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UPDATE: Congratulations Dropped Monocle Games!

UPDATE: Voting now open until 6th September 2015. Pick your favourite background! Who will win, Grok or Dropped Monocle Games?

Sorry this has been so delayed. My autoimmune disease has been acting up like crazy so this hasnt been at the front of my mind. I wont be closely monitoring this but anticipate voting will start on the 29th.

For this background blitz I wanna see some novelty themed hotel rooms! The game is set in a cheesy theme hotel, and you are in one of the crazy bedrooms. Maybe it's a space room, maybe it's a jungle room, maybe the theme is more subtle, but it's important the bedroom have a noticeable theme to the decor and furnishings. Other than that, go nuts!

Hey

I have next to no experience with digital art or painting, not since my GCSE days anyway, but I would like to improve so I had a crack at a self portrait and tested out art rage 4.

Would love some constructive feedback and if you have any recommended tutorials or books for digital painting they would also be greatly appreciated. I have no clue what I'm doing and I have definitely aged myself in the picture and the eyes are kinda weird.

[Pioneers!]

Pioneers!

Pioneers are people who have broken new ground. They may be folks migrating to pastures new, or people doing dynamic work that we once thought impossible. Your protagonist should be a pioneer of some kind. They could be the inventor of something we once thought impossible, they could be breaking barriers of gender or race, the first female president maybe? They could be people looking for a better life elsewhere. Will your pioneers have the odds stacked against them? Will their triumphs feel hollow or bittersweet? I look forward to reading your stories and finding out.

The voting will be split into these categories that are only slightly altered from last time!:

Best Pioneer: The most believable and well written protagonist
Best Plot: Which scenario was the most well crafted. Maybe it is the most creative or adds something new to a more traditional plot?
Best Atmosphere: Which story gave you the feels? An emotional intensity of some kind.
Best Ending: Which ending satisfied you the most?
Best Background World: You could vividly imagine this place in your minds eye due to the author's talent with the keyboard.
Best Writing Style: Who gets a gold star for their writing ability? It doesn't just mean they used fancy words, but actually put them together in an engaging and readable way.
Most Ruminative: Which story makes you reflect on the deeper themes and meaning? Which one seems especially thought provoking and really draws you in?

Entries in by 30 January unless you really need an extension. Good luck and I look forward to reading the entries!

Thought this might be of interest to people. I enjoyed the first Kaptain Brawe, and I thought the art in particular was beautiful. Was quite a short game if I remember rightly so hopefully this one would be a bit longer.

Kaptain Brawe Kickstarter Page

I'm sure many of you have seen this already, but I thought I would post it here for people who haven't.

Hemingway app is a site that basically simplifies your writing. It is not perfect by any means, but attempts to help writers create bolder, more concise prose. Writers all have their own voice and it is best to use your own judgement when using the app, but it has helped me break out of my passive voice a bit more and highlights when my sentences get too complex. Sometimes, complex is needed and right for the individual, but I am often guilty of lengthy, meandering sentences. This has given me an opportunity to assess things objectively, without forcing my friends and family to read my work. Anyway, it's totally free and might help some of us out when writing out game documents and dialogue.

http://hemingwayapp.com/

NOW COMPLETED AND RELEASED. DOWNLOAD IT HERE!



Goat Herd and the God is the second release for Dropped Monocle Games. It follows the journey of a young goat herd named Atl, who was enjoying the simple life until his world was turned upside down by a visit from El Chupacabra. With his goats gone, and an angry village to appease, will the Gods help Atl or will he end up on the sacrificial altar?





We have currently completed 100% coding of the puzzles and are working on finalizing the art, recording voices, getting some animations in place and polishing everything up. We also have fantastic music by AGS's very own Problem. You can check out some of his stuff here.

To follow our progress you can visit our website, facebook page or follow us on twitter.

UPDATE 10/11/2014:

We have been working away quietly for a while now and the game is almost complete! Yaaaay!

Goat Herds is now in the final stages of Beta and play testing and we are recruiting testers is anyone is interested >link to recruitment<
The game is pretty much finished and we just have a couple of bits left to polish up like the menus and some custom music to add to the final cutscene, but that's pretty much it!

Unless the testers find something horrendous that sets us back we anticipate a December release at the latest.

So here are some updated screens:







P.S We know berrie is spelled berry but my proofreading skills only kicked in after Sox made the screens so it'll be corrected for the release lol

Dropped Monocle Games (Myself and Soxbrooker) are looking for a musician to work with us on our latest project, "Goat Herd and the God's". Our first game, Witchy Woo was one of the entries in the June 2013 MAGS contest.

"Goat Herd and the Gods" is a short freeware game, set in an Aztec jungle period/locale. We are looking for a talented individual to create one or two tracks for us to really bring the game to life!  If you are interested in helping us out and would like a more in depth brief please reply to this thread or PM me and I will send you a detailed synopsis.

This is not a paid position, however we are looking to work on longer (hopefully commercial) games in the future and if we develop a good working relationship with someone we could definitely look to work with them in the future and pay them for their services.

DOWNLOAD!

Witchy Woo is an adventure game created for the June 2013 MAGS competition, with the theme of something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

Woo is a witch in training and to be perfectly frank she's not very good! Because of her magical failings her teachers have banned her from having a familiar of her own. Tired of being the laughing stock of the witching community, and the only witch without a faithful companion, Woo decides to take matters into her own hands. Help Woo find a friend in this short debut adventure game from Dropped Monocle Games.

You can download it here.

We hope you have as much fun playing it as we have had making it!

