Messages

I don't think it's as grim as you make it look.
At least I see more point and click adventure games than I have seen at other times.
With digital distribution and crow funding Indie companies and old legends have been able to produce games without having publishers and producers slam doors at them.
Tim Schafer, Al Lowe, Ron Gilbert and the Guys from Andromeda all made or are making adventure games in these last years.
Heck, one of my favourite pixel artists (Mark Ferrari) is making gorgeous backgrounds for a game right now.
King's Quest is having an episodic reboot (Still have to play it, so I don't know how good it is).
Then you have Tell Tale Games that is pumping out adventure games that are based on really popular IPs (Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Fables, Batman, and others).
I haven't played Life is Strange, but I have mostly heard good things about it, and I think it did pretty well financially.

As for Lucas Arts, the company was dead on arrival by the time Disney bought Lucas Films.
They had already got rid of most (if not all) the people that were working on adventure games, and were mostly focused on publishing Star Wars based games made by other studios.
I can honestly say that by the time Disney bought and closed Lucas Arts, it had been years since I had been excited by any announcement they made, that didn't get cancelled.

It seems that you're talking about an individual who gathers people to do his / her bidding instead of someone who forms a genuine team.  If that's the case then I agree with you.  However most indie game teams are formed to pool various talents - if one person can do a good job at every single element of creating a game, they often go ahead and do it as a solo dev.  Not many people can do that.

Well, my original rant was about people that make posts that you know will be ignored. Like starting a Game in Progress thread with no real description or images, or a recruiting post that tells you nothing about the game in particular.
The example I gave did have a secondary layer of things that annoy me.
People that think that just an idea is enough to make others work for them since they already contributed or people that expect others to join their teams when there are no definitions on what they really want to do are some examples.

Good indie teams are made of people that that are good at different things working together to make something.
I don't expect someone to be a solo dev.
I usually go that way, and I know it sucks because it becomes unbearable the moment you try to make the scope of the project bigger.

On the latter posts I was mostly referring to people that pretend to be the creators of a project when they only have an idea or a concept, but nothing else to contribute (whether it's skills or money).

If made as a Darkseed turned into Pac Man, it would work as this month's MAGS entry.

Mandle, it's your concept. How do we turn this:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/kM404RC.png[/imgzoom]

into this?

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/wef12QQ.png[/imgzoom]

"Walt Disney was great at making animated movies. Except that he didn't make the animations. And he took the stories from old fairytales. Basically, he put his signature on the movies, but he had someone else design the signature for him.
So I don't know what Walt Disney actually did, but he was good at it."

In my opinion, choosing good artists and writers and being a good leader of a team as well as acting as a vision-bearer can also be very valuable skills.
However, there is a difference between working hard to manage a group project and just look for others to do all the hard work for you.

Well, Walt Disney was good at selling and getting money.
He acted scenes and sweet talked the producers to get the funding for Snow White.
And then he payed the people that worked at his studio.

There's a difference between a manager that says "We are making a Snow White point and click adventure, here's money."
And one that says "We are making a Snow White point and click adventure, I'm sure when we finish it we will get rich, but for now we all have to put some effort."

The second guy might actually be sincere and good at being a leader, but 9 out of 10 times, he just wants to be successful by making other people work for it.

What if Simon The Sorceror or Pac Man were done in the art style of H.R.Giger?

Pac Man by Giger would be grey flesh-like looking corridors where penis shaped ghosts chase a weird Alien-face hugger-egg with a vagina shaped mouth (because Giger) that gains teeth after eating some fetus/baby shaped power ups... Hmmm this one might actually work.

Edit: Add some Debbie Harry faces with needles protruding on them to replace the cherries.

That bothers me too! I think if you're going to make an indie game you either need to be the artist or programmer yourself. If you're not one of those then you best have the funds.

I actually don't get mad at a writer trying to make an adventure game (since adventure games are usually strongly story-driven), but they better have a story, good design documents, a chunk of the story done for real, and they won't get crazy mad if you turn them down after reading the stuff and deciding it's not to your liking.
I mean, if you can't draw or code, you can do a horribly coded with stick figures and boxes for graphics demo of the game to show people what a great idea you have.

