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I've never understand why the walking deaths, dead ends all Sierra's things are so annoying for the players... For me they make the game more challenging and more interesting.

Well, they're not as annoying as message boards make them out to be, but when combined with slow gameplay and/or unskippable cutscenes they do make a game rather tedious.

It was the RPG elements that made it completely intolerable for me. When I spend time boosting a characters stats in the directions I want they become a unique incarnation of themselves in my head and it's just too damn emotionally distressing to scrap them and start the game anew; redoing all the tree climbing and knife throwing and other neat little things you can do it that game to develop your character.

And why does the quest have to become unwinnable just because you burn one bridge? That's not how life works, a resourceful person would find another way; not stand around paralysed until the end of time. And, at the very least, I expect my adventure protagonists to be resourceful.

Nice idea, Questionable. To aid you in bringing this thread off topic, I think the BioShock universe would be an excellent setting for a business simulator. I imagine something like 'Plasmid Tycoon' where you play an up-and-coming entrepreneur stretching ethics and profit margins to their limits within the capitalism-gone-mad system of pre-collapse Rapture. And of course the game should be unwinnable, similar to Oiligarchy.

Do I smell a prequel?

Aw man, I had this exact thought a few days ago. But I just completed the first Bioshock last weekend so my mind was pretty much submerged (a do ho ho) in Rapture mythos and there pretty much wasn't any genre of anything I didn't want there to be something Bioshock related of at that moment.

Someone brought up Sierra; man, how could I forget.

I started playing Quest For Glory recently and got really into it and loved it for several days... until I hit a walking dead. Geeeaahhhh...
I stole some potions from The Healer and was left with no way to redeem myself and no way of finishing; for me that just seems completely against the idea of what an RPG is about... I'd put effort into levelling up my character; get rid of that shit... just a few lines of code that makes her give you opportunity to return the potions after a few days or something. SHEESH SIERRA!

So yeah, I nominate every Sierra game; just so they can remove the walking deads and the games can actually become... you know... fun.

All I can think of is a first person Zombies Ate My Neighbours in the Unreal engine.
I'm a terrible person.

I got Al Gore

It's so weird this happens.
I mean one of the most surefire ways to make your game properties endure and keep people interested is by ENCOURAGING people to make their own fan-made content. And these guys are so willing to go around expressing their love for this old, dusty franchise they spent eight years making this whole thing from scratch without a mod tool or graphics resource in sight to help them.
It seems counter-intuitive to pass up that kind of free, powerful endorsement that had so much potential to rekindle interest in this ancient intellectual property they just have lying around.

Just another example of an old company not understanding how the online fan-networks can benefit them... just like the music industry I guess.

[CREATING LOW-RES ART THE HI-RES WAY]

This thread's become a fantastic resource; should definitely be stickied.

While I'm here I may as well throw in this little nugget of wisdom:

CREATING LOW-RES ART THE HI-RES WAY

In the olden days of VGA colour, pixel art was created by individually choosing a colour and meticulously placing each individual dot; it entirely up to the artists judgement how and where various colours would blend together.

Not only was this time-consuming but woefully ineffective as the fact is the human eye will never understand as much about light and colour as the high res paint programs we use today.

However, out of nostalgia, many of us seek to emulate the old low-res look. Well here's how we can use today's technology to surpass the work of our pixel-pushing forefathers...



Start with a large canvas; I'd saying anything below 3000 pixels in width won't really allow the computer to get in the detail you need. Don't worry, it'll be shrunk down later.



Zoomed out now? Good. We start by blocking out the rough shapes; It's OKAY TO BE MESSY.



Okay, now it's time for the shading, this is the area in which we've most managed to outstrip the pixel artists of old as we can recreate realistic lighting perfectly by simply creating a new layer and painting in transparent black (the real world colour of darkness).

Now here's the REAL secret the industry don't want you to know about: It DOESN'T MATTER if you make mistakes! You heard me right; when we shrink the image down the resolution will be simply too low to accommodate our errors and they'll vanish along with all the other surplus pixels.

It's time for the resize...



HOLY.
FUCKING.
SHIT.

