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It seems most of what I said has been either misinterpreted or reduced to its less important aspects.

I repeat here: what is the original sense of the Awards? Celebrating games made with AGS, independently from their budget? If this was (and still is) the case, the whole matter is simply irrelevant. All games should be allowed, there should be no separate categories, and no "Best Free" or "Best Commercial". Because if the philosophy is "they are AGS games, non matter what", then what's the point of having even those special Awards? It seems totally illogical to me.

Speaking of the admission criteria, I see a lot of unnecessary confusion as well. What I suggest is that release date should be a requirement: there is, the release date has to be the year before the one when the related Awards Celebration takes place. This, however, doesn't prevent us to add another requirement like, for example, the insertion in the games database (or any other reasonable one). If that had been the case, there would have been no doubt at all for the admissibility of Primordia.
It's been released in 2012? Then it's not eligible. Period.
And let's take Forge: Chapter One as another example.
Has it been released in 2013? Yes. Has it been inserted in the database in 2013? No. So it's not eligible. Period.

With this couple of requirements (release date + insertion date) the eventual issue of an author not wanting his game to participate is fixed as well.

That said, this is not the solution I prefer: as I explained I have a totally different view on both the topics. But let's forget that.

I know putting Primordia may have been a wrong choice, but the team felt really stupid, when we forgot to last year, so I put it up and thought why not put it for nominations. It's not an attempt to get awards, it's an attempt to let people vote for it. If I cared about awards, the game would have been added to the database already, and I wouldn't bother spending time to fix bugs and go through feedback along with Wormwood studios.

Me, Mark Yohalem and Victor Pflug, along with Dave Gilbert, Nathaniel Chambers, and everyone that worked on this, worked hard to get a game done. I spent 2.5 years of my life coding. I didn't do it to get AGS awards.

It seems to me that Primordia isn't the focus of the discussion any more, it's just the pretext to analyse an already existing problem. I doubt anyone here would be pissed off in case it's allowed (maybe the exact opposite) and I doubt anyone thinks you and your team have elaborated a cunning plan to steal Awards. I don't, for sure.

In the end, I think the best solution would be to admit that game and any other that were inserted in the games database in 2013, since it seems the current rules are unclear on the admissibility of a game whose database insertion year is 2013. Of course this "amnesty" should be done only for this particular edition of the Awards.
Then we should come up with a common and widely accepted set of rules for the 2014 (and following) Awards.

I'm not saying money creates good games by default, but you can surely afford to pay competent people to achieve a very good result. Not necessarily the best, but surely an (unfairly) good candidate.

But how can any game be unfairly good? That means,literally, that after reaching a certain quality, I should feel really really bad about submitting my game because it could win!

Let's make an example to make my point more clear. A graduation / degree thesis for your Physics degree. You can pay Stephen Hawking 1.000.000$ to do that for you, or you can do that by yourself. If you choose the first option, and then the University is so happy with the resulting thesis that decides to publish it instead of another one did by a single student with his hard work, can you be proud of yourself? This is what I call being "unfairly good".
Another example: would it make sense to allow a Ferrari to compete in a race against home-made cars?

But, once again, the point is if we only care for the final result, or if we care for other aspects as well. Either is acceptable, according that there's a convergence of opinions, but the choice is not irrelevant.

[Of course, I repeat that if the only relevant fact is that the game has been made using AGS, then any game should be allowed as a participant.]

Using the games db to determine eligibility has some real practical advantages: It's one easy place to see all the games that could be nominated, it provides ready-to-use game profiles, screenshots and download links for players who want to check out the candidates, it makes it easy to make an awards page afterwards, and so on. If we agree that candidates should be in the database, the only question is whether the creators have to create the game profile within a certain deadline (in the past we've given them a grace period into January, I seem to remember), or whether the organizers should unilaterally add games that haven't been submitted.

