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Indian Independence: It was 1947, Ghandi was making a fashion statement and cheating on his [salt] taxes.  Muslims and Hindus make massive migrations to the new religiously homogenous states of Pakistan (east and west) and India, resulting in many a bloody encounter.  Bollywood is still in black and white.

OK, there's this guy who won an election to become the new head of state of his country.  He is 42 years old, and is considered one of the most charismatic politicians to come along for a long time.   He is taking over from an old guy who was the supreme commander in a war that ended fifteen years previously.  Who is this guy?

So, Baron, you're probably about half done with the next chapter by now, right?

Yeah, that'd be about the pace I work at.  But no, I haven't any sequel in the works.  Those pixel animations are just way too time consuming for a new parent like myself....  Plus my co-programmer got run over a couple of months back, and it just wouldn't be the same doing CF without him.

I just want to say that it's an antrocity that this game hasn't been nominated for any AGS award. Certainly have been one of the top 3 games I most enjoyed in 2008.

Thanks for the nominations!  We'll get 'em next year.....

Baron

I would like to specifically nominate FUNKMAST's awesome music in BESIEGED (see above) for the best music award.

That was a pretty sweet little racer game.  The texture of the backgrounds made it visually stimulating to look at, and I like the "rubber on the pavement" feature.  I had the hardest time making any progress -twiddle fingers isn't really my thing -but I managed on Easy mode and with the help of track 3 to beat the game.  I would have appreciated more middling levels to build up my skills.

One question: if the guy you're delivering for has planted a bomb in the package, why doesn't your car blow up if you don't make it in time?

All in all, congratulations, kudos, back pats, etc. etc.  Although not an adventure, it's a very well polished game for a first outing. 

Alright, new version 1.03 is up fixing all identified bugs. 

And I had forgotten that Yarooze's Necroquest had the undo too  :.  Basically the philosophy is that saving should only be necessary if you're going to leave the game half-played to do something else.  The whole idea of needing to save at every instant "just in case" introduces a needless anxiety to the gaming experience, in my opinion.  Some would say it makes the danger seem more "real", because there is a real consequence to dying, but I think that's a minority opinion these days.  As a game-maker, I have the most fun creating diabolical and fun ways for the player to meet his/her demise, so why would I punish you for exploring them?

Anyhoo, happy C-day to all.  If anyone is burning a copy of B:OHTGOOAC....WBC to put under the tree for a friend, I want to hear about it!

Baron

Hey, thanks for the comments:

     Regarding Retry/Undo: it's featured in my other games, but I haven't seen it elsewhere yet.

     Regarding Bug Report: Thanks!  I'm working on a new version fixing a variety of dead interactions, so I'll be sure to fix that before releasing.  I'll get it up in a day or two.

Baron
   

....always trying to wake up the guard  :.
       Alright, version 1.02 fixes -in a more comprehensive way -the bug that should have been fixed in version 1.01, namely the wakeful guard walking dead.  There are also a few spelling corrections.  Let me know of any further bugs and I shall ZAP them!
       Always glad to hear more people are enjoying the game.

Baron

Version 1.01 is up, fixing the "Wake Up" bug (I hope).

Thanks for all the comments -we're glad the game is being enjoyed!

Baron

[BESIEGED]

Announcing.....
BESIEGED
Or, How to Get Out of a Castle..... Without Being Catapulted

A short and silly adventure game by Baron and Yarooze.





PLOT:
        The king is besieged in his castle by the evil Count Bleicher.  Food and time are running out for the defenders.  In desperation the king hatches a scheme to catapult a messenger over the enemy to bring reinforcements.  The only problem is that, even to the deeply ignorant medieval mind, catapulting means almost certain death to the one experiencing it.  Naturally the top soldiers shirk the honour onto someone lower down the hierarchy, until the buck finally stops at the lowly Dung Shoveler. 
   The Dung Shoveler must now break the siege and save the castle.  Success may well win him the heart of the Sexy Servant Girl, while failure will bring certain death, either at the hands of the besiegers or his own side!  You must guide the Dung Shoveler through this short but potty-humoured adventure.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
       -Music by Funkmast
       -Lots of silly dialogue
       -Did I mention the potty humour?

