Topics

[A Thread Through Reality]

Hello, everybody!

It's been a while since the last time I posted here. It's been almost exactly ten years since my last AGS game, Barely Floating, was released. Since then I've been mostly busy programming some free to play mobile games before jumping ship late last year. Naturally, I felt the need to make another short freeware point & click adventure after such a long break. (This one's made in Unity, so that's why I'm posting here and not in completed game announcements.)

Anyway, on to the game itself!

A Thread Through Reality

There's been a bit of a breach in the Fabric of Reality and we are in desperate need of a capable seamstress such as yourself to mend the Tear. The reality has already begun collapsing in on itself through the Tear, causing time periods to mix and corrupt each other. Let's get crackin' before we're all doomed!




Trailer

If you want to try it out,
Download it here for Windows!

I also have some experimental builds for Mac and Linux users here. These have been tested much less than the Windows one but at least it's something if you're not running Windows and want to try out the game. Note that Mac users may need to right click the app and choose "Open" from the context menu to get past Apple's unable-to-check-for-malware warning. There is, of course, no malware in the game. Sorry for the inconvenience!
- MacOS
- Linux

The expected play time is somewhere between 2-3 hours.

I hope you enjoy the game! I'd be happy to hear what you think about it!

(And if you're curious to see my older adventures, head on to http://www.serpentpictures.net/games/)

[Download now!]

Hello, you guys! It's been a while since my previous adventure game. I know most of you have been anxiously awaiting for my next project!

*crickets*

Well, that still doesn't change the fact that we made a quick little point & clicker in roughly six days with a team of four. So here it is:

Download now!

Made with Unity using Adventure Creator, created by Chris Burton, ICEBOX Studios (IceMan).

It's a short one so if you have a couple of minutes you want to spend doing some mysterious adventuring, this is the game for you!


Let us know what you think!
Thanks!

[Stemshock Interactive]

Now's the last chance before I may or may not be contractually forbidden to release our Summerbatch game...

Stemshock Interactive
Presents



DOWNLOAD
NOW FREE FOR ALL MANKIND!


Story

Somewhere along the east coast of Africa, pirates have attacked a luxury yacht!
They have taken a few seemingly wealthy passengers as their hostages, a family and an old man,
hoping to collect a hefty ransom for each of them. When the hostage negotiations go awry,
the rescue duties land on the weak shoulders of an unlikely hero.
Little does he know that the ship's crew, that stands in his way,
is composed of some very weird and silly individuals.


Screenshots


Hostage negotiator extraordinaire.



This diarrhea ain't gonna cure itself.



Impress youths with your inability to sing.


Trailers

[embed=560,315]<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/L88-9Jd19gM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]

[embed=560,315]<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gRl089VN_lM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]



Making of Barely Floating - a video podcast series

A preview of the amazing soundtrack by Sine Cadenza!

Features
- The first 1280x720 resolution AGS game?
- 18 wacky characters!
- 15 rooms to explore!
- Lots of lazily made animations!
- Bingo!
- Karaoke!
- An inflatable lady!
- Hitting bad guys with a cane!
- Based on early alpha playtesting, at least two hours playtime!
- Some technical magic that nobody really cares about.


System Requirements
- Higher than usual due to the higher resolution!
- Anything better than a cheap notebook should run it OK, I hope.
- Requires a DirectX 9 capable graphics card with support for 1280x720 resolution!
- Download ~160 MB
- The game itself ~1,250 MB


Credits

• Aki Ahonen(AJA) -- Game design, writing, programming, character art and animation, background design, project leader
• Joni Ahonen -- Game design, writing, character and background design
• Ari Huuskonen (MadReizka) -- Background and cutscene art, music, sound
• Tommi Kivistö (Ishmael) -- Scripting, writing
• Joni Karvinen -- Music
• Sini Haapanen -- Background art

Special thanks

• Denzil Quixode -- For the amazing Lua plugin and the even more amazing tech support!
• Screen7 and other Summerbatch participants -- For motivation and finally luring me into making a game that's not for an OROW competition!
• SkyGoblin folk -- For the custom resolution branch of AGS!
• Everybody who nominated us for the Best Programming and Best Puzzles AGS Awards (2012)!

