This is the first game I've ever done with AGS...and maybe the last. I've been working on this by myself for 1.5 year and I really hope you'll like this game so the time I've spent on it hasn't been a waste :D
Poor Jimmy is about to have a bad day. His grandfather just passed away and Jimmy arrives to the attic of his grandfathers house to clean it up. He finds a spellbook in a locked chest and Jimmy thinks that magic is just something that belongs in fairy tales. Just to prove how stupid magic is he reads a spell just for fun and is magically transfered to the land of Xandia where the evil witch Josephine has gone mad with power. Will Jimmy save the world or will Josephine reign in terror forever? Why don't you find out?
This is a cartoonadventure set in a fantasyworld. There are some adult material, profanities, a little cartoon nudity stuff, drug use (not by Jimmy though) etc.
The game contains 73 backgrounds and some of the music is made by me and the rest is taken from The games factory. There are quite a lot of different characters to interact with and...ah what the hell...It's an adventuregame, you know the drill. No need for this info :D
(http://a.imageshack.us/img641/3305/screen3uo.th.png) (http://img641.imageshack.us/i/screen3uo.png/)
(http://a.imageshack.us/img823/7682/screen2ll.th.png) (http://img823.imageshack.us/i/screen2ll.png/)
(http://a.imageshack.us/img704/9100/screen1xq.th.png) (http://img704.imageshack.us/i/screen1xq.png/)
Here's the download link as well. Thank you Peder for hosting the game and for some scripting help whenever I needed help :) Feel free to send me a message if you're stuck in the game or if you find any bugs etc. PLEASE PLAY IT!!!! haha
UPDATED 2011-03-21
http://www.agsarchives.com/gamecard/1127/jimmy-the-troublemaker.html
Looks pretty awesome, I'll give it a shot, maybe even let's play it if it isn't super super long. :)
No it's not superlong :) It takes me about 1.5 hour to play it if I only do the stuff you have to do to complete the game and nothing else (like talking to people you don't have to. Inspecting all hotspots etc.) Medium length I guess :)
gonna check this one out, looks like cool:D
Congrats on finishing such ambitious project!
Thank you :D Ahh I just realised I forgot to delete the savegames I've been using when testing the game. They don't work now though. If you try to restore them, the game will exit. Just open up the savegame and delete them :)
there are no savegames included.
Really? strange...they were present when I ran the compiled game oh well..no problems then :)
With AGS, the saved games should be in your my documents folder in a folder called My Saved Games. So the saved games wouldn't be in the zip.
Good to see you finally finishing this game. I'll definitely have to give it a play through soon.
Playing and, even if humorous adventures are not my cup of tea, I'm having big fun!
Congrats on finishing it!
Quote from: Mouth for war on Tue 17/08/2010 20:24:10
Thank you Peder for hosting the game and for some scripting help whenever I needed help :)
My pleasure!
Congrats on releasing it!
I will have to try and get some time to play it properly one day :).
This one looks nice, downloading! :)
Wow that's a long time to be working on a game! Congrats for finally getting it done! I'll play it this weekend :)
Really sounds like you finished some ambitious project here, so congrats! :D
Just played it a bit and I have to say that I really love the graphics and animations. They look clean, lively and colourful, and the animations are well done and a joy to look at. Love the intro sequence for that matter! :D
Otherwise the game is not my cup of tea, though. I think I heard all variations of fourth wall breaking jokes before, but anyway, this game seems to have all of them in one place, which may be in an overdose for some.
The premise is not the most original, but who cares, the execution matters anyway. :) Yet, our protagonist is just "Oh well, what do we do now?", with the immediate goal being to get out of this mess. The main character doesn't seem to surprised by the situation, and shows just a lack of interest. I don't know if the premise of a real world character being teleported into a fairytale world is used inventively later on, for that I didn't play nearly long enough.
The descriptions are a bit demoralizing. Like "That's a stupid idea" when I try to pick some berries from a bush or all the variations of "Just another tree/rock/bush". I dunno, locations are meant to be explored, so when I hear that, the fun of exploring wanes a bit.
