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Anyway, in all likelihood he'll continue his career as a giant among B-movie actors, but probably won't ever break into the mainstream (nor does he want to).

I just wish some of his old pals like Raimi and the Coen bros. would use him more (or that he'd let them). He was hilarious as the wrestling announcer in Spiderman.

Last Crusade (which imo is better than FoA)

I couldn't disagree more.  To each his own, though.

I've always preferred to LC to FOA. In part because I find the Holy Grail much more interesting than Atlantis, and that I prefer creepy German castles to Greek ruins, but more importantly because of the gameplay style. Yes, the three paths in FOA adds replay value, but in fact they limited the player's choice (!). In LC you could choose your approach to the problems on a case-by-case basis, in FOA the choices were dictated by whatever path you selected before leaving the college.

It's a bit like the QFG games. You are meant to choose ONE character class and solve the puzzles with their abilities. I, however, played a thief character with magic and combat skills as well, and went through pretty much all the tasks of all classes within one playthrough. I was incredibly annoyed when some of the later games (QFG3 in particular, I hate that game) greatly limited my options.

But as remixor said, to each his own.

Sounds interesting. Maybe you'd get more replies if you posted part of the story (no spoilers of course) and some character description. At least some basic facts about the location and the topic of the mystery.

300 pages of research done so far

I assume this means that you've read a 300 page long book, not that you've actually compiled 300 pages worth of facts for the game?

I'd offer to help, but that would only delay Shadowplay. If you need some feedback on the story, structure and such, from somebody working within the same genre, I'd be happy to help though.

Good luck Vel!

I just bought the Evil Dead trilogy DVDs last week. Bruce Campbell is a comical genius. Why isn't this man a huge star by now? Anyway, I wouldn't classify them as horror (maybe the first film, but that's, in my opinion, the weakest of the bunch), so on to the real stuff.

I was surprised to see how similar people's tastes in horror are to my own. If I'm able to pull off what I'm trying to do with Shadowplay, you guys are going to love it. Most of these movies have already been mentioned, but here goes:

The Haunting - An absolute masterpiece. One of the most unsettling films ever. The remake ruined everything that was good about the original.

Don't Look Now - Still scares the shit out of me. To this day, I can't see a red raincoat without fliching.

Angel Heart - Great detective story, great horror film, fabulous New Orleans atmosphere. I've always felt that this is what inspired Gabriel Knight 1, although the stories are completely different.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway & Mulholland Drive - Though far from perfect, these movies show David Lynch's incredible talent for the uncanny. Highlights: The first half hour of LH, The two-guys-at-the-diner in MH, and the David Bowie scene in FWWM. Spooky. If you can get your hands on his 1-minute short, Premonitions Following and Evil Deed, do so. It's the best of Lynch condensed into a single minute of film.

Pet Sematary - I wanted to have just one Stephen King-adaptation on the list, and while The Shining was an obvious choice, I never really liked it as an adaptation (but I still find it scary as hell). Pet Sematary isn't a masterpiece, but it's incredibly atmospheric, that kid is so creepy, it has two Ramones songs, and Re-Animator ripped off the ending.

In the Mouth of Madness - Not John Carpenter's best movie, but certainly one of the best Lovecraft-inspired films ever. You either love it or hate it. I think the 3 or 4 copies (I keep taping it until I get a letterboxed copy) in my collection speak for themselves

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - THE expressionist film. It isn't really scary, but I love it to pieces. The Caligari style has influnced just about anything I've done within visual arts.

Vampyr - Carl Th. Dreyer, 1932. Wonderful atmosphere, incredible use of early sound film. Nearly as good as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Carnival of Souls (1962 version) - Dreamy, surreal, much like Vampyr. Shot on a low budget, but so much more atmospheric than most studio horror.


And then there are all the others: Roger Corman's Poe cycle (anything starring Vincent Price really), Psycho (1960), and a strange Disney family movie from 1980 called The Watcher in the Woods, which really spooked me when I watched it as a kid. I haven't seen it since, I'd probably be disappointed, but man was that scary for a little kid.

