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On the other hand I can guarantee the BBC Legal Department won't send a response back.

Well, not entirely, this was perhaps eight years ago when I naively emailed to say "You won't C&D me if I do who a Doctor Who game, right? Cos otherwise I won't bother!" They might have sharpened their game since 

How about a mags that encourages anyone with unfinished games from any era to complete them in a month (at least enough to be playable)?  This may attract the interest of people like me who have several 25-75% finished full length games that for whatever reason we've abandoned.  This way everyone wins even if there has to be a courtesy 'win'.

Love it. Absolutely love it.

Huh, I was just about to volunteer to do Colin, because he's my second favourite Doctor.

The Box That Ate Time was only one cup? I remember finding that really fun. Huh, I might actually have to check out some one-cuppers. I'm one dial-up so I only download games if I'm reeeeally sure I want to check it out.

...damn. Just when I think I've gotten through an April the First un-snagged... Well played, Renegade. Well played...

Personally I think the lack of interest would be over new games not being released.

I gather we'd still be able to release games with Dr Die Vee Ess, the Nihilist Bros etc if we're interested in making them? I've been sidetracked by other projects but I still did want to make a RoN game..

Broken link there Jared.

Fixed now. I keep forgeting which forum does what and had quotation marks round the address.

You raise an interesting point actually. I've somewhat assumed that any joint doctor who game would inevitably be one of the new doctors, but there's absolutely no reason why that should be the case.

Which is interesting because the ones that I've seen planned... Time Snare was 4th, the breakdown one was 8th, my idea was 5th, and one I saw on a website which a guy admitted was little more than concept art was 1-8. Oh, and somebody released a Klik 'N Play game that was 1-5. Peace and Goodwill was surprisingly the only modern Doctor game I'd seen (Ironically with some niftily uber-retro graphics)

It's as if people who enjoy making Lucas Arts/Sierra-style adventure games are predisposed to nostalgia somehow... 

Certainly, it might make considerably more sense to involve one of the older doctors, if only for the 'bumbling around' factor.

It isn't quite to say that previous Doctors were more foolish or less competent - a big part of it was stories having more running time on average and a slower pace. The Doctor didn't need to come up with a plan quite so quickly. I have to say that Tennant's hyper-competence would make an adventure game with his Doctor impractical unless the player took the companion role...

Personally I like the idea of the companion being an occassionally playable character as well, or even split evenly to the point of the later Broken Swords. The companion gets used a lot to provide multiple sides of a story, after all.

The Doctor did do a lot more 'bumbling around' in the Classic series of course...

If there's serious intent here for a spontaneous group effort of finally making a completed AGS Doctor Who game then I'd like to be involved. I'm a very big fan, across all the mythos from Absorbaloff to Zygon, from Faction Paradox to Zagreus. I'm also a confident writer - bit of my work (a fan re-write of Attack of the Cybermen) available here and I've some friends who are also big fans and good writers.

I can code, too. So... if anything happens I'm definitely in. The first AGS project I wanted to try was a DW one in fact ("The Power of the Nestenes") but that was around ten years ago and never got past an uber-n00bish "I'm going to make th1s game, dudes!" post.

Was rather amazed by the news of the new games earlier today, since I was saying years ago that I was amazed Revolution had never bought the rights...

I got a solid idea for this - whether it happens depends on my enthusiasm levels over the next couple of days.

If you're just showing the title then you should create the image, then turn it into the background of a room in the game. Start the game in that room with "Player character is visible" (I think that's the option) set to false.

Assuming you just want the game to start after showing the screen for a little while just put a Wait() command in the code in the AfterFadeIn() function, followed by ChangeRoom(). If you want the screen to stay visible until the player presses a button probably make the whole screen a hotspot or region and code the AnyClick function call a ChangeRoom().

If you want a menu on the title screen, then it's slightly more complicated but not much. Usual method is making the buttons hotspots and then finding the save, load code etc from the globalscript.

