Messages

this time he had

[(specially the ones in this update)]

What do you think of the Klingons? I don't like the look, personally, but I'm still holding out on an in-universe explanation that ties it together with both the 60s Peurto Rican gold lamé look and the 80s/90s/00s heavy metal lobster-on-head look.

I don't think these current Klingons have an explanation. But those 60s Peurto Rican gold lamé Klingons got a pretty good explanation years ago. Which I'm sure all the Star Trek fans here already know.

Yes, of course. I meant that I wanted to see continuity -- why we haven't seen flat-headed Klingons yet when they're due to (re)appear in 10 years.

I got hooked on the series from the first episode. Honestly I think it's very well made and looks a lot like the movies. I can't decide whether to like or dislike the intricate details as the show is still revealing its elements. But so far it looks interesting and different.

Oh, speaking of the spore drive, I couldn't help but think of AnasAbdin when watching it. The Discovery's spore drive is Tardigrades powered!

I have a theory *ahem* I think the writers/producers/directors/designers/Uhura have been following my progress on Tardigrades and have seen my videos (specially the ones in this update). I will wait for a couple of more episodes before I sue them

I think this will act as publicity for your game. You should be able to use the Tardigrades link as marketing. Certainly, everyone will know what a tardigrade is now.

I'm moderately enjoying Discovery, though I'd prefer if it had fewer lens flares and more ethical quandaries. The Expanse, on the other hand, is so good. Almost every dialogue scene in Discovery could use Chrisjen Avasarala saying "Get to the f****** point."

Agreed about the lens flares and ethical quandaries. Better lighting in general would be appreciated. I watch it with the lights off and I get annoyed at how much of the great Klingon costume design work gets obscured most of the time because the lighting is so bad.

I tried the Expanse. Does it get better after the pilot? It seemed overly Canadian to me, like there's this vein of cheap sci-fi shot in Canada -- Travelers, Continuum, etc. -- that are built on a budget (few effects shots, mostly bottle episodes). It seemed very reminiscent of that, so much so that I switched it off about three quarters of the way through the pilot. Also, regarding Discovery's dialogue, I haven't had a problem with that, but if you're saying the Expanse does it better, I can't agree. The dialogue I witnessed seemed laboured and packed with clichés.

I went in expecting silly and spoofy (a la Galaxy Quest) and was pleasantly surprised.

Actually, it's interesting to note the different approaches here. I think the Orville underpromised and overdelivered, whereas Discovery hyped us all up and now we've got nowhere to go but to be disappointed.

I think the Kübelwagen looks fantastic. You've done a really good job with the tyres.

I like the texture work too, especially with the grass and foliage.

It's looking good so far.

That's some very clean art. Looks great!

SPOILER WARNING! Please don't read any further if you haven't watched the series and want to avoid spoilers.

Is anyone else watching Star Trek: Discovery? I'm really enjoying it.

I've read rumours that the Discovery might be a section 31 craft. Some are saying it's the mirror universe (unlikely, I think). There's also a theory that the Discovery's spore drive might propel the crew into the future. It's certainly fun to speculate though.

Oh, speaking of the spore drive, I couldn't help but think of AnasAbdin when watching it. The Discovery's spore drive is Tardigrades powered!

What do you think of the Klingons? I don't like the look, personally, but I'm still holding out on an in-universe explanation that ties it together with both the 60s Peurto Rican gold lamé look and the 80s/90s/00s heavy metal lobster-on-head look.

I've got to say, I liked the series more at episode 3 than I did after episode 4. Episode 3 left me thinking it was some kind of weird X-Files ship where weird phenomena were present, but ep 4 cleared that up and now the whole things much more grounded again.

What do you guys think of the series so far? What do you like/dislike about it?

And while we're talking sci-fi, there's a lot on at the moment (the Orville, Red Dwarf). I watched the first few episodes of the Orville. I was expecting to hate it but I don't. I mean, I really don't like Family Guy and Seth Macfarlane in general, but it's better than I was expecting. The jokes are flat, Seth isn't much of a character, but if you can get past that, it's a good B-show for Star Trek: Discovery. The effects are surprisingly good. The stories are good and touch on some relevant social issues, though one episode clearly rehashed a Twilight Zone story. It's got heart and you can tell that Seth is a big Trek fan.

Enough of my thoughts. What do you all think of Discovery (and other sci-fi that's on right now)?

Will we be able to walk over or run over that halfring in the background (on the left) sometime in the game?

Yes, don't tease us with awesome locations, when we can't actually visit them

Yes, all locations should be visitable at all times!

I love this beautiful, cloudy sunset. Very nice colours and some nice silhouettes in the skyline.

I watched a bit of your previous stream. I agree about the value of watching playthroughs. Unfortunately, they're hard to come by. I am probably not the only one who recognise that the AGS community has a shortage of players who do this. I thank the people who do regular playthroughs -- in the past, Bulbapuck and currently, I believe, selmiak. I also think we should do more to encourage it.

