Topics

[Tuulipuku-Tauno Darrassa]

My MAGS entry for the June 2025 contest: Tuulipuku-Tauno Darrassa  (Windbreaker-Willy has a Hangover)

https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/play/game/2872-tuulipuku-tauno-darrassa/

This game aims to showcase what it feels like to be Finnish, up to and including how difficult even the most simple activities in life can feel when you're hungover, exhausted, confused and in pain. Help the protagonist regain control of his life by brewing a cup of coffee. This should be a simple task, right? What even could be complicated about it...?





Key features include:

• Really annoying-to-use doors (though there may be a trick to making Tauno more capable of dealing with them for a while)
• Authentic Finnish ambience
• Bilingual: all text displayed in both Finnish and English
• 640x360 resolution: hand drawn ultra high-definition graphics
• A secret bird

Warning: contains mild nudity in the form of hairy legs and thighs (no, you can't see Willy's willy).

Target URL: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/create/game-submit/add-game/

500: Internal Server Error
"It looks like something's gone wrong on our end. Sorry about that!
Please post on the Site & Forum Reports forum, giving as much detail as possible about what you were doing when the error occurred."

I've filled out the form for adding a new game and as far as I can tell all mandatory fields are filled. There are 3 images attached in .png format, 2 download links. Not really sure what I could provide that'd be more specific. I am still able to go back on my browser to find it all pre-filled out so I'm holding on to that page, but the "Save your game" button sends me instantly to the error page.

EDIT: I followed those handy notifications to try and rate some of the games I've played and it seems adding ratings also doesn't work. The button just doesn't do anything, so perhaps that is related as well. Noting the observation here just in case.

[is there an easy way to detect if a character.say command has finished]

Since I failed to find this in the manual and in the search: is there an easy way to detect if a character.say command has finished and the text dispalyed over the characters head has disappeared?
I am using the Lucasarts style speech and haven't found out any GUI element that the character.say text is bound to so I could check its text value or visibility, so I'm guessing its tucked away somewhere inaccessible.

What I'm trying to accomplish here is a simple subtitle system where a text label is assigned a bit of text whenever the say command triggers, which works fine, but trying to figure out when to clear the subtitle text (whether because the player skipped the dialogue or the timer ran out) so it doesn't linger on screen for longer than the standard speech text is what I'm failing to accomplish here. My initial idea was a simple repeatedly executed script that checks if any speech command is ongoing, and if not, clear the subtitle text away.

The minute I post the question I figure it out! The say command is blocking so I can just clear the label in the next line of code and not overthink things so much! IT WAS OBVIOUS!

Still, a bonus question: how does AGS calculate the time the .say command text stays up if no voice line is attached? I'm guessing its X milliseconds/frames per character, but didn't find this in the manual either. Just a vague "The text will remain on screen for a limited time".

[A Place of Significance]

A Place of Significance
A short game about a simple cave and how we, humans, perceive it across various time periods.
Developed for the December 2024 MAGS contest.

Download link: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2814-a-place-of-significance
Want to play without downloading? Here's the game on itch.io: https://wham.itch.io/a-place-of-significance

• Single button user interface (both mouse buttons perform the same action).
• I finally took the time to figure out how to use the AGS dialogue tree functionality in this one!
• Multiple playable characters.

So I was roped into participating in a 2 week Game Jam. I've just spent 4 days in a row working 15 hours a day to write up the 40 page design document, crunch the project to a finish, all while pestering my teammates to death, but finally it is done!

Felt like sharing, and I hope it's not too badly frowned upon to share a non-AGS game here in the rumpus room:

https://wham.itch.io/shadowbrew

My main takeaway from the project: goodness I love AGS compared to Godot engine! AGS has so many convenient features that I came to miss greatly now that they were gone, and while Godot has its own neat features, most of them feel like they're geared up for making pretty lights and sparkles happen, rather than help you create an interesting game.

[The Night Falls]

The Night Falls
A Community Roleplaying Game



Rain falls heavy outside of your home, the drops hammering on the panes of glass through which you peer outside.
It is not quite night, but the hours of dusk are fading fast.
It's all a little hazy in your mind right now, but you know that you have to head outside soon, despite the deeply unpleasant weather conditions.

You've got something important to do. Something only you can do. Something you've done before, of course, so surely it won't be a big deal.

Just a job. A Mission.

You just need to get ready for it. The same way you always get ready on nights like this. A little ritual of sorts, to get yourself ready to head out there, into the weather.



