Topics

Yeah, that's right.

I've collaborated with many an AGSer in my day, and in just about every circumstance I've discovered a great sense of camaraderie and an admirable skill-set far beyond my own abilities.  From Ascovel's philosophy and game-analysis to Radiant's unholy scripting abilities, and from Problem's brilliant musical powers to Yarooze's unshakeable optimism, and from Cat's careful attention to detail to Ponch's eerie ability to belch and snore at the same time, I genuinely feel as if these collaborative relationships have helped me grow as a developer and a person.

Thus, with about three weeks to go before OROW, I'm thinking about partnering up.  Hey, maybe I'll hook up with someone and maybe I won't, but for now I'm interested in seeing what's out there on the singles scene.  I'd probably be interested in working with someone I haven't before, at least in a major capacity -getting back together with an ex is rarely a good idea.   What am I looking for in a relationship?  Well, this is more of a one-week fling, so exnay on the long-term ommitmentcay (Baron doesn't need any clinging vines).  Ability to communicate and compromise would be key.  I'm not so fussy about specific skills or experience, since I've been around the block a few times and could probably fill in any gaps.   My ideal partner would be aged 18-63, not because I'm ageist but because I'm not entirely convinced that my mom didn't make an account here at some point and I don't think our relationship can handle the kind of pressure that OROW would inflict.

So what about me?  I have absolutely no pre-conceived ideas about plot or game-style for the competition (parameters to be announced, I'm sure), but I have been thinking it'd be nice to experiment with a new drawing style I've been developing.  I'm young at heart but lengthening in the tooth, quick to laugh and slow to anger, mildly disorganized and often pressed for time.  I like long walks on the beach except when there are jellyfish involved, but I hate pina coladas!  What are they made out of, anyway?  Sour cream?  Guh!

All right, so let's see what kind of action is out there!  Don't get put-off if I dance with more than one of you as I shop the market -I intend to inspect the goods before I make a purchase.     Even if there's not enough hours in the competition to work with everyone, rest assured that my heart is big enough to love you all.

So.... Wanna dance? ââ,,¢Â«

[an entity of less than 3'4" in stature (approx. 100 cm)]

Welcome poets, scribes, and shameless hacks of all ages!  This fortnight's topic is....

Little Folk



Little Folk have it tough on the bottom rung of life.  They get stepped on, have their homes unthinkingly cleared away to make parking lots, and have to breath air at butt or sock level.  But there are advantages to being tiny: you can fit in places that larger, more powerful beings cannot.  You can subsist on mere crumbs, and ride around on toys and steal all kinds of stuff as long as it's not too heavy.  Sometimes whimsical, sometimes humorous, sometimes edifying, stories of wee folk have existed as long as stories themselves.  Your challenge is to write a story of an entity of less than 3'4" in stature (approx. 100 cm), or a society of such folk, in any format of your choosing.  Obviously short stories would be apropos, but we'll read just about anything you can write (we might even deign to vote on it! ).  Little folk constitute anything that suits the definition above, but might include things like: midgets, dwarves, elves, fairies, pixies, brownies, smurfs, mice, fraggles, toys, ants, cockroaches, toddlers, babies, gremlins, gnomes, pixelated adventure game characters scientifically transplanted to the real world, and extremely stunted giraffes.     

Your work will be due at midnight Monday July 20, 2015, with voting to commence the following day to ensure that we haven't left out any Pacific islanders.  Good luck, and watch out for birds of prey!

[Fridge Follies]

Presenting:



Fridge Follies

Baron and Ponch collaborate on this epic one-room journey of a small Starfruit in a big fridge.  Winner of the November 2014 MAGS "food theme" competition, this little gem of a game has finally been remastered and fully voiced for the consumption of the wider gaming public.  Despite an approximate playing time of 5 minutes, this game is chockablock full of zany humour and compelling dialog.  So what are you waiting for?  In the time you've taken to read this promo you could have finished the game already!

Download from the Database

Gameplay: Single click. 

Credits: Concept by Baron & Ponch.  Art and animation by Baron.  Most of the dialog is Ponch.  Scripting was half'n half-ish.  Ponch found music & sounds.  Baron did the voices.  Frodo did our betatesting.

