Adventure Game Studio

 

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Massive AGS Project
Do you remember back in November, when Andail proposed (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=23581.0) a Massive AGS Project, a game that would be developed by many different people from the AGS community working together? SPHINX is the game project that came out of that proposal. SSH, bigbrother, myself (Snarky), and several other people have been working on it to various extent for the last few months. Now we are ready to really start cranking up production. And now is your chance to help out!


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Wiki Now Online
SPHINX is an attempt to create an adventure game by open collaboration. All the work is on a Wiki (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/snarkywiki/), so that anyone can contribute just by going to the website and posting their additions and changes.

(http://home.comcast.net/~snarkibartfast/images/sphinx/wikiscreen01.jpg) (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/snarkywiki/index.php/Main_Page)

(http://home.comcast.net/~snarkibartfast/images/sphinx/wikiscreen02.jpg) (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/snarkywiki/index.php/Style_Guide)

(http://home.comcast.net/~snarkibartfast/images/sphinx/wikiscreen03.jpg) (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/snarkywiki/index.php/Plot_Overview)
Screenshots of the Wiki. Thanks to AGA for setting it up.

Help Wanted
The point is for this to be a truly massive, community project. So we need more people to contribute and collaborate on the game. We have an overall story, characters, some graphics and a few puzzle ideas, but there's plenty of work to go around! And this isn't a ploy to get others to make our game for us: We don't own the project, and collaborators have a chance to provide meaningful input and help set the direction of the game.

So go to the SPHINX Wiki (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/snarkywiki/), have a look at the work in progress, and see if there's anything you can add to it.

Very interesting and great idea! I really hope that this works out and can't wait to see what the resulting product will be like. Thumbs up! :D

Oh, the project still hasn't died? Nice! :D

Generally, as far as I'm aware, there are mainly two people working on this game, at least that's what the forums show:
BB and Snarky.

Indeed there's been a lot of effort put into this, and acutally after listening to SSH podcast, I wen there and joined in for the music part. But after seing that it is a little too early to start even discussing music, I was a little put off but still I used to chekc the forums almost daily. After a crash I lost the link, which I foudn today, and I dee that indeed the design has gone far enough.

I believe that this is a great idea that we shoud all back up, as much as we can of course.

Kudos to you two guys for keeping this up.

And honeslty, the noble idea of 'massive AGs collaboration' seems a little difficult to me, but still the game that you're diesgining (along with SSHs' idea) is superb so keep it up, even if most AGS members are not up to it.

Great, simply great.

This looks really exciting, but is there a way of making sure contributers don't end up working on the same backdrops for example?

Also, it would be useful if, in addition to the style guide, you linked to reference material like pictures of Cairo or New Orleans.

I love this idea and when I get some time to read and brainstorm, I'll gladly contribute to story and puzzles!

Thanks for the support, everybody! I hope some of that enthusiasm translates into contributions.  ;D

Quote from: Ali on Mon 12/06/2006 10:59:34
This looks really exciting, but is there a way of making sure contributers don't end up working on the same backdrops for example?

Also, it would be useful if, in addition to the style guide, you linked to reference material like pictures of Cairo or New Orleans.

Good questions. I guess I would recommend that if you're working on a background, you post a note to that effect on the corresponding Wiki article.

Yes, there should definitely be some photos for reference and inspiration. I'll be adding some that I have this week. If you know of something you think is appropriate, go ahead and put it up there!

A reference photo section is definitely a good idea. I'll look into it when I get home. Remember that everything on the Wiki is open to discussion on the forums.

I thought I'd have a go at a concept-ish sketch for one of the backdrops for the cutscene in Episode One. It's very rough and I'm unsure of how Heliopolis should look, but I thought I'd post it to see if it was worth me continuing.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Helioconcept.gif)

Sweet! How would you feel about putting it on these forums, too?
http://agsproject.proboards76.com/index.cgi

Well I think thats an awesome start, Ali! The project itself looks fantastic, and the game already looks superb and thats judged on one screenshot! ;) There's no real discussion that I could find in the Wiki regarding music - so I don't know what you or "us the community" are planning there, but when it comes to musicians it'd be impossible to fall short of any with this forums reputation!

Good work so far though, really intriguing!

I am thinking of Tokio... The modernistic & aichient mix is very very interesting. This game would rock! Sign me in. :P

Japan: http://img349.imageshack.us/img349/6430/tokio18ca.png
Egypt: http://pw.vsb.bc.ca/moon/GradProject/Webpage/egypt%20market.JPG

EDIT: This style seems easy to work with... (http://img114.imageshack.us/img114/7391/rdcrew3uj.png)

It almost looks like this project could be finished. I might even contribute with some puzzle design when it reaches that stage. Considering that's as far as I've ever gotten with my own cancelled projects, I suppose it's better to do it for a project others will ensure gets finished once I eventually give up.

There's one thing though: At this point, what exactly do you expect contributors to do? Talk in the discussion page for the various episode articles in order to finalise the story and locations needed or?

Perhaps a "New contributors" article where you describe what a new contributor can do at the current stage of the project would be nice. Updating it whenever more stuff can be done, such as saying "Story for episode 1 is now finalised. Puzzles still need some more work (link to episode 1 puzzle article), but backgrounds we know we need can already be created (link to article saying what backgrounds have/haven't been made yet).

From what I gather you're not operating with separate production teams per episode any more, is there a reason why the forum still reflects this working method?

That's a good point about direction. Some sort of to-do checklist for every aspect (story, art, puzzles, music, scripting, etc.) would definitely help out people wanting to contribute.

