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Sounds very nice so far, keep working on it
Changing the key is generally just moving all the notes up or down, with a few exceptions.Ã,  In your piece, you could try moving everything up 5 notes for a while, and then maybe back down again later on.Ã,  It sounds better as well if you change the melodies a bit for the new key, it adds more of a contrast.Ã,  Here's a very quick example of changing the key and going back again.Ã,  It changes at 0:47, and back at 1:12.Ã,  Feel free to open up the MIDI and have a look if you need to.

edit

To be honest, I don't mind a simplified interface if it suits the game.  The Discworld series is one of my favourites, but it only has USE/LOOK for the mouse buttons, and an inventory.  It didn't make the game easy by any means since the inventory had about 30 items at times, and so most of the game was inventory based.  I really didn't mind since there are too many items to solve the puzzles by brute force in any short time, but it wasn't obvious what to do with them.  The Curse of Monkey Island is similar too.

Don't get me wrong though, I didn't mind the verbs in MI1 since they were all used a few times each, but I don't think it's the only interface that works.  Having to move your mouse back and forth between the verbs and the scene is tiring, and having your hand sprawled across the hotkeys isn't that much better.  I get tired of the standard 4-verb interface in most AGS games as well, and pressing the right mouse button to cycle to the icon you want isn't really that pleasant, especially since the icons are different for every game, and often too ugly to recognise instantly.

The only parser games I've played are text-only, except for The Lion's Den (OROW).  I'm not that good at them, but they're a lot more fun, and more personal in a way.  In fact, I think the best interface is the drop-down menu to suit each object.  It means you don't have to think about the stupid verbs which hardly apply to anything, such as 'open/close' and 'give'.  I saw a tech demo or two with this in, but nothing longer.

As far as puzzles go I haven't got much more to add.  I like MJR's point about conversations, and I think there should be consequences for what is said in a conversation.  Every game just seems to have conversation topics that are built up and then exhausted during the course of the conversation, until talking just results in 'bye' each time.  What order it is done in doesn't matter one bit, one topic doesn't affect another in the slightest.  I want to play a game where I save before an important conversation in case what is said is pivotal to the storyline, or at least slight details throughout the game.  I want to be able to put my personality into a game I'm playing by actually choosing the pathways I want, not reading pages of linear script.  Of all the aspects of the game, the NPCs are the only things that can think, and talking to them should be exciting.

As long as it isn't going to be the death of 2D adventures I'm happy.

I loved episode 1 more it seems than some people did with all the negativity around, and episode 2 was no worse.  The plot developments and the 'fogging' scenes were great.  Sure, I agree about the ending, and the collisions in the boss fight were sort of dodgy, but still.  I'd like it just as much if it weren't Yahtzee that made it, and it seems that people are being especially negative because it is by him.  I'd be more critical if Yahtzee was particularly arrogant about it, but the games page has a modest one sentence description.
Looking forward to episode 3.

Darn. I can't open it because it's a .rar file

Use WinRAR - It's a 40 day trial, but there are no limitations after that, except that it asks that you buy a licensed version. Ã, What you do after the 40 days is your choice, but it's fine in the meantime.

Edit: Gah, this forum's too fast.

Amazing game, had my eye on it since the MAGS it was meant to be in.  I liked the music, and the scripting and testing's really good too, I didn't find anything to mention except for "greatful" instead of "grateful" somewhere in the ending.  As for 'hours of gameplay', it took me 2 hours since I was stuck several times, but the puzzles were logical enough that the game kept me going through one sitting.
Looking forward to more great releases in the future!

Congrats to Pablo and Ishmael, and everyone else that entered.  OROW games always seems to be new and fresh, I enjoyed playing all of them.

I voted highly for Brooklyn for most categories, I thought the scripting was fine.  Had a few problems with keys not being very reactive, but in general is was great, the only thing that held me back was Windows StickyKeys on shift, but that's probably not ProgZ's fault

It seems that the main reason why people don't enter the OROW is that they don't have the time to work solidly for a week, and they don't want to spend just a couple of hours a day because they know that other people will have plenty more time and produce much more polished games.Ã,  I'm not going to talk about why they should still enter, but perhaps there should be another event for them to enter in their own time.Ã,  Still just one room, but with unlimited time.Ã,  This leaves people without large gaps in their timetable to enter, and also people who tried and failed to enter OROW can polish up their game and still release it with fanfare.