       ***There's a tid-bit of medieval violence and a lot of dung in this game.  If this makes you squeamish then.... well, too bad for you.  Otherwise......

DOWNLOAD NOW

Greetings expectant gamers,
        We are confident that this game will be released this coming weekend, probably sometime between Friday November 28 and Saturday November 29, depending on your time zone.  We look forward to your download,

The Besieged Team

Man, Dualnames really wants to do some music!  I'm going to pester him the next time I start a project.

What do I need?  Reliable Beta-Testers for BESIEGED: Or, How to Get Out of a Castle...  This project is 99.99999999% done.  We're waiting to switch out a music track, and that's it.  But I need more eyes to go over it, to ensure that it's as bug free as possible.  It's a short game: you can finish it in 10 minutes with a walkthrough, and it probably won't take you more than an hour or two to go through every possible interaction.  Write up your findings: bugs, glitches, type-o's, spelling errors and plot inconsistencies, and you're done!
        But what's in it for you, you ask?  Credit in the game, first crack at it, and the gratitude of millions of adoring fans.  Well, alright thousands. 

Interested applicants should PM me -I won't bite, seriously!  Well, I suppose I should qualify that...  There was that one incident after all.... :  But I haven't bitten anybody recently, and that's what counts.  Just don't push me....
One other hitch: we're releasing this game next weekend (November 29/30), so I'll need to hear from you before Tuesday if you're on board. 

I think this is a really good idea; obscure bible references would make for some pretty challenging puzzles!  And I'm sure there's a large pool of people out there who would want to play such a game.  If you could help teach moral lessons that would be a great bonus.  Ignore the skeptics: this is a good concept.
      I disagree that there is no place for parody in Christian moral edification: Veggie Tales proves that.  But I can understand why you would want to make it a serious game.  Personally I'm a pretty irreverent guy, however, so I don't think I can be of any assistance.

AL-QUEST 1 was made only using the old interaction editor, back with version 2.54.  Except for the arcade game, that is: I mostly ripped that script from the demo game  :.  I partly learned the scripting language by using the editor and looking at the code equivalent that would show up at the bottom.  But I agree that the demise of the editor was probably a good thing -sure it was easy (at least to do simple things), but in the long run it was an unnecessary crutch that just slowed me down.

Hey Ho AGSers,
           Just a quick note to update you on the project -Yarooze will update the first post shortly.   We're on schedule: only a few dialogues to write/polish and some GUIs to fix up.  This means that we will be requiring the services of 2-3 beta testers by the end of the week.  Experience is an asset, discretion a must.  English language skills would be nice (for proofreading).  This is a short game so the time commitment we need from the successful applicant(s) will be somewhere in the 2-4 hour range during the week of November 7-14ish.  Interested parties should rave about the project in this thread and/or PM me directly before November 6th.  Thank you in advance for your interest,

Baron 

My dumb brother cartwheeled my car once -with me in the back seat!  It was close to dawn and a deer jumped out of the forest right in front of him -he swerved to avoid (good) but lost control (bad).  Fortunately we were on a stretch of open road on the way up treeplanting, so the back was packed with sleeping bags and other cushy gear -I was well insulated and walked away unscathed, while he had only a few minor cuts and bruises.  The scary thing is that the car came to a rest not two feet from a telephone pole that would have crushed the car on impact.  Since our contract required us to be 1000km away by the next day neither of us really thought much about it right after the fact -there was so much to do to deal with the car, the law, and the hitch-hiking with all the gear.  It only really sank in the next day how close we'd come to being killed.

I'll be back again this year -I have meticulously planned my schedule around it by wrapping up most of my other projects to cut down on distractions.  The bar I set last year was pretty low (16,000 words), due to the fact that we moved houses right in the middle of the month -there's no place to go but up for me.  I'm shooting for the 50K of course, but I will be happy if I can double last year's total.

If we're going to make use of the Wiki (which I think is a good idea) perhaps we should make a list of Wiki articles that need writing?

This is not a bad idea actually.  The list could be in a sticky thread perhaps in the Technical Archive.  The first post could include a check list of best practices and other suggestions.
It also wouldn't be a bad idea if would be authors posted a thread with an abstract of the article they intend on publishing.  Others would be able to make suggestions or other inputs at the beginning and would be able to critique the article when it was finished.   I don't know - perhaps people will just ignore such threads? 

