Messages

I knew about tiny houses, and they do fascinate me... but probably it's no surprise. 

Though, they are small houses, I wouldn't call them tiny, seen others that are much smaller than those. Still, lovely to see.
Doubt I could live in such a small house though. As a vacation home, yes, but everyday...

Oh, and don't forget to add it to the DB, you can't sweep all the AGS awards if you don't put your game there.   

Congrats at reaching the first end of the project! 
Hope it sells good (it should!).

I have the perfect solution for you!
turn off the TV and play some free games right here in this forum. 
It's not like we can do anything about it anyway.

[Lord of Light]

Here's my take on this months games, in play order. 

Lord of Light by PlayPretend:

Spoiler

I was looking forward to play this one and see how the idea of playing the blind was done. Loved it! Though, if I had done mine, it would have been black with white objects outlines. 
It was fun to not only touch, but taste, smell...  Although it took me a long while to figure out why the vases didn't show when I touched them... maybe given an empty outline of the vase would have been less confusing... but then maybe it would still be as mysterious to figure out what was inside. 

I enjoyed the story, graphics and puzzles. But the "bro" talk, kind of ruined immersion for me. 

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Lygophilous by VampireWombat:

Spoiler

Unfortunately there wasn't much to do in this game, it started promising and then it ended. 
One thing that drove me nuts was the graveyard, please add a car to exit the premises, instead of an edge that you can't see.

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The Last Light Post by JackPutter:

Spoiler

Usually I prefer 3rd person games, but this one sucked me right in! The 3D graphics, even though basic and simple, fit well with the story/mood of the game, and they didn't bother me one bit. Loved the "walking/sliding" animations which gave me a "Myst" feeling.  Discovering the clues through exploration & investigation was great. It's not new or innovative, but was quite effective. But I don't think I got the answer to "where did everybody go".... except Tara that is. It's like they just vanished. 

The Intro text run a bit too fast to read, I had to speed read and that's not nice. Also it would have been a good idea to wrap it in a cutscene function. Starting the game again forces you watch the intro again.

What drove me nuts: Not being able to turn around on some occasions, like at Tara's computer. No indication of the exit hotspots (turn around, go left, go right...) A little rotation arrow in the lower corners to turn around, or a strait arrow to show when one can go left/right, like at the machine, would have made the game much less frustrating to navigate (at least for me).

In all, you got me both engaged and immersed all the way. 

Note: Save/load function is indeed hard coded on the BASS template, check the code under on_key_press F5 and F7.  But basically all you need to make one save slot is: SaveGameSlot(99) on a button and then LoadGameSlot(99) on another button... where 99 is a slot you assign (don't use 999 as this one is reserved for restart point).

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Taste the Blood of Darkness by Slasher:

Spoiler

Great story and setting. Graphics are okay, though you could have made him smaller so the library looked bigger (and made him actually not able to reach the book and thus the need of the ladder). Puzzles were good.
"Battle" scene weren't my favorite and I would have been happier without them.
Finding the garlic was pixel hunt, I knew it had to be there, but I couldn't find it, only at my 4th visit I managed to find it. One would think he knows where his own vegetables grow...

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My vote went to:

Spoiler

The Last Light Post by JackPutter! It was just great exploring the compound and solving the puzzles!  I think they were well balanced and very fair.
Lord of Light by PlayPretend takes a very close second place. If only my immersion hadn't been broken...  But we're all different and enjoy different stuff... thank God for that or the world be very boring! 

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Stick with the real Gabriel... the second is a wuss... 
And yes, SQ! my favorite!

If you like exploring, investigating and "being on the right place at the time" kind of game, give Colonel's be quest a chance (but don't use a walkthrough, the first 3 times (at least) that you play it. 

Oh, and keep in mind that you should save often and use several slots while playing Sierra games, you can die and/or end up in a dead end.

With passwords or codes, it should be possible to always enter them. After all, the player or the character could just decide to brute-force it, or even be lucky. If the dev. doesn't want it to be brute-forced (make the code longer than 4 numbers/characters... or generate a new code at game start). And if the player does enter the right code/password without having gotten the knowledge, one could always add a "what a lucky guess!" comment or something to that effect. 

Otherwise, all specific knowledge that might be required to do certain tasks should be available in game.

If the character is a chemist he/she should know how to mix stuff that we as non-chemics don't. Then the character should have that info ready to provide the player, by commenting.

If it's something the player knows but not the character, then the info should be available for the character to figure it out but still let the player use his knowledge to solve the problem (cause the player is suppose to be (or identify with) the character). It's very frustrating as a player, IMHO, to know the solution to the puzzle and not be able to do it, cause you haven't looked it up/discovered the info in game, yet. Also this will let the player feel good and smart, as he just solved a puzzle without the need of inside help/hints. 

