Messages

You should be able to lose the key_in_shirt variable altogether since AGS has it's own variables for inventory items.  This should work too:

Code: ags

// script for Inventory item 5 (shirt): Look at inventory item
if (player.InventoryQuantity[1] == 1) {
  player.Say("Yuuck I hate green color.");
  player.Say("Hey there's something in a pocket.");
  player.AddInventory(iKEY);
  player.Say("It's a key!");
}
else player.Say("There's nothing more in a pocket.");
}

Where in InventoryQuanity[1] the 1 means the inventory item number.  You can also use the iKEY instead of a number if you like.

I downloaded Maplestory a while back but was wary of it asking my National Insurance number.  I know very little about documents and the like and it turned me off.  Silly of me I'm sure, because it looked really cool.

As for Silkroad, don't bother with it.  I played up to about level 29 (cap is 80) and already it was about 10-20 hours per level of monotonous grinding.  The quests were 'kill 200 of x', and then when you've done that, 'kill another 200 of x', and then just grind without a quest until you level.  All the secrets to good character building simply involve levelling up about 5x slower, or the slower the better.  Basically the more of your life you have to waste grinding thousands of the same enemy the better.  The translation is also pretty poor.

Regarding monthly subscriptions, I was on the brink of signing up to WoW at one point, but the monthly fees really turned me off.  I'm more of a casual gamer and monthly fees add pressure to my life, which is the opposite effect to what I game for.  I also have a great dislike for paying money for a service that simply expires, I'd rather pay £100+ for the game and have unlimited access.  For example, Half-Life 1 was a cheap purchase and I've played it pretty regularly since it came out.  If that went to subscription I'd cry.

On the contrary though, consider the amount of time you'd play a subscription MMORPG in a month.  Take 30 hours/month as an average, you're paying roughly between £0.30 and £0.70 for an hour of play.  Minimum wage is over £5.00.  So you have the choice of either playing a crappy freeware MMORPG with dodgy servers and easier to hack, or work an extra 4 hours a month (at most) and play a commercial MMORPG with a heck of a lot more content.  I know which one I'd choose.

Nice clean look, and nice to see progress updates .  Although this isn't the CL, I'd suggest moving the front brim of the hat up a couple of pixels, it looks like the brim is swallowing her head right now, and a pain to see through.  If this one is compared to the sprites in the first post, I much prefer this one.  Judging by the smoothness of the backgrounds this will fit in better.

The bounces aren't identical, I can see that the part behind the neck is sticking still for one of the bounces which looks odd.  Also I think that the character should bounce upwards, not downwards.  Remember that their body moves vertically because they are raising a leg, which raises their hips, so their upper body is above standing position.  Otherwise it looks great, nice pixelling and nice palette.

I agree that the games database needs more order.  Also, Pick of the Month and additional ratings are things to strive for when making a game, which is good.

The save/load buttons look messy.  I'd suggest using images for them instead, or a different interface like a CD tray or casette slot.

Been there, seen it, got the promo card for booking a seat.  Blissful days they were.

I don't know what the Photoshop folder looks like, but try having a look through the config files (.ini, .cfg etc, anything < 10k).  There might be something obvious there you can fiddle with, or you could try getting someone to send you their configs and swap them over.  Failing that, rename or move your configs, PS may create new default ones that don't cause it to crash.  Check also any log files, they may tell you why it crashes.  Don't forget to check your C:\Windows and Documents and Settings\[path to PS] folder for PS files as well.

Winter:



2x, 320x240, 42 colours

I remember several friends downloading a program that claims to find out if someone is blocking you or something and their MSN conversation windows would start with a load of advertising crap.  The truth is simply that many more people use MSN than know what malware is.

Did you actually manage to reformat and reinstall windows?

The only reason I can think of why the keyboard wouldn't work is if the connection is broken somewhere along the line.  Try plugging in a different keyboard, check that the plugs are in properly, and see if there is a pin bent on your connector.  Open up your PC and check that there is nothing obviously out of place on your motherboard.  See if the capacitors are leaking.  Do you have special drivers for keyboard/mouse you have to install?

Alliance - sure, Linux is a good alternative, but I didn't know it can do everything Windows does and better.  What with compatability issues and the like, simply because most commercial programs are developed for the Windows market.

evenwolf: you are aware of this one too?  http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=29996.0

Slightly off-topic, I know.

