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Thirteen looks pretty.  Ish.  But it has failed to grab me--certainly not enough to grab some overpriced next gen console (this gen?).

A little put off by twelve, because yes, the battle system was amazing for those of us who have legitimate dread of the imminent carpel tunnel syndrome, and yes, the world was detailed and gorgeous and had a lot going on, but the game was like 100+ hours of

A to B*
A to C*
A to D*
A to E*
A to F*
*do a hundred sidequests.

with a story that had its moments, but was altogether too sparse and predictable to justify its length.  Almost made me miss the giant FMV festivals that were the previous 4 single player installments, but what it really did was make me wonder whether the enjoyment I'd gleaned from the earlier titles had been more a product of my own youth and lack of critical evaluation skills than of any inherent quality in their respective stories.  It's left me a bit skittish about revisiting old favorites of anything.

At any rate, I did enjoy the games when I played them, but the Final Fantasy name has lost much of its appeal to me since then.  Still, I would give it a try if I could afford it.

Dying from anything, walking-dead, maze and timed puzzles are also realistic, but there's a reason why they're not in modern adventure games anymore.

Walking deads are not realistic.  They stem from the entirely unrealistic (but necessary) dynamic of only having a limited number of predefined ways of solving a problem.  True, in real life it is possible to sabotage yourself or fail to the extent that a given goal that was once conceivably within your reach no longer is, but when this happens, your life does not just stop.  It doesn't get stuck--at least, not in the way it would in an adventure game.  And generally this doesn't happen because you forgot to pick something up or for some other trivial nonsense.  (Okay maybe in bureaucracy, but that's different)

Death from everything isn't that realistic either.  True, there are a lot of things out there that can hurt or kill you, but games tend to unrealistically exaggerate the fragility of human life and/or the prevalence of lethal entities--and then, not even consistently.  True, people can die from most of the things that kill you in an adventure game, but it isn't a given that you will die every time you fall in the river, every time you get shocked, every time you get hit by a car.  The other problem with this is that game characters are unrealistically clumsy--or rather, the way we control them is.  No matter how intuitive your control system is, it will never approach the complexity with which real humans can interact with their environment.  The subtleties of footing and finger movement and the senses--things that allow us, for instance, to drive safely.  In real life we surround ourselves with potentially lethal entities all the time, but we are rarely at any significant risk from any of them.  Most people will even have a number of "close ones" before they finally die.  Serious injuries they recover from, or near misses, such as when you nearly avoid being run over.  If the game worlds and the way we perceived and interacted with them were truly realistic, death would be quite rare in them.

Part of the problem with realism in games will always be with the player.  One of the problems is that as a player I will never see the consequences in the game world as real enough.  Whether I know that I won't die, or that I can reload, or that I can restart, I will always engage in much riskier behavior than I would in real life.  When the game world makes it clear that there will be real consequences, in game, however, I may react oppositely and become paralyzed.  Unlike the real world, I will never be able to anticipate the risks I am taking with a high enough degree of accuracy to accept that I in fact have a reasonable life expectancy of 70 years, or even 7 days, for that matter.

These concerns relate to timing puzzles in games just as easily as they relate to death in games.  In real life we have a heightened awareness of time, we have more time, and we have a much larger arsenal of ways to compensate when we, for instance, realize we are going to miss an appointment or deadline.  So to say it is realistic to have timing puzzles in a game is only an approximate truth.

It should also be pointed out that the closer we get to solving these issues and making our games "real," the more they will become sandbox games, and not story driven adventure games.

So I guess I agree that not every step we take toward realism is a step toward a more immersive game, especially if that game is an adventure game, even if I do think that on the whole, a game that behaves like reality, is perceived like reality, and is interacted with like reality, would theoretically be about the most immersive gaming experience possible.

That said, I think careful, if heavily stylized, attention to reality is an excellent strategy for creating a more believable and immersive world.  Just remember that as in books and film, the trick is to capture the essence of reality in a way that does not frustrate your audience or compromise your artistic intent.  When you write dialogue, you want the flow of the conversation to be "real," you want people to say things that they would actually say, but at the same time, you don't actually want to write word for word what people DO say in the real world.  You'd be bogged down in "uh"s and "errr"s and awkward pauses, people repeating themselves, cliches, mumbling, unintentional rhyming and alliteration, and not only will this be annoying to your readers, but they will likely get lost in all the excess crap and actually lose track of the layers of meaning that the same exchange would effectively convey in real life.  So instead you try to capture the essence of what people say, the essence of how they say it, and this is a flexible and somewhat subjective thing, but it will still only benefit from careful attention to reality.

