Secrets of Sultan Kanuni 2

[proximity]

Oh, i misunderstood Nostradamus, listen to mr.me

[Nostradamus]

No. that's not the point, I wasn't looking for a hint.
If I wanted to do timer related fast actions I'd play an action game.
I could work through an action sequence or a timer puzzle later in an adventure game if the game was interesting to that point and it was important to the plot. But to have a timer puzzle right at the start, having to either see the intro over & over or save the game and load it over and over with barely having a few seconds to try stuff is a major major turn-off.

[proximity]

What can i say ? I just wanted to create excitement at the beginning of the game. As i said before, i thought people would like it. Most of players actually did. I can say i achieved my goal.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Not played the game yet, but for the record here's some games that tried that "excitment" stuff as well:

"Broken Sword 2" - you start tied up in a house that's on fire. It's exciting, but you can't actually die. And it's still exciting.
"Broken Sword 3" - you start in a plane that's about to tip over the edge of a cliff. It's really exciting, but I don't think you can actually die. And if you can, it surely isn't on a timer.
"Riddle of Master Lu" - at the very start, you have to save your friend from a poisonous cobra. There's a timer, and you can die, but in that game, if you die you just restart from the beginning of the dangerous situation.
Hey, "Beyond Good and Evil" starts with a fight, and even though it's more of an action game, it has the foresight to also reset to the beginning of the dangerous situation whenever the player loses.

Just letting you know of some examples of how other games did it, in case more people complain about it and you feel moved to seek alternatives. I know I would have complained about it if I had played the game yet - forshame, I've been very busy...

[proximity]

"Beneath the steel sky" : When you are killed by a monster or robot, you restart before cutscene of that dangerous situation.

"Gabriel Knight 3" : When you are killed by traps late in the game, you restart with interface "try again" or something. Also you have to wait loading screen .

"Monkey Island 4" : When you lost fight in Monkey Combat, you have to restart  from the beginning of the fight and the it was too long.

  I think adventure fans passed easily beginning of the game because it is so clear that the sofa must be pushed. You can see the sofa doesn't have any shadow. That means the sofa is interactive object and you gain 30 seconds after pushing it.  I think it is reasonable time to solve pliers-window puzzle and escape from the room. I think adventure fans passed the first room after at most 10 attempts and it is not excuse to give up if you are REAL adventure fan.

[Nostradamus]

In Rui Pires' examples of Broken Sword games, those puzzles had reasonable timers or no timers at all (because I passed both with no problem) and also they have the reputation of being Broken Sword so you want to do the puzzle because you know the rest of the game is gonna be great.

Sorry, first impression means everything. If you start the game and it annoys you why would you have motivation to go on?

  I think adventure fans passed easily beginning of the game because it is so clear that the sofa must be pushed. You can see the sofa doesn't have any shadow. That means the sofa is interactive object and you gain 30 seconds after pushing it. 

I was going for the pliers\window combo, I didn't notice shading on the sofa because to me it's not important. My thought process in an adventure game is what would I do in the situation and how can I use stuff and not determining by the graphics if objects are useable or not. To you it's so clear that it has no shadow because you MADE it.

I think it is reasonable time to solve pliers-window puzzle and escape from the room. I think adventure fans passed the first room after at most 10 attempts

I'm not willing to see the intro up to 10 times or load savedgames up to 10 times, especially when saving the game actually takes a few seconds of the timer.

and it is not excuse to give up if you are REAL adventure fan.

Excuse me??
"REAL" adventure fans are not defined by playing ANY AND EVERY game that they stumble upon. I don't have to like everything. Just like any fan or any type of entertainment form on the earth doesn't have to read\watch\play\listen\etc to everything in the genre of whatthey like or the person that made what they like.

[Gord10]

Nostradamus really knows everything

I have completed the game, I liked it much. But as it is said above, the actions sequences were a bit annoying. No, the game still skips to the point where the action starts (instead of a "Game Over" screen that leads us to the main menu). But we still have to wait a whole cut-scene to finish when we are caught by the agents in the beginning. As I have mentioned to you in another forum; if you used the StartCutScene and EndCutScene scripts, at least we could be able to skip them with the esc button. I must say this: If you didn't make the this game and this wasn't a game hosted in my webspace, I would stop playing the game just because of that annoying action sequence.

