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As for disrupting the industry: by all means oh please do.

Great news about music. Is it possible to listen to this piece modgeulator composed?

I don't want to be rude, Inkoddi, just honest.
Do you believe that anybody except you would really miss it?

edit:
that's not to say that yours is exceptionally bad or something, it's just that animated signatures are rarely something that others really notice or care about -- unless it slows down the connection.

I think Erik Satie is quite underrated: most of his stuff is really simple (even I can play Gnosiennes), but this is the only piano music that can convey such strange emotions, weirdness plus melancholy, melancholic creepiness.

As for moderns, I'd say Death in June and Current93.

If this is the fact that some of you reduced your signatures' size that made me finally browse the forums quickly and without hang-ups, than I can only say: THANK YOU, RICKJ.

I rage against the people who cannot read humour without emoticons to aid them, Mr Frisby.

As for the educational games, I like them a lot etc., but to reiterate my post, I cannot imagine what possible benefits could an AGS remake of Pepper's Adventures in Time offer.
Better graphics? Unlikely. Better gui? Ditto. No walking deads? There were none in the original.
So?

Cool! Creative scripting!

Goldmund's Course will have walking deaths and a maze puzzle.

Hey, I haven't gone very far into it, but it appears to be a characters-based game.
Which is goodness.

Nice box art you have there, LostTraveler.


Pretty ascetic, if you ask me.


It's a bit too literary, if you catch my drift.


Okay, enough of this.


And, hey, Lost Travele, they didn't really spend much on them box-set designers, did they.


Okay - to the point.


Oh, and maybe you could just type it yourself, instead of linking to the picture, LostTraveler?
Like: "MobyGames, The definitive resource for PC Games, mobygames.com"
See, it looks as good on blue as it does on white.



Pepper's Adventures in Time gave me some fun when I was little. It's a nice little game, especially the parts when you play the dog are nice.
But why you would want to make a remake, LostTraveler, is beyond me.

Do you feed the illussion that the game would look better in AGS?

It won't. It's not AGI. It's pretty sophisticated.

I think all your senators should come to a consensus and ban all marriages alltogether.
Futuristic fun!

Ha!
GG is THE person that should stand behind new commercial adventure games!
And me, but I have no friends in the industry.
Also Las, because he helped me greatly some time ago and I don't want to enrage him.

Have my jealousy cake.
Do you want sugar with it?

Wow, comments!
Thank you!

GarageGothic:
I skipped the antique shop part for some time and concentrated on later parts, although I'd have to return for this.
It was designed as just one room, but your enthusiastic approach to antique shops makes me think again.
As for "gratuitious" apparitions: then again, sometimes it works nice, if done with a certain self-conscious semi-serious manner, unless your audience is a crowd really hungry for "sense and meaning".
I like sense and meaning, although I don't think its obligatory to have them in a good book, film or a game - correction: I think you should have the meaning, but not necessarily the sense.

LazyZ:
Aha, I'm happy you like it! I've never played Noctropolis, but - as it sounds like an obscure game - you might well be right. I also found my inspiration in obscure games, like I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream or Dreamweb. Rule they do.
Thanks for your generous offer (and you must know it is generous considering the game's length); I haven't started to enroll beta-testers yet - once The Day comes and you're still willing I'll be delighted to ask for your help.
We, English Majors, have to stick together!

Hueij, Bionic Bill (and Fruity) - ............
You know I started worrying recently.
That expectations are too high. I'm afraid I'll turn unable to satisfy them.
After all, I've only given you a very scarce glimpse of the game.
I like it, but I don't think it will be that revolutionary.
This is my first one.
I hope the second one will be better, and I will be able to fulfill all my hints and desires exposed in my MA thesis.

Can it be that they found even less WMDs in Iraq?

Strike Force Cobra - 1986

Playing with 4 characters, actions of others are very interdependent.

Enigma Force - 1986 as well


Both are adventure games, in both you control more than 1 (or 3) characters, who need to cooperate, and both appeared before MM (1987).


And don't forget Bureau13.

[the best, most involving]

Almost all independently designed adventure games have an interface that is based either on Sierra, Lucasarts or a verb-coin. The way of conducting dialogues is also extremely similar in all titles: you select a sentence and a character says it.

The reason for these types to be so widespread lies probably in the fact that the most famous games used such GUIs.
I also copied a typical Lucasarts interface without giving it any thought.

THIS IS BORING!!!

Why don't we give some thoughts to the question of interface now?
Remember that the interface, as a means through which the player operates in the world of a game, must have a big impact on the player's reaction to your product.

For me, the success of Bestowers of Eternity lays mostly in the innovative use of the notepad. Masterful stroke. Genius.

