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Thanks for the help.

Oh dear... it looks like the drivers don't support MIDI or there's some sorta setting I need to fix. Ah well. I'll try and tinker around... thanks anyways.

Hmmm... I recently swapped out my sound card + speakers for a usb DAC + Headphones.

Here's the issue(on WinXP): whenever I try to play Nelly Cootalot, the sound effects(walking, opening door, etc.) play but the music doesn't.

I've tried tinkering with the various options like "Default DirectSound device", "Default WaveOut device" but to no avail. I've tested with other games like Shivah, Blackwell Legacy, Automation, etc. but... this is the only game(so far) that seems to have this issue.

So, is there something I can do to make the music play?

Hi guys, I'm looking for this game "Moirer en Moire" about this boy who's being severely abused by his father and the aim of the game is to help him find peace by dying at the beach.

But I think the title is wrong 'cos I can't remember the French spelling.

Interesting, although, unless you're able to duplicate all the honorifics and style of Japanese thought, speech, etc., it might be better to place the game in another environment you're more familiar with instead. :p Otherwise, the whole environment becomes rather stilted and artificial.

However, if you're excellent at reproducing the various details, go ahead.

Hmmm... I prefer nudity to naked people. Plus, naked people often equates to tasteless models of naked women likely created by a 14 yr old teen and often in various positions that we've all likely seen already. It's like the person's never seen sex before and thus, needs to show you as many as sex positions as possible.

Nudity to me, means that it's done more tastefully. A bit of skin here and there showing but not so "in your face".

But hey, it's your game, do what you want. *shrugs*

As a female, I've rarely gone for the female characters in most games. They tend to sound like they're having sex all the time and overall, I think it's actually more insulting to the average male's intelligence since it seems to indicate they're incapable of thinking something other than sex.

At the prison, after using the Aegis on the door, the game crashed when the place started rumbling.

Error: AnimateCharacter: invalid loop number specified

Prodigal version 1.1

Any ideas what I can do?

Thanks for your comments, Lucifel. It's interesting to see another point of view.

I don't want to repeat what Ben has said, but it's worth pointing out that this was a MAGS game, and the first time either of us had ever written a game using AGS, so there were bound to be one or two things that weren't quite as good as they could have been.

Ah well, you always improve with time, so just keep up the good work!

Some of the hotpoints (such as light switches) are small, but it's always clear where they are. They all cover the full extent of the relevant objects.

Oh, I knew that, though, I think that 'cos they're kinda small, it can be difficult to locate the hotspot.

Regarding the red herrings... sometimes the obvious answer doesn't work, and you have to find another, just like in real life.

Yep, figured that out far too late.

We had a few items in the game to give some variety. If every puzzle could be solved by hypnotising someone, it would have made it too easy and a bit boring, I think.

That's totally true.

I think all the puzzles require wit to solve, and all of them are logical, I believe. If you're finding you're using every item on every hotspot, then it's likely you've overlooked something that's happened or been said. It's worth remembering that there are a lot of spoken clues in this game.

Ya know, now that you mentioned "clues", I think some of them might have flown over my head. :p Ah well, it'd been quite some time since I played an adventure game before touching this game. Guess my skills are kinda lacking in practise.

Thanks again for the feedback. It will help us make our next game even better!

Aww, sure. ^^;; Though, I wonder if my feedback was even any useful. :p

Wow, Lucifiel, thanks for the comments. I'll try and reply to everything as I see it:


Graphics were kinda rushed as they were a product of me trying to get used to a new way of doing backgrounds and putting lighting etc in, so I sometimes had more shadow than highlight and therefore not enough contrast. Thanks for noticing it anyway.

Ooh well, given that time was a limiting factor, it's definite that you'd be rushing. I just recalled that it was an MAGS game and thus, had a deadline.

The perspective was also me experimenting with a two point perspective as I was totally sick of limiting myself to the one point cube rooms I'd seen everywhere. The plan is to hopefully eliminate the black edgy bits eventually.

Hmm? What's "one point cube"?

Well, cool! May you succeed at doing away with the black edgy bits. I assume they refer to the "black areas" surrounding the pictures?

About smallness of hotspots.... which bits exactly did you find a pixel hunt? We tried to ensure we avoided all annoying little "omg I can click on the rabbit!?" moments...

Hmm, I think it's more 'cos the objects were really small and I seemed to have problems finding the right spot so I could click on them. :p

The way I saw it, we only really had two red herrings:

Spoiler

The pen, obviously, and the ladder/light/switch hint to frustrate people a bit

[close]

Aha, I see. :p

We didn't think those were over the top... just enough to add a little bit more difficulty into the game. We were worried people would finish the game in like 10 minutes.

Hmmm... I guess I haven't played adventure games in a while, so my skills must be sore.

Finally, well... I had originally hoped to make the game without any items whatsoever, and just use the memory device but it was more sensible to have some items. I didn't think 6 items was really too many and had hoped that the main point of the game would be the memo... I worried that if we had heaps of object puzzles and one or 2 memory puzzles that the memo would get passed of as a useless gimmick. Feedback seems to indicate people wished we'd used it more than we did... are you saying you wanted more object based puzzles, or less of them?

Hmmm... just using the memory device, huh? That'd mean the device might need a few more functions and capabilities as well as technical restrictions. :p

Yeah, I can see why you'd think the memo would be dismissed, although, I wished it had more airtime.

Ah well, at the time I wrote that post, I was thinking more of a balanced sorta thing: equal amount of puzzles based on the memory device and object puzzles and other objects. But then again, come to think of it, fitting the puzzles into the game and balancing the game design are just as important too. 

Thanks for playing!

Edit - Thanks CosmoQueen ....