This palette keeps tricking me! I keep thinking it's the EGA palette. It's very close -- like a more tasteful EGA. Great colours.

I like the new title screen a lot better, particularly the new font. It suits the beach context perfectly.

I don't actually even mean anything elaborate, but basic stuff like separate volume sliders, a reasonable amount of save slots or options to change your text reading and walking speeds. Maybe it's a personal kink of mine and others don't really care about it, but I've always appreciated games that let me map my own keys and make small tweaks to the user interface.

Yes, this is really important, particularly in the context of people playing on devices with different capabilities. It can also help to make your game accessible to people with disabilities.

At first I was thinking, who would want to turn off v-sync? But you might perhaps be playing on a low-spec machine or a high refresh rate monitor where v-sync might interfere.

Good use of tabs in the dialogue too. I'd like to see what's on the remaining tabs.

[One Room Two Weeks]

Thanks for all of the comments, guys. It's so nice to hear words of encouragement from other game creators I admire. I'm trying to keep the updates coming!

Thanks Creamy, a lot of the backgrounds are almost isometric, but the ones with different perspectives are really interesting for me too. In particular, I love the gate piece.

Thanks Cassie. Yes, I got your other comment.

Riaise and Hoob, I figure I might as well share everything with you guys. Almost all of us here are developers. More to the point, I think that not talking about what I'm doing for fear of spoilers is perhaps the silliest thing a developer can do. I might write a mini-update about it sometime.

One Room Two Weeks

I don't know if any of you have experienced this, but I got bogged down on one room. Specifically, I got bogged down on a single puzzle. To my credit though, there were other rooms involved.

The puzzle occurs about a third of the way through the game. Girl A spent the prior day with the handsome (secret vampire) antagonist. In the morning, she wakes Girl B and informs her that she's going out on another date, lumping Girl B with a bunch of errands to do. One of those errands is to pick up a book from the excessively quaint bookshop cum coffee shop on campus. For testing, I'm using Kate, but it could be either girl in either role.



The book shop is run by Yuri (behind the counter):


And additionally staffed by Fernando:


In addition, there are three background characters. I like this style for representing them. They're people you don't care about or interact with and I wanted something that would indicate this clearly while remaining fairly dull.

I'm going with what I think is an adventure game classic, an out-of-order coffee machine. In this case, it's a bit contrived. Yuri insists on giving you a free coffee with the textbook, and while it's out of order, that's just not possible. He wants to wait for the maintenance man to come by and fix it.

Yuri's the villain of this section. He bullies Fernando and Fernando just puts up with it.

There are two ways to solve the puzzle. Method 1 involves you going outside to the maintenance man to borrow his screwdriver:



You then use the screwdriver to tighten the release valve on the coffee machine. Fernando goes to make another coffee, but the coffee machine blows up. Yuri, of course, blames this on Fernando (it was his idea), and Fernando leaves in a huff. With the coffee machine destroyed, Yuri's happy to concede that it's impossible to serve you a coffee, so you get the textbook.

Method 2 involves a trip to the library to look up academic records:



You see, Yuri explains that he and Fernando are both immigrants, and what distinguishes Yuri is his education. This is why, as Yuri reasons it, he is there to give orders and Fernando is there to take them. If you present Fernando with a true picture of Yuri's accomplishments, you can humiliate Yuri in front of Fernando, at which point, he storms out. Fernando is then free to run the shop and happy to give you the textbook.



The big question then, why did this take so long?

The time consuming part was figuring out how to structure the puzzles. In the end, it's just a couple of simple fetch quests, but it's about telling a greater story (I hope). In this case, I wanted a workplace where bullying occurred, and I wanted two distinct ways of dealing with it: the path of self-interest and the path of dealing with said bullying problem.

I had (and still have) some issues with the mechanism that holds up progress. The idea that you're required to take a coffee with your book order is a little soft a blockade for my liking. I'm planning to explain that away with Yuri's sense of order and propriety.

That's another thing, I haven't really completely fleshed out all of the dialogue and all of the interactions yet. To get to this point, I focussed on just the dialogue involved in the puzzles. Yuri and Fernando, and to some extent, the maintenance man, are a bit like character sketches right now. I have to go back and flesh them out at some point, probably later as I want to give this a rest for a while.

The second thing that made this time consuming is, as I've hopefully demonstrated, it wasn't ONE room. I had to create a little routine that the maintenance man follows, and script all of his interactions. I had to script the computer interactions too.

The third thing is that I'm still running interference with artists. I need to hold impromptu meetings with them to establish what I want. Often I get interrupted just to OK work on assets.


Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the progress that I've made. This is a big chunk of the middle part of the story. There are two other, smaller errands -- signing up at the library and signing up for tutes. These are pretty much just "find the location and talk to the person", so the major work in the university quad is done.

I think the next thing I'll tackle is the radio room. It's in the same section of the game, but it's completely optional and involves a timed puzzle, but not in the way you think. Until next time, thanks for reading my updates!

vomit with carrot chunks

Kimpossible?