Myinah and Soxbrooker

Hi Guys

I have a problem when using active inventory items with a global variable counter. I apologise if there is a really simple answer for this, but searching the manual didn't help and I couldn't find an answer in the forums. I have tried various code combinations but nothing works. If there is a thread or page in the manual answering this please feel free to point me in the right direction. I have created a successful global variable before, but there was no inventory involved.

Basically we have a puzzle that requires us to use four ingredients to create a spell. The cauldron is an object in the room and we need to add 4 inventory items (in no specific order) to the cauldron. I thought using a counter would be the best way to do this, but it doesn't like the additional "ifs", "()", and "{}" for the code. I have tried removing one or all of them in various combinations but nothing works. Am I barking up the totally wrong tree here?

Code: AGS

function oCauldron1_UseInv()
{
  CauldronCounter = 0;


if (CauldronCounter < 4) {
      (cWoo.ActiveInventory == iIngredient1) {
      cWoo.Walk(787, 623, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
      cWoo.Say("In it goes! Black as night!");
      cWoo.LoseInventory(iIngredient1); }
      CauldronCounter++; 
}
   else {   
     cWoo.Walk(787, 623, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
      cWoo.Say("In it goes! Black as night!");
      cWoo.LoseInventory(iIndredient1);
      cWoo.Say("That's it! That's all the ingredients!");
      cWoo.Say("Now to begin the spell!");}
   }

      
if (CauldronCounter < 4) { 
     (cWoo.ActiveInventory == iIngredient2) {
      cWoo.Walk(787, 623, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
      cWoo.Say("Fresh, new, into the stew!");
      cWoo.LoseInventory(iIngredient2); }
      CauldronCounter++1;
}

else {
  (cWoo.ActiveInventory == iIngredient2) {
      cWoo.Walk(787, 623, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
      cWoo.Say("Fresh, new, into the stew!");
      cWoo.LoseInventory(iIngredient2); 
      cWoo.Say("That's it! That's all the ingredients!");
      cWoo.Say("Now to begin the spell!");}
  }
  
 
if (CauldronCounter < 4) {
     (cWoo.ActiveInventory == iIngredient3) {
      cWoo.Walk(787, 623, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
      cWoo.Say("This perfectly aged item is going to make our spell awesome!");
      cWoo.LoseInventory(iIngredient3); }
      CauldronCounter++1;
}

else {
     (cWoo.ActiveInventory == iIngredient3) {
      cWoo.Walk(787, 623, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
      cWoo.Say("This perfectly aged item will make our spell awesome!");
      cWoo.LoseInventory(iIngredient3);
      cWoo.Say("That's it! That's all the ingredients!");
      cWoo.Say("Now to begin the spell!");}
}

     
if (CauldronCounter < 4) {
     (cWoo.ActiveInventory == iIngredient4) {
      cWoo.Walk(787, 623, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
      cWoo.Say("Can't get enough of this stuff!");
      cWoo.Say("...");
      cWoo.Say("Oops.");
      cWoo.LoseInventory(iIngredient4);
      cWoo.AddInventory(iBrokenThing); }
      CauldronCounter++1;
}
  
else {
     (cWoo.ActiveInventory == iIngredient4) {
      cWoo.Walk(787, 623, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
      cWoo.Say("Can't get enough of this stuff!");
      cWoo.Say("...");
      cWoo.Say("Oops.");
      cWoo.LoseInventory(iIngredient4);
      cWoo.AddInventory(iBrokenThing); 
      cWoo.Say("That's it! That's all the ingredients!");
      cWoo.Say("Now to begin the spell!");}

I'm really not sure what I'm doing wrong. I feel like I must have missed something really basic because multiple items in a recipe isn't exactly testing the boundaries of adventure puzzling!

If anyone can offer some advice I would be very grateful.

Thanks again.

Hi Guys

Working on our first training game and really struggling with the left click, right click interface. We have combed the old posts but found all the links to a template from 2004 to be broken. No other posts contained code we could get to work for us. We basically want to be able to walk and interact with hotspots using the left mouse button, and look at hotspots with the right.

This is the code we are using:

function on_mouse_click(MouseButton button) {
  if (button == eMouseLeft) ProcessClick(mouse.x, mouse.y, eModeWalkto);
 
  else if (button == eMouseRight) ProcessClick(mouse.x, mouse.y, eModeLookat);
  }

Any suggestions on how we can make this work? Or a working link to the original template?

Thanks for your help

Myinah

Hi Guys

I'm new to AGS but have written a full video game script that I want to get on and make, but I'm not 100% sure where to begin. Ideally I want the game to be commercial and professional looking so that I can build up a portfolio of work and one day sell the games I write. I have had some success with creative copy work in the past and I'm hoping that my puzzles will good enough that I can make some sort of career out of this. Of course plenty of us are inspired by independent studios that get themselves up and running and I guess this is my ultimate goal. Maybe it sounds silly, but I can only work from home because of my health and this is what I want to be doing really. I figure if I aim as high as I can I'll at least get close to where I want to be and so I'm starting from the bottom now of the ladder now

I did have a great artist ready to work on the game with me but they have now had to drop out due to their increasing work load and family commitments. Now I'm in the position where, like many others, I want to get a talented artist on board (someone with similar goals and who believes in the project), but because I haven't proven myself yet by making a game of course I can't expect people to automatically take me seriously.

What would those of you who are experienced do in my position? Would you make the game with programmer art and then put up a recruitment ad? If so would you make a demo or a full game? Will a demo be enough? My game will be a full length one, the script isn't short by any means.

Of course I would love to just hire an artist, but its not going to be financially possible for me at this time. I know artists are few and far between but to any artists reading, what inspires you to work on a project?

I hope I posted this is the right section and I look forward to hearing some advice