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- Even the game engine to use! I really like AGS, but wintermute, with the hardware acceleration, gets much higher framerates (like 600 fps (!) for the demo, which runs in 800x600).

Sorry if I'm being dim, but what is the advantage of a frame rate that high? Film is only 24fps and TV 50 or 60. Is a super-high frame rate particularly desirably for an adventure game?

Why doesnt everyone in the UK rise up against such a stupid rule?

It's not a stupid rule, else I'd be rising up good. It allows the BBC (gor' bless ya) to provide a public service - essential stuff like unbiased news, educational programming and minority interest programming. It's value is that it doesn't need to be popular to survive!

The only trouble is the fellas at the BBC seem to have forgotten this of late.

who watches BBC3 or BBC4 anyway?

BBC3 has the Mighty Boosh!

I was browsing through the first of these links and thinking about how useful scans of old manuscripts and woodcuts might be in coming up with and developing ideas for adventure game-ish type plots (The last of the links here leads to a document featured in Broken Sword 3).

I thought AGSers who weren't familiar with these libraries might find them useful:

Fantastic images from art and literature:
http://fantastic.library.cornell.edu/

Ancient Egyptian Papyrus scans:
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/

Medieval manuscripts:
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/medieval/browse.htm

Early US adverts:
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/eaa/

Scans of the Voynich Manuscript:
http://www.voynich.nu/folios.html

Let me know if you find these sites interesting, or if you know of any interesting libraries I haven't discovered. Likewise, let me know if you find the whole business dull and want me to go away.

I think Vince Twelve's 'Cool Factor' explains why physics cards sound so fun. I do doubt whether they would do a great deal to improve the 'Cool' of an adventure game, and I note that many of the games mentioned are at the FPS end of the spectrum.

My qualm would be with the word 'adventure' in the title of this thread. I think of all games, adventures would be the least able to make use of realistic physics.

On the other hand:

For some people adventure games are also about solving puzzles. For some it's more about solving puzzles.

I didn't mean to overlook puzzle solving, I just wasn't sure what realistic physics could add. Having thought about it, it would be a great deal of fun to be able to carve a hunk of rock into the shape of an idol (needless to say, I have no idea whether a physics card could facilitate that).

A physics card can simulate a key unlocking a door, a hand picking up an object, a crowbar breaking into a car, and virtually just about anything possible.

I enjoyed your enthusiasm, but adventure games are about narrative. Physics simulation is irrelevant. I can't imagine an adventure game fan saying, "Yeah, the story was weak, but check out that hyper-realistic key-in-lock action!"

For a long time now books have featured doors being unlocked, cars being jimmied, and objects being picked up. They haven't ever needed a physics engine.

take pink hairbrush and tie rope to it, then swing it from the balcony in order to attract the Flamboyantly Gay Pigeon that will give you the key you need to progress

Okay, I've got the key. Where do I use it?

Hold on...

This is a really nice idea and elements of it are very, if not wholly, original. I have a few reservations about whether it would work though.

You would limit your audience to the computer literate (i.e. people able to lighten photos and so on). I'm aware that most fans of adventure games, and probably all AGSers fall into that category, but it's worth thinking about.

Secondly, and more importantly, would it really be more entertaining to lighten an image yourself in GIMP than have the a character persuade his techno-genius best friend to do it? Possibly by making a Flamboyantly Gay Pidgeon dance for him?

If you could strike a balance between real-world investigations and fictional character interaction then I think you'd be on to a winner.

It was 'Mourir en Mer' by Dorcan: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=140

I think 'Moulin en Mer' (Windmill at Sea) would have been less melancholy and more jaunty.

I'd side with GG and pick Gabriel Knight 3, and I also found Black Dahlia quite moving. Though I never completed Trinity I did find it had an atmosphere unlike any other game. Plus it tought me what a Klein bottle is.

Naturally the most moving game for me is the sometimes-non-too-popular-round-these-parts Riven.

I love the fingers on her left hand, they look wrong but in a right kind of way. Or perhaps they look right in a wrong kind of way. Either way, this work elegantly recaptures the off-kilter style of classic Warner Brothers cartoons.

As for the nipples, they look wrong, but in a right kind of way.

[very]

I explained myself poorly before, this is a very quick and crude example of what I was suggesting:



I'm aware that your game is in 2d, I meant to suggest that you show the hut in cross section so in addition to seeing into the floor, you can see the depth of the walls. Also, I think a framing vaguely like my example would help to give a sense of a small room.

My paintover certainly isn't very attractive, but I think you should be wary of using lighting effects with a style like yours. Valiant's paintover is nice, but I suspect it would be difficult to maintain that look consistently.

With BGJ's style flat colours are more appropriate than gradients so the lighting effect looks showy. Don't worry about showing light coming in through the window thing of backdrops in the Simpsons. They almost exclusively use flat colours to great effect.

