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Aw, come on! Jack Black and Juan de LaRosa are so obviously the stardard Poser 4 male with a few morphs. I even think Jack's hair is one of the standard Poser hair styles. I'm pretty sure Christine is Poser 4 as well, while Ren is either very well lit or retouched in Photoshop.

As you may know, my game Shadowplay is about movies, and I thought of doing a Sidney-like search engine related to films and industry people like actors and directors. But it's impossible really. It would mean creating a database of all movies with credit lists and all, because if you can search for some obscure movie related to the plot, why wouldn't you be able to find Casablanca or Wizard of Oz as well?

Edit: One option which I'm still looking into is to have limited searches (dialog style), but then link documents with hyperlinks - so if an actor was mentioned in a description of a film, it would link to their biography etc. I haven't found a way to implement this yet though (I could RawPrint text onto the screen, but the hotspots would be difficult to align with the text)

Probably way off topic, but I didn't want to start a whole new thread:

Are Rezbor Studios using Poser for the characters in Legacy, or were the real models not ready when they made the website? The last three characters at http://legacythegame.com/char.php look incredibly Poserish (=bad! ), but as far as I know, the game uses in-game rendering of characters. I don't want to download a 150MB alpha just to find out.

I've been thinking about this for a long while, and I still haven't come up with a satisfying solution: How can you use the Internet (or rather, a simulation of it) in an adventure game without limiting the player too much?

Of course, I'm thinking here of the mystery/detective genre, which usually consist of interviewing people, reading books and sometimes even visiting museums. But is it realistic in this day and age to not allow the player character to go online?

The Uncertainty Machine allowed you to research the strange statuette on the Internet, by clicking the inventory object on the computer, but that was about it. Pleurghburg allowed you to receive e-mails and to search for addresses if you knew the name of a person, but only if you searched for the right name at the right time. Gabriel Knight 3 had a rather impressive occult database (imagined to be on the computer rather than the web) as well as a little used e-mail function.

The gameplay of mystery games consist of recovering information, but the puzzle nature of adventure games leads to strange strategies of withholding information. As an example, in GK1, how come Gabriel Knight could look up "Drachen" and "Drei" in a dictionary but not "Cabrit sans cor"? Maybe he didn't have a French dictionary on the shelf, but he could have gone to the library or another bookstore, in fact, he could just have asked someone in the street, as many people in New Orleans speak French. Logically, he should have been able to translate the words with ease, but because this is a game, a challenge, it must be made difficult.

The trouble with the Internet is that you can search for almost anything, and probably get a few hundred more or less relevant hits. Puzzle solved within seconds. How can you implement as basic a research tool as the Internet search engine in a game without making it too easy or too limited?

One solution would be to reduce the search topics to dialog options. This would by far be the easiest option (and the one I'm currently using) - If the character can ask people about something, he can also search for it on the Internet. But it's not very satisfying. I think the idea of typing the word you want to search for makes much more of a puzzle, actually finding the right keyword, knowing what you want rather than just clicking through all the options, is much more rewarding to the player. But then he could search for anything, relevant or not!

Anybody else considered this problem?

Yes, you will need the gum, but not before Susan says she needs it. Have you checked the vase?

I was thinking, how about an option for a "listen" view? As Scummbuddy gave a brilliant example of, idle animations doesn't always fit the talking situation, but on the other hand static characters aren't very realistic either.

I don't know how I missed it when it first was posted, but I LOVE this idea. I've always been a fan of creepy hotels: The Shining, Barton Fink, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (Disneyworld ride), and most recently, Fear X.

Are you familiar with the movie Hotel Room, directed, in part, by David Lynch? It was originally a short series on HBO, but the three episodes are available on video as a movie. All the episodes take place in the same hotel room, but in different eras - some of it is pretty bad, but the last episode, Blackout, is just incredible.