DOWNLOAD NOW!

-EDIT-
Updated download URLs.

[(Buy it now as part of the Summerbatch!)]

Hello, people of Earth!





We have just released the first episode of our three episode Barely Floating Podcast series in which we talk about the making of our game, Barely Floating! (Buy it now as part of the Summerbatch!) If you can't understand a word we're saying because of our lacking ability to speak English, you can at least still watch the pretty pictures go by: photos of the production, early screenshots, designs, etc.


Episode 1 - Preproduction & Design

In the first episode, we talk about the beginning of the project, including the game design, assembling the team, project management and so on.

[embed=640,360]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_1uMQRDr7fQ?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]


Episode 2 - Production

In the second episode, we speak about some technical mumbo jumbo, including the Lua scripting language and the custom resolution version of AGS. And what would it all be without all the behind the scenes drama of the darkest days of the production! Plus some stuff about character art and animation.

[embed=640,360]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0lWVQjH4Sj8?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]


Episode 3 - Graphics & Music

In the third and final episode, we take a closer look at the background art and turn our floppy ears towards the music, the game's fabulous soundtrack by Sine Cadenza.

Slight spoiler warning: There are some things in this episode that I'd rather have you experience in the game first. Probably not a big deal for anybody else but at least I've mentioned it now.

[embed=640,360]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/eCj0vh6K8m4?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]



Enjoy! And if you have any comments, please let us know, so we can improve for our upcoming podcasts and whatnots.

And if you haven't done so yet, go check out the Summerbatch bundle!
Also, visit our website for more information and some free games: www.stemshock.com!

[Screen7PresentsAStemshock InteractiveProduction]

Screen7
Presents

A
Stemshock Interactive
Production



A Summerbatch Game
(if it's finished in time and accepted)

Story

Somewhere along the east coast of Africa, pirates have attacked a luxury yacht! They have taken a few seemingly wealthy passengers as their hostages, a family and an old man, hoping to collect a hefty ransom for each of them. When the hostage negotiations go awry, the rescue duties land on the weak shoulders of an unlikely hero. Little does he know that the ship's crew, that stands in his way, is composed of some very weird and silly individuals.


Screenshots


Hostage negotiator extraordinaire.



This diarrhea ain't gonna cure itself.



Impress youths with your inability to sing.


Trailer

[embed=640,360]<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gRl089VN_lM?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>[/embed]


Other awesome stuff



A preview of the soundtrack by Sine Cadenza!

Progress

Development began in mid-February this year with just the two designers. After that we got some scripting help and a couple of musicians to compose an awesome soundtrack for the game. In late April we had an alpha version ready for playtesting, ie. checking if the puzzles made any sense at all. And some of them did! Wow! After that it's been the usual fare, ups and downs, falling behind schedule, and a hell of a hurry to make deadlines.

We're going into beta phase in a couple of days. After that it's going to be less than two weeks of hard work getting it finished and polished. There's still lots of eye candy stuff missing, such as walking to hotspots, cutscene stuff etc. but the game is fully playable and background art and most of the essential animations are done. Yay!

To be released sometime in July!


Update - 2012-07-05

Almost there! Just a couple of minor things left and we're ready for a couple of weeks of rigorous testing! One of those weeks may or may not be reserved for resting after a month long crunch.


Features

- The first 1280x720 resolution AGS game?
- 18 wacky characters!
- 15 rooms to explore!
- Lots of lazily made animations!
- Bingo!
- Karaoke!
- An inflatable lady!
- Hitting bad guys with a cane!
- Based on early alpha playtesting, at least two hours playtime!
- Some technical magic that nobody really cares about.


