Once Upon A Crime: A Fairytale Whodunnit (new v1.3B)

[Ghost]

Can somebody explain where the sudden DITA hype comes from? It's nice to see interest, but I am a bit worried here.

I explained that the DITA project really got on my nerves, and that I needed a break. I was able to make this "break" a different game, which is OUAC, which is what this thread should be about.

I'm happy you seem to like the Fairytale Whodunnit, really: the feedback makes me a much happier man and gives me some resolve, but to be, for a last time, a bit more serious and picky than I usually am: I am part of this forum, I have more than one interest, and I would like it very much if we could keep threads I open on matters other than DITA free of this subject.

When people post in C&C I do not ask them when they will be done with their announced game. I give them C&C.

When they release a game out of the blue, I am happy to have a game, and if it is interesting I will play it, and if I like it I will say so. I don't post in the same thread that I expect their other project to be finished yesteryear.

If I spent all my days here just asking where Legend Of The Lost Lagoon, Forgotten Element and MI Lost Years are, I would have a much higher post count and much less friends.

Yeah, I updated my avatar and link banner. So what? Everybody likes a change of clothes now and then, and the progress bars were all wrong. Good?

Sorry, this may all sound rude, and in truth we all know I should just feel flattered at all the interest, but if this continues, I don't think I'll ever get in the mood again.

[Galen]

Long production times do tend to breed hype. As does leaving references about the release of DITA in the game and rechanging your sig and avatar.
Sorry I and any other offenders (who are to blame for everything *points finger*) annoyed you.

[Dualnames]

I was trying to tease you. Not make you mad. I just enjoyed your game and I know that whatever you're about to release is gonna reach top quality and even if it doesn;t i ''ll know you try. When I saw the sprite I thought it was about DITA since it was very close to that art style.. Even if you plan not to release DITA , I still gonna check out your games.
Even if you end hating me, I'll still be posting in your threads. I'm no immature guy that doesn't know how difficult is to make a good game.
I hope you'll still talk to me. I'm planning to take a burden of you. I'll talk about DITA at the Completed Games thread.

[ManicMatt]

Ah, so this game has been released.



OMG it's done and I've only just noticed!!  :o

[Vlad]

Very well made game, I enjoyed it.

It's not everyday that a game character looks at me and goes  :o

[Ghost]

I was tempted to edit my last post and leave things be, but that would've been no solution. So I'll let it stand, and try to clean up things here.

Crazy, Dualnames, no personal offence was taken. I was just a bit scared, and I think this can be understood, to be put down as "the DITA guy". In a perfectly normal C&C thread I get asked about DITA, then here too. This is stuff that could well have been done in PMs.

On the other hand, I now understand I was a bit too touchy, and you were not nagging but, to use my words, using "friendly force" to encourage. I apologise for reacting too strong.

Two things about DITA.
Yes, it will always be my little brain child, and I am working on it.
But there have been drawbacks. Production at OUAC revealed a serious misadjustment of my monitor, which basically means that many graphics will need to be readjusted. And there is very little time. I'm in school and internship, I have little time on my hands. The last two hours of holiday were almost completely spent on OUAC because, frankly, it has been the longest bit of free time I'll have in the next six month. But it will be done.

I also misread a few comments that were just saying, if I had been not so rash, that you took OUAC as a reason to believe in the quality the next game will have. In truth, no nicer thing could have been said.

If you accept my apology, I'd very gladly leave things rest.

@Vlad
Thank you, and I am glad you liked the game!

[Dualnames]

An update has been made, removing the last known bug from the game. As for the crashes due to cursor modes, I am a bit puzzled that some report them, some seem to be fine.

@joel
I usually do not like ripping at all, but the two Kyrandia tunes were so much spot on that I couldn't resist. The credits tune, however, was especially made by Corinna, who seems to have a thing about KISS and just told me to hug you all and tell you to buy some tribute album of the band.

WOW... I so wanna finish the game... Corinha if you're a woman merry me.

EDIT: Can you upload the song somewhere and i'll host it or send me the song and i'll host it?

[Ghost]

Corinna is an old friend from Aachen. Chinese. These days, blue hair due to an extremely childish bet. Obsessive KISS fan. Trained in Monkey Kung Fu, Lost Monkey. Extremely bad scooter driver. Broke my shin once because she thought I was a traffic light.
Also the most crafty midi burglar I ever saw.

I'll tell her you liked the music. She'll let you live 

BTW: Where are you stuck? There's a walkthrough available now.

[Dualnames]

I know I don't want to finish the game by walkthrough just to hear the song. Pretty pretty please can you send me the song.. if you don;t want it hosted and want people to hear it when they finish the game..

EDIT: Thanks a lot.

[ManicMatt]

Woop, that was fun!

Lovely graphics, amusing dialogue, and some puzzles leading me to using the walkthrough!

