Secrets of Sultan Kanuni 2

[darkest_light]

Noone can exclude you from this community unless you want to be excluded

[proximity]

I'm glad to hear this. Thanks

[Snarky]

I'd like to point out that the original Secrets of Sultan Kanuni can be downloaded from the bicycle-for-slugs AGS archive. I tried it a little bit because I was confused by the introduction sequence of the sequel (Nostradamus wants me to stop the USA from getting hold of a pair of golden shoes? Huh?), and I can see great improvement between the two games. Good work, Proximity!

With regard to the first puzzle, I agree that it's a bit unforgiving. I was able to flash through the death scene by holding down ESC, and I noticed the sofa chair on the fourth or fifth attempt, so it wasn't such a big deal for me, but if you don't push the chair the game is over very quickly.

I don't like the idea that players are supposed to solve puzzles by noticing which objects aren't part of the background. That may work in some cases (in the same room it's obvious that the pliers can be picked up, for example), but the chair looks a lot like any other part of the background, and you would have to look pretty hard to notice that it doesn't have a shadow (especially if you're stressing because of the timer). As a more general point, the puzzle shouldn't be to detect how the game has been put together, it should be to figure out how Ali can best escape from the American agents. Ideally, a player should be so involved in the game that he doesn't think about backgrounds, sprites, characters or objects at all.

I consider myself a real adventure gamer, and scoff at the notion that people who finish every game they try are at a "higher level" than me as players. I think an important part of being passionate about adventure games is to have standards, as well as likes and dislikes. I love adventure games too much to go on playing an adventure game that sucks. There's not enough time in my life to play even every good adventure game, so why should I waste time on the bad ones?

Although I agree with Nostradamus on most of his points, he should still relax.

Finally, how can you say you didn't have time to beta test or spellcheck? There's no deadline for AGS releases! If you had spent two more weeks on spellchecking and bug fixes no one would have been impatient with you. After all the work you must have put into the game, I don't understand why you would skip a small task like that at the end. It makes such a huge difference. Now the game has fine graphics, a story that sounds quite exciting, and pretty clever puzzles, but the text is full of mistakes and poor English. It really detracts from the experience, and doesn't do the rest of this excellent game justice. It's so easy to find people to do spellchecking and fix translations, too, because pretty much anyone who it fluent and literate in English can do it.

I urge you to get the text fixed as soon as possible, and to not release your next game until you've had it checked by an English speaker.

[proximity]

   Hi Snarky, first let me thank you for being such a careful member. I see you've red most of messages in thread before replying.

   Looking from your angle of view, it's impossible to agree with you. May be Nostradamus was right on some issues but he was too offensive and this made him wrong. My real mistake is first game was too easy and i wanted to make something real hard this time. Because of that, i may lose control of difficulty of the game. I guarantee you that third game will have more balanced difficulty.

   About beta testing and grammar checking, i know AGS doesn't have deadline for releases. However, i didn't have time for that not because of deadline. I must finish the game as soon as possible because of my personnal issues. Although i tried to make very simple sentences to avoid grammar mistakes, you showed me i still made some mistakes. I'm so sorry to reduce your enjoyment of the game.

   I will work harder to make better games and English. May be i should start to join English courses to improve my English. Thanks for your comment.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

he was too offensive and this made him wrong.

*He*?

At any rate - now I actually got to play it, and since I had played Kanuni 1 (and, frankly, hadn't liked it - a particularly nasty bug made me restart it), I was quite surprised - it's a big step further in many directions, so congratulations for that, you're on the right track. However, the next step in your personal evolution should really be understanding that using *arcade sequences with very little hints* and *sliding puzzles* and whatnot don't necessarily mean the game is longer or *more difficult in a good way*. Arcade sequences with little hints are just frustrating - sliding puzzles and etc just detract from the game's immersion, especially since they're overused to death.

Overall - marked improvement over the first game. Keep at it, and don't ignore some of the input here. If people got upset, then understand what made them upset. You *don't* want to make your players upset, so whenever one of them *is*... the customer is always right in this situation.