And for the creme de la creme, for that properly authentic retro look; a quick conversion 8-bit colour in Adobe Photoshop:


Compare.

For additional levels of blending; simply save as a jpeg:

Haven't played the demo yet but I dig the character art. Simple but really appealing, which is a difficult thing to pull off with that vector-y technique.

I had A friend I played a few adventure games with as a kid, but I haven't really been around around anyone since then who wouldn't find the experience boring except maybe my girlfriend Hannah and we've only played Fallout 3 together. Does that count?

I want to make a sandwich with AGS.

Aw man, localising Maniac Mansion dialogue.
Surely this is the dream job; YOU WEAR YOUR NEW RESPONSIBILITY WITH PRIDE, LEON!

How do you uncombine items?

Am i the only person who thinks Fallout looks better as a Gameboy game?

Awesome news. I never managed to play the Gabriel Knight games (annoyingly) but I very much enjoyed reading this blog when it was updating.

One technique is to think of something obvious your protagonist needs to do for the story to progress (dig a hole, unlock a door, eat a pear) then take away their means to do it (make the shovel factory be on strike, put the key on the other side, make the character have no mouth).
Like a lot of narrative constructs it's about forcing the protagonist to become something they weren't before; in this case that thing is: resourceful). By dropping appropriate hints (preferably in interesting ways that think outside of simple exposition) you can provide the player with enough information to A) Accept why the obvious won't work and B) Set their minds onto the less obvious, more convoluted solutions and work out that pears can be taken as a contraceptive tablet, that the key in the lock is magnetic or that by joining the shovel-makers union the complimentary  'no more shovels until we get justice' sign makes an excellent shovel.

At least... that's my theory.

Also; I call my vacuum cleaner a Dyson, not a Dyson Brand Vacuum Cleaner Designed By Mr. Dyson (actually I don't because I don't own that brand of vacuum cleaner but...ahem).

Although I agree calling the monster from the Frankenstein story 'Frankenstein' is incorrect, calling that TYPE of monster 'a frankenstein' is fine in my book.

Also, may I just say: BEST THEME EVVVVEERRRRR!!

Here is my one and only note on this idea:

Old person's home for Superheroes been done stop Make whole game about Magic Pants stop.

Ooh yeah; idea I had the other day: multi-floored themed restaurant First Person Shooter. You play as a waitress you needs to collect tips to buy better weapons against, like, chefs who throw pizza and you and and each level is a different themed restaurant cliche and and and and spatulas.

Wouldn't non-linear gameplay be kinda ruined by a time limit? I mean, if you had a limited time you'd be finding the shortest way on the grid - you could make it so the shortest path has the hardest/most time taking puzzles but that kinda leads the player a bit too much and so you might as well have only 3-4 paths (I'm assuming that "the grid" would have more than that) and that's it.
I'm all for "just use the gun" solutions, it can always be limited (for example make the room flooded or gas leak or some other situation where you can't use a gun). And then you can make a point on grid into a gun shop (not an out of context shop, I mean like a real gun shop or a gun locker or a safe and you'd steal ammo but this requiers solving a hard puzzle etc.

Non-cliche endings (especially if multiple, are always great, and if there's a few of them then they don't have to be too far from a cliche, cause it's variety and that's enough. Now making plot points like an infected hiding his byte and thus turns into a zombie when story demands it - if you can avoid those, that would be even better. 

I think it would be neat if the game forced you to sacrifice a friend to solve some puzzles when you screwed up.
Like a very literal version of the 'lives remaining' in old computer games.

Maaan, playing IF games on a train has a certain appeal but I type at a glacial pace on phones...

Still. I AM INTRIGUED.

Ah, it seems clear to me that what you want is a tool to make a game similar to the great Dungeon Hack made by SSI.

Oh coooool, I downloaded that game of underdogs once and spent quite a while flailing around trying to figure out if I could use it for an original game. I had no idea there was so much cool fanmade junk out there for it.

What? Adjusting compatibility settings made it work?
But that NEVER works.

I feel dumb now. I'm going to fill this post with a picture of a horse: