Mafalda - The Strange and Unusual Life of Mafalda West

[thealexv2]

My first game. It basically is very simple and short, no inventory and no music or voices. Will add them later. Maybe. Anyway, please check it out . there is an installer version (now with no password), and a compiled version. Fixed some dialog errors, changed the ending, and changed the mouse cursors. please comment so that i can improve it.  
a screen shot is on the page link
Link: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=1340

[bicilotti]

Congrats in finishing your game!
Can we have a no install version? Also some screenies could help!

[Khris]

Here's a screenshot from the very beginning:



I didn't play much; the walk speed is pretty slow and what I saw of the gameplay seems in need of an alpha test.

[thealexv2]

okay. here is the version without installer
http://www.mediafire.com/?od5j7o3t6gddesy

[Alun]

Haven't had time to play this all the way through yet, but a few comments on what I saw so far:

The fact you've managed to get background conversations working and incorporated (what I assume is) the flashlight plugin shows you've put a little more effort into learning some AGS coding beyond the very basics than many beginning game creators do.  However, there are a few things you need to work on, perhaps most notably your walkables... the player kept floating off into the lockers, and often mysteriously teleported a short way across the room.  Also, the rooms seemed to be connected up oddly... going back the way you just came from often brought you to an entirely different place.  It's okay if there's a reason for this, but here it just seemed to be random and confusing.

There's some odd inconsistency later on... was this originally two different games mashed into one?  You may start out as a girl named Mafalda, but then at one point you're called Al, and the dialogue indicates you're now male (and apparently always have been), although the sprite doesn't change.  Hmm...

It's a much larger game than I expected; most beginners aren't quite so ambitious.  However, it seemed mostly a cavalcade of inside jokes directed at (I assume) people you know from school.  If this helped you learn how to use AGS better, that's great, and, again, using plugins and managing background conversations is more than a lot of beginners could manage.  But if you want to actually release a game to the public, you probably want to try something that doesn't rely so much on inside jokes -- all the "baggy pants" references may be hilarious to you and your friends, but don't mean much to people who aren't in on the joke.  Clearly you have the patience and the ability to make a decent-sized game, and you have some ability in coding; work on your walkables and your room connections and I look forward to seeing what you come up with next.

[thealexv2]

Thanks, these were the comments I was hoping for, i´ll try to fix my errors.

[thealexv2]

yes, at the beggining it was the standard ags character, but later on i changed it, i am going to have to change those dialogs, and walkables too.

[Peter Bear]

Hello,

I usually try every game that is realeased here.

I never expect perfection, of course, all is amateur ... But you should really listen for upper advices, work on your "zones" , walkables, animations, etc.

When you change direction, your character simply JUMPS from one place to another ( your transparent sprites are too big, too wide, arent they ? )

Finally I gave up on this, not because of the story, because each game here worths a try, but the technical part blocked me in some way, maybe I ll find some spare time later to play it again ... and maybe to an IMPROVED version

Oh , and never use JPEG !!! The backgrounds became blurry because of compression. If you want to keep hi color resolution, use the PNG format, the compression never ends blurry with this one.

Regards.

[Peter Bear]

I guess, just resize your walking sprite ( remove all useless transparent stuff around ) and your walkables will work fine ...

AGS calculate the bottom of the sprite as the FEET ! so ...

As I though I was mean, I gave your game a second chance but I got stuck by TWO bugs :


1/ after getting the train ticket ( jump left, jump right ) , I am not a cat anymore, but the girl again, if the room just before...
I try to escape from the LEFT of the screen but then appear again in the "ticket store", with the cat and the ticket lady, asking me AGAIN to jump left or right ... and after that, and the messages saying that was the first time, I stay in the same room with nothing to do more ...
I guess this is a unwanted loop, isnt it ?

2/ At this stage, I tried to SAVE my game, but there is an issue ( maybe with the flash light plugin ) , I can enter a name to my savegame, but cant click on SAVE, DELETE of CANCEL ... The saving GUI remains on the screen and I cant do anything.
( well , I can CANCEL this GUI by pressiin ESC, but the save option became useless then )

another advice : you should work on your GUI too ... upper the main one, remove the grey text GUI, which is useless in your game as you dont show hotspot's name on screen.