Credits

• Aki Ahonen (AJA)
  Game design, writing, programming, character art and animation, background design, project leader
  
  
• Joni Ahonen
  Game design, writing, character and background design
  
  
• Ari Huuskonen (MadReizka)
  Background and cutscene art, music, sound
  
  
• Tommi Kivistö (Ishmael)
  Scripting, writing
  
  
• Joni Karvinen
  Music
  
  
• Sini Haapanen
  Background consultant

Special thanks

• Denzil Quixode
  For the amazing Lua plugin and the even more amazing tech support!
  
  
• Screen7 and other Summerbatch participants
  For motivation and finally luring me into making a game that's not for an OROW competition!
  
  
• SkyGoblin folk
  For the custom resolution branch of AGS!
  

Follow us on twitter @stemshock and facebook: Stemshock Interactive

[What's New?]

Hi guys!

I've finally finished a project I started sometime last April. My goal was to make a Lua scriptable adventure game engine that I could possibly use in the future for commercial ventures. It's still a work in progress, and only the things you see in the game are implemented at this time. And before you ask, no open-sourcing is going to happen in the near future.




What's New?

- A brand new two frame talking animation!
- Crappy voice acting for testing purposes
- Crappy Finnish translation for testing purposes
- Some minor bug fixes
- Some minor enhancements

Check the config.ini file to change window resolution and translation!


The Engine

The engine uses OpenGL for graphics and a bunch of open source libraries for things ranging from window/input handling to Lua bindings. I tried to avoid any libraries that didn't allow static linking. The only exception is the audio library irrKlang, since I couldn't find a suitable permissively licensed alternative.


Download

Anyway, here's the remake of the 2008 OROW Competition winner: Download How many... (Remake). You might need to install the Visual C++ 2010 Runtime if you haven't already.



Please, try it out and check the readme for controls. If you encounter any bugs or other anomalies, send me the log.txt file so I can figure out what the problem is.

Thanks!

[Style A]

Hello!

I'm not much of a graphical artist myself, so I thought it best to ask the experts here.

What I'm trying to figure out is some sort of an approximation for how much time it takes to make background/character art for an adventure game. I realize it depends a lot on the artist, the graphical style and the actual contents of the picture. This is just something to point me in the right direction.

Let's assume a resolution of 640x400 pixels and two graphical styles:

Style A


Style B



Background Art

Let's use this concept art as a reference for the contents and composition of a room:




Now then, how much time would it take to make (in styles A & B):

1. One 640x400 background (including design & sketching)
2. Adjust a finished background by entirely changing the lighting (eg. daylight -> night, candle light)
3. Adjust a finished background by moving the furniture around (they need to be redrawn)



Character Art & Animation

The resolution is still 640x400, so let's assume a character would be something like 100x175 pixels.


How much time would it take to make (in styles A & B):

1. One character standing frame (including design & sketching)
2. One speaking animation or some other simple animation
3. One walking animation (6-8 frames)
4. One complex animation (eg. the character drinks a pint of beer, attempts to walk a couple of steps, and falls to the floor)



The point of all this is that if I have a background/character artist who says he can do, for example, 40 hours of work, I can prioritize the work. If a background takes 10 hours and a really cool but complex animation also takes 10 hours, I could try to think of ways to lose that one background in order to have the animation that really adds to the story and mood of the game.

Why not ask my artist, you may ask. Well, I don't have an artist yet. So, basically I would use this information to get an idea of the scope of the game and the artist's workload while I'm still designing it.


Any guestimates are welcome! I'm sure they're still more accurate than what I can come up with. Thanks!

Spoiler

And yes, this is for my Summerbatch game attempt. If you're interested in helping me out with the graphics, feel free to contact me by pm. Check my previous games first, so you know what you're in for. I'm currently looking for local artists (Tampere, Finland) because then I can physically go and kick them if they're being lazy. But if that doesn't work out I'm definitely going to ask around these forums.

[close]

[Restrictions:]

Hello, fellow AGSers! It's been a while since I've done anything even remotely useful for the community, so here goes...

