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The zombie clowns wouldn't stand a chance. They aren't badass enough. In order to have a fair chance against Oceanspirit Dennis (or, depending on your typo-affinity, Oceanspirit Denise) your species description needs a nuber of syllables equal or greater to Oceanspirit Dennis. That makes 7 1/2.

Kil-ler-Klowns-From-Ou-Ter-Spa...ce...

Yes, *that* would work.

This is a personal opinion, and I admit that I am no great fan of DAZ stock characters anyway, but the face looks really, really wrong. Eyes are extremely small, the nose is (in comparison to the rest of the face) far too fleshy, and the overall impression is instant uncertain valley...
This is a face that creeps me out.

[MinimumTextDisplayTimeMs property]

You're displaying a very short text, and may want to increase the minimum time text is displayed before the timer removes it:

MinimumTextDisplayTimeMs property
static int Game.MinimumTextDisplayTimeMs;
Gets/sets the minimum length of time that text is displayed on the screen. AGS automatically adjusts the length of time that text is displayed for depending on the length of the text (and you can customize this calculation with Game.TextReadingSpeed), but for very short statements like "Hi!", you might want the text to remain for longer.
This property is specified in milliseconds (1000 = 1 second), and is set to 1000 by default.

I can't put a finger on it, but I never really got into PG. King's Quest had it easy because I like fantasy, and I enjoyed  the first three games and later KQ 5. Space Quest, yes, they had their good moments too, I liked some of them. But Police Quest never fel right. I can't say way, I remember playing the first two games but for the life of me I can't remember anything *about them*.

I think King's Quest has many fan games because of the usualy reasons, seasoned players remaking something they liked as kids. And the games have some memorable charcters AND simple plots, it's easy to jump back into them. PQ seems to have a less strong fan base...

Ghost disappeared mysteriously on his way to Mittens America and then other strange and sinister events began to unfold in the thread as more and more AGSers went missing until...

I would've liked to read that tale! Seriously, someone tell me where I am right now plz! Totally in the dark here.

Votes:
Character:  kconan, baron, wham
Plot: wham, baron, chef
Atmosphere: chef, baron, wham
Background World: No, that would be unfair- all four really did a great job here!
Word Choice/Style: baron, kconan, wham
Topic: again, that would be unfair- all four really did a great job here!

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An honourable cookie vote to Ponch, too!

Is Denise his sister?

No, no. Oceanspirit Denise IS Oceanspirit Dennis. It's complicated but a typo, gender-bending webcomics, bender's gender, an ocelot, and ghosts with too much time on their hands all play an important role in her creation.

One game that really stands out in my collection is "Nord and Burt Can't make Heads Or Tails of it". It's one of Infocom's finest I think- a game that is completely based on puns, proverbs, and spelling. The puzzles themselves aren't really special but they all rely on the player finding out the pun and making the most of it- using a strange contraption to create all sorts of "jacks", for example (jackknife, jackrabbit, jacket...), or hunting down a Cereal Killer (a vampire who eats all the cereals in a supermarket).

Then there's Curses, Jigsaw, and Christminster, three games that got me back into IF. Especially Christminster excels at creating atmosphere, and Jigsaw's concept of time-travel is well executed too. Since these games are available for free, I can just recommend them to anyone:
Curses: http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=plvzam05bmz3enh8
Jigsaw: http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=28uhmejlntcbccqm
Christminster: http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=fq26p07f48ckfror

With all the quality threads about general game theory, adventure game design et al, I'd like to put up the IF THEORY READER.

It's a pretty hefty volume with quality essays about interactive fiction (design, pitfalls, idiosynchratic elements, thoughts on characters, puzzles, and what have you). They're mostly written by people who are main contributors to recent IF, and since IF is the foundation on which graphic adventures are build, it's sensible to say that some of the stuff in that reader may be useful for "us", too.

If you're getting it: My favourites are "Crimes against Mimesis" (or "How to make stuff break the illusion of the game") and "Broad Landscape" (or "How to avoid making games that look like a patchwork instead of a true world").

Have fun with this free download:
-> http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_69/10228000/10228464/4/print/IFTheoryBookv2.pdf

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Also, because it really interest me: Who here still plays IF? Any thoughts to share, and opinions? IS IF still comparable to modern point-and-click adventure games? If you had the choice, would you like to see a classic text adventure re-made*? Is that a sensible idea at all? Fire away!

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* I''d love to see a new take on Wishbringer. The very first IF I played and solved, and I love the idea: All puzzles in the game can be solved by wishes granted by a magical stone, but also by mundane means. The more wishes you use the harder it becomes NOT to rely on the wishbringer... and your reward for solving the game's story is that you can keep the stone, so depending on your playthrough you *can* end up with a worthless pebble as your sole reward (well, you also save your hometown, so there's that...)

Objects have a baseline, which defines at which position something is "behind" an object. Just make ObjectA's baseline lower than ObjectB's.

