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I saw it at the Virgin Megastore in London the other day - you could get three budget-release games for 10 pounds or something like that, I wanted Alice and Thief 2 but couldn't find a third one, so I put it back on the shelf. Maybe I should take another look'at the Virgin Megastore at the airport when I'm going home.

Sure, no problem. I agree - and when you want to store your savegames to be able to see certain parts of the game later, you zip or rar them anyone. I was just curious.

Migs, it's funny, I actually hadn't thought about the age thing, but of course you're right. To people who didn't grow up with them, playing text-only games must be like watching a silent movie.

Perhaps the main issue is distinguishing somehow from what you're used to seeing - I mean, if a game looks and plays like Syberia but only has text, it is somehow disappointing. On the other hand, people love things like Broken Saints, because it looks like a comic book, and you're not used to comics with voice audio.

But if games become too cinematic, they tend to need voices to keep up with the style. Aside from FMV-games, there's one single adventure game, I can think of which I really don't believe would work without voices: Full Throttle. I see no way how that game could be as exciting and fun if it wasn't for the awesome voice acting. Ben, Ripburger, old man Corley, and my favorite female voice ever, Maureen.

You know, actually I thought the screenshot was saved in full size and the rescaled when displayed, maybe I got it wrong. Anyway, I was testing it with the Garfield game, and the savegames were very big considering the resolution/colors used.

Not as much of a suggestion as just curiosity. CJ, do you have any plans of adding compression of save games to AGS? Especially after getting screenshots in save games, save files have become huge, but they compress really, really well.

Edit: Another question, somewhat related: Is antialiasing when rescaling screenshots for the save interface on your to-do list?

stw - I wouldn't go as far as to claim it was the greatest adventure game ever, but I do agree that Harvester truly is underrated. It's not just about gore, there's a lot of moral dilemmas in it as well. I remember feeling so bad about killing the wasp lady, that I had to go back and restore a game - even though her death had absolutely no consequence for the game.

Would this happen to be the pink worm currently displayed as part of the inventory item quiz over at the Just Adventure forums?

For the last couple of months I've made up all kind of excuses why I wouldn't bother with voice acting in my game - first of all, the amount of dialog. Second, the difficulty in finding the right actors for the parts and to get good line readings. Third, the matter of file size. I've been making up excuses, as if it was preferable to have voice audio if at all possible. But replaying the GK1 cd-rom version as well as playing newer games like Syberia II and Black Mirror made me think otherwise:

I don't actually enjoy voice acting in games. In fact, most of the time it detracts from the gaming experience, because it's so much more annoying to hear the characters repeat themselves in audio than in text.

I grew up with pre-cd-rom games like Police Quest, King's Quest IV. I even played Sam & Max, DOTT and GK1 in the floppy disc versions with no voices. And I actually prefer those versions! I was really looking forward to play GK1 again with voices, but it was such a disappointment. First of all, I turned off the narrator voice right away - she annoys the hell out of me, and even the simplest descriptions take forever to convey. Then, after hearing Gabe ask "What do you know about voodoo?" in the same voice about a hundred times, I went back to playing the floppy version (which doesn't have as many bugs either).

It's really difficult to find a game WITHOUT voice-acting these days - if you search hard, you might find an RPG, where the dialog uses text, but that's about it. But is voice acting really all that necessary? I mean, maybe it's just me. I'm the kind of person who actually prefers reading screenplays to hearing the dialog spoken in the films - mostly because I really notice what's being said and what the words signify when I read it.

I think that possibly voices are good for dramatic cutscenes, where you can do some things with timing and delivery, which is difficult to convey in writing - but in basic "information" dialog, it isn't really all that necessary.

What are your thoughts? Is voice acting overrated, does it even detract from the game (somebody, give me a text-only version of TLJ please)? Or has it actually made games better an more immersive?

You can see some of the stuff at http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/~dml/SamNMax/samnmax.html

I love the background. Beautiful work. Was it drawn from a photograph? The feeling of light coming in through the basement window is absolutely wonderful - especially the bluish tone on the back wall and the shadows cast by the drawing table is great. The box on the floor seems a bit big compared to the table, but it might just be a big box

I agree with viktor that the character seems a bit out-of-place, but it's not the styles that don't fit eachother, it's the angles. You've got a very high horizon line (top quarter of the screen), and the character is displayed in a straight-on view. Also, perhaps the proportions of the character are a bit strange (short legs), making him seem smaller than he is. If you compare him to the door, he seems about the right size - only he's quite a bit in front of it.

