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Sorry, I'm no good with irony. Especially coming from religious celebrities

Ugh, postmodernism - been there, done that, wake up and smell the millennium, the 80's are over, and so is Quentin Tarantino's career judging from the Kill Bill-trailer! Sorry, you would react that way too if you'd spent ten years dissection postmodern theories and films. Seriously though, I think the postmodernism defense is getting old. Writers have always stolen from eachother, making tributes, tipping their hats, it's the way art works, we don't need Umberto Eco to explain that.

In regards to what Jesus said:

LONG LIVE FEMALE ADVENTURE GAME LOAD CHARACTERS!!!

(I presume he meant "lead characters", but I wouldn't want to correct the lord almighty). Maybe there weren't that many female adventure game characters in Gallileia around the early A.D.'s, (although I'm sure they had Rosella and Laura Bow). But these days it seems that female player characters are getting to be a cliché in adventure games.  April Ryan, Kate Walker, the girl in Legacy: Dark Shadows, the female journalist in Journey to the Center of the Earth plus the female characters in multi-character games such as Grace in GK2 and 3, and Nico in Broken Sword 2 and 3. It looks as if the female player character could be the new cliché in adventure gaming - not because of her gender, but because they all more or less look the same and are all either journalists or some other kind of investigator. The Uncertainty Machine didn't do much to change this.
Now, with the protagonist in Legacy: Dark Shadows, the title character of Goldmund's Donna, and Dinah Burroughs in my game, Shadowplay, maybe we're close to creating an even more specific cliché: The gay female player character.

Ok, so it's a loving tribute then

Maybe pastiche would be a better word. I'll post again when I find my thesaurus

Thank you so much Barcik for mentioning Tolkien. It made me remember watching LOTR (without having read the books), feeling that it was a blatant ripoff of Star Wars . Of course it's actually the other way around. But it made me realize that being inspired by other works isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean, a huge part of the original Star Wars audience MUST have read Tolkien, and yet George Lucas pulled it off.

However, I agree with MillsJROSS that

"...just because a games genre and general mood might be influenced by a book, movie, etc... doesn't mean that storyline isn't unique and original. It just happens to use elements that exist to tell it's story succesfully."

That a work of fiction can be defined within a certain genre doesn't mean that it isn't original. I mean, High Noon is an original story although it's a western. But Outland, which is more or less "High Noon on a spaceship", isn't (or at least not AS original).

And to DGMcPhee: I would classify Grim Fandango as a parody. The game wouldn't work without those specific noir references. It's the Big Lebowski of adventure gaming (while, one the other hand, a game like QFG2 could easily do without the Casablanca and Maltese Falcon references).

Nope, not using cd version (yet!). I guess I'll just have to play it in Win98 then when I get the cd. It's strange how some games using the same interpreter works and other don't. I could get GK2 to run in XP, but not Phantasmagoria 2 (or maybe... didn't they use different video formats now that I think of it?).

This is related to the discussion on innovation in the "how much time do YOU spend?"-thread (http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=6513). But I decided to start a separate topic to avoid straying too much from the original heading.

It's no secret that the genres and plots of many (most?) adventure games are derivative of other media. At first it was just a genre thing (the first Space Quest games are sci-fi parodies, but don't refer as directly to Star Wars and whatnot as the later games refer to Star Trek, Terminator, Blade Runner etc. - but let's keep the parodies out of this, for now, since they HAVE to make intertextual references to BE parodies) but as games got more sophisticated and started to focus on storytelling, especially Sierra began harvesting ideas from popular movies (or the novel they were adapted from):

Phantasmagoria is more or less The Shining set in a creepy old mansion instead of a hotel. The sequel is in parts very similar to Jacob's Ladder. Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers seems to be inspired by Alan Parker's Angel Heart and The Beast Within is Interview with the Vampire with werewolves.

I'm sure there's a reason for this. First and foremost, that sometimes you watch a movie and think: "that would make a great game - imagine actually being the main character in a story like that, experiencing it from within!". Another approach would be to watch a movie which you might or might not like, but certain parts would stick with you, sparking other ideas.

I'm sure that some of these games, if made as movies, would be accused of plagiarism. But in games this is apparently accepted. Making it interactive seems to make enough difference to turn it into something new.

