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Another question: how do you test a long game? Is there a trick to avoid having to start the game from zero each time you test it? What's your method?

THose are actually good insights, thanks guys.

In fact I already ran the game a few times (it's not that long a game) and it's not GUI or coding errors I worry about (I used the default GUI and just amended it a bit), the debugging is pretty efficient for mistakes such as forgetting a semicolon or whatever. I worry more about having some little things that do not appear correctly or display at the right time, etc.

But you may be right that I need to show the game to people to test. I still don't have the welcome screen and the ending scene but the game itself is complete so I guess I will open a topic somewhere else to ask for volunteers to test it.

In the meantime actually if someone else has good advices on testing, please keep on posting!

Hello all, this is not really a technical question but I hope this is still the right place to put it.

I am busy finishing my first AGS game so I do a lot of testing to polish it. I just run the game and note down the little changes I want to do, fix them, play again, etc, until it will be good enough for me to show it around. So I am asking myself the question: what are you guys best tips to test a game? What method do you use and what works best for you?

What's with the hate for Ron Gilbert?
He always comes across as a really nice man, and LucasArts as a company sounds like it was a real dream job with how everyone describes working there back in the day.

You kinda sounds like how a Sega fanboy sounded back in the 90s whenever Nintendo was brought up.

Oh no you got me wrong, I am not a Sierra fan, as a matter of fact I never really liked their games. My favourites were Lucas games. I still consider the 9 verb interface to be one of the best systems ever.

But that was 30 years ago. I know I am in the minority but I did not really like Thimbleweed Park, for many reasons but one being that it looked like such a self-indulgent ego trip for Ron Gilbert. I was referring to a crude joke in Thimbleweed Park where a character said something like "if it were a Sierra game I would already be dead". He did that joke much more cleverly and elegantly in Monkey Island when Guybrush seems to be dying in Sierra style, so there was no need to make this joke again in such a non subtle manner, it was kinda mean and unfunny, at the time we were playing MI it was relevant, nowadays it just seemed like he was scorning his long-vanished rivals and rubbing it to their face that he was still around years after they disappeared. So even though I liked his past games much more than theirs, I did not think he was acting classy and that reflected poorly on him.

Ron Gilbert did wonderful games in the past and created plenty of awesome things, and I have nothing against him as a person, good if some loved to work with him, but he is not God Almighty and not beyond criticism either. In contrast this article shows the Williamses as great people even though I never really liked their games. That's what I found interesting: 25 years ago I would never have thought I would have felt this way.

There was an excellent adventure point and click game with a political background: KGB, by Cryo Interactive. It is set in the lattest days of USSR. The Soviet ambiance is very well rendered and the plot is highly complex (brace yourself for one of the hardest games you ever played!). It is fascinating though and I played it a couple times because once you get into the plot you never want to get out until the end.

I am perfectly fine with not finishing it for the competition, I am not a competitive person and not care for awards, I just saw it as a fun way to be motivated  I would have finished it if I had not crashed my car in the middle of the month but I will have finish it soon and put it in the completed games section.

I always thought they were dissolved by all the acid of Ron Gilbert's spite and hubris...

Haha actually it's interesting in the article to see how Ken Williams actually viewed the evolving medium of games and how he considered Disney and Microsoft to be his true competitors in the space (as opposed to LucasArts or Broderbund).

Yes it shows you a classy person he really is, as opposed to Ron beating Sierra's dead horse as late as in Thimbleweed Park.

Funny how I always prefered Lucas's games to Sierra's by far, but 25 years later what I learnt of their respective personalities make me respect the Williamses much more than Gilbert. This article shows more humanity than anything the "grumpy gamer" ever wrote.

But do not regret anything about not having been around at the times in this industry, milkannanan. You are living much better times with such a big online community keeping the medium alive without all the problems of businesses at the time.

I always thought they were dissolved by all the acid of Ron Gilbert's spite and hubris...

