First game ever

[big brother]

While InC's reaction may have been a little extreme, I def know where he's coming from. After posting on CL for the past few years, I have developed a certain expectation of quality. When I see something that has the signs of a lack of effort, it seems to violate common sense. When someone joins a forum that's new to them, why wouldn't they read other posts to get an idea of the standards? What is the goal of posting an early stage WIP in the CL?

Perhaps my problem is with the original post itself. Piece of advice: while first impression crits can be helpful, you will gain much more insight if you ask about a specific part of your work. For instance, say I post a demo, then by the download link I write: "I'm trying to make the dialogue sound as natural as possible. Do any of the lines sound awkward?"
Basically, I'm telling people not to get distracted by sprite rips or placer art and focus on one aspect of my WIP.

Obviously, that last situation is hypothetical. I'm not saying that you meant to post about dialogue. But perhaps there is something specific you'd like feedback on?

[evenwolf]

Lord Nipper:

Haha, the old bush trick!

bigrd:

Immediately I gave you the credit of this being a "technical exercise" and if this was the first time you tinkered around with AGS, it was a successful one.

Your dialogue branches, score system, walk paths, and puzzle all worked.

In the next game I'd like to see some original graphics and dialogue that makes a bit more sense.  Don't worry about making the Game of the Month.  Just try to express yourself. 

And screw the critics.

[Ishmael]

I'm sorry if my reply sounded harsh or attacking. My meaning was to point out the parts I think you could improve on, as critics goes. I remember someone saying "This is the Critics Lounge, not the Praise Lounge."  I'm not much of an artist myself, I know that. But I still have that little self-confidence left to say my art doesn't suck ass right from the start. People have criticised my work a lot, and I've tried to learn from it all. That's what you should do in my opinion. List down the detail people have criticised and next time you work on something put some more thought and effert into those not to make the same mistakes.

[Ubel]

Okay, I tried this one. I haven't read all the replies in this thread but here are some of my own opinions:

-Next time you make a game, make your own GUI graphics. AND don't use the Roger character. Actually don't use any graphics from the AGS Default template. Make everything yourself. It doesn't matter how bad the graphics are, people prefer self-made graphics MUCH over ripped ones.

-About the humor of this game. I really truly liked some jokes. You're on a good start here pal, and I really hope you will stick with AGS and make some serious comedy games.

-You need to do much more testing with your game before releasing it. This game had some serious bugs in the score adding, like Lord Nipper showed in his first post.

-Use more time in designing the puzzles and story. Because these are the most important things in adventure games and if your game lacks good story, people won't like it. Yes, story is much more important than graphics.

-Also spend more time on your background art. Don't just wipe up some green and blue bg's in Paint. Use hours to practice drawing them. And when you feel like you've done all you could, post your backgrounds here on Critics Lounge and we'll give you advices on how to make them even better.

Last but not least, don't put this game into the games page of AGS website. People should never put their first practice games there. But if you really want to, put it in the joke games section. I don't mean to offend your game in any way, but it's the only place (if any) for the first practice games...

Anyway, you're really on a good start here. Please, don't get offended by some hard critics. You just need to learn from them and I really wish you'll continue making games.

Thank you for listening and welcome to the forums.

[DonB]

Hmz.. Inncreator is my man! dont fuck around with em 8).. seriously.. drop this guys..

about the game.. tbh.. it quite made me laugh.. especially the alien dialog;

Alien:Hmz..
Roger:Oh great.. he cant talk..
Alien: Sorry.. I just had some food in my mouth

I think thats hard to even improve by the big guys around here

But seriously.. you should change the graphics.. altho the Alien doesnt looks ripped off.. you made it yourself?
And the game.. well.. since I didn't pass the alien I'm not sure if it's long and complicated enough for a real game..

[MarVelo]

The alien is a template. He made me sad. The first emo alien ever....

[DonB]

lol..

[evenwolf]

Hmz.. Inncreator is my man! dont fuck around with em 8).. seriously.. drop this guys..

DonB, hi my name is evenwolf.   I'm confident that in the AGS community, ALOT of people are other people's "man."   That means absolutely nothing to me.   When I form an argument, I typically use reason and rhetoric above all else.   I see that you use an artificial form of possession, that this person is your "______."

Well bigrd32 is my "homie" and colossal is my "genetic father" and yakspit is my "grand daddy long legs"  and big brother is my "high swingin' cuz" and ProgZ is my "probation officer."