My game-in-progress, Shadowplay, was heavily inspired by Theodor Roszak's novel Flicker as well as Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas. They share certain basic elements: The rediscovery of long forgotten director, the hypnotic power of films, strange religious doctrines, and the search for hidden meaning in a number of old films (books in Perez-Reverte's story). The characters, the mystery and the themes are entirely different in the game, but the basic concept and story structure is very similar. It related to Flicker as Phantasmagoria relates to the Shining, you could say.

Do you consider this a problem? After learning that Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) is working on an adaptation of Flicker, I'm even more set on distancing the game from the novel. Not for fear of lawsuits, but to avoid players regarding the game as derivative.

Tell me if you've had similar considerations, and what you think of these "more than coincidental" similirities between games and other mass media products, be it film, tv, books or comics (not too many games inspired by songs, paintings, and sculptures yet )

My guess would be Kansas and Oklahoma, but I could be wrong being an ignorant European.

Pardon me for asking, but what is the save/load problem? Once I experienced not being able to overwrite my old savegame, but after deleting the savegames and restarting I could overwrite my new saves without any problems.

Interference, as I said, my GK1 (floppy-disk DOS-version) also runs fine on XP (Pro) without any tweaks. I've got an Audigy 2 and the sound is fine.

I'm starting to think the problem is with the CD version. I'll see if I can borrow my cousin's cd and see if it works. As I recall, cd-version used AVIs for the cutscenes. Could it be avi-playback which causes problems?

BTW: If you run the windows version it uses Windows' own general midi setup. I see how that could cause conflicts. DOS installation should work though. Can you get other Sierra games from that period to run (PQ4, KQ6 etc.)?

I was talking about the floppy version, but I do think it's a sound thing (have you turned off sound effects as well as midi in the install music?). The error message is the same I got the few times it wouldn't start (because the sound card was busy doing something else). What sound card do you have?

Are you running windows or dos version? Windows SHOULD work, I see no reason why not. But as I say dos version runs on my XP. It's a patched v1.1 (i think) of GK floppy version.

Argh, this thread got off topic very quickly. It's as if most people just read the replies instead of the first post. (thanks for all the feedback though, and thanks to Dragonrose for the compliment.)

I wasn't talking about HOW the design process works, or how to design a game. Rather I was asking if people set up "rules" for the actual design. Do's and don'ts for what you can or can't (or shouldn't) do when designing. Maybe I just wasn't very clear about it.

Have you tried running without the sound? GK1 runs fine on my XP, but sometimes, when it doesn't, it's because the sound card isn't responding and I have to reboot to get it working.

Custard, I agree. But then, I also think it's unfair that 6 Day Assassin is the top game on the AGS website just because it's a smaller download than some of the better games.

And so what if it's a matter of opinion? Isn't that what matters, what the audience thinks of a game? As opposed to the sales of the commercial market (which isn't a measure of quality but of clever advertising), reviews and forums like these tell you what people really think. And for the life of me,  I can't see how the number of rooms can be a measure of quality.

Whoa, there are just too many interesting things in the thread that I want to comment on. I'll try to limit this to two or three:

First of all, DGMcphee I must say that I'm really looking forward to your tutorial. Sounds like great stuff.

Secondly, I agree completely that we, as non-commercial game designers, ought to spend more time on innovation than repeating old formulas. There's nothing wrong with making old school game. In fact, most of us are here becase we love the old LucasArts and Sierra games and always dreamed of creating something similar. And a large part of the community is still stuck back in the early 90's. I thinks it's a noble effort of the Tierra people to bring the old games to a new audience, although I think the percentage of fans who've already played the original is pretty high. I admire their devotion, but in some ways, it's a bit like that kid who did his own version of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I never really liked Sierra's own remakes (much like Hollywood remakes, or even colorization of old black and white movies), and when there are people this talented making free games, I'd much rather see them spending their time on something that I haven't played to death already.