One word of advice: Don't try to explain it! And please ignore everything GinnyW just said I think the game would be much more powerful if the idea of room 5 wasn't explained in any scientific manner, but rather remain a paranormal or psychological mystery (a la the motel room in Lost Highway). There should be some sort of thematic connection between what happens in the room across ages and locations. An interesting story would be that different versions of the same scenario (say, somebody murdering their lover out of jealousy) was played out in a Viennese luxury hotel in 1899, a dirty motel room in the Nevada desert in the 1940's, the smashed up suite of rock star in New York in the late 1970's, and the honeymoon suite of young newlyweds in Hong Kong at the millennium.

Ideally each era would have it's own player character, so that this strange feeling of patterns repeating would be clear to the player, but never to the characters. Maybe the ending would be to break this circle of events, to refuse to be controlled by fate.

I would recommend watching Lost Highway ("we've met before, haven't we?") and playing I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, which is a pretty good example of the "multiple characters failing to run from fate"-theme.

I always took full length to mean the equivalent of a professional game. I would say length should be measured in hours of gameplay rather than in number of rooms. As it says on the games page, medium games are up to one hour's gameplay.

I hate to be a grumpy old nay-sayer, but as a Gaiman fan I must say something about this. First of all, I think a Coraline game is a great idea - most of the book is in fact based on puzzles:

Spoiler

Finding the marbles, the trap at the well etc.. although the narrative climax of finding the parents may be a problem in a non-linear environemt

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And I really DO like the style of the room, as well as the character. BUT NOT FOR CORALINE!!! It's like making Lord of the Rings in South Park-style animation (which may not be that bad an idea, but I hope you understand the analogy). The style just doesn't fit the story. And it's even more difficult to imagine after seeing Dave McKean's beautiful illustrations to the book. Although it would be nearly impossible to match the style and talent of McKean, I think other approaches to the art would make for a much more atmospheric game. Are you familiar with McKean's other work? His Sandman covers or Mr. Punch, another collaboration with Gaiman? I think it would be really interesting to create backgrounds and characters in a style emulating McKeans collages - maybe closer to the cover image of Coraline than the illustrations within.

Another approach would be a Tim Burton'esque design, which I think would work really well. Did you know that Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, is supposed to do a movie version of Coraline? I think doll like characters and wildly exaggerated gothic sets, like the ones in Nightmare Before Christmas with muted blues, greys and blacks would work very well, maybe using color and lack of color to contrast the real world and the other mother's world.

Sorry to put your work down, but I'm just very enthusiastic about the idea of a Coraline game and I'd hate to see the concept wasted on anything less powerful than it has the potential to be.

I doubt I'd even have Syberia on my top 25 - and probably not TLJ either. Maybe TLJ is slightly better, at least it's long, but it's so damn talky.

This is just to answer Goldmunds question about Post Mortem. I am considering buying the game too, but after playing the demo, I'm not so sure. I mean, they used that ancient puzzle with the key in the lock on the other side of the door. I remember rolling my eyes when I encountered that in Phantasmagoria, and that was what, 8 years ago? I like the atmosphere though, an any game that has a Hotel Orphee moves up a notch on my coolness scale. I wouldn't buy it fully priced, but if it comes on sale, I will definitely pick it up.

There was some movie with Gregory Peck in it, they got an Abstract... Dali? To design the dream sequences.

That's Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound" (1945), and yes, it was Salvador Dali who designed the dream sequence.

"A Life Less Ordinary" could be a cool, if confusing game. It MUST be made in claymation like the end of the movie though!

I once wrote a game design heavily inspired by Fight Club, but also by other novels of Chuck Palahniuk as well as Brett Easton Ellis. It was written as a mod for Deus Ex, but it never got far into production. I've been thinking of making it into an adventure game, but I'm not sure it would work as well, although the plot still rocks.

"Zero Effect", more or less unknown detective film starring Bill Pullman, would make a good game (better than the movie at least). And one thing I REALLY would love to make is "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - The Adventure Game".

Well, here's another thing to discuss. Do you think some gay guys act femmy because they think they're supposed to?