Edit: ...and Frodo and Grundislav did our Scottish and Spanish translations, respectively!  Now who was responsible for the German translation, I wonder....

That's right folks, it's the FWC's own WHODUNNIT Competition!



Mysteries can take many forms, from missing biscuits to murder most foul, to weird sci-fi scenarios where psychics are harnessed to machines to predict crimes and cars self-drive in three dimensions, but the predictions of who the culprit is still come rolling dramatically down a Rube Goldberg marble run .  But it is considered one of the highest art forms of fiction to weave a mystery that is both solvable (if you can piece the clues together properly), and yet confounding to the vast majority of readers.  Your goal for this competition is to craft such a mystery according to the following criteria:

-Target of 1000-2000 words.  We don't disqualify you if you spill over slightly, but don't miss it by an order of magnitude.
-There must be hidden clues that point to the real perpetrator (but of course red herrings are very welcome as well)
-The perpetrator must not be revealed!  Instead we will guess WHODUNNIT?  at voting time, with the big reveal afterwards!

The criteria your work will be judged by will probably include:

-Best character (most believable, compelling, adorable, captivating, or mesmerizing)
-Best setting (best described/developed location for the mystery)
-Best word craft (stylistic marks for good word choice or turns of phrase)
-Best crime (be creative!  It's worth 20% of the votes!)
-Best mystery (the subtle weaving of clues and colour to make the story compelling to our sense of curiosity over WHODUNNIT?!?)

Deadline is midnight June 2, 2015, with voting to be started by me at some point the following day.  Good luck to all participants!  Get out there, and get writing!

[623 words]

Lost in Translation



Why must all the native English writers benefit from an inherent advantage in our little writing comp?  This time around I challenge you to write a short story in another language, and then translate it into English using a tool like Google Translate.  If you are a monoglot of the English persuasion, you will have to write your story in English and then translate it into another language -or perhaps several - and then back into English.  You may edit the text after the fact to either correct glaring errors or (preferably ) to enhance them: the whole point is that each text should read at least a little awkwardly so that the playing field is levelled.

Here's an example:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

-Abraham Lincoln, 1863

...and the same, translated from English to Maori, then Swahili, then Mongolian, then finally back into English (with a bit of help):

Four goals and seven years ago our fathers birthed out of this continent a new family, and brought them the freedom of the same culture.

Well, ok, nobody's going to write something that complex, but it could be fun.  You don't really need to go through the whole translation rigmarole if you can write something that appears to have been computer translated.  Consider that an additional challenge.

Any subject goes, but as computer translation (especially unedited) makes for some hard-slog reading I'm going to ask all contributors to limit their original text to an arbitrary 623 words.  That's a bit short, so if you want to write a fragment of a story (maybe from an incomplete hieroglyphic ruin or something), then that's cool too. If you really need more direction as per theme, write something about Hobos on the lam. 

Deadline is Tuesday April 14.  I will start voting on the 15th so nobody feels short-changed of time.  Since the prose might be a bit choppy and nonsensical the voting categories will give added weight to ideas and characterization.  Some possible voting categories include:

Best Character (so good that it shines through)
Best Editing (nobody wants to slog through something completely unreadable -keep it entertaining! )
Most Unholy Analogy Gone Awry (some things don't translate well -ham it up if you notice this!)
Best Plot Despite Weird Discrepancies (does the gem of your story shine through?)
Best Moral (which piece communicates a real, genuine and important lesson despite a bit of garbling and roughness around the edges?)

Good luck, and have fun!