Bobbin Threadbare traded jobs with Manny Calavera? Now, that's an interesting plot twist

Anyway, I enjoyed the game Vel. I didn't at all mind the lack of interaction. In fact, some of the few "puzzles" in there almost detracted from the story (looking at the bookshelf etc.) It reminded me a bit of my current favorite adventure - not of all time, but of those released within the last couple of years - Shadow of Memories. If you haven't played it, you really should. It's excellent, and very heavy on story telling and emotion.

If you DO choose to continue in this style however, you should work mork on the characterization and motivation. The gold heart scene didn't really work for me. It seemed too "easy". I loved the character of the woman who gives you the address in the park. She added so much to the story. And the ending was excellent. I wish you'd explore something similar in a longer game with more complex characters.

The graphics were naive in style, but very nice. Reminded me a bit of Bestowers of Eternity. Maybe the contrast between the red and the green in the gradients on the trees were too much though. At least when compared to the rest of the scenery.

Looking forward to your next game! I hope you'll continue in the same vein.

the actual Larry sprites for his underneath view give the impression that he's Female, (it must be detatchable)

I don't remember if you actually see his thingy, but it probably has to do with the variable level of raunchiness.

Great idea SSH. They did that in the showers in LSL3 as I recall.

Edit: Although keys hidden under carpets become very easy to find

There are no commentary tracks on the US versions of the Indy collection either, right?

I never buy DVDs without commentaries, they're usually the best part of the bonus stuff, even when they're bad (did anyone listen to John Woo's Mission: Impossible 2 commentary? It's hilarious - it's as if he's talking about a completely different movie, insisting that it's about romance, not action). And on Kevin Smith movies they are even funnier than the movie itself.

*GG goes home to listen to the six(!) commentary tracks on the Rules of Attraction disc he purchased yesterday*

Another good thing with birds eye view is that you only have to draw the walking anim once and then rotate it (too bad AGS can't do this on run-time).

Dreamweb ROCKED! I loved that game. Especially the inventory system and the total interactivity of the world (I remember reading that guys e-mail while he was on the can, and stealing his guitar plectors ). But damn that creep who swiped my shoes! (if that made no sense, play the game!)

I'm so happy that I'm not alone with these feelings. I wasn't sure what to expect when posting it.

mr gothic, did you read this?http://www.adventuregamers.com/display.php?id=178

Interesting reading, but I don't think that's the case here. I've never been the kind of person who considered King's Quest 1 a good game out of pure nostalgia. In fact, most of my adventure favorites, no matter their age, hold up pretty well today.
Rather I feel that the newer games suffer because they try to be innovative and just end up being contrived. In contrast to other genres, adventure concepts - at least on the micro-level of puzzles - can't be repeated, and there are only so many things you can do within the realm of logic. That was, in my opinion, what lead to the so-called death of adventure games.

starting the ship in Pilot Light is awesome! I love that crap! It's not so much a brain breaker of a puzzle as it is just a nice little puzzle that pulls me into the game and makes me smile.

Yes, exactly. Stuff like that is what I'm talking about. It's not a puzzle, but it's putting the obvious action into the hands of the player, making the game world feel more interactive and alive.

that's just a film where you have to watch boring bits. Like a roadtrip film where you have to watch the hours of travelling between whacky antics.

I agree completely. It's like that old saying (not sure who came up with it) that "film is life with the boring bits cut out". Often I feel like games are film with the boring parts put back in.

Having to sit through mythology lessons in TLJ isn't like a film, it's like a shadow play

Hey, don't knock shadow plays!

So when you play my game (the GENERIC one...) expect to die

Uh, I have heard that there's no such thing as bad publicity, but maybe you should re-think your advertising campaign

That would be very cool. I'd love to play Fatman, but I would probably never buy it. Not because I'm cheap (which I admit ), but because I just don't buy things online (dumb, I know).

