Topics

Yesterday I had the first 2 lectures of an 8-lecture course about the brain. There'll be courses from different areas of science, like psychology and biology. When I got home, I felt flooded with so many ideas that I couldn't contain them all.
Has anyone ever studied this subject? Personally I find it very interesting.
So, would any of you be interested in hearing what we're told during the lectures? I can post a summary of each one and discuss it. It's one of those things I can talk for hours about.

The first lecture, by the way, was like a prologue to the subject, and the different ways of looking at "the body and soul problem", the seperation between the physical body (the brain) and the feelings, thoughts, conciousness. Then we had a lecture about drugs and addictions.

So, any interest?

Just venting here a bit..

Do you ever have those days when stuff happens that is totally weird and leaves you feeling kind of unfocused? One of the weirdest things that tend to happen to me a lot is that I'm talking about a person or thinking about them and all of a sudden they turn up! It happened twice today, I guess part of the reason might be that I live in a small town but still.
Like today I was planning to go to a class two years below me to talk to someone I don't know very well, ask them something. As I'm pondering how exactly to say it so it sounds good, all of a sudden this girl I wanted to talk to walks by and says hi, so I just say what's on my mind.

Sorry if this post is a bit incomprehensible, as I said it's been a weird day. Anyone else had a weird day lately?

edit:
Actually, I feel like venting some more:
I'm working as a kind of teacher's assistant in afternoon classes for lower graders (I'm in 11th grade), and there's this girl in my group who I've been trying to connect with. She has some problems in her life, and she ran away from home a few days ago. I'm not too worried, people have seen her around. It's amazing how much I know about her though, considering that a week ago I wasn't aware of her existence. Strange how these things work..

[What is this project you ask?]

Fello AGSers!
My teammates and I are looking for some people to join us in a game project.
What is this project you ask?

The game is called Try Not to Breathe (TNTB for short), and it's set in a world similar to our own, and yet different. The main character, a seven-year-old named Lily Dale, sets out on a journey through a surreal world of strange gardens, deep forests, old legends, unique characters, and much growing up on her side, accompanied in most parts by a helpful creature, whose true identity she only discovers at the end. This story strives to scare you, to surprise you, to make you laugh and cry, and perhaps even evoke some deeper thoughts about the universe.
We're starting production, however, with the game's demo, which takes place some time before the game, and focuses on other characters in the same universe. The demo is about Emily and Janice, two sisters living far apart, who both experience a tragedy, and.. well, we won't tell you what happens then.
I really can't elaborate too much on the story without giving away too much, if you're interested PM me. I can garauntee it's interesting in a special way.

So what do you need to know about the game and the demo?
The resolution - 320x200
Color depth - 32bit
Full game length is not precise yet, but it's a pretty big project. Demo will be about 10 rooms, 5 characters, not very long gameplay.

People on the team:
FruitTree- story writer, artist
Ginny- story writer, programmer
Rui 'Shodan' Pires- dialog writer
custard/Privateer Puddin`- artist
N3TGraph- music and soundfx

edit- There are some people who either used to be on the team and aren't anymore, or just haven't been active in the team much so I didn't write them down. You know who you are, so if you see this, just holler.

Positions we are looking to fill:
A background artist or character artist that can turn concepts into quality 2d graphics, an animator, or a combination.

Some examples of what's been done on the project:
Sketch of Lily, the main character, by Fruity - http://custardsclutter.com/tntb/lily.png
A tune written by N3TGraph - http://custardsclutter.com/ft/upload/introtune.mp3
Some concept art (Fruity) - http://www.custardsclutter.com/ft/upload/ronald200402.GIF
Another character concept sketch (Fruity again) - http://www.custardsclutter.com/ft/upload/gardener.jpg
A background sketch by Al_Ninio (highwaygal), coloured (pretty much roughly) by custard - http://custardsclutter.com/tntb/lalala.png
Another background by FruitTree and custard - http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/house3.jpg

And some lines of dialog, just for the heck of it (by Rui):
"You're my brother! You're not supposed to go around disappearing like that!"
"In the end, Lily, we either blame the whole world or we forget to place blame at all. Blame is such a tricky thing."