I'm working on speed drawing for 10-20 minutes a day, as a way to improve my art and to get warmed up for drawing something I might actually use in my current project.  But I got to thinking, why squander all my rubbish art on my own poor eyes alone?   So I thought I might have a stab at resurrecting our interactive fiction game, just for kicks and giggles.  So here's how it will work: I will try to update the game every night with a piece of game art that takes only 10-20 minutes to draw, as well as some explanatory text.  If you haven't participated in one of these games before, here's how it works: you submit commands via text-parser-style to see if you can beat my game.  Please precede your commands with the >> symbols so that I know what your command is.  So post something like:

>>eat rotten sandwich, but don't barf until you're right in front of the mayor

...and then see what happens in the game.  Let's begin:



Welcome to the Hotel Exotica stars Jimmy Wag, a fiery yet diminutive private investigator, and his partner Larry Coffstopsky, a blind eccentric with the superhuman ability to track down anyone in the world by smell alone.  Larry is "The Finder" and Jimmy is "The Seeker" of Find & Seek PI, a firm that picks up where official law authorities leave off.  Now, in the damp of a late autumn evening, they have tracked their quarry, a runaway teenager, to the Hotel Exotica, a seedy establishment on the wrong side of the tracks.



You are carrying: a loaded revolver, three spare bullets, half a ham sandwich, case notes, and a wallet.

Larry confirms that this is the place.  The front entrance is just to the north, while a dark and scary alley lies to the east.  The street appears to be deserted despite -or perhaps because of- the early hour.  Now what?

[Inept Personal Ad]

The Joint Committee of Writing Topic Allocation (ie Sinitrena & Baron) presents...

Ineptitude in Personal Ads

    Love, obviously, is an affair of the heart, but in the quest for love some people obviously leave their brain behind.  For this Valentine's edition of the Fortnightly Writing Competition, we are challenging you to write a fictional Inept Personal Ad wherein your main character is looking for love or companionship.  The format is completely open to the writer's discretion, but can possibly be: a traditional print ad, a dating website profile, a dating site video transcription, a love letter, etc.  The length and tone are up to you: it is an easy topic to have some fun with, but we feel the topic also avails itself to critical analysis of the expectations of what "love" is in this day and age.  We advise you to read the voting criteria (below) carefully, since our ideal entry will balance both humour and thoughtfulness.  But first, some examples to get the creative juices flowing:







   The voting criteria will be as follows:

1) Best Character (most inept, or most date-able, or most rounded, or most endearing....)
2) Best Use of the Language of Love (ie best word-choice/style)
3) Best Hook (the strategy the character uses to stand out from the crowd to get attention)
4) Best Social Commentary (Who has best revealed the good and ugly about modern society and its ideas of love)
5) Best Overall (Most entertaining, sweetest, etc.)

Deadline is February 21, or until there are at least three entries.  There will be no tie-breaking vote by your contest organizers, since we reserve the right to participate (being the two most reliable participants in the FWC in that we have neither of us missed a contest that we were eligible for in the past 2 years ).  As potential participants, we will vote just like everyone else does.  So that this does not lead to confusion about when the contest is over, a strict voting deadline will be enforced (the exact date to be determined once the contest closes).

   Good luck to all participants, and happy writing!

I've got a sprite that I want to build in layers like a sandwich.  So I figured I'd try something called "Dynamic Sprites" that I read about in the manual.  As far as I could figure, if you want to draw on a sprite (which is necessary, because I want the sandwich to move), you have to first create a dynamic sprite, then create a drawing surface for it, then draw something on the surface, and then release.  So I pieced me together a bit of code like so:

Code: ags

DynamicSprite* BurgerOne = DynamicSprite.Create(120, 100, true); 
DrawingSurface *BurgOneSurface = BurgerOne.GetDrawingSurface();
BurgOneSurface.DrawImage (100, 100, 292);  //sprite slot 292 is a slice of tomato
BurgOneSurface.Release ();

...and I got nothing.  Anyone see where I went wrong?  What I'm interested in doing is repeating line 3 over and over again to build up the sandwich, and then call release.  Is this even possible?

[Deadline is no sooner than January 5, 2015]

We're too close to Christmas for a schmaltzy theme: by the time we reach the January deadline it will read like egg-nog that's gone off.  So here's something light-hearted to have fun with, or something profound to explore: it's flexible.  It's pliable.  It's...