(?) What ACTION will you take to prepare for the night that is about to fall?

- - - - - - - - - -

What's all this then? And how do I play?

Spoiler

This is the beginning of a community roleplaying game. All will make sense in time.
How do I play?

To enter a new command into the game, respond to this thread with a command formatted like the example below:

> Perform an impressive juggling display

or

> Offer the man a fine leather jacket

or

> Steal the lamp

A new command should be indicated with the > sign.

If you wish to upvote a command already given, simply post the same command again.

How will the game process commands entered?

Commands entered will be tallied and the most voted command will be executed in the game. If there is a tie, then the command given first will be executed.
For a command to be executed it needs to have at least one upvote, ie. a minimum of two players must agree on the command.

How often will the game update?

The game will be updated 2-3 times a week, depending on player activity and my availability due to work and social engagements.
Faster updates may be made early on to help the prologue get rolling.

Can I contribute?

Sure! If you wish to contribute art, characters, ideas or anything at all, feel free to PM me your suggestions.
I will not promise to include everything sent in, but I will consider all contributions and do what I can to include them where sensible.

Can this game be won? Or lost?
The mechanics of the game will be made apparent over time. It will be possible to eventually lose the game, as taking risky or dangerous actions carry a random chance of failure and consequence.
It is also possible to win the game, by completing The Mission.

What is the Mission? And who are we?
That is up to you, the players, to find out.

[close]

I was recently reminded of the AGS wiki and realised that I had a page there that was badly in need of updating, so I've added a few things, and will add some more later. As part of this I was reminded of some old projects of various quality, such as these:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=44156.0
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=49495.0

Sadly only one of these projects ever truly finished due to waning interest, overt complexity for little return and, most of all, myself becoming too busy to keep up. (RIP King Simulator 2013, I miss you to this day and still have a design doc from 2019 for recreating the basic concept as an AGS idle game)

Still, I loved working on these little projects and I might be interested in trying another one. The question is: are folks interested in it?

For me these projects are a way to experiment with narratives and pixel art, and for the participants they, hopefully, provide interesting and funny moments and an extended narrative that can take unexpected turns thanks to audience participation.

[recycling]

I'm sure pretty much all of us were taught at some point in our lives that it's important to recycle. A piece of trash, if properly reused, might not be a burden on our ecosystem, but a resource that might be cleverly reused time and time again. The topic came up recently as I discussed how different the methods for recycling something as mundane as beverage containers is from country to country, and so I decided to cheekily recycle the observations of that conversation into a topic for our contest!

Write a story that somehow revolves around recycling something. That is, using something that has once been used for its original purpose, for some new purpose, either as-is or after some kind of refinement.



The deadline of this contest is Sunday 15th of May at 23:59 UTC.

Each person choosing to read and vote has three points to allocate, one for each of the following:
1 point for the best or most interesting or imaginative idea of recycling.
1 point for the best or most interesting setting / character.
1 point for the best technical writing, ie. grammar, readability etc.

["WHAM plays his own games and does developer commentary for them"]

Special "WHAM plays his own games and does developer commentary for them" -stream tonight at 16:00 UTC (19:00 Finnish local time).

https://www.twitch.tv/whamtheman

Feel free to pop in and see an old man grumble about how bad he has been at making games since 2007!

[watched]

Back when I was a kid, maybe 6 or 7 years old, I spent some time at a daycare while my mom was at work. That daycare had some older kids, and they had a PC, and they played games on it. And I watched.

Now sure, they played cool games like Silent Hunter and Heroes of Might and Magic, and I loved those, but there is one game I remember most vividly. And here's the kicker: I have no idea what that game was. Or even if it was just one game or two. What I do recall was that it was a point and click adventure game. And I'm hoping someone might figure out what game it is and tell me so I can go back and see it with my weary adult eyes and put this bogeyman to rest.

I can recall three scenes:
- A scene based on a large boat, where the male protagonist could walk around and enter the boat. I seem to recall that the boat could be explored both externally and internally, and that the side of the boat would be cut away to reveal the interior.
- A scene in a kitchen of some sort. There was a severed head inside the fridge that freaked me the hell out.
- A scene with an NPC, most likely a cannibal of some sort. This one got to me the most. The protagonist entered through a door to find what I seem to recall a room with a bed, and atop that bed was a bloody corpse. Hunched over it, and animated in the act, was a character (I seem to recall thinking it looked like an old lady, but this might not be accurate at all) eating said corpse. This character would turn, approach and kill the player character, at which point I fled the room so I have no more details to offer.

