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And also, isn't it slightly misleading to call the thread "Great Game" when you yourself admit that "It isnt great"? 

Great looking game. Looking forward to playing it.
As for names: How about Pandora, or Maila?

I think the main problem with the idea inventory as it was used in Discworld Noir is that it creates an even wider gap between the player's mind and the character's. Ideally, I feel it should never be necessary to force the character to realize something, which the player has already figured out (without cheating and using information he could in no way have at this point - e.g. the license plate number in PQ4). redruM's example from Discworld Noir with the AZIZ clue could easily work without this interface, if the player knows that the guy was hanging upside down, he should be able to put two and two together without going through the mechanics of an interface.

If it's only used for conversation (or, for looking up information on a computer as in Bestowers of Eternity), I think it's fine - although I do prefer a traditional topic-list dialog interface to the notebook of Dagger of Amon Ra: You end up running through the list anyway, you just spend more clicks doing it with the notebook.

Although the text interface of QFG2 and Colonel's Bequest  probably is the only interface, which really limits the range of topics to the player's knowledge and imagination, I think the dialog interface in QFG4 worked pretty well too, as a somewhat more complex and specific variant of the GK1 dialog interface.

I certainly think some agree of RPG-elements are necessary to revive the adventure genre. And by that I don't mean combat, stats and monsters, but rather freedom from the rigid scripts that are usually adventure games.

In my opinion, computer RPGs have failed miserably if they're trying to be anything like tabletop RPGs (except perhaps the dungeon crawls of the early seventies). You're trying to identify with this character - yet, you see him from a far away isometric view. Half the characters you meet are clones of eachother, and most of the encounters/missions seems sort of... well, random, I guess.

The QFG games were, to me, the perfect way (at the time) of presenting an RPG on the computer screen. Everything was held together by the story - nothing seemed random or irrelevant to the plot at hand, yet you could decide which subquests to solve or leave be, and how to solve the tasks you were given. But for some reason, this approach - the hybrid between adventure and RPG (and QFG excelled at both) - was forgotten.

The Deus Ex games had some nice RPG elements, although of a rather simplistic kind with little influence on the overall plot. But the real heritage of QFG i find in the GTA games - for some reason, the whole idea of quests and subquests within a freeform environment - all held together by a narrative, seems to capture exactly what I loved about the QFG games. I hope this genre will become more influential, but I don't think it's the way that adventure games should go.

Rather, I think, we should look at live RPGs as they're played today. Without all the rules and stats of tabletop RPGs, with a strong focus on story and interaction, and where the drama is more important than whether the player fails or succeeds in his quest. I envision the games as shorter than we're used to, but with immense replayability. Think Tender Loving Care with the player in the role of a character rather than an observer.

Has anyone tried this game? I just stumbled across it, but I won't be able to download and play it for at least three more weeks. I've never heard about it before, but it looks really good:

http://nihilis.games.cz/deadcity_eng.html

I'm not sure you answered this yet. I'm also curious about program was used for making the characters.

I know the answer, I know the answer. But it's a secret

Looking forward to playing the demo. Even more so after hearing other people's response.

Make your art, in the highest resolution. Resize it to the lower resolutions and change the color depth, check what workds. It's more or less like selecting the levels of jpg-compression when exporting images for the web - see what works, if the negative sides outweigh the benefits, go for the higher res.

It's hard for us to make a call without seeing you style of art - try posting some examples in different resolutions.

Yeah, I think indirect is a good way of thinking of it. The analog, I suppose, would be the word handmade. Is an item handmade, if a designer traces it (by hand, with a mouse) in a CAD-program and then has a machine output it? Not really.

That's really another discussion altogether, but I agree. I miss the danger in most modern games (and right as you thought it was safe, they kill you anyway - see Black Mirror). The thing with Sierra was that in some games it was really tedious (Graham pushing the rock from the wrong side), but in the Space Quest series the multitude of deaths became part of the joke.