There isn't any built in feature for creating a title screen, so simple workarounds like this are the go.

Wicked awesome.

Could just be my paranoid mind at work but I'm wondering if there are any negative features or just plain reasons to show restraint when using Game.DoOnceOnly(). It's an incredibly useful function and I think I've put at the very least a dozen of them in my game so far.

I'm guessing from the way it's set out that it creates a set of booleans at run-time named from the value in the method, and these booleans become more Global Ints that get stored in the memory in run-time - I can't remember exactly but ISTR booleans equal around 1 byte of memory each as one of the most primitive types. I thought I'd check if maybe it was a little more complicated than that.

I've gotten into the habit of using this code so often that I felt a need to check if it had any sort of limitation at all other than memory use. Just to be on the safe side.

Jared: There's this team of people who are putting together the rest half of the game, as it was actually built but just not put inside the game.

I know about the project but

a) It's 50/50 over whether or not it's dead

b) They won't do as good a job as Bioware would have.

Also, as I said, now I've played Mass Effect I want KotoR in the Mass Effect engine. True cinematic gameplay.

Damn, I could have sworn that she'd Goodmated his mushroom of Phungoria, or at least simoned the sorcerer...

I assumed the boundary was scat.

I'm surprised nobody suggested a demake for Escape from Monkey Island.

Actually, that would be brilliant. In potentia. The game had good graphics and some good puzzles (first half mostly) but went wwaaaaay of the rails in terms of having a coherent story, feeling like Monkey Island, and just general quality towards the end.

Simon The Sorcerer 3D. Someone just update those awful graphics, kill the terrible bugs, and make long-distance traveling easier.

Yes. Somebody was working on a 2D remake, looked like it went nowhere. I maintain Simon 3D is a very good game trapped in the buggiest thrown-together-at-the-last-minute engine ever. I'd really, really like to see some of the 2D stuff AdventureSoft made for it (apparently half the game was made in cartoon graphics)

I also second the idea of a 2D Discworld Noir, or at least a more stable version. Moreso than Simon 3D Noir was an absolute classic not many people got to enjoy. I'd also like fan Discworld projects because there has not been enough Discworld on PC for such a popular franchise.


When I was playing SQ4, with the various running-from-Sequel-Police puzzles I was thinking that if it was made again in the Half Life 2 engine or something similar it could be awesome - just like the first level of HL2 where you're running around on rooftops to escape the soldiers.


This may sound crazy, but going very recent - Knights of the Old Republic 2. Not only does Mass Effect make it look kind of shallow, but the fact that the game is missing HALF THE BLOODY ENDING! What's that? We need to stop the Mass Shadow Generator? Can you please explain to me what this is and why nobody brought up over the last two weeks? No? Okay then. I've saved the world? HOW DID I DO THAT???

And, you know, they could put the bucketloads of content that had to be axed back into the game, which apparently included an HK factory (!!!)

that's why I find cutscenes to be a mixed bag, interactvie cutscenes like in Half life are on the other hand more fun and easier on the developer

It's strange but these cutscenes don't work very well for me. Okay, some of them are cool and memorable but I feel they're (ironically) a lot like puzzles, in that with a bad one you need to be in exactly the same headspace as the developer to work it out. When I played the original Half-Life with friends they were constantly telling me - "No, you're meant to stop here and watch this!" after I saw a random scientist out a window when I was walking down a corridor, or "No, you're meant to go up there, watch what happens, and then come back" because watching one cutscene triggered something unrelated.

I got frustrated, I remember in Half Life 2: Episode 1 and BioShock with cutscenes that were completely non-interactive - until a certain point. BUT nothing changed at this point. No GUI, no message, no effect at all. That really irritated me. Fair enough, if it's interactive, I'm in the story - but how is not telling me when the thing ends, so Gordon Freeman ends up staring at somebody for half a minute, meant to help me feel part of the story?