I would be against the latter, because as you mention, some people might not want to compete. I guess the other part of the question is whether games that were released in one year but added to the database later should be eligible at all. I would say yes (possibly only within reason), because it seems unfair that just because someone didn't submit to the DB right away, their game would never be eligible at all.

I agree that the game database has its advantages: this wasn't the focus of my statement. I was just pointing out that the release date seems a much more logical choice if we have to set a rule for allowance. This doesn't mean there can't be extra rules, like, for example, the need to manually insert the game into the database. It doesn't seem very "necessary", though, and I believe the Awards would make more sense if they were independent from the author's will.
As a matter of fact, you misinterpreted my explanation about the reasons I probably wouldn't take part even if I could. I don't think it's an added value being able to decide if our own game must (or must not) be a competitor. If the game has been made with AGS (according this is the most important thing when it comes to the Awards) then it should be in by default, probably. Or at least being potentially nominated by someone else as well, be he a fan, another game-maker, a mod.
The author could be then free to "dis-attend" the ceremony and even ignore it completely, but this should be unrelated from the fact the product takes part. Just my 2 cents, of course, nothing objective.

If Tim Schafer made an AGS game and it was the best AGS game that year, why wouldn't we want it to win? In fact, wouldn't it be absurd, even perverse to exclude it?

Maybe because with 3.000.000$ even a mountain gorilla would be able to do one of the best AGS game of the year? I'm not saying money creates good games by default, but you can surely afford to pay competent people to achieve a very good result. Not necessarily the best, but surely an (unfairly) good candidate.

With as "little" as about 10.000$ anyone could provide his game with top quality 2D graphics, for example. And I say that with 50.000$ you can create excellency in almost any aspect. But who would spend thousands of his own bucks to produce a non-commercial game? Sure, there are exceptions, and that's great! When you believe so much in a project that you're willing to spend money and time without any possible earning, it means you really believe in what you're doing.
Anyway, there will probably be more "medium-budget" free-games in the future, as crowdfunding allows reasonably low amounts of money to be raised quite easily.

And wait a minute... isn't Larry Reloaded the revamped version of the 1st LSL whose Al Lowe is working on? Are you calling that "smaller" with Double Fine as a comparison, or in a more generic sense? Cause I remember Al was asking for something like several hundreds of thousands of bucks for that. An amount with one zero more than what was necessary, definitely.

All this has made me reflect on something though... probably what matters most is the budget the game has required, not the fact it's commercial or not.
Of course, I repeat that if the only relevant fact is that the game has been made using AGS, then any game should be allowed as a participant. That's a possibility, for sure. Is there something like a Foundation Act, or the original discussions around the AGS Awards? What was its original spirit / objective? It doesn't have to stay unmodified forever, of course, but it could be a good starting point.

Anyway, it's a moot point. Maybe commercial has no limits, but sadly, AGS does. Double Fine would never make an AGS game (other than maybe as a lark); not even the smaller Kickstarter projects like Larry Reloaded or Cognition seriously consider the engine. And it's not just for the obvious reasons like the limited resolutions and platform support; it's things like not taking real advantage of hardware acceleration (leading to poor performance on more graphically intensive games), outdated library stack, savegames breaking between game updates, lack of Unicode support (and layout-independent keyboard controls) for internationalization, limited support for source control and multiple coders, not dealing properly with the access-control security model in recent Windows versions, nonstandard scripting language with limited debug tools, and a project format with a binary sprite file that makes it necessary to manually re-import sprites each time they're updated. I mean, CW is doing a great job bringing AGS up to date, but this is not something that will be fully resolved any time soon, and pretty much every one of those issues is by itself enough to exclude it from consideration within bigger game dev studios. AGS was designed as a tool for small/one-person development teams, and as far as commercial projects go, it's going to be small indie teams mainly from within the AGS community for the foreseeable future.

Hey... don't talk about my friend like that!
But hey, I see your point and can't deny you're somewhat right. Is there an adventure-game engine that has produced more games than AGS so far, anyway? I'm honestly curious to know.

But I'm going off topic now.

