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Good heads up, thanks!

Great to see that the project is still alive.

And I agree wholeheartedly when it comes to the backgrounds - these are much better than the 3D rendered graphics we saw before, and even better than many old Sierra games!

Snarky, I believe the list up there is only for things to be included in the demo, thus the very limited scope of tasks
I do however think it would benefit us better to know how the game is progressing in its entirety, instead of just the demo!

It needs more work!

The girl's legs are much too short - right now her leg/torso ratio is dwarf like. Her lower left arm is tiny, barely longer than the palm of her hand.

The sword-dude is mostly fine anatomically speaking - except for a distinct lack of flesh around his thigh/buttock, but there are some other minor issues with him. I don't find his pose very natural, at least not if he's supposed to be resting. See if you can find some better balance here. Also, since his shirt seems rather loose - looking at the sleeves - his bosom has been rendered a bit too voluminous, almost female. I would also give him a more interesting facial expression while at it. Far too often I see character faces in concept art (and in plenty of box art, no names) looking utterly bored, which takes away dynamics and tension from the picture.

Composition wise, I would make sure the foreground edge overlaps the female figure a bit. It's not a good idea to have objects and shapes just touch like that - either give plenty of room in between or let them overlap.

The squirrel guy looks pretty perfect! Good anatomy, good expression, good pose.

while the rest of the cast should be made up of Scandanacian actors and actresses with completely unpronounceable names.

Show me one of those names and I will pronounce it for you!

Hm, apart from painting in the proper resolution (e.g. if you want 320x200 or something more high-res) there isn't much else to worry about. If you want your game to be in 16 bits then ideally you should paint with so many colors, but importing a 32-bit image into a 16-bit environment usually doesn't have that severe consequences; some very smooth gradients will appear more jagged, but then again that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Now, whether you should use computer-generated gradients or not is another question, one pertaining to aesthetics...

So, just make sure you paint with the right amount of pixels, and the rest should be fine.

Thanks for some feedback!
Darth: Yes, some kind of credits system was definitely something I had in mind, allowing users to spend very small amounts of money here and there.

Snarky: You're obviously right in a way, but I have some great counter arguments
* There's a distinct crowd funding element involved, where people may support someone simply because they appreciate their work. On any given crowd funding site, you'll find people giving much more money to a certain project than they would spend on simply buying the finished product.
* Self published books are dirt cheap because they're generally really bad, and people aren't inclined to spend money on something untested. But in this system, you'll only pay for what you've already read. There's no real reason to spend less money on an indie title than on something from a big publishing house if you like it.

And regarding your other point, that's obviously a problem, but only for books that aren't already finished - there'll always be plenty of books that are completed if you don't want to risk being disappointed. But hopefully some people will want to encourage a writer to complete something they find fascinating by supporting their project.

Ghost: Yes, those risks need to be addressed, but hopefully the low figures (every support click will only yield some half a dollar) means it won't attract the worst types of sharks! There isn't any easy, quick money to be made here, just a continuous low flow of donations.

Also, padding out a chapter won't work since readers will always get to read it before they donate, and if they sense the writer has stopped caring the word will probably spread.

If anything, I anticipate an emphasis on strongly episodic stories with plenty of cliff hangers between the chapters...

[you]

Ok, so I have this maybe not so original idea for an online writing community, and I would like your input. I don't have that much experience or insight in this stuff, but surely you do.

The idea is pretty simple. People become members of the community. There's a payment service that allows quick payments back and forth. You can be a writer or a reader, or preferably both.

The writers write original stories, which are released chapter by chapter. If you like someone's first chapter, you click on a fund button, which will charge you, say, 50 cents. When you have done this, you get access to the next chapter. And so on.

Essentially, this is both a way for people to support writers they appreciate, but also a way to easily get into a lot of literature (albeit mostly amateur), but only paying for things that keep you intrigued, and that you can stop reading - and paying for - in case you cease being interested.

There will have to be a few rules, such as a set minimum length for every chapter. There could even be two options; a chapter which is 15 pages or something for 50c, and a part which is 30 pages for $1.

Once you buy the first chapter of a new story, a new "book" will be created in your virtual library, and every time you buy another chapter, it will be added to this book. The books will only be readable through the website, although there could be additional apps for handheld devices that let you access your library.

There would be charts for the best selling story chains, but also special lists for the longest chains, or even the largest libraries.

I see the following advantages:
* Writers often find it easy to start writing, but difficult to keep up the pace. Here they can simply release the first chapter and see if people like it. The money and appreciation will hopefully compel the writer to keep going. If it ends up not being funded at all, the writer won't have to waste any more precious time, and can go back to plumbing or whatever.
* If somebody stops writing for whatever reason, you have only paid for the chapters you've read, and most of the times a very small amount.
* The writer isn't obliged to finish a story - as a reader your 50 cents only entitles you to see the next chapter when/if one is written. This means there are no risks involved, no promises to keep.
* The strength is in the numbers; as a reader you will never end up paying more than maybe ten bucks for a full length novel (300 pages), but if a writer can get just a couple of hundred readers that's a pretty substantial salary.

