Messages

WOO WOO! I got my first million! (and I could have done so much better if I hadn't screwed up and let loads of things rot in useless squares!)

also:
I uploaded the version with a read-me file, and the (admittedly subtle) colouring changes.

Well, I will do, but I don't know how it can really expand on what I've put in the instruction section of the game already...

I'm writing it now, and will upload it (and the newly re-coloured grid) later

I'm not sure I understnad why we need to stick within this field of "adventure" games at all.

I mean, I'm not particularly encouraging people to specifically breal away from it, but no one should turn down a good idea just because it's moving outside of this funny kind of box we call adventure games...

It's crazy that I'm forever seeing people saying things like "would a loom style interface be possible in AGS?" because they see it recognise that a new kind of interface opens doors to new kinds of puzzles and a subtly different kind of games. Only instead of thinking "that worked marvelously well as a break from the adventure game standard! I wonder what other sorts of interfaces/puzzle structures I could come up with..." and then ask if THESE new ideas are possible, they seem to just think "I wanna do that too!"

It's not a particular failing of a person to react like that (hell! I do it all the time!) but does everyone want to follow trends ALL the time?

It's a slightly depressing thought that, perhaps the reason AGS has seen so few real jumps of inspiration is because there's a culture of derivation around here. Within this on-line community there's no one pushing for innovations. there's no section of the web site or the forum that says: Innovation with AGS is EASY, and there's loads of people around to help on the technical side for YOU to realise YOUR dream of the adventure game of the future!!!

Even our non-adventure games are (by and large) just other genre-games (platform games, darts games, the constant murmer of different people coming up with the idea of making an RPG game etc). Yes they're technical marvels (although I confess, for mine I took most the marvel from the people who helped me on the forum) but why has no one looked at AGS and said "This language has so many brilliantly helpful functions and features built in, it would be a perfect platform from which to launch my vision of novelty gaming"?


I dunno. Maybe there is no reason...

I apologise for the "no must-play games" comment. What I meant was that all the games that WERE really really good (the ones you mentioned) were lost to me because of the constant barrage of games coming out, so I didn't even notice them!!! I bet Rode 2 was high quality, beautifully drawn AGS gold, but I missed it because I failed to pick it out against a background of "Smokin' Weed"s and "Mika's surreal dream"'s (neither of which are any worse than any of our first games. It's just there seem to be so many first-games around now, they're blocking out the oldies ones)


Also, I agree that not everyone wants to be innovative (hell! No one starts off with AGS if they want to forge new types of gaming.)
I'm just surprised that with all the people here who've had prolonged exposure to game development, there aren't more of them saying "why! I could do something no one's ever seen before!"


As for innovative commercial adventure games, I'd say Loom and Lure of the Temptress were the ones that stick out the most for me. Day of the tenticle KIND'A although I guess I'd be saying Maniac Mansion if I'd played that first...  But part of what I'm trying to convey is that there aren't many really innovative commercial games because it's difficult to get them made because of the money and funding. And it surprised me that in an entirly money-free environment, there's still this backing-away from re-thinking how we approach games...

I don't want everyone to feel they HAVE to make a steller jump forward in game design. I don't want ANYONE to feel they have to make a steller jump forward in game design. I'm just amazed and a little dissapointed that NO ONE seems to want to make any jump forward in game design...

Also: I am NOT picking a fight either! (before anyone starts getting offended again)

I have no idea what the highest possible score would be, and I don't even know how to begin to work it out...

You can't pick lumptato seeds (I was simply asking if you used them out of interest D.Y) they are worth 16 points per fruit before multiplyers, and at their ripest they have 4 fruits on them. Pea-creepers are only worth 4 points per fruit (before multiplyers) and if you leave them long enough you can get 9 fruit off each plant...

so lumptatos are technically worth more than pea creepers, but they take longer to produce (you need to do several cross polinations) so are they worth it?!!??!

EDIT: Just fixed the bug where you always get 2 fauxtato seeds, even when you picked it in it's 1 seed stage... You now only get the two seeds when you wait for 2 seeds to be visible...

LATER:
I have added shading on my version of the game to hint at which squares start with higher multiplyers attached... I haven't uploaded this version yet, as it's not backwardly compatable with your old save games, and I'm not sure if anyone thinks it's worth the effot. If people say it'd help I shall replace the downloadable zip AGAIN (I'm only making changes according to what people tell me would make the game easyer... and I really didn't expect this many suggestions... thank poo YOU lot aren't suggesting things!!! We could be here all figgin' year!)

I bet it does!!!

Out of interest, how much effort do you put into getting lumptatos (if any)? I suspect that what's holding me back is the fact I keep aiming for these, and forgetting about pretty much everything else... but they are worth a LOT of points... is it worth it?

that's a pretty damned impressive score!!!!


More bug fixes coming in:
This time I fixed it so that you CAN pick fixit seeds (it seems this function got deleted some-where along the line!!!)


d.y.d.o   lol I just checked the maths of your score, and it seems the version you've got was doing the maths right all along!!! Something crazy's clearly been going on with this code!!!

I don't think there are any other bugs to fix, but you never know folks!!!

LOL. I don't think my game will blow you mind. But I WAS trying to make a kind of game I'd never made before (largely inspired by Ikaruga on the Game Cube, although you wouldn't know it if I hadn't told you) and it always seems bizzar to me how, given the creative freedom that people have here (no one is going to tell anyone here to make a game more "main stream") fiddling with the formula hasn't become much more prevalent here-abouts.

I mean, obviously non-adventure games are always going to be an aside in the annals of AGS, but I'd have expected people who've been here a long time to have started coming up with ways to take adventure games in new directions.