Yet, I liked the idea of searching for spots to dig with the shovel. Strictly speaking, this is just pixel hunting. But on the other hand, when you know what you're looking for it can be a fun mechanic, like all those hidden object games prove. :)
Well, that was a lot of criticism, but for the price it was alright I guess. Just kidding. ;)
I would love to see such art in another game, maybe you might make another one? :)
Thank you for your criticism. It's always good to hear that. I understand what you mean with things like "that's a stupid idea" That doesn't mean I think you guys are stupid though :D I just wanted to give the character a bit of an attitudeproblem.
Sometimes when I've been working on this game I've just typed things in the script for Jimmy to say without thinking so much about them. Maybe I should have thought more about that. But when people are trying to talk to a rock for example...they almost deserve a funny reply :D This was my first game like I said and it has been a real experience and I'd love to make another game. This was more or less for practise
I value your opinions and I think that will help me in the future. :)
Haven't had time to play much of the game yet (I work as a teacher, and this has been finals week for the summer semester, so I've been busy), but from what I've played so far it looks like you've put a lot of work into it, and I'm looking forward to playing the rest.
I think you may do yourself a disservice with too much self-deprecation; your protagonist goes on a bit too much about how terrible the graphics are, et cetera. The graphics may not quite be LucasArts quality, but they're actually quite good for an amateur adventure; I know that your having your protagonist insult the game so much may be meant humorously, or to forestall criticism and give a knowing wink to the player, but I don't think that telling the audience your game is bad is necessarily such a good idea.
Aside from that, the only real criticism I have so far is that some of the room exits are kind of small; it sometimes seemed a bit too sticky getting a character to just the right spot to move into the next room. This wasn't terrible -- I've seen a lot worse -- but just something you may want to keep in mind for your next game. Bigger, easier to use exits are good.
Other than that, I just have a few technical linguistic niggles I'd like to point out that you may want to fix if you end up making a second release (I don't really think these are spoilers, but I'll stick them behind a spoiler tag anyway, just in case):
Spoiler
"Crystal ball" should be two words, not "crystalball"
The word is spelled "ridiculous", not "ridicolous" (in the description of the diploma)
Anyway, just pointing out a few minor details that could possibly use improvement. Overall, though, I'd say so far it seems you've done an admirable job, especially given that this is your first adventure. As I said, I'm looking forward to finding time to playing the rest.
Thank you as well. Yeah the so called jokes about the graphics is a little like you said to forestall criticism but I am aware that I'm not a good artist even though the graphics for Jimmy turned out ok but that's as good as it gets hehe. I've probably spelled a few things wrong here or there or didn't use the proper grammar. I'm swedish so my inglish mej nott bi purfekt. :D Hope you like the rest of the game :)
OK, finally had a chance to finish playing the game. Cute, and a lot of different NPCs to react with that each had their own personalities. A couple of interesting plot twists. Some of the humor was a little crude for my taste, but that's just a matter of personal preference; other people may feel differently. Overall, though, it was well done, with some good puzzles. For someone who claims to be bad with graphics (and claims
over and over and over to be bad with graphics...), you put in a lot of animations, which is a good thing. And the bit about extra places to dig that weren't necessary for the game's solution but yielded random objects or supplementary info was a good one, I think.
There were a few things I thought could have stood for improvement; again, I don't want to be too critical, and I only mention these as things to keep in mind for your next game -- overall, I thought it was well done, so I hope it doesn't come across too much as I'm dwelling on the negative. But anyway...
There was a
lot of dead space in this game. A heck of a lot of rooms with nothing to do in them. I don't really think that was necessary; a tighter game with fewer rooms might have been better, overall -- walking around the map would be less tedious, for one thing. And in some cases, it wasn't obvious that there
was nothing to do; there were things that looked like they might be relevant but turned out never to do anything. That was true, for that matter, even in many of the rooms that
did have some things to do; they were chock full of extra scenery that looked like it should have been important but wasn't -- locked chests that the player never found the keys to, doors that didn't go anywhere, useful-looking objects Jimmy refuses to pick up, and so on. A few red herrings can add a little challenge to the game, but this made for far too many distractions, and made the game more frustrating than it may have needed to be at times.
