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Hey all, this is a short game I made to contribute to the Adventure Jam 2016 competition at GameJolt.  It's pretty short and a little rough around the edges, and I consider it sort of a rough draft as I still have quite a few things I would like to do to it that I didn't have time to get done before time ran out.

Anyway, this game is sort of a mashup between the television series Frasier and the Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.  The average person can probably play through it in about 30 minutes.




Story:

Frasier Crane is a wealthy and successful local radio celebrity.  He has his own call-in psychiatry show, a posh penthouse apartment in Seattle, and a razor-sharp intellect.  However, his father, Martin Crane, who lives with him, has recently been driving him up the wall.  His dog, Eddie, constantly stares at him, his coarse, blue-collar demeanor clashes sharply with Frasier's high-brow sophistication, and, perhaps worse of all, is the ratty old chair he insists on keeping in the living room.

It's enough to drive a man...insane.

This version of the game is fully playable, although I didn't have much time to test it and there may be a few odd bugs I didn't catch.  Let me know if you have any trouble.  Comments and criticism appreciated as always.

Somethings I want to add to this in the near future:

- Music
- Sound
- Expanded animations for some of the cut scenes
- More rooms
- More characters from the show
- Add more/better puzzles and increase interactivity

http://gamejolt.com/games/frasier-crane-seattle-rampage/146666

Thought I would throw up a hints thread in case anyone needs it

Hi all!



To anyone who has been keeping up with my occasional posts to my game in production thread for this game, then good news:  your long wait is partially over!  Although I have overshot my original target date of Summer 2014 by quite a bit, I am happy to report that my latest target date of Fall 2015 has more or less been hit.  I think technically I said I would have it done BEFORE fall, but whatever; during is just as good.

This game is the first chapter in what will eventually be a full-length sequel to my previous game, The Adventures of Stanley "Frankfurter" Jones.  If you have not yet played the original game, I would suggest playing it first as this game builds upon the story.  Here is the thread topic for the first game:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=47291

Following the events of the first game, Stinky Pete McCullogh is now living in a government-sponsored care facility for troubled youth.  His obsession with magic and the occult, along with his numerous and incessant attempts to contact Stanley "Frankfurter" Jones (a person his psychiatrists are convinced is imaginary), has earned him a reputation as a serious head case.  For the past year, his life has been dreary and uneventful; however, all of that changes one rainy night when he receives a very cryptic message sent to him in the form of a dream...a message sent by what appears to be a ghost.

Join Pete as he attempts to outwit and outmaneuver his wily captors.  He'll need to harness all of his extremely limited wits if he wants to escape this nightmarish facility and help his friend, a man who only he believes is real.

WARNING:

Much like it's predecessor, this game is.....not especially politically correct.  This game contains coarse dialogue, adult themes, explicit references to all sorts of nasty practices, and humor that you have to be pretty messed up to appreciate.  If you are the kind of person who is easily offended, you probably shouldn't play this game at all.  If you are the kind of person who is NOT easily offended, but will eventually become offended if someone is trying hard enough to offend you, know that this game puts forth a valiant effort.  Fair warning.

Here is the direct download link:

http://www.therealmuffin.net/games/frankfurther.zip

The game has also been posted to the AGS games database:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1971/


I feel like there will eventually be as few as 3 and as many as 5 chapters to this project, and my suspicion is that it's going to be quite a long stretch of time before the whole thing is finally done.  Now that this chapter is finished and uploaded, I will probably be taking a short hiatus from the project in order to finally finish up an old game I started work on about 5 years ago, as well as try to bang out another project for which I have had the idea rattling around in my head for some time now.  Considering that I pretty much started on this game immediately after the first game was done, I have been working on pretty much nothing but SFJ since about 2011 or so, and I kind of feel like I want to work on something else for a change.  However, once those projects are done I would like to get right back to this one.

That said, I would like to just take a quick moment to thank anyone who played the first game, as well as anyone who plays this game, for their interest.  The thought of attempting to at some point finish this game and wrangle it into some sort of attempt at a commercial release has been flitting across my mind lately, and I am curious to know who is playing this game and what they think of it.  If you played this game all the way through and feel strongly enough about it one way or the other to tell me what you think of it, I would be delighted to hear from you.

Also, if anyone who has any talents would be interested in possibly lending their talents to this project at some point in order to help get it done a little faster, I would be very interested in hearing from them as well.  I currently am looking for 3D artists, animators, sound designers, and possibly some coders willing to take the occasional odd job off my shoulders.  Let me know if you are interested.

Hey folks.  I'm creating a game where I want to have the mode selection interface appear as a thought bubble over the character's head when the character is clicked on.  My first idea was to do it like this:

Code: ags

gMenu.SetPosition(player.x - xOffset, player.y - yOffset);

gMenu is the name of the GUI I want drawn.  xOffset and yOffset are arbitrarily defined values based on the width and height of the character sprite itself and are used to make sure the thought bubble gets drawn over the character's head in the right place instead of at his feet, since player.x and player.y are based on the center-bottom of the character.  As far as I can tell they are not related to my problem and can be ignored for my purposes here.

