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Excellent! And lovely use of In the Hall of the Mountain King.

Great to hear you're really coming m0ds.

It seems like I also got a spare ship gift. Magic? Eric? Or someone else wanting?

This is a bit tricky as by default all player interaction responses are handled by the functions attached to specific in-game objects. For instance if you try to "look at banana", the game by default seeks instructions what to do within the function "banana_lookat" instead of some global "look at" function. To subvert this go to the GlobalScript and within the "on_mouse_click" function add something like:

function on_mouse_click(MouseButton button) // called when a mouse button is clicked. button is either LEFT or RIGHT
{
  if (button == eMouseLeft) {
    if (IsInteractionAvailable(mouse.x,mouse.y, eModeLookat) == 0) player.Say("looking here would not do anything.");
  }
}

This is only for the look at command (symbolized in the script by "eModeLookat"), so add further lines of script to address the remaining MI2 GUI verbs.

EDIT:

Oh, I forgot there is also the unhandled_event list. Search for "unhandled_event" in the AGS help file to get details how to use it - this could potentially be an even simpler solution than the one mentioned above. But both should accomplish what you need.

Most impressive.

That is not the sense of the comparison, in the 1910s, movies are building the rudiments of the art, like adventure games in 1990s. In 1920s some movies were already very sophisticated, full master pieces (narrating through the moving image). Adventure games, today, don't reach that evolutionary stage (narrating through the puzzle).

But you see I find this comparison terribly unclear and subjective, as well as referring to events that have yet to come to pass (if they ever will).

For example, did film follow the same evolution as did painting or architecture? Did it start from scratch in terms of shaping a new art form?

Is it the goal of paintings to tell stories? How many of them do that compared to books of fiction or movies?

Can architecture tell stories?

Are later era productions in any media always more sophisticated than what was created before?

I can't assign any specific meaning to your movie history 1920's period in respect to games - that's my point. For all I know adventure games might not even evolve at all in any way any more. In my opinion right now games are limited in what they can be in part because of how much they try to be like movies and how much they are compared to them.

Clean #2
Dark #3

To be the Citizen Kane of something is to be the first widely recognized example of having fully used all the unique techniques of a particular medium to communicate something meaningful.

Like things about human condition and stuff.

Obviously, Citizen Kane is not Citizen Kane of films according to your statement. Citizen Kane, ¡1941!, that's too recent. What about Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh), that used plenty movie techniques, even some new techniques like unchained camera? It was the film that change the way to do movies in Hollywood, William Fox gave to Murnau a blank check to do a movie like that for him. It was the seed of Golden Era in Hollywood, even Murnau filmed Sunrise in the States, another full modern master piece. Three lustrums before Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane was not an instant master piece, during a lot of years no one list about best films ever included Citizen Kane.

If I have to say two films that being fully modern films, changed the way of filming, I say Körkarlen -The Phantom Carriage- (Victor Sjöströn, 1921, "most important film in history" Ingmar Bergman said) and Der letzte Mann (F.W. Murnau, 1924). And I say no, there aren't yet adventure games like Körkarlen or Der letzte Mann.

I love Der letzte Mann and agree with you about its importance. My favorite movie ever happens to be Dreyer's La passion de Jeanne d'Arc from 1928 which - just like Murnau's work - is by many considered the greatest achievement of the silent movie era.

However, Citizen Kane is more widely recognized as one of the earliest films where everything (photography, editing, storytelling, acting, meaning) came into place to achieve a profound artistic result. It's not my private idea to use it as an example of that. It's the American critics that managed to give it such status probably (and only a few decades after its controversial release). Also, it's a great film - no doubt about it.

Adventure games reached 1910s movies in 1990s, we still wait for 1920s in 2010s.

Comparing apples and oranges. The 1920s will never come again - for games or any other medium. Even films themselves are rarely used to express meaning the way they were before.

I second Death Gate.

But for something presented from the tiled perspective I'd strongly recommend Valhalla Classics - a very cool series of very long and complex top-down adventures that debuted on the Amiga in the early 90s. It was ported to PC a few years ago by the original creators, but I'm not sure if the online store still works as the website has not been updated in ages. Nevertheless you definitely can download the already incredibly long first chapter for free and try it:

http://www.vulcan.co.uk/classics/

It's not a disaster (and I sure hope it won't be), but it's already a considerable disappointment in terms of how the production is managed.

I'd also say it has already become a serious argument for the ineffectiveness of KS-funding, since the project will need to use lots of extra money to get completed - far beyond what was given in the campaign. A luxury money reserve most KS-funded developers wouldn't be able to rely on.

But it's only the financial aspect of the project (and its management) that leaves a somewhat negative impression. Other than that, I hope the game will truly turn out better thanks to the extra time and money and wish the team the best.

The visuals have a nice simplicity to them and remind a lot of Super Mario.

Is it a pure adventure game or one with action arcade elements?

EDIT: Oh, judging by the controls description, it's more of an action/arcade game.