It's too bad that you don't have the original files (why would anyone get rid of those? What if you had to do a bug fix for later releases?) or you could have had voices in the intro (like DOTT and Sam & Max floppy versions) to get freeware users interested in the voice version. Kinda like the floppy vs. cd-rom versions of the LucasArts games (they used to have a voucher in the box so you could upgrade to the cd version at a reduced price if you already had the floppy version).

I noticed it mostly in the behind view, when going from standing to walking. Actually I think it's a Poser problem, depending on how the camera is set relative to the body parts.

Example: If the camera is set in a fixed distance to the part closest to the camera, when the character walks towards the camera, his foot will be closest, and due to perspective, his body will become smaller than when he's standing normally. If, on the other hand, the camera was set in a fixed distance to the hip, you wouldn't see any difference in height.

But yes, of course it could be fixed by scaling.

Edit: Thinking about it, the side view shouldn't have this problem - that might be related to a different camera distance being used for that view.

Edit2: Talking about rendering and such, am I the only who thinks that more attention could be paid to lighting the backgrounds? They seem very bright and flat, which is really a shame when you've gone through the trouble of building it all in 3d. I suppose it works ok for a space ship full of fluorescent lights, but if you have different locations later on, maybe you should work on some more atmospheric lighting setups.

To me, the main difference between games and other media - and the main reason that I chose to tell Shadowplay as a game rather than as a graphic novel, which was something I considered -  is the ability to structure the flow in response to the user's input. No, I'm not talking about interactivity, at least not in the usual meaning. I'm talking about an optional depth to the story.

The Colonel's Bequest is an excellent example. The player can discover all the intrigues and find all the clues to reveal the whole plot. Or he can see a few of the plot threads, maybe find the killer, but have missed out on a lot. The problem here, of course, is that the player doesn't know that he's missed it, until the score comes up at the end.

Shadowplay is VERY information heavy. There are many hours worth of reading - film history, philosophy, religion, the occult, PLUS all the plot specific facts, the characters' background etc. etc.
If I had written it as a graphic novel or a movie script (more likely a tv series, the length considered), I would have to force all this upon the viewer, or I would have to dumb it down, not to bore parts of the audience. Turning it into interactive entertainment allows me to make much of the information optional. The player can spend most of the game digging deeper into all this knowledge, or they can play it through as your average detective game, learning only the facts absolutely essential to the mystery.

One of the main problems in The Longest Journey is that Ragnar Tornquist wrote this very elaborate mythology of Stark and Arcadia, which is fine - you can never do enough background story when working with fictional characters or locations - but he didn't make it optional! You were forced to listen to hours of lessons on history of a world or a species or whatever, and at times it got so tiresome that you just felt like clicking to the end of the conversation.

Another factor is the option for TRUE interactivity in a non-puzzle-solving context, in relationships with NPCs or in major choices along the way. Just because MOST games are movies broken into pieces by puzzles, a game WITHOUT puzzles doesn't have to be like a movie. In fact, the moment that you don't have the puzzles to distract the player from the fact that they're actually watching a movie, you'll have to discover the real possibilities of an interactive format.

Ah, randomfilmbuff beat me to it. I couldn't remember the title, but a quick google search on "pink submarine" did the trick (and found some pretty horrible jokes as well, but that's another story).

I really like the blue light on the underside of the rock outcrop on the left. Reminds me of The Dig. You really should do a tutorial.

Chrille: Great idea, but:

I don't have the orginal files to modify anything. So I can't shrink down the size of the setup file by removing the voice support etc ...

Too bad

I'm not sure if I should rather have posted this as an update to the Shadowplay thread in Games in Production, but I felt it was more of a general thing - though semi-related to the progress of the game.

To remind myself of what works and what doesn't, I've been replaying a number of so-called classics. And I've come to the rather surprising conclusion that I don't actually like adventure games! I don't know how to explain it. I've played every damn adventure for the last 15 years, I've regarded the genre as above all others. 80 or 90% of my favorite games are adventures. But now I find myself playing The Longest Journey (which might as well be titled "Doesn't This Ever End?"), bored out of my mind with repairing machinery, making distractions, and achieving goals, which have little or no relation to the actual story, not to mention listening to endless dialogs, that keep repeating the same pretentious and self-righteous philosophies - something a good screenwriter would have cut down to a single 2-3 minute scene. And I wonder: "Why do I even bother?".