For some reason I like the simplicity of the interface - it reminds me of the one used in The Dark Half. Not a lot of textures or fancy buttons. But maybe you should consider using a higher resolution font?

Look shadowplay is #5! Congratulations errr.... Shadowplay author? GarageGothic? (I'm really really sorry, i cant remember)

Thanks Czar, I must admit I was pretty surprised too when I saw that list. And somewhat embarassed for not having updated the Shadowplay thread in games-in-production for ages - I also noticed that I was the only developer on the list who didn't have a website 

Looks like Goldmund has some competition in the vampire genre now The game sounds cool, and with all the old Lucas-guys on the team, it just can't fail. I just wish the graphics were a bit more... Tim Burton-like or something. Darker, dirtier, not quite so cutesy. I can't help be reminded of Gilbert Goodmate for some reason, but I certainty see the similarity to Curse of Monkey Island's graveyard scenes. I really like the drawing style of the character's face though, it reminds me of Gerald Scarfe's designs for Disney's Hercules. I know the game isn't supposed to be scary, but even the Halloweenland world (I know that wasn't the real name, but it was a Burton rip-off) in KQ7 had more atmosphere.

I'm impressed they made a booklet. Shows it's not all about cramming other people's free software on a disk and earning a buck.

And by the way.... .ace ist bestÃ,  (winace)

Except, it isn't supported by as many decompression programs as rar or zip (at least not older versions of them, not sure of the situation now). So unless you're doing self-extracting executables or only expect to release you're game among the computer-literate, you should stay away from it.

Go for Inno Setup if you want a professional looking installer. As far as I'm concerned, it beats professional tools like InstallShield hands down (you wouldn't believe the kind of issues we see with that one).

Dave, I too thought that Nishanthi was a unique and original character. At least I've never encountered anyone like her in other games. And yes, it probably has something to with... well, not ethnicity as much as culture. I mean, it's not the color of her skin, it's the fact the she wears traditional Indian dress and as far as I remember, it also comes forth in the dialog - and the whole playing-the-flute-in-the-park deal seems somewhat... grounded in her culture as well.

It's rare to see non-westeners in games - unless you either meet them in their own part of the world (Heart of China, Riddle of Master Lu, Fate of Atlantis) or they have adapted to western cultural norms - Grace Nakimura comes to mind.

As a character (stereo-)type, Ninshanthi isn't very original - she's the nice older lady/man helping the player character out without asking anything in return. A mentor character of sorts. But the form is unusual. I don't think she would have been less interesting as a white woman, just different. Because her motivations would possibly be somewhat different - it's likely that you'd perceive her as a bit weird even.

Wow those graphics are truly awesome, could we possibly persuade you reveal some of your techniques? The style of the character portraits remind me a lot of Shadow of the Comet - only better .

Yet another project to look forward to. What happened to that Prisoner project btw, anybody know? I forget who was making that one.

Matt: I'm a language tester, which means that I test the localized (in my case Danish) versions of the games - for bad translation, third party (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Warner Bros.) guideline violations, faulty implemention of translated ressources (length problems etc.) and stuff like that. Currently I'm testing Catwoman on the Xbox. We're at the EA offices in Chertsey, although the game is developed by Argonaut in Sheffield.

Petteri, yeah actually we work pretty much 24/7 (or at least 15/7 - a guy's gotta sleep ) - often till 11pm or later. And we're supposed to sign off on this project on the 27th, so I don't expect to get time off during the weekend 

Whoa, this is weird. I hadn't checked in on Brittens before, because I (usually) live in Denmark. And now, just of curiosity I look at the thread and discover that I'm actually right now located just south of where you're going to be at - working at EA in Chertsey, and staying in Walton-on-Thames, ! I doubt I'll have time off in the weekend, but man would I love to come.

Not to mention LSL5, 6 and 7 

Thank you very much for your replies. I'm happy to see that almost everyone agrees that it should be released as a full game. Although it could, in theory, be released in ten chapters - it would really break up the flow of the story, and the cumulative effect of the player's choices would be non-existent, unless I did some sort of QFG-style export-import thing. Also, the character's changing perception of the game world might not be as obvious when playing each episodes with two months in-between.

As for the art, I still haven't designed 100% what I'm going to do. Although the sketch-like style isn't as obvious in 320x200, it still looks pretty good (at times even better than the hi-res, if you like the old Sierra style), plus it makes an enormous difference for the file size. For now I'm settling for 640x480, but it might change somewhere down the line.