THE INCOMPETENT KING


Leaders come in all shapes and sizes, but sometimes people are promoted too far beyond their abilities.  Your "king" could be a CEO, or a president, or a boss, or a headmaster.  She could be an empress, or a arch-sorceress, or a matriarch, or a drill-sergeant.  As long as your story revolves around someone quite ill-suited to their leadership-role then it passes muster with me.  Likewise, the tone of your story could be comedic, or philosophical, or tragic.  History affords us many precedents of ineptitude mixed with power.  Your "king" could be artistically insane like Rome's Nero, or well-meaning but feeble like England's Henry VI.  She could be hopelessly out of touch like France's Marie Antoinette, or a buffoon like America's George Bush II.  What would have happened if Michael Corleone had gotten whacked early on and the mob was inherited by Fredo?  What would happen if Hitler had poured his paranoia and managerial ambitions into an ice-cream reich?  So, pick your nincompoop from history or create him from scratch, and then weave the bestest story ever around his reign of bungling!

All lengths and styles of story are acceptable, from anecdotes to annals, and biographies to ballads.  Have fun!  Entertain us!  Write!

Deadline is no sooner than January 5, 2015

Voting criteria will include:

Best Non-King Character: most believable or captivating or magnetic or unique: could be main character or supporting role
Best King: The King that displays the least aptitude for dealing with their responsibilities (or at least best-king character)
Best Atmosphere: Which story evoked the strongest feelings due to excitement/humour/intrigue/wonder/emotional intensity?
Best Ending: Replacing "best plot" this time around, but mostly dependent on it: which story was constructed so well as to have the best punch at the end?
Best Background World: The best setting or milieu for a story: a place brought to life.
Best Writing Style: The technical art of combining words in clever or gripping ways.
Most Substantive: Which story provides the greatest insight into the foibles of power?  Can be philosophical or humorous.

I look forward to reading your story!  Good luck!

[November 15th, 11:59pm Hawaiian time]

Diaries of the Zombie Apocalypse

Hey there aspiring writers!  This biweek's theme is something I was considering for a writing blitz in the last few days of October, but even though Hallowe'en is past I still think it will be fun.  Your challenge is this: provide glimpses of how the zombie apocalypse would play out if adventure game players were the main survivors.  Sure, have the first-person shooter addicts in there if you must, but I'm not looking for a play-by-play of who shot whom: it'd be much more interesting to see how a thinking person would go about evading or surviving in close proximity to an army of famished undead.  True to the nature of written material during an apocalyptic event, I want you to keep it short, even incomplete and maybe even chaotically disorganized.  Would anyone really know what was going on?  Would events on the ground really make sense to those who were living them?  So I'm looking for brief vignettes, log entries, messages in a bottle, a paragraph, or even just a sentence written out in blood on a wall.  The challenge is to say as much as you can in the briefest of stories. (...But, I'm not going to set a word limit, so if you really want to crank out a novel knock yourself out )

A note on zombies: any reanimated or permanently mentally altered semi-cannibalistic human will do for me: don't think you have to conform to any kind of pre-defined zombie criteria.  As long as they are relatively dumb and hungry for people, I'm good.  So they could be the traditional risen dead, or just infected with some sort of mood-altering plague, or victims of some parasitical alien brain slug species, etc.  Be creative!

Voting will be based on best character, atmosphere, word-style, creativity of survival tactics, efficiency (best story per word used), and best scenario (entertaining combination of zombie type, setting and personalities involved).  The contest closes on November 15th, 11:59pm Hawaiian time, and voting will commence the next day.

Here's some visual ideas to get your brain fluids flowing (and thereby make your brains tastier for zombies!):







Good luck!

Hey,
    This one seems pretty simple on the face of it, so I'm asking in the beginners' forum.  I want to have my character speak when the inventory GUI is open, for example to describe an inventory item.  But when the GUI is up the game is necessarily paused (I know I can set it to not be paused, but I do want it paused for all other purposes), so although the text comes up (and the speech sound file plays), it doesn't disappear unless there is a mouse click.  I want the same speech behaviour as when the game is unpaused (ie speech disappears after a period based on its length or when an associated speech audio file is done playing).

1) Does anyone have any ideas?

2) Does anyone know if there is a game timer independent of whether the game is paused?  The conventional ones all freeze.

