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I would love to see more games using text parsers for dialogue in the manner of Starship Titanic (which admittedly many people hated). I think using a parser for interactions can be tiresome, but I often find choosing dialogue options to be extremely limiting, particularly when I'm stuck in a game and I get sick of seeing the same options again and again.

I've never really played with the AGS text parser so I don't know how it would handle flexible conversations.

I do agree though that 'look' and 'examine' should be and were different in all the Infocom titles I've played.

I would say low-res and maybe even 256 colour. Something along the lines of Sins of the Father would be brilliant.

Also I think you should play as Al for part of the game and not be able to interact or pick up.

this forum runs parralell to a facist police state!

Shh! They'll hear you...

I don;t even have to think about this, because I actually do have a mutant superpower a la the X-Men: I cough whenever I eat salt.

That's got me out of some pickles I can tell you.

I think Black Dahlia is an excellent and much underrated game. It's the best FMV game I've played, though it isn't up against much competition!

The problem for amateurs to face would be how to populate a First-Person world. In 3D it would require either detailed models or FMV, and both would be challenging. On the other hand, it's difficult to justify the mysterious emptiness of a lot of FP adventures.

A hand-drawn FMV game would be a novel idea though.

I completed QFG1 yesterday, luckily my computer is just slow enough for it to be possible. I agree though that compatiblity is a valid reson for remakes.

I find myself subcounsiously influenced. Aftwe watching many episodes of the Mighty Boosh I find a Boosh-like cadence dropping into my normal talkings. I don't really like that though, it's weird.

As for my influences: The Coen Brothers, Terry Gilliam, Bob Dylan.

Basically anyone from around Minnesota, apparently.

I've always been niggled by the idea of a fangame. I thought this was because I preferred wholly original games. Having thought about it, part of the reason I'm enjoying making a pirate-themed game is that it is familiar.

So, originality isn't that high on my list of priorities, but I do doubt whether it is possible to improve on many games. Updating games from EGA to VGA is a nice idea, but changing the interface on Grim Fandango doesn't really seem like a step forward.

What the very good-looking Grim Fandango remake shows is that a new game using the 3D plugin would be amazing.

That's German for 'the, character, the.'

I think deaths should occur rarely if at all in a game. For instance, in real life I don't have to think about not walking off cliff-edges, so I don't think it should be something I have to think about in an adventure game context.

Sierra games often err towards this kind of enragingly stupid death, but Grundislav is right that Gabriel Knight is a good example of well executed death (no pun intended).

It's particularly good because in GK its very obvious when you might be in danger.

I did enjoy Douglas Adam's IF Bureaucracy though, where too many mis-typed commands resulted in your blood pressure killing you.

I wrote about this seemingly identical project: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/ in my dissertation at univeristy.

I don't know whether that makes me sound clever or stupid...

It's a real shame you are leaving. Goodbye.

-Al

If you get rid of the 'set character view' numbers for all the walkable areas you'll see that Nelly would walk down the hill backwards.

The inverted-view-swapping makes it possible for a character to walk down the screen playing their up loop so it looks like they're walking away from the camera down the slope.

Btw: Thanks!

[EDIT: I didn't realise Strazer's solution used the view-inverting idea. Never mind!]

I've come up with a simple means of making a character walk over hills which I haven't read about in threads like this.

It doesn't requre objects or anything like that. You just enable and disable walk-behinds and change the ego's main view to one where up and down are inverted. Here's a zipped template:

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Walk_Behind_Hil.zip

It's a bit awkward at the moment because of the shape of my walkable areas but with tweaking it could work well. It also has the advantage that you don't need to have a cutsequence to go over the crest of the hill.

I'm sorry if this has been brought up before, let me know what you think.

-Al.

EDIT: I didn't realise Strazer's solution used the view-inverting idea. Never mind!

Snarky's hit the nail on the head. English hasn't changed that much in 200 years except a few spellings. In print, try using '&c.' instead of 'etc.' for 'twas the style at the time. Just avoid using modern idoms or falsely archaic prases. Eg:

'catch you later'

'thou hast wronged mine eyes with thine mini-skirt'

Remember that an Englishman from the 1800s would be witnessing the industrial age, the rise of capitalism and the decline of organised religion. Would he be that surprised by modern Britain?

Blake wouldn't have been.

The reason this is tricky is that lovers by and large do talk in cliches, but I think I might be able to help you avoid this problem:

I do not want to use bad harliquin/fanfiction-esque romance of making them instantly fall in love and all is well and right in the world

It's thanks to folktales that we use marriage at the end of a narrative as an indication that order has returned to the world. If you feel the need to break away from the folk narrative model then try bringing your characters together without them successfully righting all wrongs. Though that could make your game's ending somewhat melancholy.

i made my self a falmethrower.

I tried that, but I couldn't get the falmes into the catapult. They just kept wriggling, cute little blighters.

Does that mean we're 500 years ahead than the muslims Voh? Because if you were trying to deffend them that's not a good stalement, I guess...

It's a sentiment that does seem to crop up in the Western Media frequently though, and is entirely wrong-headed.

I'd argue that the lack of religious fervour among Western Europeans has more to do with the Protestant work ethic facilitating the growth of international capitalism. We're not less religious because we're more advanced. To a great extent we've internalised elements of faith to bring our modes of worship in line with with modern capitalism.

In the west, worship is about what you believe, not what you do. Sola Fide and all that. Consequently we forget that what you do is very important in religions like Islam.

I also am quietly pleased.

The composition is lovely, but to counteract the 'empty' feel you could attempt to pioneer some 2D greebling.

What is atmospheric perspective?

I've always called it aerial perspective but here's an explanation:
http://www.sanford-artedventures.com/study/g_atmos_perspective.html

It isn't necessarily very useful for a bedroom image, but I wouldn't want to contradict Big Brother. You know... 'cause he's watching...

I think Helm may have a point. There's no reason that you couldn't draw an entirely 'flat' image - like a platform game. A few AGSers have attempted a similar style including me [plug] in this WIP where I've tried to make every object flat like cut-out stage scenery http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=24188.0[/plug].

It could be effective for a comedy game and easier to draw. Try to be a bit stricter with yourself: doors should be tall rather than wide. Trying to be more diagrammatic might be more effective.

A sort of half-reference from the BBC radio series of the Mighty Boosh (www.themightyboosh.co.uk)

During a sequence in which Howard tries to aid his friend Vince in a mental-imaging excercise in order to imagine a polar bear:

Howard: What's here?
Vince: A small miniature trumpet.
Howard: Pick it up, put it in your utility sack. Might come in useful later. Go on...
Vince: I'm going on... there's a sort of big angry Seaweed god on a throne. He's going "Whoooor! Whoooor!" What do I do?
Howard: Play the trumpet!
Vince: He really likes it, he's dancing!
Howard: What's happening?
Vince: He's danced himself out of the room.
Howard: Go on!
Vince: There's a door!
Howard: What's through the door?!
Vince: A polar bear!

Obscure, you may say... more a reference to polar bears really.