Anyway, my script works fine in rooms where the room dimensions are the same as the screen dimensions.  However, in scrolling rooms, where the room dimensions are bigger than the viewport, it started behaving strangely.  From what I've been able to figure based on the AGS documentation, the issue is that character position coordinates are based on the dimensions of the room itself, whereas GUI position is based solely on screen coordinates that remain the same regardless of how big the room is or where the character is on the screen vs. the room.  So, the script is drawing the GUI at a location based on the player's location in the room, rather than on the screen. 

So, what I need to know is:  is there some way to script this so that it will draw the thought bubble at the same location over the player's head regardless of where the player is standing or how big the room is?  I'm thinking there has to be some sort of way to calculate this mathematically, but I am pretty much the world's worst math student.  Anyone with any help or insight will earn my eternal gratitude.

[Frank Further: The Further Adventures of Stanley "Frankfurter" Jones]

Frank Further:  The Further Adventures of Stanley "Frankfurter" Jones
A MUFFIN Game by Styop Quoons

UPDATE:  Episode 2 is in production

Okay, so after a brief (read: 1.5 year) hiatus, I have finally resumed work on this game.

I haven't done a whole hell of a lot in terms of the actual development, mostly just building the environments and getting the preliminary code laid out.  The good news is, I'm getting much better at developing these games; I'd even say I'm somewhat organized about it.  Instead of just haphazardly adding features to the game whenever they occur to me and fixing conflicts between new features and old existing features with sloppy duct-tape code, I'm actually planning this project out (on paper even!) and writing the code for just about everything mechanical the game will do before even attempting to start working on the fun parts.

The interface is pretty much implemented at this point; as soon as I finish the remaining rooms I can get to work laying out the story details and designing puzzles.  This episode of the game (and all remaining episodes hereafter) is going to feature multi-character gameplay and a time-travel theme that will allow the player to explore the same areas at different points in time, similar to Day of the Tentacle.  However, thanks to my newfound ahead-planning abilities, I have designed the game in a way that will theoretically allow any character in the game to be playable.  The player will have at their disposal a set of two, maybe three, communications devices, and can switch back and forth between whichever characters possess a communicator.  The communicators can be transferred between friendly characters as inventory objects.  Different characters will have different skills and reasoning capabilities, make different observations in the same environment, will interact differently with other characters, and will have access to different areas.  I am hoping that this will enable me to design puzzles that can be solved creatively in multiple ways, and increase the replayability of the game, which seems to be a frequent gripe about the adventure genre.

Below is a general summation of the direction the story is likely to head, hidden under a spoiler tag if you haven't played the first chapter yet.  For those who haven't, a general summation of the game's story appears at the bottom of this post.  Or, you can just play the damn game since it's free anyway.

Spoiler

Stinky Pete has successfully resurrected his ghost pal Stanley "Frankfurter" Jones...unfortunately, in the wrong century.  Good thing there's a guy in town who is building his own time machine!  Unfortunately, this man also happens to be an ultra-paranoid neo-Nazi who is obsessed with bringing down the Federal government.  How he got to be friends with FBI Agent Stanley "Frankfurter" Jones is a story for another day.  In any case, now that he and his new friend Priscilla are on the lam, the pressure is on for Pete to find a way into the past before the facility staff (and maybe even the police) can catch up to them.

Meanwhile, in 19th century Bumhazel, Stanley "Frankfurter" Jones has gotten himself into something of a pickle...

[close]

Progress (for Episode 1 at least):

Story:  15.002%
Scripting: 41.3%
Graphics: 40%
Puzzles: 0%
Sound/Music:  0%

General Progress Rating:  I'm working on it, get off me.

NOTE:  Values are very approximate.  I don't really plan my projects; I just sort of sit down and start working.  I tend to start by coming up with a very general story idea, then making some environments, putting some characters in them, and just kind of letting everything work itself out from there.  As such, I have only a vague idea how long this game is even going to be, so it's a little hard to calculate how far along I am at this point.  However, I've created a value called "General Progress Rating" that I think pretty much accurately reflects where I am in development, and if you want to know how far I am, this is probably the closest thing to an accurate representation I am able to come up with.

WARNING:  THERE ARE SOME VERY MILD SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THE FIRST GAME.

I don't think I give anything too serious away, but it's impossible to explain the premise of this game without giving away a tiny bit about how the first game ends.  If you don't want to spoil anything for yourself, I would highly recommend playing the first Stanley "Franfurter" Jones game, which can be obtained thusly: 

Official Website  // Oh, one more thing.  I forgot to pay my web hosting fees back in December so my website got deleted, and I haven't gotten around to putting it back up yet.  This link isn't going to work for a while, however all links to download my games should work fine.
AGS Forum Thread
AGS Games Page Entry

The Story:

In our last adventure, Stanley "Frankfurter" Jones uncovered an insidious plot with the help of an unlikely ally, 12 year old Stinky Pete McCullogh.  Now, a year later, Stinky Pete is a resident at a home for orphans and displaced children, and Stanley "Frankfurter" Jones is MIA.  However, life for Stinky Pete is disrupted suddenly when he receives a strange message from Stanley's spirit in the form of a dream.

