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Sassy videos and two video game concept bars. Although the one in Melbourne has the worst licence and closes at 11pm... and lacks a bit of character...

I agree that it brought a lot of people to AGS - I've been playing on and off with AGS since playing that series. It's only more recently that I've actually revisited my project and rewritten a complete backstory and script to actually see my adventure game out and that was triggered by the Blackwell games on Steam.

5DAS really setup the idea that an amatuer 1 man dev can make a pretty engaging, free game and get a fair bit of exposure to his ideas. This was before indie game devleopment was the giant sprawling beast it is today and I daresay it played a part in inspiring some indie devs to take a plunge.

That being said, we're meant to nitpick here and I must agree - as someone currently working through a very deeply story and character driven game one of the biggest challenges I'm finding is making my characters and world feel real and alive. I think making your NPCs active and engaged outside of direct player interaction can do a lot for both immersion and pacing in a game. 5DAS really didn't have strong believable (or generally likeable) characters, and I didn't really feel the paranoid angle well in this game. I felt the sequel was much better and capturing the tension (I guess space helps with that), and I really found myself hooked there.

I played everything he released, and found probably 7DAS and that space one with redshirts to be the strongest of the collection.

Ahh that's alright. Thanks for your help!

Thanks for your help. I was able to find the section in the manual covering how the blocking in functions works - didn't realise there was doc on that so it helped heaps.

I ended up resolving this a different way - breaking my cutscene into functions, ditching the "wait" command and using timers instead. Another way I considered was using WaitMouseKey and using the 0/1 it returns to do something, but I wasn't really sure the best way to do this. You can see my code below:

Code: AGS

// room script file

int myIntroCounter;

function myStartGame()
{
  //re-enable mouse cursor
  Mouse.Visible = true;

  //START GAME: go to starting game room.
  cChristianSpear.ChangeRoom(1, 60, 348);
}


function room_RepExec()
{
  if (IsTimerExpired(1)) {
    //increment cutscene
    myIntroCounter++;
        
    if (myIntroCounter == 2)
    {
        ShowTextCentered("A game...");
        SetTimer(1, 80);
    }
    else if (myIntroCounter ==3)
    {
        ShowTextCentered("This is the prologue cutscene placeholder", 7);
        SetTimer(1, 80);
    }
    else
    {
        myStartGame();
    }
  }
}

function room_Load()
{
  //Play room music.
  aMusic1.Play(eAudioPriorityHigh, eRepeat);
  //Hide mouse for intro
  Mouse.Visible = false;
}

function room_AfterFadeIn()
{
  //setup frame number
  myIntroCounter = 1;
  
  //START CUTSCENE SCRIPT - rest is run in rep exec.
  ShowTextCentered("A Time Apart From Time", 2016);
  SetTimer(1, 80);
  
}

function on_mouse_click(MouseButton button) {
  if (button == eMouseLeft){
    //myClickListener = true;
    Display("A click!");
    //NEED TO ADD CONFIRMATION MESSAGE
    //myStartGame();
  }
}

One last question I did have - at the moment I'm using an int variable that I'm incrementing to track my current frame, and I'm using an if else statement to run the various parts. One thing I'd like to possibly do later is have the parts in separate variables (rather than a single running script) with a number for each function, using the incremented number to call the function - is there a way to use dynamic variables to call a function (i.e something like myIntroFrame+myIntroCounter(); (so if the counter was one 2 it would call a function named myIntroFrame2()


For example, in Javascript I would do it like this:

Code: AGS

function foo()
{
    alert('foo');
}

var a = 'foo';
window[a]();

Thanks for the quick reply.

The biggest problem I'm facing here, I believe, is that while the cutscene is executing it seems to prevent the listener from running any scripts on click. I've commented out the actual 'cutscene' elements of the code (the text displays and page switch, and if nothing is happening the click registers fine and the function is perfectly happy.

As the cut scene is going to be a series of title splash screens, I don't need to worry too much about WHEN the interrupt happens, it can just happily jump ahead to the final function call - just need it to actually register this.

Hey guys,

Been banging my head against a wall for about 2 hours on this one, I'm sure it's simple enough - just can't quite get my head around the rules of the scripting quite right yet.