And about the commendary of the agents... If we die in the programmer's rooms, we start the game in the beginning of the level (if we didn't save the game), where is such a past point to start on. And also it is too easy to die in that level, how could the players imagine that

Spoiler

that door leads to Moon or Mars and we die if we don't have/used the right item on us

[close]

?
And about the T-Rex room:

Spoiler

It is too hard to notice we can pick up the long and short bones of the skeletons; because the whole skeleton is showed as "Bones" in the GUI and Ali says "I don't want to/can't touch the bones".  How could the players figure out to pick up the bones?

[close]

I think the game needed beta-testing before releasing (but I know you didn't have much time to release the game).

In spite of all these, it is still an ejoyable game to play. I must say the jokes of the Turkish version (which weren't included in the English version) were really good.

[proximity]

  Nostradamus;

  If you can't notice the sofa as an interactive object, i don't think you are real adventure fan, forgive me. Because, real adventure fans can guess solutions before they solve it. Because they have played hundreds of adventure games and puzzles like this are easy to them.

  If you remember Resident Evil series, objects in room shines and you can easily notice them. We're talking about AGS games so you should distinguish interactive objects because they are different then background objects and they have to be. You know what timer is, so you should also know how interactive objects look like. I'm not the only one use this technique on AGS. If you've played lots of AGS games, you can easily notice interactive objects. This is called " real adventure fan " and you're not one of them, sorry.

  I can't discuss enjoyment you got from the game because this is your enjoyment. You don't have to like everything. You can find timer puzzle annoying. I respect that. But i insist that players who are higher level can easily notice the sofa and they did. Noone asked hint for the beginning on Hints and Tips - this game thread. That means, adventure fans easily passed the first room. This is not my opinion, this is REAL and PROVED data.

[Nostradamus]

Who THE HELL are you to judge what kind of adventure game fan I am??

FYI I have been playing adventure games for at least 12 years and have been in here for 6 years and I have played hundreds of adventure games.

You judging me and saying I'm not a "real adventure game fan" because I don't like your little game opening is highly offensive, irrational and unjustified. All I was trying to do is give you some constructive criticism. You should know if people don't like stuff in your games and be sure that while maybe only one is talking but there are more who are silent but feel the same. Your responses are childish and even brutish and arrogant. I can't believe someone who worked hard on a game and who wants people to play his game talks this way.

I can tell you that from now I will never play or support any of your future games, not because of quality because they're good, but because of your disgusting little attitude. And with this attitude you will not go far in this community.

This behaviour will only make people less interested in you and your games.

All I wanted is for you to know that there is something that me and some people find discouraging. You could have just made the timer a bit longer and improve the game for many people. And as you can see above I'm not the only one here who didn't like some aspects of your game.  In this here community people praise you when you do well and criticize you when you do stuff that are unliked - so you may improve them and get more people to play your games. Instead you chose to offend and go unneedlessly to a personal level - you have a lot to learn on how to behave buddy.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

"Beneath the steel sky" : When you are killed by a monster or robot, you restart before cutscene of that dangerous situation.

"Gabriel Knight 3" : When you are killed by traps late in the game, you restart with interface "try again" or something. Also you have to wait loading screen .

"Monkey Island 4" : When you lost fight in Monkey Combat, you have to restart  from the beginning of the fight and the it was too long.

Er, weren't we talking about such sequences in the *beginning* of games?

Also, the notion of a "real adventure gamer" as someone who scans the screen for something that looks graphically different is... well, it's dis-heartening. I bet if that's what Crowther and Woods, King's Quest and Maniac Mansion knew would happen, they'd have thrown their hands up in frustration and just give up. Your definition isn't of a "real adventurer", rather of someone who's *lumbered through* (as opposed to *playing*) umpteen adventures and wants to get through to the end, and employs all the tricks he's learned with games of similar design, with knowledge of their flaws. What's so different between that and using a walkthrough, or extensive cheats in non-adventure games?

Other than that, I pretty much support Nostradamus in everything he said.

[mr.me]

I would like to start off by saying I'm sorry for starting this argument, this was not my intention.

Proximity - I completely disagree with what you have said and you are completely out of line.

Nostradamus - At this point I understand you dismissing the game, however before Proximity's outburst I think you didn't give the game a fair chance. From what I understand you were trying to use the pliers on the window without having pushed the chair against the door. That means that you missed a part of the puzzle and until you've tried the beginning with the chair pushed, I don't think you can say the timer was too fast. If you did do this though, then you did give it a fair chance and saying the timer is too fast is completely understandable.