Likewise, when we talk about things like motive and carrying capacity for game characters, getting too bogged down in a perfect duplication of reality will be counter intuitive and ultimately impossible, but that isn't a blanket excuse to simply ignore reality in favor of an unrealistic status quo that everyone accepts.  Not saying there should never be games where you get to put tires and mini-refrigerators in your pants, or pick up hairballs and gum wrappers and press strange buttons "just 'cause."  But if you do this, do it on purpose, and when your world is not meant to be humorously or surreally counterfactual (and even when it is, really), pay attention to what reality is actually like, and try to capture some essence of it in the way your world behaves and in the way people interact with it (even if you do achieve this by showcasing reality's absence), because this is a big part of what will draw people in.

Useful as knives and guns are, there are plenty of reasons why we don't use them in our everyday problem solving (err, interpersonally, at least, knives we keep in our kitchens and use all the time).  I think it is perfectly reasonable to make a character need a strong motive before they go about putting a gun to everyone's head or killing everything that gets in their way.  When things get desperate enough to where a character realistically would start resorting to this strategy, as probably will happen in the average adventure, you can still complicate the whole "violence or threat of violence solves all problems" sort of dynamic by forcing the player who pulls guns on people to navigate dialogue trees wherein they have to get reliable information/aid out of a character whose fight or flight instinct has just gone through the roof.  If the gun ever goes off, you can have guards/police swoop in and make an arrest (not always realistic, if it is immediate, but approximately realistic, and if you wait around for the neighbors to get up nerve and call the cops, you've probably just put the player in a walking dead situation).  And if the gun was supposed to go off, you can do the same thing, and just not make it a game ender.  You can also make your character a terrible shot, or someone who has never been in a knife fight, and so is easily disarmed by your average thug.

Still, I agree that if you give someone a gun, knife, or big stick, you should expect them to try to use it on everything, so it is best to design your game around this possibility, or avoid giving them a potential weapon to begin with.  If you can make them lose the weapon soon after it is necessary, without coming off too contrived (an out of ammo, or getting it confiscated by the authorities or badguys might be believable in some situations), this is another good route.  

I really liked how the whole gun situation played out in The Vacuum.  

Spoiler

Bringing the gun into play at all heightened tension and made the world much more dangerous for the NPCs you were trying to protect, and even when it was useful, it mostly just escalated things and forced a more fatal climax than was actually necessary.

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I've tended to be a little bit of a hoarder in real life, so maybe I'm biased, but I don't think that it is that unrealistic to have people on a quest picking up things like scissors and crowbars because "they might come in handy."  

It is true that in real life, we have an extremely limited carrying capacity and only leave home with a few generalized items that will fit in our pockets, purses, or if we want to travel heavy, our hand bags.  We usually limit ourselves to things like keys, wallets, phones, and maybe one or two other items we use frequently - a pair of sunglasses, a notepad and pen, a mini flashlight, a pocket knife (but not all of these at once).  Then maybe we carry some receipts or business cards or other excess crap that was useful once, or that someone handed us and we haven't bothered to toss yet.  (Little more leeway if there's a handbag involved, of course, but the principle still applies).

We only pack more than this if we expect to need it, in which case we might tote around some specialized set of items - meals, school supplies, etc.

The rest of the time we expect any item we might need to exist in our immediate environment.

The problem is, in real life we have these expectations because in real life they work.  Desperate trips to a store or frantic searches all over the neighborhood for usually common items we never expected to be stuck without do occur, but they are relatively rare.   However, in adventure games, we are often faced with these types of challenges repeatedly.

If I got hit with a couple of these situations in a row and, in addition found myself in a distressing and unprecedented situation (which I must be in loong before I start stealing body parts from the morgue), I might not start stealing everything that isn't nailed down, but neither would I feel any cognitive dissonance if I happened to find myself pocketing scissors and screw drivers "just in case."  After all, my day to day routine has been compromised, and I can't really know what to expect.  It's probably best for me to be prepared for anything.

