...



...but when even the water's nothing but sirup, how DO you actually clean your spring?

SPRING BREAK started as a MAGS game and remains a short classic point-and-click. I recently updated the majority of the old assets; just for fun, compare this old orignal screen to the updated ones:

Spoiler

[close]

Features:
- the now-standard BASS-style interface
- half a dozen rooms, all of them with EXITS
- classic puzzles all the way
- animations galore
- probably the highest calorie-to-pixel ratio of any AGS game

Should hit the database around March and I hope you'll be along for the ride.

__

I'll post updates on overall progress right here; make sure to check back every once in a while.

14.2. - Rusty Gears WIP
- Plot summary and game bible are in place and ready to be ignored.
- Interface, Framework and Locations in place.
- Base Animations for all characters in place.
- Work on Puzzle scripting starts.

16.3 - Tic-Toc WIP
- Progress has been a bit slower these days, mostly because now I have all the major puzzles written down. To make them interesting they need to be linked into sequence; so
there's a good bit of planning right now.
- Spring Break is going to have an original sound track. Our very own qptainNemo has agreed to lend his services and create some ear candy to go along with the eye candy. I'm very proud to have him aboard; you may remember the downright awesome tunes he's provided over the time.

Designer's Diary: No sense of scale
This screenshot showcases a neat dilemma: Scale is all over the place in this game.

The Patchwork Pepper doll stands exactly 12 inches high, yet our protagonist interacts with characters that clearly fit into a landscape made for the average human. And that's not taking into account the fact that in this land, a slice of cake can be smaller than a jelly baby...
It's fun to simply ignore scale and just mash stuff together. The minute you start building a valley out of pancakes and sirup, you can be pretty sure that people WON'T complain about that kind of stuff. You've essentially removed scale. And even that makes for some neat puzzles

Meet the cast

Uncle Frostee

"A story? Ho-hum, of course I'll share one with you. So, what do you want to hear about?"
We can't say when this certain Candyland came into existence, but when it did, Uncle Frostee was there, and had always been there. Clearly the oldest inhabitant of Candyland, he's an easy-going model of "the cool uncle" we all want to have when we are kids. By tradition Uncle Frostee welcomes everyone to the land once they find their way in, and while no-one in this realm is even allowed to have a proper job, he is a bit of a lore-keeper. If anything, the huge snowman is a traditionalist to a fault, often mixing up the tales he's told so often with real life. But then again, that's uncles for you.
Uncle Frostee lives in the Frozen Dessert, a vast valley made of ice cream and semifreddo. Interestingly, the cold climate has never bothered anyone: In this world you're only cold when you want to be.

Tangy Tanya

"Ooo hi! Hallo! Let's have a party, you and me and everyone! Yay! Birthdayyyyyy parteeeeee!"
Even in Candyland sentient food is not all that common, and Tangy Tanya's one of a kind. Outgoing, cheerful, energetic and always full of ideas, she's the kind of (lollipop) person who's physically unable to be bored. While occasionally a bit too manic, she's a rainbow of inspiration for the Candyland folk, and usually the first one to invent a new game. And before you ask, yes, she IS sweet. Literally.
West of the Playgrounds, there's a small valley of natural layer cake and creamy hills, where every day is a birthday party. This is where a person like Tanya would want to live, and that's why she does just that.

Mr. Woodruff

"Winding down, eh? What's so bad about that? I enjoy winding down."
While apparently a human, Mr. Woodruff all but forgot about his past. It doesn't bother him much- Candyland is the perfect place for a peace-loving, thoughtful man with a gift
for making lemonade, and Mr. Woodruff has quickly settled in. Relaxed, easy going and lazy to a fault he's in charge of keeping the rivers ful of may wine. Rumour has it
he once, just once, lost his cool and actually raised an eyebrow at a particularly annoying fly.
That's how mellow he is. That he settled down close to the soda springs was a given.

The Scissorman

"Abra! Kadabrrraaaaa!"
Nothing is known about the man under the top hat. But even those who are afraid of him must admit that is IS a nice hat.
If you want to meet the Scissorman, you need to walk all the way to the pancake plains (just follow the smell of butter pokey) and, standing with your back to his cylinder, speak out his names three times.
Then you turn around.
If you dare.

Patchwork Pepper

"I like candy!"
The Patchwork Pepper toyline was a huge hit during the late 70s- a quality felt body stuffed with sawdust and housing a clockwork that allowed the doll to walk in a straight line "without ever stumbling" due to the surprisingly well-made gearworks. While the toy eventually fell out of favour it remains a beloved part of many a collection.
But this Pepper didn't like collecting dust in a shelf and one night wandered away to have an adventure. She found Candyland, and gladly made herself at home there: Finally in the company of people who were just like her.
Her carefree life is currently a bit on the upside-down side, but Pepper won't stop until she's cleaned up her broken gearworks. She knows just the right people to help her and, yes, it's just like having another fun adventure!

Meet The Cast is over

Just found this little article here http://kotaku.com/new-borderlands-game-coming-from-telltale-makers-of-th-1478745808.

So... a randomized FPS gets the Telltale treatment. I am very exited- I really like the setting of the Borderlands games and think that one could easily inject some story into them!

Discuss!

Oceanspirit Dennis wasn't always the hardboiled gay ninja pirate we all know and love. Even he had to go to kindergarten. And he was awesome even back then.



Join our beloved hero on his first attempt at conflict-solving, developing social skills on the way, and learning an important TEH LESSONS.

