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People are talking about "giving away stuff" and "spoiling", but if you're making a demo for an adventure game, I don't think it should be a cut of what your actual game will be- that seems boring, and in that case, I'm not sure a demo is useful. I mean, sure, if you are going to have a year or something between releasing the demo and the full game, it might make sense to allow the player to retread stuff they saw in the demo.

But otherwise, while it is a little bit more effort, I'd suggest using locations and characters and music- all reused assets- and writing style of your final product, but have what actually happens be slightly different. Might even be cool to allow it to function as a prequel or sidestory (that doesn't take away from the main game if it is not played). I remember LucasArts adventure game demos used to do this, and it was always cool playing them, as they were their own little unique mini-adventures.

Dishonored is a confused game. I don't think it figured out whether it wants to be a stealth game, or a violentkillkill game.
The main action button is the one that stabbed your knife straight ahead, and the secondary action be whatever you had equipped.
And because by default they're mapped reversed (left-click is the action with your right hand, stabbing faces, and right click is secondary action with equipped item), I was constantly going up to people, trying to use the heart on them to read their minds, and consequently stabbing them in the face.

I seem to remember this being brought up, and then the issue mentioned (bandwidth, maybe?), but wouldn't it be more convenient to have the art available separately so that one could see all the images or at least "packs" without downloading them? Having one massive torrent or download file that you then have to browse through to see if it has anything that fits with what you need is a bit inconvenient.

No, I don't think anyone here can beat LimpingFish's "score" 

Denver the Last Dinosaur?

Oh dear...I had no idea. I had been missing him for a while here on AGS. He was always quite active on #AGS, and then also on Stickam/tokbox/whatever we used to group voicechat on. So much of my art was informed by him, as was so much of my AGS experience.

Ah, I see. I suppose an iconic bit of one's work is totally valid as a sort of identifier (for example Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment company taking its name from one of his works and its logo from another), but I feel if it isn't either a reasonably well-known work, or the item itself isn't reasonably clear, it would just cause confusion.

Not sure what sort of content your videos would have, but the intro video doesn't make any sense. A person is standing in some garishly wallpapered corridor, and then someone offscreen throws a laser discus and beheads him?
What point are you trying to communicate? What sense are you trying to give with the intro? How does laser-beheaded man communicate philosophy of horror?

This place definitely is more left-wing than other places I frequent on the web as an avid gamer and game developer.  Personally, I don't mind that, but I could be biased  , as so many other places I frequent are so virulently right-wing (I hate that sort of political/economic division to describe it, though- transphobia and xenophobia aren't supposed to be political positions).

Anyways, since we're airing grievances:

That TK guy is too nice! I mean, as a newbie, I might have felt him and ScummBuddy and Necro and Gilbot and TerranRich and Radiant (all too nice!) were a bit sharp (the original Khris! ), but I probably wouldn't have learnt AGS without them
Same for that Necro guy. Always promoting smoking and being a reptile by making it look cool in his avatar, but still, helping me in AGS
And that MrColossal. Acting like such a huge guy, but at least helping me out with those awesome tutorials. Without him and miez and ildu and DarthMandarb (WHERE IS THAT DAMNED STAR WARS GAME? I'VE BEEN WAITING OVER A DECADE) and Farlander, I'd be even more of a pixel-art idiot than I am now.
And m0ds for making music that was just too good! People got the wrong expectation of my game with that stuff!
And Evil and Peter Thomas and miez again and even Tanker for giving my my first experience working on a game in a team. WHY WOULD YOU SUBJECT ME TO THAT?!
And Iqu/Ian/Squinky the First for hosting my first site for so many years. Why would you allow me to inflict that on the internet?
And Custard and Vel and Al_Ninio and AGA and BOYD and FSi and the lot for making me stick with IRC. It's 2020, and I'M STILL THERE!
And ProgzMax for being good in art, music AND scripting. Sure, you may have helped me in all those things, but it's unfair on the rest of us!
And Scotch for spending several hours helping me set up and get OpenCV running way back when. Sure, I thanked you in my Thesis acknowledgements, but why would you let me think that gesture recognition was the future of computing?!
And Opo Terser for randomly showing up in C&C Lounge, dumping an incredibly beautiful fix to whatever was being asked for criticism, specifying that it was done in MSPaint, and then disappearing. Why make the rest of us feel so inadequate?!
And bicilotti for burning in the image of breakfast in bed from a bald, velvet-bathrobe-clad italian stallion into my head forever
And Matt for never giving me that signed pixel-art that he promised
And Ali for confusing me into thinking "Hey, another muslimbro on the forums, I'm not alone!". SO MANY YEARS I WAS DISILLUSIONED
And Ghost for keeping me up so many late nights due to different time zones, with help and conversations (I miss you, buddy)
And CrimsonWizard for constantly dragging AGS forward and making me need to constantly learn it again.

To be honest, there are far too many of you that I have grievances with. It's because of all of you I've been trapped here since 2003. Otherwise, I'd have bounced when AGS dumped the Interaction Editor.

