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I can't test my game in progress, the following message comes up each time:

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Illegal exception
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An exception 0xC0000005 occured in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x004ACC3A ; program pointer is -182, ACI version 2.62.772, gtags (0,0)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and notify CJ on the Tech forum.

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It happened directly after replacing a number of character sprites.

Some very nice games here. "The Criminalist" could do with a little more polish however. It seems like a first game, but even so, the limited storyline is... odd.

SPOILERS FOLLOW:

I mean, you are a "criminalist"? I assume this is a way of saying detective... and you go to a home to investigate a murder. Unfortunately you aren't very good at your job it would seem. No batteries for your camera? Stealing from the victim's home for no good reason? Not wanting to know what happened to the murder victim? And why did the door end up locked?

Okay, I'm not doing too well at this, I've figured that I need to get the artist away from his pallet and know how to do it, but I have no idea what to do once I've done so.

Great! I had an interesting idea for a low colour game recently, this might give me the motivation to have a go at it.

The funniest thing is when newbies ask to be moderators.

Even funnier is when the admin is so unbelievably moronic that they take the newbies up on their offer. I've seen it, it has actually happened.

I'm pretty slow as well. I've contacted everyone about the first meeting, but only Madame Tilly has gone to the Travel Room... am I missing something here?

EDIT: Never mind, I hadn't rung percy.

During my time as moderator on a forum, I rarely found it amusing.

It was pretty nice to be recognised as reliable and someone who could be depended upon, but it was certainly never funny.

Could you give us a brief description, maybe a couple of screenshots, to give us an idea of what to expect maybe?

I never said you guys didnt want me to make a game, you just make it very hard for me to actually making it. As i said before, I'm putting the project on hold to get more experience, then maybe i can do some custom bg or something. I already finished about half of the game, but i think a fan game withut custon bg would suck.

No, no one has made it difficult for you to make it.

Just wondering, is there a particular game file size that would put you off downloading a game? The Apprentice II was about 40MB or so... how many people didn't download it because of that? I ask because my game is looking to be about 50meg (maybe more), and I don't want this to stop too many people from being able to download it. I understand the pain of being on dial-up ^_^

My game is looking to be that sort of size unfortunately, despite being graphically simple and with little music. For reasons I fail to grasp, whenever I import an image file it is bloated up to many times its actual file size. 5KB graphics have jumped to 200KB ones. It is... odd.

Yes, well, it's not really my fault that about eleventy-billion AGSers live in the UK

That number could be slimmed down, with just a little bit of heavy ordinance.

I mean, you already effectively have their addresses.

I am not going to change the location only, but also the items he sells. I will try to edit the background too, and the reason i am changing the location is simply because he is needed in part of the story and you will only stay on the first island of the game. So, where should i put it?

You need to learn to read non-selectively.

Putting Stan where he is will be thoroughly inappropriate, and in all likelyhood your edit will look out of place. And if he's selling different items, as he does indeed in each game, why does he still have a coffin shop?

I like both. 2D has a lot of the classics admittedly, but 3D games are still often good, look at Grim Fandango (best adventure ever in my opinion), and Broken Sword 3 was pretty darn excellent as well.

Really, the graphical style isn't that important if all the other particulars are top notch.

Of course, if you don't have time to play MI2, you dont have time to make a game. A MAGS game takes a month and they are usually small and a bit rushed. Games take AGES to do (except Princess Marian ones ) And by asking for all this help you are implying that your time is far more valuable than ours, which is insulting (and probably inaccurate). Get your lazy butt to work.

Not always. Here again we come to the problem of assumptions. People assume that a game cannot be done well if it takes very little time to make it. Clearly this is incorrect, I imagine it would be possible to make a good game within a week. It would certainly be different to what we commonly expect from adventure games, but it could still certainly be of good quality.

[everyone else]

Yep, whats wrong with that?

A fan enjoys something because it's a quality piece of work.Ã,  They have usually enjoyed playing/watching/listening to said piece multiple times.Ã,  To interpret the game into their own vision, they must understand it in-and-out.Ã,  They don't make a "fan game" because everyone else in said community thinks Monkey Island is cool.

You're a poser, dude.Ã,  You're making a fan game in the hopes that everyone will think you're "cool".Ã,  Sigh, reminds me of school.... You've got a lot of maturation to go through.Ã,  But good luck on making your game.Ã,  Hopefully you will learn something from this experience.

Bt

What makes this whole thing worse is that he's trying so desperately to conform while lacking in artistic talent, without even realising that this could actually be an advantage, possibly going in a direction not commonly explored by adventure games, by making something abstract or unusual.

The world does not need another badly made fan game. Try something unique.

This sounds great.Ã,  It reminds me of "Uplink: Hacker Elite" which was a title in which you play a hacker and the only interface you use is the hacker's computer interface, so you get to feel like you're actually hacking into banks and transfering large amounts of money or stealing confidential files from major corporations.Ã,  Here's the website:

http://www.introversion.co.uk/

There's a playable demo on there that might help you get some ideas.Ã,  It's a really fun and addicting game with some ideas similar to your own:Ã,  Overarching conspiracy, collect programs, send/recieve messages, etc.

Yeah, played it, love it. One of the major influences behind this project.

I'm rather confused here ...

Is this an AGS game?  I see, in one of the screenies, the name Ego as the login name but the resolution of the images isn't an AGS resolution.

Are those in-game screenshots?  You play the game on an internet forum?

I have to say, the idea sounds intrigueing ... kind of like Tron, but with a different twist.  Can you provide a little more information about what's in the screenshots?

Yes, it is an AGS game, the reason the resolutions are messed up is since the GUI isn't finalised per se, and there is no central character, those are just background stills that haven't been properly resized. Reading the stickies more thoroughly I should have imported them into the engine and taken screenshots, but it seemed more efficient to post up the backgrounds since there isn't a heck of a lot more to those particular scenes, scripting and interactions aside.

As for the game's setting, yes some of the game is set in an internet forum. Most isn't... but that is a part of it.

Cryptic is an idea for an adventure game which is hopefully rather unused at the moment.

Essentially play revolves around computer systems and the internet (which means, due to knowing astonishingly little about either, you get lots of fake "pop culture-hacker" type situations). You play a computer AI, released onto a system for reasons that your memory doesn't go into and play progresses from there, with lots of cheesy conspiracies and the like.

Being an AI, the idea of inventory has to be somewhat different. Rather than finding and collecting objects as such, you collect supplementary programmes, memory modules and pieces of data and interact with other things based on these.

Just finishing off with some screens, these are currently rather rough... they are badly scaled and much too large in terms of file size... but they should give a reasonable view of what the game will be like. Sort of. I guess (there's no visible character because I felt that giving the character a physical form would be rather redundant)

http://www.bratch.co.uk/coven/cryptic1.jpg

http://www.bratch.co.uk/coven/cryptic2.jpg