Since scotch hasn't been active for years now, I decided to remake the Theora plugin in order to fix some things that have been bothering me. (I hope he doesn't mind.) Well, as it turns out I went a bit further and also added the possibility to create Direct3D textures and render them. And since this plugin only supports the Direct3D driver (and 32bit colours), I've decided to megalomaniacally call this the Direct3D plugin.

Restrictions:

• Games must be played with the Direct3D driver
  
• Only 32 bit colours supported
  

Main features:

• Play external Theora video files (with extremely simple obfuscation)
  
• Create textures from AGS sprites
  
• Create textures from external image files
  

Todo:

• Transparency, tinting
  
• Some kind of "free memory on room change" automation. (Because room_Leave is called before fade out, argh!)
  
• 
  

Manual/website

Download!

I made this plugin for my own needs so I really have no idea if anybody else finds it useful. If you do, feel free to post any comments, feature suggestions or bug reports.

It's not fully tested 'cause I'm a lazy sod. That's why it currently prints debug information into a debug.txt file. Send it to me if the plugin crashes your game or something weird happens. Also, no demo game available for now, sorry. There's a couple of examples in the manual, though.


--EDIT--

Source code now available!

[Barrier]

I was away so the official release was delayed a bit... But here it is finally! I know all none of you were anxiously expecting it!

Barrier



A Chinese peasant called Wu has to overcome the Great Barrier of China
in order to get to a girl called Mei. Hilariousness ensues...

This game was made for the 7th One Room One Week Competition in four days. I've enhanced this release version a bit: added fading footsteps and fixed a couple of glitches. So nothing drastic.

I hope you enjoy the game!

Download here!

[By the Numbers]

A short game made for the sixth One Room One Week competition:

By the Numbers

The investigation of a wave of kidnappings is going nowhere. One day someone claiming to be an eyewitness to one of the kidnappings approaches the local police department. It's time to find out what he knows...


Download from the Games Database page or directly or Mediafire.com


Features:
- Full voice acting with motion-captured performances drawn with beautiful vector graphics!
- That's pretty much it!


Screenshots:





Changes from entry version
- Modified Act 2 dialog options to make them clearer and
  also changed the occurrence points of the short exchanges,
  making the last one occur only when all the dialog options
  have been exhausted.
- Added blinking and slight eye movement
- New music, changed song placements slightly
- Credits sequence
- Option to turn off subtitles
- Option to skip act one


Download from the Games Database page or directly or Mediafire.com


Making of:
A short making of video for the game can be downloaded here (XviD encoded AVI, 16 min, 35 MB).
MIRROR: Mediafire.com



Any and all comments are much appreciated! Especially ones such as: "You suck!"


-- EDIT --
Due to my website exceeding the monthly transfer limit, I've changed all the links and added some mirrors!

[Dialog Designer]

Hello, everyone!

I'd like to present to all of you a very special Christmassy utility that I mostly made in August, then forgot about it, and now finally finished for release. It's called...

Dialog Designer

Dialog Designer is a utility to help design and write dialog scripts. It contains many useful features that make the process easier and faster. Also, since it's a separate utility, it allows you to collaborate between other writers without needing to use AGS and still being able to preview the dialogs and see if they even work like they're supposed to.

I can already write dialogs with AGS. Why should I use this?

Well, in addition to the points I made earlier, you've probably sometimes been frustrated when you've had to add new dialog options to your dialog, and you have to go through a big hassle if you want to place them somewhere else than the bottom of the list. Those days are over now! With Dialog Designer you can add options anywhere you want and you can organize them into a tree that clearly shows the structure of your dialog.

Even better, you can move and delete options, and Dialog Designer keeps track of all the references made to any options. Let's say you have two options and in the first one you turn on the second one (option-on 2). Now, if you move the second one above the first one, the reference is automatically changed (option-on 1). I bet you can already see the time saved flashing before your eyes. If, on the other hand, it's your life flashing, I really can't help you with that.

There's also a bunch of custom script commands that work as shortcuts to a bigger bunch of AGS script commands.


How exactly is this going to make collaboration on writing scripts easier?