That's close enough. Your turn, ClickClickClick.

For the 3DS...

There is such tremendous quality to this whole production. I've got to say, it sounds like a very action-packed storyline and that's great for an adventure. I've been looking through the animations you've posted here and on Twitter. I've got to say, I don't know anybody who animates water better than Anas. I like the rain effect in that last animation too. Just beautiful.

That video was really entertaining, eri0! Did I hear you right? Did you say middle click to bring up the phone UI? I'd suggest an alternate way to bring up the menu. Maybe Tab or Esc, or just something you can click on. It was really interesting hearing you talk about the design process. It's great that you can collaborate so openly on design. The passion for your project really shines through and I hope you can keep it up!

[Puzzle Surgery]

You. Made. My. Day. Week. Year. Life.

Oh dear. I think I'm going to be overwhelming you pretty soon. I'm trying to post updates to the thread semi-regularly, at least for the next couple of weeks.

eri0, it's pretty easy with the system I've set up. I just set the character's mood before and after a speech line. I have the same 6 speech frames for each mood, so it's seamless and works really well.

selmiak, it's laborious, but a labour of love. Almost all of it's done now.

CaptainD, Cassie and Stupot+, thanks for the encouragement. Mandle, it's going to be a fair while longer. I might even need another month after this, and I'm not sure when I'm going to get the time :|

Puzzle Surgery

The last few days have been spent tidying up imports. After my warmup a few days ago, I felt ready to tackle something that had been bothering me for a while. It all centres around the first puzzle in the game.

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/Bq7Y0WX.png[/imgzoom]
This is the foyer of the residence hall on campus. When the girls attempt to get the keys to their room, they get asked for some paperwork -- namely, a contract signed by their guarantor.

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/MX0EXTU.png[/imgzoom]

Depending on how you navigate the conversation, it can be in either girl's suitcase. The puzzle involves working out that the contract hasn't been signed and forging a signature.

Now here's where the surgery started. Originally, I thought there wasn't enough puzzle going on, so I added another layer of complexity. You needed a pen to forge a signature, that pen was chained to the desk, and when each girl searched her suitcase, a cutting device would fall out. Kate's was a rusty pair of scissors and Shelly's was a manicure set.

At the time, I thought it was rather clever. The item would pop out behind the suitcase, so you wouldn't see the item until you moved. The idea was that you could use this item to cut away a pen that was chained to the desk.

Today's task was to remove that part of the puzzle. There are several reasons why I wanted to remove it:

• It's supposed to be the first puzzle in the game. I'm very aware of difficulty ramp, and I want to keep it straightforward
• The manicure set was a bit too one-dimensional for Shelly for my taste
• Cutting a chain doesn't really WORK anyway. I mean, it's nonsense. A pair of scissors to cut a metal chain?

The solution? I just removed the chain. There's now just a pen sitting on the desk, which you can take. And the whole flow of the puzzle is so much better.

The steps to solve the puzzle are:

• Talk to the clerk
• Talk to Shelly or Kate about the contract (and decide whose suitcase it's in)
• Take the pen
• Leave the area and get Kate to forge a signature
• Give the signed contract to the clerk

There are still 5 steps to solving the puzzle, but it doesn't feel awkward now. I really like the idea of stuff falling out of their suitcases and I'm still hoping I find a good place to use it. In the Jimi Hendrix Case, there was something similar when the fish scales were revealed, and I saw that it connected well with players when I watched let's plays.

Bit of a side note: each puzzle (quest) in Kate and Shelly Stick Together has a name. Whenever you get a point, you get a little Law-and-Order ding and an indicator of how far through the quest you are:

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/u2CA37v.png[/imgzoom]

I took inspiration from games like Skyrim. There's also a Progress window that you can bring up from the inventory bar that shows you which quests you've completed, grey silhouettes for stuff you haven't encountered yet and a total score. The total number of available points is just the total point count from all quests.

It's pretty late as I'm writing this, so apologies if anything I've written here is jumbled. The next few days are going to be spent working on what happens to girl B while girl A is out dating. Note: I have to phrase it that way because the game is set up so that either one can go on dates while the other has to stay back and take care of things at the university. It all works out, I promise.

It's a Picross game.

Diner Dash?

Not Diner Dash. Here's a screenshot from the other screen:

Hahaha! Yes, but it had acting! I remember thinking the video was so great. I bet if I look back at it now, it'll be even more macroblocked than Mad Dog McCree.

It doesn't have to be PC, right? Here's one I've been playing a lot of lately:

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/WTaUwcb.png[/imgzoom]

Remove the " CR" from EditorVersion and it should open.

To clarify, change it to:

Code: ags

<AGSEditorDocument Version="3.0.3.2" VersionIndex="7" EditorVersion="3.3.0">

I would recommend making a backup first, just in case this pre-release version did something weird with the way it stored rooms or something.