AGS Demo Game (again)

[Crimson Wizard]

As I am packaging new release it reminded me again of a "Demo Game" issue. I guess people who are continiously using AGS for many years are not bothered by this since they don't need demos anymore, otherwise I cannot explain how there's no much incentive to replace it. It may be however the first game source seen by new users. This issue was raised by several first-time users in the past.

Current "Demo Game" is severely outdated in terms of script and parameters, it looks bizzare (my subjective opinion) and not much fun to actually play.

Perhaps we could simply remove it from the installation package until better times to prevent confusion. IDK if anyone's learning from it today. If someone wants to simply see a showcase they may download existing free games.

For the future, I once proposed to create a new Demo Game, but did not see much interest in the end. There were also few p&c open sourced games, one of which probably could be distributed with AGS if its license is okay. I recall "Open Quest" and community made "Draculator II".

[jahnocli]

The 'Draculator II' gives a 403 error (not even a 404...), and the 'Open Quest' link directs you to the AGS Archive Torrent, which I have never been able to figure out. A little bit of detective work led me to a better link for Open Quest: https://archive.org/details/openquest.
[EDIT]
The accompanying Open Quest readme.txt file says "The source project file is available as well as the final executable." There aren't any source project files in this incarnation. So it looks like the 'Demo Game' scenario needs a bit more work if the current version is to be replaced. I'd be interested in something a little more advanced.

[Crimson Wizard]

First of all, I went ahead and removed DemoGame from AGS installer today (not present in todays 3.4.3 release).
It may still be found here if anyone wants: https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags-demo-quest

Regarding other games, I've mentioned these two as example of possible "backup plan".

I found OpenQuest source here: http://www.adventurepuzzledesign.com/
Actual download link: http://www.adventurepuzzledesign.com/downloads/OpenQuest_AGS.zip

The game is pretty cute and simple, so it would be my first choice for demo game (even though I was in Draculator's team )

I haven't found working Draculator II download yet, but its project team lead Baron was online only today, I guess we may ask him about it.

[jahnocli]

Thanks for that! Just downloaded it - I intend to take a look at it tomorrow.

[Giddy Plant]

OpenQuest was me, about twelve years ago! I'm amazed people have kept it alive so long. Surely someone else can do something better that's written in the current version?

[JenniBee]

OpenQuest was me, about twelve years ago! I'm amazed people have kept it alive so long. Surely someone else can do something better that's written in the current version?

Thanks so much for creating OpenQuest. It's helped me a lot with learning adventure game programming - on multiple engines even. Thanks so much for your open license on it as well.

I'm the person currently running http://www.adventurepuzzledesign.com/ and archiving the OpenQuest AGS and SCUMM binaries and source code and I also converted it to the Wintermute engine a few years back.

It's a great demo for learning adventure game programming - it's small, but it has an inventory, verb bars, dialog tree that changes based on choices of dialog options, it has a custom verb and actions attached to it, it has two rooms and states that change in the rooms based on actions, inventory items that can be combined and modified, an intro and outro, and a cool little twist on the "reform an item from its pieces" puzzle.

That's what made it so attractive to the ScummC team and myself to convert it to other engines, as it's a great intro to adventure game design in general.

[eri0o]

I wonder if aggregating some open sourced games somewhere that demonstrate things done in the engine would be useful. Maybe to test upgrading project versions or for someone new learn techniques. My only two open sourced games aren't adventure games though.