Originally, we wanted to have several small teams each making a chapter of the game. I think this method works much better. The forums could use some reorganization. Good catch.

Although everyone contributing is great, make sure you - the core team - still make the final decisions and don't get pushed about with "ideas" or disagreements. Otherwise the game will get nowhere and we'll get bogged down with debates and bleurgh...just all that crappy annoying internet stuff that halts production. I think you should be tough too. If someone disappears for a considerable length of time, just replace them. Their loss.

You probably took all this into consideration anyway :)

I actually groaned with pleasure when I saw that background, Ali. (Disturbing, I know...) It looks great, and to my eyes very much in the style established by big brother. Seeing an idea I had turned into reality like that is a real rush.

I don't think we had fully visualized what the skyline would look like (I know I hadn't). I think that's one of the exciting things about the project: a lot of things are in the early stages and not fully worked out yet, and contributors can really set their own stamp on the game.

Esseb, you're right. Yes, we need a to-do list for people who're interested in contributing. The reason the forums still reflect the old organization is that there hasn't been a lot of activity there, so we didn't think about it. Also, Rui is the admin and he hasn't been around lately. I am half of a mind to suggest that discussions be moved to the talk pages on the Wiki, except there are some things for which a forum is better suited than a Wiki (such as Critics Lounge threads).

m0ds, my attitude is that the core team is whoever's doing a lot of work on the game. Recently, that's meant big brother and me, but if and when that changes, the most prolific contributors will get to have the most say over the direction of the game. I think (hope) it will work out mostly by itself, since contributing more work by itself exerts more influence over the game. It's more difficult when the major contributors disagree. So far we've been able to discuss different opinions, sometimes compromise, sometimes incorporating multiple opinions, and keep moving forward. (The one issue we haven't fully resolved regards the conclusion of the story, which is still a bit up in the air at the moment. See the Episode 4 talk page.)

Ultimately, if some disagreement is holding the development back, the Wiki maintainers can make an executive decision, though the license allows people who disagree to create their own version of the game if they want to.

Quotethough the license allows people who disagree to create their own version of the game if they want to.

An interesting clause... Does that mean there could be 8 versions of the game SPHINX? Or does it mean a 90% compelted version could be ready, disagreements are met and the whole thing has to be re-made?

Oh, I almost forgot to say: I really like the sprite too, Krysis. I could easily see him as a lowlife hanging out at the docks.

We're just now beginning to establish what style of dress people wear in the city (of course there should be a wide range: The advisor to the Pharaoh and some random thug aren't going to be dressed the same way), since the main character isn't from there and therefore dressed in a somewhat exotic style. I would like to have your input on that question.

Quote from: m0ds on Tue 13/06/2006 14:59:31

Quotethough the license allows people who disagree to create their own version of the game if they want to.

An interesting clause... Does that mean there could be 8 versions of the game SPHINX? Or does it mean a 90% compelted version could be ready, disagreements are met and the whole thing has to be re-made?

The license is discussed (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/snarkywiki/index.php/License_Discussion) on the Wiki, which also mentions (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/snarkywiki/index.php/Contributing#Status_of_your_contributions) the possibility of branching/forking the development.

The same clause of the license that allows someone to take my location description and big brother's sample background and use them to create a new background also allows someone to take all the completed work on the game and use it to make whatever they like, even if that's a different version of the game. Under certain conditions. This is because no one person owns all of the game. Every person owns the work that they do, and grants others permission to use it.

In theory this could mean eight different versions of the game (though we could protect the title so that other versions couldn't use the same name), but I don't think that's a risk in practice. Open-source applications work the same way, and it's rare for them to split. If there's a disagreement and the project gets divided in two, I think it's almost inevitable that one will be seen as the "official" version and attract all the contributions, while no one except the people who left will work on the other. It will then die.

I'm not particularly worried about it, to be honest. I think the big problem with homebrew adventures is that they never finish development. If we do end up with eight versions of the game, that's a luxury problem.

And you're absolutely sure you won't cancel this one if no music is produced? :P ;)

Thanks for explaining though, that makes sense - so best of luck! I'm going to keep an eye on its development :)

This is a great idea, I would like to collaborate with the puzzle and programming stuff. ;D

This seems like a good idea. The only thing i don't get, is where to send/add my contribution. It says in the wiki that i should link my contribution there, but it doesn't say excactly where. :P

Anywaay... Since i don't know where to post it, i'll just post it here. I tried to make it the right clothing etc. and the style weren't that hard to work with. :)
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/sphinxcontributionfromvict0r.PNG)

The pink box is just there to illustrate that he is sitting on something.

Good stuff. I'm glad the idea has been embraced finally :)
You have good people in the team already. Good luck!

Good going for a first sprite for the game, vict0r. I think I already see some improvement in the next two you posted.

I updated the site with a tutorial on how to post to the Wiki and a list of things that need to be done, so if any of you found it hard to figure out how to contribute, have another look! And Big Brother posted a sprite tutorial, so even if the project fails it won't all have been for nothing!

Quote from: Snarky on Thu 15/06/2006 05:45:44
so even if the project fails it won't all have been for nothing!

Nothing is ever made for nothing!!

Minor suggestion again, regarding the to do (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/snarkywiki/index.php/To_do) article you mentioned having created: add more links.

The first design point, for instance: "Design the conversation interface". Where? I created a conversation interface article stub and linked to it from the to do list. Most of the other stuff on the to do page should probably also link to somewhere.

By the way, there doesn't appear to be a stub template yet.

Quote from: Esseb on Thu 15/06/2006 20:15:55
By the way, there doesn't appear to be a stub template yet.

Added to the todo list  ;D