Any ideas would be greatly welcome!

[One More Fathom]

EDIT: I'm going to have to overhaul this thread, because wiser people than myself (Oh, hey Chomba!) have made me realise how bare bones and limited this request of mine was.
I'm going to come back to this thread with proper references on the art direction I'm looking for, as well as more detail, at a later date.

For the time being: sorry for the mess below.

Spoiler

I'm looking for an artist to work with on creating an expanded version of my February MAGS game: One More Fathom ( https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=58887.0 )

Project detail

My goal is to rebuild the game with a higher resolution, new artwork, audio and music, as well as new content, expanded story and more. I am hoping to move from away from a pixel art style, toward a more cartoony or comic-book art style, as permitted by the higher resolution of the new version.

Open position

I am searcing for an artist to draw backgrounds, characters, objects and creatures, replacing the low-res pixel art of the MAGS version, while adding new characters, objects and scenes to go with new gameplay mechanics.

Other open positions may become available at a later date, and I will update here or create a new thread as appropriate at that time.

Project timeline

There is no concrete deadline, but my goal is to start the project during the summer of 2021, with a goal of finishing the project either by end of 2021, or early 2022, depending on how well sourcing art, audio and music go. However, as there is no external pressure on the project, delays are possible.

Payment & Funding

I am paying for this out of pocket, and my budget is limited to what I have left of my salary after my living expenses.
If you are a potentially interested artist, feel free to reach out to me to discuss the project, scope and potential price offers, as well as other detail.

You can contact me via email at wham@whamgames.com or via PM on the AGS forums.

[close]

[1. He Watches]

I mentioned this idea in another thread back in the General area, and finally got around to making it. I'd imagine there are quite a few projects that have been started on the AGS forums over the years, and sadly many of them are still unfinished, and in extreme cases, are completely abandoned. I felt it might be interesting to look back on some of these projects and share them with people, hopefully encouraging others to also share their lost projects. Who knows, maybe going back down memory lane will encourage people to dig up their old project, or at least help others pick up on common issues, hopefully learning to avoid them.

(This is by no means a full list. I know I have many more of these, but these are the ones I had imagery for.)

1. He Watches
Let's get this out of the way, and start off with the most painful one for me. He Watches was my first serious effort at making a really big and complex game, with multiple characters, branching story paths and a fully explorable mansion as the main setting. I had plans for things like having the NPC's move around the mansion around the player, and ways for the player to call out to them to draw them into specific rooms to have private conversations with them or to secure their assistance with puzzles or obstacles, as well as a sort of parallel reality ghost world version of some rooms, where the player would be allowed glimpses into the past events that took place in the mansion, which would provide clues for later puzzles. A point of pride was the overlay based lighting system that would let the player use a lighter and candles to light up rooms in order to create safe areas from the shadows that haunt the mansion later on, as well as allowing them to spot hidden objects. The design document was a mile long, and I had a ton of art and animations and even a playable demo, which I think is still out there somewhere.

The mansion exterior


The main entrance hall, with Sarah, the protagonist of the game


Sadly the project died in the dumbest way possible. For one, the project was already massively delayed due to the far-too-ambitious scope of it all, and the more months passed the more challenging it became to work on it. The final blow came one day when I had a cold and a bad fever, and I had the bright idea of updating the firmware on my SSD hard drive. I messed my computer up big time and ended up bricking all the hard drives I had, including the backup drives, and this was in the day before I had cloud  backups or source control, so I lost literally everything except some of the art I'd copied to my work computer. All the code: gone.



2. CJ Zombie Escape

This was a MAGS project I once built. The concept was fairly simple and inspired by 28 Days Later the movie. The player is some dude stuck in his apartment, waking up from a massive hangover, when he discovers a zombie apocalypse has begun. An evac chopper could pick him up, but he has to draw its attention with coloured smoke, which means puzzling it out to craft a homemade smoke bomb by using supplies stolen from the crazy man mixing up explosives in his bath tub upstairs, all the while doing time based puzzles to block zombies from intruding too soon. The game borrowed a lot of ideas from LaSol, an older MAGS entry of mine, where time-based puzzles where key to making an otherwise dull puzzle game more interesting.

The bottom of the stairwell. The player had to pick up their lost cellphone or something from their mailbox.