Get it: https://www.mediafire.com/?tyk2183pulk5lq9

[He is sorry for his bat English!]

Do you know why Adam West is so often looking pretty downcast? He is sorry for his bat English!

What the title says. There's some french artist who takes cartoon and pop culture characters and gives them the X-Ray treatment. And it's awesome on t least two levels (because, see, you get to see the original character and the x-ray; that makes two levels)

I'm normally hesitant to link to facebook pages but this really is the best thing I've seen on the internet in the last twenty minutes.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Chris-Panda/442439902507882?id=442439902507882&sk=photos_stream

_
Oh ya, it *is* 98% SFW.

Yeah, I really suck at celestial bodies. You KNOW what I doodled here (it's a popular candy bar after all), but how to make it look tasty?

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/1HkPcVR.png[/imgzoom]

For reference: That is the good Commander (a shepherd) chasing a rogue Ghost across the Milky Way. Jus' so you know.
The sheep are space sheep and can breathe in space.

[A Most Magical Christmas Ornament]

A Most Magical Christmas Ornament

The man running the market stall looks a bit odd, but he is selling christmas ornaments and you really want to put up your decoration in time this year. A certain item catches your eye. It really looks nice.
  "Here, what's this?" you ask. The man stops polishing his wand, strokes his beard and chuckles.
  "That!", he booms, "That is a special magical christmas ornament straight from the halls of a wizarding school I cannot name because of copyright!"
  "I want it, please."
  "But it's magical and rare!"
  "I have five euros."
  "It has MAGICKS woven into its very fabric of being!"
  "Yes. Sounds awesome. Look, I make adventure games as a hobby. I know the drill. Can I have it?"
The wizard shrugs, then hands the precious item over, muttering something about being stuck in Monkey Island.

With glee, you take your magical christmas ornament home. When you hang it up, it looks...


So, show us your very own magical christmas ornament!
- There is no colour limit.
- You can flip and rotate the outline.
- If you really must, you can also fill the two holes in the outline.
- Bonus for any combination of tradtional festive ornament and magic. Seriously, don't you think Santa looks a lot like a wizard these days?

Competitions runs from November 26 - December 10. Have fun!

There will be trophies; I have made tiny tiny snow globes. And (and this is just a tiny joke on my part and a shameless attempt at increasing participation) they are all magical.

First Place: Haunted Snow Globe

Second Place: Moonlit Snow Globe

Third Place: Red-Nosed Slow Globe

With all the quality threads about general game theory, adventure game design et al, I'd like to put up the IF THEORY READER.

It's a pretty hefty volume with quality essays about interactive fiction (design, pitfalls, idiosynchratic elements, thoughts on characters, puzzles, and what have you). They're mostly written by people who are main contributors to recent IF, and since IF is the foundation on which graphic adventures are build, it's sensible to say that some of the stuff in that reader may be useful for "us", too.

If you're getting it: My favourites are "Crimes against Mimesis" (or "How to make stuff break the illusion of the game") and "Broad Landscape" (or "How to avoid making games that look like a patchwork instead of a true world").

Have fun with this free download:
-> http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_69/10228000/10228464/4/print/IFTheoryBookv2.pdf

__

Also, because it really interest me: Who here still plays IF? Any thoughts to share, and opinions? IS IF still comparable to modern point-and-click adventure games? If you had the choice, would you like to see a classic text adventure re-made*? Is that a sensible idea at all? Fire away!

___
* I''d love to see a new take on Wishbringer. The very first IF I played and solved, and I love the idea: All puzzles in the game can be solved by wishes granted by a magical stone, but also by mundane means. The more wishes you use the harder it becomes NOT to rely on the wishbringer... and your reward for solving the game's story is that you can keep the stone, so depending on your playthrough you *can* end up with a worthless pebble as your sole reward (well, you also save your hometown, so there's that...)

I have recently finished a rather elaborate "world map" for a GiP, and while it works the way I want it to work, it includes two designer sins- code being distributed over several scripts, and quite a bit of repetitive code. Maybe someone has a better idea, or some general pointers- I can script alright but sometimes I have a hard time finding an efficient (but more obscure) solution 

First things first, the player aquires a map that can be used to fast-travel between locations. The map is initially almost empty but fills up during the game when new locations are pointed out by other characters.

Locations are represented by graphics that overlay the world map's "city grid". I am using objects placed within the worldmap room. Since these graphics are of irregular shape and often overlap, I am not using them for mouse click detection.
Instead I have a separate GUI with small "marker" buttons, small enough to never overlap. There is one button corresponding to one map "spot" object. I even created them in the same order, so that button[1] is the marker for object[1].

To unlock map locations, I wrote a function in GlobalScript and imported it so that its accessible from anywhere in the game. There is also a matching "lock" function. I included an enum with entries for all map locations which I pass as a parameter to make the code more readable:

Code: AGS

function UnlockMapSpot(MapSpots ms)
{
  if (ms == eMsLemonadeFactory) 		
  { 
    gvMapSpot01Unlocked = true; 
  }
  ...
}

And here is where I am sure that things could be done more efficiently. Since you can only acess objects by name while in their room script file, I use global variables to keep track of everything, and that means I have the map room process a lot of stuff each time it is entered.

The "unlock function" only sets the global variable.
The worldmap room script checks the global variables, and makes objects and buttons visible according to that global variable's state.

This all works. It's not even too complicated, and the constant updates are necessary, too, because map spots can also vanish from the map. Still, I think there should be an easier way.
Any ideas?