Adieu, folks:).

edit: Sorry Al_Ninio, got all confused with the different versions on the sketches![/b]

Sorry for my long absence. What's new, anyone care to update me?

[a can of lemonadespoonengagement ringmachetea REALLY good booka flashlighta gun with only one bullet in it2 items of your choice - which must make sense regarding the backstory of how you got there]

Rules: Every week (or so) a post will be made with a list of items and a scenario. Using your wit, skill and lack of mental health; find a way to complete the scenario with the items provided. You can only use a set number of items of your own choice. When I say use your skill, use it.

For example: you have a boulder and a reinforced window. I advise not using Pick Up boulder chuck through window. Think of something adventuresque to use.

Voting: After the week voting shall commence!

What If I win?: The winner chooses the next scenario and list of items.
________________________________________________________

The scenario is thus: You must invent any intro you want in which the player ends up underground, buried alive, 6 feet under. The spookier the better. The puzzle is obvious: get out before you stop breathing (lets say for fairness the hole is quite big. you might be in a coffin at first, or any other restrainments, or none at all).

You start the game with the following items (at least 2 of them must be used):
a can of lemonade
spoon
engagement ring
machete
a REALLY good book
a flashlight
a gun with only one bullet in it
2 items of your choice - which must make sense regarding the backstory of how you got there

You may find under the ground any amount of items of your own, as long as they are logical items, and one of them is a worm.

Finally, I want to see one or two things in the puzzle which show the atmosphere of the game, by scaring the player or whatever.

Go!!!

Note: Please forgive my futile attemps to be funny.

Today I remembered after a long time what it's like to laugh out loud.
It's been a while since I did, I must say, at least by my standards (once a day at least is an ok dosage of laughter by those, and the more the merrier), probably because I haven't had a physics lesson lately.
Ah, those physics lesson, always the place to go for a good laugh. I believe it's come to the point where I expect to laugh on them, and come to the lesson with a certain readiness, and am in the mood for laughing at just about anything, and end up laughing more. So, essentially, it's an infinite loop, the more I laugh, the more I want to laugh and the more I do as a result. Which is of course always welcome.

Some people don't value homour as much as they should, or perhaps don't value laughing. Apart from proven scientific theories that laughter is good for your health and can lengthen your life (I like to think after this amount of physics lessons I'll live to be 150), which has something to do with chemicals being released in your brain, I really don't know, laughing is first and foremost, fun. Fun like nothing else can be fun. Pure FUN!
So why this long rant about FUN and laughter? Ah, that's getting me a bit closer to the point of this post.
A bit too soon for my style. I think I'll just ramble on a bit more.

So as I was saying, today I remembered once again how great it is to laugh out loud.
Sure, all around us we see amusing things, but nothing that really hits the nerve hard.
Today, while reading a thread about the new pope (and hope this doesn't offend anyone) but a humourous remark posted in that thread took me somehow by surprise, and I laughed. For real.

Yesterday i had a close experience aswell. I was walking my dog, passing the post office thing.. And what did I see on the ground nearby? A toilet seat. I'm not a fan of toilet humour (ooh, bad pun ) but that almost made me laugh. At the very least i found it weird and amusing that the toilet seat would be lying there like that.
More importantly, it was surprising. Did I mention I was surprised? I was. And that, some say, and I might too, is the key to making people laugh.

I also considered what I read in the thread today. I don't recall it exactly, and am too
lazy to check, but the remark said something absurd about the pope's name and I found it very funny. Maybe it's just my type of humour, if I can even define that. I know some people are offended by this or that type of humour, but I find just about any type funny to some degree.
However I look at it, it makes me feel lucky, as I get to laugh spontaneously at many things, and I enjoy laughing so much.

