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I have been working on my entry together with Morganw and HandsFree about the black plague and the rats spreading the disease, and I'd thought I'd share a background for the game I've been working on:

I borrowed some motives from a famous medieval artist, can anyone guess which one?

Congratulations Wiggy!

No working download link? Odd, the one at the top of the forum thread worked for me:

Download: From Techtroupe.net

Anyway, I saw the example in your link, and I think I got it.
The version I downloaded used

Code: ags

targetCharacter = cEgo;

Thank yo for your help!

OK, I forgot to add the "TargetSprite = ..." in the beginning, that's why it didn't work.
The line I replaced was the one highlighted in yellow in my first screenshot, but when I added the "TargetSprite = ..." to the line I replaced it started working.

However, I've noticed another problem in the game. At one point, the player switches character for another cutscene, yet the camera is still centered on the first player character. Is there a way to control which character the camera is centered on?

The smooth scrolling module is also slowing the game down a bit, is there a way to shut off the script when the player is in a room without scrolling backgrounds?

I tried replacing the highlighted line of code with the one you suggested, but now the game crashes on start
and this line of code is highlighted instead:

Code: ags

  int TargetHeight = FloatToInt (IntToFloat(Game.SpriteHeight[TargetSprite.Graphic])*scaling);

And the error message says:
Error running function
`repeatedly_execute_always':
Error: Null pointer referenced

Hi, I tried to import this Smooth scrolling module (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=33142.0) into an AGS project, but the game keeps crashing during the intro cutscene I've programmed,
every time the dialogue script reaches this command:

Code: ags

 player.LockView(9);
 player.Animate(3,4,eOnce,eBlock);
 player.UnlockView();
 player.SetIdleView(0,0);

the game crashes and I get this message:

How do I make the script work and implement the smooth scrolling module in my existing AGS project?

This looks cute, and dark. I'll be keeping an eye on this one!

Behold... the Snips!

Wow, that guy looks scary! Is he going to be a boss fight?

Wow, that last screenshot looks absolutely gorgeous!

[Best Character:]

Best Character: Sinitrena
Best Fail: Sinitrena, because it made me chuckle.
Best Writing: Wiggy, because I could tell just from the first sentence that it took place in Victorian England.
Best Story: Wiggy, I loved the twist that the contraption worked, and the traveler simply failed to take the earths rotation into account.

It's impressive to see how well your character fits with the new background, it all looks great!

plus I love games with historical settings.

I was actually thinking that was probably your pitch.

+1

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but my pitch was:

Spoiler

[redacted]

[close]

I ended up voting for 5, since it had both a potentially fun story as well as lots of potential puzzles and gameplay, plus I love games with historical settings.
With most of the other pitches, they either had a good story but were very vague on how it'd be translated into gameplay or the story was just an excuse to string some fun puzzles together, but number 5 felt like it had both.

Is the footage sped up or is the protagonist really capable of putting on an entire spacesuit in just one second?

Also, I immedatly came to think about this game when I saw this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMUvNWuSq6I]
Will there be any boss fights against a giant tardigrade?

[Still Life]

I recently watched a review comparing all of the versions of Ocarina of Time, and in it the reviewer said something which I think is very relevant to adventure games.
He said, and I quote "The purpose of story in gaming is to contextualize gameplay, so it doesn't come off as a laundry list of arbitrary tasks."

And I've come across several reviews and complaints about adventure games (even on this forum), where they have said that the game is about giving a bit of story, and then blocking you with a puzzle, which you then solve, and then get a bit more story before being blocked again, making the two exclusive to each other.
But that quote pretty much sums up my thoughts, which is that story and gameplay should NOT be mutually exclusive in an adventure game (or any game for that matter), but should instead work together. And the problem is, most people who make adventure games don't realize that, and as such they make them exclusive to each other. This isn't a problem with the genre itself, but rather with the attitudes of the creators.

I'd love to discuss this a bit more in-depth, and get other people's thoughts on the matter.

I agree that this is a problem in bad adventure games, one infamous example is the cookie baking puzzle from Still Life, which is a game about a policewoman investigating a series of brutal murders inspired by Jack the Ripper. The game contains gruesome imagery and violence, yet at one point the plot grinds to a screeching halt because the protagonist's dad asks her to bake some gingerbread men, and what then follows is a long puzzle trying to decipher the encrypted recipe in her grandmothers cookbook. Even if you look aside the fact that no sane person would encrypt the recipe for freaking gingerbread, the plot so far has been about the hunt for a serial killer, and by having the protagonist stop to make cookies just removes a great deal of the sense of urgency and danger.

