Topics

[cursed with the unfortunate title]

Alright, before you volunteer, let me inform you what you're getting into.

There's a video game called Spore. Like AGS, it has its own forum. Some of the kids there are making a full-blown movie using the video game. The movie is cursed with the unfortunate title "Hugmonster: The Movie". The hugmonster is some warped, evil race of things that desire to destroy the rest of the universe.

I told the kids I'd help out with their movie, so I'm doing storyboarding for them and possibly a bit of voice acting.

Now's the part where you come in-- we've found that the vast majority of the video game forumers are male. This poses a problem, since half the cast is female.

We're needing several females for main characters and minor characters, and we're considering outsourcing females with Adobe Reader's built-in voice or with Microsoft Jenny.

Save females from outsourcing!

If interested (and no one here has to know you're helping out a group of kids with a low-budget film, simply visit the link below (you'll need to register at the forum there to join).

http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/59396.page

If you've never voice acted before, or if you're well-seasoned, this is an opportunity to get your name out to a new audience.

Edit: This is volunteer, don't expect to be paid. Your reward is the warm feeling that comes from helping kids do something.

This is really sad, but I've tried every key on my keyboard, all three buttons on the mouse, pressing and holding, scrolling...the only options I can get are quit (CTRL+Q), walk to (left click), save, restore, and quit (the banner).

What magic spell must I utter to Look, Talk, and Use?

A logo with an image of a ship and a sea monster (could be as simple as a single tentacle reaching over the ship).  The logo should look adventurous, not demonic.  Preferably, the image should be contained (or mostly contained) within a common geometric shape, but do not let this stand in your way of creativity, as it won't disqualify your entry!

A high-resolution PNG (512x512) is great; an SVG is even better.  Along with this, a monochrome bitmap of the same image (black and white, no gray) is requested (to be printed in the manual).  Don't worry about alpha-channel transparency if you don't know how to do it; I can do that part afterward.

Odd Sea Games's first game is The Odd Sea, which is based on the Odyssey, as you might guess if you're good with word puns.

If you win, I am willing to list your name as the logo designer in the credits, as I believe every artist deserves credit for every piece of art they make.  I will also, of course, feature the logo on all Odd Sea Games products.

A winner may or may not be chosen at my own discretion.  Competition ends April 4th at 23:59:59GMT (that's early in the evening for America, just so you have the heads-up).

This is the problem with rooms that will only be visited once: The user only has one chance to pick things up.

What are some creative ways to "force" the user to pick things up?

A very non-creative way is to hold some sort of variable in your game that does not let them proceed until they have picked up the item.

One creative method is to hide an item within another item that is required in order to proceed (such as the file hidden inside the carrot cake in Secret of Monkey Island).  A more ridiculous example of this would be the gorilla envelope from LeChuck's Revenge.

Another commonly used method is to automatically actually reward the user with an item when a mission is completed, usually through dialog: "Thanks for helping me.  Here, take this, since I don't need it anymore and I want to thank you."

Anyone have other creative methods of doing such?

Is there any way I can set the position of the dialog choices higher to prevent the last dialog choice from being cut off the screen?  The y's j's, p's, q's, and g's are all being cut off.

Thanks!

Anyone ever notice there's a crown cursor in the pie shop?  According to the manual, this means there's a puzzle that needs solved VERY quickly.  I could never figure out what the puzzle was.

All I know is I've been stuck for years in the castle.  I get to the laboratory and the wizard kills me.

Did I miss something in the pie shop, or somewhere else?

I'm using the Verb Coin template from build 3.1.2.82 at an 800x600 resolution.  This causes two of the GUI graphics, gVerbCoin and gInvUnderlay, to appear a few pixels too far to the left, but gOverhotspot and gInventory appear fine. :o

This should be fixed in any upcoming releases.  In the meantime, which lines do I need to alter to fix this?

If I have all the images for my game drawn, and then find out the artist can't animate, are there people at this forum that would be able to animate the graphics I already have?

I haven't had any graphics designed yet-- just want to make sure such animators exist in case I end up with someone who doesn't animate before I actually have anyone start drawing.

So before I sit down for several years to work on "the Ill Lad & the Odd Sea", I'd like to know if there is actually a market for games like these.  I happen to love them, but then again, I grew up about the same time Windows did, and we met when I was 3 and it was 3.1.  Windows, DOS, and me, we were best of friends.

Would kids today actually play adventure games?  Should I simply offer it as freeware?

Also, I'm considering making it a larger resolution similar to Curse of Monkey Island...do games with a high resolution sell better than those with a low resolution (like Secret of Monkey Island)?

Discuss...