[Admission to the Awards' Rules:]

I have to make a premise. Despite having been a member of this community for about nine years, I've rarely been very active. My post count is 320 and 90% of those posts I've made in the first couple of years. I've received probably more than I've given back, but independently from that I care for this community. I never voted nor participated in the Awards though, and I've never followed the results or the discussions about them. This is the first time I do, and the reason is someone asked me if my game was going to enter the competition or not and linked me to this and other posts. I don't like celebrations, usually, no matter if they're related to Cinema, to Music or to Games. Competition isn't just my style, I guess.
I ignored there were rules to be allowed in, and I've found I'm not even eligible. I didn't add the game to the database, but mostly because of laziness and not because I don't care for the community: I don't think that omission can be considered as such, anyway. But I doubt that I would have entered if I could. I'm against having a "Best Demo" category, and my game is more of a demo than a complete game (though none of the two).
Having cleared that I haven't got a personal interest in the competition, and all the rest, I find the discussion interesting and I feel expressing my thoughts can be a way to give something back to the community.

Admission to the Awards' Rules: any set of rule is fine (more or less), and it's mostly a matter of choosing one and don't allow exceptions. Rules suck, I know! But they help keeping the competition fair and the protests to a minimum. The only rule I feel the need to point out as completely nonsense would be giving precedence to the insertion date instead of the release date. Someone already pointed that out, but it just seems... illogical.

Commercial vs. Free: it all depends on the aim of the Awards. Most of the solutions and considerations I've read in this topic make perfect sense, as a matter of fact. In my opinion, if the aim is to celebrate games made with AGS, the fact they are commercial or not is irrelevant. On the other hand, if we want to focus on the indie, amateurish, "out of passion" aspects, then some kind of distinction is necessary.
Commercial games are not necessarily better than Free games, not even in some aspects that could certainly thrive from having money to be spent on (graphics, for example). A lot of AGS commercial games have graphics that are worse than some free ones, and some of them even have what I'd call "bad looking graphics" in an absolute sense. I won't make examples, but I have a long list in my mind.
It's also true that most AGS commercial games are just the efforts of small teams, but the problem is "commercial has no limits". If Tim Schafer one day decides to use AGS to make a game, wouldn't that be great as both a recognition to the engine's usability and the AGS fame? But would the resulting game be an honest competitor of other titles? Probably not.

Also, two alternative and mutually exclusive scenarios that might be worth considering are:

• There's a decent number (the exact amount of which has to be agreed upon) of commercial games: in this case, let's keep two (almost) identical sets of awards for the two macro-categories (Commercial and Free). Voting doesn't require so much time, after all, and the data we can collect can help make a better decision in the future. What I mean by this last sentence is that if the Commercial Categories get just a few global votes, then they're probably not even worth being there.
• There's a very low number of commercial games: I'd suggest to exclude commercial games from the awards once and for all OR leave just the "Best Commercial Game" as a special "exception".

Amount and nature of Categories: I'm generally inclined towards the most variety possible, but I think the crucial thing is to avoid categories that overlap one another, except for "Best Game" (which, however, might simply be the game with the most awards). The reason I'd remove the "Best Demo" is that it seems unnecessary, and is not even an incentive at finishing the game (the exact opposite, probably). Things like "Best Comedy" overlap a lot of other categories and so seem bad as well. The only doubts goes towards "Non Adventure Game", but all in all it could be discarded as well. If we value the fact that it's made with AGS, then a game is a game is a game.
I'd keep all the other existing ones, and NEVER EVER put together sfx, music and voice-acting. They're so unrelated I can't even think of a reason why they should be inside a single category.
"Best Documentation" seems very important to me because, as someone already noticed, it's a stimulus to refine an aspect that's often neglected despite it's importance.
"Best Programming" seems just natural, as that is a crucial aspect in making a game good, much more than most of the others, I dare to say.

Oh no, I missed an awesome Christmas present! But I won't miss a fantastic 27th of December present!