By allowing you to preview the dialog directly in Dialog Designer! In order to support more complex stuff, you can also define variables and use them in your dialog with custom script commands. The dialogs are saved into basic XML files and can be shared easily.


XML files? How am I supposed to get them into AGS?

That's easy! To setup the included AGS Editor plugin, you need to do the following:

1. Copy AGS.Plugin.DialogDesigner.dll to your AGS directory.
2. Run AGS, open your project.
3. Double click Dialog Designer node in the project explorer tree.
4. Select Dialog Designer.exe.

Then you can start writing dialogs and exporting them directly to AGS:

5. Write your dialog.
6. File -> Export to AGS -> Settings -> Set the dialog name.
7. Make sure AGS is open and your project is loaded.
8. In Dialog Designer, select File -> Export to AGS -> AGS Plugin (or Ctrl+E)
9. Switch to AGS, there should be a pop-up saying the dialog was imported successfully. You should see the dialog in your tree view.
10. To edit a dialog that you've already imported, open the dialog in AGS and double click on Dialog Designer in the project explorer tree.

You can also export the dialog in two other ways, either only the script into a text file or the entire dialog directly into your AGS project. If you choose to export into a text file, you will have to manually create or modify the dialog options in AGS. This step can be eliminated by exporting directly into your AGS project file. You can choose to create a new dialog or replace an existing one if you're only doing an update.


I'm still not convinced.

Then I guess you can f*ck off. Seriously though, what more do you need? Oh, maybe the ability to convert normal dialog speech lines to some other format, like Character.Say calls, during export? That's very much possible with Dialog Designer.



Features
Okay, now that we're done with the marketing speech, let's recap the main features:

- Dialog options are organized in a treeview that clearly shows the structure of the dialog
- Syntax highlighted dialog script editor
- Dialog preview
- Basic AGS dialog script commands work in the preview: option-on, option-off, option-off-forever
- Additional script commands that make writing scripts even easier
- Automatic dialog option reference management
- Variables and showing dialog options automatically if a specified condition is true
- Exports AGS compatible dialog scripts. If conditions or other advanced functionality is used, the minimum required AGS version is 3.1.1.
- Dialog speech line conversion



Known issues

- File -> Export to AGS -> Project does NOT work with AGS 3.4 due to changes in the project file structure. Please use the editor plugin instead.




If you're ready to give it a go, make sure you have the required .NET Framework 2.0 installed.

>> Download Dialog Designer << New version 1.3.0!

Change log available here: http://www.serpentpictures.net/dialogdesigner/




Feel free to post if you have any problems, comments, suggestions or bug reports!
I wish you all a very productive Christmas or any other holiday that may or may not be happening in the near future!

[www.drhorrible.com]

I'm a bit surprised this hasn't been posted here, so I decided to do it myself...

www.drhorrible.com


"The story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up,
and the cute girl from the laundromat he’s too shy to talk to."

Watch it on Hulu.com

It's an Internet musical written by Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy, Angel, Firefly), Zack Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day. If you haven't seen it yet, you still have some time until the free viewing ends midnight Sunday July 20th.

Go watch it now! It's great!

[The Heist]

From the guys who brought you the OROW winners The Heist, How many... and Alone in the Night, comes a new and exciting adventure game filled with humor. (Just like the title suggests.) A game that's been in development for almost two years (and it's still nowhere near finished). Evolum Games proudly presents...

Download the demo!

Story

Vincent wakes up from a terrible nightmare: a huge rock from outer space was headed towards the Kingdom of Colvennen. The dream felt so real it must've been a vision of the future. If the asteroid hits the planet, the consequences will be disastrous. Vincent decides to consult the vast knowlegde and wisdom of the mages without delay.


Screenshots


Visit the International House of Mages.


Try your luck with hang-gliding.


Blow dust off of very very old books.