Bedroom, with what was a sort of functional computer through which the player could chat with NPC's to gain hints.


Most of this game was done. All the backgrounds and animations were finished, along with all the characters, but I just ran out of steam on the project. The zombie idea was too dull and my initial ideas of trying to turn a mundane apartment and stairwell into an interesting puzzling environment just felt flat and boring. I dropped the project but preserved the graphical assets in the hopes of reusing some of them in some future project.



3. Space King

Inspired by a really cool platformer demo someone had built on the AGS forums I tried to build my own from scratch. I used the Megaman games as a template for things like jump height and air time, and even based the test animation I had on Megaman X sprites. The concept worked all right, and I had a playable one room demo which could even support things like breakable objects and moving platforms. The concept was a sci-fi space opera where the player takes on a role of a super soldier serving the eponymous Star King. The game would have been split into two halves, with one being a vertically scrolling space shooter during which the player could damage enemy forces and collect powerups, and a side scrolling platforming shooter with enemies to shoot and light puzzles to solve. However, the more I tested my keyboard movement engine out, the more janky it proved to work with, and even trying to program things like moving enemies with their own movement patterns or any other kind of projectiles than hitscan was, at the time, well beyond my ability. As such I gave up on the project and set it aside, deeming it a fun side project to toy with, but unfeasible as a one man game project.

Character concept art


Test animation for the player character




4. Civil Unrest

I've always loved board games, and the idea of designing my own has always tickled my brain. There was also a point in time in which I considered trying to make a sort of digital board game, and one of the themes I selected was a sort of riot police versus anarchist setting, in which players would try to control regions of a city while managing escalation levels and media attention, trying to make the other side look bad and unjustified while using as much force as possible without looking too evil themselves. The game borrowed heavily from the much praised Twilight Struggle in its card and influence mechanics, but I ended up scrapping the idea of a digital board game of this nature due to challenges with enabling multiplayer, as well as it just not feeling right due to lacking physical pieces and cards to play with.

I actually still have the rough rules document for this, and have been toying around with printing my own cards and making some simple pieces and boards out of cardboard so I could prototype this as a physical board game rather than a digital one.

The game board drafted with placeholder art assets




5. Infiltration Strike Insertion Squad

This was my second attempt at taking a board game concept and turning it into a digital game. This time the model I went after was the Games Workshop game Dungeon Quest, which I modified into a single player sci-fi dungeon crawler with influences of Space Crusade, Aliens and more. The idea was for the player to assemble a team of 2-4 characters, gaining cards for their deck based on those characters, and then venture into a randomly generated tile-based dungeon representing a space station or a colony or a ship. Here the player would explore new rooms, collect keys and loot, and try to complete some final objective that would trigger a new boss encounter and allow them to beat the level. The idea is still perfectly valid, I think. I made a rough draft of the game with a fully working map generation function as well as card decks representing doors, encounters, secret passages and basic weapons and health packs, but tried to make the combat work with a sort of quick time event system that was just utter rubbish, so I scrapped it and instead began to expand the idea of the game being a deck builder as well as exploration game.

Out of all my scrapped projects, and especially with my recently released MAGS game One More Fathom sharing some ideas with this, this one feels most likely to be worked on against in the future.

A test view of the main view of the game. I already had the map generation in place, and rooms would get randomly assigned doorways, floor sprites and wall segments to make them look unique. The placeholder character sprites are concept art from some Aliens -themed mobile game, I think.

Just noticed a fun quirk in the AGS Games Database.
If you set the game resolution as "other" rather than any of the pre-defined resolutions, the game page displays resolution as just "HD".
Since there is no way to write in a value yourself, this might seem a bit off, considering in the case of my latest game I selected "other" because the resolution I used was slightly smaller than the smallest available resolution on the list.

Now my 320x180 game is listed as "HD". 

I seem to be getting a "File not found" error page when I try to add a new game to the AGS database.
URL: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/add/

I can input all the fields properly, but when I try to press "Add game" in the end I get the error.

Any idea if this is some kind of issue with my input on the page, or if the page for adding games is just down in general?

EDIT: Tried again after sleeping overnight. No error this time around and game added to database successfully. No idea why it didn't work yesterday.

[One More Fathom]

One More Fathom


DOWNLOAD >


Treasure awaits below the waves, deep in the Graveyard Chasm. Dare you dive deep enough to find the most valuable treasures, and are you wily enough to return to surface before air runs out and it's too late?
One More Fathom is a push your luck game of diving for treasure and becoming filthy rich, and maybe, just maybe, also finding a little something more...

