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Messages - Hobbes

#101
Completed Game Announcements / Re: Fhaloness
Tue 25/05/2021 12:24:21
For those of you having some download issues due to slow speeds, I've now added it to Itch.io as well:

https://hobbeshk.itch.io/fhaloness
#102
Completed Game Announcements / Re: Fhaloness
Tue 25/05/2021 05:33:51
Thanks for your kind words, heltenjohn! And for the comment left on the AGS Game page. I'm really happy to hear you found it to be an atmospheric game, since this was the first time ever I composed any music.

And as for buccaneers showing up... or anything of the sort... I'd rather underpromise & overdeliver this time round so... who knows. :-)
#103
Completed Game Announcements / Fhaloness
Mon 24/05/2021 06:00:47
Fhaloness
(MAGS May 2021 Entry)

From the guy who brought you Buccaneer (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/258-buccaneer/) errm... 18 years ago... and then... never did deliver on Buccaneer 2... he, ah, finally decided to enter another MAGS competition.

;)

I'm proud to present:



It features 10 rooms (yes, I am counting the Main Menu   the End Screen). Six characters. Some wonky walk cycles (at least they're not gliding across the screen anymore). A few small puzzles (hopefully with enough guidance to feel like a game but not cause frustration!). And hopefully, plenty, plenty of melodrama.

The story is set in a fantasy world I once developed and never used for anything... so hopefully it'll all make sense. If time permitted there would've been readable books, a browseable map, etc, but hey, I can always promise a Fhaloness 2! (Too soon for that joke?)

Please find it on the AGS Games Database here: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2543-fhaloness

---

UPDATE: I've begun working on the next part of Fhaloness, rebranding this game as the Prologue. For more information on Chapter 1, please go here!
#104
I made it! I'm happy to submit for MAGS May 2021, Fhaloness...



I'd love for you to try out my little game! It contains...

- Character growth
- A growing flower
- Weeding unwanted growth

Please give it a try here on the AGS database: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2543-fhaloness

I'll now proceed to put it in the Completed Games section as well... :-) I hope you like it! I had a lot of fun making it. And of course, can spot 10,000 things I'd want to do differently...
#105
I'm still here!

I remembered how much fun it is to animate sprites. And I remembered how much time it takes... so, the pressure is definitely on to get this one finished before the end of the month...

Little update:
Spoiler


[close]
#106
I was wondering if anyone here has any particular recommendations to make regarding composing software. I've got a MIDI keyboard and can compose some basic tunes myself. Where I struggle is with timing so I would ideally want an interface to easily correct my wrongly timed compositions afterwards.

I'm not too concerned about the initial capture/edit program's ability to load patches etc. If it can export / save as a MIDI file, I can easily load it into other software for final composition and OGG file generation to use in AGS. It's that initial place to capture multiple melodies, fix my mistakes & save as MID.

If it works on a Mac, that's a big bonus, but Windows is fine too.

Thanks in advance everyone and anyone with any thoughts about this.
#107
And then there were three, great!

I’ll do my best to complete mine on time. However I’ve had to undergo surgery last week and am not as able to focus as usual. Fingers crossed it’ll be all right in a few days, otherwise I might need to postpone for this month.
#108
Interestingly enough, I don’t know how I never heard about Twelve Minutes before today. It’s suddenly on every game site and whilst not fully roguelike, it has a supposedly cool time-loop thing that might be very much what I was looking for. :)
#109
After too many deaths and frustrated attempts to get further in Returnal, I started to ponder whether the concept of a roguelike P&C game was ever explored. To my knowledge, no game has ever built this cycle of try-die-repeat fully into the gameplay cycle.

The closest thing would be Sierra's style of game design with permadeath due to a wrong decision. This would then lead to a more frustrating experience where you had to save frequently to prevent too much backtracking.

