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Talking about how big the boobs a girl has in an adventure game is  very politically correct, and as the whole political correctness movement has ably shown, it's excellent for making surface change and ignoring the root of the issues. 

Exactly! Thank you!

Meh, even if men worship sexy women and treat them with utmost respect, the fact still remains that women face a lot more pressure to be beautiful than men do. Saying that feminism has now become completely irrelevant just because women are no longer forced to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and that we should be perfectly satisfied with that and only that, is asinine.

You are missing the point: feminism becomes obsolete when women and men have (at least on paper) the same rights, and women start looking for their own cultural processes. Some of those include sexual expression. Frankly, a big-breasted nurse who is active in any story is a thousand times culturally more beneficial than your average passive Disney Princess.

Creating a culture where women are forced to never cross a certain line, to dress conservatively if they want to be taken seriously andall that crap, even if it's in the name of feminism, is just another way of being repressive.

The art is awesome. My only bone to pick here is the SCUMM (TM) gui. Seriously, why? It's just an outdated remainer from conversational adventures, that Lucasarts themselves abandoned after their first few games. Most of the time it's only a way to make the game last longer by giving the player too many options instead of clever puzzles.

But if you are set on using it, could you at least make keyboard shortcuts? The whole rocking the mouse up and down continuously ends up getting on my nerves.

Well, yeah. It is vulgar. It's pure, unsubtle fan service. The intention is to titillate, more than anything else.

And you know what? Well done. Be proud of it. Just say: "Yes, we enjoy fan service, and we are using it in our game. And we love it". Sure, let there be nice plain looking girls as protagonists. Or plump. Or ninety year old women. Or big-breasted bimbos, Let there be every sort of characters you want to make. It's your world, and you should never make excuses for it.

Now, the dilemma here is: does it objectivize women? Sure. If you are living in the sixties. If you are living in the twenty-first century, all I can say is: patronize much? Hell, the dirtiest-minded more sexually obsessed people I know are girls.

Nowadays feminism has been effectively replaced by post-feminism. A school of thought that considers openly sexual characters in fiction as empowering for women (as long as they are doing the ass kicking and/or the thinking, as opposed as being tied to a railroad waiting for the dashing hero to rescue them. That would be sexist no matter what they wear.)

I'll even go further than that, and say that, from a post-feminist point of view, trying to "control" a women's (even a pixelated one) sexuality, like saying that the representation of a girl shouldn't wear a sexy nurse outfit, is pretty much chauvinistic by modern standards.

So there. Rant off.

The french company cryo did a couple of factual history-based adventure games:  Versailles, Journey to Pompeii... I also remember some company publishing adventure games in ancient Egypt and China, but can't really remember more details.

-Sigh- I'm not a religious person, but my morality derives from the one that most of the western civilizatiion (including non-fundie religions) has nowadays: good old humanism.

Basically it's a moral system based on reason, logic and the natural empathy we are able to feel for others. One of its tenets is, of course, not harming other people. Having consensual sex with another adult is harmful to any of us? Is there a logical reason not to?

Then it's alright.

Another tenet is not really caring for race, religion, or, of course, sexual preference of other people. In that case I would consider myself, humanistically, more moral than a homophobe.

I would be, of course, in a paulharveyan way, less moral than him. But basically I win because my moral derives from logic and his from... craziness, I guess.

[I like Rob Schneider movies and I don't care who knows it! "European Gigoló" had its fair share of funny moments! And he was the only watchable thing of "50 first dates"!]

I like Rob Schneider movies and I don't care who knows it! "European Gigoló" had its fair share of funny moments! And he was the only watchable thing of "50 first dates"!

*POSTER WAS BANNED FOREVER BECAUSE OF THIS POST*

If I were the devil I would incite hatred and ignorance.

I would make lists were I blamed on myself several random things fundies seem to dislike.

I would put the options on that list on retarded dicotomies that make the reader choose between being mindless drones who must follow blindly what their church tells them or either  they would be on the side of evil.

I GUESS I WOULD PRETTY MUCH BE PAUL HARVEY!

OR AL PACINO!

EVEN IF HE OVERACTED IN THAT MOVIE!

BUT I WOULDN'T HAVE KEANU REEVES AS A SON!

BECAUSE HE CAN'T ACT AT ALL!

You mean that one of the guys from Lemon Demon used to be in this forum.

Wow. Best band ever.

SSH: Bravo.

Has deja-vu got a biological explanation? Let's wiki it:

"Neurophysiological specialist Stephanie Warn (based out of San Francisco) has dedicated research on the subject matter. Her current conclusion is that déjà  vu is merely the brain pulsing at an exponential rate which causes a person to recall something he or she saw the moment before."

Tuomas: You should keep in mind that in both Buddhism and Hinduism, the objective of a soul is precisely to stop being reborn (in Buddhism that happens when you reach Nirvana), so a certain number of souls are not in the game anymore.

Not to mention those theories about reincarnation not being necessarily lineal in time (a "the bug you are squashing right now could be yourself" sort of deal)

I once heard a very interesting idea, more scientifically pausible: as we are just our conscience, and that's all we can know, our existence means repeating again and again the same life we have, doing exactly the same stuff (yeah, I know. Unless you are Hugh Hefner,  that sucks)

Anyway, all that could be a good idea for a game.

There we go.

I quite like it. I would gladly play a game with a character like this.

However, if you are really aiming for very realistic movements, here's my two cents. When walking we rarely stand this straight.: remember that the axis of the body is the pelvis, not the whole spine, and our torso crouches slightly forward, and even more if we are going faster.

Doing "relaxed hands" is not as difficult as you may believe: mostly is just a somewhat triangular shape with three lines and the thumb barely touching the rest of the hand.