Team

Ari Huuskonen (MadReizka)
Design, writing, background art, music

Aki Ahonen (AJA)
Design, writing, scripting

Sam Dobbs
Writing, proofreading


Actors

Aki Ahonen
Ari Huuskonen
Tommi Kivistö (Ishmael)
Joni Ahonen


Features

- Resolution: 320x200
- Gorgeous 3D background art
- Live actors with tons of animations (check "Alone in the Night" for a preview)
- Wacky characters
- Video cutscenes
- Original soundtrack
- Voice acting, hopefully
- And probably more!


Progress

- Graphics   50%
- Puzzles   95%
- Scripting   50%
- Music/sound   5%
- Cutscenes   0%

It would make modifying sprites a lot easier if you could re-import sprites. Right click - Re-import. AGS would know where the original imported file was and re-import the current version with the same import options with which the sprite was originally imported. Of course, there is is the possibility to replace the sprite but it's not really convenient for longer animations.

For example, a long-ish animation rendered in some 3D software. Once it's imported to the game, you notice that you could improve the lighting a bit. So you render it again. And now you have to replace every single frame of the animation manually. It gets even worse if you're working with live-action material from which you've removed frames after importing it to AGS. You'd have to go through each frame and find the correct updated file.

All of this could be avoided if it was possible to select multiple frames (or a sprite folder) and let AGS do the replacing automatically. It doesn't really matter if you're making a big game or a small game, it would be extremely useful in reducing the time required for these boring tasks that could and should be automatized.

[/marketing speech]


I'm not sure if this has been suggested before but I think it would be a major improvement for the editor. By the way, great work on AGS 2.8, CJ!

I decided to start a new thread for our OROW entry because we're quite satisfied with the outcome. We worked really hard the entire week and we'd really love to hear YOUR comments on the game.

Anyway, in this game your goal is to steal valuable jewelry and other stuff from the Marmous Manor. Each stage of the heist has multiple solutions, so you can play the game again and again and again... Unless you get really sick and tired of it The game also features DivX compressed cut scene and transition videos, pre-rendered 3D background art and mini games.

This version of The Heist is almost exactly the same as the OROW entry. The only change is that I've updated our names into the game and the readme. I've also removed one song from the music.vox which I forgot to remove for the competition entry. :-

Well, we (me and MadReizka) hope that you enjoy this short game! Have fun! (Hopefully some of you will try out all the solutions to the "puzzles" (there are three somewhat different solutions for each of them).


Last but not least, here's a screenshot:


And the download urls (~17MB)
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=download&game=728
Mirror: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=download&game=728&mirror=1

I have this problem that the random numbers I store into global variables aren't regenerated when the game restarts. Any ideas?

Btw, I assign the values in the first room of the game after the restart point.

Just to let you guys know, Alone in the Night and The Search ("demo") are now available for download.

Alone in the Night: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=595 (5.1 Mb)
The Search: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=116 (2.2 Mb)

And remember, The Search will never be finished, so try it out if you're interested in what that game could have been like.



Have fun or be bored!

[WARNING!]

http://www.serpentpictures.com

WARNING!
The site design itself is about 75KB
Sorry, modem users...  


There's not much there yet but the site should be finished in a couple of days. And remember to check / post in the forums!

Hi everybody!

I wanted to share this piece of art with you. I made it a few years ago when I was 13... or 14 years old. Here it is:



It's one my best (if not the best) pictures I've ever made. What do you think?

Here it is:

1X


4X



It's drawn mostly by Mad_Reizka but I also helped tweaking him a bit. ;)And it's for Dima Software's new "training" project.



[EDIT]
Here are the two first versions of the front view. We're still working on this view, so these won't be the final versions. The side view could stay as it is without your suggestions/comments

AJA edition / Mad_Reizka edition (in creation order)

[/EDIT]


Team:
-Mad_Reizka
-TK
-AJA


About the character:
-High School student
-Doesn't have many friends (if any)
-Quite shy
-Spends much time studying (but he isn't very good at school) and playing adventure games ( :o)
-Some "Bad Boysâ,,¢" have picked on him at school for years


All kinds of comments are important! Thanks!