Suggestion to AGS games page

[bicilotti]

I've updated the game ranking pages to include the latest ones (only games with a user rating are included, btw):

I almost forgot about the page made by SSH. Here you can sort them in any order you like: thanks again SSH!

[Bai Karl]

2x and 3x filters helps, but not enough! Another thing: I can't run any game 320x200 on my PC. The new video cards doesn't support this resolution.

The small quantity of 800x600 games is not a reason not to include them in pick of the month.

I think Stan hasn't realised about the 2x and 3x filters in the game's setup.exe, or the larger resolution options in older games.

It also now has a resolution column so you can see that 17 games out of about 500 are 800x600. Which is maybe why you don't see many in the pick of the month. (The only one, I think, has been the farm)

[Andail]

I wish people could read up on previous discussions on users' rating and why they're not reliable.

Game authors, shamefully, have a tendency to pimp their own games by giving them the highest score multiple times, while lowering the score of competitors' games systematically.

Users don't have criteria to follow, their votes cannot be discussed, appealed or reversed.

Even when we only had users' rating, we still didn't sort the games by them, because it just caused problems.

[Bai Karl]

Even the best created adventure game could be lost here. This website needs more special sections like "Pick of the month". And these special section should contain the best games from the website!

The best game should be lifted up!

[SSH]

The small quantity of 800x600 games is not a reason not to include them in pick of the month.

I'm not saying it is, but it would be unfair for them to be proportionally overrepresented. I have chosen 31 games for pick of the month and 2 of these are 800x600 (I forgot META, too).  That makes about 6.4%. 17 out of 500 games that are user-rated makes about 3.4%. Therefore 800x600 games are actually already over-represented in my choices.  


And as for special sections, the AGS Awards are voted for by forum members. Why not check out the winners there?

[Bai Karl]

So I think that you admit that there is discrimination for 800x600 games. What are these percents? Every game is a game.

I suggest in the main page of the site to put a message:
"Do not make game in 800x600. They have a smaller chance to be included in Pick of the month section."

The small quantity of 800x600 games is not a reason not to include them in pick of the month.

I'm not saying it is, but it would be unfair for them to be proportionally overrepresented. I have chosen 31 games for pick of the month and 2 of these are 800x600 (I forgot META, too).  That makes about 6.4%. 17 out of 500 games that are user-rated makes about 3.4%. Therefore 800x600 games are actually already over-represented in my choices.  


And as for special sections, the AGS Awards are voted for by forum members. Why not check out the winners there?

[SSH]

So I think that you admit that there is discrimination for 800x600 games. What are these percents? Every game is a game.

I suggest in the main page of the site to put a message:
"Do not make game in 800x600. They have a smaller chance to be included in Pick of the month section."

I just proved that they have a larger chance.

I admit that I discriminate for good games. I really don't understand how you can read what I said as discriminating against 800x600. If you have a specific non-commercial, released game that you'd like to recommend for POTM, please suggest it.

You know, sometimes my 5-year-old says "Daddy, why haven't you got me a drink, I'm thirsty" and that's the first I hear of it. My response is usually "I'll get you a drink as soon as you ask nicely". Hey, a five-year old needs to learn to deal with the issue rather than question someone's motives. Fair enough, they're a kid. How old are you?

[bicilotti]

I wish people could read up on previous discussions on users' rating and why they're not reliable.

Game authors, shamefully, have a tendency to pimp their own games by giving them the highest score multiple times, while lowering the score of competitors' games systematically.

Users don't have criteria to follow, their votes cannot be discussed, appealed or reversed.

Even when we only had users' rating, we still didn't sort the games by them, because it just caused problems.

Let me respectfully say that the "sort by rating" topic isn't that straightforward. Maybe I'll try to elaborate a bit this statement with some meaningful(?) numbers (a report on another topic spurred many friendly, and imo meaningful, opinions).
To be honest: I think CJ stated on these boards that he's a against it and the opinion of our landlord is what I follow.

bicilotti out, let's get back throwing stones to SSH!  

[Bai Karl]

6.4% is that a larger chance? Every game is a game. For the "pick of the month" they shoudn't be devided!

So I think that you admit that there is discrimination for 800x600 games. What are these percents? Every game is a game.

I suggest in the main page of the site to put a message:
"Do not make game in 800x600. They have a smaller chance to be included in Pick of the month section."

I just proved that they have a larger chance.

[SSH]

6.4% is that a larger chance? Every game is a game. For the "pick of the month" they shoudn't be devided!

I'll explain it in simple terms.

Of 17 800x600 games, I have chosen 2 to be pick of the month. That is 6.4% of all picks of the month BUT 11% of all 800x600 games.

Of 480-ish other games I have chosen 29 to be pick of the month. That is about 6% of all games.

Therefore 800x600s are over-represented. Like in the same way scottish voters are over-represented in the UK parliament because constituencies cover lower populations in Scotland. But there are still less Scottish MPs than English MPs becuase England has a much bigger population than Scotland.

Next you'll be complaining that there are no 1024x768 games as pick of the month. There's a good reason for that...

Spoiler

NO ONE HAS EVER RELEASED ONE YET

[close]

[bicilotti]

Stan, SSH was only stating that there are not that many hi res game in the database. As there are few hi res games in the database and as not everyone of them is a gem (unfortunately), you expect to see more low res games in the "pick of the month" showcase.
He was not telling he does not want to choose a hi res game just because they are now lot res.
And he's a nice guy and did lot to the ags community! And he's got a great blog! And the "pick of the month" made me discover many nice games! So try to be kind with him!

edit: gaaah the scot was faster (and more humurous) than me

[Bai Karl]

SSH, sorry if I wasn't kind.

