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Sorry to revive this old thread, but I just wanted to ask: Did anyone here buy/play the 5 Days A Stranger Special Edition yet?

(I'm mostly interested in how the commentary works as I have a similar feature in my game)

Thanks for the suggestion. It's partly helpful, but:

I really suck at reading other people's code (I had to write my save game with screenshots system from scratch, because I didn't understand what was going on in the template script) but as I see it, you're still using rawtime to name the file here, and just checking whether it exists or not before writing. This is basically how it works now (and since rawtime is different every second there's no real need to check for overwrite).

What I was trying to do was to name the files sequentially ("SP0001.pcx", "SP0002.pcx" etc.) and have the script check the existing files for the highest number to continue the sequence (even after restarting the game).Ã,  It seems what I need is a script that checks through the numbers of the existing files by trying to open them, adding 1 to the end number for each try. How can I do this without running a repeatedly executing script? (And without manually checking for each possible file name ).

While I certainly agree that the art has it's shortcomings, I'd like to point your attention the fact that:

1) This is an image from the pic resource. The room, as show in the game, had a lot of props to draw the attention from and partly cover the light effect

2) This is a very rarely visited room. In fact I don't think there's any reason to go in there except to talk to Ethel in the first quarter of the first act.

In a game this size, I really think this should be the last thing the artist would have worried about. Nevertheless, it was cool seeing you guys solve the problem with whatever means necessary.

I'm pretty sure that the size matters as well (150 x 500 is friggin large!). Have you tried Jasc's Animation Shop? (http://www.jasc.com/en/products/animationshop/?) I'm pretty sure it has batch scaling, but not sure whether it has issues with anitaliasing - I remember I had some problems myself a year or so ago, but they may have beenÃ,  fixed now. I also believe that Animation Shop can do tiled animations so you can import the frames tiled instead of one at a time.

Edit: Just out of curiosity. What color depth are you running, and do you feel any impact on in-game performace with sprites that large?

I've been trying to find a way to auto-assign file names to screenshots, to prevent them from overwriting eachother. Currently I'm using the RawTime-feature and the StrCat command (not sure, I'm writing this from memory as I'm not at my own computer), so the screenshots are titled SP11004309.pcx and similar. This allows the user to save a screenshot every second without overwriting previous ones. And it works great. But it's not all that pretty. So I'm wondering, is there some other way to do it?

Some things I've considered and decided against:

1) Using the date and time to name them. While the number wouldn't appear as arbitrary as the rawtime number, the file name would be even longer than it is now (if using ddmmyyhhmmss format) and as the file already has its own date, the information is redundant for the player.

2) Using an external file to store the number of screenshots taken and assign n+1 to the next name. This would allow sequential numbering, but if the player deleted/moved the savegames, the next screenshots taken would continue the original sequence rather than restarting at 0.

SO, instead I'm wondering, is there any way at all to check the directory for existing files and continue the sequence (so if SP0009.PCX is found,  the new screenshot will be titled SP0010.PCX). I know how to do this for savegames, but not sure how to do it with other files.

What's the big deal about SCI studio 4 really? I've been following the development for years, but in the end, will anyone actually use it? Most people just want it as a ripper tool  for Sierra sprites, so why not just make that? We've had ripper tools for LucasArts games forever. Why program a whole script editor/compiler just to rip some graphics?

The ending is more or less a matter of taste.Ã, 

Spoiler

Actually, I would have liked a complete happy-ending...

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I thought the game was excellent, but as for the ending:

Spoiler

Actually, I'm curious whether Alkis had decided on the ending before he started coding. It seems to me that the ending would have been a lot stronger if everything if the fantasy world in retrospect could be seen as symbolic representations of the player character's emotional struggle. It could have been quite interesting if the locations and characters in the "Other Worlds" referred back to actual places and people in her old life as well as at the asylum (Cabinet of Dr. Caligari style). Imagine a Usual Suspects/Through the Looking Glass kind of twist where everything we've experienced in the game was actually derived from pictures, book spines and decorative objects on the shelves that the catatonic girl is looking at all day

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Sorry, this was how it worked for me. I'm not sure what else could trigger it. Have you visited the Roman as well as the girl's room? Have you been in the nurses room once and been thrown out? You might have to TRY to enter her room while she's still there.

anon: Meyre apparently HAS tried to call the Roman guy, that's when you know the voice has to be deeper.

drink coke
Again: I'm stuck in chapter 7. I have the axe, but I have no clue on where to find the other tool. It says in the walkthrough to find Al and the spider, but i have no clue where they are.

Spoiler

In the room where you met the troll who wanted to put the band together, there's a hard-to-find exit on the hill on the left part of the screen. Do some pixel hunting

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In nurses office. If she never leaves, try entering and exiting the room a couple of times.

