Hey Guys
Here is the Johnny Rockett Space Adventure! my FIRST EVER AGS GAME!
This little game was really more of an exercise in learning AGS rather than creating an amazing narrative and I've really learnt alot...mostly how NOT to do do things, but it has been great. I hope atleast someone finds this enjoyable and as this was a learning tool I'd also be happy to share the actual source folder with all my code and art...although I'm not really doing anything amazing with the code.
www.blacktreeuk.net/download/JohnnyR.zip
I'd like to thank everyone on the forum that helped, especially Khris who put up with my constant questioning of things. There are two player deaths in the game too so save often.
(http://www.blacktreeuk.net/johnny_r/screenshots/3.JPG)
(http://www.blacktreeuk.net/johnny_r/screenshots/5.JPG)
This looks great. Downloading now... further comments later.
[update]
Great graphics. Good dialogs and loads of interactions. Great stuff! The font size could have been a bit smaller, the dialogs not all in uppercase, some typos but other than that, well done!
More soon!
Love this game! Another note: while restoring a game, you can't see the black text on a black background.....
And if you want to remove the textual errors and typos, just PM me.
Ahh.... I just crashed the game!
While re-entering the cargo room where the bot was and trying to select the crate:
in "room8.asc", line 15
Error: MoveCharacter: Character not in current room
Finished. Short, but sweet. The end is a bit sudden and cuts the story (very) short. But potential for a much longer version. Keep it up!
btw, In the end line, Johnny is called Rockett, instead of Rocket.
Ah thanks Leon
Fonts are an area of AGS I'm still yet to explore :) I used to always get lumbered with localization and fonts in my last job so I should be good at it :)
Word of warning - dont expect too much from the story :p It really was just..."How does AGS work???" quest.
YES! I was really looking forward to this... Back in a bit. :)
Looks excellent, huge fan of pixelly games
will give it a go.
learn form sentence must
Cheers Leon!
I've fixed that nasty crash! You always think you've tested something pretty thorough but you always miss something when you've been working on something for so long.
A new file is uploaded with that fix. The character's name is actually Johnny Rockett so if I've refered to him as Rocket thats wrong lol, I'll go back and look over any references with his name!
Cheers again. I was alittle unsure what the best way is to end an AGS game, code wise so I just stook a restart function at the end. Not sure if this was the best thing to do there. Thanks for playing it Leon, means alot :)
Quote from: Mark Borg on Sun 09/05/2010 16:50:04
Johnny Rockett
:o :o Look at topic, look at game title... ???
Yeah...thats probably me just going nuts over time...it happens all too easily to me :( I don't think its a bad try for my first game.
Fixed one other crash, it should be pretty damn stable now anyway :)
Cheers guys.
Finished it 5 minutes ago, found it very interesting and would like to play more.
Crashes sometimes (mainly for the
Charcater not in current room thing Leon reported), plus
Spoiler
you can easily pass past the freezing leak without the help of the bot, just to get another crash if you actually try to stop the vent fan.
Debug mode is still on, too!
Apart from those minor things, great stuff!
Awesome!
I'll download tomorrow and try this out.
Congratulations for completing the game!
Thanks man, despote a few mingling issues with it I'm proud of it :)
Can't wait to start the next one!
I'm also loving your new sprites Wham!
It's really here?!? ***does the happy dance*** I am so excited...between this and nanobots, should be a very satisfying week. :D Ohh Yessssss. More later... ;)
~Sarah
Edited to add: ok, so I finally found a teensy problem. The game crashes on me in the room with the huge fan and whatever that spraying liquid that turns you into solid ice. BTW--I am stuck here and not sure what to do next, any ideas of a possible hint? Pretty please? ;P
Anyway, the scripting error says:
in "Room 7.asc," line 153
Error: Move character: character not in current room
--Hope this helps a little. Or pisses ya off, whichever... ;D
I'm currently playing it, it looks awesome so far, my sole complain is the game deceptively make you believe you can save on more than one slot but actually overwrite the same slot.
Enough posting, I head back to the game.
Quote from: blueskirt on Mon 10/05/2010 08:00:28
I'm currently playing it, it looks awesome so far, my sole complain is the game deceptively make you believe you can save on more than one slot but actually overwrite the same slot.
But you can. Just give the entry a new name and it will become a new slot. You'll only see the first one because it's white text. The others are black text on a black background. The sliders are also in black so...