Most of the puzzles, as I said, were good, but there were one or two that I thought were kind of iffy. One puzzle seemed like just a guessing game; if there were any clues, I missed them, and I got it only by trying every object:
Spoiler
Giving the piggy bank to Benny. Was there ever any indication he wanted a piggy bank before you tried giving it to him? For that matter, there was no real indication that the player should buy the piggy bank in the first place, except that it gave a different message from everything else in the store when you interact with it. And then painting the piggy bank red... well, I only tried that because, again, giving the (unpainted) piggy bank to Benny yielded a different reaction than anything else, so it was clear I was on the right track and only needed a little something extra... but there was no obvious indication a priori that the piggy bank should have been red. All in all, as I said, this puzzle seemed more like just a guessing game than anything logical.
And then, a minor matter, but one of the puzzles involved some serious pixel-hunting:
Spoiler
the tape. True, there was nothing else useful in that room, so the player is arguably motivated to search it extra hard, but still, that seemed a trifle unfair
.
Oh, that reminds me... for that matter, speaking of pixel hunting, many of the hotspots could have stood to be larger. It was often very difficult to find the right spot to click on an object, and the fact that the cursors didn't show their active points made it even worse. It's okay if the hotspot is larger than the object -- it's better (in my opinion, anyway) to make the object easy to click on, even if that means that even clicking slightly off the object still works. Along similar lines, it wasn't always obvious where the player could or could not walk, and where the exits to the rooms were.
(One other puzzle I found slightly annoying was the
Spoiler
ghost's game
. But that may be just me.)
Anyway, again, overall I thought it was very well done, especially for your first game. I'm only pointing out a few places where I thought there was room for improvement so you can keep them in mind for your next game. (And, of course, all this is just my opinion, so others may well disagree.)
a bug encountered- I suppose
after visiting the gnomes' cemetery I became a small sized guy, is it okay? ???
how to get my normal size back?
since that time I cannot enter the gnomes' cemetery anymore
I went to the cemetery, then went up to the gnome cemetery and then to the right ??? to another cemetery with a huge table and trees and gravestones around. Since that time I have become a little tiny Jimmy gnome guy
Hmm that's weird...never encountered that. Maybe I put 2 walkable areas next to each other. You're supposed to walk up the hill again and return to the original size.
But I cannot enter that gnome cemetery anymore ???
Weird...I haven't encountered that problem at all :(
Quote from: Mouth for war on Sat 21/08/2010 13:57:00
I am aware that I'm not a good artist
First of all, I'm surprised you're talking this way! The graphics were really quaint and colourful. I didn't actually mind all the jokes about the author being rubbish at this and that - but mostly it felt really forced. So you should definitely have more confidence in your own graphics, rather than think you'd better cover yourself on the off-chance somebody says "terrible graphics".
Gameplay was good. Sometimes I felt I was missing an in-joke, such as when you tell us about a psychotic woman with a knife confronting you. It was a bit strange to say the least =D. The music was cheerful, and surprisingly did not get overly repetitive. Animations were fantastic. When I discovered new scenes there was lots to look at (in a good way), but on the other hand, perhaps sometimes too much (as Alun said).
Ashamedly I have only ever played a handful of AGS games, so whether I played this one by coincidence, or whether it subconsciously caught my eye, I have no idea. Therefore as a relative outsider with no anticipations in an AGS game, well done.
A post in the Hints and Tips forum just reminded me of a bug I ran into in this game that you may want to know about.
Spoiler
It's possible to talk to the Professor after he's left the beach but before he enters the house. If you do, he says not to talk to him until he gets to his house -- but he stops moving, so he never gets to his house where you can talk to him. As far as I know, this makes the game unwinnable; when this happened to me, I restored a game from before I talked to him.
Didn't mention this before because I'd honestly forgotten about it; like I said, I was just reminded of it by a post in the Hints and Tips forum.
Hi everybody! Thank you for playing the game :) I've uploaded another version now. The bug with Professor Brown is gone :) (Same download link)
I found a error. I'm always kicked out of the game when I use the hollow stick with the seeds on professor but not when I do that on the fairy lady. :'( The professor must have higher respect than the fairy lady in this game hehehehe. ;D
Quote from: Alun on Thu 02/09/2010 03:21:21
A post in the Hints and Tips forum just reminded me of a bug I ran into in this game that you may want to know about.