The abdominal area is way too tall. Most people intuitively represents wrongly very high abdomens (Google "Rob Liefeld" to see what happens when someone can't learn this) but in fact the area separating our ribcage from our pelvis is quite short. And, of course, legs should be more or less the same height as the upper area.

And a teenager's head should have noticeable bigger proportions that that of and adult (the smaller the kid is, the bigger the head will be in comparison to the body)

the legs should be a little bit less forward, and the feet, when walking normally, are completely plain in the floor just for a little moment, when we put our weight forward, and then inmediately we start raising the heel.

Here's a quick photoshop to see what I'm trying to say.

I remember reading an aricle (sadly, can't remember who wrote it or where I read it) linking the decline of adventure games to the popularization of internet (and thus, of walkthroughs for games)

The idea the guy had (and I found myself agreeing even aginst my will) was that this thing we hate so much, getting stuck at puzzles, were exactly the main point of Adventure Games.

Sure, it was frustrating. What the hell do I need to make this machine work? Will I have to pixel-chase again every single room? This is a door, I have a sledgehammer... why can't I just hit open the stupid door? I'll try it again! Just in case I clicked it wrong the first eighty times!

And we quit. And promised ourselves we were throwing away the stupid game first thing tomorrow. But we didn't. We kept on loading again the game because, hey! Somebody has to save Zork from that mean Inquisitor! The destiny of mankind was on our shoulders.

And then, sooner or later, we found the stupid hidden stone, or used the jar on the truck for no aparent reason, and... it... worked! All that tension acumulated, all that hatred against the game designers, all released thanks to our perseverance or intelligence. And then we were rewarded with some more story.

I'm not, of course, saying that this was the only appeal of Adventure Games. But hell, it was a big one. Nowadays, I find myself looking for a walkthrough even when I haven't explored every single room. Who's got time for walking around empty rooms in a game, anyway?

Maybe games are better now, but with walkthroughs? Less addictive.

yay!

I am sort of part of the team, so I guess there goes my objetivity, but, seriously... the problem is that the backgrounds look too good? That's ridiculous: the game is the sum of all its parts, from the music to the dialogues, and, in its totallity, it works. The sprites are "alive" as much as original Gabriel Knight was, through the storytelling.

When you wrote "Indie Radiohead influenced band" I thought... well, that's a clever name for a band. It's honest and ironic. As a matter of fact, I'm going to learn to play some instrument just so I can form a band and call it exactly that..

Look in the web for "Mistery Science Theatre 3000". You will easily get a list of the crappiest movies ever. (Also very easy to obtain through certain P2P programs, I'm told, not that I ever would do such thing, *cough*)

And I can recommend "Manos, hands of fate", wich is the worst movie in history according to the IMDB. "You failed us Torgo!"

Small flash adventure game. You have to find numbers in avery screen to put on the telephone. Very easy, but fun for a couple minutes.

http://www.aooa.co.uk/#

The game Five Magic Amulets is a good example of bad dialog. There were many cases where the character needed to know everyone's life story, and it got boring and served no purpose. It fleshed out the characters, yes, but that can be done in subtler ways through dialog that IS import and germane to the game.

-MillsJROSS

Frankly, eventhough "5 magic amulets" is a great game that I recommend to everyone (and, hey, you can't beat the price, it's free), it is a pity that includes some of my biggest pet peeves. I don't really mind pointless dialogs. I really enjoyed the so- often- criticized ones on "The longest Journey". Difference here is that April had a lot of personality, just like all the other characters, and it created a rich complex world. Unfortunately, on "5 magic amulets" the main character was really plain and boring: her adoptive mother had just disappeared, the world was on the verge of impending doom and she acted like she was having a nice stroll on the woods a summer morning.

Another problem I had with the game is that you just start with... what? fifteen screens  with 5 to 10 hotspots each and ten inventory items? The possibilities are too overwhelming. I'm betting a big numberof players quits the game or goes for a walkthrough  at this point (I know I did). If you have to use a large map, please:

Not at the beggining. Seriously. Start with a small map with one or two clear puzzles. Make the player get used to the game's universe and controls. And if you have bigger maps then, please, be sure that the puzzles are not too obscure that there is a clear path to follow if you use logic. In "5ma", for example, you have to do a lot of unrelated sidequests in order to create a reaction on the game (a new character appearing, for example) that has no relationship whatsoever with what you were doing. Not that you know why you were doing it in the first place.

Let me explain that all that above is not reallly a rant against "5ma", just an opinion on how it could have been even better.

About deaths in Adventure Games... I really prefer not to die, I personally kinda like to inmerse myself on the game, and diying and ressurecting allt he time throws you away from th sense of reality.

Anyway, if you REALLY have to make deathscenes, make sure that at least they are avoidable if the player has done its homework. EXAMPLE:

You've broken into the museum, in the middle of the night, it's dark but the moonlight allows you to see the dagger of Amon-Ra, you grab it and leave... but a giant cockroach demon suddenly appears and corners you against a wall... the creature slowly approaches you... THINK!

If you have made your homework and went for a chat with the old anticuarian, you will know that demons are afraid of the light. Before grabbing the dagger you took a look around the museum and saw a fusible box. You even tried to use it, but your character said that he/she didn't wanted to draw attention to people outside...

So, yeah, previous knowledge and attention pay off: you use the fusible box on the seconds you still have before the demon gets you, the lights are on, the demon runs away.

That would be a satisfactory death scene. If you are smart enough and pay attention to the game you are rewarded.

Now a bad death would be when it's completely random, when you have to resort to trial and error without previous information to speak of. That is pretty annoying.

For your information, Hernández y Fernández were originally named (I believe) "Dupont & Dupont". Unless you are doing the game in spanish, I would check those details out, if I were you.