EDIT - Still playing, and found a perfect illustration of what I mean. The 5 programmer doors, which lead to puzzles. The speed at which the character/tiles/whatever move in the puzzles is excruciatingly slow. If you really want to dedicate a section of your game to brain-teasers-which-everyone-is-fed-up-with-by-now, at least make it all faster. Like, instantaneous. Or allow us to press ESC to make the character/tiles/whatever teleport to their destination.

[Snarky]

Looking from your angle of view, it's impossible to agree with you. May be Nostradamus was right on some issues but he was too offensive and this made him wrong. My real mistake is first game was too easy and i wanted to make something real hard this time. Because of that, i may lose control of difficulty of the game. I guarantee you that third game will have more balanced difficulty.

People get upset on the Internets, that's just the way it is. You do so yourself. I agree that Nostradamus can be abrasive, but he wasn't really being particularly offensive as far as I can tell. If you feel you've learned more about how to design your next game from the exchange, that's a positive outcome. In the future, inviting people to beta test your games may allow you to reap the benefit without the forum fights. 

About beta testing and grammar checking, i know AGS doesn't have deadline for releases. However, i didn't have time for that not because of deadline. I must finish the game as soon as possible because of my personnal issues. Although i tried to make very simple sentences to avoid grammar mistakes, you showed me i still made some mistakes. I'm so sorry to reduce your enjoyment of the game.

Alright, fair enough I guess. Good on you for completing such a major project in the first place. I hope you'll still make the text available so people can make an improved translation. It should be pretty simple for you to do. I'm pretty picky about spelling and grammar, and not every player will care as much about it as I do, but the rest of the game is so polished that it's a shame to let this one aspect seem unprofessional.

[proximity]

Arcade sequences with little hints are just frustrating - sliding puzzles and etc just detract from the game's immersion, especially since they're overused to death.

   I don't know Nostradamus he or she. I don't have to. I don't have to know your sex either.

   So you're saying that arcade sequences is frustrating, so sliding puzzles are.  You leave me very small choices. So, i should make " combine'em all in inventory"  or  "use inventory on hotspot" or  " lego puzzles " or  "password puzzles"  in my next game ?

   Can you be more spesific what kind of puzzles you like ? You may also give me new puzzle ideas. But i'm not willing to make "combine" and  "use inventory on hotspot " puzzles  often. Because, you can see them in all games and they are about to be cliche.  I want to make something very special and untried before.

   Alright, fair enough I guess. Good on you for completing such a major project in the first place. I hope you'll still make the text available so people can make an improved translation. It should be pretty simple for you to do. I'm pretty picky about spelling and grammar, and not every player will care as much about it as I do, but the rest of the game is so polished that it's a shame to let this one aspect seem unprofessional.

   Yeah, i am still planning to upload the game text for translators and grammar checkers. May be, your approach is going to be different when you play the fixed grammar version if you still want to 


    Now, i want to criticize you generally. Sometimes i feel that i'm criticized unfairly. Sometimes i think you compare my game with Broken Sword 3 or similar types of it. But you know you should criticize it compare to other amateur free AGS games. Because i know what my game is. I'm also player and i played most of popular AGS games. I think this game is technically outclassed from most of AGS games. Especially graphics and animations. Graphics are not distorted photographs or real photographs. They are not stolen from the internet. 2 months spent to make all animations. Graphs and animations even can't be compared with 7 awards winner game "Apprentice 2".  Mine is much better 

    Why am i telling this ? I sometimes read your comments about other completed games and i'm so surprised . You are typing so positive comments about bad games. Actually you can do it, but if you say those games are good, mine should be excellent. If my game is bad, those games should be worst game in the world. I can't give you those games' names because i don't want to start another fight. But i want some justice and balanced comments.
When you say my game's graphics bad, please don't say any game has awful graphics " very nice ".

   I'm not telling this to Rui and Snarky. No offense. Just generally.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I don't know Nostradamus he or she. I don't have to. I don't have to know your sex either.

