Adventure Game Studio

(https://i.imgur.com/W2Djh8V.png)
                                                                    (lighting strike in town festival)

PLOT

Falco is a popular police commissioner of the homicides department who works in the capital city of a certain old country.
After 20 years spent investigating murders, he chose to take a long break to return home, a small hill town in the north of the country where people loves drinking.
He just set foot in town when the mayor promptly contacted him to ask him for a favour, knowing his affection for drinks and parties, and gave him the task to free up the town party that is supposed to go on all night long.

(https://i.imgur.com/v2YiEgh.png)

Indeed, a lot of noisy drunkards gather there for town festivals to have party until late in the night, and no police officer was able to stop them, especially during the festival of Baucco.
Falco is happy to accomplish the task as to join the old men to drink with them, but the meeting with an old acquaintance of school times will make the story more interesting.

(https://i.imgur.com/7fiE8fv.png)

MAKING OF THE GAME

Falco is my first game ever made. I didn't know anything about scripting and graphic, so it took me a lot to make it, especially to draw animations and backgrounds.
I also composed the music and wrote the dialogues, for the last with a little but essential help from my friend.
The game is quite short and it's supposed to be a kind of demo or introduction for the character, which I'd like to develop to make some noir stories, without forgetting of the humour element proper of adventure games.

LANGUAGES:
Italian
English

DOWNLOAD:
AGS game page (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2786-falco-lighting-strike-in-town-festival)
There could be minor glitches.
Now the game is available for web, but I can't take screenshot for saved games yet.

Thanks to AGSers:
@Crimson Wizard
@eri0o
@Snarky
@edmundito
@7yp0
@The Last To Know
@Yanek_Crispbread

Special thanks to AGSer:
@Khris

Something is wrong with download link!
Is download private?

I suggest updating link so all can download without signing up on dropbox
If that's not possible then choose other servers!

Same prob here!  :~(
I am not authorized to download the game by the link you posted!?   :confused:

Sorry, now it should works.

I had some connection problems so excuse me for the late reply.

I added a mirror link to itch.io

Enjoy it,
Giacomo

I get a warning when I try to download your game on Itch.io:

QuoteWARNING: This Page Has Been Quarantined
Our system has flagged this page for additional review due to potential suspicious behavior from the page owner.

Maybe that's the same problem that Rootbound encountered when he released his game My Siblings, the Stones (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/completed-game-announcements/my-siblings-the-stones-61469/) a couple of months ago.

I'm sorry about this, maybe it's because I modified many times the game page on itch.io.

Please tell me if you still have problems for download.

Quote from: Giacomo on Tue 01/10/2024 09:18:56I'm sorry about this, maybe it's because I modified many times the game page on itch.io.

Please tell me if you still have problems for download.

Still quarantined, but no problem with downloading when I chose the equivalent of "download anyway". I added a message to the itch community board linking to your threads on this forum, just to let people know it's a safe file.

Nice game so far with substantial dialogs and good animation.

I'd like to report a crashing bug with the phone booth:

After calling various people, the game crashes when I try to end the call and I get the following message:

QuoteError: DialogOptionsRenderingInfo.ActiveOptionID: invalid ID specified for this dialog (specified 15, valid range 1...5)

Thank you, Creamy. I have never encountered that error and despite I'm trying to replicate it, nothing bad seems to happen yet.
I'm sorry to know that the game can still crash. If you can, please give me more details about how that happened.

I realized that sometimes I call "return" instead of "stop" when a dialogue option is choosen. I organised many dialogues so that they work in progression: when I choose an option I use to close the current dialogue and jump to next (e.g. dPhone1 -> dPhone2 -> dPhone3...).

I think it's a good idea to call "stop" everytime you choose an answer, so the current dialogue gets closed and the following one gets opened; this should work well especially if you don't have to jump back into a previous topic, so when a talk is simply linear.

Maybe calling "return" and opening a new dialogue might give problems for the count of ActiveOptionID, as from the error message it seems you have a too high number, compared with the number of the range.

I'll try to figure it out but I'm fumbling around in the dark and I'm not sure how I could fix this.

I did some tests. The bug seems to be triggered by the bottom line of pixels in your general dialog GUI.

To reproduce it, play in fullscreen mode (where you can easily click on the last row of pixels) and go talk to the barman or to Gina. Place the cursor at the bottom of the screen and click.

Ok, I informed Khris and he corrected the faulty line in his module. Now it seems to work fine. 

I guess that who use Scrolling Dialogs module should update it now. I also updated the game.

Thank you, Creamy and Khris

I have another game-breaking bug near the end:

Spoiler

Just after getting the mask, if you go from the truck (scene 3) to the festival (scene 2) the sound cuts, you can't control the character any more and nothing happens. It doesn't matter whether Falco has the mask on or not. I can send you a save file just before that part if you want.

[close]

Creamy, your name should be added between game testers on credits! Thank you for finding all these errors.

Does the game crash everytime you try to do that thing? I hope it's not so and that you could complete the story. I tried that part so many times and nor me nor my friends who tested the game have ever found it out...I am going to fix it very soon. You can send me the saved game file.

