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[Zid Journey!]

Last year you went on an Adventure...
Now get ready for a Journey - a Zid Journey!

Ready for round two? The cartoony dinosaurs are back in the second chapter of the Zid and Zniw Chronicles series! Featuring a familiar look and feel, Zid Journey will combine classic point-and-click adventure gameplay with charming cartoon visuals, comic book-esque art style, and frame-by-frame animation - essentially everything you loved about Zniw Adventure will make a grand return in Zid Journey! And just like the previous game, Zid Journey aims to be an enjoyable experience for both beginner and veteran adventure game players!

Happening in the same timeframe as our previous title, the new game will explore even more of the prehistoric world and characters in a cartoony fashion! Even some familiar faces might make an appearance...

Zid - a young dinosaur from Magmosian forests - spots an abandoned egg while looking around for some firewood. With no parents or nest in sight, Zid decides to take the egg to safety and ask fellow dinosaurs about it. However, much to everyone's shock the egg soon hatches into a carnivorous hatchling - a baby Daspletosaurus! As these predators are feared in Magmosia, the forest inhabitants pressure Zid to get rid of the hatchling. Zid, however, soon disappears from the forest as he decides to reunite the hatchling with its lost parents instead.
It will be a daunting task, as the only clue of the hatchling's origin is an unknown village deep in the far away Northern Borderlands...

• Charming retro visuals
It's like '90s again, but better! Enjoy cartoony hand-drawn backgrounds and frame-byframe animation - now in 16:9 widescreen!

• More than just a hatchling
The tiny dino in your backpack will give you some hints and help in other ways on your journey. You can even play as the baby Daspletosaurus in its own unique segments!

• Adventuring made easier
Featuring an improved one-click verb coin, story recap, mini-map, and on-screen menu buttons - to make your journey easier!

• New (and familiar) friends and foes
You will meet more than 20 different prehistoric creatures during your journey - including seldom seen ones like Mercuriceratops, Citipes, or Albertonectes.

• Encyclopedia is back, baby!
The optional in-game encyclopedia fills up with information about creatures, items, andlocations you encounter during your travels.

• A pleasant sountrack - once again
Denis 'Problem' Comtesse, the man behind the beloved OST of Zniw Adventure, returns as the main composer of the game!


Technical details: AGS 3.5.0.26, 640x360 @ 32-bit

[Zniw Adventure is available for 20% off on Steam, starting today through the November 8th!]

Wow, I can't believe it's been (almost) a year since I pressed that magical green "Release now!" button on Steam.

And since I like to start celebrating early, why not with a sale? That's right - if you still haven't played our pointy clicky dino adventure, now's the best time to do so! Zniw Adventure is available for 20% off on Steam, starting today through the November 8th!

Grab it here!

[Steam Trading Cards/Items]

A new update just dropped? Hah, about time!

If you played Zniw Adventure for more than 30 minutes on Steam, you might want to check your inventory, as the Steam Trading Cards/Items update went live this weekend! Fancy some dinosaurs on your Steam profile background?

I also seem to remember that Zniw had updates without breaking saves.

Yep, we had 6 major updates that introduced some additional goodies (like the OST as free DLC, the digital manual etc.), and several bugfixes/QoL improvements, without breaking the saves between versions (a 1.0.0 save will work just fine in the most recent 1.3.1). I managed to achieve it with a combination of the following

- following CWs advice, I've left several empty global variables, reserved for future use, as adding any new one at this point would render all older saves incompatible. That was a very wise decision, considering one bug would be notoriously difficult to fix without an additional flag. With the empty extra variables, it was a matter of a simple 5 minutes fix,
- similarly, I've also left several empty/unused sprite slots. They came in handy for things like additional backpack graphics (introduced in 1.0.4), or some extra assets for the Mac port,
- the game actually uses both standard AGS saves, as well as additional "save slots" files to store extra data. These allowed me to create the custom load routine, as well as allowed to implement the new game+/checking the encyclopedia/extras straight from the main menu. These can be freely modified, as they're not a part of the AGS core files.

So yeah, it is possible to future-proof your AGS game and update it without breaking older saves, but indeed, I'd welcome any change with open arms, especially the one that would actually let me add some new content in subsequent updates (maybe not as extreme as new rooms or characters, but at least some extra variables/scripts or sprites would be great)

Excellent, congratulations on the release! 

The beta was so much fun to playtest, such a cool crawler!

Does Remote or anyone know how to change the icons from standard AGS by doing something *other* than re-compiling the MacOS engine from scratch?

Replace the ags.icns file in the Resources of your app with your icon of choice, and then type

Code: ags

touch yourGameName.app

in the terminal.

Disk 1 of 570 

Anyway! It took a bit longer than I expected, but the 1.3.0 update hit the Steam this Saturday, along with the promised MacOS version!

Oh man, I'm absolutely stoked to see our game receive three AGS awards! Thanks so much for everyone who voted for our dino gal, as well as all other nominees and winners! What a great ceremony it was!