Right, what was I supposed to write about? Oh right, GAMES. Games need humour. Players need to be surprised, caught unready with something funny. But remember not to make it clash with the game's mood. Timing is of the essence. USE THE ESSENCE.. Erm. Sorry. I'm not gonna go into HOW to implement humour, mainly because I don't feel like it ^_^. You could call this an incomplete post. I'm done ranting for now.


Please post if you have something to say on the topic, or some tips for humour in games, or your own rants somewhat related to the topic, or if you think I should stop ranting because AGS games have a lot of humour ^^.

P.S. This was all partially inspired by these 2 articles:
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6114407/index.html
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1595.asp
The other part is my mind just thinking up this starting sentence, and then I had to go with it and it led me to this great starting paragraph.... Damn my controlling mind

I've been thinking, has anyone heard of the gospel jazz music style? There's a pair of singers (israeli ones, surprisingly) whose concert I went to, and it was wonderful. Most of the songs were in english, so I'm wondering if this style is sung in other places.
To clear up: Gospel Jazz sounds like gospel music (or church songs) but accompanied by Jazz music. I'm not christian myself, but it appealead to me.

Btw, if Iris and Ofer Portugaly are on tour somewhere near you and you think you might like this style, it's very recommended.

It just dawned on me, after long searches through people's old post in order to get an idea about their work, that it would be useful in there was a section in the profile with links to some examples of the person's work. Although some people have websites, and some have games that they have made to show their abilities, they seems to be a minority.
It could be something simple like links to art/music/writing/posts/etc..

What do you think?

[Run, Lemur, Run!]

Sorry for the delay, I had some trouble with the computer. Let's get puzzling!

The rules are simple. I provide a situation and a problem for you to solve, as well as any additional details, and you need to build a puzzle around the situation, by using the the provided list of items and a limited number of your own items. This doesn't apply to in-room objects, locations, and characters. The more interesting and original your puzzle, the better, and more details add a lot too.
The winner is chosen by voting after the 11th, and he/she gets to set the next rules, Yay!

The theme this time is:
Run, Lemur, Run!

You are a small lemur nearing maturity (kind of in puberty stage), and you notice that your brothers and sisters have escaped the zoo, after being captured the night before, but you were left behind. How will you join your family in the wild, and more to the point, get out of this place?

Items you may use:
CRAB SHELL
3 LETTUCE LEAVES
METAL BAR
PENNY
RUBBER DUCK
STURDY WEEDS
LEMUR-FEED(tm)
GOLDEN COIN
FUR
BITS OF WOOD
CARROT
TWO ADDITIONAL ITEMS OF YOUR CHOICE

Additional rules: You can start off with any number of items, but not with your additional ones.

[What is history?]

Ok, this started out as a little idea that was resparked by playing Apprentice 2, and I'm posting it here to get opinions and discuss!

What I'd like to discuss is the importance and role of history and/or backstory in a character and in the dialog involving that character, aswell as in a game world. I'll write this out similarly to a GTD, though this subject is pretty tied into the GTD about character personality.

What is history?
Perhaps I should explain what I refer to as history. I am talking about two kinds of history, one that has happened before the game starts (in the writer's imagination) and one that happens during the game.
A history for a character could include his family tree, his childhood, his highschool years, his jobs, etc. depending on his age of course. This would most likely be part of the pre-game history, while any adventures he has during the game are in-game history. Both kinds of history would include people/other beings he meets, places he visits and investigates, even items he collects, to some extent, if they are of a higher importance than to solve a single problem. Artifacts and ancient books would be an example of this.

Who or What needs history?
First of all, we need to ask ourselves if we need history for anything at all. Obviously I think we do, otehrwise I wouldn't have started this discussion, but if anyone disagrees, please state so, and explain why.

Now, supposing we need it, what should history be applied to?

