Messages

I'm dreadfully sorry that it took a day longer than I expected, but I have now released the game and I hope you will enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed making it!

Here is the Completed Game Announcements page!

[Click here to download the game!]

Commissar's Contrapasso is a story about an arrogant soviet commissar
who follows the official doctrines of the party with little regard for the simple soldiers beneath him, until he finds himself caught alone behind enemy lines that is.

What follows is a darkly humorous adventure with many strange turns. Whether or not the commissar will make it out alive depends on you, the player.

This game is set in the same setting as my previous games Sniper and Spotter being patriotic, Sniper and spotter serving the motherland and Fallen soldier,
but it is a standalone title which can be played and enjoyed without any knowledge of the previous games.

If you want to look more at the development process of the game, follow this link.

Click here to download the game!

Hooray! That's always a good milestone to achieve. You're in the home stretch, now!

Thanks!
I feel that I've completed all the important parts of the game now, and I feel that even if I keep polishing, I'll never be able to make the perfect and flawless game I want to make, so I've decided to try to have everything wrapped up and ready to release the game by this upcoming Monday. Wish me luck!

That looks absolutely gorgeous, Monet himself would have been jealous!

[2]

I voted for 2, since it felt like the most intriguing one to me, but I had a very hard time deciding between that and number 5.

typewriter and easy to read, sounds like a paradox. I had a really hard time reading the texts in downfall for example. better use a simple sans serif font or still, these bitmap fonts could look okay and most importantly readable in higher res.

Yes, I've noticed certain types can be hard to read, especially in larger blocks of text, however, I've usually found some of the hardest fonts to read low-resolution bitmap fonts with large pixels in similar styles to this one,
so it's hard for me to tell which type of fonts will be easy for others to read. The one I've currently chosen for menu text is called Modern Typewriter, though I'm open to changing it.

I usually get my fonts from https://fonts.google.com/
They have very professional fonts that usually include lots of characters and have a good license.

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out as well when I get the time!

I actually thought that the text block at the top was convenient, but I can see that the new version to the side looks better aesthetically, and is just as simple to use. Good work!

LOL
Notice? I never heard of such idiocy before internet!

PS - And most of my good friends from childhood were males! As I was never much interested in "girl games/play time"...

I always figured guys did that sort of things to impress other guys, trying to prove who's the toughest etcetera.

I mostly use these:
https://www.dafont.com/bitmap.php

bitmap fonts are great for low res games, like in 320x200, you make bigger sized games, but maybe these work there too...

Nice, the fonts I tried seems to work fine, although I haven't tested them in different languages yet.

Are you looking for bitmap fonts or anti-aliased (TrueType) fonts? What resolution is your game in? Do you want a stylized font (e.g. cartoony like in Day of the Tentacle) or a more neutral text-display font?

The current project I'm working on has a 1024 x 768 solution, so I'm looking for something that will look good in a high resolution.
I want something that looks like a typewriter font, but the top priority is for it to be clear and easy to read.

I didn't think any of the fonts in the SCI fonts pack suited my current project, so I'm wondering if anyone here knows where I can find other AGS-ready fonts to download.
I'm also looking for a font that has French and German letters in it so I can have the game text translated without worrying about missing letters.
Any good advice?

This looks awesome!

I love it.  It's so ridiculous!

Thanks! Maybe I'll try doing more stuff in the future!

[Blondbraid:]

Blondbraid: Well written little story. The only problem I see is that it doesn't deliver what it promisses: "The learned academics and scholars of my age would no doubt call me mad if they were to read my account of the event and dismiss it as ravings more befit a patient of Bedlam" There really is very little out of the ordinary, and when it finally shows up it's not really the focus at all. A sharpshooter is not impossible, wounding instead of outright killing is not completely out of the ordinary when it comes to war and the twist - that was really projected miles wide beforhand - could be explained away very easily.

Thanks for the feedback! I was pretty tired when I wrote down and submitted the entry, if I hadn't waited until the last day I'd probably have examined the story more closely and improved the foreshadowing,
but I'm glad you liked it otherwise.

Best Rivalry: Sinitrena, since it was a sad and realistic tale of a neighbor feud escalating much too far. At least none of them ate yogurt...

Best Writing: Wiggy, while I agree with Sinitrena that the Yugoslavia part was unnecessary, it brought across a wacky feeling and I could imagine it being read in a funny Australian accent.

Best Story:  Baron, I couldn't help but laugh at the story, it was very entertaining.

As for Mandle's story, I understood the joke, though it would probably have worked better as a visual sketch than a written joke.

It grinds my gears when I have to endure "creative" DVD menus in order to watch a movie.
You'd think not making the default text white and the text on the option you've chosen highlighted in pale yellow would be an easy thing to do, but I've seen it in far too many menus, alongside nearly unreadable fonts and blaring music looping in an annoying 15 second loop repeating endlessly until you've found the right language option. And far too many DVD also have irritating animations swishing by whenever you pick an option.

Good news everyone, I've just completed the game and it is playable from start to finish!
However, there are still several cutscenes and animations that needs to be done as well as
a lot of polishing, but if all goes well you can hopefully expect to see it released the upcoming month.