Maybe you'll even make a FRIEND on the way...

Hopefully this is the right place for this, but I am observing a weird behaviour in AGS 3.5.0.
I use a button graphic to display some information, and just swap the buttons normalgraphic with code run when player changes rooms.
However, if the player saves the game, exits and loads the game, the button graphic defaults to the original default value given in the GUI settings for that button, rather than the state it should have been saved in.

Is this a feature or a bug in the AGS engine itself, or am I missing something here?

[24th February 2021 - 23:59:59 UTC]

What a Thief Can See


Being a thief is stressful work. The constant danger, the risk of being caught, falling from a window, being bitten by dogs, and yet it's all worth it for that sweet, sweet loot!
However, sometimes a thief might get more than they bargained for. Rather than merely pocketing a shiny trinket or a secret document, their nightly intrusion might have them witness... something unexpected.
A secret occult ritual? A forbidden romance? A gruesome murder? An alien abduction? A talking dog in a fancy leather jacket?

Rules: Write a story in which a person, who might be called a thief, is in a place they are not supposed to be in, and they witness something they did not expect, that might have a profound impact on them or someone else.

Once submissions are in, anyone can read the entries and vote. Each voter will have one vote to cast in each of the following categories:

• Best technical writing quality
• Best overall story
• Best secret or event revealed
• Best individual character

Stories must be submitted by the following deadline: 24th February 2021 - 23:59:59 UTC

I always found board games a fun way to spend time with people, learning something new together and challenging each other in friendly contest in a way that just felt more vivid and personal than video games ever did. Over the years I've accumulated a bit of a collection of various board games from the simple, casual games like Carcassonne, Ex Libris and Tash-Kalar to the moderately complex ones like 1960 - Making of the President and Combat Commander: Europe to the absolutely insane such as Advanced Squad Leader and OCS: Korea - The Forgotten War (the last one of those says it takes 200 hours to play a full game). Personally I've got pretty close to 40 board games currently sitting on my shelves (which probably means things have gotten a bit out of hand and I should be barred from visiting the local board game shop for a while).

Any other board game or wargame hobbyists around? Tell us a bit about your hobby, your favourite board games and board gaming moments. How have you been able to keep the hobby alive in the age of Covid quarantines, or have you resorted to things like Vassal and Tabletop Simulator for your board gaming needs?

Who knows, maybe we'll end up organizing games or even a little tournament some day, if there are enough people interested in the subject matter.


Image: (last game I happened to play and take a picture of) Combat Commander: Europe

[FOOD]

We all need to eat, and the crafting of food is one of the finest, most delicate arts known to man. The tools of the trade are as varied as they are powerful, and the most powerful foodomancers can feed a king as easily as an army.



Your theme for this contest is: FOOD

One of the major themes of the story you write must have to do with cooking or otherwise preparing food.
The story must also, in some way, include a frying pan. (Or, as Brock showcases in the image above: a 'drying pan'.)

The deadline for this contest is 23:59:59 (UTC) on the 10th of January.. (Edited as of 7th Jan 2021)

The voting categories, in which you may award one point per category, are as follows:

- Best use of a frying pan or other cooking tool
- Best overall story
- Best technical writing


May the best tale win!

I tried reading up on the search results and found others with similar issues, but wasn't able to quite figure this out, so maybe someone can help me figure this out.

I have created a new script file CustomFunctions to keep certain data and functions separate from the global script, for clarity. I have also added the line for importing it, so it can be used in the global script as well as the various rooms.

In the CustomFunctions.ash (header) I have declared a struct

Code: ags

struct Plot {
  int PlotType;
  int Damage;
  int Graphic;
};

import Plot Plots[40];

However, I was unable to figure out where I should put the export that would pair up with the import.

Currently, trying to write into the array from another script file returns the error
-------
Loading game failed with error:
Script link failed.
Runtime error: unresolved import 'Plots'.

The game files may be incomplete, corrupt or from unsupported version of AGS.
-------

This makes sense, as I am missing the export.

However, attempting to place an export into the CustomFunctions.asc, outside of any function as when exporting functions, like so:

Code: ags

export Plots[40];

Results in the error:
Cannot export an import

Either the location or syntax of the export, or perhaps import, is invalid, but I cannot figure out which one, or how?