It could also negatively affect all future games crowd-funding (particularly that of adventure games), and Schafer knows this.

Worrying about his own game is probably enough work for him. Why should that be his burden?

It is his burden whether he likes or not - a consequence of his previous actions. He started something special - popularized a new way of funding creative works - but for now he's quickly proving that it's all been an utopia. That studios need a publisher/producer/etc. to manage/control what the creative guys are doing.

I mean - if Schafer had absolutely no idea how far off he was with his budget estimations (and after following the project we know he didn't), what about all the little indies - the 1,2 guys teams - asking us to help fund their games via KS. What chances is there they can manage a game project better than a man who's been in the industry for more than 20 years. That's how many potential backers of new KS projects will be thinking from now on.

When I see so many gamers scoffing at Tim's desire to make this as big and good a game as possible (and holding that as a higher priority than being utterly practical, business-wise) I think to myself, "This is why people don't see games as art."

Every game designer wants to make his game as big and good as possible. And that is actually 100% practical business wise to do.

But creating art has nothing to do with spending money without moderation and solid planning.

I think most commenters agree that Double Fine has screwed up from a business POV. They should never have ended up in this situation. What seems to separate the complainers from the "defenders" is the question of whether this is something we need to worry about. Unless you own shares in Double Fine, their inability to stick to their budget isn't necessarily our problem.

It only becomes our problem if it jeopardizes the completion of the game, or the future of the company.

It could also negatively affect all future games crowd-funding (particularly that of adventure games), and Schafer knows this.

1. I don't mind waiting (even much) longer for the game to be ready.

2. I already feel like I got my money's worth because of the cool documentaries.

3. I can understand it's difficult for Tim to downsize at this point in his career.

But...

4. Schafer still comes across as incompetent because of underestimating (overestimating?) the budget to such degrees. The studio would be already out of money if not for the 2nd KS, the humble bundles and the Indie Fund (All that income came from marketing, PR and business negotiations and almost zero real new content production).

5. Also, I'm not sure making one single game should be this expensive, unless it's REALLY huge and offering incredibly complex interactions and system-based processes. Otherwise it feels like a waste of money.

6. I feel they actually didn't separate the money for the game from the rest of their expenses. Partially it was sunk into additional marketing. Which is a bit of unfair to their backers.

But we're used to making half-hour games for free. And not having health insurance.

Man, are we tough!

Good to know someone like Schafer is watching out for the much more delicate DF-type guys out there.

What is it about?

Only the Final Cut of Blade Runner is bluish and greenish. They ruined the colors during restoration.

EDIT: These podcasts are such a great thing to listen to when I'm feeling down or find myself in a desperate situation where I need to quickly re-awaken my enthusiasm for game making.

Animation wise it actually seems more complex than Sam & Max Hit the Road.

Scavenger, frankly it looks so good that I'm starting to worry you may not manage to finish the project while aiming at such high standard. Or have you a team of animators working with you now?

Hah, no, it's just me doing the animation, I'm afraid. Would that I could have a team, that would be amazing. But I'm carefully balancing what I can and cannot do, making sure that only the important parts of the game get full animation, and the rest gets limited animation.

I can tell you all, you ain't seen nothing yet. I'd show you, but I don't want to spoil ALL the surprises :3c

Best wishes to it all working out. It sure looks amazing already.

If you could play a game where every 'door' in the world was open, there were no puzzles, and you just walked around in this environment and had extensively coded dialogs with anyone you could talk to- intensely reactive and with lots of content based on lots of small things you've witnessed and other people you'd spoken to, would that not be an adventure game? Perhaps you're finding out about a mystery, but the game doesn't necessarily end if you figure it out, and you have no bearing on it- it happened a long time ago, maybe. But the graphics are beautiful and the writing is really good. With no puzzles. Is that an adventure game? And depending on who you talk to and how much you put off some people, some conversation topics are blocked off forever. You might come to one conclusion about the mystery on one playthrough and another on a different one, but it's all on you. And there's no 'good endings' or 'bad endings', there's no 'ending', you would just be interested enough to keep playing and lose interest either on your own or when the conversation well inevitably dries up of interesting exposition. Does a game have to tell you when it ends?

All I can tell you that that personally I would find such game extremely boring (in terms of gameplay, it sure could have some cool story threads inside). I want the games I play to have meaning, sense of purpose and to be to the point. If I want to create the meaning for myself I prefer to do spend time doing that in reality. And if I want to play inside a sandbox, I rather design and build my own game or role-play with friends. Almost everything beats sitting in front of the computer for hours wandering through some huge game world, if there's no guarantee something interesting/stimulating will eventually happen. Even if it's all very pretty.

Dose every story-driven game need puzzles? No. But adventure game puzzles are the easiest/purest way to create the illusion of meaningful connections between a limited number of settings, while leaving agency and choice how to solve problems to the player.

No EGA, no buy! 

But seriously, I'm just too attached to the original to play this reimagining.