Spoiler

Like the cherry bomb puzzle.
And being stuck because I didn't know I should go to the pigs den to have a cup turn into a bucket. 
When I use the cake on the tin-man-come-robocop-guy near the end, he says what he'd say at the start of the game!

[close]

Oh dear, my girlfriend is wondering why I havent sent her a text message tonight, I can't realy say I was immersed in an adventure game hey...

EDIT: To what you ask below, I'll PM you about rather than fill this thread up about it.

[Ghost]

Woop, that was fun!

Matt, geez, you're a quick one. But well, a quick little fun is better than none... Walktroughs are *evil*  :

Edit: Right, thanks.

Spoiler

When I use the cake on the tin-man-come-robocop-guy near the end, he says what he'd say at the start of the game!

[close]

Bummer. That's intentional. Limited vocal circuits and so on. Hardware upgrades too expensive.

[Anonymous]

A suggestion for next version:
Set the default left click for menu items as use and the right click as look. As of v1.3B, the default is walk to, which doesn't make sense for items in the inventory.

[Ghost]

Duly noted, though I think I'll wait for some more feedback before I tackle a new version.

[Anonymous]

Oh, also, an option to load from the title screen rather than having to skip through the intro would be nice as well.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Awfully demanding there aren't you, Anonymous?

Cute game.  It has a style going for it that should make it one of the better remembered AGS games and it is also lengthy enough to satisfy most tastes.

A few things I noticed:

Spoiler

There are ALOT of red herrings in this game that distract you from what you need to do.  The egg, Neptune offering his crown for a pie with jellyfish on it and Captain Hook's suggestion that you talk to Peter, even the candy making machine in Red's room.  These all strike me as ideas you had intended to follow through with initially but then decided not to, and having these options thrown at me confused me enough that I had to check the hints at one point to figure out what to do next.  I also found Red's use of 'bugger' to be extremely out of character and yeah, it seemed a bit out of place in the setting.

Also, I kept thinking of logical ways to use her new PI set (like dusting the walnuts for the most recent fingerprints) and coming up empty, which is a shame since more detective work would have sold the whole detective thing more for me.

[close]

Aside from that and some pixel-huntery I found it to be quite an enchanting game!  Nice work!

[Ghost]

Regarding Anonymous' suggestions, I would have not too many problems with putting up a new version sometime, but, as a one-game-releaser, I have no idea how common that is. There have been two bug fixes, and that was important, but one new version for the sake of some added features, I wouldn't know. It seems hardly worth it; so far the "new versions" I found worthwile were "deluxe" versions of older games (Apprentice, BenJordan) They should offer more than a skip key I feel. Maybe someone with a bit more experience has a suggestion.

ProZ: Thanks, and you are right, there were (of course) some things I wanted to put into the game and then left out. One of them has been spotted by you.

Spoiler

I really wanted to have Red dusting the walnuts for prints, but then thought that it would be even more illogical to have common dust reveal a "recent" fingerprint.

[close]

Also, please make sure to rate the game because I am a feedback addict!

[Dualnames]

The KISS Song on the credits for those wondering is:

Spoiler

Christine Sixteen

[close]

Damn you Ghost I was about to use a KISS song for the credits of LC3 :

[Blair]

Was the blue cup reappearing after it converted into a bucket intentional? After I use the bucket. I can get the blue cup  again convert into a bucket again along with the used bucket in inventory then pick up the blue cup a third time and so on.

[Ghost]

@Blair:

Yes, that is intentional. The big blue cup is such often used as an in-game joke that I wanted to extend the metaphor: You always, always again, return to the big blue cup 

It's almost quantum.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

---------------------------
Adventure Game Studio
---------------------------
An internal error has occured. Please note down the following information.
If the problem persists, contact Chris Jones.
(ACI version 2.72.920)

Error: run_text_script1: error -6 running function 'on_mouse_click':
Error: Null pointer referenced
in Global script (line 357)


---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

It would appear that not all the bugs have been weeded out, sorry to say, which is a pity, because I'm having a lot of fun with this game!

I've often seen this error in games that use a LEC-style inventory, even Prosksito's MI2 template suffers from it occasionaly, and always happens upon clicking on an inventory item coupled with some other strange condition which probably depends on whether the player's clicked the inventory sprite, or the inventory window, or some other silly small little thing like that which screws up the values. I've had this error happen 5 times in about 3 minutes, which is detrimental for the overall enjoyment of the game, to say the least.

In this situation, my advice is to make some sort of check at line 357 or before - even if it needs to be redundant, just to make sure that if the pointer is null then it won't be referenced.

BTW, I'm not sure if my version is 1.3 or 1.3B - I think it's 1.3B, and I downloaded it quite late, but the readme only lists version history up to 1.3.

EDIT - BTW, using the spatula on the regular candy canes causes Red to say "Might as well take a sample", although nothing appears in the inventory and a quick glance at the walkthrough told me it's not necessary. Bit misleading, isn't it?

EDIT - Also, give the cherry pie to Smee while Hook is away and Hook's line will still display.