Spoiler
It's possible to talk to the Professor after he's left the beach but before he enters the house. If you do, he says not to talk to him until he gets to his house -- but he stops moving, so he never gets to his house where you can talk to him. As far as I know, this makes the game unwinnable; when this happened to me, I restored a game from before I talked to him.
Didn't mention this before because I'd honestly forgotten about it; like I said, I was just reminded of it by a post in the Hints and Tips forum.
I've run into a similar version of this bug, where
Spoiler
although I made sure not to talk to the professor while he was walking to his house- because I read about the bug in the Hints and Tips thread- and followed the professor all the way to his house, The professor stop walking when he is almost all the way in door (you can see and interact with the back of his head) and talking to him result in a "not now" dialogue. The professor never appears inside the house itself and this brings my game to a standstill. unfortunately my last save was before I got to the master's grave, so I have some repeating to do.
I also found two other glitches:
The first
Spoiler
happens in the house where you get the tape from the mermaid poster. I walked behind the silhouette of the lamp in the foreground, and Jimmy promptly got stuck. I was unable to walk anymore and I had to load an old save.
The second
Spoiler
happens at the gate to the grave in the forest where the jack o' lanterns (pumpkins) are guarding the gate. Seeing as the pumpkins go on and on about having to prove you are a member of the Spencer family in order to pass and attempting to interact with the gate prompts Jimmy to say it is solid and the pumpkins repeat the Spencer thing, this causes me to believe that there is a puzzle you have to solve in order to get past the gate. However, when I was puzzling over this, I happened to click behind the gate, inside the graveyard area. Imagine my surprise when I suddenly walked right through the supposedly solid gate and was able to walk to the next scene! I'm pretty sure I managed to skip a puzzle here as am positive I never proved I was a Spencer yet I was able to pass through the solid gate.
BAH! You always think you took care of those nasty bugs...better fix that then...I thought I could leave this game forever and move on to something new but nnoooo :D hehe. I'll let you know when I've fixed it. Thanks for reporting
Absolutely wonderful game!! Took me forever to finish it though LOL. Should I be looking forward to a JTT part 2? :)
Glad you liked it. Hell yeah you should :D...BUT...I want someone to help me with the graphics. I don't really feel like doing another game with the exact same graphics. It's weird...I even offer people money for drawing graphics even though I'm not rich but still no luck hehe. oh well...I really want to do a JTT 2. I already have ideas for it :)
Well good luck! But still, I wouldn't mind the same graphics. I LOVED it.
Quote from: Mouth for war on Sun 17/10/2010 11:43:17
Glad you liked it. Hell yeah you should :D...BUT...I want someone to help me with the graphics. I don't really feel like doing another game with the exact same graphics. It's weird...I even offer people money for drawing graphics even though I'm not rich but still no luck hehe. oh well...I really want to do a JTT 2. I already have ideas for it :)
In all actually, it was the graphics that drew me to your game in the first place. When I see a new game has been posted, the first thing I always look at is the screen shots to see if the game appeals to me at all. I really liked your smooth cartoony graphics- in fact, just the kind I like in an adventure game. I'd say the graphics are one of the strongest parts of your game!
I totally agree with piperhcombs, CosmoQueen, Atelier & Ozzie about the lovely graphic style.
No need to hire someone to do the graphics for you in another style,
I hope JTT part two will be done in the same graphic style, by yourself. :)
Thank you for all your kind words. I really appreciate it guys :) it makes me wanna do a sequel right away :D
I've fixed the last bugs (I hope) You shouldn't be able to walk through the gates now. And the professor should enter his house without problems now. In the room where you get the tape...I really couldn't find a problem there. Hopefully it was a bug within AGS and not the game itself. I never got stuck in there. Let me know if you STILL find any problems
same download link
http://www.agsarchives.com/gamecard/1127/jimmy-the-troublemaker.html
Ah the uploader isn't working correctly. I'll let you know when it's working again
Ok! Now it works :D
http://www.agsarchives.com/download/game_id/1127/jimmy-the-troublemaker.html
Hi, first of all, I would like to say congratulations, this is a pretty good work!