Or could it be that straight guys act all butch because they are afraid of being perceived as gay? I think all gender specific mannerisms are social constructs. It's roleplaying. Openly gay men doesn't have to keep up this charade, so they behave in a gender-atypical manner. But often they go way too far in the opposite direction. No, limp wrists, lisping, and bitchy attitudes aren't genetically implanted in gay men any more than bad haircuts are in lesbians. They're stereotypes, but unfortunately many gays see them as role models.

Also, acting effeminate is a shorthand to communicate that you're gay. I remember when I came out, I got really limp wristed for a while and spoke in a very affected manner. But it's just a way to call attention to yourself. As you get more relaxed about it - and unless you become part of an all gay community - you will return to an if not butch then at least less effeminate manner.

As for the humor thing, I'm not even going to comment on it. But I must say I find Ellen as funny as The Kids in the Hall, and a lot less exhausting.

Not robots, automatons dammit!

Mr. Panda: I checked up the numbers from Kinsey's "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (the ones I mention were quoted in another book). The survey is of white American males in 1948 - the results of the female survey were published in 1953. Paraphrasing the report:

At least 37% of the male population have at least some overt homosexual experience leading to orgasm between the beginning of adolescence and old age.

The 50% mentioned previously includes experiences not leading to orgasm as well as homosexual psychic arousal.

I couldn't find the numbers for females in the hurry (I did find the statistics for sexual experiences with animals, but that's another matter... ), but they are somewhat lower, around 20% as I recall.

Spoiler

Yeah, that puzzle was nice - I also liked how you had to call the bar at the hotel in Paris, except it was written as the only number on the pamphlet. It would have been much cooler if you had to pick it out from a long list

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As there already is another thread about "who do you admire", where I pretty much cover my inspirations from other media, I'll keep to the adventure game designers this time around:

Jane Jensen (GK2 and 3 in particular) and Ron Gilbert (Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, Indy 3)

About the ending:

Spoiler

I think it was planned for the game to end like that - the whole point being that the journey is more important than the destination, as was also the case with Grim Fandango. In fact, I'm a little worried that the sequel will ruin the magic by actually showing Syberia and live mammoths. As for the boyfriend, I wish we had actually met him at the start of the game, or that he had been nicer from the beginning. As it was now, I just thought "good riddance" when they broke up.

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I must admit I haven't finished it yet, but so far I'm very disappointed after all the fabulous reviews it got. The adventure community must really have been starving when they called Syberia one of the best adventures of all time.

These things have been mentioned before, but the major issues are:

1) Too much walking through empty screens. Most locations are pretty but dead.

2) Too few hotspots (or rather, too few interactive hotspots if you count all the locked doors)

3) Stupid puzzles ("Momo, go get that oar for me, it's wet and dirty". The single interesting, but apparently totally unrelated book on the library shelves. A long quest to get rid of a few small birds)

4) No "look at" function. Not much feedback from Kate.

5) Too many levers to pull, buttons to push and keys to wind. Not that they didn't fit with the plot, but they just were no-brainers. Most of them had one position and could be activated only once anyway.

But interestingly, one of the things that annoyed me most was the lack of close-ups of people speaking. Everybody began to seem very generic when you couldn't see their faces properly. And the voice acting just didn't lend the characters enough personality. Meeting the rectors at the university made me think of the peasants at the inn in QFG4 and how much better their quarreling worked.

"Syberia: It's Myst... with people"

Ok, so I finally, a year late, I got my hands on Syberia (and playing it, I'm very happy I didn't buy it myself). Aside from all the flaws of the game, which I'm sure have all been discussed at great length in these forums, theres one thing I just don't get: The title.

According to the professor's lecture, Syberia should be an island north of Siberia. But the two words are pronounced the same, and I'm sure these cavemen didn't have a written language. So what's with the "y", and what kind of asshole would give two nearby locations names that sound exactly alike?!?! (my guess: It looked cool on the box)