I'd imagine the entries to be even higher quality than OROW, but still people can compete against each other.Ã,  The entries could be ranked by each player in the order that they like them, from best to worst, which are then totaled up and displayed to all the users as a 'league table', except that results only change through new games and players.Ã,  Hopefully this would encourage people to try and make a really polished one room game, building from a small concept rather than the huge blueprint of an ambitious game.Ã,  Things like GUIs would have to be suitable, and still there'd need to be things like character animations, music, and possibly a plot.Ã,  Being forced to make a small amount in high quality could encourage people to expand their game to a larger, multi-room version, or at least use the resources they made in another game.

Another thing I noticed in the OROWs is that some people stick strictly to a single screenspace, whereas others push the rules to include many more screensworth of content.Ã,  Perhaps to stop people judging simply by size, there could be a limit of say, 2 screens?

Opinions?

Are you sure the virus isn't from another source that infected your download?  If it is from the actual archive on the games page then I think you're right, someone probably should know about it.

My first CC entry.
In fact, my first comic

I'm not half the artist you are, but these backgrounds are amazing!  I like anime art, and I can hardly fault the sketch in the first picture, except that there seems to be something up with the shape of the head, and maybe the placement of her right eye, or the angling of the mouth, or a bit of each.  The background is great as well, my only problems are with the definition on the foliage at the middle-left.  Every leaf seems to be very clear, perhaps if the lines were slightly less contrasting, not necessarily making it like the plants on the tree, but less attention-drawing.  There seems to be a lot of brush-trailing as well on the foremost tree and the one to the left of the girl, it looks very jagged compared to the smoothness of the rest of the picture.  As for the grass, I can only suggest making the foreground grass thicker and more opaque, and maybe denser, with more going in the same direction?  I don't know.
And the second, picture, that's just great.  If these are for a game, I really hope you manage to finish it.

Sorry, I did play it as well, but I wasn't planning to post until I finished it.  Got to about level 7/8 so far.  It is a fun game, I think my main criticism is that the levels are too similar, and every level can be solved in many, many ways.  Perhaps a few more features would make the game more interesting - teleporters, more shapely levels, one-way arrows, or more original things if you can think of them.  That is assuming that you don't have them already
Here is a similar game that might give you some ideas: http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=3563
There was also an old DOS game, I think it was called 'pod', might want to take a look at that too if you can find it.  But I will carry on playing this game, I like puzzle games.  To be honest, I'm not sure about how it would turn out in Game Maker.  About 99% of games made with it come out as shoddy crap, and it raises the file size a lot too.  If you can, hand-coding it would probably be the best option, but I'd still play a version in Game Maker.
Sorry I've ranted a bit, but I hope some of it helps.

I think it's a good game idea, and considering that you can speak in full sentences, read people's replies and generally aren't an arse, I don't think you'd have that much trouble being taken seriously.  Lingering around a bit and making a game (MAGS?) would help too though.

I have a few problems with the background so far:

-The perspective is off on the depth in the window, I think the left part of the frame should be covered up by the wall, like in Squinky's edit.  The glass is probably not completely opaque either, even a bit of blue-tinted wall behind it would help the depth.

-The composition's slightly strange.  The building seems very close, oppressive almost.  The tiny bit of background to the right is too small, right now it seems like a poorly thought out photo.  Also, I think a street corner should be lonely, and this picture doesn't show the surroundings.  Some emptiness in the background would help, I'd assume some sort of streets.

-The lighting is quite nice, but I think it could be better still.  When I think of a street corner, I'd think of very dark surroundings, and a streetlight just about lighting up the area, maybe some overhead things that block out some of the light.

Don't take this too harshly, I'm not a great artist by far.  Some of what I say might be wrong, or you might not be going for the type of scene I had in mind.  I just get bored of the overused back-entrance-to-a-pub scene with old posters and several trashcans etc. that seems to be everywhere.
Hope some of this helps

I use Paint Shop Pro 7 for pixelling and just about anything else, and it does everything I want.  I get the feeling that PS is little different, so it's probably just the way you use it.  If you don't already, try using a 1px 100% opaque brush, and use layers for objects at different depths.  With layers you can draw an animatable object onto your background, and then just make more layers on top for different stages in the animation, so that you can always compare it with the background.  I'm no professional artist, but that's how I do things.

