AGS Awards 2021 - Results!

Started by cat, Sun 02/01/2022 20:44:19

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Snarky

Dualnames is handling it this year, perhaps with some help by Cassiebsg.

Spoiler
In my experience, 90% of the submissions are no trouble, and it doesn't really matter whether they are in .chr format or as sprites. (In fact, because I stuck with AGS 3.4.3 while many people submitted .chr files in later AGS versions, that was a good deal less convenient.) The work to import and set up views for a set of clearly labeled walkcycle/talkcycle sprites is minimal. (It's quicker if they are not sorted into separate folders, but distinguished only by filename.) I also had a set of macros to do any necessary resampling, so again, that's not really much extra work. (Again, it's quicker if they're submitted as sprites rather than a .chr, because then you don't have to import the .chr and export the sprites first.)

What took up most time was submissions that were mangled or non-standard in some way. For example if the different loops or views were not aligned, causing the character to jump around. Then I'd have to go in and edit the sprites. Or if the walkcycle and standing angles were stored in separate views. Or if the walkcycle was manifestly wrong (e.g. one frame missing from the left-angle walk but not the right-angle.). Or if the special/idle animation didn't transition properly from/to the standing view. Or if the outline had been alpha-blended against a "magic pink" background. These things happened way more often than you would think. Also when people submitted the avatars without the proper identifying information (for example, submitting three characters from the same game without indicating which one was which, either in the filename, Character.Name or submission form), forcing me to go and research who they were if I hadn't played the game.

And similarly with game screenshots, if they are all in consistent resolution for each game (ideally the original game resolution), it's very easy to run a script to resize them to fit the presentation screen, using the best resampling function depending on the resolution. But very often people would submit screenshots in wildly inconsistent resolutions, sometimes cropped, sometimes squeezed or stretched, sometimes blurry or with some kind of upscaling filter applied, sometimes including the window chrome or strips of their desktop behind the game window. Even some professional, commercial AGS games proved almost impossible to get full-screen, pixel-perfect screenshots of. Usually this isn't very noticeable in the ceremony, but sometimes you have a situation where there was e.g. text in the screenshot that should display as a clean pixel font, but rendered as a blurry mess unless I very carefully fixed the resolution/aspect ratio/displacement problems in the submitted image. When I see a screenshot submitted as a 641x397 image I do that "gwuhh-h-h-h!" Simpsons shudder.

Because of this experience, I didn't really trust people who submitted assets to do any conversions/adaptations properly, and took the view that I would rather have the original files as far as possible and do any necessary conversions myself, instead of having them do it wrong and not having any way to fix it. (I remember one avatar I had to scale down, but where the original sprites were misaligned so that I had to fix that before downscaling to avoid a half-pixel displacement.) Also, for nominees it is useful to have character assets in the original size because they're also used to create presentation screens for categories like Best Animation, Best Character Art and Best Character.
[close]
tl;dr version: It was easier for me to rescale ten avatars myself than to have ten different submitters do it and one of them doing something wrong. Dualnames may feel otherwise.

Dualnames

100% agreeing with you, Laura. I think that's an omission on our part, something to definitely be more explicit about in the future! I didn't clarify that to Cassie [until very late], who did a wonderful job communicating with me and with all of you, and set up all the assets to be proper, so that my job would be easier! This was if anything a very transitional period for the ceremony. And I do apologize for any miscommunication on my end with these things. They were of course communicated to me by Snarky, at some point at least, but it's difficult to get ahold of so many new things. Last time I worked on the ceremony, things were very different and much much less organized. In fact I'm quite confident I didn't have entrants sent me pictures, I just went and grabbed assets from the game database or game-related topics.

So TL:DR, we take/I take your very valid feedback into heart, and promise we'll find a way to be more specific about what is required from our nominees.

Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

Laura Hunt

Quote from: Snarky on Wed 06/04/2022 12:33:06
tl;dr version: It was easier for me to rescale ten avatars myself than to have ten different submitters do it and one of them doing something wrong. Dualnames may feel otherwise.

I see, that definitely makes sense, thanks for the detailed explanation. I can definitely see how trying to manage so many assets from so many different sources could be a massive headache.

