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This game was very funny and absolutely lovely to play. Even though it was short, it was still satisfying because the story kept going beyond what I thought would be the end to an even more fun conclusion.

Brilliant!

This is very rough, but I think it's what you're thinking of:


Like khrismuc I don't see anything particularly whacky about the shelves, they could just do with a little tweaking.

By the way, a Diagnosis Murder game is genius.

To my mind the whole business is exactly like trying to plug a SCART cable into the back of a TV without looking.

Well, not exaclty.

Thus far I've only made one demo and nothing else, but for me it was also (3).

I like games where you can't explore the whole world straight away so in my game you can only explore two rooms until you find a map. To relese a demo I put together an intro sequence and then created a simple puzzle (with some elements that will feature in the full game) that led to the player getting hold of a map.

I think in your position a separate self-contained demo might be preferable, if only in the interest of file size.

Thanks for all the mirrors guys, am I right in thinking it's the Tripod site that's hosting the demo that won't let people download it properly?

Thanx SSH. It seems your to be the only working one. Great game so far.
Is it because of the default "Force alternative letterbox resolution" tunred on that at some central parts of the screen some letters looks like a little bit blured or something? Maybe you should consider turn this option to be accessible.
btw when I try to save, the game crashes. It tells me that it's some kind of script error at line 577.

ps. I can collect unlimited amount of bottles in my inventory :.

Thanks for spotting my mistake at line 577, I'll look into that. As for the bottles, they are only there to test the scrolling function on the inventory screen. For now it's up to the player to drink responsibly.

I'm not sure what you mean by "blurred" though on the lettering, the game actually isn't in letterbox, its at 640x480. Do you mean speech or buttons? Has anyone else spotted this?

Thanks again to all of you for the positive feedback,

Ali.

I'm starting to feel self-conscious about how many times I've posted in my own thread, but thanks very much for the firefox friendly link GBC. I hope you don't mind if I add it to my original post.

Many thanks for the feedback from those of you that managed to download the demo. With regard to the title, I chose the 'Nelly Cootalot' prefix because 'Spoonbeaks Ahoy' is a profoundly obscure half-reference to a comedy series called The Mighty Boosh. So you see to me it doesn't sound original, and I like long titles anyway.

I never read the book, but the whole story definately needed that certain touch of gritty realism.Ã, 

Perhaps the White Witch should have been a single mum on the dole.

In a last ditch attempt to validate the word 'available' in the thread's title, here is the demo as zipped by Windows XP's compressed folder function:
http://themonkeyhut.tripod.com/NellyXP.zip
If anyone has successfully unzipped the demo, or can explain why this might be happening, please let me know!

Your canvas is square. If you want a more dynamic 'camera angle' try using a more cinematic 16:9 ratio. A widescreen aspect ratio forces you to frame, or in this case compose, the image in a more dramatic way.

The .ZIP don't seem to be a valid archive to me. Is this happening to anyone else?

The previous demo was compressed in Power Archiver, this .ZIP was compressed in Winzip: http://themonkeyhut.tripod.com/Nelly_CootalotWZ.zip
(Again, 'Save Target As...').

I hope maybe that helps.

I believe that googling will bring up a demo for Simon the Sorceror.

I've been in the same room as Charles Cecil.

That isn't as good.

I have nothing else to add.

[NELLY COOTALOT: Spoonbeaks Ahoy!]

NELLY COOTALOT: Spoonbeaks Ahoy!

Pre-amble:
All-too-recently (Edit: About a year ago) I decided to make a game with my girlfriend as the hero for a Christmas present (she loves adventure games, I'm not just the worst boyfriend ever). Needless to say, I didn't finish it in time. She was happy with just a demo though, and I submit it now for cutting and brutal examination. I'm aware that I'm on well-trodden ground making a pirate game, but my aim wasn't to be startlingly original. I just wanted to make a game that would be fun for my ladyfriend and hopefully for other people too.

Plot:
Nelly Cootalot, fearsome pirate and lover of tiny and adorable creatures, is charged by the spirit of a dead buccaneer to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a fleet of birds known as Spoonbeaks. Her adventure will bring her face to face with the nefarious Baron Widebeard as she uncovers corruption and wanton punning in the Barony of Meeth.

Screenshots:





Features:
640x480 Resolution
Verb Coin Interface
The opportunity to aquire morally dubious items for minor aristocrats
More skull imagery than you'd expect in a game that centers around cute animals
Real-time particle effects courtesy of Akayumo's Particle Engine.

Demo:
The aim of the demo is to get a hold of a map of the Barony of Meeth. The demo's puzzle(s) won't actually be in the finished game, they're just there to give you something to do.
http://themonkeyhut.tripod.com/Nelly_Cootalot.zip
(Use 'Save Target As...')
If you're not using Internet Explorer:
http://www.xtrafile.com/uploads/cb29de7b39.zip.html (Thanks to GBC!)

Update 13/5/6:

Well, progress has been slow because I've been very busy with other projects. I haven't forgotten about Nelly though, and I don't want you guys to forget either so here's a quick update.

After realising I'd missed my original optomistic deadline, I decided to rethink the weaker parts of the plot. I've added new rooms (drawn new backdrops) and worked out new puzzles where they were needed. The completed game should now be comfortably medium-length. I hope.

I'm glad to say that m0ds has agreed to use his magic fingers* to create some midi tunes for the project. You can hear what he's been up to on this thread:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=26241.0

Update 1/10/6:

Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy is currently about one 'pick-up' interaction away from being playable start-to-finish. I still have to script the final cutscene and plenty of non-essential interactions, but the gameplay itself is in place.