If you really want immersion, I'd say define your character's carrying capacity.  Do they have a lot of pockets?  Then let them carry an indefinite supply of small things, but for every potential item, ask yourself "would this fit in a pocket"?  Or if you give your character a purse or a tote bag, then ask "would this item fit in a purse/tote bag."  Likewise with backpacks, briefcases, or whatever other carrying container your character might hold. If an item won't fit, don't let your character take it with him/her - and say why.  Say "that won't fit in my pocket/purse/bag." And show the carrying container on the sprite itself, otherwise just assume that your are working with pockets.  It seems like the vast majority of games, even commercial ones, rely on this abstract concept called an "inventory" in which we store the "inventory items" that we come across in our travels.  We accept this default without thinking about it, but it really is quite absurd.

You don't necessarily have to limit the -number- of inventory items (it is more realistic, but it can get annoying very fast), but avoid even including in your game more than one or two long term items that look as though they would push the limit of your carrying capacity (things like books and crowbars might fit somewhere on your person, but if you have me carrying five hardback novels, a crowbar, a bottle rocket, and a small bucket, I expect to be positively bulging, clumsy, and quickly exhausted, whereas I might overlook an unrealistic number of bitesized trinkets).

Don't be afraid to limit the character picking up items without proper motive if they are obviously items that an ordinary person would need a strong reason to take.  I know I've never felt too put off from a game that has prevented me from stealing or carrying obviously dangerous or straight up absurd items without an in game motivation.  But if you are going to do this, avoid putting these items on the other side of the game world from where you find out that you need them, and don't extend this reasoning to small, harmless, ownerless, multiuse items like scissors and pens, because sure, not everyone would take these things, but someone always might.  After all, these items ARE useful.

You might consider leaving more than one set of a given common object (scissors, pens, string) or types of objects (cutters, blunt things, writing scraps and utensils) around your game world, and allow them to be picked up and used interchangeably.  Finding these things isn't much of a puzzle in real life, so it shouldn't be in your game either (at least, not too often).  If you want to save on inventory space, you could even have a message like "I don't need that knife, I already have something to cut with."  But again if you do that, don't penalize the character for not taking the knife, later on.

For items that can be picked up, but are too large to realistically carry around indefinitely, or which only have a use in a specific context (a fact your character should be aware of), you might consider allowing the player to pick them up, but then not let them leave the screen with them.  The most realistic way to do this (especially for larger items) would be to show the item in the in the player's hand, and stop them from performing any complex hand interactions until they put the item down, because now their hands are full.  But you could also just put the item in the inventory and then have the game check if you try to leave the room.  Or do what King's Quest 7 did.  There was a puzzle in a forge that let you use a large pair of tongs, but when you picked up the tongs, they overruled your cursor, so you couldn't perform any non-tong actions (including walking) until you put them back.

This is fairly realistic behavior.  Many people would not hesitate to pick up and fiddle with any number of items that they would never actually take with them for practical or ethical reasons.

For the specific puzzle you brought up, I would let the player pickup any old knife or pair of scissors instead of or in addition to the specific mortician's instrument.  Then let them cut off the bit of DNA with whatever they can get their hands on.  You might even let them yank out some hair for the DNA scan with their bare hands.  I'd probably do that before I went cutting pieces off of people.

Further, I wouldn't let them leave the morgue with any of the morgue's tools unless they had a long term motive for the theft, be it kleptomania, "I need this elsewhere for a specific reason" or "hey, I hate to steal, but they WERE useful once, so maybe..."

I mean, if you are going to take in game motives seriously, you may as well go the whole way.

Just remember that if you have the player trying to guide the character through some sort of mental gymnastic every time they need to motivate an action, you haven't stopped the player from thinking outside the constraints of the game world; rather, you have emphasized the fact that they are outside this world, and that the mind they are thinking with is not the same mind that their character is thinking with.

Look up DateTime functions and properties in the manuel.

Then put something like (pseudocode)

Code: ags

if (year > last year of beta) AbortGame("beta time is up");
if (year = last year of beta) {
  if (month > last month of beta) AbortGame("beta time is up");
  if (month = last month of beta) {
    if (day of month > last day of beta) AbortGame("beta time is up");
  }
}

in on_game_start.

But I'm pretty sure this won't stop people from changing their system time to bypass the block.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

The logic in this game is beautiful.

Salsa is a type of dip, often with tomatoes, cilantro, peppers, onion, lime, etc.  Typically associated with Latin-American cooking.  Chunky salsa is salsa with larger than usual pieces of solid vegetable matter in it.

My guess is the point here is to combine disparate elements into your story, in the hope of getting some unique and inventive (or at least random and quirky) results.  Chunky salsa is merely one item from the list that, being atypical as a major element in the Adventure genre, best represents the theme as a whole.