As for the upcoming 1.3.0 update... Well, if you followed my tech ramblings on the AGS Discord server, you pretty much know what's coming next.

Yeah, this year's ceremony was absolutely crazy, in a positive sense! Excellent games, excellent community once again - thanks so much for everyone who participated, and especially all the nominees and winners!

Oh man, I absolutely love that yummy TI/GB pixel art style, well done!

*slams fists on table* Now THAT'S the content I want to see!

Excellent job, the trailer looks fantastic! Really loving that crispy clean pixelwork - can't wait to try it out!

Good lord, 9 nominations? :0 Wow, thanks so much for everyone who voted!!

Excellent list of games, glad to see some of my picks among the nominees! 

Adding to what eri0o said (because I totally missed the part about 'grounding yourself') - indeed, that's a huge no no. Do this instead:





Granted it's for a CRT monitor (an old compact Mac in this case), but it's the general idea for all kind of CRTs - discharge it via the anode cap and a grounded flathead screwdriver.

You already got me at the glam rocker middle-aged teddy bear part. Best of luck with the production, can't wait to try this on out!

Ah, CRTs, yes, yes. I still keep my beautiful Sony Trinitron around, it's an absolute beast for old computers or consoles!

There can be high voltages in some of the components even for a long time after the TV had been disconnected from the power socket. Good luck!

Yeah, since there's a lot of high voltage components inside, it's always a good idea to discharge it before attempting further disassembly (depending on whether you have a bleeder resistor inside or not, discharging capacitors/transformers by themselves might take from 10 minutes to several days).

[spoilers]

Hey, thanks so much for the kind words!

In other news, you can vote on Zniw Adventure, or many other excellent adventure games, in Adventure Gamer's 2020 Aggies Awards Reader Choice! If you enjoyed our dinosaur journey, consider dropping a vote! And be sure to nominate the AGS games too!

Additionally, if you like free stuff, head over to Steam to grab the full OST of the game as a free DLC to witness... er, hear the amazing job Problem and Pator did yourself! (warning, the track names might contain a little bit of spoilers, so proceed with caution )

I don't quite understand? There's plenty of hints scattered through the game, and the 'story so far' widget explicitly tells you what to do next. Many players have actually considered ZA to be very easy compared to other adventure titles.
Sorry you didn't like the limited inventory thing too - it was a design choice from the very beginning. Starting from 1.0.4 we actually patched it a little bit, with some items being removed or shuffled around, so it wouldn't be that much of a hassle anymore.

And speaking of updates, totally forgot to post it here - 1.1.0 features a nice little surprise for everyone, as we added a colourful, 41-pages long manual, featuring some unique artworks!



And finally I gotta say - the last two post-release months were pretty crazy for the both of us (sorry I wasn't very active here!), but man, we absolutely didn't expect to receive so much love and support. Thanks so much for everyone who gave our game a chance! 



(full view available here)

[For your consideration:]

For your consideration:

AGS Database entry

What begins as a mere quest to find a perfect gift for your mother's hatchday will soon escalate into a struggle to save one of the neighbouring villages from a major trouble... Zniw the dinosaur and the cartoony world of Polisemia awaits! Point and click your way through 13 varied locations and meet over 20 different dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals in this hand-drawn and animated journey!

Features:

• cartoon dinosaurs!
• a family friendly adventure - no blood, gore or swearing!
• hand-drawn and frame by frame animated environments and characters
• over five minutes of Saturday morning cartoon-like fullscreen cutscene segments
• artstyle inspired by oldschool adventure games, as well as European cartoons and comic books
• a pleasant, accoustic soundtrack, done by Problem!
• 13 different locations to explore, including forests, caves, villages...
• over 20 epoch and location accurate (Late Cretacous/North America) prehistoric creatures to encounter during your quest
• light educational aspects - in-game encyclopaedia, with descriptions of encountered prehistoric creatures, items, locations, and more
• unlockable rewards, including concept artworks, sound test or mini games!
• a colourful, 41-pages long manual included, just like the good ol' times - describing both the game mechanics, and expanding the game lore a bit further!

Please consider our game for the following categories:

• Best Game Created with AGS
• Best Animation
• Best Gameplay
• Best Writing
• Best Music and Sound
• Best Character
• Best Character Art
• Best Background Art

Indeed, I updated to .26 around summer, as previous versions had some bugs that affected the development. I just updated the engine to 3.5.0 in December (until then I was still using 3.4), as it had support for some things I really needed.

Yeah, we're using 3.5.0 since December 2019. The final build of the game was created on 3.5.0.26, I haven't updated the engine since. The patches I rolled dealt with minor bugs and text fixes, like missing commas in the Polish translation.

There are only three places in the cave that feature large animation chunks - the fresh air cavern, secret cavern (with the large boulder), and the path slope, where you have to bring the boulder down. As for the torch, there's a background check whether its state has changed (i.e. it was lit or extinguished), and it sets the appropriate background and graphics of the visible objects. This check is actually used

Spoiler

in every room that has light/dark version and/or time of the day change.

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