Radiant, have a happy birthday, a swell good time, and (cheese)cakes!

Changing resolution works fine for me, but the test room, having a 320x240 image, may look odd because the image won't fill the screen (backgrounds aren't resized).
Does the new room actually tell you it's still 320x240? Have you imported an image that works with your resolution?

Call it what you will, but AGS needs proper reference types. We need to be able to pass them as parameters to our functions and return them, we need to be able to store them inside of other structs, we need to be able to create dynamic arrays of them.

Agreed, absolutely. I read your implementation and it is bulky, but it should be very useful- not just for RPG/RTS games but a lot of "unusual game concepts" (cards and whatnot). And it seems that these days there is a high demand for proper reference types. They are useful and it would be awesome to have some sort of "meta-object" to create instances of, and that could then become an integer or string or whatnot.

I would really like to see that implemented into AGS at some point. It would be a great step towards flexibility and it would remove the need for workarounds that apparently are used so often that they become "common knowledge".

Being more an AGS user than a programmer, however, I don't know how soon someone will get around to implementing the chances. It sounds like a radical change (but I could be wrong).

This thread reminds me of the game Lure of the Temptress which had neither a lure nor a temptress, but what a great name!

Well- the Tempress WAS the lure 

I think names matter, and a game designer can use some tricks in order to make his game more attractive just by chosing a certain title.

Example Resonance. In his PDF Vince commented how the game was supposed to have a different name (I can't remember which one, and that already says something), but they used "Resonance". It is a single word, always nice. It describes a known scientific phenomena, also nice because the game tells us what it is about. But I found the other, more mundane meaning of the word really memorable: Someone does something and his/her actions have consequences, and that is a theme that's also in the game. Triple win.

Names are a good way to establish a brand- as in Star War, Indiana Jones, Blackwell, Barn Runner. After a few nice games linked to a brand, the [repeated name] bit alone can persuade a customer to buy the game: I'll get Blackwell: The Blackest Well because I've already played a couple of good Blackwell games, not because this one apparently has a really black well in it.

Names can be memorable without having much to do with the actual game OR by summing up all of a game's essence. "Dark Seed" and "Full Throttle" don't tell me anything specific about the game behind the title, but they sum up the core theme. "Sam And Max, Freelance Police, In Search Of The Escaped Yeti" tell me EVERYTHING about the game's premise, but the title still is memorable for its sheer length.

Names that make an acronym are also nice. DOTT? DITA, anyone  ?

And, as stated above, since these days everyone seems to hit the internet first when a game is announced, it is a nice bonus to have a title that's easy to remember, hard to mistype, and that will get you somewhere at the top of a google search. Though I still think that this is really just a bonus.

Bad names are made by combining the name of a war setting, a military buzzword, and a random number to a string.

Just make an Oceanspirit Dennis game.

a) You can never have enough Oceanspirit Dennis games.
b) Almost all games and assets are open source.
c) It is impossible to make a bad Oceanspirit Dennis game- they are bad on purpose.
d) There. Is. No. Canon. (Despite what Monkey will tell you  )

Happiest birthiest dayest, Tabby!

This is a good time to announce my next project - Barn Runner: Eternally our RAM Ghosts.

I shall trump that. Because soon I will make
"Indiana Jones and the Day of the Comet with the Tentacles From Twenty Thousand Leagues Of The Extraordinary Gentlemen Below The Ocean Spirit Tennesee, Chapter 1: Daemons In The Black Well*"

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* Rob Liefield will do the sprites.

When I first read the thread title, I thought this would be a discussion about if game names matter, as in, do games with cooler names attract more people, and if so, what makes a name good?

THAT sounds interesting. Let's make that thread!

Ghost - I see what you mean about adventure games being - largely - linear.  I'm interested to see what you think about the ones in my (soon to be released) game though - we've tried to be inventive with what we chose, and many are things that you don't actually need to do to actually complete the game, but are - hopefully - fun.

I *always* like to be swayed by awesome games! 

So I sure don't care about them when I see "You killed ten bosses with a single bullet fired blindly while moving the mouse with  your nose" on the list 

It's harder than it sounds 

I don't care for achievements, and I think achievements in an adventure game are absolutely pointless. In arcade/action games, yes, there are crazy things one can do with some skill/luck. Or just luck. I can see how someone will enjoy being rewarded a "You killed ten bosses with a single bullet fired blindly while moving the mouse with your nose".
But adventure games are linear, and today, few games even have multiple solutions to puzzles. "You killed LeChuck (again)" would sound a bit silly really when it is the point of the game to do just that.

Classic "score", however, is quite a bit of fun in my book, because a game with score will usually have little actions/side-puzzles that don't need to be solved. I smiled at a lot of Resonance's "hidden points"... And that may be because balanced score is an integral part of an adventure game, while achievement are, these days, often tacked on because Steam or whatever distributor requires it.

Going through an adventure a second time? Yes, often. For achievements? No; and not even for finding "the last lousy point".