If we need cutscenes, I'm one of those people who prefers a clear separation from cutscene and gameplay. Medal of Honor: Airborne has them in-game, non-interactive, but when you encounter them the camera goes into widescreen mode. I found that actually kind of cool.

The soup 'joke'? To me that's not just a gag, that's a great encapsulation of Rimmer's entire character. In his refusal to take responsibility for ANYTHING he ever did in his life he's gone off the rails to the point where he blames a gaffe he made a dinner party nobody probably remembered a week later for destroying his entire career.

"I bet Toddhunter had gazpacho soup for lunch since he was five! No, I bet he was BREASTFED with it! One nipple gazpacho one nipple chardonnay!"

Now, if I can just go on an unrelated tangent...

"Everybody dead everybody is dead dead is everbody everybody is dead, Dave."

"A superlative suggestion, sir, with just two drawbacks. Firstly we don't have any defensive shields. Secondly, we don't have any defensive shields. Technically this may be just one problem, but considering the scale I thought it was worth mentioning twice."

"Six? Do me a lemon. That's a poor IQ for a glass of water"

"Hey, oxygen's for LOSERS!"

I'll definitely check out this game when it's finished.

Arr, I'm in desperate need of some help right now.
I have this song playing in my head that I heard about ten years ago that I would love to find again, but as usual, I don't know who did it or what it's called. All I know is this:

- Musically, I seem to remember it as a mix between an organ/keyboard-melody and a more modern, dance-oriented beat(though still a rather subtle one) Rather repetitive, most likely intended to be a club-hit or something.

- There was also more or less one vocal line repeated constantly throughout the whole thing - If I remember it correctly it was something like "I see you ride o-on a storm / I see you ride o-on a storm / I see you ri-i-ding on a storm", sung in a rather cheesy, crooning, baritone-like voice. I'm not sure if this is sampled from some other song or if this was actually written for this track, though.

- The music video for the song featured an extremely and deliberately kitschy/colorful 50's/60's-styled party in a living room or something similar, with an equally kitschy/campy live-band playing the song in question.

The one time I heard the song and saw the video was through the Swedish tv-show "Mosquito" that aired between 1998 and 2001, and showcased new music/visuals/3D-graphics, so I suppose it's most likely a song made somewhere in between that timeframe. Anyone who has the slightest idea what this song might be, do please tell, because I think I'm going insane from hearing this song play in my head and not being able to find out what it's called...

As Cailin says this is a cover/sampling of The Doors' 'Rider on the Storm'. The only dance-y remix I've heard is one by Puff Daddy, which was on the soundtrack for, IIRC, Need For Speed Underground. I remember that one being quite dance-y but I can't recall if there were additional lyrics.

Was talking to a guy involved with the project on MSN this morning. His summary was that the TSL crew were way too keen on trying to get their project endorsed as the official KQ9, following the SQ7 path (after THAT went so well :) and had even been pursuing a contract for a commercial release with Vivendi and then Activision. If that isn't asking for trouble, I don't know what is.

It's a damned shame, but I find it hard to see the TSL team as blameless. Activision are the same guys who cut loose titles they had halfway through development with the excuse that they weren't 'titles that could be exploited every year', in those exact words (!). For people who haven't been following the mainstream gaming news too often, Activision have taken over EA's place as the 'big bads' of the marketplace, the Microsofts of game publishing.

So to present them with any choice of a) Impart some effort into helping us with our project or b) Getting your lawyer to send a fax that has 8 million precedents, you shouldn't be surprised when this happens.

I have to say Vivendi were unusually reasonable, and nobody should make the assumptiont that that somehow signalled a shift in the viewpoints of publishers out there. I think if anything they were the exception that proved the rule. If you've got a fangame project, keep it under wraps. Just like I do.

Simple solution: Change all the character's names

There's already talk about that, funnily enough...