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Hooray Hoorah, I've played through the game for the first time without finding a single bug.  The game is complete---except for the music.  Sounds effects are done, but I have to record some songs.  I've already written them, so it won't take long, but I'm stuck in Texas until at least tuesday so I can't record until then.

I think I'll have a beta version available for testing by the end of this week.  No joke.  I doubt that testing will take long, because I've been testing the hell out of it myself, and I think I've found most real problems.  Of course, it folks play it and find that it doesn't make any sense, then I'll have some work to do.

Anyway, if you'd like to help test the game, please PM me.  I'd love the help.

Otherwise, keep an eye out in the completed games section, and if you're in the Washigton DC area, I'll be having a god damn party once I release this thing. 

This looks awesome.  I love the graphics, they look fantastic.  I wish you well...this has to be a challenging project, Police Quest games are sooo complicated.

Character.ChangeRoom(int room_number, optional int x, optional int y)

Look through the character functions in the manual, it's all there...

This is happening when the height of the second area is both much taller and much shorter than the first region.  I see what your saying, but in both areas where i do this, there is plenty of room for the character to make a gradual shift in size, not a herky jerky jump in size.

I've had this problem forever, and have yet to figure out how to fix it.

Say I have two walkable areas.  Both areas use continuous scaling.  The area in the foreground goes from 100% to 90%, and the second goes from 90% to 20%.  The problem is, when the character walks onto the second second area, she doesn't smoothly move from 90% to 90% scaling, but makes a big jump to a smaller size.  I don't have the two regions interlocking, so that she would accidently walk onto part of the second region that is at 70%...I think this should work but it doesn't.

Any thoughts?

Well, if we were to split the US into regions, I'd think a Mid-Atlantic region would be in order.  If I had a house, I'd offer it up as a meeting place (I live in DC) but alas I have a one bedroom apartment.  Still, DC would be a good place to meet up, no? 

Setting up a national Amerittens would be a serious undertaking and I don't know about many of you, but I've got a job and can't take a week off (though I might be getting laid off, so unemployment here I come) but a long weekend would be doable.

I guess people usually go the camping route because it's cheapest.  There are a lot of camp grounds in the DC metro area...one is actually on this cool island just outside of the city. 

Would there be many people that could make it to DC for a three or four day regional meeting?  I would seriously consider volunteering to put something together if A) there were enough people to make it worth the trouble and B) we could plan for a date that would leave me enough time to make the plans and get time off work.

My sincerest condolences to everyone in London...I heard about this when I woke up and immediately thought about all you Britteneers.  This is a terrible tragedy.  However, I appreciate the sentiment that we need to address WHY people are doing these things, instead of just bombing their countries into oblivian.

Let's hope Dave is ok, I'm sure he's fine.  Hopefully everyone will check in real soon.

-Logan

Wasn't Mittens supposed to be in Australia this year but the only people who could go were the Australians?

I've mentioned it before, we impovershed americans who can't make it out to Greece or England or upstate New York should have an insurgent Amerittans ourselves.

It's such a waste of money.  I love how politicians talk about how it will be a boon for the economy, but the opposite is inevitably true.  I remember flying over Salt Lake City and seeing a bunch of empty stadiums.  What a waste!

That sounds cool, I'd consider making the trip but with such a steep entry fee, I'll have to pass.  Too bad.

First of all, your detective looks great.  The image looks good too, but there are some things you could improve on.  For one, I think the top of the filing cabinet is off in perspective.  The rug is waaaay too white, it forces the viewer to focus their attention  on it.  I would go for a different color, something grey or bluish.  You're right about the confusion in period and style...i really think the painting looks cool and you probably spent a lot of time on it, but would a detective have a big painting of an ocean behind him?  Also, wouldn't his desk have a chair?  If you're going for a noir theme or something darker, i would probably stick to using more wood trim---around the windows, along the floor.  Some kind of dark wood that blends in.  The window looks too modern, as do the metal cabinets...

But it does look cool, and your detective is rad!

Well, the thing is, Emily is the opposite of a bright and cheery girl.  She is a meglomaniacal, homicidal nightmare of a little girl.  I've always thought that the dreary surroundings compliment her personality.  You see, the cutscene consists of her parents asking if she's happy with her presents and Emily being furious that she didn't receive a pony.  The dialogue escalates to the point where she picks up the cake knife and kills her whole family.  So you see, I don't really want to emphasize the warmth of the character.  However, fire in the background could emphasize her darker size...

I think the clown would be funny because when she complains about not having a pony, her parents could say, "But we got this nice clown."  And she could say something like, "Curse the clown.  I'll stick his head on a pike if I must!" 

Maybe I'm the only one who would find that funny...

I really agree with you.  I don't think the genre needs to be watered down, if anything we just need to further perfect the craft.  Why not spend a fraction time and money it takes to make big 3-d ladden games, and smaller, smarter "retro" games in less time?  I think there is enough talent in this community to make that jump into commercial gaming.  The biggest problem is that no one can realistically do it alone.

Great, these are good ideas Ildu.  You don't think a fire going on behind her would be distracting?  I was planning on animating the candles on her birthday cake.  I would like to put a clown into the picture, maybe to her left, but I dont want to draw this out for too long.

Thanks!

Sorry to bump this, but I wanted to show you all the finished version and ask for a little C&C.  Loominous, thanks a billion for your drawing, it helped me a LOT getting that perspective right.  I also used your idea of pillars for windows. 

And yes, I did post this in the release something thread, hopefully it's ok I put it here too (I wanted some critiques).