Elements I'm thinking of in particular are:


  • Death being a core part of the game process, automatically reverting you to the start.
  • Random level design (screens linking in a new fashion after death or dialogues mixing around.)
  • Something that does "carry over" from one run to the next, eg some statistics or items that you can unlock.

It's just a random question I'm pondering at this stage. Does anyone know if there was ever a point-and-click that incorporated rogue-like elements? The genre lends itself more to linear storytelling (with some branching paths), but it could be a fun thought exercise for future game design...
#110
Looks fun, Slasher. Is the testing phase going well so far? I really like how our entries are so completely different. With May only 8 days old, let's hope there are more people joining in!

I just finished my final background, so all 10 rooms have background art & objects drawn. Scripting is finished, so the game is fully playable... that means there's 23 days left to:

- Write all dialogs and descriptions
- Compose some music
- Draw all 6 character sprites, one full walk cycle + other animations
- Customise GUI
- Any other finishing touches

Onwards and upwards!
#111
Quote from: eri0o on Wed 05/05/2021 11:41:29
Ah, about porting aga games to MacOS (for shipping), edenwraith has an interesting blog post that may be useful if you need in the future (goes through the signing and notarization process).

http://www.edenwaith.com/blog/index.php?p=112

Bookmarked for potential future reference, that's a great extensive post on the topic - thank you!
#112
Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Sun 02/05/2021 12:22:27
Quote from: Hobbes on Sun 02/05/2021 12:03:51
I haven't tried the Engine Mac port as such at this moment. The reason is that when I compile from AGS, it spits it out into the same folder every time, so all I need to do is just launch ScummVM and I'm off. The Engine port, from what I can read, requires copying-and-pasting within a MacOS app, which is of course an option, but sounds more like a solution for a "finished" product, if that makes sense?

Is the inconvenience mainly in how the compiled files are handled, or there is anything else? You mentioned some DirectX issues.

Actually, I have no idea how this whole setup works on Mac; from what you've said it sounds like Editor is like running inside a wrapper, but you are still on Mac operating system, and results of compilation are placed in Mac filesystem. Is this correct?

EDIT:
I actualy wonder if our mac port can be setup to run game from anywhere. I mean, if Mac gives such permissions, that might be a matter of passing command line argument or setting something in configuration.

Sorry for the slow response, but yes - you are completely correct. MacOS can use Wineskin (like Linux). So this creates a "Wrapper" which includes all the required Wine libraries to make Windows apps/games run. But it then has access to the host filesystem, so my game's files are all available on my Mac drive like all my other files. It's working really, really smoothly. The only thing I need to tinker with is which Wine-libraries to install into the wrapper to get the game to actually "run", hence why I'm resorting to ScummVM for the time being. Running the game gives me some error messages, which I think are DirectX related, but I'm not well-versed in the intricacies of Wineskin/Winetricks/Wine to fully realise what packages/dlls I'm missing/misusing. So for now, the Editor running on my Mac is just an amazing tool to have and as I said, ScummVM just works very well for me as a testing platform to run my games on. The only issue is that ScummVM is currently very confused with pathfinding algorithms so traversing a map towards a hotspot waypoint takes... an interestingly long time. :)
#113
Thanks for your kind comments Slasher. Same to you! Looking forward to seeing more people join in?
#114
Nice to hear Slasher! Curious to see what you'll come up with after last month's entry as well!

My game will combine an abandoned/unfinished fantasy novel manuscript and some old Critic's Lounge art to get started with. Managed to spend the day scripting initial game, which is now complete (and finishable). So the rest of the month will be spent making the actual thing: actual dialogs (instead of "I'll reveal my evil plot here" etc), music (might need to resort to some old MIDI files at the last minute here), art (10 backgrounds, 6 characters)... exciting though!

A sneak peak:



My game's called Fhaloness and will focus on a gruesome murder that has to be solved. So expect plenty of growing up (as your father has just been murdered) but also for actual growth, since the family's a bit like druids... for the rest, you'll just have to wait and see.  ;) I'm definitely going for dramatic fantasy writing. We'll see how melodramatic it'll turn out to be...