I reserve the right to change my mind and certainly the right to give constructive feedback after I've played it; but I can't help but feel happy for you guys. We started working almost at the same time on our respective games, and I'm glad we both mark an important milestone almost at the same time. Yours is far more important than mine, though, and I can only imagine the relief and pride of this release.

You deserve the utmost respect for what you did out of pure passion.

I raise my glass to your success.

This looks very good! So how many chapters are you planning on?

Small request: could you please make a right-click on a hotspot act as two left-clicks, so that I don't have to double-click everywhere just to look at things?

The game has 5 Chapters, but their length varies greatly. The 1st one is about 1/3 of the entire game, for example. Anyway this whole "chapters" thing is somewhat misleading, as I'm not releasing the game in chapters. There won't be a Forge: Chapter Two, for example. I want to release the full game as the next (and last) step. I didn't know how to call the current demo, and "demo" would have been misleading as well, since this is exactly how the first part will look in the complete game. My bad for all this confusion.

The main reason for the double-click system is faithfulness to Loom; I was looking for a useful function to assign to the right-click, though, and this seems a possibility to take into account. The other one is having r-click clear the currently selected hotspot, instead.

Thanks for the feedback!

I love the minimalism of that style, Emont. Good luck with the game!

A small critics: please, PLEASE make it possible for the main character to walk faster. It made me give up on the graves puzzles just because I was going crazy walking to each grave several times to read the clues.

(But don't let that spoil the happiness: that's a great, great game with an amazing level of quality)

Eheheh... I can't even imagine what your reaction would have been if you had tested the first beta then! The character used to walk even slower.

I usually dislike inhuman speed in characters just for the sake of the player's comfort. I believe a universe needs some realism to appear coherent and keep the immersion in the game constant. I especially dislike teleportation, for instance, while I think maps are a great way to reduce the need to walk. But I do agree that, especially in some Sierra games, the need to cover long distances again and again by walking was a bad design choice. Is this really the case in Forge?
Anyway, if this fix will be requested by many, I'll surely apply it so I'm really happy that you brought this point up. I think I'll open up a poll in our Forums in the next few days, as I did with the testers during the beta.

It's a horror game, a short one indeed, I will hopefully make it.

That "screenie" is incredibly charming. Hope the game keeps that style / feel.

Knowing someone dedicated some minutes of his time to play during Christmas is "WOW", actually!

And I also appreciate the nice comment, of course.

P.S. You should update the link on your signature's banner! I clicked hoping to discover a "A Night at Camp Ravenwood: Chapter One" and instead it brought me to the old forums' address.
P.P.S. I have high hopes for your game, so please post an update! I have things to tell / ask about it, but I don't want to dig an old thread unnecessarily. You've got a PM.

You guys deserve a medal for getting this gauntlet interface to work so flawlessly in AGS. I'm racking my brains trying to figure out how you coded it. It's great.

Wow, this is the best comment a programmer can receive. I'm flattered...
But, to be honest, there's a whole lot of amazing AGS games from the scripting standpoint. Quoting them all would make a long, long list, really.

Still

you guys did an amazing job! 
I have spent already a few hours on chapter 1 and I really love it!!! 
but now I am stuck without a clue and so I created a help thread for your game.

however, keep on the good work!

A few hours, you say? Hrmm... one thing I never took the time to calculate, nor ask to the testers is the length of the game, but it's very interesting to know it's already in that range. I'm positive the full game will be longer than Loom (which is not hard to achieve, since it was quite short).
Glad you're enjoying it so far and you managed to solve that puzzle, in a way or another!

EDIT: ok, I found the solution on the Forge-website 

Oh, well... I'll use this space to give this piece of info, anyway.

Unlike it happened in Loom, in Forge the Proficiency Mode influences the difficulty of the puzzles in game as well as some content, rewards and other minor things. So take that into account when choosing the Proficiency setting, and in case you complete the game, give the other Modes a go. You won't face a completely different game, to be honest: but you might discover something new and find a bit more challenge sometimes.