This isn't a call for avantgarde game design (we've already had Davy Jones C'est Mort, thank you very much). Rather than the experimental films of the 60's and 70's (Warhol et al), I see the AGS community as being closer to the independent film makers of the 80's and early 90's (John Sayles, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Kevin Smith, Harmony Korinne, or maybe the French new wave in the 60's).  But unlike them, we aren't limited by costume budgets and available locations. We don't have to make games set in convenience stores or Brooklyn streets. But just like them we can allow ourself to tell personal stories and go against convetions and expectations in style as well as content. But is this enough?

The innovation within the adventure game business has primarily been technological (text->drawn graphics->digitized graphics->FMV->3D). True, there have been some attempts at new approaches to storytelling. But let's be honest, most of the great writing achievements were in text-based IF. Mostly's examples, Loom, Lure of the Temptress, Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle (yes, I mention both, as separate concepts), are innovative within what I would call "gameplay concept" for lack of a better phrase. I hadn't considered this before, but looking at these examples it becomes very clear: Interface (musical spells instead of verbs, no inventory), NPC interaction (the Virtual Theatre system, intricate orders), multiple player characters, and parallel universe interactions (the different ages are in a way similar to the double reality of Darkseed). None of these are technological innovations, nor are the games telling stories in a new manner. They are new ways of playing games! Roughly put: You haven't tried this shit before!

And this is probably the most interesting, and most challenging, take on innovation. I mean, how innovative can you get before it's no longer an adventure game? I thought Tender Loving Care was very interesting, but I wouldn't call it an adventure game (not because of the lack of real puzzles, but rather the lack of a participating player  character). But on the other hand, I probably wouldn't call Myst an adventure game  either, if I had my say.

The major question is how to innovate without losing the genre, and to do this, we probably have to set up some "rules", some elements that HAVE to be there for a game to be a real adventure game. When you have those, everything else is fluid.

Don't get me wrong. Read my post again. I totally agree that the game had a unique vibe, BECAUSE of the graphics (and music). What I said was that graphics and story sometimes worked in opposite directions, but maybe that was intentional. I thought the game had a wonderful, almost childish joy to it, and I don't mean that in a bad way. It was like a 10 year old kid's dream of being a policeman (having a friend who makes cool gadgets for you and all that, as opposed to the "adult" universe of say Rise of the Dragon.)

For some reason I don't care too much for short games. Maybe because I play games for the story and the characters, and there just isn't enough time for development in most short games. I mean, sure 6 Day Assassin is pretty and fun, for about five minutes, but I fail to see why it's so popular. I mean, most game demos have more content than that! The same thing with Search for the Don. It had tons of style and atmosphere, but there just wasn't much game to it.

So my favorites are among the longer games. I think that KQ2VGA is probably the most professional looking/playing AGS game to date. But although the enhancements from the original (plot- and puzzlewise) are amazing, it still is very derivative, not just of KQ2 but of the whole KQ series. For some reason these remakes, as well as other "fan games" just don't interest me as much as original concepts do.

P:DA was highly derivative as well. Elements from Gabriel Knight, the Police Quest-series, Rise of the Dragon, and the Manhunter games are easily spotted. But although some ideas were rather clichéd, the blocky graphics gave the game so much charm. If I should point out one flaw, it would be that the naive graphics at times clashed with the dark subject matter. So currently, P:DA is my favorite AGS game with The Uncertainty Machine being a close second (if it wasn't for that final puzzle...).

I think KQ2VGA is a better game, but it leaves me cold. I feel much stronger about P:DA and TUM. Maybe KQ2VGA is just TOO professional (or maybe I'm just jealous at Tierra ).

I was just wondering, when you start planning a game, do you ever write down (or even just think about) your "design philosphy" for that specific game? Or do you just "make it up as you go along"?

What I mean by "design philosphy" spans from basic issues such as "can the player character die?", "will I allow walking deads?" to minor issues such as "do I want the player to repeat an action once he's solved the underlying puzzle" (putting the steps into the holes in the tree in MI2, using the key on the car each time i Pleurghburg). I presume that each of us have some design standards that we've learned from playing other games. I think most people here follow the LucasArt design philosophy in many matters (dying, walking deads, not awarding points). But I'm sure that you must at times come across certain issues that haven't been covered yet, or somehow seem illogical and need revision. But are you conscious about this, and do you ever put it into words, or even writing?