You misunderstand me. I was implying it was not Nostradamus that got offensive, or at least, not only Nostradamus.

So you're saying that arcade sequences is frustrating, so sliding puzzles are.

Nope. I'm saying that arcade sequences without enough hints are frustrating.

Spoiler

It's very frustrating that you have to set up the whole Dino-trap BEFORE you know there's a Dino around, with no reason or hints about it. Also frustrating that if you DO, you end up back outside the HQ - and say goodbye to any other programmer's door puzzle you've solved. I won't even go into the very first puzzle of the game, we've been over it already.

[close]

And I'm saying that surely enough people have played enough games to groan when they see sliding puzzles and puzzles with levers and whatnot (and the whole "cross the river riddle"? please, everyone knows that by now). Mostly they just artificially prolong gameplaying time, in a boring way.

Mind you, your implementation of those puzzles is not too badly made:

Spoiler

The jigsaw's interface was very bad. You have to put it, then you have to rotate it, and it was always unclear whether the cursor was on just the right place to click, sometimes it was on the other square and there I go, pick it up again, put it where it should obviously go, and rotate it again. This is boring. Boring is a no-no.

And it did make sense, in a way, that there were puzzles behind the programmer's doors, but again - SPEED IT ALL UP. It's bad enough that we have to stop the story in order to solve some puzzles.

[close]

Because yeah, the story stops. That's my personal gripe with these puzzles - when you solve them, the story stops for no particular reason, and mostly the puzzles themselves are puzzles just for the sake of puzzles, not for the sake of story. Which is what happened in your game.

I want to make something very special and untried before.

Kudos to you. But in order to do that, you must realize that what you've actually *done* this time is something that everyone's already seen before. So, you failed in what you wanted. And you'll have to accept it in order to move on and get to do something special and untried. You want an example of something special and untried, try Purgatorio. It's got a very interesting letter-keypad puzzle, that needed only a little more clarification in order to be a good balance between challenging/frustrating.

So, i should make " combine'em all in inventory"  or  "use inventory on hotspot" or  " lego puzzles " or  "password puzzles"  in my next game ?

Make puzzles that don't stop the story dead in its tracks. And don't use overused formulas - the jigsaw, the sliding tiles, the levers/platforms and the river-crossing are very old stuff, not presented in a new enough way to keep the player interested (read: way too SLOW).

Re your final paragraphs: first off, your graphics aren't better than Apprentice 2. They're a different style, and even so, all the characters look the same in pose and posture, and they move awkwardly, and there's things like the glass sphere on your head that during animations stays somewhere above your head while you push that rock. Your graphics are 3D, but they're not better, not in my opinion - someone else may disagree, and they've a right to, but you brought it up: Apprentice 2 has gorgeous graphics, beautiful animations. Your graphics are stiff and nice.

Now, gamemakers have certain attitudes towards their games. Some are so obviously first-timers that you have to give them some slack. Some are so obviously trying to do great - and have some GREAT things going for them despite their lack of experience - that you have to mention the bad but focus on the good. And some gamemakers, and some games, appear to have a very high opinion of themselves. Well, when that happens, they're just bluntly put to the test, and praise and mockery will arise in similar quantities.

You'll notice I didn't post in your Kanuni 1 thread. Because I didn't like the game at all. But it was your first game, or close to, and it showed, so I thought I'd give you a break. But now you've come a long way, and now I can tell you all the things you're ready to hear and improve.

But I don't really want to anymore, because of your argument with Nostradamus. That's another thing. Take a position like that, and it's unlikely that people will focus on the good of your game. Why should they, when they know that's how you're going to react?

[proximity]

   I didn't make myself clear. Those bad games weren't first games.I can't still give names of games.  I remember you didn't comment on my first game. I appreciate it and again, no offense, i didn't mean you. Just generally. You're respective member and your comments are important for me.