In this thread, I would like to tell you about some of my favourite adventure games that have GUIs different from the most popular, yet they work very neat.
Most of them are quite old and are made for Commodore 64 -- the reason for their interfaces being so different is probably that the famous best-selling games weren't there to copy them. I encourage you to download an emulator and try them out, most of them can be found on www.c64games.de

I really think that we can use some ideas or get inspired by these titles to try new, alternative interfaces.
These oldies, though almost forgotten, are much more innovative than newcomers!

PART 1: Neuromancer


This, ladies and gentlemen, is Neuromancer on C64. The game has a PC version, but it's graphics is greatly inferior to the C64's one.

The most fascinating thing about Neuromancer is that the game takes place on 3 levels: one is the real world, in which you walk, talk with people, buy and sell hardware and software, and even at some moment take a space trip.
Second level is the world of databases, message bulletins, media coverages, banking systems etc. in the "internet" to which you connect with your computer. This part is text-based. You may send messages, download and upload software, try to access higher levels of police or banking sites, use passowrd decryptors and even play in a chess tournament.
Third level is the Cyberspace, the virtual representation of the Net, data clusters, black ice and AIs that protect the most important data clusters.

The controls are with joystick or keyboard. The upper row of icons is: 1) toggle the info displayed on the bar above (money, time, energy); 2) access inventory (and do stuff with it), 3) access Public Announce System (banking, news etc.), 4) talk to characters that are in the room.
The lower row: 1) Use Skills (great feature, used mostly for fighting with AI, but also in the real world - like playing music; you upgrade those with special chips), 2) Walk - you control the protagonist to move between rooms, 3) ?don't remember??, 4) load/save/exit etc.

You should really try how smooth the gameplay is.
And this is the best, most involving cyberpunk/hacking game ever made. For a computer of 64 kb. Year? 1988. Thank you. What happened since then? Bloodnet and Uplink. Thank you.

PART 2: Frederic Pohl's Gateway

For people, who (like me) are too lazy to really play all Interactive Fiction games, I propose 2 Gateway games and Time Quest, all of them by Legend, all of them at Underdogs.
The most interesting thing about these games is that they appeared in a period of technological advance in terms of graphics and music before IF became obsolete.
They have animated graphics, sound and cutscenes, yet you control the protagonist with text parser.
A perfect combination if you ask me, and the way that I will definitely follow after I finish Donna.
The player doesn't need to stretch his/her imagination too far, because of attractive graphics and music. The gameplay and puzzles are immensly enriched! You cannot just "use" things, you have to think what to do with them! You type yourself what you want to say! Unforgetable experience, feeling of freedom (because many things aren't shown in graphics, the designers could allow a lot more actions that in P&C), very satisfactory - especially if you finish those games by yourself.
You also have a compass to move, list of basic commands for the lazy, and a map.
Check Legend's games for PC at http://old.the-underdogs.org/Legend.htm

PART 3: Captain SniffPants in Mines of Doom

LOL, okay, everyone knows what game this is. Dowload it for free from my site (along with free porn) ;-)
I think that the lack of a separate GUI vastly increased the player's immersion in Grim Fandango. A set of commands or icons always, in a way, prevents us from believing that what we see is a real world.
Notice that the only time that the convention was shattered was the save/load/exit gui. The fact that you could walk with keys, not click, somehow made us more keen to believe that it is US who walk these streets, not some kind of a remotely steered puppet. Even handling inventory didn't shatter the illusion, you didn't have a separate screen with items, Manny took them out of his coat one by one.
I believe that - apart from the story - this was a very important factor that decided about the fame of GF.
Nomad Soul boasts a similar approach, although the convention is shattered more often (inventory gui, stats screen, etc.)


If you like this thread, I will post more games with alternative interfaces. Learning from them could really enrich the genre, by copying or - even better - having more courage to invent own interfaces.
Also, please post your own examples that could teach us something new.

That's nothing.

I've read that the scientists have calculated that if you took all chairs in the world and build a tower with them, so that one chair stands on another one etc., the resulting tower would be amazingly high!

Maybe it is hectic, Zor, yet I doubt that this explanation of doctor's name was a right conclusion.

[french accent]
For some it will be grief.
For the law - relief.
But this will be death for Chris Jones and Clyde!

Trying to solve the burning enigma of what the hell this game was about at one point I came to the conclusion that Doctor Who stands for a  doctor of World Health Organisation. I was thirteen.



I know I'm tormenting you with my memories, but check it out, the cat had a really neat program gui. You can get the game at http://www.lemon64.com.

Oi! There's a very cool Doctor Who adventure game for C64!

He has a programmable cat in it. Who does all kinds of errands. And little controllers try to insert a screw into Doctor per rectum.

The funny thing is I played it having no idea who Doctor Who was and the whole experience was very obscure, tantalising... as was the case with all by-products of Western pop culture that somehow seeped behind the Iron Curtain.

Gee, thanks!

(in fact, I'm only posting this to make the thread go to the first page, as the updating of the "update post" seems to have failed to do this... go on 1st page to read update diary, if you wish.)