I'm using 3.3.0 and no modules. 

[Contest Deadline is Monday September 22 at 10pm EST (7pm Pacific)]

Welcome fellow writers,
     This fortnight's writing challenge is to tell a short story about humans on display in a zoo-like setting.  Maybe they've been kidnapped by aliens, maybe they've been poached from distant times, maybe it's just a day job.  But they must be in some sort of zoo-like habitat, and the plot must deal with what it's like to exist in a confined space that's made to seem familiar. 



Possible plot ideas might include: establishing a pecking order, trying to rebuild a critically endangered society (like an adventure game development company ), escape, running amok just like when humans are free (destroying the environment, or starting a war with another group.... ), dealing with a weird alien behavioural biologist who tries to infiltrate the group, trying to communicate with the slightly different humans in the display across the way, the problems of running a prison camp bartering racket, grossly incompatible beings in the same enclosure (man eating beast, or incompatible personalities), a Lord of the Flies cautionary tale, survivor horror from an epidemic like the "ick" that killed all the fish in my aquarium, mistaken identity (the protagonist shares some mannerisms with a given animal), grossly inadequate climate (AC is too strong, habitat is mostly water/garbage/parked cars), problems with navigating some maze or puzzle to obtain food (humans as lab rats work for me too), or just the goofy things that quasi-intelligent beings come up with to pass the time.  Be creative! Maybe you could write a review of the new display for an alien newspaper, or publish a pamphlet advertisement, or record a folk ballad whose lyrics depict what it's like to live life on display....  Or just write a log entry, or a message on the display wall for the next human to be caught, or a message in a bottle in the display moat.  Surprise me!  Have fun!   

Contest Deadline is Monday September 22 at 10pm EST (7pm Pacific)

[AGS Group Goal]

    I'm interested in starting an AGS motivational/support group for aspiring game finishers.  I envisage this as being a low time commitment enterprise whereby each member's essential function is to hold the others to account for their progress in as positive a way as possible.  "Meetings" would essentially consist of two weekly PMs: one mass mailing to other group members stating the week's progress on your project and the challenges you've encountered trying to make progress, and one personal PM to another group member as a response (obviously you could respond to everyone if you chose, but I think a mandatory minimum is necessary to guarantee that everyone gets support).  Why the PM route?  Well, there's already a forum to post your game if all you want is attention: I was thinking of something more personal.  Also, some members might have projects that aren't ready to be announced, or are intentionally being kept on the DL, or don't necessarily want to air their dirty laundry to the public at large.  And, lets face it, enthusiasm for a GIP thread dies much more quickly than the developer's need for motivation: ideally the PM format will fill this gap.  AND it's personal.  There's no hiding, or saying you didn't check the thread.  Somebody has taken time out of their busy schedule and written: "Baron, why you no make progress?!?", and you've got to face that.  Ideally this will result in more AGS games being completed, especially mine!

Here are the group dynamics I propose, but I'm open to other ideas being discussed.

AGS Group Goal: Motivate and be motivated by a small band of like-minded and like-muddled developers.

Membership: 6-8 members would be ideal, but realistically there will probably be some churn.  Membership would be open to all skill-levels, but proper manners and a supportive attitude are compulsory.  All members must be currently developing a game (no free loaders!).  I'm not fussy about how far advanced the project is, but if there's enough interest it might be worthwhile to split into groups of fellow travellers who are at the same point in the development cycle (but let's not get ahead of ourselves yet ).

Commitment: Minimal, as to maximize time for working on your project!   This is not a social gathering, although you can feel free to send social PMs to group members outside of Group business.  And it's not for tech support, or C & C, or for attention seeking, or for idea brainstorming.  It's about holding each other accountable for following through on what we all acknowledge to be our personal goal from the outset: to finish a game.  A longish-term commitment would be ideal, since I foresee members developing an attachment to the success of the other group members projects.  You are under no obligation to share sensitive material, builds, assets, etc., but you should be prepared to demonstrate progress in your weekly PM (describe work, problems, rough sketches, etc.)