I think that it's the games industry's fault for people not playing adventure games much any more.  Most of the best-selling adventure games were 2D, mostly in 320x240 or 640x480, or similar.  I think that game designers have tried to apply new technology to every genre of game, and failed for adventure games.  The earliest games had everything visible in front of you without any hassle in changing the camera angle, and you just had to work out what to do.  Now, adventure games have irritating camera angles and more complicated interfaces.  An adventure game is poorly designed when the player struggles to do something that they could easily to in real life.  I hardly play any newly released adventure games.
Having said this, I don't think adventures should stick to low-res, low-colour technology.  Wouldn't it be cool to have a virtual reality adventure game?  Find things yourself, actually have realistic puzzles, talk to people in conversations with many more than 5 dialogue options, and actually feel exertion, pain or even death.  No, I don't think that's possible yet, but I'm sure it could be, and I might enjoy that even more than early adventure games.
What I'm saying is that adventure games are trying to take advantage of the latest technology while losing the all-important gameplay and clarity.  The market has now seemed to be drawn more to graphics, and games without cutting-edge technology don't get a mention.

Back on topic, I think forced failures can be a great plot device, but yes, only if used correctly.Ã,  I've only played a handful of games with forced deaths in (can only remember two right now), but they were well done.

Spoiler

In Silver, Fuge kills the protagonist's father.Ã,  The scene had plenty of action, and it wasn't drawn out.Ã,  The player even had a change to fight, although I don't think it was possible to win.Ã,  I remember loading plenty though to try and kill Fuge, which did break the atmosphere a bit.Ã,  But it was still good.

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Spoiler

Final Fantasy VII - Definitely my all time favourite game, of any genre.Ã,  The scene in this game was anticipated, but not expected.Ã,  Considering that previously the game was focused a lot on action and battle crying, it really plunged the player into the storyline, and I didn't at all feel that the training I had done was wasted.Ã,  I think the problem with many RPGs, especially amateur ones, is that the designers focus too much on battles and all the D&D elements, and put in a storyline as an afterthought, to tie the game together.Ã,  FF7 on the other hand focuses a lot on the plot, with 2 hours (?) of cutscenes, and really shows that the characters are mortal, as other games don't.
/end of FF7 rant

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As far as adventure games go, I can't think of any examples of forced failure, but I haven't played that many games, so I'll be careful which spoilers I read.Ã,  I think it's a great thing to do, just as long as it's appropriate and well executed (no pun intended).

A few things I think would help:



-The doors seem pretty small, the back ones in particular.Ã,  If you do want them that size though, make sure that the side and back doors are the same height (red lines on top of doors)
-The bath is slightly out of perspective I beliebe, and it might also help if you could see the bottom edge of the pool faintly through the water.
-Some of the columns have oddly shaped and angled bases.Ã,  Squaring them off a bit might help.Ã,  I also doodled a bit with one of the bases
-The side door was both behind a column and off centre from the pool steps, so I moved the door over to the middle and got rid of the column.Ã,  But you could have two doors either side of a central column instead.

I'm glad also that you used the special effects sparingly and in perspective, I think they look quite nice.Ã,  I hope some of these crits help

Picture works for me, now and when you posted the topic, in Firefox and IE.

Great game, managed to get the good ending with 173 points.  Is there a different ending if you get the full 178?  Anyway, some crits (many already mentioned):

Spoiler

-Top arrow on inventory changes cursor to an ugly pointer.
-You can't 'look' at the scissors in the inventory.
-When talking to Theresa near the start of the game, the phrase "the you're" comes up, instead of "then you're".  I can't remember precisely where though, it's in the conversation after talking to the geek.
-You can access the default inventory with tab.
-The default white background text boxes look sort of ugly.  I'd recommend replacing them with plain speech, it just doesn't seem to suit the game.
-I don't think that you can click on any part on an inventory item to select it, only the upper section.  I had a problem like this, try looking at SetInvDimensions (I don't know if it's in v2.7, never tried it).
-During the photograph scene, 'bum' is spelt as 'bumb'

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The graphics were great too, they really seem to fit the game.  And the close-ups, , nicely yet still tastefully done.
Again, a fantastic game.  To be honest, I was quite relieved that the scenes were quite mild and that while there was some titillation, it wasn't frontal nudity or obviously adult as more games in the field seem to be.  Not to mean any disrespect to those games, simply that this game seems to be a nice compromise, with both puzzling and light romance, making it more accessible than the more graphic titles.
This is the first game of yours I've played, aussie, but I might check the others out.  Similar style or not, I look forward to your next release.