Yeah, sure thing.

What the... lol... it's kinda offensive and funny(except for the dog part) but then again, GTA's probably a lot worse.

Then again, Emily Enough is just as disturbing too.

Btw, be warned. This is kinda long.

Graphics are kinda cool though they could do with a wider color palette or better contrast? Because they do look kinda dull or muted. 

The perspective is cool although it also makes clicking on an area or item rather difficult, at times. My suggestion is to have a closer view of a room, instead, with either a zoomed-in view or a view from another angle.

For the other characters, I think the hotspot(is that what you call it? The area where you can click on an item/object/etc.) needed to be larger or something, so that it doesn't turn into a pixel hunt.

Furthermore, having some red herrings is fine but it can be kinda frustrating when you're not really allowed to use the items with the puzzle.

Spoiler

For example: C-505. I desperately wanted to use the step ladder so that I could check out the light bulb myself but... man, the game wouldn't let me. And the idea of the character not being able to push an empty box/carton aside was a little... My suggestion would be to isolate the puzzle so you don't have to worry about creating  any possible solutions that haven't been programmed into the game.

[close]

Oh and the usage of a memory-tampering device as a plot and puzzle device was awesome and very clever yet at the same time, there could have been more focus on puzzles orientated around other items. That's because if you allow the player to pick up random items throughout the game, said player will end up with tons of items that they don't need and personally, I've always preferred being forced to solve the puzzle with wit and some thinking rather than applying an item/action to everything in the room. :p

Lucifiel, thanks! yes, thats me. LV1 is supposed to have music. Phil used a bunch of popular tunes for the music in the game, which worked pretty well! I guess again it's the fact it's built in such an early AGS the music doesn't work. I can't get MIDI to play on old AGS games either.

Ooh, I wonder what they sounded like. It's a pity they're built into the .exe

Ah well, older prototypes tend to be a little dodgy sometimes? (Edit: Also, note the hilarious "bring bring" effect when you earn some puzzle points. And also, the fact that the people's heads look like they're... I dunno, bouncing? Seriously, just how much crack did Phil take? It seems to have been laced with other noxious poisons, too. :p)

Have you tried running a diagnostic on your DirectX drivers? I've had problems with my mouse in AGS in the past, and it's usually directx.

Yep, just ran all the tests. The pc passed every one of them.

It was actually a bug in the older versions of the AGS engine, which had been fixed in newer versions.

However I think unless Phil compiles a new version with a newer version of AGS, it would stay that way unfortunately.

Oh well, I'll just save often and avoid that particular hotspot. :p

I enjoyed this game, and I particularly liked the way the mystery was just this side of logical rather than really 'wacky'. The backgrounds were really nice, particularly the lounge, and I loved the use of textures. The sprites weren't entirely stylistically coherent, but they were effective and the cat looked terrific.

I look forward to more games of this quality!

Oh yeah, the cat. Who could forget Mrs. Winterbottoms? It looked pissed enough to  just leap out of your monitor and re-arrange your face before slinking away in blissful glee. :p

Hmmm... I think I've figured out the issue.

It's likely a bug or some kinda issue caused by running the game on a newer kinda pc. Anyways, if you click on the "pool" in the maintainence room to get a description, the menu might be replaced by some sort of bar. And from that point on, using any of the action cursors(Eye, boot, mouth, hand) will not work unless you hover your mouse over the menu bar.

If you've saved the game at or after this point, those save files will also suffer from the same issue, whether you've restarted(Quit + F5) the game or not. 

You'll also notice when he walks his animation indicates the developer must've been on crack.

LOL... yep, I remember some other games too where the characters were sliding around on glided feet. This one... is *LOLz*.

Wait.... are you the Mark Lovegrove who created that music for Poom and Nelly Cootalot?! Wow, I absolutely loved the tunez.

This isn't a bug. It just happens. The game is quite old and I guess way back making hotspots and walkable areas was very difficult. You have to find your own way to realise how the game's working. About the music oh yeah. Try right clicking till your cursor has a boot on it.

Uh actually, I clicked on almost everywhere on the screen with the boot cursor but now, nothing happens unless I move my cursor over the menu. Before, he could walk normally too.

Hmmm... now, even, clicking on items(like pool, person, etc.) to get a description doesn't work anymore. Unless I move my cursor above the menu, that is.

In Larry Vales 1 , I'm unable to get my character to move around. When I use the walk function and click on a spot, the character doesn't move unless I hover my mouse onto the menu.

Has anyone encountered this issue before and what did you do to make it go away? I could start a new game but I suspect this might be one of those "randomly occurring" bugs.

Edit: Also, there doesn't seem to be any music. Is that the norm or did something go wrong?

Thanks Lucifiel!  The dream diary was mainly a way to foreshadow future events, as well as a way to justify Lauren having a dictophone in her possession.  There weren't many portable recording devices back in 1973!  That said, you're right.  I'm glad you liked the game regardless.

Aw no problem.

Yeah, such technology wasn't very widespread in the 1970s. It must have cost her quite a penny too.

Hmmm... how well IS Blackwell(the series) selling anyway? I'm seeing it being mentioned at many places from AdventureGamers to PlayFirst to tons of online game sites(JA) and even various online game stores. 

P.S. Btw, you really should sell some goodies like posters or something.

Ooh excellent!

I really enjoyed this game a lot. And I look forward to your next game. Btw, the twist at the end of the game was brilliant and flipped the tables on the suspect.

The game looks interesting... is there an english version or is it only in the language shown in one of the screenshots?

Yes, there's an English version.

Just a question: the ending I got was with Clyde telling Matt that he wasn't a killer.

Is that the best ending or one of the 2 alternate endings?