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This looks excellent.  Downloading now...

That totally worked! Thanks for the help.

I set up my start menu as a room with objects for character selection and so on.  The GUI that I made for the game is visible in all of my rooms, but I'd like to hide it in the start menu room.  How do I do that?

  Thanks for the excellent suggestions.  I think I'll try out a combo of the three.  It'll be good to see the pauses as (...), but also be able to click away from them.  As it is now, you can click through the pauses, but I haven't added in the 'say' option yet.

In general, do you think pacing the dialogue and using dramatic pauses are annoying for players?  As the designer of the game, I'm all about finding in-game ways for the characters to 'perform' their parts, but I don't know if players will respond to that kind of thing in a positive way.   

I'm starting to put dialogue into my game and I have a question about the pacing.  AGS will let me do pauses, long or short, allowing me to pace the dialogue for more dramatic effect, but I'm worried that it might get tedious or confusing to play through these scenes.  Any thoughts?

Idea:  Cogliostro
Atmosphere:  Dualnames
Design: Cogliostro
Composition: Dualnames
Functionality: Ilyich
Technique: Ilyich

Looks like the squiggly line method worked out pretty well. 

Couldn't resist this one.
I give you:
FLOATY  ROCKS

Looking good.  I really like the design, especially the character design.  Good luck with this.

Here's a bit of the character I'm currently working on:





This is one of the Hadek Industries service droids.  You'll find these charming fellows wandering around Pater Proxima Station, and you'll be able to play as one of them during the game.  More to come soon 

My vote is for Jackpumpkinhead.  That sleepy gnome/ wizard dude is awesome. 

Yeah, parallax would be freaking sweet (that was my original plan), but I don't think I have the technical hoo-hah to pull it off.  As for the walking speed, I'm going to try to fix that with future animations.  For that particular animation, it was only speed that didn't give me serious glide issues.  But, yeah, he walks painfully slow.

Aaaaaaaaand I'm back.

For any of you who might have been following the production of this game, sorry for the delay.  I'd like to say that I was abducted by aliens or inducted into some sort of goat-worshiping cult, but all I have is the usual excuses about school, work, life, blah blah blah...  Anywho, production has picked up in earnest this time around.  I've learned a lot more about working with AGS, and I have the game mechanics worked out for what the player experience will be.  Also, there's some more footage up on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es9yrMQQrcU

You'll probably notice that the animation still sucks, but trust me, I'm hard at work on a worthwhile animation technique for the characters.  At least he's no longer limping 

About the game play:

My original idea was for the game to be a vehicle for the story, but I've come to notion that I would much prefer the story and game play to be one and the same.  To this end the game experience will be as follows:

Players will choose a character from 4 character choices at the beginning of the game and play through the main story arc as that character.  Apart from a few major events, the story will be primarily non-linear and experienced through interactive scenarios that the player comes across while exploring the game world.  Each scenario that the player encounters will have a different outcome or 'solution' based on the character that they are playing.  Mechanically speaking, the game will be somewhere in between an adventure game and an rpg.  Players will run into the same types of puzzles you would find in a standard adventure game, but there will also be skills, skill combinations, and knowledge to use in making your way through scenarios. 

I'll be putting up more video as these features develop.  STAY TUNED...

@ WHAM

YES PLEASE    These kinds of videos are awesome.  I think any AGSer that has some work to show and would like to talk about it should put one of these together. 

@ Snake

    I agree that the story and ideas in our games are the most important element, but video games are (at least in part) a visual medium.  Certainly good design is good design at any resolution, but I think that a higher resolution can open up a few more design options.  Adventure games don't need to be HD (unless they're designed for it) or anything, but  I think they should have a level of resolution that supports the artwork in them.  

Personally, I'm a hi-res man myself.  I think the old-school aesthetic holds some games back from reaching their full potential.  Are you concerned that  a full-res Muran game would look too different from previous episodes?  If so, do you think that would pull players out of the game experience?

This looks really amazing.  I like that it involves playing multiple characters with multiple effects on hotspots.  It's good to see developers here really pushing the genre 

Just wanted to second (or third, or fourth?) the call for 'The Longevity Gene'.  Also looking forward to the next part of the 'Star Trek: Newton' series.

I really liked Barker's 'Abarat' series.  They would definitely make excellent adventure games.  'Thief of Always' maybe?  Also a pretty compelling setting.

I think its possible to do the "safe" opening by putting your player right into the game world.  The story and action don't have to start right away, they can still build slowly.  There doesn't need to be a puzzle right away, the player can just wander around and experience the setting.  Personally, I like story elements to be introduced in game-play.  I find that cinematics and cut-scenes (especially when there are too many) can pull the player out of the immersion.  It is an interesting dilemma; how much agency you want to give the player vs how much you want them to follow the story.