Other than that, PLEASE don't give up immediately when you can't solve a puzzle. Give yourself (and the game) some rest, let the brain elaborate a solution, and then give it another go. Let's rediscover the pleasure of being stuck and having no easy way to check a walkthrough! As I like to say often when talking about those things, it took me 7 years to complete Leisure Suit Larry 3. I didn't play it every day, of course, and sometimes I had to start from scratch because I had forgotten everything; but the pleasure of completing it without hints was great after that and the game lasted way longer without losing its value.
I'm nuts, I know.

[selmiak]

Cheers Abisso, but selmiak gave me the answer last night!
It's a fantastic game so far, really good!

Lol... but did he tell you he had to ask me for the solution during the beta-testing?
Glad you like the game.

Certainly one of the most wonderfully illustrated indie dev games I've played.
I especially like the musical incantation which is specially and professionally orchestrated!
Your doing a swell job and I see a bright future for you and Quill O Wisp!

Oh yes... Jamison Alderson is an amazing composer. He's the main responsible for the game's soundtrack. And the especially good thing is he's the kind of artist who immediately grasps the requests, and thus his works rarely require touch-ups. I hope he'll keep working with us through the rest of the game. And let's not forget Jon Babb, aka Bosa, and Paride Semeraro. And also Ashley Alyse, who's gently allowed me to borrow a couple of her already existing tracks.
When I reflect upon the fact Ch.1 score is already made of about 25 unique tracks... it almost feels crazy!

And thanks for the kind words about QOTW and its future. I wish the same to your Grim Quest, and your team.

Heya guys!

First of all, thanks for the feedback! I have mixed feelings about the game being enjoyable as a film: though I discovered a long time ago that some players prefer that approach, some others want more interactivity. I tried to achieve a good mix, and though the first part of Ch.1 is very cutscenes-driven, the rest is better balanced.

As per the graveyard puzzle, here are some progressively less obscure hints for you guys. Please don't go straight to the solution, try to use as few hints as you can.

First hint

Spoiler

Only some of the verses in the riddle contain hints. 5 of them as you might have figured out since the tomb sequence gets reset after the 5th tomb clicked in sequence.

[close]

Second hint

Spoiler

There are some words in those verses that make a reference to the epitaphs of the other tombs. Check them all, both the names and the epitaph itself.

[close]

Third hint

Spoiler

The verses containing keywords are the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th.

[close]

Solution

Spoiler

tomb sequence is (from left to right, including the one with the riddle): 3-6-4-1-8

[close]

One thing that's worth mentioning anyway, is that, unlike Loom, in Forge the Proficiency Mode influences the game a lot. This includes the difficulty of that puzzle and of many others, as well as other special content. All this precious info didn't make it in the game's reference card, but a manual is in the making, and I might include it in the next instalment of Ch.1 (if there will be one).

Cheers!

I'm on a very slow connection or I would have downloaded it already, Is there any way you could add a link to a .ZIP or .RAR version?

Well, not exactly, but there's a .TAR archive now! You can find it in the DOWNLOAD PAGE, right below the standard version.

Still, don't get too happy about that... the installer version already uses the very good LZMA compression, and it's 16 MiB bigger just because of the background image and the track used in the installer GUI.
Anyway, I had already planned to add an archive version for Linux users, as Wine seems to be quite annoyed by that installer, while it works flawlessly with the game itself.

Looking forward to playing through the first act! Looks amazing as always.

What are you waiting for?!?!? It's not like you have your own game to release in a few days... or is it?

[CLICK HERE FOR THE DOWNLOAD PAGE]

Since Abisso is probably sleeping or preparing a nice post to put in here or to update the first post I just want to post this in the meantime...

http://forgegame.com/?p=downloads

At the time you wrote this I was probably in Morpheus' realm, yeah! You did well in sharing the link in the meantime, but this board deserves a slightly more elaborate post (in addition to the update of the first one), for sure. So, here it is.