Also, here are some of the latest tunes m0ds has worked up:

Main Theme

General Exploration

Uh-oh!

The game now uses Akayumo's Particle Engine for some special effects too. I'm tempted to set myself a deadline for completion, but I'm so busy at the moment that would be foolish. Hopefully, it won't be too long before I can ask for beta-testers.

Update 19/12/6:
The game's so nearly finished I can taste it... no wait, that's metal. Is that bad?

It's missing a few music tracks and a couple of sound effects, but the bulk of the work is done. Check out the statistics below. I plan release the game in early 2007, depending on how long beta-testing takes. My plan is to make sure everyone has forgotten about it in time for the 2007 awards.

Update 13/2/7:
The music is complete, and it's all gorgeous. Huzzah! All that remains is dropping the tracks in place, and a wee spot of beta testing.

Statistics of a now pretty damn accurate nature:
Plot/Dialogue: 100%
Background Art: 100%
Character Art: 100%
Animation: 100%
Scripting: 99%
Music/Sound: 100%

*Fingers may not be magic.

I came to a similar conclusion Ashen, but couldn't understand how that could be happening.

buttonSprite was declared in the Global script header.

The function method sounds like a possibility, but the workaround I've achieved makes my scripting neater anyway so I don't want to keep fiddling. Thanks for your thoughts guys!

The film is very strong for an hour after Lucy enters the wardrobe. It loses pace as the "epic" battle approaches and I find it's representation of war ultimately quite distasteful.

As a Disney film it shies away from showing the blood in the well known clean-your-sword bit, but is happy to demonstrate the gleaming golden glory of an army before battle. That just ain't right to my mind. C.S. Lewis grasped the subtleties of good and evil, this film is crude in comparison.

As for the CG, it's not bad. The beavers and Aslan in particular look terrific.

These are great new features, thanks!

Yeah, it's the usual thing about the rating not necessarily being a good way of ranking games, especially if the game is new or has relatively few votes. It could be added though, I'll consider it.

Voting isn't necessarily a great way of ranking games (one person thought Apprentice was visually Abysmal), but it would be a good way of quickly finding (probably) good games. Would it be possible to rank the games in order of votes, but to give new games an automatic spot at the top while they gather votes?

I don't really know what I'm talking about here, a wierd thing occurred that seemed like a problem in AGS but was probably down to my lack of knowledge about the way the editor works:

When the Load button on one of my GUIs is clicked it runs this script:

Code: ags

LoadList.FillSaveGameList();
if (LoadList.SelectedIndex != -1) listselected = LoadList.SelectedIndex;
if (buttonSprite != null) buttonSprite.Delete();
buttonSprite = DynamicSprite.CreateFromSaveGame(savegameindex[listselected], 73, 47);
if (buttonSprite != null) LoadScreen.NormalGraphic = buttonSprite.Graphic;
gLoad.Visible=true;

'LoadList' is the list on my load GUI, 'LoadScreen' is the button that shows the screenshot, 'gLoad' is the Load GUI itself. buttonSprite is the pointer that I load the screenshot into.

This loads a screenshot from the currently selected saved game and works absolutely fine. When I click the cancel or the load button on the GUI it calls:

Code: ags

if (buttonSprite!=null) buttonSprite.Delete();

A wierd thing happens though when I copy the script from the GUI button to an interaction on one of the objects in Room 0. I was using an object as a 'Load' button rather than make a new GUI. The Load GUI works fine and the screenshot appears, but the dynamic Sprite is not deleted when the cancel button is clicked.Ã,  When I exit the game I get a message from AGS telling me that I didn't delete the sprite slot I loaded.

Indeed if I remove the

Code: ags

if (buttonSprite!=null)

part of the script the game crashes telling me that buttonSprite is null.

I worked around this by making sure only to bring up the Load GUI from another GUI, but I thought it was worth asking if anyone (or perhaps everyone) understands this better than me.

Thanks for such a speedy reply and sorry for such a late thank-you. I am indeed running Windows 98. The mystery is solvéd.

I originally posted this problem in General Discussion, but having re-read my error message I realised that I'm supposed to post the details here. Sorry!

I wasn't able to download BJ4 from the games page, the link was dead, so I downloaded it from grundislav's website. When I unzipped it and tried to run the game I got this message:

An exception 0xC0000005 occured in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x8FF98868 ; program pointer is -189, ACI version 2.62.772, gtags 0,0)

I'm wondering if the error was something to do with file paths rather than the game itself, because all of the html manual files were looking for images in a folder that doesn't exist on my computer, presumably the location they were in on the author's machine.

I'd appreciate any help with this, I'm so keen to play #4!

I'm not sure if this should be in the technical forum. Please move it if it's in the wrong place.

I wasn't able to download BJ4 from the games page, the link was dead, so I downloaded it from grundislav's website. When I unzipped it and tried to run the game I got this message:



I'm wondering if the error was something to do with file paths rather than the game itself, because all of the html manual files were looking for images in a folder that doesn't exist on my computer, presumably the location they were in on the author's machine.

We want 2D games 3D sucks because you just can't make adventure in full 3D( beside Grim Fandango ).So Third BS is the worst in series.First was the best and second was realy good.

SO WE VOTE FOR 2D 8)

I've played more bad 2D adventures than 3D ones. I'd be genuinely surprised if any AGSers could say differently.

There's nothing inherently un-adventure game about 3D graphics. As MrCollosal indicates, how well a 3D adventure works is down to design. Not all, but many of the 2.5-3D adventures I've played have been great. I actually found that BS2 was very disappointing, while BS3 was excellent. (I'd also have it that GK3 is the best of the bunch, Vampires, Masons and the Holy Grail? Genius.)