I don't know if that will help you, but what I do when I attempt a puzzle design is I make a list of all possible objects and background elements that might belong with the location my character is in, along with that character's starting items.

And I mean literally everything that comes to mind, so for an outer wall of a sorcerer's castle it might be a pile of stones, a loose brick, pieces of old mortar, a tree trunk, a body of an adventurer, a barred castle window, a bent rusty climbing hook, odd looking mushrooms, a rodent's nest, foliage, a small sentinel beholder, a human turned into stone, berries, a lost pouch, wall, distant castle tower, the sorcerer's watchful familiar, growing herbs of all kind, etc...

Then I reflect on the list and try to think what kind of challenges and item combinations might fit. When I come up with something I can use, I put it in a flowchart along with prerequisites and results, and attempt to slowly sew everything together.

This usually gives me ideas that would have likely never occurred to me if I was trying to tackle the puzzle sequence working down from the main storyline.

This really helped, Kastchey, thanks! My puzzles are done, and I have about 2 weeks to go 

Isn't that essentially the "Click X to continue" genre, heltenjon?
And Cassie, the "series of objectives blocked by obstacles" IS supposed to be the story, not be shoehorned in. An adventure game story essentially being a challenge placed against the player character that they need to overcome.

I had seen that video before, Ali! It is very interesting, but I struggle to see how I could implement the ideas it provides to create a process to make adventure game puzzles (rather than a series of Myst-like ones).

*Babar looks at the date and sighs

I'll try to implement the ideas provided in this thread, thanks! And keep them coming if you have more

[objectives]

Puzzles really seem to be the least investigated element of ags game development here, with the fewest resources!

I had decided yet again to attempt this month's MAGS, and yet again I was stumped at the very first(ish) step.

In my mind, the process of developing a game is:

• Come up with an idea
• Flesh out a series of objectives blocked by obstacles that when solved give certain results/rewards (access to new areas, plot progression, some sort of meaningful change in the game world)

- these could be kind of recursive, with major objectives/obstacles having a series of smaller objectives/obstacles

• Start doing the art/coding/dev for that sequence, adjusting stuff as you go as required

I always get stuck at the 2nd step. With MAGS it is especially frustrating, because I realise "I need to limit my scope, so as to be able to actually finish the game, and limited scope/size seems very often in my head to run contrary to having meaningful objectives/obstacles and results.

So for this month, the theme was "White Elephant". Not to give all the details, but I decided to make a game about a rogue-esque character who got a blessing (that turned out to be a kind of a curse) due to a gift/reward for acquiring some treasure for a sorcerer type person. Her solution is to break into the sorcerer's castle and steal it from him and thus hopefully "nullify" the conditions for the reward and get rid of it.
I came up with the premise, I came up with overall objective, I came up with the eventual ending. I even came up with (what I thought was) a limited scope adventure with obvious progression: breaking into a castle, getting the treasure/maybe confronting the sorcerer, getting out.

Except I'm stuck now. I can't figure out puzzles. I mean, I could do what in my mind would be a BAD adventure game with BAD puzzle design, i.e. just make a series of figurative locks and keys (maybe even randomly pulling from one of the many lists of puzzle types that people have been compiling here), culminating in "Yay, you won the game, here is the end scene!", but...I don't want to do that. That seems like a recipe for an uninteresting adventure game.


I can't remember having played any AGS game with particularly spectacular puzzle design, but I would be curious as to the process you fine people employ to come up with puzzles, and maybe help me out. I'm not looking for help on this specific MAGS (or I would've probably posted in CL), but more asking for process advice.

The "good" Robin Hood that I don't like is the one with Russell Crowe - too serious.  It may not be a masterpiece but I had a good time with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as a child, thanks to Alan Rickman notably.

I'm not sure that many would consider it a good Robin Hood. In fact, my preference is where Prince of Thieves (and thus by osmosis, Men in Tights) took much of its inspiration from: Robin of Sherwood. Some might be turned off by the cheese today, but I still quite like it, although that's probably a topic for the other thread.

I'm not sure if it is fair to call a movie directed by John Woo and starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage "should have been bad", but...

It absolutely could have been but wasn't 

So you have (in half-assed notation):
tree-z (vowel)
eye-z (glide)
bed-z (voiced consonant)
wish-ez (sibilant)

However, when you have a word ending in an unvoiced consonant, the -s is unvoiced, /s/:
pin-s
cop-s

I'm more of just a speaker than someone who knows all the intricate rules, so to be totally honest, I don't get the differences between the classifications you listed, but I've always pronounced it 'pinz' (the link shows a word with a different meaning, but I can't find audio of 'pins' on the internet anywhere).

What a dramatic story

Spoiler

AI Dungeon
You're about to enter a world of endless possibilities, where you can do absolutely anything you can imagine.... Will you proceed?
Home
Generating story...
Tip: Want more story to generate? Just press enter without typing in an action.

