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Torrents aren't designed specifically for warez, ya know.

These days I know (I admit I needed someone to point that fact out to me, though. I still mostly go torrent == warez). But putting a game on a torrent while it is being sold IS piracy.
So my game GOT pirated before it went freeware.

So I still feel cool.

Torchlight 2.

Damn! I was hoping for Ghost not entering!!

But an Arjob-summoning beats an AprilSkies-hoping. It's a clash of forces.

And seriously, that shape is so weird that I am surprised at how awesome the entries so far are, all around.

John Doe was a musician. A marathon man. A painter. Also a plumber AND a great dancer. Occasionally he moonlighted as the wall-crawling, sea-creature-befriending, colour-changing superhero "James".
People often asked how he managed to juggle that many careers.

John never told them about the DEAL*.

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/T8aNh3H.png[/imgzoom]

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* Cthulhu was pleased.

no,i think most people are quite kind to bakesale files.

The first time round I found one uploaded torrent of RAM Ghost. It had two downloads. I was super proud- you know you've made your mark when someone goes and pirates your freeware game

Steam says you already have it?

The beauty of Steam Gifts - you can sit there adamantly ignoring the Sale, and not even having any SteamPoints... and games can still manifest.
Shadowrun Returns is a retrofest!

These are really the same deals we had one whole year ago with the Summer sale 2013. I expected there to be a bit of a change.

Well, I think that's because Sales are now such a common feature of the service. There is always something on sale. It's safe to say that you are not doing yourself a favour if you ever buy a game there at full price. Sooner or later there will be "usual suspects" and this is happening now.

I can't think of any other reason someone would quit the community all of a sudden like that.

I can, and many don't involve accidents at all. After several YEARS I am sure the forums would in some way have stumbled over info if it had been of the bad kind.

I think I 1.

He's gone AWOL one day. I still remember him fondly. ut well, it happens. Some people leave.

This is so utterly pointless that it approaches awesomeness from the OTHER SIDE. It's technically the Micheal Bay of all the integer numbers between 7 and 9! Is 8 secretly the Seven of Nine? Will this game, once launched eight times, speed up to Warp8?

Will the sequel be "9"?

Someone is doing the summonings! Must... make... sprites...
(after shift!)

As a rule, and one that is extremely hard to accomplish for indie devs, the more time you spend on your game the more quality you'll produce. But, there's always a but, you take the risk of getting bored with your own project, the same one that drove you into hours and hours of hard-work.

Miguel makes a good point there; just look at all those promising titles that make it to some sort of "early access" and then run (pun) out of steam. Getting external feedback is really great IMO because it provides not only useful critique and probably fresh ideas, but also because more people start to care about a project. That can add some motivation, you know that there are people out there liking what you do. Motivation often becomes a crucial part, especially if you're really just making a freeware game because you happen to like the genre, or just want to see of you can actually make a game.

It's a double-edged sword maybe- who's in control, do you have to listen to everything? How do you deal with backlash should push come to shove? But apparently the "indie way" is to be more transparent with a project and that can result in some cool ideas.

There is a full documentation of Resonance available- the whole "bible" for the game. It makes an awesome read and shows how a professional AGS game looks on paper. I'll see if I can find the link.
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edit: Now that was quick, here you go: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=47824.msg636448407#msg636448407

I've used a lot of different approaches over the years but they all fall between two extremes: Write the game with little to no preparation, always making things up as you go alone and try out what works best, or have a solid plan with a clear vision of the final product, and work towards it step by step.

Both extremes are valid IMO and everyone will sooner or later settle somewhere in between. You're never absolutely clueless and will have at least a vague idea. And you also can't predict everything that'll happen during development so there will always be some changes.

Personally, here's what works for me, these days (please note that I am notorious for dropping projects!)

1) The Idea
This can be anything but I like to try and compress it into one sentence. That's what I want to make, and when someone asks me what my game's about, this is the answer.
"Red Riding Hood is a private investigator in a whacky fairytale land." "A zombie wants to bake a cake." "A faithful remake of the Archomage cardgame." "A really fiendish puzzle, no idea what but really really hard, must be solved, by someone, because reasons."
Now I already know a lot about the game.

2) MiniPlot
A simple plot, just a situation to get the story started maybe. This help me find an atmosphere. Genre? Character? Protagonist? This makes the core of the story and I like to know a lot about that before I start spriting.

3) Framework
I like to write the interface first or, more precisely, I select one of my homebrew template to tweak it and use it as the base. That way I know about the controls and how the player can interact with the world. A simple static sprite of the main character is also helpful, if only as a rogh size reference.