I think most people's main issue with death in games is that you can just restore anyway, so what's the point? Save early save often and it just becomes a minor annoyance - so why not remove it. That's what LucasArts did eventually - except for a few EVIL instances in Indy 4, and the (player provoked) underwater death in MI1.

Just Adventure+ people are genre elitists? Which genre is that?

ROFL

This thread explains exactly why I - with very few exceptions, one being any independent production - have stopped enjoying adventure games.

Back in the day, we didn't really distinguish between genres. Cinemaware is an excellent example of that - is Wings a flight simulator? Not really, it has a story and arcade-like bombing sequences. Is Defender of a Crown a strategy game? Sure, but it also has arcade tournaments, fencing and catapult shooting. Is It Came from the Desert an adventure game? Well, you go around and talk to people, choose your responses, find evidence, and the whole story is totally interactive. It Came from the Desert is by far a better interactive fiction experience than any adventure game I've played for the last decade.

When did we become such genre purists?

I mean, most of the games that we consider adventure classics had arcade sequences: The Indiana Jones games, Sam & Max, the Manhunter games, nearly all Space Quests (not sure about 2), Police Quest 1 and 3 (driving), Larry 3, Codename: Iceman, Conquest of Camelot. Granted, some of them were poorly implemented (I literally spent months trying to master the steering of the submarine in Codename: Iceman). Hell, some of the best designed adventure games ever were hybrids: The Quest for Glory series.

Have you ever noticed that in bookstores you have the genre shelves: "Mystery", "Fantasy", "Romance", "Science Fiction" - and then you have the rest of the stuff, "Fiction and literature". The underlying assumption is of course that genre fiction is cheap, it isn't art, it's for Barbare Cartland readers and sci-fi geeks who care only for their genres. To a certain degree this is true, A LOT of mystery, fantasy and romance books are written by hacks and churned out by the dozen. But great works of art have been written within those genres by people like Arthur C. Clarke, Roger Zelazny and Philip K. Dick. Yet somehow these genres are valued lower than the "real" "Fiction and literature". Same thing with movies - we have all the "dumb" genres, Comedy, Action, Horror, Sci-fi and then we have the "classy" genre, Drama. It always pisses me off, when I look at the shelves in a dvd-store and find Fight Club among the action movies instead of the dramas, and I think that pretty much describes the situation.

These days, most games are in a genre: FPS, RTS, RPG, adventure, simulation, arcade driving and what-not. Why is it that we worry so much about this? People love games that break boundaries - GTA is proof of that - so why aren't we looking for the "Fiction and literature" or "Drama" genres of games? Games that can be about anything, that doesn't have limits for what we can and can't ask the player to do, or doesn't fit neatly into any particular category? Why not? Because companies love genres. It makes it so much easier to sell games. "What's this here, the cover looks interesting?" "Oh that's the newest first person shooter" creates much less doubt in the customer than "Well, I suppose you mostly walk around shooting monsters, but it also involves some strategy elements and you have to go back and forth to collect items".

But we're not companies - we don't have to explain our games in four words or less. We're players, and we're independent creators of games.

So what's with this hang-up with genres, and what's "typical" for adventure games?

If I wanted to make a decent hourly wage for the time put into Shadowplay, I'd probably have to charge 10.000$ per copy. Might as well do it for free and hope that it leads to a real job.

No no no, Shadowplay will be free! Although any donations will be appreciated

Sorry SSH, yeah that was stupid. It's not that I don't know the difference, just that I was thinking "non-american" when I wrote Englishman. But him being Scottish is an ever better reason actually. And we KNOW from Trainspotting that he can do a Sean-accent

Best Bond movie? From Russia With Love - no gadgets, no ludicrous supervillains planning to conquor the world, just pure spy business. How I'd love to see somebody (but I'm not so sure about Tarantino) remake Casino Royale in the same style.

Best Bond? I've always like Timothy Dalton because he was closer to the character in the novels, Lazenby was also pretty good - maybe because he was allowed to show emotion. Sean Connery was great, but I actually prefer him in his later movies, like The Untouchables and Name of the Rose.