Coincidence.  On Saturday, Jan 2 I started doing some sprites and scripting for a platformer that tentatively stars a vampire.  Supposing I finish it on time and the end result still fits with this theme, would it be all right if I entered it, even though it wasn't initially intended for the MAGs? 

So, I had an idea.  Don't know if anyone has tried this.  (Apologies if this is the wrong forum, but I couldn't think of one that was more appropriate.)

Say you are making an RPG, or another game that utilizes a large number of arrays and structs.  The numbers of variables that need to be set can increase rapidly, (exponentially in some cases), and while some of these variables can be set automatically through the script, many of them will need to be set manually, at least for their initial value.  This is the unavoidable cost of creating stats for large numbers of monsters, characters, items, or whatever other entities your game just can't get enough of.  What you can avoid, however, is the tedious copy-pasting of

Code: ags

guy[1].Name = 
guy[1].HP =
guy[1].Level =
guy[1].Etc. Etc.

Repeating with guy[2] and guy[3] and guy[256].

If you have Microsoft Access, or a similar program, all you need to do is input the relevant variables into a spreadsheet.  Input your variables (ID#, Name, HP, Level, etc.) in the columns and instances of the struct (be it describing characters, items, etc.) in the rows.  Then you just tell Access to generate a report or label with the data displayed in a format like (Access Psuedocode:)

Code: ags

guy[{ID#}].Name = "{Name}";
guy[{ID#}].HP = {HP};
guy[{ID#}].Level = {Level};

and then paste the resulting text into on_game_start()

When I tried this I wasn't able to copy the label text straight from Access, so I dumped it to a plain text file and copied it from there.

Also note that Access uses certain characters (such as {}, and I think quotes, actually) in its label generator, so you may need to use placeholder characters to signify those characters and then run a Replace All in notepad before copying into AGS.

Obviously, this won't be worth it for structs with only a couple instances, but for large ones, it might save you a bit of work.

I would not be at all surprised if a similar effect could be accomplished using Excel or another simpler spreadsheet program, but I haven't tried.  Another thought I had was programming a simple utility in AGS itself to generate simple code in a String and dump it into a .txt file.

Has anyone else used a similar (or dissimilar) method to generate AGS script and found it useful, or for that matter entirely unuseful (too much work or producing problematic code)?  Feel free to share your ideas/experiences here (or point out problem areas you see in this method or others), as this information could be useful.

Awesome.  Good to know.

I went ahead and changed the formatting to fit the AGS module guidelines.  As far as I know I didn't break anything.  Still compiles at any rate.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/z4rnnmznmmy/BitManips_0_4_1.zip

Related question: Is using bits in a char or int to store a series of binary values any faster or more space efficient than using multiple bools?

For instance, if one were to use a large array of structs and each stuct needed to hold a large number of binary values (say the presence or not of a plethora of individual status ailments on RPG characters), is there a chance that storing all these values in one int per struct instead of several bools would notably improve performance or filesize?

For hand drawing, you could try making a little paper cut-out at whatever dimensions you want your characters to be, maybe sketch/print a character on it, or just leave it a blank rectangle tab, whatever makes more sense.  Then you can just put it on your paper while you draw, and it will have the same effect as pasting a sprite on in your paint program.

Edit: Though probably make sure you can duplicate it at the same size, in case it gets lost or wrinkled/ripped beyond usability.

They could probably all be good, but #1 piqued my interest.

Based on your love of King's Quest and Quest for Glory, I'm gonna say do not miss A Tale of Two Kingdoms.  It's an excellent game, and definitely feeds that old Sierra fantasy nostalgia, without feeling like a lame knock off.

The bluecup ratings in the game database are pretty stringent, so if you play anything with 4 or 5 cups (even 3, really), you are probably guaranteed a solid playing experience, but there are some real gems that don't make the cut for technical reasons, so don't be afraid to delve into the lower ratings if you see something that catches your interest.