I'd say history is very important for develping interesting and 3-dimensional character personalities, as was mentioned in the character personality GTD. History gives them a motive and reason for their behaviour, and makes them seem much more real to the player. Character's backstory may also cause players to sympathise with the characters more.
I also believe that as long as the game isn't meant to be a joke or a mostly humourous game, if it's set in a world other than our own, it needs history, and sometimes even if it's set in our own world. A history for a fantasy world of demons and fairies would enhance it's believabillity, perhaps even making the player doubt their own reality. Games that take place in a different time usually rely on history to explain the current advances in technology, current culture, etc. This could be taken from real sources (for a game set in the past) or made up (usually for a game set in the future).

Now I come to actual meat of this discussion, which is more methodic:

How?

First of all, should history be written down at all, or should it be made up while writing the dialogs that express it? As I said here, I've pondered a few ways of incorporating history into games. Where should history be used in the game? dialog references? in-game reading material? diaries, monologues, books, introductions, newspapers/news, character behaviour (as Goldmund said then), other characters reflecting on one character (such as family members), visual means and sounds, etc.

A few examples (both existing and made up):

"That sign looks just like a hat my great-uncle Jerald used to wear for parties."
I made this up as a simple example realted to family history and/or a family tree. This basically tells up the main character has an uncle named Jerald who sometimes wears a hat of a certain shape (probably a strange one, if it resembles the sign). This also uses visual means to describe the uncle, as the sign isn't actually described in the comment, but the players can see it on screen.

"It's the commemorative poster from the annual Willowbean soup contest."
"Master won the blue ribbon with his cucumber-oregano-chese recipe." (Apprentice 2)
Of course, I have to mention Apprentice, as this post started partially because of noticing these things in the game. I didn't want to bring a very long example, and I think this one demonstrates it quite well. It tells us that Willowbean has an annual soup contest, revealing some local history, that the master won it that year, and also references the player's experiences in the first game, where he

Spoiler

made that soup .

[close]

... "Mean to animals?"
"Oh no, I love animals! Once, when I was volunteering in an animal shelter..." ... (Grim Fandango)
A game theory discussion thraed by me would be incomplete without at least one mention of Grim Fandango, preferrably more . I am going to fully admit my bias towards this game. But I also believe that even someone objective will agree that this dialog tells us a lot about Meche's life, something which is unique in itself since she is a skeleton in the 8th underworld. We find out that she was a good person, who volunteered for many things, has probably never done anything wrong, and in this particular snippet, we learn of her love to animals.
I'll take this chance to mention that good, expressive voice acting can show a character's personality aswell, though it probably doesn't have much to do with history. However in this dialog, the strength of the voice acting enhances the meaning of the written text by far.

The Library in The Longest Journey contained many books and many things to research that tell us about Arcadia, Stark, and everything in between. I found them a very interesting read, and they made the whole fantasy world appear much more believable.

Here are a few theories I had as to ways character and world history is implemented in dialogs:

One theory I have is that developers add it on the fly, making a note of the idea possibly, for future use, but in truth just inventint that great-uncle Jerald while writing the conversation. This can be tricky cause it's a bit random, and you may never get the idea of adding that in. This is a quick way to give characters some depth though, in my opinion. For example, that off-the-top-of-my-head comment (a response to looking at a sign) could be very good at convincing the player that the main character has always had that great-uncle, and makes it seem like the character has a history. This way works better for humourous games than it does for serious ones, though it can probably be adapted to a serious game aswell.

The other theory I had for doing this was actually writing out a (relatively) complete history for (almost) every character, in this case with a family tree full of all sorts of quirky characters, and try to reference them in the game. Of course, I doubt you would think of a great-uncle who wears hats the shape of french fries or something absurd like that, so fitting it to your needs can be done. In more serious games however, having a solid history to shape personality and comments etc might be a good idea. Plus it must be fun, and probably encouraging, to have a document/biography of a character to read, or even to add with the game as an extra (only if there won't be sequels though, cause that could slightly ruin some of the tension or surprise). This goes more for history related to the game world than characters, since this may be more interesting to write and to read. Some people didn't like reading lots of documents and books and the diary in The Longest Journey, but I found it highly enjoyable, and would love to have the option to read a long imaginary history book about an adventure game world. It can be so much better than real history
I think Dave Gilbert said that he was spending more time fleshing out characters's family history in his game (Bestowers of Eternity?).