Gameplay should vary depending on the character you play as, and playing a crime detective on a case shouldn't be the same and contain the same puzzles as a baker or jobless slacker, and that means that the puzzles should be different as well.

I think that indie games did bring some new elements to adventure games, namely a bleaker environment, more serious themes, and some new puzzles at times, but it is true that we also see huge repetition of some specific story lines. To name one which exists in a very large number of indie adventures: amnesiac character, character who did some crime and then is unaware, and/or multiple personality.

I definitely think there are some very overused tropes in adventure games, such as the amnesiac character you mentioned. It's almost always a white man with short dark hair in his 30s who's wearing generic standard clothes (often jeans and T-shirt without logo, occasionally a leather jacket)and 9 times out of 10 the "big plot twist" is that he either was the killer all along, or that he was framed for a murder and the real killer made him forget what happened.

But there is a second character archetype I'm also getting a tad tired of seeing in adventure games, let's call it the Unlovable Rogue, for when the developers clearly tried to make the protagonist come across as a lovable rouge in the vein of Indiana Jones or Inigo Montoya but ended up making them a smug jerk instead. If the character is male, he'll be a messy slacker with a gross and untidy home and work space and of course he's lost vital items and equipment in there and forces the player to dig through it all, plus he has a tendency to tell mean spirited and bigoted jokes at other characters expense that aren't jokes as much as they're just random mean comments bordering on bullying. If the character is female, they usually face and body of a Barbie doll but compensate for it by being rude and sassy in a lame attempt to be a "strong female character". All of these characters also often have a tendency to have a detached "Why should I care" attitude towards things, but if the player character can't be arsed to care about the plot, why should the player?

Compare that to April Ryan, who starts off as kind of a snarky slacker, but as soon as she realizes strange things are afoot she does take the whole thing seriously and towards the end of the game she's overcome most of her personal flaws.
Or Look at Guybrush Threepwood, while he comes across as messy and silly, he does have a friendly attitude and feel some actual enthusiasm for what he's doing.

And there's also the stupid idea that nonsensical puzzles are perfectly fine if the protagonist crack a joke about how nonsensical the puzzle is,
but in reality it's just the game design equivalent of somebody putting their foot in their mouth  and immedatly going "lol, just kidding!" afterwards.

Great new work!

I have this idea for a game about a plague doctor, I already have a background and I've started on the sprites:

My idea is a pretty dark game about the black death and the witch hunts that followed, all while a doctor searches for
a possible way to contain the disease and dispel the plague carrying rats.

However, while I already have a rough idea for the story I currently don't have many ideas for puzzles and if anyone is interested to help me
with gameplay and programming please let me know.

I recently played through Broken Age, and I think that the game is a good example of what's "wrong" with the genre.
I really liked the first half of the game, it was easy enough to progress and in general you could always solve a puzzle
in a short amount of time if you just remembered to pick up every item and talk to every character, and most of the focus
was on the story and atmosphere as well as exploring the game world rather than solving hard puzzles for the sake of it.

The second half of the game... not so much. I felt like there were too many puzzles that broke the games own rules, like one
scene where you had to hold still and wait for a minute despite there being no indication you should do that and no previous puzzle
using that mechanic. Then there was several randomized puzzles where you had to either memorize or write down a series of abstract symbols
and use them as clues for another puzzle in the other end of the game world, which felt more as a test of patience than a test of logic.
And what I disliked the most was the timed puzzles, where you had to navigate across a huge area and then backtrack and redo the whole thing if you failed.
That isn't funny, that's frustrating. At least most action games feature a game over screen which lets you see the hero die in an exciting way before
you start over, but making the player walk back and reset the puzzle by hand is just boring.

I played the first half by myself, but gave up and resorted to a walkthrough pretty quickly in the second half.

Basically, I think Adventure games should let the player explore the game world and interact with its characters and environments in a way that makes sense in the story,
and adventure games shouldn't pad out the gameplay with forced backtracking and puzzles lifted straight out of a kid's activity book, and it's point and click adventure games
being so closely associated with the latter that has kept the genre from reaching a more mainstream appeal.

And no more sliding tile puzzles. They're not funny, they're not original and there's hardly any story scenario where they don't feel like a tacked on afterthought.

I'm feeling more comunist now, damned imperialists!

_

Happy to see that your genre of Soviet-era adventure games is still alive and well!

Can't wait to play this one, comrade!

I admit that these types of games aren't my cup of tea. Blondbraid made me love them!

Thank you both, I love history and I hope my games will make more people interested in it!
Here's the latest animation I've drawn for the game:

Any guesses as to what he's reacting to?

Anyone else spotting the Photoshop error?