The real issue to me is when they have "ideas" and "concepts" and you are given only a synopsis of the story, or get told you can see the actual stuff after you agreed to work in it, because their writing is so amazing you might steal it and make your own game.

Read the book! It's short and it will change your world! The sequels are pretty good too!

Except Mostly Harmless, you should never read that.

Also, the coastline is lovely

Maybe by changing line 12 of the previous code with:

Code: ags

    ProcessClick(mx, my, mouse.Mode );

You will be using the old mouse coordinates and not the ones where the mouse actually is.

["Normal, initially off"]

I think the first thing you should check the GUI Visibility property to make sure that it's on "Normal, initially off" and not on "Pause game when shown".
Otherwise the game will pause the moment the pop-up shows up.

Spoiler

The dead-man's switch on the conveyor belt worked properly for me. What I meant was that I tried holding the button for several long lengths of time but nothing happened. But as soon as I had another character in the right-hand end of the room, and went back and pushed the button with a different character, then the safe falling off the belt's end event triggered. Does it only trigger if there's somebody there to witness it: Quantum-safe?

I understood the ring puzzle, but I thought the whole puzzle might be a red-herring. I thought the correct solution was to distract the hobo at the ring-toss game while another character steals the bell, but the hobo can be in both places at the same time (or moves faster than the screen scrolls), or has a twin brother: Prestige-hobo?

What I was suggesting was that you make this solution also a valid way to solve the puzzle, so that it has two possible solutions. This would also make the three-character system more important as a game-play mechanic. Just an idea of course...

[close]

Spoiler

    Well, the conveyor belt actually works fine without any other player, the issue is that the safe is not visible when you are pushing the button, so you don't see the change. One of the passes I never got around to was to make an animation (and not just the two positions of the safe) and move the camera to show it tilt. But since I never got around doing the animation, I never made it so the camera would show the safe becoming unstuck.

    As for the hobo... the guy that helped me with the story suggested a way more crazy stabby creepy hobo (never got around to do that creepier dialogue) that would get violent and deadly if the player tried to have him show in both places at the same time.

[close]

I hate it when people open new threads that shows they didn't care about glancing at the rules. I'm not talking details, I'm talking looking at a new thread and wonder why they bothered at all.

I'm making a new project. It's super secret so I can't give any details or screenshots, but I would need:

An artist to do backgrounds and characters for free.
A musician to make some music.
A dev with lots of AGS experience.
A writer to help me with the dialogue and the details of the story.

It's an indie project, so all positions are not payed.

Spoiler

Would have been nice to have extra dialogues between characters once you've done certain tasks, and for instance I already knew where the bell was, yet looking in the notepad it still mentioned having no idea where to get one.

    Yeah, I have a humongous unfinished table with personalised interactions for each character, including things some characters wouldn't do. For example some would refuse to search a dead body, or steal from the Church. Having them update each other on the information when meeting in the same room, or updating some texts were ideas that in the end I didn't have time to implement.

[close]

Spoiler

When I gave Clarence the candle, all of a sudden the book and notes disappeared from Phil's inventory and showed up on Dave's... even though he was still at the church and the other two near Ron.

[close]

Hmmm, this one I'll have to look it up, because I have no idea how it could happen.

Spoiler

Also, the bell, candle and book were out of order as in the config they were in the book. In the book you have Book->Bell->Candle, but I ended up with Book->Candle->Bell. I Tried switching the characters to the right spot, but they wanted to only be at that one specific spot. Then I tried to swich the candle and bell, but they refused.
Also, I had all three boys in place it the items, but only when I switched to Phil it triggered the end.

Yeah, my bad. I think at some point I mixed Bell and Book on the code and they ended up not in the same order. I will have to fix that.
As for the game not ending the moment all three boys are in place, it's something else I will have to check. Do you remember if you had the inventory bar showing? because that pauses the game (something I'm realising I do not need, because there are no time sensitive puzzles), but it might make a the code pause and only resume after the bar is gone (switching a character takes the bar away, so it might happen like that).