Atmosphere: Positive!   We can do this!  Ra, ra, ra!  There's a thread for criticism: Group should be all about getting things done.  Maybe the quality of those things might be iffy, but they can always be improved upon later should the developer chose.  GO TEAM!  [igm]Tabata cheery smiley[/igm]

Exact Format: To be determined once the group is actually assembled, but ideas are welcome below.

AGS Group Name:  I like how cheesy "Group" sounds, but we can probably do better. 

So, feel free to offer ideas below, or sign up, or tentatively sign up.  For organizing purposes please clearly communicate the following information to help us see where our members/potential members are at:

Name: Baron (actually this isn't necessary, since you'd be posting using your account....)
Interested in Group (Yes/No/Tentative): Yes (why else would I have started this thread )
Game Dev Skill (Beginner/Intermediate/Jedi Master): Intermediate
Project Status (Starting/Middle/Ending/Post Production): Starting
Estimated Project Completion: Approximately one year

Greetings Tech Experts,
     I've got this GUI with overlapping buttons.  Everything looks great, but the buttons aren't square so in order to make them "fit" properly they have to overlap each other (at least, the empty box that's a part of the sprite but isn't visible overlaps).  Functionally everything works fine, except that the invisible portion of the highest (z-order) button seems to be intercepting clicks meant for the graphic visible underneath.  This behaviour is unlike other AGS elements such as objects, where even if blank portions overlap it is the visible one that interprets the click.  This is only a problem around the edges of my buttons where the overlap occurs, but I foresee it being frustrating for users.  Is there a simple workaround for this or am I going to have to use my ...*sigh*... brain?

[Photoshop Phrenzy]

A little while back Selmiak had an awesome idea to resurrect Photoshop Phriday, the much loved competition that ran off and on from 2005-2010.  But all the cool kids know that the real action on the Forums is migrating from the over-regulated Comps Board to the wild-west Rumpus Room.  I therefore propose that Photoshop Phriday morph into Photoshop Phrenzy, whereby participants are freed from the strictures of a regulated competition and just have fun doing (or viewing) a creative activity.

So here's the non-rules:

1) Anyone can post an interesting picture to be butchered by the rest of us
2) Anyone can photoshop anything posted in the thread
3) Amusement shall be maximized.

To get things rolling I've taken selmiak's proposed picture....



...and turned it into this:



Surely somebody can do better: now prove it! 

So I just rewrote my speech bubble code so that the speech bubbles conform more closely in size to the length of text presented therein.  Usually this wasn't an issue with the old code, but for very short strings (e.g. "No.") it looked a little funny with a bubble that was way too long.  So now I'm calculating the bubble width dynamically using an algorithm based on the string length, and it works perfectly now even with strings as short as "!".  But then I was testing with some voice files for voice speech and discovered, to my horror, that the  invisible characters that denote which speech file to play (e.g. "&1") contribute to the string length!  So now I'm back to having a large gap of white space around my very short strings, thereby negating all my efforts.
    So my question is, is there a way to dynamically calculate the length of the "&xxx" substring, so that I can subtract it from the length of my total string?  The "&" character is easy (length =40 at the font I'm using), but the number could be anything from 1 to the hundreds....  If I was using ActionScript I'm pretty sure I could build a string out of two smaller strings and thus determine their length separately, but I haven't been able to figure out a way to do that in AGS.  Can anyone help a brother out?  Thanks!

[Deadline is Saturday June 14]

The Fortnightly Writing Competition kindly invites you to write on the topic of....
Game Review

Jay Jonah Jepson of the Daily Bloggle has invited you to write a 1000 word review of the best game never made for his website.  This review can contain characters, puzzles, plot arcs and even spoilers, so long as it is entertaining enough to keep eyeballs on the page (and thus keep J.J.J.'s advertisers happy).  Also ol' J.J.J. isn't too fussy about the exact word count: that's just a ballpark figure he threw at you, based on his archaic perception of the media business as filling space on paper.  You have two weeks to create this fictional game review, starting..... Now!