Read edit above. Thanks for the help. 

Yes, I get that, and I've tried that as well. 

Spoiler

I'm likely entering the code wrong... so exactly which buttons do I need to press?

I've tried to press first the 2nd, then the 6th and lastly the 4th, but nothing happened! And the item is on the east slot, as far as I can see.

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EDIT: I just run the game again, and now it worked.  I'm not sure what I was doing wrong, cause that was exactly what I had tried before... thank god the save worked, would have hated to have to restart! 

ok here's the answer:

Spoiler

apenas números pares.

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I've tried that already before I posted, with no result.
I'm missing something in the logic you all seem to have found, unless I made a mistake somewhere.

Spoiler

Do I need to take the sequence, divide it by 2 and only use the even numbers? (I have not tried this yet) or is there something else?

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Spoiler

I've read all the 3 posts, and I'm still clueless.

Can the game be saved, btw? EDIT: Found it... F5. Wish there was a button for it, instead of just a keyboard key. 

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[The Last Light Post]

The Last Light Post

I seem to be a bit stuck, can't seem to finish it. 

Spoiler

I've got the container and placed it in the right slot, I hope, but when I try to enter the sequence, nothing really happens. Unless I have the wrong sequence, since I haven't figured out the clue about 2 reactions, divide by 2 and use only the even numbers. 

On the other note, I had no problem finding all passwords. And as soon as I read that it was a lousy bday, I figured that was the password... The one that was took me a bit longer was Simons password, because I was looking for a clue around his computer. But once I stopped to think about it, it was obvious. 

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@PlayPretend, awesome, you made the game mechanics I also had in mind!  I just couldn't come out with a story.  So I'm very looking forward to play it!  Just a comment, you can cut the game size in half, if you delete the data folder from the zip file. All you need is the Window's folder. 

Cool, it's awesome. I specially like the special guest(the spider  )! 
Great idea, and am sure the kid got some scary moment there with the door at the end. 

Sorry, I stand corrected. 

I guess it depends of exactly which "several platforms" you mean.

Like Jack said, Android is almost a "out of the box" solution. And I mean almost cause you have to setup some stuff (that I don't know), before you can compile it properly. I do have one game with android version, but it was morganw that compiled it for me. But since you're a Linux user, you might be able to set up those things easily your self.

If you mean IOS or MAC... then it's possible, but will require a lot of effort from your part to set it up. There's a thread on the forum on how to do it. Not out of the box solution.

Consoles, like Xbox, PS or Nintendo... again no out of the box solution. CW made a "port" for PSP, and some have had luck porting to Switch (though this require you to pay for the dev kit to Nintendo, so really worth it if you intend to sell the game).

eri0o had recently made a port to publish AGS games to browser (HTML5). It's not perfect yet, but works and he's still working on it, so good chance it'll end up working good.

[Le Club des prédateurs]

I read a lot and can't remember any one that ever scared me. Shock? yes. Emotion (happy, fun, sad, and so on...)? yes. But scared? No.

If you after shock effect, then I can recommend:

Le Club des prédateurs (available in english also)
by Valérie Mangin (Author) & Steven Dupré (Illustrator)

Spoiler

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Shi (available in english as well)
by Zidrou Homes

Spoiler

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And maybe

Green manor (also available in english)
by Bodart & Vehlmann

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These are just a few I've read recently. (waiting for Shi 4 atm to continue reading that story  )

One more plot-device I just remembered is from the movie "Hudson Hawk" where the two characters start singing the same song when together and then split up, each continuing to sing the song. They know from the timing of the lines in the song when to do separate actions to work together as a team. This is quite charming and also gives their relationship a feeling of having worked together for a long time. And it can probably be stolen because almost nobody saw "Hudson Hawk" LOL.

Pretty sure, I've seen it... but don't remember it. 
But I do remember that in Battlestar Galactica (1978  ) there's an episode where Starbuck does exactly that, to coordinate an attack with a bunch of "warrior kids"...  The episode isn't great, even though it has some good scenes and brings in another marvelous IL serie cylon, Spectre (priceless)! I've always hated the stupid song, but it worked well for the situation.

LOL, the first looks like a life size paper-mache sculpture and the second those metallic balloons! 
Nice job!

That's the same problem with the:

Spoiler

"Luke. I am your father!"

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People just forgot that no matter how old the movie is that "everybody" has seen it a million times, there are new viewers that haven't seen it! So no matter how old and well known a movie is, FFS, please use spoilers when talking about movies/shows!