Just click to the left of the red vertical line on the right. You'll see more entries.
Nothing pisses me off sarah! :)
Thanks for pointing out the save slot problem to Leon, I'll fix both issues and upload a new zip (that helped alot Sarah!. I'm really happy people seem to be enjoying it despite some small issues that it has, there were alot of different puzzles planned originally and the whole Bot puzzle was actually completely different but due to my lack of coding skills it changed...but I think for the better.
From making this I'd approach doing the graphics alot differently and certainly wouldn't run into the same kind of coding brick walls as I did with JR! But it's all a learning curve!
----
Edit-
Theres a new zip online now - on a side note the crashes Sarah found didn't stop the player from finishing the game you'd be glad to know....they're just annoying crashes! I also changed the font colour for the save and restore GUI windows! yay we can now see our other saves! I'm very sorry Blueskirt - that must have pissed you off :(
As for a hint. You have to make Johnny Rockett indistructable to get past that Trigenon gas!
Will check it out within the next days, looks cool.
Don't forget to add it to the game database, so more people will play it ;)
yup, its now in there, I'm having some problems linking it to my forum profile, it doesnt accept my password but I'll get that sorted eventually :)
----edit
Yeah for some reason its my password....bizarre lol nevermind ;)
From the bottom of the add game page:
"Note that you MUST use the original forum name that the user registered under, not whatever their current nickname is"
I think that's the problem..
Hmmm...indestructable, indestructable... Got any more hints of the "obvious" kind for this dense girl? :o
Thanks for fixing the bug--you're right, I didn't think it was anything that would prevent completing the game, just wanted to point it out. I'll download the new zipfile now!
~Sarah
Edited: I figured it out!! I'm not quite as slow as I give myself credit for. ;) Now, back to the game! I am really enjoying it, and although you say you don't want to use those kind of graphics again for your next AGS game, I love 'em! Very pretty.
Thanks hun, every bug found makes it better (ideally I should have found these things before I released it :p but I'm abit of a one man army at the moment).
I don't think my artwork will change too much...improve hopefully :p for some reason the graphics are alittle blurry when the game is run at full screen but I know how to sort that now :)
Cheers Sarah!
Nice work Mark, really impressive for a first game! It's cool to finally see what your questions were about, my imagination was running wild whenever I pictured that gas leak :)
I think the game would benefit greatly from a two-button interface (think The Dig) and a single resolution, but these are really just minor quirks.
I'm still stuck at the gas leak, will keep playing though.
Thank you Khris - again things would have been alot different if you wern't around to help! Puzzle design wise I was alittle limited by my coding knowledge at the start (I guess when your coding ability is very petite your scope for design is quite limited but as I got abit better I tried bigger ideas which....got me stuck at a few points, but you've always been the one to answer my questions when I felt like throwing in the towel.
I still have no idea how to use global variables and things and I'm sure half my problems with the gas puzzle would be solved if I used them but nevermind...theres times for that Holmes!
As this little game was more of an exercise in learning AGS I don't mind sharing the source file with other people like me that are learning the ropes. I'd appreciate it if people didn't use my artwork (as in...don't...it really isn't that amazing anyway, you will do better by practice and creating your own style Like Ben, Wham or Calin!), it's only really ment for looking at the code and seeing how things knit together and how I botched some of the puzzles together. www.blacktreeuk.net/downloads/Rocket_source.zip (5.68mb). I'm no coder so I don't know if it will be much use but it may help people that are at my kind of level in AGS.
----
oops link fixed :)
Thanks guys.
Quote from: Mark Borg on Tue 11/05/2010 11:07:57As this little game was more of an exercise in learning AGS I don't mind sharing the source file with other people like me that are learning the ropes. I'd appreciate it if people didn't use my artwork (as in...don't...it really isn't that amazing anyway, you will do better by practice and creating your own style Like Ben, Wham or Calin!), it's only really ment for looking at the code and seeing how things knit together and how I botched some of the puzzles together. www.blacktreeuk.net/download/Rocket_source.zip (5.68mb). I'm no coder so I don't know if it will be much use but it may help people that are at my kind of level in AGS.
Thanks for fixing the link, got it!