I understand. If you divide the games by resolution for pick its understandable. But why you have to do it. If someone make a GREAT game that everybody likes in 800x600 and the quota for the pick of the month is spent what you will do? You will publish a game that is not that good but in 320x200 because they have quota?

I think that the games should be devided by resolution for the pick of the month.

[MashPotato]

I think you're misunderstanding SSH, Stan.  There is no quota for hi-res games, he's just showing you numbers of what has been chosen in the past.  The numbers would no doubt fluctuate and change as the resolution of the games being made changes.

[Nikolas]

Resolution is a technical issue and nothing more.

I have to disagree. I don't agree with Stan's fervent objections to low res, and I think scaling settings can help get around the problem he's talking about in the post above. That said, resolution along with pallate is an aesthetic issue as well as a technical issue. Higher resolution and more colours offer artists more options.

My reply was, of course, over stretched to reach Stan's ideas...

That doesn't mean better games, of course so I don't think being able to search based on resolution would be that essential.

And I do agree.

But indeed, while technical issues can lead to aesthetic issues (4 colour CGA will have different aesthetic than S VGA with the 16 million ones). Pixel art, necessarily will be different, than high res 3-d art and so on.

But I'd like to say that this is more necessity than aesthetic choice!

[jetxl]

Ah the age old question: Is bigger better?
Well is it?

[Snarky]

I think that the games in 320x240 have a big MINUS. Is you want to play them like the way they are designed you have to play them in a small window instead of full screen. And this is the real problem.

- If you play them in a small window you a loosing from the game's atmosphere. You see the WINDOWS icons and buttons, and toolbars. Also somethimes the game can be a pixelhunting because of the small window.
- If you play them at full screen - the resizing is terrible.

I prefer to play hi res in full screen. In 800x600 there is also resizing if your monitor is 1024x769 but that resizing is not too much.

You know, this has nothing to do with resizing or the resolution of your monitor. Games looked exactly the same when they were running on 320x200 VGA screens. It's simply a pretty low resolution, so unless the screen is tiny, it's going to look blocky.

You don't like blocky graphics. We get it. But not a lot of people here are going to agree with you that a game like La Croix Pan is "ruined" by being in oldschool VGA resolution. If you can't appreciate the great art in screens like those ProgZmax posted, I feel sorry for you. If you worry more about the technical resolution than about the actual quality of the graphics, or of the story and the gameplay, I think you're an idiot.

Now, one thing I would agree on is that the increasing difficulty of getting 320x200 games to run in Windows is a problem. I am almost 100% certain that all modern graphics cards can render this resolution, simply because it's part of the VGA standard, which all PC graphics cards pretty much need to support. However, I do find that I cannot currently set this resolution in Windows, not even under the advanced settings of my graphics card. I know I used to be able to, with the same card and the same monitor, so it's probably something that's being blocked either by Windows XP, or the drivers for the graphics card or monitor. I am determined to find a way around it.

Meanwhile, turning on the 2x filter should make it work in all cases without affecting the look of the game at all. Doesn't the latest version of AGS try this automatically if the 320x200/240 setting fails? If not, it definitely should. There are probably some players who can't figure out how to fix it and give up on playing the game.

[Khris]

Ah, how time flies.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=24766.msg340965#msg340965

[Snake]

If you can't appreciate the great art in screens like those ProgZmax posted, I feel sorry for you. If you worry more about the technical resolution than about the actual quality of the graphics, or of the story and the gameplay, I think you're an idiot.

I can't agree with you more.

Stan, this is a dead-end argument for you. You obviously have a taste for higher resolution as well as many others, including main-stream game players, and that's fine.

I for one love, prefer and will create all of my games in 320x200(240). There's countless games made in that res with beatiful backgrounds.

Personally, and I don't mean to knock anybody out there, but I can't stand when people create adventure games around here in 800x600. They just don't seem to do it right. There's too much emty space and the backgrounds are nothing that couldn't have been easily made for 320x200(or 240) and look much better. It makes it look too... I don't know, it just doesn't work for me. I don't see the point of the new addition of 1024x768 in AGS, either.

All in all, that is my personal opinion. I'm more likely to read about/download games made in lower resolutions. But, don't get me wrong, I won't ignore the higher ones just because.

--EDIT--

This game is proof that 320x200 is not dead ...

Stanley Stanley Stanley...


--Snake

[Iliya]

This controversy is pointless. Different people, different taste. I personally prefer high resolution. But I'm also playing low resolution. The latest game that I played was Space Quest 0: Replicated (320x200 - 16 colors). And I must say that I enjoyed it a lot! But if Space Quest 0: Replicated was made in high resolution by the same author, I'm sure the game would bring me more pleasure.

[Pumaman]

#1 - Sorting by player rating
In addition (or instead) to sort with the AGS panels rating, it would be great to sort with rating given by players. This would give more accurate sorting and thus make it more competitive. Also con of the current sorting by panel rating is that opinion of a few is overrepresented.

This has been discussed before -- basically there are a couple of reasons for not sorting by rating:
* User votes are unreliable and have been known to be rigged by some game authors (sadly)
* Games with only a few votes can easily swing wildly from 100% to 50% to 75% as new votes are added. Therefore games with less than 20 votes would have to be excluded from the sort -- and that's a large number of games.

This is just something that came to mind when I was writing the previous suggestion. There have been some cases that I really doubt the pick of the month, don't get me wrong here, the games picked are at least avarage, but it's really shame when there's a lot of greater games without recognition. In the long run, the pick of month loses it's value when the game is more or a less just a random pick (with some exaggeration.)

The "best" games are supposed to be reflected in the AGS Awards. The Pick of the Month is supposed to be to bring attention to good games that many people might have missed. Therefore you shouldn't expect every good AGS game to get a Pick of the Month, because they should be rewarded by the AGS Awards instead.