    The idea is good, but I think the thread could get pretty unwieldy pretty quickly.  The "List of Wiki Articles Needing Writing" thread would quickly become outdated, meaning a potential writer would have to read through the whole thread to get up to date, every time (to check for new information).  Either that, or a co-ordinator would have to spend good time keeping the first post up to date.  A more practical solution would be to put the list directly into the Wiki, so that anyone could edit it (add, subtract).  If the list were made with dead links (you know, the red fonts -not sure of terminology here), then all potential writers would have to do is click and write.
    I agree in theory that it would be good for an editorial review panel to look over articles before they're published, but due to a lack of manpower I believe this will have more negative results than positive.  1) The review process will certainly delay progress, 2) it will probably discourage more than a few writers from contributing, 3) It is somewhat against the spirit of a Wiki.  I realize at Wikipedia there is typically discussion about major changes to articles, so perhaps some criteria for "major change" or "article of importance" could be published: otherwise, just let the users try their best and edit what you don't agree with.
    As for articles to write, anything with a dead link is an obvious start.  Babar is right that the information regarding games can be found elsewhere, but this is true of all Wiki entries.  The idea here is to synthesize information so that it can be easily accessible to non-experts.  I would say stubs and articles on published AGS games should be fair game for anyone who has played them.  Histories of AGS community phenomena written by a protagonist would also be handy  -editorial summaries of some of the competitions to date, summaries of each AGS meet, a compilation of CJ's April Fools pranks, etc.  I would also say stubs for AGS people that you "know" couldn't go too far awry -they can't be any worse than some of the ones already there.  There is already a massive list of dead-linked Walkthroughs that should be addressed -much of this information is on the net so it need only be brought into Wiki format.  Other contributions could be left open-ended -publish what you know about "Politics in Adventure Games" (for example) with the expectation that someone else will (eventually) add to your work.

Well, you inspired me to set up an account over at the wiki and add an article.  I'd add more, but I'm....

too busy/lazy to do so

at the moment.  But if even half of all AGS members write an article, there'd be a lot of interesting reading.  If you're reading this post then I challenge you to stop wilfing, go to the AGS Wiki and write an article. 

Well, I for one am excited.

[1) Theme]

This isn't set in stone, but it's usually how things go:

1) Theme -this is the seed of an idea.  It's the location, mood, main character, but all in the abstract.  It has to come first: you can't just make a game into the vacuum.  Al-Quest 1 proved that....

2) List of characters, locations & objects in separate columns -the idea being to keep everything "on theme" so it all "fits" in the story.  Then I draw lines connecting things, essentially making the puzzles.  I might sketch a character or two in the margin.

4) Draw & animate main character's walk-cycle.  I have to see him/her alive in the AGS environment before I can proceed.

3) Write up a task list for game events and estimate how long each will take.  The list is usually based around drawings (backgrounds, animations) necessary for each puzzle/plot advancement.  I will quickly (1 min.) sketch a background or a new character, but otherwise it's right down to work.  I usually start with the hardest/most time consuming task, plugging away a little bit everyday until it's all done.  I like to get one "task" done per day (it keeps me motivated), so they're usually broken down into one/two hour increments.  Draw background guy (1 hr.), for example, or animate background guy side-walkcycle (2 hrs.).  I script as I go, so that I can see the action progressing.

4) Revisions .  My projects always evolve as I work on them.  I come up with new plot or puzzle ideas as I go, so I usually have to draw up a secondary task list and start again, as per above.

5) Rationalizing .  This is where the intense writing takes place: making everything make sense after the fact.  You'd be surprised what kind of crazy lunacy/ridiculous inconsistencies you can justify with a little creative writing.  Clues/backgrounds are inserted into dialogue/messages to make puzzles/plot seem logical/consistent.

That's pretty much it.  Sounds and music are done at the very end, kind of as an afterthought since I'm personally no good at either.  Beta-testing usually happens as I'm scrambling for music, to save time.  Then there's the euphoria of the game release, followed promptly by an emotional crash because I have nothing left to work on.  Then I start again.

It is interesting to see how others approach the process.