As to the feedback:
1) Love the graphics, you don't have to change anything there. A bit more self-confidence, please ;)
2) Too many screens/locations, especially when the character is walking quite slowly.
3) Sometimes I had to use "Brute force" to find out what I needed to do. At least a small hint should be present (e.g. with the pig)
And... I have to report a bug which hasn't been mentioned before. I got past the pumpkins in the proper manner, the gate opened but I got stuck on the path behind the gate and can't move anywhere. Could use a fix there :)
To sum it up - you've done real well. Love the game. Looking forward to the sequel :)
Vendula
Thank you Vendula...and everybody else. I didn't expect this kind of feedback from all of you. I really appreciate it...have to stop here for a sec...Ok I'm back...Just had to check out what I've written so far in the script for...OH COULD IT BE?!?...COULD IT? Drumwhirl pleeease...Snare with a crash....*Rakadisch*
JIMMY THE TROUBLEMAKER 2!!! :o
This is in a VERY early stage of production. Gave birth to it a few hours ago (didn't feel a thing...and you women always complain about giving birth...tsss") ;) hehe. But more seriously. I might have found some artists/friends to help me out this time. I even offered them some payment like I've done with everyone else I've asked
I hope they won't bail out on me...otherwise I guess I'll have to look elsewhere...I've been thinking about it and I want my next game to be my best work so far and that's why I refuse to do JTT2 with the same graphics. It would just feel like a big add on and nothing new.
The main thing about this game that made me want to download it is the graphics! I love this cartoony style, very clean...Im playing it now :)
ps: Dont need to hire someone for graphics, continue in the same fashion.
Thank you as well general knox. It will be cartoon graphics. dont you worry but even better looking :D One of my biggest problems was that I couldn't add all animations I wanted for Jimmy 1. I had to leave lot's of things out because of that. That's what I mean when I say that I suck at doing graphics/animations hehe.
Allright I have now made the last bug fix I hope. Some people complained about not being able to walk past the gates in the forest of never ending night when it was opened. I have fixed that now and I'm sorry if you've downloaded the game and couldn't complete it. It happened because of another bug I fixed. Someone said (s)he could walk through the gates without opening it so I made sure that if Jimmy collided with it he would stop. That gate happened to block the walkable area though so it was impossible for Jimmy to walk past it. Sorry again!
With those words I leave this thread and continue working on JTT2 :D
Thanks for that. For those of you who experienced the same problem and don't want to start all over again, here's a saved game (http://gamesolutions.efzeven.nl/files/agssave.zip) of the new version, starting at the gate with Bub & Bob.
Hey! Very professional of you Leon. I was thinking about uploading that but you beat me to it :D
EDIT
Oh I also made sure that Jimmy won't throw away the crypt key...
great game for a first that you stayed with for 1.5 years. the art style actually went really well with the games theme and it shows you've put a lot of time and effort into it. ending was....different.
HAHA yeah not the typical ending you'd expect I guess. I've always had a weird/sick sense of humor so you can expect other "Different" things in Jimmy the troublemaker 2 aswell ;) glad you liked it :D
Quote from: Mouth for war on Thu 31/03/2011 10:19:15
I've always had a weird/sick sense of humor so you can expect other "Different" things in Jimmy the troublemaker 2 aswell ;)
Cools!
'File does not exist'...
Quote from: SuperDre on Sun 17/04/2011 16:22:47
'File does not exist'...
Typo in the URL in the 1st post is the
trouble maker ;), here's (http://www.agsarchives.com/download-file/GameID/1127/jimmy-the-troublemaker.html) the proper URL.
oh I didn't notice that. There have been some changes on the AGSarchives page. I updated the url in my first post too. Thanks ArjOn :)
I think I caught one of the earlier bugged versions. As the file link wasn't working when I went to check for updates and I was already behind deadline, I had to leave this off the March FF roundup. Now both are fixed I'll look at it for the April one. I liked the look at the start and the general feedback here is a good sign.