4) Scripting & Refining
I usually have *some* ideas what the game will contain. But there is also a lot of blank space. Adventure game puzzles often appear while you're drawing a room or putting together a simple "get X" puzzle, and then you can throw it in. Or leave it out. In small games I like to have one clear and short sequence of things to do; you can always break down that sequence into MORE puzzles.

5) Roll with it
As the game grows, try to focus on small daily goals. You have five rooms, each one with a major puzzle? Finish each room in rough steps. Then refine them one by one. Don't try to do everything at once; you won't get anything done then and just become frustrated. is your game all about ONE string of puzzles? Then start there, make it playable, and then see where you can add more. It's really rewarding to see, at the end of a day, that there is true progress.
When you get STUCK somewhere, don't force it. Don't pour too much time into fixing a bug now. There will be more.

6) Keep note
As you work your "vision" will become clearer and more realistic. Write things down, write how your game moves and changes. You can steer that. A small idea may turn into something more important. Something that sounds awesome on paper may not be any fun. Keep everything though. Make a folder for all your assets and keep copies of every original (layer'd) file. You will need them again. Accept that you may not be able to use everything you create and just keep it for some later game. Never force something in for the sake of it.

7) When playable, share
I've learned the hard way that you often don't see the forest for all the trees when you're deeply involved into your game. After testing a puzzle for three days you're on autopilot- you don't see bugs and you won't spot typos. As soon as there is some proper gameplay (no animations, no polish, nothing!) get a few testers. Make sure to NOT only share the game with your friends. Friends tend to be polite. You want people who will actively try to wreck your game. You want honest critique.

8) When everything is done, don't play it for a week, then play it.
Because you WILL find something that you want to touch up. And then wait another day, and THEN release.

8.a) Five minutes after release, check for ANY thread that mentions your game.
It will be a bug report.

I do think it strange that games are being sold on Amazon that won't run properly on modern systems.

Glad to be of service.

The thing is, those games are old and some people like to collect, so there is a market. They are in some cases true collector's items- maybe not for their "value" but for the joy of owning a physical copy.

Didn't META by Radiant do that? I think when you quit the game it schrolled a huge screencap of the actual game's script.

I'll sit this one out though because my backlog is killing me.

I picked up Shadowrun Returns for next to nothing just now in the Flash sale!

You know, you're making this very, very hard for me, sir.

Nooooooeeeees! Man down! MAN DOWN!

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edit
I apologize for my rambling in this thread. It's the joy of creation and the thrill of adrenalin that moves my fingers in clicking movements over the worn-out keys of my board-chow-laden keyboard.
I've missed that and man do I like it!

Well, tiny update:

Final pieces of code are clearly dropping in place. There's lots to do but generally the game is playable. Weekend should see the end of "home testing", and four brave forumites have already signed up for beta-testing/balancing purposes.
They have been hand-picked for being either utterly objective, terribly geeky, or reportedly cruel to the insect kingdom (bugs, natch).

A full list of six awesome original music tracks, made by promising newcomer JasonB, have arrived.
They are absolutely awesome.

Basically, you're in for a single player board game that could be described as "NetHack and Muchkin meet Chainsaw Warrior in a cartoon world with groovy blue alien invaders instead of some boring one-man-army lumberjack".
It's a complex Solitaire game where you face punishing odds with a randomly generated Invader who JUST WANTS SOME MILK. The game's locations are represented by cards, which are either encounters or locations, allowing you to make your journey through an Earthling town plus nearby pastures based on stealth, brute force, or heavy use of rule-altering alien gadgets.

Also you get to build a Saw Chain. That's many saws made into a chain. Orionese are really clever and have even mastered teleportation, but they totally suck at weapon building.

Looks like this:

(All graphics pretty much subject to change. Game may or may not contain blue dice.)

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EDIT

And I still say that Oldschool's avatar changes appearance more often than MINE. And I actually UPLOAD these things!

There's usually a "last hurrah" sale where several top discouts come again. I'd put my hopes on that

A German help forum (AdventureTredd) adresses this and offers the following solution:

1. Sucht im 'Scratches - Director's Cut' Verzeichnis nach der Datei 'scream.cfg'
2. Öffnet die Datei mit dem Windows eigenen Programm Notepad oder Wordpad und sucht nach folgendem Eintrag: Rate 0
3. Ã,,ndert den Eintrag von 0 auf 60
4. Abspeichern
5. Loslegen!

Simply put: Open scream.cfg in the game directory (using NotePad). Find the entry "Rate 0" and change it to Rate 60. Save, run game.

Hope that helps!

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There are several posts in that thread that hint towards the game not running REALLY GOOD under Win7. In some cases videos do not start, and sound either stutters or goes into random loops. The IDEAL solution would be to use a copy of Win95...