If I had to pick one, I'd say first person narration, present tense internal monologue.  At least, I think that's the least intrusive and most personal, for any given character driven story.  But it really depends.  Just like any story, different game narrators are useful for different things.  Past tense narration allows for more perspective and foreshadowing, while present tense keeps the player in the moment.  2nd person helps put the player inside the character, especially if that character is the generic, customizable silent protagonist type.  And omniscient 3rd person takes the player out of the story a bit, but allows you to do all kinds of exposition.  A narrator who is an actual character in the story (whether a PC or NCP) allows you to cast doubt on how how objective an account of events your story is.  Your basic 3rd person limited makes character switching fairly seamless, but that shouldn't stop you from using 1st and even 2nd in the same way.  And don't forget that plenty of games in other genres don't even have narrators--don't take it as scripture that you need one.  These will all affect the mood and tone in a serious game, and allow for different kinds of jokes in a humorous one.  So really, I'd say do what fits best or mix things up a bit for the fun of it.  But barring that, you can't go wrong with 1st person, present tense.

Having the character actually turn and talk to the screen worked great for Monkey Island, and you can probably make it work for you, too.  But it entails some serious implied 4rth wall violation and suspension of disbelief, so I wouldn't use it (especially in a serious game) unless I knew exactly why I was doing so.

You could do an infinite while loop, though it'll lock up before crashing, which might be annoying.  Or is that the same as a stack overflow?

I would use an int to store an invisible score, and then add some value to that int at every puzzle and plot point that is essential to completing the chapter (but not on optional ones, probably).  A sort of invisible point system, if you will.  If you want to put all the chapters on the same bar, you'll probably want to make the total points the player will get in each chapter.  Example: Each chapter sums to 100 points total.  Then just add more points for events in shorter chapters.

As for the bar itself, I haven't done one myself, but it shouldn't be too difficult to do.  I would recommend either a GUI button with a dynamic sprite, or you might be able to use a GUI slider.  Read up on GUI objects, dynamic sprites, and drawing surfaces in the manual, if you haven't already.  Then just draw evenly spaced lines or something to represent chapter breaks.

Ha ha.  Go, monkey!

I might have stated my preferences a little strong.  While I tend to get a little bored of the pure nostalgia after a while, I still played KQII+, the new Maniac Mansion, and intend to check out QfGII VGA.  And I still get giddy when my favorite books get turned into movies.  I think homage is a legitimate form of expression and that amateur game makers, especially, should make whatever the hell kind of games they feel like.  And while I might not be first in line to download the latest fan remake, let alone make it, I don't expect or particularly want everyone to make games with me in mind.

I think if anything I get more frustrated with Hollywood, where it seems like almost all the high profile fantasy etc. movies are based on something else.

If I was interested in coding, but none of the other aspects of game design particularly appealed to me, or I felt I was not good at them, I think I would find making a remake very appealing.  I can just look at what other people have done, and done well, and the challenge for me, then, is to reproduce what they've done.  It would be great experience, and I wouldn't have to get bogged down in all the other little details of plotting and puzzle design.  I suppose this could also be true of artist/musician types.

Personally, though, remakes don't really appeal to me.  Not just with games, either.  Movies, songs, books, comics, books turned into movies, comics turned into games.  Etc. etc.  The only exception being when the remake does something to make itself notably different from the source material.  When the artist takes the original and makes it his or her own.  Remakes that are really faithful seem pointless and bland to me, and remakes that stay mostly faithful but change a few things to accommodate budget or technical constraints, or appeal to a more mainstream audience almost always seem to detract from the original.  But if you can subvert the source material, turn it on its head, or take low quality source material and turn it into something amazing, take vague source material and flesh it out, make the player/reader/viewer/listener think about it in a whole new way, that's a worthy remake.  I could conceive of wanting to make a remake like that.

Oh.  Or if I were to remake some of my own work, to improve it, with the intention that the remake be what I am remembered for, rather than as a new work specifically paying homage to an older work.

Instead of four copies of the same sprite on top of each other, duplicate it on several layers in Photoshop and merge them together into one image.

The only problem is banding in the dark regions, so it's probably best to merge only two copies, and still use two of the resulting sprites in-game.

Yeah, doubling up the sprite in the paint program turns the outer regions solid black, making the fade-in less seamless, though it isn't super noticeable.   

I messed with it some more and didn't notice any slow down, but there wasn't a lot else going on, since it was just a simple test game, and my machine, though a laptop, is relatively new and fast.  In a more complex game on an older computer, I have no idea.

The only thing with using an object or character is you have to worry about positioning it, especially if the game has scrolling rooms, but that's still fairly simple scripting.  Is that definitely faster than GUIs?  Also what about graphical overlays?  Can they be added to the tween module and are they more or less efficient than GUIs and/or objects?

At any rate, the method should work (with some tweaking), and it isn't too difficult to implement, which is good to know.