A hint would be greatly appreciated:

Spoiler

I'm at the pyramid in the Red Sea where you have to select 12 of the 50 symbols. I looked at the inscription in the tree saying that only those in their prime would pass (or similar). So I figured it was a reference to prime numbers - of which there are 12 between 7 and 50. But it doesn't seem to work. Any further clues?

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"Whenever I smell asphalt, I think of Maureen"
Maureen Corley from Full Throttle, no doubt about it - and what a voice!

Well I have both versions, and frankly I prefer the floppy version. For the first playthrough, voices might help the atmosphere, but the game is so talky that I'd fall asleep if I'd have to listen to all the lines being read out loud (especially in Michael Dorn's droning voice). It isn't TLJ, but it's damn close - and this is coming from a guy who loves the GK games enough to rip them off for his own game.

Why not try white toothpaste or a polishing compund on the scratch? (Hey, if I doesn't work, it's not going to get any brokener)

Plus it will smell minty fresh 

I think a side quest in an adventure that allows you to skip parts of the game you'd usually have to play through would be horrible. Granted no one mentioned this and I can't think of an example, but I just want to throw it out there.

Frankly the lack of optional paths/solutions is part of the reason that I dislike most modern adventure games. Examples:

1) Indy 3 - Going to Berlin and getting Hitler to sign the pass, securing you safe passage throughout the rest of the game and skipping the zeppelin entirely.

2) Zak McKracken - Going for a flight in the Bermuda Triangle, being abducted by the aliens and then using the lotto number prediction machine to win enormous amounts of money and thus solving the problem of limited airplane tickets.

3) Gold Rush - If you receive and decode your brothers letter before the gold rush starts, the tickets will be much cheaper.

Granted, all these examples deal with games where you have some sort of depletable resource (money, hitpoints). But how about a game where an alternate solution saves you from solving a slider puzzle. Wouldn't that be worth it? (not that there should ever be one in the first place...Ã,  )

Edit: Sorry, forgot to answer the question about "unlockables". I'm doing something similar in my game, where finishing the game once will unlock a Special Features section in the main menu as well as a "Designer's Commentary" icon in-game. The easiest way is to write a code to a txt-file in the game directory when the player completes the game. Then, when the game is restarted, check the file for the specific code and if it exists, activate the bonus content.

Wow, very atmospheric game - although I was expecting more from the plot with that wonderful setup. I really loved the dialog pics. They remind me of the old Horrorsoft games (Elvira, Waxworks etc.). The rest of the graphics didn't quite match the style, but it would be impossible to keep that near-photographic quality in everything.

Nice puzzles as well - the comparison of the two letters isn't something I've seen before, and the final "chase" reminded me of Dagger of Amon Ra.

Great work guys!

Hi Dimi. Good to see that you checked this thread. I was wondering if I should have posted it on theinventory.org forums instead.

I am aware of Al's joke mailing list, but in fact all the jokes are also available from his site (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberjoke3000/messages). But as I said, I don't mind the column - it's just not my cup of tea.
You have some valid points about the hardware articles, but there's nothing in them that couldn't be found elsewhere on the web. I'm just afraid that The Inventory may lose it's identity if you keep adding too much stuff like this.
Oh BTW, was the "The Purist" column a one-off? Or were you just too busy to write it this month?

After 'Jersey Girl', my devotion to Kevin Smith has dropped considerably (but I'm still buying everything he makes on DVD, mostly because of the hilarious commentaries). Yes Kevin, we understand that you're a father now and that you love your daughter. Now please stop making movies about it. Just give us another Mallrats or Chasing Amy (anything starring Jason Lee, really - what happened to that Fletch project?).

Another great issue. The previews and inteviews are excellent as always. They are the main reason that I read and re-read The Inventory. The reviews are well written, but they are often so subjective that I only read them to get "another angle" on games that I've already played. Also, I miss the time when dimi wrote all the reviews. I know that you don't have time to do everything by yourself, but for some reason Justin's reviews feel a bit trivial in comparison.

Although its not really my kind of humor, I don't mind the return of the Al Lowe Show - even if it seems a bit redundant when people could read the same jokes at his website. The comic is, in my opinion, feels more like an advertisement - which it is - than a real comic, but although the art and layout is horrible, it's still fun to see original ways of marketing games.
But what's up with the Bits and Bytes articles? Not only are they VERY dry (except the "Hump the Wumpus" incident which made me laugh out loud), but they also seem out of place in an adventure 'zine. I mean, the first one made more or less sense because it (among other things) dealt with some very early adventure-like games. Graphics cards? Eh, ok I guess, since even adventure gamers might need to upgrade their computers. But now we're reading about digital cameras? Isn't this the magazine which won't even write about adventure hybrids? What's next? A section with cooking recipes?

Congrats on the two year anniversary!

Heh, thanks. Good thing I didn't get around to suggesting it yet - I had actually searched through the "to do" list, but apparently my search word, "dialog option" wasn't part of the description.