I would have said that taking adventure games into 3D is pointless and counter-productive (it adds nothing, and polygon based graphics are less friendly and less interesting, with the only exception being Grim Fandango to my mind). But I feel stupid for taking up AGS and never using it to make an acceptable modernisation of the genre... AGS in the hands of the peolpe who know how to use it could produce exceptional high-concept games that make us re-address the way we think about adventure games, but why has it taken me so long to notice? And how come no-one else has tried it?

Sure Sol was good, well rounded and nicely drawn. Sure, Larry Vales was funny and made by a guy with the biggest wanger in America. Sure there will always be newbies who will make traditional adventure games (of varying quality)... But why doesn't the future hold inventive takes on the theme for us?

My next project (For which I'm going to use a lot of the things I learned how to do in "Vegetable Patch Extreem Turbo") is going to have to be something really radicle if it's going to make a real impact. It's been AGES since something origional has made a real MUST-PLAY splash round here. What was the last one? LV2? Pleughburg? I never even got round to playing the 3rd Robert Redford game... Everything since SOL's been pretty much lost amongst a background noise of endless "short" games, or "joke" games, or "MAGS" games, or "Hour" games... I'm sure they're all good, but everything get's utterly lost amongst them


The most innovative twist on the theme I ever saw was "RON: Eye Spy"

How can we encourage people to follow the example and try doing things a little differently?

if you get him to say JUJU three times in one day, your daily multiplyer goes up 1.

as for pea-creepers, they're pretty good. But a fauxtato is better...

well, it's really worth it if you do, as now the maths works properly (oops!)  and a LOT of bugs have been taken out...

Plus there's those handy squares to help you identify to status of each plant...



anyway, I tried to e-mail you about your prize just now, but it got returned!!! Could it be that the mail address in your profile is either fake or out of date?!?!?!

lol...

I guess that'll have to do for proof... now I'll have to think up a prize!!!

(B.T.W. is that on the newest version? It won't invalidate your prize if it is, I'm just wondering)...

I was thinking more along the lines of, if a game is doing something you aren't used to (like a new GUI, or a new set of game-goals) rather than if the puzzels were hard. I mean, if you were presented now with an adventure game that worked in an entirly different way to all other adventure games ever before, and that seemed like you were having to learn how to play adventure games from scratch again, would you have the patience to sit down with it, learn how it works, and THEN judge if it was a good game..?

It's kind of one of those barriers that games developers must face. If they want to do something new, it has to be only a very small distance away from something everyone is already really familier with, otherwise people don't get it, and it flops...

It's like how "Creation" (by bullfrog) was going to be the next big thing, but because marketing types didn't understand it (on the basis that it wasn't going to be like anything else) it just had it's funding pulled away from underneath it, and it vanished.

is it still worth people trying to push boundries when we often don't want to run to catch up? (sheesh that's a ponsy sounding metaphore, and if I were more dedicated I'd sit here and re-draft it 'till it sounded good... But I think you get the idea... at least I HOPE you get the idea...)

vegetable patch extreem turbo
Non-adventure-game

thread:
http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php?board=5;action=display;threadid=6512

download:
http://www.angelfire.com/ex/vegetablepatch/


ALSO:
www.sylpher.com/vegetablegames/VPXT2.zip

(which is the sequil. I decided not to make a second post, because peopel would heckle me for douple-posting or whatever)

that's what I figured... oh dear

The sums I'm getting AGS all work when I test them with lower numbers, but sometimes when they're working with much higer quantities they just get ignored!!! This doesn't always happen (I KNOW it's happening on many occasions) but every now and then, a sum just get's ignored for no reason I can understand!!!

They are all being performed with int's if this helps....

any ideas?

EDIT:

APOLOGIES:

YET ANOTHER BUG FIX!!!

I swear this is the last time I upload it, as I've checked ALL the maths over-and-over and I KNOW it's right this time...

should'a mentioned I want evidence for those top scores of yours...

BUT:

While I hate to piss the both of you off, I've now uploaded a version of the game with helpful colour-coding (as requested by my house mate) so you can tell exactly what stage of growth the plants are at all the time...

Plus there're a few bug-fixes in it (ALREADY!!)

I've been pondering (following the release of my latest game [see new games area]) how long people stick with a new type of game before they give up...

I've developed what I hope is a reasonably origional (or at least novel) puzzle-style game, and while I'm very pleased with it, I KNOW that people won't get into it because it's difficult initially to work out what you're doing (let alone how to get high scores)...

I did my best to explain how the game worked, and hope that at least 1 or 2 people get into it, but I think it's a common issue with most slightly origional games.

for example, Sacrefice is one of my favorate games ever, and just brilliant, but because it's not like anything people had played before, it's over-long and more-than-a-little-tedious training sections put all my friends off it (much to my irritation as I wanted to wup their asses in multi-player)...

So how long do YOU give a new game before you say "I don't understand!" and walk away feeling irritable (because it's clearly very simple when you know what you're doing, but the people who made it find it difficult to express exactly what you have to do)?

I made a non-adventure game

it is hosted at

http://www.angelfire.com/ex/vegetablepatch/

It's one that you'll have to invest some time in, as you need to get used to it before you can get the higher scores. First person to beat the built-in high score get's a prize...



(also, any constructive comments would be much apreciated, as I'm not sure how well I've managed to explain how the game works...)

it's ok. I descovered it was screwing up because the save code was in a function for before a screen loaded. This meant that when it loaded up, it got all confused...

anyway, I fixed it now!