Very interesting article, thanks a lot for posting.

Ah I will not be able to meet the deadline. I had a trouble happening this week so no way I would finish it.
But it is not important. The competition gave me an impetus to finish a game, it is almost done so soon I should have a little game to give 

I will still show you a little screen shot. I think before the end of November I would have finished it, unless I run into more troubles 

I still believe I can finish it on time. If I don't it's okay I will still show it at some point.
I have fun doing it and learn a lot.

Jack, Formosa, Mandle: work faster please.

I still think I can do it before 30 October.

Thank you very much, FormosaFalanster!
I'm really happy you enjoyed the theme of the game. I like 14th century Tuscan literature, so I had a lot of fun writing all the references -- even though in a parodic form.

I don't know if I'll make a longer version, but maybe I'll use characters for another small game in the future. In fact, I have an idea for a story, but I'm not sure how well it could be adapted in an adventure game.

The problem of adapting a story into an adventure game has fascinated me for the last couple years. I was primarily an author and I was surprised, when I started looking into making games, to realize that actually the writing of the story was the hardest thing for me to do: AGS is intuitive enough and with a large supportive community that you can find your way through, and even the artwork you can still outsource. But in fact writing a story for a game is so different from writing a short story.

I reached the conclusion it's about "play don't tell": try to take away as much of story from text itself and try to convey it through the gameplay itself. It is incredibly difficult but I believe this is the ultimate goal.

It is so awesome having a taste for ancient literature. THat promises a lot of original ideas coming from you.

Just a reminder, it is okay to use open source sprites, right? My main character I designed myself but for the rest I used a tileset I found on a resource website.

It's a very lovely art style, total respect for only using one colour; and what a great theme, a great tribute to your culture  I would hope you make a longer version!

Thanks for valuable advices guys. This game only has one room so it should be fine but I will keep this in mind for future projects.

Well that was fast, some awesome person helped me in the discord channel, so for anyone who finds this topic in the search function with the same problem, the solution is to use the Enters Room event in the properties of the room, which in code gives this:

Code: ags

function room_AfterFadeIn()
{
  RemoveWalkableArea (2);
}

hello, I have put a RemoveWalkableArea in the room_Load function yet the walkable area is still walkable. Note that the walkable area in question is located beyond the screen and character has to walk and scroll to reach it. It goes like this:

Code: ags

function room_Load()
{
  RemoveWalkableArea (2);
}

The Walkable Area ID is correct so I am not sure why the Area is still active when the game starts.

PS in fact I added a player.Say in the room_Load function just to see if it would work and it doesn't, it seems the room_Load doesn't work at all.

Kyriakos - oh yeah, I should have listed that, too. I finished the game as a kid (with the help of a tutorial I found online), and I think there may have been a bit of dust in my eye when they sailed off on the back of that dragon-thing in the end. 

((ending video of Another World))

What a game... and to think Eric Chahi did that all by himself. The timing in this game is fantastic and the narrative is entirely driven by the gameplay with not one line of dialogue. This is very inspirational.

I have this theory that a narrative game should add the rule "play don't tell" to the rule "show don't tell". You have to communicate through the gameplay itself, primarily. Text and images should only come second to this. It's extremely hard to acheive and I have huge respect for those who maximises this rule.

FormosaFalanstar - I've never heard of those, but my wife is a Mainlander so we're familiar with the Water Margin story (I'm just reading in the Wiki that the game is based on this story). Thanks for sharing ~ I'll check it out.

I read Shui Hu Zhuan because of Suikoden  But seriously, these two games have the most emotionally impacting stories I ever saw through videogames. They remained in me for long. Play they, you will not regret it.

You know what, I'm doing one  This is the first time I try to make a presentable game so wish me good luck. Hopefully by 31 October I will have something to show.

I had a concept around darkness, not what you may expect, but I thought it's a good occasion for me to finally try something serious so let's see if I can actually participate. Wish me luck!