So, what I want to achieve is that I have a basic introduction scene with some cycling text and want any keyboard press or click to bring up a prompt "Do you want to skip this cutscene?". The problem I've faced is that my listener doesn't seem to registed while the cutscene is playing out and the inbuilt cutscene script has no (obvious) way for adding a prompt that I could see.

My code (at this moment) is this:

Code: AGS

// room script file

function room_Load()
{
  //Play room music.
  aMusic1.Play(eAudioPriorityHigh, eRepeat);

  //Hide mouse cursor for intro
  Mouse.Visible = false;
}

function myStartGame()
{
  //re-enable mouse cursor
  Mouse.Visible = true;
  
  //START GAME: go to starting game room.
  cChristianSpear.ChangeRoom(1, 60, 348);
}

function on_mouse_click(MouseButton button) {
    Display("A click!");
    //NEED TO ADD A CONFIRMATION MESSAGE HERE
    myStartGame();
  }
}


function room_AfterFadeIn()
{
  ShowTextCentered("Game Title", 2016);
  
  Wait(80);
  
  ShowTextCentered("A subtitle placeholder...");
    
  Wait(80);
  
  ShowTextCentered("This is the prologue cutscene placeholder", 7);
  
  Wait(80);
  
  ShowTextCentered("In this scene we'll see the FIRST dream sequence.", 7);
  
  Wait(80);
  
//Start the game
  myStartGame();
}

Note: Show text centered is a little custom script that creates a Textual Overlay.

Thanks for your help!

Thanks for the responses guys! I'll just aim to fill out the script of the story as I intend it to flow and see how it plays with playtesters I reckon.

Thanks Ghost,

It's a bit of a tricky one. I really do want to give the story the time it requires to really draw you in, but by the same token I do need to actually do all the work on said scenes as well. I guess I'd like the average competition to take about 8 hours, but I'm struggling to interpret how long that might take someone (as the speed at which you move through an adventure game is so variable). I guess that would come out in beta testing.

It might be easier to script scenes that develop the meta story or characters but only develop them into the actual game it it plays too short, at least that way the story wouldn't suffer from a shoehorned in 'filler' scene.

Hey guys,

After making some silly little games that sucked, I've been working on the script for my first proper adventure game.

So far I've developed a pretty comprehensive back story, mythos and universe for my game (most of which won't ever even be revealed to a player) and I'm now fleshing out the first in what I hope will become a series of games.

I'm drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources, and I want to create something with a lot of depth that will keep people guessing over several games.

I've finished the skeleton script for my game but I was just wondering how long the first game should actually be? I've played a lot of AGS titles and often I feel they are much too short (especially the first of a series). At the same time I don't want to create something that just drags on (like the Longest Journey series - even though I enjoyed them). There's a lot of room in my story to develop my characters early on, and I do feel this will help engross the player and make the world more alive.

There are currently about 28 key scenes in my story, but I feel this may be a bit short.

What would you say is the ideal play length for an adventure game?

Really like the art style.

The things that look odd to me are:

- The stride is way too fast. I'd slow it down a lot.
- Her legs aren't really bending at all, so it looks like she's sprained her leg and is limping.
- I'd exaggerate the heel to toe action alot more (watch that walking in heels video for reference, I'd say)

Overall the animation rocks, just the details (as always I'm sure!)

Fantastic feedback everyone, thanks so much.

@ antipus, I haven't played Arden's Vale, but I've downloaded both your pre-game version and the real deal (I'll play the finished product first!)

Might I suggest hosting your game files on a service like DropBox? Using the public folder available you could freely share the game without the crazy ads And you could do it for free with the 2GB allowance they provide.

I think the pre-art version is a good idea.

@ mystazsea You basically completely changed my direction, I've been pretty solidly just scripting and writing and rewriting everything now for days. I've got a word doc that's about 5000 words of notes, HEAPS of backstory, character investigation, etc.

I'm slowly realising how intense an undertaking some of these characters are going to be, but on the plus side my story just increased it's complexity and awesomeness pretty dramatically from my original vision. The process has introduced A LOT of character to my game world, and I'm really seeing a good story arc coming out of it.

I guess my next challenge will be integrating some good, challenging puzzles logically into the story. I've got some ideas, but can anyone recommend some good articles on puzzle development and the game concepts behind them to help me really make great puzzles rather than forced mediocre ones.