Quote from: Sslaxx on Tue 11/05/2010 11:30:44
Quote from: Mark Borg on Tue 11/05/2010 11:07:57As this little game was more of an exercise in learning AGS I don't mind sharing the source file with other people like me that are learning the ropes. I'd appreciate it if people didn't use my artwork (as in...don't...it really isn't that amazing anyway, you will do better by practice and creating your own style Like Ben, Wham or Calin!), it's only really ment for looking at the code and seeing how things knit together and how I botched some of the puzzles together. www.blacktreeuk.net/download/Rocket_source.zip (5.68mb). I'm no coder so I don't know if it will be much use but it may help people that are at my kind of level in AGS.
It's currently 404ing.
I got it succesfully in case you feel like it I can upload it somewhere else, or e-mail it to you.
The link should be fine Duelnames, I just made a typo originally :)
Cheers man!
Just finished it and really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed that gas leak puzzle. That was clever! And some really nice sprites and background! Especially the 2 soldiers. And the gore is always a plus with me! ;)
:o I'm really impressed by the drawing
*DOWNLOADING*
I am so glad there is only two ways of dying ...
I figured one in the first minute of playing :D
haha cheers guys
Yeah about Death, its always a funny mechanic in adventure games....over done and it can be a nuisance (like space quest - although that was born during the days where games were incredibly tough and trial and error based). I wanted death in it...simply becasue its fun to implement and animate as a developer and some kind of peril is always good for the player.
I think a death at the start and a death at the end was enough and they wern't sneekily squeezed in...the player was given enough cues that...."yes the wires are really nasty" and "yes....if you touch that gas you WILL die" so I'd like to think I avoided the pain of dying somewhat (but I'll let you guys be the judge of that!).
Thank you so much for playing it and giving it a good blast, I appreciate it :)
got these 2 errors with the current build (you really should number the builds, that's a mistake that happens a lot around here, they always keep the same filename so you never know which build you are downloading or if you have the latest build)..
(in room 3): Cannot load ambient sound 1
(in room 1): Warning: ChangeCharacterView was used while the view was fixed - call ReleaseCharView first
I agree about the comment made above here about the 2 button interface.. Also I would suggest having 'tooltips' when you hoover over a spot, most games have it these days so you won't have to pixelhunt (which is very annoying)..
I also hope you'll expand this 'test' as it looks great and could make a great game..
Keep up the great work..
Quote from: Mark Borg on Tue 11/05/2010 19:33:00
I think a death at the start and a death at the end was enough and they wern't sneekily squeezed in...the player was given enough cues that...."yes the wires are really nasty" and "yes....if you touch that gas you WILL die" so I'd like to think I avoided the pain of dying somewhat (but I'll let you guys be the judge of that!).
I played this game for a little while and then died at the beginning. And because dying seemed so easy I didn't feel like playing further. I am a big Sierra fan but I wasn't in the mood for random dying at the moment. I'll probably give it another go later since I was apparently wrong in assuming it's one of those death-filled games.
But if I may, I'd like to suggest that if you want to use the player's death for its comedy value in your games and especially if it only occurs in a couple of specific places, please don't make the player restart the game or load a save game. Instead do what Leisure Suit Larry 6 did and let the player continue from the point before the dying happened. Otherwise the player might become annoyed and in the worst case scenario continue the paranoid save-early-save-often routine throughout the whole game, therefore not being able to fully enjoy the game itself.
In fact, this suggestion goes to all adventure game developers who want to include dying as a possibility in their games. Dying was never a good design point in adventure games. Sierra developers made a mistake! Don't make the same one.
Sorry for rambling, I'm sure your game is enjoyable once I feel like giving it another go. :) I always love a good sci-fi adventure and this one sure looks fantastic!
Quote from: Pablo on Mon 17/05/2010 01:17:15In fact, this suggestion goes to all adventure game developers who want to include dying as a possibility in their games. Dying was never a good design point in adventure games. Sierra developers made a mistake! Don't make the same one.
I personally disagree with dying being a bad designpoint in adventure games, I do agree with your solution of continueing before the dying point.. I'd rather think let the player die instead of saying "oh no that's to dangerous I might die, I won't do that" just let the player make the mistake and die. What I really think is bad design is letting the player play through the whole game and only finding out at the end it forgot something on screen one so he/she can't finish the game (and therefore make all savegames worthless)..
But as I said, if you do add dying to the possibilities, make sure you restore the player to the point before dying and not let the player rely on his/her savegames (unless you have an autosave function or something like that).