You are Winter, a wizard living in the kingdom of Larion. You have a staff and a spellbook. You finish your long journey and finally arrive at the ruin you've been looking for. You have come here searching for a mystical spellbook of great power called the book of essence. You look around and see several magical markings on the floor. One in particular catches your eye, and you notice a stone staircase leading underground. Will you go down the stairs?

> You read magical marking.
You walk into the magic markings. You feel a tingle up and down your spine. Suddenly you levitate in the air, screaming. Your mind is blasted with images of the Emperor.

> You float to tower.
You float into the tower, landing on a stone floor. You stand, staring around at your surroundings. You feel weak, tired, and exhausted. Your surroundings look very familiar. This tower... this room...

> You flashback to when you were here last.
The images in your head continue to assault you.
You are a human wizard named Ian. You are searching for the lost civilization of Thaluvan, the inhabitants of which were wizards.

> You find Thaluvan civilisation.
You find the ruins of a great city in the desert. After much searching, you discover a single wall painting that looks very much like an eye.
You are Ian again.

> You look at eye painting.
The eye painting is of a being with a single, demonic eye in the middle of its forehead. It holds a long, curved dagger in its hand.
You are Ian again.
A voice whispers from behind you.

> You turn around and see who whispered.
You turn around, staring at a tall, deathly pale being with a scarred, skull-like face, wearing black armor.
It raises its long, curved dagger, and strikes you through the chest.

> You cast fireball at pale being.
You cast a small fireball in your hand and throw it at the creature.
The fireball hits the creature, causing it to howl in pain. It strikes you, who were standing behind Ian, in the back.

> You unfold reality back to normal.
You wake up and hold your chest, breathing heavily. You are still in the ruined tower, though you are now in a sea of blood. The floors, walls, and ceiling are spattered with blood.

> You check to see if you are hurt.
You feel around inside your body. You realize you are unharmed. You sit up, breathing heavily.
The flashbacks to your past continue to assault your mind, but you push them away.

> You look for clues about the book of essence.
You begin to search the room for any clues about the book of essence. You walk over to the bloody corpse of a large, black creature.
It appears to be a vampire. You wonder if he could help you.

> You ask vampire corpse if it has seen the book of essence.
You stand over the corpse of the large black vampire. You wonder if he might know where the book is.

> You listen to vampire corpse.
You listen to the raspy breathing of the vampire. It slowly sits up, looking at you. It begins to chuckle, and reach inside it's black armor.

> You cast shield on yourself in preparation.
The vampire suddenly swings it's arm, hitting you in the side of your head. You fall down, clutching your head.
"You won't be needing that any more." The vampire says, and laughs.

> You ask vampire what you won't be needing anymore.
You look at the vampire in shock.
"That book of yours, duh." It says.
The vampire continues to laugh.

> You read spellbook.
The spellbook appears in your hands, and you look at the cover.

[close]

And just like that, my quest was completed. The book was with me all along. How...conclusive.

And as a final update, seemingly after the bundle has finished, a few more additions. Most notable (for me) is the book "Simply the Best", a book of interviews with game developers, including AGD Interactive, Sierra people, Eric Chahi, Jeff Vogel, etc.

I'm surprised at how little interest this bundle garnered here, considering it's contents and cause . Maybe it was my mistake posting it in a pre-existing thread.

Just a little over a day left for the bundle, so if you want loads of games (even more were added since my last post- Anarcute in games, some more tilesets and GameMaker Studio assets being noteworthy- but I've added them into their respective collections in the links there) as well as supporting racial equality, you should get it now. It had a $5 million goal which it hit already, and it is at $6 now.

PS: I'm using this site to more easily parse the games and other stuff

I just realised by looking at the topic: do 3d printed dolls count as handmade? 

And now it is 51!
I've made a couple of collections to make it easier to go through the stuff available:
Significant games according to my personal taste- The meat of the bundle, with a lot of highlights that I've noted above, but everything in this list is something I would eventually want to play
All the game-dev assets available- Some for Godot, some for Construct, some for GameMaker, some for Unity, and some graphical assets, most of which appear to be high quality, but there are a few meh ones too
Books- Novels, Light Novels, Short Stories, Comics, Colouring Books. A couple of highlights for me are "HG101 Presents: The Guide to Classic Graphic Adventures", and a Worldbuilding book (meant for ttrpgs, but still)
Music- Mostly game soundtracks, with a couple of highlights from Danny Baranowsky
Mobile Games- Mostly Android, I'm always curious to try DRM-free games that aren't chock-ful of ads and IAPs. Good stuff I know about includes Super Hexagon, Lyne and Tallowmere

They're listed in the reverse order that I added them, so it's actually the more obscure stuff on top. I probably missed some soundtracks that were listed as games and had soundtracks as extras, and I didn't mention a lot of in-browser and HTML5 games that weren't explicitly listed as Mobile, but could probably be played on the mobile.
Also, there are a LOT of physical/table-top games that I was collating, but the variation in quality and the massive quantity sort of numbed me down, and I stopped at 200: Physical Games