So, to the point, this thread is here to make you TALK! Share your opinons, ideas, theories and thoughts. I haven't been able to give as many examples as I wanted to, so please give any examples you think are relevant to the topic. Thanks for reading all that

Sub-Topic:
A rose by any other name...
...would smell as sweet, according to Shakespeare, but I think names in adventure games have more importance than they seem. This isn't entirely related to history, but it's something I've wanted to discuss, and doesn't really warrant a seperate thread. Names are supposedly given to characters by their parents, so in more serious games, but humorous games aswell, we may want to consider what kind of name the parents would give their child, and that has a lot to do with his family history. In truth though, it's the developer who names the character, and sometimes the name is just meant to be catchy, interesting, unusual (Guybrush anyone?), or may have come from the paint program the artist used if desperate (again, Guy(.)brush). The name Manny Calavera says something about the culture the game is based on, aswell as having a meaning (a calavera is a papier-mache skull used on the Day of Dead in mexican culture, if I recall correctly).

So, consider this, if you will, a sub-topic to the whole history issue.
Sorry for possibe overuse of the word 'history'.

Right, when I start AGS, all I get is this error message:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We're sorry, the AGS editor has encountered a serious error and must shut down. You will have lost any changes made since you last saved your game.

(Exception 0xC0000005 at EIP=0x0046B22A, AGSE v2.61.490)

Please note down the numbers above, and what you were doing when this error occured. If it happens repeatedly, please inform CJ of this error by visiting the AGS Technical forum and providing any information that you can.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's happened before, and "reinstalling" (removing and then unzipping again ) AGS helped, but it's started again just now, and continues after both reinstalling and rebooting my coputer. I also downloaded the newest version of AGS afterwards, incase I didn't have the latest updates, but still got the same error.

I have a strange feeling this has something to do with my computer rather than AGS, but I thought I'd better check. This day isn't going too well. :\

I have two main questions:

1) Is it possible, when using GUIs that cover up the whole screen, to have part of the gui transparent (the one with the background behind it, specifically) and cnot clickable, and the borders clickable with buttons, etc.. If it is possible, is it worth the bother or should I just use 4 border GUIs?

2) On a different note, if I have a background that doesn't fill the whole space left for backgrounds, can I make the mouse cursor invisible and disbale the verbcoin gui? Is it even possible to disable just one GUI? I was thinking of doing this using hotspots. Or I could use SetMouseBounds andsimply stop the mouse from moving somewhere else. Hmm..

P.s. Also another question, to which I'm pretty certain the answer is yes, just making sure- Do verbcoins work on top of other GUIs, like inventory?

I was going through some game designs, and noticed that a lot of my games have both day and night scenes in the same location, so I started thinking what the best way to allow this is. I dunno, I may be missing something, this could be a lot simpler than I think, but as far as I see it, the only way would be to 1) make a new room with the same (or maybe altered) interactions, or possibly with a function that gets the day room interactions. A lot of dry work.. 2) use an animation view. This allows for not only day and night but 3 more different "modes", but eliminates the possibility of background animation (of course I could always use objects to animate).
So, I was thinking, would it be possible to have some kind of "mode" property to every room? not neccessarilly a time, these could be used for other things too. each mode would have a different background, lighting possibly, object artwork, and some variables about places being closed at night could be added.

An alternative could be room cloning, since we can't copy the whole code just as it is because of the way interactions work. Copying the whole room once it's done is somewhat difficult.

This isn't at all urgent to me though, as I seem to have solved my own problem by posting this (and maybe someone has other suggestions?), but would be a nice feature someday in the future.