Thanks!

An in-game hint giving system might be a nice addition.
I only suggest because I bought the Indieroyale bundle and asking you for hints on MSN has become a slightly undignified option in the last few years.

nonononononono

I hate in game hint systems!

Proud to say that I managed to get through The Dig (and Myst) without a walkthrough. Just a took 3 of us working on the puzzles together haha!

Not having the internet was great for adventure games. I really feel that easy access to the answers kinda kills a lot of the adventure game magic.

That's why I love all your games - mostly no walkthroughs so I actually HAVE to think!

EDIT:: Double post.

I think that you will want to make all the continents playable, or else you're either going to end up with a really short game or A LOT of work to do.

Perhaps the character plays as every animal in whatever order before the finale?

Back on the badges on humans thing, I can see this as a really great final battle where the main character's human will and personality are battling against another human.

This could be either putting the badge on the villain to defeat him, or defending yourself from the villain wherein you actually slay/disable him when you win. (maybe his 'will' gets forced out, but has nowhere to go so it escapes - thus setting up the epilogue/sequel idea where he ends up in some other animal WITHOUT a badge. (either something brutally powerful or really pathetic, but either way something you encountered in your playthrough of the game so the player knows how brutal/pathetic it is).

As an example - the battle of wills thing could be won with a dialogue choice with several trees - the character could uncover certain emotional weaknesses about said villain as he plays through the game. Perhaps this a fight that can be initiated from early on, but only won if you've been to every continent to get the appropriate information.

Just a bit of brainstorming anyway...

Hey guys,

I only paid $5 which makes me feel like a tightarse, but awesome games. Just wondering how long the download page will last for?

(Sorry if this has already been asked - I tried trawling the thread to see if this was asked but I failed to find it)

Thanks a lot Anian, I'm actually rather keen to see how I end up redrawing these backgrounds because I've got no idea what the end result may end up like.

Agreed with the lights. I knew something was off but I couldn't pick it.

I've been trying to get at least some degree of placeholder together for my character, (walk cycles are HARD!).

As it's my first ever character sprite, I want to make sure I'm getting my proportions and sense of weight in the right direction before I make too many more frames (or other sprites).

Also, how do people handle different light sources with player characters? I'm not sure what to do with the different angles. I've attached my concept sketch to give an idea of the direction I'm going for with the character.

Thanks for your advice, I really want to get everything right so I really kick my butt in to gear and get this finished.

   

   

A bit of window dressing could make this a bit more interesting too. Perhaps some silhouettes in some windows, shutter blinds, etc.

If you wanted to go really nuts you could add some animated passers by...

Otherwise it looks awesome.

I'd also suggest spacing out the desk, chair a bit from each other and the wall.

At the moment it looks like it'd be nearly impossible to use that actual workspace.

I'd also suggest adding a base, some wheels, whatever to the chair to make it look a bit more natural. People don't tend to bolt their executive leather desk chair to the ground.

I'd also add that I'm still getting a night time vibe from this, and the light source is a bit confusing? It appears that the only light is coming from outside (based on the shadows) except there's no obvious outside light source and the left wall of the room seems to be ignoring this same light source (i.e. it should be darker too)

Hey everyone,

I've been stopping and starting to create an AGS game for about 10 years, so I thought it's time to finally bite the bullet and get things going.

I'm out to make a game with the potential scope for sequels. At this stage I've determined the whole story arc, for both an individual game, potential sequels and a finale.

I have the key moments and history and world rules worked out, and now I'm tackling the best way forward from here.

I thought a good starting point would be to begin fleshing out the rooms, etc with placeholders and then doing the graphics and audio as the final stage.

What are your thoughts on this, is this a good way to go ahead? Any thoughts on how I should layout my story, and what's the best way to approach introducing puzzles to the game?

Anyway, I'm putting together the comps of my backgrounds and I've just finished the first (the apartment of the main Player character).

I intend to redraw over the top of it in a retro style, but what do you think of the room layout, vanishing point, perspective etc?

I haven't got any characters fleshed out yet, but they are roughly a foot shorter than the door if standing inline with it.



Sorry if this is a bit question overload btw!

EDIT: Added another image