I have a "design philosphy" section in my design document where I put down things that come to mind, either while thinking/writing about my own game, or while playing other games. Some of the points are manifesto-like, others are solutions to minor annoyances from other games. For instance I remember one thing I noted: "You shouldn't have to hunt around for common and inexpensive objects (string, a nail - stuff like that) which the player character could buy in any store. If you need, say, string in another puzzle, let the player have it in her inventory already, maybe from unpacking a parcel." In my experience, creating such limitations often open up for brand new approaches to puzzles and gameplay.

I'd love to hear you approach to design philosphies and what you do to keep it in mind while designing the actual game.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a crazed fan as well, which is why I want to use the interface in the first place. But still, I feel there is room for improvement.

My current interface has these commands: Walk, look, talk,  pick up, operate + the inventory and file menu(save/restore/settings) icons. Talk works differently depending on whether or not you need to interrogate the person or just chat with them (for instance, you wouldn't need to question a street vendor about plot-related topics, so instead you would just get Monkey Island style dialog options at the bottom of the screen where you could haggle or choose what to buy).

All suggestions are welcome.

Seeing as most current AGS games use a KQ5-style GUI, I'd like to know what people here think about the "expanded" Sierra GUI used for the first Gabriel Knight game. As some of you might know, I'm writing a game in the GK style/genre, and I've been thinking a lot about interface issues lately.

First of all, the splitting up of the "talk" icon into two: "question" and "talk"/"chat". Was that really necessary? Except for a few people who you could talk to but not question, the "talk" icon seemed to be used for small talk, just some random comments, but in fact, several of the "question" conversations also had this kind of dialog. You could choose "compliment her" when talking to Gabriels grandmonther, and "Insult him" when talking to Mosely. To me the two icons seemed redundant.

Secondly, the splitting up of the "hand" icon into 4(!): Pick up, operate, open, push/move. I liked that "pick up" was a seperate icon. I've really missed that in earlier games. But I'm not so sure about the other three. I mean, the "open" icon - wouldn't that just be the obvious action when "operating" a door? I can't think of a single point in the game where "opening" something didn't perform the exact same action as "operating" it would have. I suppose it would make sense, if you had to remove the batteries from a flashlight instead of turning it on, but that's a bad example, because it's an inventory puzzle. As for the "move" icon, it probable could have it's uses. But is it used often enough? The only kind of puzzles that would need it are those where it isn't obvious that pushing something is the appropriate action to perform (say, finding the hidden passages in The Colonel's Bequest).

And finally, what did you think of the inventory action icons, LOOK, READ and OPEN? "Open" was hardly used at all (a single envelope I think, plus it could be used on books, but so could "read"). "Look" and "read" does make sense within the genre ("look" being the casual glance at the object, "read" being the careful study of written matter). What I'm considering is replacing "read" (for closed books) and "open" with some sort of action icon, which would open the flashlight from the earlier example as well as opening books for reading. Does this make any sense?

As an additional question, how do you feel about operating inventory items by clicking them on the player character? One rather unfortunate example of this is when you click the empty bowl on Graham in KQ1VGA to make him say the magic word - I would never have thought of that if I didn't know the solution from the original version of the game. It's a kind of inventory interaction that shows the flaws of the classic GUI interface. My thoughts on this is that it should only be used when actually applying them to the character (clothes, make-up, hair gel, whatever) and perhaps also when "equipping" an item (such as a flashlight or a gun), but I'm not even sure that's a good idea. All other interaction with inventory objects (that doesn't involve objects or characters in the background) should take place within the inventory screen (or in closeups of items after looking at them).

It'd be interesting to hear other's thoughts on this.

What amuses me is that a LOT of professional composers seem to steal other tunes. Horner often uses variations of other themes other people have done, a lot of film themes have been obviously ripped from earlier classical music and other sources etc.

There's a reason for this. While editing a movie they often use a temporary soundtrack of pre-existing music, often from other films or classical (Prokofiev (sp?) and Stravinsky seem to be favorites). When they're done editing and the composer comes on, the temp music seems so fitting, that he ends up emulating the temp track in his score. It's a known fact. That's why so many thriller have a Bernard Herrman-like score.