   Apprentice 2 graphs isn't better tham mine. Main character looks sticky when walking. Walking animation is too restricted. But i agree some of animations in game is perfect. My graphs are better than it  If you say you like cartoon style drawings, you're right. May be i should make cartoon style in my next game to make you love it

   Hmmm i haven't played  Purgatorio yet. It can give me new puzzle ideas.

[TheCheese33]

Actually, Apprentice II is made with 2D graphics, drawn in a fresh way that we don't always see every day, and so forth. No offense, but your game had this sort of plain feel to it. It's nothing I haven't seen a million times before in other, older games. The art style COULD work if you worked to make the 3D look something like Scratches does.

Now, I know that's practically impossible for an indie freeware developer to do, which is why I think it's always better to stick to 2D rather than 3D. Some games, like Alone in the Nightmare and Prodigal, have HL1 and 3D Studio Max locations (respectively), but what makes Prodigal look better than that game is the mixture of 2D and 3D, which I also think might make your game look a little better.

In the end, you aren't the best artist, so maybe you should have someone work on the graphics while you work on the more important things (coding, exterminating bugs, script writing, fixing typos, the usual). That's what Trisk did for Prodigal, and look at how awesome the comic-book-style cut-scenes are!

[proximity]

  I know i'm not the best artist. I also know 2d drawing is a lot harder than 3d. Because you have to arrange true perspective, shading and shadows in your drawing to look nice. In 3d, those are calculated by computer. You just draw some vertexes and cover them with textures. You leave the rest to computer to render and you gain some beautiful graphics. The hardest part of 3d is to draw human head.

   I always wanted to draw graphics like Rise of the Hidden Sun or Forgotten Element. Those absolutely looks good and reminds us older Lucas games. But i see that you must be real artist to draw nice 2d graphics. That's why i changed my platform to 3d. However, 3d drawings take more time than 2d. I'm okay with that. I will make everything 3d in my next game. May be i can use cartoon renderer to have Broken Sword 2 style graphics

   I insist this game's graphs are better than App 2. Be reasonable, App 2's resolution was 320*240    Compare them on FULL SCREEN !

[Jesus Juice]

I've been playing it and I think your game is really great. I just wanted to check if it would be ok if I made a short parody version of it as a homage?

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I insist this game's graphs are better than App 2. Be reasonable, App 2's resolution was 320*240    Compare them on FULL SCREEN !

If you think higher-res automatically means better graphics, you're using the wrong engine and are posting on the wrong forum, mingling with the wrong community.

[proximity]

I've been playing it and I think your game is really great. I just wanted to check if it would be ok if I made a short parody version of it as a homage?

  Of course you can do it. I would be happy

  Rui, if this is all about soul, why are we working hard to make beautiful graphics ? I should turn back to MS Paint then. It's very easy and takes small time.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I've had enough of this whole discussion.

Proximity, do whatever you want. Either you've been missing all the points all along deliberately or you just don't care. This game is a marked improvement over your first one, but I doubt you'll go far from here.

[Snarky]

    Now, i want to criticize you generally. Sometimes i feel that i'm criticized unfairly. Sometimes i think you compare my game with Broken Sword 3 or similar types of it. But you know you should criticize it compare to other amateur free AGS games. Because i know what my game is. I'm also player and i played most of popular AGS games. I think this game is technically outclassed from most of AGS games. Especially graphics and animations.

    Why am i telling this ? I sometimes read your comments about other completed games and i'm so surprised . You are typing so positive comments about bad games. Actually you can do it, but if you say those games are good, mine should be excellent. If my game is bad, those games should be worst game in the world. I can't give you those games' names because i don't want to start another fight. But i want some justice and balanced comments.
When you say my game's graphics bad, please don't say any game has awful graphics " very nice ".

   I'm not telling this to Rui and Snarky. No offense. Just generally.

The only aspect of your game that I have criticized is the quality of the English translation, and I certainly never said that your graphics were bad (quite the opposite). Neither did anyone else, as far as I can see: everyone has said that the graphics are good.