I think the Secret Files series had a pretty great solution to the two click interface on pc, where the mouse cursor consisted of a small icon of a computer mouse,
and when the player moved it over a hotspot that could be interacted with, the left mouse-button would light up green, or if the hotspot could be looked at the right button
would be green, and there was a tiny eye symbol next to the right button on that sprite.
[imgzoom]http://img.hexus.net/v2/gaming/screenshots_pc/secretfiles/secret1_small.jpg[/imgzoom]
I think a dynamic mouse sprite changing on context is a neater solution than a verb coin, and more intuitive if you use easily understood symbols,
like making the mouse change into a hand over something to interact with or an eye/magnifying glass over a hotspot you can look at.

Verb coins or menus can still work on more slow-paced games that want to encourage the player to fully investigate an area,
but they're pure torture when you have to solve a timed puzzle. If anything, it reminds me of David Cage's games, where characters have to do
complex quick-time events for every interaction, and the result is that most players struggle to make the characters do even simple tasks like
opening a door.

I personally don't use more complex GUI's much since it means coding so many events that have no impact on the game and most players won't even consider, for example, most players who see a door will try to open it, but few will try to talk to the door, so why even have it as an option then?

I tried to animate a funny GIF some time ago, and I thought I could post it here:

You've sure nailed the retro Lucasart style!

[The fiend in the cave]

I've had this idea for a long time, but not gotten around to writing it down until now.
I suppose this is more of a horror story than your typical war story, but it's set in a real historical conflict.

The fiend in the cave

The learned academics and scholars of my age would no doubt call me mad if they were to read my account of the event and dismiss it as ravings more befit a patient of Bedlam than a decorated officer such as myself,
yet I am no less certain of what I saw than I would be of the very pen I am writing with.

It was during my service in her majesty's army I encountered the fiend. Stationed in a barren and primitive land full of mountains as jagged and ridged as the back of an ancient dragon, still ruled by fear and superstition and far away from the structured and civilized world I knew, in a land that brought even Alexander the Great to a halt in his vast conquests, I came to question the natural rules that I had previously taken for granted.

I was tasked with leading a company of sepoy soldiers through a mountain pass, a task which I only completed after sustaining heavy losses. Despite the numerous good men who fell under my command that day I harbor few feelings of regret, as I recognize there was little I could have done to prevent their deaths. When the terror struck we found ourselves on all sides surrounded by walls of bare rocks and mountainsides, having little choice but to walk alongside the only path available, a narrow dirt road cutting deep between the mountains. But while these natural walls confined us to the path, they also offered few places where men could hide in ambush unseen.

It all changed when we reached a sharp turn in the path, and the young lad walking furthest at the front suddenly fell down to the boom of an enemy sniper's rifle. Still alive, the boy screamed out in pain while clutching his stomach, his bright red coat revealing a darker red stain slowly growing across his abdomen. Before I could stop him one of the boy's comrades had already rushed out to the aid of him, only for a jet of blood to shoot out the back of his turban to the sound of another gunshot. The injured boy kept screaming as I realized that devil had deliberately only wounded him in order to draw out the other man rushing to his aid, and he would allow his screams to torment us until yet another man could take it no more and would rush out in a desperate attempt to save him.

I ordered the men to stay put and nobody try to rescue the boy, doomed to soon bleed out regardless of what we did from now on. By my command the men would carefully attempt to spot the sniper from behind the cover provided by the rock-wall at the turn of the path, and when one of them spotted gun smoke coming out from a small crevice at the top of a nearby peak, they were to take turns shooting at the enemy from behind cover.
A normal man would have either crouched down behind cover once the gunshots started flying so close to his position or perished soon thereafter, but that man, if I may call him that, ignored them completely, and kept firing his rifle, killing several more men as they peeked around the corner to shoot. By that time I was furious, and still under the illusion that it was a mortal man, if ever more capable than I would normally deem a native of this land, I started to draw up a new plan. The bulk of the men would stay in the path, still behind cover and shooting at the sniper, but taking greater care than before. Shooting him was no longer the priority, instead they were to draw his fire and attention away while I and two men of my choosing would attempt to climb the steep cliffside and reach the sniper from behind.

Perhaps it was reckless of me to leave my men behind, but I was a better climber than any of my subordinate officers and I wanted to personally kill the man who had humiliated me and killed my men in such a sadistic manner. It was an arduous climb to be sure, but my rage kept me going and I was soon too occupied with thoughts of revenge that I barely noticed that the gunshots from the crevice had stopped and the snipers rifle slid back into the darkness of its opening.

Upon reaching the small peak I discovered that there was a small cave entrance that no doubt led to the crevice in which our enemy hid, but the curious thing was that it was blocked by a large rock I doubted could be removed from within. I ordered the two men I brought with me to remove the stone, but as they both started to roll it away a shot was fired from within the opening, instantly killing one of them and injuring the other so that he lost his balance and tumbled to his death on the rocks far below.
I was alone now, and in equal parts madness and rage I leapt in front of the opening and emptied my revolver into the ragged gestalt facing me before he could reload. When I descended back to the remaining men on the path I told them I had killed the sniper, but I secretly doubted that I did, and that I ever truly could.

For there was only one being to be found in that small cave, and as I looked at the body slumped down on the floor, still clutching the rifle which had killed so many of my men,  dressed in bleached tatters hanging off his body, his turban partially unraveled and almost covering the two black holes where his eyes should be, I realized in horror that I was looking at the dried out corpse of a man that had been dead long before I shot him.

It's a shame I never found the time to play all entries before the vote ended, but congratulations to both the winners.