[proximity]

    Hey, i'm not out of line. I didn't insult anybody. Telling someone that he is not an adventure fan ain't an insulting. It's just a criticism like you made to me. If you can't handle criticisms, don't criticize others. I play adventure games for 15 years.

   All i wanted to tell you that adventure games can't be played without ambition and passion. Let me tell you something. I hate pixel hunting puzzles ok ? I find it extremely annoying. I was playing Apprentice 2 and i found 1 or 2 pixel hunting puzzles ( like bucket part ). However, that couldn't prevent me to continue the game. I just tried harder to solve that puzzle and just gave up SOLVING it, not gave up the GAME. I just looked at a walkthrough and continued to play it and finished it. Annoying puzzles can't stop me. They just make me more ambitious and i get stronger desire to finish the game. This is adventure gaming. I've never given up an adventure game in my life. I've always finished the game i started (with or without help of walkthrough ). And i know there are more passionate adventure players than me. They can finish any adventure game without help of walkthroughs. Someday i hope i will be the real adventure player like them.

    Who the hell i am ? I am just an ordinary amateur AGS game developer. But i am very ambitious and passionate adventure player and never give up a game i started even if it is full of pixel hunting puzzles those i think EXTREMELY ANNOYING.

     Adventure gaming is about ambition and passion. The harder it is, the more you enjoy. May be you notice that big commercial games have very very hard puzzles and some of them are impossible to solve without looking at walkthrough. Are you giving up them when you challenge extremely hard puzzles ? Where is the passion ?

    And for the god's sake, the sofa is standing in the middle of the screen and it's looking at wrong direction. What more can i do to tell players that it must be pushed ? Do you want me to write a text on it  " Please push the sofa " ? Where is the passion ? Where is the adventure gaming ?

    I'm saying this as a player, this is not the game to give up at the very beginning. In fact, any adventure game shouldn't be given up at all if you start to play it and if it doesn't have a bug you can't dismiss.

   

[Nostradamus]

I agree with everything Rui Pires said. Summed up things I wanted to say but didn't know how to phrase.

Mr. me, you didn't start this. I would definitely would try using the sofa after a few tries but again, I don't like having to go through the intro dialogue again & again, and you can't even press ESC to bypass it, nor loading savedgames which anyway would leave less time to do the sofa thing. To me a game that starts like this is too annoying to continue. Unlike promixity I do not force myself to play games I don't enjoy just for the sake of finishing them, that's not being a "real" adventure fan, that's being an
addict that will play anything and everything just because it's an adventure. That's not passion and ambition, that's submissiveness. That's playing anything that's an adventure game even if you don't like it. For comparison, if you like Sci-Fi movies do you watch ANY and EVERY sci-fi movies even if they're crap just for the sake of watching all sci-fi?  Do you keep watching a movie if it completely bores you or annoys you for say 30 minutes? most people don't.
My ambition and passion in playing adventure games comes in games I enjoy, games that give me a reason to try annoying puzzles and pixel hunt and go through action phases. Not games who give a strict timer puzzle right at the start with no real plot in the intro and not even an option to skip the intro dialogue. There's nothing to motivate to play thorough some this that's  annoying. There's no guarantee you would enjoy the game after that.

But now I will not solve the puzzle and will not play this game or any future games this guy has because of his attitude. I will not support a game writer who insults an judges his own crowd who are supposed to play his games.

He doesn't even get it, as you can see from his post, he doesn't even understand how he's offending people and how he's nobody to judge people. That's really sad, but it's not my problem. It's only proxmity's loss. He'll lose potential players for his games.

[proximity]

  I'm trying to be polite but you are just getting rude to rude Nostradamus. My name is not this guy and my name is not the hell ok ?. You will call me proximity or Fatih. I don't need you to play my games. I don't need your criticisms. Delete the game and don't play my games again.

  I understand everything. You're even not a player, you're just a consumer. Adventure gaming is sort of addiction and you don't know that.

  I advise you to learn something from Jane. She plays all AGS games and types a comment to all she's played. You're just rude, impolite and consumer. You can't handle criticisms and you shouldn't criticize others' games. I didn't insult you but you are just getting rude to rude. I can't figure what you will say next. May be you swear to me huh ?