Here's an example, just to get you thinking:

What do a witch, a walking onion, and the ghost of Ronald Reagan all have in common?  A singular bond of camaraderie in Begippered!, an audacious new adventure game from the makers of Hillbilly High and Squeeze Me, I'm Juicy.  Deliciously fresh comedy is paired with devilishly wicked social commentary to create what may well be the best game released so far this year.  The pace is fast, the dialog snappy, the locations exotic and the puzzles fiendishly silly: you'll fall in love with Begippered! at first sight, and find yourself still married to it 60 years later.  The game is that good!
     The action begins implausibly at Kim Jong Il's 50th birthday party in the North Korean presidential palace.  You play as Topaz, a spirited young woman of mixed broccoli/cabbage ancestry and an unfortunate water allergy, who is at one and the same time the best Greatful Dead fan-girl and the worst-skilled witch of all time, and at this very moment is just trying to make ends meet by working the birthday crowd in a swelteringly hot Hello Kitty costume.  She might just have pulled this mascot gig off but for the meddlesome antics of the ghost of Ronald Reagan, whose poltergeist brinksmanship initiates a small nuclear war, resulting in vegetables mutating into humanoid creatures bent on taking over the world....

Your fictional game must be a computer game, but not necessarily an adventure game.  It can be a project you've already thought of, but didn't build (or release....) for whatever reason.  As long as the game is substantially unmade, it is fair game.  The main thing I'm looking for is the ability to sell an agenda: if it's the best game ever, your review should leave me drooling into my open wallet; if it's the worst game ever, your review should be as scathing as it is cutting; if it is a beautiful game, your review should leave me with a sense of awe and wonder.  So be creative, have fun, and write, write like the wind!

Deadline is Saturday June 14.  Voting will start when I get internet access on the evening of the 15th, so if you're are one of the many AGSers who live next to the international dateline in French Polynesia, you'll still have lots of time to meet the deadline. 

Goodbye and... goodluck! 

So what's the deal with the "rirrom" level?

Spoiler

Yeah, I get that it's "Mirror" backwards, but how do I solve it and get my Beer?!

[close]

[Blue Lobe Inc.]

Baronic Games is proud to present the release of....

Blue Lobe Inc.



Three daring AGS entrepreneurs start up their own commercial indie label in their parents' basement in this zany web-comic/sit-com/adventure-game!  Join Lazarus (the writer/musician), Mothra (the coder) and Cuddles (the artist) as they struggle manfully against the myriad of setbacks that beset their project.  Will they be able to scavenge enough coffee to fuel the completion of their project demo?  Will Lazarus be able to salvage his inspiration to finish the soundtrack?  Will the group be able to beat off the negative publicity generated by internet trolls?   Find out more than you wanted to know about these questions and more in this thrilling peek into the adventure-game creating process!

Features:

-Fully voiced by full AGSers!
-Playable pixel game demo!
-Professional quality soundtrack!
-Irreverent adventure game humour!
-Obscure references to adventure game classics!
-Voice cameos by AGS A-listers!
-A full hour of gameplay!
-Deloused and debugged by experienced beta testers!

This game is part of the AGS Bake Sale II Bundle, which is fundraising to defray the costs of the AGS server.  Eager players should head on over there and....

Download Now!

Edit November 2015:  I kinda forgot to release this to the general public after the Bake Sale rights lapsed, so... here it is!

[Midnight Thursday April 17]

Greetings fellow writers,



       Ever wonder at the supply-chain behind the wine cellar kept by Tokein's wood-elves?  Where did all of Mr. Baggin's dishes come from, anyway?  Where do you buy those magnificent wizard hats that Gandalf wears around?  Your challenge this fortnight is to create a short story around a fanciful business idea of yore.  Maybe your main character will be undertaking an historically plausible enterprise before its time, like stringing hammocks between mammoth tusks, or maybe your business idea is just pure fantasy, like salvaging scrap-iron from Dragon poop.  The only strict requirement is that your character be an entrepreneur who actually believes that his idea might change the world, or at least make him a quick buck.

       All entries are to be submitted by Midnight Thursday April 17, with voting to start sometime on the 18th (to accommodate stragglers along the international date line submitting at the last possible moment ).  Write short and prosper -go!