Thoughts? Has this been done already? Many times even? Is it a lousy idea?

http://games.usvsth3m.com/2048/georgian-dream-edition/

I scored 3128 on the Georgian dream edition 2048, and got to the tile with a big park.

I have made some cartoons for my private use

You can insert e.g.
cEgo.SpeechView = 5;
whereever you want in the dialog. If you're using the standard dialog editor, remember to indent normal code with at least one space. Thus:

ego: How are you?
sidekick: My mother just died.
cEgo.SpeechView = [number of sad view];
ego: That's terrible!

For a large game, it might be wise to create custom functions for this so you don't have to remember which view is which, but I don't know if you find that too advanced at this point.

[I think there should be one Backgrounds and one Sprites/animations, basically.]

    Should we separate commercial games from freeware games? If so, how?
           Yes, have a "Best Freeware" reserved to freeware games.

   
    Should we trim the awards categories? We could... (non-exclusive)
        ...merge Music/SFX/Voice into Best Music&Sound.

        ...merge Original Story/Dialogue into Best Writing.
            Yes.

        ...merge ________ into Best Artwork:
         
            Backgrounds/Character-Art into Best Artwork (leave Animation alone).
        I think there should be one Backgrounds and one Sprites/animations, basically.         

        ...merge ________ into Best Game Design:
            forget it! Drop Best Gameplay and leave Best Puzzles intact!

            Leave things as they are.

    Should we add more categories?
        No.

In addition to Mark's notes about fonts, here's a related one: Avoid image-based texts like the plague! This is a rather obvious rule of thumb, but I was totally oblivious to the side effects. The problem, of course, is that those images (e.g. close ups of items with words written on them) will have to be re-painted for every language and programmed to appear in the right place. So, stick to overlays and labels as much as possible!

Ok hopefully this will be my last post in this thread, before it's time for a completed games thread...

Right now testing the various translations - as Mark said he's going for full EFIGS localization on release day, a bit ambitious perhaps but hopefully worth the extra work! It's great to see your own creation fully translated - educational even

And great job Mark on getting it on Steam, GoG and Desura! This is why I need a producer - I hardly know what those sites are all about, much less how to get your game approved there!

So, sorry for the delay everyone, but we're soon there

You can insert code just as usual in the dialog editor, you just need to indent with a space.

Thus:

stop
QuitGame ();

This topic has been moved to General Discussion.

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I think the strong aversion stems from the fact that most beginners, once they feel they've got a grip on the language, tend to squeeze in hundreds of exciting and diverse adverbs and synonyms to "say" in dialogues, which usually ends up looking rather pretentious.

That's where you get all the "the captain retorted contemptuously" instead of just "said", which literary critics and workshop teachers have learnt to loathe.

I'm slightly skeptical toward this kind of very rigid and dogmatic rule sets, but if your main problem with writing is a compulsive overuse of adverbs and extremely long sentences, I guess this can be handy.

I'm also a bit tired of the recent (many decades actually) trend of simplifying everything. These days every style guide I read is basically just about avoiding adverbs, never to use metaphors or similes, make sure there are no redundancies and keep the "fancy" words to a minimum.

Just because Hemmingway wrote tersely and to the point doesn't change the fact that countless other renowned writers have employed a highly flowery and poetic diction.

This topic has been moved to General Discussion.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=50196.0

+1 for genre awards.

Sound effects is probably a redundant and quite tricky category as most designers, even professionals, use libraries, either bought or creative commons.

Best puzzle (as in a specific puzzle) is an interesting idea, but it might be a bit unfair in the sense that it favors a game with one outstanding puzzle (but a dozen other lousy ones) over a game with twenty really good puzzles.

And to reiterate what some people have already wisely said about a game being commercial - it doesn't mean the designer magically got a huge team and could work full time on the project. In my case I still work on my own and have a day job - I just wanted to be able to pay my voice actors and (hopefully) get that money back.

Okay, a few unorganized thoughts here.

It's impossible to say how long it takes to make a game - that's like asking how long it takes to dig a hole. It depends on big a shovel you have, how strong you are, and ultimately how big a hole you want.

Having written both novels and made full length games on my own I don't think the two can be compared - a novel you can always return to when you have the time; you can write a page or two one night when you feel like it, you can easily revise or revert or edit in or out stuff. Even if you just write one page a day, you can get your novel done in a year, and add half a year of editing and polishing and your book is finished. That's a tiny workload.

A game requires you to sit down many hours at a time, because every longer break means you have to spend lots of time finding where the hell you are and what the hell that script actually means and what part of the animation is that sprite really and man did I really leave that walkbehind half finished and what did I really think when scripting that puzzle etc etc. Even the tiniest detail you add or change retroactively can have consequences that aren't clear until you test the game in its entirety. So you test and test and test and everything you fix may hypothetically create a new bug down the line. It's a gargantuan work load.

So I guess I'm going to repeat the popular consensus here - start out small, test the waters. Finish a MAGS. By then you should have an idea of your capacity and pace.