This is a fantastic background, I like the tree shading and the foreground rock especially.  The ground shading is nice but the lightest colour sticks out quite a lot at the bottom.  The earlier shading on the ground was messy but it looked smoother, perhaps you could smoothen out these lines a little?  Unless of course you just hadn't finished that part

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?category=101 (Option #4)

Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em - very old, about a clumsy fool
Trigger Happy TV / World Shut Your Mouth - sketches based on city streets, parks etc
Little Britain - massive hit, be prepared for mild gay/trans scenes
Catherine Tate

I loved BS1+2, and BS3 was great fun too, except when I got to Montfaucon (with the building site).  While talking to the builder guy, just going through the topics etc, the game froze.  My speakers looped, monitor read 'no signal' and I don't think the reset switch even worked.  When I managed to restart Windows refused to load and gave me a grave error about a corrupt file in the \system32\config folder, and the backups in that folder and elsewhere wouldn't work either.  It also screwed up my harddisk partitions so I had to completely reformat, which wasn't very nice.  Nevertheless, when the computer was up and running again I downloaded the lastest drivers, latest DX, latest patch for BS3 and carried on.  Except it didn't, it did it again at exactly the same point.  Since then I've pretty much replaced everything in my computer but I daren't try it again.

So yea, the BS games are great, I assume I just had a freak error with my PC.

I think that's the problem many of us have been having, if you don't highlight the price you are selling them for you are automatically giving them away.

I finished the demo: "Not-bad"!

A few more bits (from the new download):

- I think the early design artwork was available to sell more than once.  I'd already sold it but it popped up again, I don't know if that's for the project in development or something.  When I looked at the game info page for the new game the artwork was available to sell, but I might've missed the popup for that one.

-Tim Schafer became available, but his salary is missing.

-The popup saying Tim Schafer is available came again and again and again (although I did never employ him).  Once is probably enough.

-I'll admit that I was a bit of a beast once the 3rd game was ready to market and fired off my whole team.  Even then the waste basket continued to fill, does this fill regardless of how many employees you have?

-Unless it's only for the demo, you should be able to produce more than 3 ideas, since they don't really take up any resources to 'store'.

-Even when I've released games, I still get messages saying "z0mg where r ur games???"

-Make more user comments, they're hilarious.

I've noticed though that the writers take the early phase, art and animators in second phase, coders in third and testers in fourth.  This is a bit of a problem since you can only work on one game at a time so most of your staff are redundant.  Perhaps you could give them holiday or set them to work on something else?  When you want to upgrade staff, I'd suggest being able to either make staff redundant or fire them.  If they are fired they can't return, but while redundant staff can return you have to pay them to leave.

One idea is maybe to set unneeded staff to 'practise mode'.  They are paid less but learn how to produce better material, and maybe coders can research new engine technologies?

For the GUI it would be nice if you could switch between the menus just by clicking on the icons on the left - they're already nicely aligned to be like that.  For the games on the right perhaps tabbing between each one instead of opening/closing windows?

Sorry if I sound too critical, I do like the game really

I like the use and look GUIs too, most of the others are too cumbersome.  I liked the way in Discworld you could drag the inventory window so you don't have to keep closing and opening to change items, something very common and very irritating in AGS games.

I liked the Lure of the Temptress GUI the most though, and in fact my game in progress uses a context menu.

SCUMM is ok for me as long as each command has a keyboard shortcut, dragging the mouse backwards and forwards is no fun at all.  Of course, most games with a SCUMM GUI really don't use some of the commands enough to justify having them there.

The Verbcoin was ok too, but I got bored waiting for the coin to appear each time and often forgot I can use it on inventory items too.

The default AGS 4+ action cycling cursor mode is not a very good choice.  I challenge you to find one person that clicks the iconbar at the top to change action.  You usually have to think twice to make sure you've got the right cursor mode, and the last inventory item used just gets in the way.  With a simple two-action interface you don't need to recognise anything on the screen to work out what you're doing.  Don't think that two-action games are easy though, my ideal game would have a big inventory (like Discworld) and cool minigames.

Matt you probably had the same problem as me - I'd set the price to sell the game but didn't actually highlight it, so I was giving away 100+ games for free!  By the time I realised I was really in the brown stuff.

m0ds - really fun game to play around with, a few things that cropped up:

- During 2nd game production I received a message (on bottom bar) that crashed the game:

---
in Global script (line 2081)

Error: Cannot display message with extended characters in SCI font

(Accented characters, for example the special French and German e/a/u/i letters cannot be used by default.  You need to import a TTF font to do so).

---

- I found myself spending most of my time bashing the tea+coffee button and the empty was button.  Perhaps this should be replished faster or bulk buy options or something.

- You can't tell if your game has stopped being developed until you go have a look.  A popup hint at the bottom saying to get more coffee would be very nice

- I had just under 4k when I selected and bought a soundtrack for my first game in production.  I instantly got a buzz and a "you've failed your objective" + quit without really being sure why.  Buying music on other attempts seemed to work fine

- What is that slider on the far right?

Loving the game though, and I'll carry on and try and beat the demo.