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I have been working on a game for a few years now, and Im at a point where both the game name, and some companies/products featured in the game need to start getting put into the visuals. This means I really need to get some answers to some naming concerns I have, as I am planning in the long run to make this game commercial.

Basically, are there any restrictions to naming a game, Ie copyright/trademarks?
My working title is "Colourblind" although it may get added to or changed, but if I named my game colourblind, and there is another game out there with this title, would it get me in trouble? Especially If my game goes commercial?

I can never understand the whole copyright thing, I get that if you created a brown drink , and called it coca cola then yes you are blatantly ripping a brand off, but any product/title that is a single word from the english dictionary... how can anybody copyright or trademark that? Or cant they?

Secondly, I have a company in my game called Bloom INC , and they manufacture a drink called Bloombrew , now again, if there is a company out there called Bloom INC , or a product called BloomBrew, can I get in trouble for it? And If I can , then how can I ever be sure that there is not one? I mean, not everything can be found on google.....

Thankyou in advance to anybody that can shed light or offer advice on this.

Ok so Im not entirely sure if this Is the right forum, as my question is more generalised but is still technical so here goes.

Ive been part of this forum for two years now, and Ive not posted a lot since I have been writing the story for my game so there has not been much to say and Ive not produced anything yet that would make me qualify for a GIP thread.

Anyway, my game has been ongoing for three years, I have the story written 100% and A lot of the artwork done. Im now at a stage where I need to start actually creating the game. Now over the years, Ive read a lot of posts on here, but there are still a couple of questions that I need answered before I can commit to using AGS to make my game. Without these answers I could potentially put a lot of work into AGS only to have to jump ship at a later date, so Im hoping you guys can help me out.

There are a couple of ideas that I really want to get into my game, but just to be clear, Im not a programmer , And I will be recruiting a competent one who knows AGS well. So my questions relate to wether or not the ideas I have can actually be done in AGS , not wether a noob like me could do them. Because I wont be.

First of all, my backgrounds will be rendered in Blender. I have actually created the whole game world so that each location is relative to the others in every sense. This means that If I want , I can render out camera flythroughs from one location to another as animations. In an ideal world, It woul be great if I could play these between locations the first time you visit each one, to get a better idea of the game world. This would be really cool but would have to be pretty seamless to have the desired effect. So when you walk out of one location, the camera instantly flys to the next and settles in position as the player walks in. Ive seen this sort of thing done before, I remember that Lumino island does it, but can AGS?

Next up, i have a game mechanic that is very important as I will have to rewrite a LOT of the story if I cant include it. A lot of my game takes place in sepia tone, as it is based in a world without colour. At one point however, the player discovers a tool that can reveal colour wherever he points it (he needs it to solve a very important puzzle) . The tool works similar to a flashlight, so in the same sense that a flashlight lighens dark areas in a circle that you point it at, the tool brings colour to sepia areas that you point it at. But obviously once you point it somewhere else, the colour is lost where you have just pointed it.
From an artist point of view, I would overlay a sepia layer on top of the exact same image in colour and rub through the sepia image to reveal the colour, only have it go back to sepia when you move it. But could this idea be done in AGS?

My final question is similar to the first,
The menu screen for the game will actually be a screenshot of the first frame of the beginnging animation of the game. When you click the new game button, I need the animation to ideally begin as if it was playing from the menu screen. So, no change in size, big jump in resolution or a blank loading screen. Basically, you click play and the full screen still image on screen begins playing. My thoughts would be that the video is already loaded up , and the start new game button is actually just a play button for the video, so clicking it will instantly begin the video, but again, im no programmer.

I would really appreciate some help with my questions, so I can get started on my game. In an ideal world, I would love to mske it in AGS as I love this community, but if not, can anybody suggest a suitable engine to use?

Btw game resolution will be 1280x720 as reccomended by Khris a while back.

[WHERE'S JEFF?]

VOTING EXTENDED TILL 25th JUNE
Ok so my computer is out of order for a few days thanks to technical failure and I can't figure out how to link images on my ipad so im afraid you will have to scroll the posts to see the entrys.

VOTING WILL BE IN THE CATEGORIES OF :

CONCEPT
PLAYABILITY
ARTISTIC EXCECUTION
WHO HID JEFF THE BEST AND GETS HALF HIS LOOT OR GOES MISSING UNDER SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES MAYBE PROBABLY

We had three amazing entrys by Grok , SinSin and Mandle but who gets your votes and why?

Voting will end on midnight gmt time on the 25th

trophys to follow I promise

Ok so Ive put a bit of a twist on this months BACKGROUND BLITZ..... If its too ridiculous then shout up and ill change it to something a bit more normal. But I had an idea so im going with it......

I am happy to announce the new BACKGROUND BLITZ:

WHERE'S JEFF?

Jeff, the master criminal (and full time horse) has just done his biggest bank job yet, and is on the run. The cops are hot on his tail and he needs somewhere to hide quick!
Thats where you come in.... Jeff needs to hide in your game and if you keep him out of jail, he will of course share half his loot with you, or just tell you that and then kill you later...pfft, criminals eh?

So, in true Where's Wally style (Wheres Waldo in other countries) design a background that will hide Jeff, his bag'o'swag and his lucky potato from the rozzers. You should be able to save the sprites as .PNG and they will have transparent backgrounds.
          

The rules: you must include all three sprites in your background. you can change the colours of them to suit but nothing extreme. you can rotate, scale and do whatever you want as long as it is not clearly cheating. If pixel art isn't your style then you can redraw them yourself too. No painting Jeff black and hiding him in a shadow or making him one pixel wide or anything like that
You don't have to go for the typical Where's Wally idea with loads of people, just come up with the best idea you can to hide Jeff and his stuff.   

There will be the usual voting categories of CONCEPT, ARTISTIC EXECUTION and PLAYABILITY but I will introduce a fourth category for who you thought did the best job of hiding Jeff and his loot

The deadline is 11.59 pm GMT on the 14th June and the winners will be announced on the 18th

You get the idea. Now, I hear sirens , so get going!

AS PROMISED, HERE ARE THE TROPHYS FOR OUR WINNERS OF FIRST AND JOINT SECOND PLACE

       

I realise that this has probably been asked a thousand times, and I have searched similar posts to this but have not got an exact answer to my question. I leave tomorrow on a short business trip and am taking my laptop to work on my game but Wifi may be unavailable in the hotel so I really need to get an answer soon to aviod incredible boredom everynight in the Hotel on my own when I could be working on my project.
Anyway, shameful excuse out of the way , Im at the stage where I can start making my first background for room number 1, The game will have a similar art style to machinarium, and those who know the game will know it is quite high quality despite being scribbly and random.
My game will have a lot of detail, and fine lineart that will need to show. I wont be going down the pixellated path as it will spoil the atmosphere I am intending to create.
What I need to know is, what sort of resolution should I be looking for when I Digitally paint my backgrounds? It will need to be as high as possible without affecting performance.
Also when I play Machinarium on my 24inch monitor, the screen is always minimized to about half that and wont go any bigger to fill my monitor. Ideally I would want my game to fit full size into most monitors or at least not be cut in half on 22 and 24 inch sizes.
Any help would be greatly appreciated .
Thanks , Matt

Hi all
Im a New Scottish member and i am preparing to start making a game of my own. However , i am building a new computer and have postponed my project until i order it. Before i do, i just wanted to make sure that AGS will run on the 64 bit version of windows 7 . As my main motive for building said computer is to have something decent and reliable to use to make my game on , it would be a bit of a bummer to buy it only to find out AGS wont work on it.
Any help with this matter would be most appreciated
Thankyou