I feel like a person who've eaten hamburgers all his life and suddenly realizes how disgusting and unnecessary meat actually is. It's almost like a sudden loss of religious faith.

I'm not saying that I don't think there are any good adventures - just that they aren't necessarily good BECAUSE they are adventures. I'm beginning to understand all those people who spoke of the death of adventure gaming. My feeling right now is that the genre as such has become as inbred as some of the royal families in Europe. A monstrosity with certain features exaggerated to the freakish, because it's fans have so closely guarded the bloodline against dillution by other genres.

When I look at my favorite adventures, they mostly aren't about puzzles at all, and when they are, that's pretty much the worst parts of the game (Le Serpent Rouge in GK3 being an exception, because it advanced the story rather than being an obstacle - e.g. if the game was turned into a movie, the riddle would remain an important part of the plot).

The reason that adventure games have meant so much to me is 1) that they're a great storytelling medium and 2) they let you experience a complete world in a way that no other genre, not to mention non-interactive media, could. They were - and still is, although other games like the GTA and Hitman series are strong competitors in my book - the best way to immerse the player in a fictional world. The actual gameplay conventions of the genre were secondary.
For a long time, I've thought that I, unlike most people in these forums, preferred Sierra to LucasArts because of the lack of humor (I tend to prefer serious games, and LA only made a couple of those). But now I realize that it has to do with the gameplay. In the best Sierra games, you just go along with the story, doing the obvious things in each situation rather than worrying about contrived obstacles and solutions. A game like Conquest of Camelot has next to no "true" puzzles - a few riddles require some thought, the rest of the action is a breeze. You can stumble your way through the Colonel's Bequest, not finding a single clue, but still get to the end. And the Quest for Glory games, like Police Quest, consist of nothing but the tasks expected from each hero class.

They are games of immersion, narrative and exploration.

I'm going to stop looking at Shadowplay as an adventure game. I'll spend no more time concocting devious puzzles. In fact, I'll probably try to forget every game I ever played. I'm going to tell a story set in an interactive environment, and that's it. I'm not sure it's even a game. I don't really think it should be. It's an experience, and it will be staged as such. If I wouldn't watch a movie or read a novel with Guybrush Threepwood running back and forth, finding an oar, breaking it, getting it repaired, using it, why would I want to play it?
Maybe this will disappoint some people, maybe it'll be a pleasant (or at least interesting) surprise. Maybe you can't spot the difference. The whole genre issue does nothing but limit inspiration. I'm telling stories set in an interactive, non-competitive, virtual environment. If you want to label them adventures, that's your own decision. Right now I feel utter alienated from that genre, and the only way I can regain my enthusiasm for the project is by evading categories.

It seems I might have to re-think the force field frequency puzzle thing. You're right, it is a very large range. Maybe a smaller range? Because the closer you get to the right frequency, it's supposed to disrupt the forcefield more and more. I'll reduce the range by a large amount and re-release it.

Well, I suppose you meant the static to be more intense the closer you get to the frequency? The thing is that it isn't really visible, I couldn't tell the difference. Especially since it takes so long to use the communicator that it isn't really possible to do before and after comparisons. Maybe some sort of dial to turn would be a better interface - and you could add a sound, so the pitch gets higher the closer you get to the right frequency or something (6 different looping tones wouldn't add much to the file size).

I've been looking forward to this game, but that puzzle almost turned me off it. I'm looking forward to cheat my way past and get on with the game.

Well, the KQ2 speech pack was released as an April's fools joke. I think that jump from fan game to professional standard (albeit mid-nineties professional standard ) might have something to do with it.

Beautiful work. Loved it, and didn't come across a single bug. I haven't played that many, but this is by far the best MAGS game I've seen! In fact, puzzle wise, I found this better than Flashbax. Sure, it was easy, but the pacing was great. I love your graphics, those colors are just so intense, and the character designs are wonderful.

Cheers!
GG