To indicate that this is the interior of a hut you framing the image within a cross section of the hut's shape, sort of like this image:



Not having the edges of the room reach the edges of the screen might help add a cosy interior feel to it.

I loved the film, definitely a return to form for Timmy B. By far my favourite line was "That's the puppet burns ward... it's relatively new."

Film Trivia: Depp wasn't credited for his Elm Street performance.

I'm not trying to be rude, it's just that everytime I post, which hasn't been that much mind you, someone has attacked me

This forum is usually very friendly, but everyone's somewhat on their guard at the moment since there have been a few nuisance posters about. I didn't know that there was a Police Quest 1 remake, so this post has been helpful to me, but it could have been more interesting.

Rather than asking the forum if the game exists you could have looked it up via a popular internet search engine, and then begun an artistic debate regarding the graphical changes, or asked whether remakes are really an improvement, or asked what games we'd like to see updated...

I have accounts on other forums where people are a lot friendlier and post as much as they want to, even keeping to the right topics.

I imagine you've also visited forums that are o'erflowing with nonsensical, incoherent and often offensive posts. The three golden rules aren't an attempt to censor, and you shouldn't be afraid to post here. I believe they are an attempt to make people think before they post. I suspect this forum will happily accept you if you take a little more care about what and where you post.

[EDIT:]

While moneyspinning seldom leads to good games/films etc. I see no reason to doubt the quality of this next game. As with Gabriel Knight, I found the first Broken Sword game to be excellent, the second to be weak and the third to be a return to form.

In both cases at the point of the second game I might have said, "no more sequels, please!". If I had I would have denied myself two of my favourite games. If BS4 is made with the same integrity, humour and attention to detail as the third in the series it will be a worthy continuation.

EDIT: Sorry, Rui, I know it's adventure game blasphemy but I felt that the gameplay, graphics, and puzzles were deeply substandard in GK2. The story was good though!

Patents work for designs, medicines, tv show formats and similar. A trademark is a name or image that you trade under. See http://www.uspto.gov/.

Copyright is what would be of most interest to you in reference to AGS games and as Snarky has pointed out you aren't required to register copyright. Intellectual property is an odd concept, but a piece of artistic work belongs to you as soon as it's created.

The tricky bit is, as far as I'm aware you can't copyright an idea. If an evil corporation stole the concept for your game then you would have no recourse, unless they reproduced your work in some respect. This is something that people pitching TV shows and advertising concepts to production companies worry about all the time.

This is can be a good thing, at least no one can own the idea of "one lone hero must topple a dark power and rescue the princess". Imagine where we'd be if you couldn't use that!

This is a marvelously atmospheric backdrop, but that's been said. The only thing I would suggest is that you make sure to fade to black between the two images to avoid the effect that always irrtates me in adventure game mazes and under Monkey island where the game cuts between backdrops that are almost identical. Without a fade it could look like the door vanishes and the pipes jump from one side to the other.

[pixelcat's]

Thanks to all the entrants, I've seen some really nice sprites. If I have to choose (and I do) I believe the entry that strikes the best balance between artistry and imagination is pixelcat's monkey paw:



Thanks again to everyone for the mystical, funny and beautiful sprites!

As much as I enjoyed this thread looking popular, the Satanism discussion was beginning to overshadow the drawing of tiny pictures, which is what this is all about. I hope the newly pruned thread will yeild even more lovely lovely entries.

-Ali

[Inventory Enchanted]

This weeks topic: Inventory Enchanted

Magical oddities that you might discover in the dusty corners of a Magic Shop.
I mean a real Magic Shop, so not just incense sticks and books on crystal healing.

Max Size: 100x80
Colours: Unlimited, but try to keep it within the visible spectrum.

Thank you!

I don't really feel worthy of winning, there were so many excellent entries! Thanks very much, I'll post a new (probably less good) topic soon.

I recognise that feeling. I'm nearing completion on my first game. It's very short but it's been a real challenge (particluarly finding time to work on it). The main reason I found it so difficult is that, like you, I was learning to use AGS as I went along.

I intended to make a very short an simple game, hoping to avoid attempting "the perfect game" syndrome, but because I didn't really plan it and don't take naturally to programming, the process dragged on and on.

In order to finish the game I opted to cut a whole sequence that I couldn't work out how to code. This meant I'd wasted hours of pixelling for images that I'd never use. Really, though, it has streamlined the game. Better to have an enjoyable and complete game than an abandoned work of art.

As a learning exercise this been useful though, and it's put me in a position where I have just about enough knowledge to consider attempting a short game in a short space of time. I suppose planning and scheduling is the key to producing a long game without losing motivation. I agree though, that producing something short and sparky might be more fun and more rewarding.