This is also a bit late, but what the hell.  This is the opening screen of my upcoming game, "Emily Enough" which should be complete sometime soon...

There is a fadeout command in the script index, also a fadein command.  I think basically you would call the fadeout command, run a DisplaySpeech or DisplayMessage command, then a fade in.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that all it takes?  You might have to use a Wait command in the middle of that though...

This is a really interesting article from the New York Times, and I think it could say a lot about the future of gaming, especially how AGS and adventure games could play into it.  I know a lot of people talk about how it doesn't take a multi-million dollar budget to produce a good game.  This group certainly seems to prove it....


June 27, 2005
On Screens, but Not Store Shelves: Casual Games
By MICHEL MARRIOTT

Far from the bloody streets of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," and light years from the deep space, run-and-gun menace of "Halo 2," lives Flo.

She is the cartoon-cute stockbroker who chucked it all to operate a modest diner that is the centerpiece of a highly successful yet relatively low-budget video game called "Diner Dash."

The game is not found on the shelves of video game or consumer electronic stores. Nor is it sold on the DVD's that deliver interactive 3-D fantasies to millions of PlayStation 2 and Xbox game consoles.

This game, sold exclusively on the Internet and downloaded onto players' personal computers, is challenging many of the conventions of video gaming. Such simple games - often called casual games - are growing more prominent in the ever-broadening game marketplace, becoming big sellers on a small budget.

"Diner Dash does not have a single end goal," said Eric Zimmerman, co-founder and chief executive of GameLab, the New York game development company that created it. "You are into it for the play."

The premise is simple: The mounting challenge is to seat, serve and collect from diners, tasks that bring to mind the "I Love Lucy" episode in which Lucy is overwhelmed by the increasing demands of a candy factory's conveyor belt.

Since the release of "Diner Dash" late last year, the hand-painted, drag-and-drop game quickly became the most requested item on major online game sites, including Yahoo Games, Real Arcade and Shockwave.com. Peter Seung-Taek Lee, co-founder and president of GameLab, said "Diner Dash" remained in the top five best sellers of downloadable games, showing considerable shelf life for a video game that never existed on a shelf.

"We wanted something that people can easily relate to," Mr. Lee said. "There is something about very simple play that gives pleasure. You can just click on it and enjoy the game."

John Welch, president and chief executive of PlayFirst, a publisher of casual games, including "Diner Dash," said the $20 game had sold more than 50,000 copies and continued to sell about 1,000 a day.

And games like "Diner Dash" have become big business. Casual games - generally simple-to-play, short-duration games that are graphically unsophisticated - will represent about $250 million a year in sales, Mr. Welch estimated. They are a small but growing sector of the overall United States game industry, which is expected to generate $8.4 billion in sales in 2005, according to a forecast by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

"It's huge in the way millions of people are playing them," said Chris Sherman, executive director of the first Casual Game Conference, scheduled for July 19 and 20 in Seattle.

He said the games' simplicity also made them ready candidates to be adapted for the increasingly attractive market of cellphones and other mobile devices.

At GameLab, which was founded five years ago, about 20 artists, programmers, animators and game designers work in closely arranged workstations in a long, narrow space carved out of an aging industrial building near Chinatown in Lower Manhattan. At one point, GameLab veterans say, the workspace looked more like a bowling alley.

Mr. Zimmerman, the chief executive, says his team generally works on three to four projects at once, taking about five to six months to complete a game. GameLab is a private company and its executives would not disclose detailed financial data, but they did say that "Diner Dash" cost between $100,000 and $200,000 to make. It sells for about 40 percent of the price of a major video game title that could cost more than $10 million to produce.

"Our modus operandi is to really create innovative games, new ways for people to play," he said as he recently walked through GameLab's studio, pointing out its museum-quality collection of vintage video game consoles, toys and stacks of traditional board games.

"For us, the company culture and the process, is really important," he said, adding that GameLab employees are given a $50 a month to spend on whatever game-related materials they want. He said they were encouraged to bring what they buy to the office. Video games, he said, must be considered within the larger category of play, a field that requires research and experimentation.

"I think part of the problem with the game industry is that there are these big projects, that people work sweatshop hours and that there's no sense of research and experimentation," Mr. Zimmerman said. "It's hard to do that. I'm not saying that we are doing it successfully, but at least we are trying to get there."

Mr. Lee, the company's president, said "Diner Dash" was designed to look and feel warmer and friendlier than expensive 3-D counterparts aimed at hard-core gamers.

"We wanted it to have a particular look," he said, noting the rich colors of the interface. "Console games look very cool and futuristic, but cold."

Yet "Diner Dash," which its makers say is quite popular among women, is not a simple "pop game," as Mr. Zimmerman refers to popular downloadable games like "Collapse" and "Bejeweled" that are descendants of Tetris and other animated puzzle games.

Mr. Welch of PlayFirst said he was drawn to GameLab's penchant for smart experimentation. His company, based in San Francisco, plays a role much like that of a record label: It fields pitches from game developers and finances the ones that seem to show the most promise.

"There is a good market opportunity while everybody is trying to figure out where the next killer app is going to be," he said.

I'm excited about this, I just got my hands on Dawn of the Dead and it's such a good movie.  You gotta give him credit for keeping with the theme.

Wow, this is neat.  Austin sure does look ARID. 

Here I am:  http://maps.google.com/maps?q=2600+16th+Street+NW+Washington+DC&spn=0.004957,0.007918=k&hl=en