Now who the heck are you?

[DonB]

Really.. it was more ment as an anwer to make you people silence and not fighting.. but.. fight along then.. suit yourself

[ManicMatt]

Yeah, like I've often heard said on the AGS forums, don't submit your first game! I may be calling my own game "Secrets" my first game, but in reality it isn't. My real first "game" started off in the wrong resolution and went cow poo shaped from there. (And the inclusion of Mr Blobby on the TV in one of the locations was very annoying...)

But, I learnt a lot about how to make a game right, and my current attempt has benefitted from my previous experience greatly.

I liked some of the jokes in your walkabout thingy, but the writing style reminds me of text messages. It felt like words were skipped and it's missing puntuation marks from what I remember playing this a few hours ago.

[Squinky]

Yeah, my first ags game involved Roger in and had 3 rooms. It was basically about a guys who's boss pissed him off, so he took a ceremonial katana off of his neighbors desk, unlocked his bosse's door (who looked like a Texas oil tycoon) and then sliced his boss to pieces. I had it so you would have to use the katana on him like 4 times, and each time did a new little sprite, much more bloody and horrible....I called this masterpiece....BossKiller....

For some reason I never released it...

[Evil]

I wish I worked at a place where my cubical neighbors had cermonial katanas on their desks.

[m0ds]

* m0ds gives the forum a chill pill

* m0ds also scrubbs DonB's mouth out with soap

[Ishmael]

Yay m0ds

...my first game was a team project which we actually released... :

[mwahahaha]

Hey, can I ask you guys opinions on how long you think your first game should be?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Get back on topic and stay there or I'll unleash the fury of AGA's severed toe upon you (this is similar to the monkey's paw, only far more dangerous).  You have been warned. 

mwahahaha- if you are curious about game lengths make a post in general discussion or search the forums- there may be a thread that discusses this already.

[DonB]

Last thing ProgZMax.. 

M0ds thanks..
It's been a while since my mouth got scrubbed with soap..
i think like 2 weeks 

[ThreeOhFour]

Dammnit squinky your first game sounds awesome!

...in a kind of over violent and neglected child way...

Anyway, back to the real topic of this thread:

The game "randysgame" (I assume that's the title as that's what the zip file is called). I read what everyone else had to say, and of course I had to try the game after hearing everyone's comments.

My first game wasn't as good as this, but then again I probably put less effort into it than you did to this one, because I couldn't see it becoming something anyone would gain any enjoyment out of. You game however, was enjoyable, or at least some aspects were.

-The graphics... well, let it be said that good graphics do not make an adventure game great. Great writing and scripting make an adventure game great, good graphics merely make it more appealing and immersive, and once you've find a style you like you'll find that practise will make it easier and easier and more enjoyable to create your graphics. A good place to start would be to perhaps reduce the saturation of the colours you're using and also try and put a bit of shading or something around. A mountain in the backround or a cloud up there with the sun and the star and the bird (which could have been lowered a bit) would be nice as well.

-The writing was clever, apart from a typo or two which is easy enough to do but detracts from the game just that much more (I myself am guilty of this) and a quick check before you release the game saves you having to patch it later on. I thought the dialogue was very good indeed, I'm not sure how long you spent creating dialogue but your game will only benefit with any extra time spent.

A couple of little things I would like to see:

When you mouse over an object, its often handy to have text appear somewhere in your gui or near you cursor that indicates not only that you have placed you pointer over a character, object or hotspot of importance, and it saves the pixel hunt nature of games.

The points system is a bit of a personal preference one, I prefer to play games without it, but have enjoyed playing a number of games that did employ it, so just do what you want there.

And also, using roger as your main character is nice and is easy and all, but please speed him up!!! Waiting for him to walk across the screen is not an enjoyable excercise, and although it may increase the amount of time that the player spends on your game to get to the end, it by no means encourages the player to finish you game.

I hope that with a bit of time and effort you'll create something that has had a bit more time spent on it as I think you have quite a knack for writing humor, and will look out for your stuff in the future, if only to experience this aspect of your games.

[Grapefruitologist]

Argh! It says "There was a problem initializing graphics mode 320 x 200 (8-bit).
(Problem: 'Can not set video mode')

Er... How do I fix this? (I'm a newbie, so sorry if this question seems obvious. I just want to download the game because I'm curious.)

[Gilbert]

Set up the game to run in 640 or windowed mode.