I know there was once a group game making competition in which a team of randomly selected people (winamp? ) would create a game in a month (?).
I dunno if it was being hosted by m0ds (
http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php?board=9;action=display;threadid=5333
) or someone else, but is anyone else interested in bringing it back?
I think it's a great concept for a competition, and with some tinkering with the rules it could work nicely. Making games in a team is possibly more challenging than alone, because it requires more organistaion and team-work skills, so I think requiring just a short but interesting game would be good.
Teams could be selected randomly, or people could divide themelves into artists, musicians, programmers, designers, animators..

edit: It seems m0ds was planning to return this in the summer? In that case, foget all I just said

Another thing, and this again depends on how many other people are interested, a competition for writing/designing a game was suggested here:
http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php?board=9;action=display;threadid=12098
suggested by Migs (kinda).
I think this is a good idea, as I like writing game designs personally (some kind of template could be made), anyone else share my opinion?
Maybe Migs will host the comp, but if not I might want to .

P.s. One problem with such a competition is that once I make a game design, I would want to keep it to myself, and possibly make it someday, and also there might be the issue of people not wanting an idea stolen.

3 Suggestions:

1) Could the mask imports for walkable areas and hotspots be imported in 640X400 aswell? Also, is it possible to import them in their actual colors, that is so that they automatically get values for hotspot1, 2, 3, 4, etc, or do they have to have grey tones(higher numbers)? I imported a mask for walkbehinds once with something that I wanted to draw in PS casue it would take too long and would look bad in AGS, but it's lots of little dots of colour that I didn't want to fill in again.

2) The RGB colour setting for colours in the palette or when selecting colors in hi-color mode are not up to 256 as is usual, but rather to 60. Why is this and can it be changed for better color selection for GUIs and talking colors? When it's a palette I can just import a palette but not in hi-color games. There seem to be a few problems with palette importing from a .pcx file also, is there a particular setting to be used when saving the file?

3) Could it be made possible to control character's movements and actions within other rooms? This would greatly increase the illusion of real time in a game, non linearlity, and general liveliness. The game would seem more like a world than a game, increasing immerssion, etc..

If you could take a look at these, that would be great .
Thanks again for AGS btw

I just unwrapped my copy of "On-line", a computer magazine, and was surprised to see an amateur adventure game mentioned there (not one made with AGS though..)  - Out of Order. Basically, there was a very warm recomendation there to play it, which is surprising every time as these games aren't much noticed by the press. This magazine has mentioned adventure games quite often, though.
It's in hebrew, but I could scan it if anyone's interested, there seem to be many israelis here. There's also a review of the new Prince of Persia game in the same issue.

Aye, my first Sprite Jam
I chose to give you something abstract to draw, so the topic this time is:
"What is the essence of life?"
Or rather, what represents life to you? Since this is a sprite jam backgrounds are excluded (as far as I know at least).

No size or color restrictions.
Animation is not mandatory, but a bonus (though the challenge is in part supposed to be representing life in a still picture).

P.s. There seem to be inconsistencies with the dates on Sprite Jams, so please correct me if I got the wrong date
Also, is it ok for me to draw something? Not as an entry of course.

Alright, this is just something I'm wondering about- Is it possible to have one part of the char have a different name and have different interactions (for example a logo on one's shirt would bring up a description of what the logo is of, and clicking the rest of the char descripts the character. Or if a char is carrying a bag I want to be a able to click on the bag and the char will open the inventory).

Is this possible? Do I need an extra character to somehow follow the char and be part of him?

Dunno if this is simple enough for beginners tech, but whatever.

My christmas themed MAGS game for this month. Hope you enjoy, and err, hope there aren't many bugs.

Here's the d/l:

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/PlanetXmas.zip

A picture of the main character:



Ginny.

Well, here are a few backgrounds for a very weird and badly drawn planet Anyway, I should have done them in 320X200 now that I think of it, but it was just a habit for me to use hi-res, which is quite unneeded here. But anyway, here they are:

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/street.gif
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/KFK_hall5.gif

And the main character, who I still have to draw a christmas hat for (I retraced him basically from Murray in CMI):

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/murray_left2.gif

Feedback? Critisism? Bashing?

edit: Murray now with cheesy christmas hat.
       Table in KFK background redone (thanks obi for the help).