Soon, the unlikely companions find themselves flung backward in time, trapped in the world of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and unable to return home.  Along with their new-found friend Jim (a former slave, militant black radical and pyromaniac of some ability), they embark on a journey down the Mighty Mississip, in a quest to return to the present and save one of America's classic books from being censored by a group of angry librarians.

This game will most likely be released in serial form as chapters, with a possible complete re-release when it's all finished.  I am currently undergoing a crash course in Xcode, and am hoping to get a Mac and iPad version of this as well as the first SFJ game out at some point in the future.

Features:

•  800x600 true color graphics!
•  All-new 3D rendered environments!
•  Character animations other than just walk cycles!  At least a couple of them!
•  An all-new original soundtrack composed by Styop Quoons!
•  Multi-character gameplay! 

Development Diary:

I maintain a blog which I use to keep people updated on my current projects (including this one), as well as jabber on about movies, games and other junk I like.  I try to post frequent updates on the progress of this title on this blog, which can be found here: 

The Opinionated Quoons

I will also post major developments to this thread.

Hi.  I'm currently working on game called Ravensbrook.  It is a first person horror adventure in the style of The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour.  These are a few test renders I did of some of the environments, and I was just wondering what people thought.  I used Bryce for this, although I should say that the occasional odd piece of furniture is from a free model library. 

[imgzoom]http://therealmuffin.net/images/ravensbrook/sample1.png[/imgzoom]

[imgzoom]http://therealmuffin.net/images/ravensbrook/sample2.png[/imgzoom]

[imgzoom]http://therealmuffin.net/images/ravensbrook/sample3.png[/imgzoom]

[imgzoom]http://therealmuffin.net/images/ravensbrook/sample4.png[/imgzoom]

[imgzoom]http://therealmuffin.net/images/ravensbrook/sample5.png[/imgzoom]

Yo cats.

This is the second AGS game I've ever finished, the first one being a completely moronic game called Frankenpooper that I've taken down on account of how it was totally stupid.  This game is one of two "practice" games I've been working on in order to learn the ins and outs of the AGS scripting language.  I took a class on Java programming last year and was able to apply a lot of the core concepts to the AGS language, so I'm actually pretty proud of how this game turned out, at least in technical terms.  Nevertheless, I wanted to make a silly game with a silly story to test out my new skills, because I have some ideas for some more serious projects, and I didn't want to attempt any of these ideas until I had a slightly better idea what I was doing.



That said, this is a detective game that centers around a very silly character named Stanley "Frankfurter" Jones.  They call him "Frankfurter" because he likes to punch old ladies in the face.  He is a special investigator for a super secret branch of the FBI that handles special cases.  He is sent to a small town in Ohio called North Weenus in order to investigate the theft of a pair of F. Scott Fitzgerald's overalls from the local historical society.  In the process of investigating the McCullogh family household, he uncovers an insidious conspiracy involving the occult.

WARNING:

This game is pretty offensive to the sensibilities of the average person.  I honestly think I have tourettes or something like that; I don't even know what is wrong with me, but I feel almost a compulsive need to make up sophomoric and obscene stories that are completely ridiculous and offensive to anyone who might consider themselves to be a halfway-decent person.  While the humor in this game could only be truly appreciated by a sociopathic eleven year old, it should probably not be played by children at all, unless you want them to grow up to be as messed up as I am.  Seriously; you've been warned.  Unless you are the kind of person who, like me, is amused by stupid, gross, offensive things, you probably shouldn't play this game.  Possible thematic elements you might be exposed to if you play this game include:  explicit dialogue, mild violence, mild sexual situations, explicit references to bestiality, and the utter mutilation of one of America's most treasured literary classics.

ANOTHER, LESS SERIOUS WARNING:  This game will take up approximately 250 mb of space on your computer, mostly due to the large soundtrack file.  There is a lot of audio in this game, because I am primarily a musician, and as such put a lot of care into the auditory features of all of my projects.

Also, I have tested this game as thoroughly as is humanly possible, and have given it to a couple of my friends to test as well, but like anyone else, I'm not perfect.  If you experience any bizarre problems or errors with this game, please let me know, either by PM through the AGS forums, or through my email:  quoons@therealmuffin.net.



Features:

- Glorious 3D rendered graphics
- A special case notebook that records important information as you play
- An absolutely ridiculous amount of original music
- An in-game mp3 player to keep track of all of it
- A mildly addictive arcade-style minigame
- A bunch of totally stupid Easter eggs, including an original, unpublished draft of The Great Gatsby on audiobook, hidden throughout the game
- A finite but surprisingly immersive game environment, which I have gone to great pains to make as interactive as is humanly possible

Wow, I almost forgot to post a link.  How silly of me.

http://www.therealmuffin.net/games/frankfurter.zip

This game has also been added to the AGS games database.

Hello, I'm new here.  This is my first game.  It was originally intended to be just a "testing AGS" game, but I wound up finishing it and adding a score.  Adult language, MS Paint graphics, & completely retarded, just to warn you.  Please don't take this as a full summation of my talents.



http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=1356