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This is a lesson I learned the hard way!

As with most things, it depends.  The one thing I always think about when adding or removing something is "does this get in the way of the fun?"  Having lots of dialog options is very nice in an adventure game, but the only problem is that it can get very boring fast.  And if the player just wants to get back to exploring, it can definitely get in the way of the fun.

Imagine seeing a film where two characters talk for several minutes and the camera never moves once.  You'd get bored.  So to stop you from being bored, they make sure to have different camera angles, close-ups, the characters moving, etc; in other words, they make stuff actually happen.  Adventure games, especially indie games, don't have that luxury.  It's like that hypothetical film.  When adventure game characters are standing around talking, that's ALL that happens.

That's not to say lotsa dialog is bad.  My new mantra is "short exchanges but lots more of them."  By all means, have as many dialog exchanges as you want - but try and make each one short and snappy.  A maximum of four or five lines, if possible.  Obviously there are always exceptions, but if you're finding your testers getting bored in certain places, try cutting it down a bit.  Especially if it's interrupting gameplay.

I once had to do something similar, so I played with the tints until the character appeared "brighter".  Tinting white seemed to help.

Theo's scream is the stuff of legends.

I managed to get this game working, and I have to say... I kinda liked it.  It did everything wrong; the "puzzles" consisted of avoiding Daleks while looking for an object or solving a minigame.  But for some reason I still got a kick out of it.  Probably because the gameplay was simple enough that it didn't get in the way of the story, which was fun in that cheesy Who way.  I wouldn't have wanted to play a full 10 hour game with this mechanic, but for a little snack game it was fine.  Not great, certainly, but enjoyable enough if you're a big fan of Who (which I am).  And CGI Amy in a miniskirt didn't hurt either.  I'm looking forward to the next one.

...

I think a year and a month is a new record for JA+!

Still, great review.  Happy to see this is still getting love.

Quick question and apologies if it was mentioned before in this thread.   I couldn't look through all 20 pages!

Is it me, or are the automatic font outlines less thick than they used to be in previous?  I'm making a 640 x 480 game and the outline is only one pixel thick, which is barely noticeable at all.  Is this a new feature or was it like this all the time and I never noticed? 

I suppose a related question, then, is "how do you successfully sell an AGS game".

With fervent hope.

This is an ancient post.  Sorry!  When I started this thread 4 years ago I didn't realize there was a reply.

Anyway, I am working on a project where the ability to flip frames via the script would come in very handy.  If I understand SSH's suggestion correct, the proper way of doing this would be:

1 - create a dynamic sprite, using the frame's graphic and flipping it
2 - set the frame to the dynamic sprite
3 - when you're done with it, reset the sprites afterward.

Is that correct?  I know this question was originally asked during the regime of an older version of AGS. Is there a better way of doing this now?  I looked through the manual but couldn't find anything relevant.

Thanks again!  I promise I won't take another 4 years to respond.

-Dave

Thanks!  I went with a professional printing house this time around instead of just using my lil printer.

CW: were you running as a guest, or administrator?

Adjusting the installer is, unfortunately, not an option.  To clarify, this isn't for me or my customer base.  It's for the portals and their customer base.  The portal in question (Oberon) deals with several dozen games a month, and they wrap each game in their own installer system.  It's understandable that they don't want to make adjustments for each and every game that comes their way, so each game has to adhere to their criteria.  Draconian and annoying, but true.

Fortunately, I convinced them that their users will very rarely (if at all) need to use the winsetup.exe file, or even know it's there.  So they let me remove the winsetup.exe file entirely from the build so it will still meet their criteria.

I just had a few tries myself and in Windows 7, right-click "run as admin" works perfectly fine. (AGS 3.2)

I'm using version 3.1.2.  Maybe this was fixed in the current version?  If so, then I won't have to worry about it in the future.  Yay!

Anyone?

Fortunately I begged the portal into letting this slide, but I am still wondering if it is possible to do this.

Hi all!  I've noticed that Winsetup.exe can only be run on Vista if your windows user account is set to "Administrator."  Is there any way around this?  The error message says to right-click on properties and to select "run as administrator" but that option is greyed-out.

Any help on this is much appreciated.  We're trying to get our game onto a big distribution portal and they are refusing to take the game because of this.

Edit: Additional info. You can RUN the application fine, but you get the error message if you click the save button.

I think AGS has an option to change how save games are created. Perhaps this could be tried, although your installer may need to change permissions to allow save games to be created in the save game folder or somesuch.

Is that even possible to do in Vista?  My understanding was that savefiles have to be in the My Documents folder because of its draconian security measures.

Well, this has nothing to do with the savegames (although I suspect that's another issue we'd have) but rather the game doesn't run in the first place.  Is the game trying to create a savegame folder when it starts up?  If so, that would explain it.

Edit: We're probably going to have to upgrade to the current version of AGS.  It would require painstakingly testing it again to make sure it works 100%, which we really don't want to do, but if we must we must. 

Hi all!  I've got a big problem here.  I compiled Puzzle Bots using build 3.1.2.82.  I am trying to get it up on distribution portals.  One of the bigger portals (Oberon) found an error that I can replicate, but oddly nobody else has discovered despite it sounding like a big issue.

Basically, the game won't run on Vista if the player's username uses non-ASCII (unicode) characters.  You try to run the game and you get the message "Unable to write to the current directory.  Do not run this game off a network or CD-ROM drive.  Also check drive free space (you need 1mb free)."

I tested this myself by creating another user account on my Vista machine using some random Korean characters.  And yes, I get the same problem.  However, I am curious why none of my foreign customers have encountered this.  Am I missing something?  Is there something I should be doing to the build in order to avoid this issue?  The portal refuses to take the game unless this is resolved, so it's kind of worrying me.

Edit: I read an earlier thread where someone has a similar problem with saved games, and offered the suggestion to set the compatibility mode to Win 98.  This didn't work for me.

[naggynerd.com]

Sorry to hear that Disco, although I'm glad to know it wasn't Puzzle Bots's fault!

naggynerd.com has reviewed Puzzle Bots: http://www.naggynerd.com/?p=353

9 out of 10 rodents?  Awesome.

And Jay Is Games likes it too! "[Puzzle Bots] is a game for people who like fun things"

DaveBot just used PR Bot on yo AssBot!

I so don't get that.  But I could use a PR bot.

I've been following the development of this documentary for awhile, and saw a sneak preview at PAX East last month.  It looks really good.  It even has the infamous Howard Sherman in it.

Andorxor, some quick questions: does it happen every time you play?  If so, does it happen in a specific spot?