Quote from: Dualnames on Wed 06/04/2022 12:35:28
So TL:DR, we take/I take your very valid feedback into heart, and promise we'll find a way to be more specific about what is required from our nominees.

No worries! Like I said, I just wanted to make things as easy as possible for everybody responsible for managing the assets, but I understand Snarky's point of view too. I'm sure y'all will make it work no matter what :)

Cassiebsg

Ah, yes. I just assumed that people would send their avatar character as .chr... (laugh)
But had no idea about the formatting of them. I thought they were just scaled inside AGS...   :-[
There are those who believe that life here began out there...

cat

The ceremony will happen tomorrow at about this time! Are there people who will attend that have not responded to the doodle poll? I sure hope so, we need more audience!

And please don't respond to the poll anymore! The date is decided but I can't close it. Just write here in this thread how excited you are to come  ;)

cat

Only a few hours left! Are you already getting dressed for the event? Or have you just returned from your hair stylist? Anyway, it's time to get excited!

Get the client here in this thread:

https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=59878.0

Dualnames

Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

cat

#67
There ceremony is over, here are the results:


Best Game Created with AGS
If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers


Best Freeware Game Created with AGS
If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers


Best Writing
If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers


Best Character
"Lady Valérie Winterbourne" from If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers


Best Gameplay
If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers


Best Background Art
If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers


Best Character Art
Strangeland


Best Animation
If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers


Best Music & Sound
If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers


Best Voice Work
Strangeland


Best Demo
Nightmare Frames Demo


Best Non Adventure Game Created with AGS
One More Fathom


Best Short Game
Breakfast on Trappist-1


Best Programming
Strangeland


Best Puzzles
Strangeland


Congratulations to the winners!

Big thanks to everyone who helped make this happen! <3

lorenzo

The ceremony was a lot of fun, thanks to all that made it possible!
And congratulations to all the winners!

eri0o

That was an amazing ceremony! Great work everyone! It was a truly nice experience!  8-)

CrashPL

Excellent stuff, that was such a lovely event as usual. Huge congratulations to all the winners, nominees, as well as everyone involved! Outstanding job!

heltenjon

Great show and well deserved awards! And may I say that it goes to show what a great game Strangeland is that it won three awards in categories where If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers was nominated. Any other year and it would have swept the floor - now it just swept a part of it.  ;)

Sinitrena

Congratulations to the winners (and nominees) and thank you to all involved in making the awards happen!

ukz530

This award was great!

congratulations to all the winners!

And thank you to all the people who prepared the awards and those who attended!

LimpingFish

Yes, well done to all the winners and nominees! ;-D

And, indeed, as always, a big thank you to all those involved with making the awards happen!

Was anybody streaming it this year? It's always nice when somebody streams it and adds a video archive to Youtube. It wasn't posted in this thread, but did I miss somebody saying they were streaming it?
Steam: LimpingFish
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Ponch

Once again, a very enjoyable experience. And the presenters were so incredibly sexy this year!  :P

Congrats to all the winners and thanks to all the people working behind the scenes to make the event happen in the first place.

Scavenger

Quote from: LimpingFish on Sun 10/04/2022 01:19:08
Was anybody streaming it this year? It's always nice when somebody streams it and adds a video archive to Youtube. It wasn't posted in this thread, but did I miss somebody saying they were streaming it?

I streamed it, the video will be up here shortly:

Chomba

QuoteI streamed it, the video will be up here shortly:

Thank you very much! I was able to watch the ceremony on delay thanks to you (it was complicated for me, because of the time zone here it was in the middle of the afternoon, something like 4pm).

Congratulations to all the winners and also to the rest of the nominees, to participate in the categories is already a great recognition from the community :D

Laura Hunt

What a fantastic ceremony! I loved all the new additions to the client, thanks so much to everybody who made it happen and who keeps making it happen year after year. And congratulations to all the other winners and nominees, can't wait to see what next year will have in store!

rongel

Congratulations to the winners and nominees!

It was my first time at the AGS Awards, and it was great! Really weird and fun event. A big thank you to all who made the ceremony possible!

Next year I will attend with my own dear Walter character!
Dreams in the Witch House on Steam & GOG

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