And it all starts at night...

#115
I'm mainly looking for the Editor to be working, so that would work well.

I haven't tried the Engine Mac port as such at this moment. The reason is that when I compile from AGS, it spits it out into the same folder every time, so all I need to do is just launch ScummVM and I'm off. The Engine port, from what I can read, requires copying-and-pasting within a MacOS app, which is of course an option, but sounds more like a solution for a "finished" product, if that makes sense?

Now that I have caught your attention though, can I just use this opportunity to say a massive, massive thank you for all that you do in further developing & maintaining AGS? It's a phenomenal achievement and I am so grateful to be able to slide right back into it on a modern system and continue with AGS like this. Thank you!
#116
Hi all,

No idea if anyone else is interested in this, but just thought I'd report the steps I took to get to the ideal (for me) development environment. I got a swanky new Macbook Pro M1 for Christmas, having gone to the Mac back in 2006 and never looked back. So using AGS has always been a more challenging setup, but Bootcamp made that easier. With the M1 chip though, there's no Bootcamp / free Windows virtualisation (I'm not interested in that anyway, since that means a whole Windows install *just* for AGS). I've been looking into alternative options and am glad to have a very, very workable solution.


  • Using Porting Kit to create a custom wrapper, installing VS Runtime 2015 + DotNet 4.5 in that, then installing the latest AGS into that wrapper. This creates a stand-alone application which basically just runs AGS for me, but makes it possible to utilise the Mac file system. So no doubling up of files, able to swap clipboards, etc. Works great. Only exception is running the AGS games. I might need to play around with DirectX options a bit more, but that's where the second piece of software comes in...
  • Daily build of ScummVM (Intel version, running through Rosetta since the M1 version won't work for me, even with xattr -cr usage). With AGS now running on ScummVM (who would've ever dreamed that would happen), I can easily run my test-versions through ScummVM instead. This is a great way to test out my game as I'm coding/building it in AGS.
  • Other pieces of software that are Mac-native and help: CHM Reader for the AGS Help file, Aseprite for pixel art, MilkyTracker and Garageband for music, Scrivenerfor writing.

In short, I'm just super happy to be able to run my full AGS production environment on MacOS this way. Yes, parts of it are a bit hacky and held together by duct-tape, but the whole solution works like a dream. And it's running on that very energy-efficient and blazingly fast M1 processor.

Again, not sure if this helps anyone, but the portability of the full AGS editor into MacOS in this way, completely for free, is an amazing step forward for me. Of course, yes, I could run AGS from a Windows laptop, but I'm much more comfortable on MacOS and the various pieces of software on that OS I've come to rely on over the years. Hope it helps anyone else looking to explore this option. I for one am having a lot of fun working on some games on my Mac again.
#117
This is a great challenge! For the first time since 2003, I might actually commit to finishing something... I'll do my best to put a game together this month!
#118
I bought a copy - eager to give it a go later. Congrats!
#119
Such amazing news. I just had a go and yep, my very old-timer MAGS game "Buccaneer" works a treat. So for anyone looking to give that 2003 MAGS Winner a try, it works fine in the latest daily build of ScummVM. :-)
#120
[imgzoom]https://www.jaapwrites.com/img/street-wip.png[/imgzoom]

I've been working on this one for a while. The idea is to build an adventure game in a fictional US-based city. This is quieter area of town with some shops with some apartments above them. I'm looking for a style that would work, be realistic but also still not too realistic looking (since that would increase development time by... a lot.

Any feedback on the style, the lighting, the colour palette, etc, would be greatly appreciated.

The coffee shop & post office (on the corners) are the more basic ones. The electronics store still has posters to go up, etc. But I want to move on from this one for now, so I can continue towards building a workable prototype for the style of game I'm aiming for.
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