Who should play Bond? Hugh Grant, obviously! No, just joking. There are two ways the movies could go to save the franchise. One would be making them much darker and more realistic in tone, like the original Fleming novels. Off-hand I can't think of any British actor (thanks SSH ) who'd fit the bill, possibly Johnny Lee Miller who played Sick Boy in Trainspotting. Another way would be to camp them up - Roger Moore style, except it's no longer the seventies. I'd really love to see Rupert Everett do that type of Bond. I think he would be awesome - like a sexy Austin Powers

Best song? It's a toss-up between A View to a Kill and Live and Let Die, I think. Of the Shirley Bassey songs, Diamonds are Forever is probably my favourite.

BTW: The other day I found a dvd (region 1) of Casino Royale which has both the David Niven and the Barry Nelson versions of the movie on it. I have both on VHS already, taped from tv, but until quite recently the Barry Nelson version was very rare.

I prefer identifying the PC as a writer by showing him talking to his publisher in the intro, to having the player roam the character's appartment and read stuff like: "This is my new book. I just finished writing it two weeks ago."

Oh, I totally agree that you should avoid on-the-nose references like that. As I said: "audiences are smarter than artists usually them credit for, they often pick up a lot of little things even though it isn't told or shown explicitly".
How do you show that he's a writer? Put a typewriter in a central position on his desk. Fill the notice board with notes - or better yet, show and empty notice board and the wastepaper basket below it full of crumpled notes and index cards. Have him remark something like "I don't want to look at that damn manuscript ever again - I'll leave that to my editor." Of course, if his publisher is part of the story, show the conversation - if it's just to show he's a writer - there are better ways.

First of all, how long does it NEED to be? What exactly do you need to tell to get points across to the player. Can't you leave some of the information to be uncovered through gameplay? Make the intro mysterious - make the player wonder why these things are happening and what will happen next. Set up the story, but don't reveal everything to the player from the word go - audiences are smarter than artists usually them credit for, they often pick up a lot of little things even though it isn't told or shown explicitly.
How about starting In Media Res - with the story already going - you can probably slip a lot of backstory into the details and let the player discover it himself.

Also, make it as visual as possible. This doesn't mean that everything has to be animated, just that you tell the story in pictures. One great example that comes to mind is Cruise for a Corpse - hardly a word is spoken (written), yet it does everything to set the mood.

Thanks! 

Because there are so many different things that people can want (eg. different colour options, header text, scrolling, etc) I think it makes more sense to go for a more generic approach and allow people to script whatever they want, rather than trying to keep adding more and more particular features in.

I totally agree with this - Most of the problems I come across in AGS are features that are hardcoded to act a certain way - i.e. as in the old Sierra and LucasArts-games. I was thinking though, if you start making things more generic - meaning that even basic things require a lot of scripting - are there any chance of a more modular approach to templates?

Or could it be the old "If you put a million monkeys at a million midi keyboards you'll get the music from Simon the Sorcerer"-theory? Or perhaps the answer involves a magic wardrobe? Actually I thought the piano parts had more of a GK1-like feel to them, but either way it's great music.

Anyway, the first two games were awesome - and that this one is longer makes me even more excited. I hope that the mystery will have more substance as well - a longer game probably won't get away with a Scooby Doo-ending like in BJ1, and in BJ2 the focus was more on getting there than the actual goal. Keep the humor, by all means, but it would be cool if you could get us more involved in the spooky goings-on rather than just using it as an excuse for a series of go-there-fetch-this puzzles.

It sounds and looks awesome. With the exception of Blair Witch, witches are really unmined territory in movies and mystery games. I mean, the King's Quest games always had witches, but they were the fairy tale kind, and "realistic" games involving magic(k) have gone the way of Voodoo and Satanism. I'd love to see your take on it - the setting does bring Macbeth to mind. I'm really looking forward to this - and unlike so many other project, my own included, I know that it will be finished. Does the audio trailer mean that the game will have voices?

By the way, where WOULD you get that many monkeys?