[SpacePirateCaine]

I think I can understand why people are getting out of shape, here. Proximity: The way you're talking to Nostradamus, and others, you're belittling their hobbies and their passions. I can really understand what you want to say - when people criticize something that you've put a lot of work into, it's usually a pretty tough pill to swallow. Still, from an objective point of view, you're coming across as very antagonistic. I think anyone involved in independent game design is allowed to consider themselves a 'real' gamer, regardless of their play style. Some people would consider someone who consults walkthroughs or asks for help not a 'real' adventure gamer, either, for example. The point is that it's not kind to speak to people in that manner. When you make a disparaging comment about another person, even if you don't intend it to be malicious, it usually comes across that way.

If you feel justified with your puzzle, Proximity, please feel free to leave it as is. There are many schools of thought on action sequences in adventure games - hardcore LucasArts fans generally shy away from them by and large because they believe that games should be a purely cerebral experience, affording you as much time as you need to work out puzzles whereas Sierra-ites are usually more ready to accept puzzles that put them on the spot. Either way you slice it, however, in my experience, the gaming community here usually seems to prefer games that give you a little extra time to think, in the case that they put you in life-or-death situations at all in the first place. You could apparently very easily fix some of the 'problems' that have been pointed out if you're willing, now that you've released your game and have as much time as you need to improve upon it.

And Nostradamus, if you don't mind me saying, I think you're taking what Proximity said a little too seriously - as I said above, I'm more than willing to acknowledge that his posts have come across as antagonistic, but when someone takes criticism badly, I reckon that it's better to just shrug your shoulders and be happy knowing that you've said your peace without needing to get into a big argument about it. You've been handling it pretty well, considering, but when a debate turns into a pissing contest, quoting how many years you've been playing adventure games, and arguing about who's more of an adventure gamer, it starts to sound a little childish.

Now, this is an announcement thread for a game - congratulations on releasing your game, Proximity - it's a pretty big and difficult task to accomplish (and one I have yet to do, myself). Especially one with a little meat on it, such as yours has. I'm sure it was a great learning experience for you - there are a few things that could've been ironed out, like the dialogue issues (with repeating lines that have become obsoletized by in-game actions), and it would appear that some members of the public would prefer that cutscenes be skippable. I'd love to see the issues addressed in an updated release, or see them worked out in the next game you release, which will be a pleasure to play.

So there I go, acting like everyone's clucking mother hen again, but for Pete's sake, this is a generally friendly forum. Now I'm going to go and hide in the Competitions and Activities forum, like usual.

[proximity]

I just want to add something.  I can swallow criticisms easily. For example, i can't answer anyone who are annoyed by T-Rex puzzle. Because they are absolutely right. T-Rex is too fast and you have to be very quick. Look, i am criticizing my own game

[mr.me]

I would definitely would try using the sofa after a few tries but again, I don't like having to go through the intro dialogue again & again, and you can't even press ESC to bypass it, nor loading savedgames which anyway would leave less time to do the sofa thing. To me a game that starts like this is too annoying to continue.

Maybe I'm playing a different version or something, but when I lose at the very beginning of the game I don't have to watch the intro again, it starts with the character in front of the door.

[proximity]

He's talking about dying cutscene.

[darkest_light]

  I think both of you are little bit faulty.

  proximity, you can't judge people what kind of player they are. It's true, there are several types of players but you can't decide which one is i am or anyone else.

  Nostradamus, i understand why you've struggled at the beginning but if you give up and don't play this game, it will only be your loss, not anyone else, even proximity. He's not paid money when you play the game The best thing he may get is an AGS award and i'm not sure if the game will get any. According to me, it must get at least 4 awards but there's still so much time till the end of year and the AGS awards are kinda unpredictable. I remember what happened to Reactor 09.

  Anyway, talking about the game, this is the best AGS game i've ever seen. I've never seen such animations, puzzles, comedy, background arts... before. This game should be an AGS classic. Of course, this is just my thought.

[proximity]

Telling someone that he is not adventure player is a big insult ? I still don't understand why i can't judge players' level. There must be fair. You are free to criticize my game and i think i have a right to criticize your player level. I'm not rude person, i just want to say my opinion. It should be as normal as game cricitism. Am i right ? I think i can judge players in kind way. I'm very peaceful man, please don't exclude me from AGS community. I love you.