[close]

Thanks a lot for letting me know about these issues.

I love this idea, and my mind keeps making up stuff like a Loom Arkanoid, I'll see if I have the time to whip out something.

Inspired by 90's platform Sonic the hedgehog (and friends).

Hahaha, this reminds me of a friend that tried to convince me to make an AGI Sonic game, because he loved the idea of having Sonic move super slow around the screens, this is as far as I went:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/zOx4Zfb.jpg[/imgzoom]


I'm sure I must have the walk cycle saved somewhere

The insertion of children in a gruesome story helps create a compelling atmosphere.
I was left wishing for more; the many characters make it feel like an intro for a bigger story.

Well, time constrains prevented me to add some darker parts on the epilogue that were planned.
I'm really glad you all are liking it so far

Spoiler

I couldn't understand why the safe only fell off the conveyor belt when there was another character present at the other end. Also: I was sure that the solution to the ring-toss was to have one character distract the hobo at the game stall then switch to another character to steal the bell while he was gone. But it seems he can be in two places at once. I thought the too-small ring was a red herring. Maybe make this an alternate solution to the puzzle, as it would be one more teamwork puzzle which is what multiple character games should be all about, and then you can also claim: "multiple solutions to puzzles"

[close]

Well...

Spoiler

The conveyor belt is supposed to have one of those don't-fall-asleep systems, so the belt stops moving the moment the character stops pressing the button.
I would have to check if that text made it through the game or got lost. The game originally was meant to have each character say different things about everything, and some refuse to do certain actions, but that got axed due to time constrains.
I was afraid that the ring thing wouldn't be obvious enough, so I made one ring clearly smaller and even have a different sound to show it was the wrong kind of ring.
Also, I didn't get around to make the fair guy be more crazy and creepy on the dialogues.
But well, time constraints prevented me to do extra passes on some puzzles. Two days before I posted the game, the notepad didn't even have its own graphics or the code item, and things were too simple and expository there, so I kept moving my focus all around, polishing here and there, cutting parts (the epilogue was twice as long, telling what happened after with the kids).

[close]

Thanks for all the positive feedback
I know it's rushed in some parts, I did left a lot of details out of the backgrounds to make it in time.

Liked the game, as well. Kind of an abrupt game exit, at least on my system. Has me wondering if something went haywire at the very end? Impressive.

I was at some point tempted to make a scare jump there, you know, make some creepy image and a loud sound, and then exit the game, but I wasn't sure if people would appreciate that or just hate me for it

Just make sure to get the latest version, I just had to make a small last minute fix

[by CaesarCub]

Graveyard
by CaesarCub
- September 2016 MAGS Entry -

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/aeD0R2x.png[/imgzoom]
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/5aXdhTs.png[/imgzoom]
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/hqov2lb.png[/imgzoom]
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/11njTr5.png[/imgzoom]

About the game: Dave, Phil and Clarence will have to cooperate to reach their goal, and save their friend Ron from a gruesome fate.

Download

So, here's my entry. It's short, but I hope it's fun.

[by CaesarCub]

Graveyard
by CaesarCub
- September 2016 MAGS Entry -

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/aeD0R2x.png[/imgzoom]
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/5aXdhTs.png[/imgzoom]
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/hqov2lb.png[/imgzoom]
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/11njTr5.png[/imgzoom]

About the game: Dave, Phil and Clarence will have to cooperate to reach their goal, and save their friend Ron from a gruesome fate.

Update:
Version 0.6.1: Fixed inventory issue and some lighting issues. 2016-09-28


Download

Technically it's the sequel, Ai Cho Aniki, but yeah, you are correct.

Shame, I wanted to get to post more of it's art, it's so original.

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/T0b0SYs.png?1[/imgzoom]

I know I'm new to the forums (well, I have lurked around for years, but never posted).
And I agree with everyone else, you have kept AGS code alive and added features to it which we all are very thankful for.

You should most definitely relax and do stuff you enjoy now.