This community is where it all began. I wasn't even remotely aware of the project, when it started taking shape. To be 100% honest, I wasn't even aware of Loom: as a matter of fact, it was one of the few Lucas games I had never played. I still remember that one of my sister's friends used to play it at the time I was playing The Secret of Monkey Island. He gently offered to let me borrow his copy, but unfortunately my 286 PC didn't have a 3" 1/2 floppy drive at the time.
I was 6 or 7 years old, but I recall being fascinated by the blue tonalities of Loom's Island, the same ones that made me fall in love with MI. But we couldn't afford buying lots of games at the time, and I already had MI to play. Long story short, time passed and I forgot about Loom.

Then, almost 20 years later I stumble upon this AGS guy who wants help with a "project". He didn't share much info about it, and only wanted a generic support. I was coming from a long fast in terms of game-making and I thought helping a newcomer wrapping up is little game was the best way to get back on track. I offered him my help, and it turned out it was Forge. I rediscovered Loom, played it, loved it, played it again, loved it again, and so on. And then I imbued Forge with the same passion. Or so I tried.

It's ironic how coincidentally this all sounds: I didn't even know Loom, and I ended up becoming the coder, and then the project leader of its sequel. Chaos would be proud of this course of events!

Anyway, the AGS community has been very supportive, directly and indirectly, throughout the years. This is especially true considering how bad a promoter I am, and how little time I spent updating the threads and sharing progress.
It might sound cheesy, but I don't know if I would have made it so far without you people; and most certainly not without the game engine itself. But this demo is just a milestone and the road is still long and full of hazards. I need support and especially talented journey mates.
Please spread the word as best as you can, and if you have some free time and some creativity to share, consider joining our team.

But enough words, for now. I'll let the game speak for itself. Hope you enjoy.

CLICK HERE FOR THE DOWNLOAD PAGE

It's awesome! The idea I had for the November MAGS fits this one quite well too!
And, most importantly I absolutely don't have enough time to even try (once again).

Nope, voting usually lasts 15 days. However, I may post the results later today!

Hrmm... the last MAGS I entered was in February 2006. May this has something to do with my ignorance, perchance?
I apologize, though. Back in the old days, the following MAGS couldn't even begin unless the previous one had been closed. This was due to the fact the winner was the one entitled to set the theme and the rules for the next month's.

Hey Abisso - thanks for your very accurate comment on Eternal Chrysalis on the games page!  You hit on basically all the things we would have liked to do better but couldn't do due to the time constraint.  (Hopefully if we ever do released an expanded version of the game you'll approve ).  The storyline in particular ended up being massively different to the original idea just so we could actually get the game finished.  We'll definitely add some more difficult puzzles too!

Yeah, selmiak told me about the cuts that the deadline required. By the way, the most evident flaw was the graphical inconsistency between some backgrounds and the characters: there are at least three different styles involved. The rest is ok, and some players actually prefer games with puzzles that are not too difficult.

Wow, a very simple yet always fascinating topic for this MAGS!

I'm surprised by the fact there are just 2 entries. They are both respectful of the theme and interesting in their own ways, though.

Anyway... may I ask why is it taking so long to proclaim the winner? Has there been issues in the voting?

I've begun roleplaying 24 years ago, and playing adventure games one year later. I'm also into pen&paper rpg-making, gamebook making, and video-game making: so I'm very interested in this. If it wasn't for my 2 ongoing projects (one of which is an AGS game) I'd immediately ask you to choose me as your heir. Anyway, after the release of Forge: Chapter One my schedule will be slightly less crowded, and I'd like to see if this opportunity intrigues me enough for me to consider accepting the challenge. It also depends a lot on the actual time the project requires to reach completion.
Would you be able to share a demo, if you didn't already? Description set my interest on fire but I'd like to see the prototype "in action".

Of course, if you've already found a heir, congratulations! I'd suggest you gently coerce him to open a topic in the appropriate board, cause this is definitely something worth keeping an eye on!