You can't just compare the feedback different games get as if it could tell you which games people like more, because it's different people who respond in the different threads, and because the comments usually take into account the skill and experience of the creator, and the effort put into it. So some games will be criticized "as if we were comparing it to Broken Sword 3" (not a great game, by the way), while others will be measured by a much laxer standard.

Graphics are not distorted photographs or real photographs. They are not stolen from the internet. 2 months spent to make all animations. Graphs and animations even can't be compared with 7 awards winner game "Apprentice 2".  Mine is much better 

   Apprentice 2 graphs isn't better tham mine. Main character looks sticky when walking. Walking animation is too restricted. But i agree some of animations in game is perfect. My graphs are better than it  If you say you like cartoon style drawings, you're right. May be i should make cartoon style in my next game to make you love it

   I insist this game's graphs are better than App 2. Be reasonable, App 2's resolution was 320*240    Compare them on FULL SCREEN !

I think you are joking about the graphics being better than Apprentice II. If that's true, I'd say it's time to end the joke. Yeah, your graphics are good, but they're not even close to App 2. You have obviously spent a lot of time on them and done a really careful job, but you're still an amateur, while bigbrother is an artist. The argument that higher resolution and more animation frames automatically make the graphics superior is a lot like saying that a big painting is better than all smaller ones, or that anyone who paints realistically is better than Picasso. It simply misses the point.

Don't worry about it. It's not a competition, and there are different ways for games to be great. Apprentice II has excellent graphics and music. Another game, like Prodigal, isn't nearly as pretty, but is excellent in other respects. You can find your own way to make a great game, in your own style and with your own strengths. Use all the praise you've gotten for encouragement, and use the criticism to improve. Good luck on your next title. I'm looking forward to it!

[proximity]

  I know you've just criticized translation. I just said it generally. You're right. Some games has tolerance from members. I will try to get used to it. I can't remember the name of the site but there is an adventure game site and it previews all AGS games. Its author is very strict. He writes very bad comments nearly about all AGS games. I've read first game's comment and shocked. After reading it second time i liked it. He was too cruel and making fun of it but i really liked it  I want him to join AGS forums May be he is member but doesn't write anything.

   I wasn't joking about comparing but i think i'm misunderstood. I can't say anything about its art style. It's perfect. I just wanted to say there is wrong perspective and shading in backgrounds. It's not a big deal , just forget it. I just gave an example. It should be Ben Jordan, too.

  About animations, i think the more animations are, the better the game. Noone want to see 1 frame picking up animation rather than 50 frames for example. My animations may look same pose but they are like swarm and this make the game good quality. I will keep on this way in my next game with 3d animations. It makes the game size bigger but it's worth.

  It must be a competition. Why ? Because, Apprentice or any other games' authors should realize that they must make better games, otherwise they will be forgotten. We must give them that feeling to force them to make much better games. Competition is a good thing and it's always beneficial for players. The more competitive developers, the better games. Am i too passionate ?

 

[tube]

Competition is a good thing and it's always beneficial for players. The more competitive developers, the better games. Am i too passionate ?

Competition would most certainly be beneficial to players, as you say, if quality is desired over quantity, but this would probably discourage many aspiring, less competitive game authors. To my understanding this forum's purpose is mainly to serve as a community for those who use AGS to create games, people like yourself. I'd bet this is just a hobby, not a job for most of you. Of course there's always MAGS and the dedicated competitions and activities forum to facilitate friendly competition.

Sorry about going off topic with this. I haven't played your game, and can not comment on it at this time.

[proximity]

   You're right. Less competitive authors may be discouraged but i don't think they may be effected much. As you said, most of us doing this as hobby. Friendly competitions wouldn't hurt anyone.

[Monsieur OUXX]

http://sosk2.coolbluegames.com/sosk2.rar
http://sosk2.coolbluegames.com/walkthrough.htm

You should replace the "index.html" file at http://sosk2.coolbluegames.com by your own file. Admit that it's nicer to find a real website when entering "sosk2.coolbluegames.com" than having to type a full URL pointing to the download archive or the walkthrough...

Also, you said in another topic that the translation file is available for download, but... where ?