Everyone who is playing the game, please have patience. I am no programmer, but I will ensure to make this game work well!

Quote from: Giacomo on Thu 03/10/2024 21:17:55Does the game crash everytime you try to do that thing? I hope it's not so and that you could complete the story.

The game doesn't crash but I can't go on. It happens every time.

QuoteI tried that part so many times and nor me nor my friends who tested the game have ever found it out...I am going to fix it very soon. You can send me the saved game file.

Well, maybe I did something unusual. Check your PMs for the save. Cheers.

I have found the error, I missed a function and the music didn't change together with the background, this triggered the error.

The game has been updated.


Creamy, thank you again! I think you to have restart the game, I'm sorry about that.

Hi, I think I broke your game again  :P

Spoiler

After giving the medecine to Old Geremia, I talked to him. Now, he's dancing and I can't talk to him again. If I try to give him the bucket, Falco mentions that "his instinct tells him to wait". At this point, I know the game well enough to know that I need the key from Geremia to get the pliers and go on in the game. So I think it's a dead end.

[close]

Hi Creamy, that's not a dead end. It's just a bad writing of the quests logic...I will do better for next games.

Spoiler

Go to first scenario and look at the metal wire between the lamp and the bin, now you can talk to Geremia and give him the bucket

[close]

My bad, it does make sense.

I finished the game  :) I'll leave my impressions in the comments section.

Being Italian myself, I had to --I must-- play this game! First of all, I really enjoyed it (I just finished it in one sitting). The graphics are well-crafted, I wish I had half of your skill... Some animations reminded me a bit of the early Simon the Sorcerer games, I can't quite say why. I found the difficulty to be just right, maybe a little bit of pixel hunting but mostly due to the color choice (which is undoubtedly appealing, artistically speaking). Keep up the good work and make many other games, especially in Italian!

In this regard, I have a little curiosity: given that so far I've only played the Italian version, some phrases sounded a bit "strange" to me, as if they were written in English and then translated into Italian. Yet I would have expected the opposite. Or is it just my impression? But, again, it's just a silly curiosity I have.

Thank you, Sim_o.

I'm happy to hear that you enjoed the game. You are right, some hotspots might be hard to find and indeed, where possible, I resized the clickable area.

I wrote the dialogues in english first and translated later into italian. Maybe some phrases were indeed hastily translated, that's because I had to manage almost everything on my own and I didn't always concentrate on the translation. I'll do better next time!

If you liked the game, please leave a comment on the game page and rate it!

On itch I opened a thread to share the report card that I give at the end of the credits video, to rate our detective skills. You can share your mark there!

German transaltion officialy released! Thanks @The Last To Know for the translation!

In case you missed it: A few days ago the German translation was released. So, if you know German, please try it and give us your opinion.  :)

I don't know how but my game ended up to be published on province's newspaper,
and AGS site also was mentioned!

https://www.ilgiornaledivicenza.it/territorio-vicentino/bassano/laureato-in-storia-fa-l-operaio-e-inventa-un-videogame-su-marostica-1.12553612 (https://www.ilgiornaledivicenza.it/territorio-vicentino/bassano/laureato-in-storia-fa-l-operaio-e-inventa-un-videogame-su-marostica-1.12553612)

(https://i.ibb.co/PW7SVxr/Whats-App-Image-2025-01-13-at-12-36-39.jpg) (https://i.ibb.co/VSMtdkH/Whats-App-Image-2025-01-13-at-12-36-40.jpg)

That's the start of glory!

I finally got around to playing this. It's a good game, and for a first outing with AGS, I must say it's very impressive.

My first impression came immediately. Commissioner Falco? Can that really be the correct police rank? Perhaps something has been lost in translation here? He doesn't strike me as chief of police.

So, Falco is a famous detective, but this time his task is trivial - he has to make some partygoers end their party. This turns out to be easier said than done, and soon this task splits into lots and lots of subtasks and puzzles that has to be solved. With only four locations, there is a lot to do! The puzzles are well worked out and quite varied. There is a fair bit of reading required in order to get the information needed for some of the puzzles, but then you should be expecting that when playing a sort of investigation game. I liked the variety and how the seemingly easy mission turns more complicated at every turn. The graphics are beautifully done in gray tones, which I suppose is a choice because of the tongue-in-cheek homage to the noir genre. (Although Columbo can hardly be called noir, and Falco clearly is a comedic version of that character.)

Personally, I would have preferred colours.

Spoiler

Especially after seeing every scene in colours during the end of the game.

[close]

There are a few pixel hunts that would have been easier with colours. But the one thing that had me stuck for a while, was not a puzzle at all, but how to

Spoiler

enter the phone booth.

[close]

I think that was not supposed to stop the player. And if I am going to nitpick, I also several times found a solution before I found the problem it was meant to solve.

Despite these small drawbacks, I had a good time playing the game, and would definitely play more games starring Falco

Spoiler

which the ending kind of promises

[close]

. Thanks for the game!