Messages

Seeeeee... TC gets it.

Hey Mordalles, I uploaded a mirror file as you requested.

Their scattered around the world.

Seriously... How many people complain that some game puzzles are not challenging enough? There are a few. Then there are some who complain that the games are too challenging. Adding a difficulty level will not ruin the game if you choose to play it the way you want to play it.

Well thats the thing, some people like the challenge. Others dont. I would make a difficulty level so that everyone will enjoy different levels of the game.

And its simple too. All I would need to do is create a variable. When the proper variable is hit, the timer starts(Medium). If another variable is hit, I would disable the save/load Functions(Hard).

It wouldn't be too much to code. It would allow you to either play the game without losing, or play the game with the risk of losing. If you want to be able to save the game, just pick medium. Its the same as hard, but with Save/Load enabled.

Ok, I will have the game be basic for now. Later on, before being ready to release it, I will make an option to either play Easy or Hard. Easy would be without a Timer. Hard would be with a timer. I think I will give you 1 hour and a half of in-game time to complete the game with the timer. I will include a medium difficulty level as well. Medium is the Same as hard, except Hard will not allow you to Save or restore the game. Hows that sound?

Good catch! I noticed that about a month ago, but I just never decided to do anything about it. I was thinking of leaving it in there as a spoof, or I was gonna add a story about it in the game where Homer may need to buy some time and remembers he left a picture of himself on the security camera in Sector 7G so that Mr. Burns doesn't know the difference.

I wanted to ask everyone a question... Would you want a timer to run on this game so that it would make the game more challenging? Maybe I could make an easy and hard version of the game. Easy would have no timer. Hard would have a time limit. What do you guys think?

DISCLAIMER: This game is not officially endorsed. Matt Groening, Fox, or any other legal affiliations neither endorse, know of or are affiliated with us. This game will be free of charge. Graphics are taken from "Virtual Springfield" and "Simpsons Cartoon Studio" which are no longer being commercially sold or updated. We simply made this game out of our spare time as a contribution to AGS, Adventure games, and Matt Groening and his Simpsons. We are in no way affiliated with Matt Groening or Fox.


Since this is seperate from the "Simpsons: Springfield Woes" and "Simpsons Game Template", I wanted to post a seperate forum. This is the closest project I have to completion so far.  I have even included a demo which showcases the entire Introduction and allows you to move about the Simpsons Home and control the Simpsons Characters.

The game itself is being aimed at being a Short to Medium Length game. If I get more wild idea's, I will make it longer. Although, I just want to release something and get my contribution to this community done and over with. So, you may not see the game be longer than medium size.

Game Description:
After Homer discovers that Mr. Burns is giving him only one last chance to get his act together at work, Homer immediatly finds himself in a pickle. Marge was informed of one of Bart's many pranks that he committed and must now goto his school, search his desk and make sure there will be no foul play committed yet again...

In the meantime, Marge asks Homer to bring Maggie to the Babysitter before he goes to work. Risking being late and getting fired from Mr. Burns, Homer goes to upstairs to Maggies room to bring her to the Babysitter. Much to his surprise, the door is LOCKED, and he cant find the key! Struck with bad luck, Homer decides to Employ Bart and Lisa in a quest to help Homer get Maggie out in time before he loses his job. Will Homer make it? THAT is up to you...

Take Control of Homer, Bart and Lisa in this "Maniac Mansion", "Day of the Tentacle" style 3rd person point and click adventure game. Find and combine objects to help further reach your objective. Have constructive conversations with the members of your family. Explore all the rooms in the Simpsons House and more in this mind-challenging adventure game.

Progress Report:
Background graphics: 100%
Character art: 90%
Inventory art: 85%
Music/Sound: 90%
Story: 100%
Puzzles: 70%
Font: 100%
Testing: 0%

Current Status Report:
Total Rooms: 20
Playable Rooms: 15
Characters: 7 (With possible mystery characters)
Inventory objects: 13 at the moment.
Playable characters: 3
Music/Background music: 3
Sounds/voice files: 2

Special Features:
640X 480 resolution
Playable on Windows, Mac, and Linux
Languages: Currently only English is supported. Italian to come soon.
You can Control upto 3 different characters
Each character has his own GUI
Trademark voice effects
Special Simpsons Font!
Custom Cursors
Custom Options and Save/Load screen
Original Style interface

Screenshots:
Homer, Bart and Lisa in the living room


The Skip Intro screen:


Burns Yelling at Homer:


Burns, Smithers, Homer:


Each character has their own seperate GUI:



The options screen:



Instructions:

To play the game, simply unzip the contents of the Zip file to a directory. Click on Winsetup and choose your options. PLEASE NOTE: 640x480 is the best resolution for the game. Also note, this game was compiled with AGS version 2.71.628. To be able to play this game in Windows, just use the winsetup.exe file. To play the game on linux, please go to this thread: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=24598.0
To be able to play the game on a mac, go here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=21531.0

"The Simpsons: Where's Maggie" was made with Adventure Game Studio(AGS) found at www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk . For the latest version of AGS for Windows and the AGS Editor, please visit the technical forum over here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?board=2.0

In-Game Instructions:
*Clicking through messages: Click the left mouse button.
*Moving a character: Click the left mouse button where you want the character to move to.
*Changing interactions: Right Click the mouse button and the players personal GUI will appear. Clicking on their 'leg' would allow you to make them walk to whatever part of the screen you want them to walk to. Clicking their 'eyes' will put the cursor in look mode. Clicking the 'arm' will put the cursor in interact mode (Try it on Homer). Clicking their 'mouth' will put them in talk mode.
*Finding a hotspot: Move the cursor over various locations to find various hotspots. The hotspot location will be displayed on the top of the screen in Simpson Font, towards the center of the top.
*Changing rooms. Certain times you may need to walk over a hotspot to change location of rooms. Other times you may need to interact with the hotspot, such as a door.
*To save a snapshot: Press F12. The snapshot will be in the same directory as the game.
*To save a game or to load a game or to even quit and restart a game: Press F5 and hit the right options.
*To switch characters: Press F9 and choose your character.

Note for the Demo:
I tried to cut out most of the interactions from the game. This will go through most of the intro. After that, you can move around the house and interact with almost anything. There is no music or sound in this version either. Character portraits are still missing as well. Even the voice effects are not there. I totally stripped it so that you get an idea with the demo of what the game will play, feel and look like and to give you an idea of what the story is about. This way, when the final game version is released, you will see a major difference with it and enjoy it more.

Download the Demo here:  http://energon-plant.com/OLD_ENERGON/SimpWM.zip
It is 3.2 megs

Here are some related sites to this game and to me:
My Simpsons: Springfield woes and AGS Game template site: http://www.energon-plant.com/Simpmain.htm
My Simpsons Game Template AGS game page: http://adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=546
My Simpsons Game Template and Springfield woes thread at AGS (Other games Main Forum): http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=2667.0
My Simpsons Game Template and Springfield Woes thread at Simpworks:  http://www.simpworks.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=66b78d7dae94f598c80661f90d1cd803opic=3784.0
My Where's Maggie AGS thread(Main forum):  http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=24863.new#new

My Transformers Site: www.energon-plant.com
My All-purpose adventure gaming site: www.pncadventures.com

--------------------------EDIT---------------------------------12/24/06

This game demo has now been compiled with AGS 2.72. So Linux and MAC support might not be available with this version of the Simpsons Game. Atleast not until we get an updated port for both versions.

CHANGES:

I fixed three bugs I found with the game so far.
I moved hosting from ScrubEngine.com to energon-plant.com
I added some minor test interactions with this one. Its just to give you a feel for it. Try interacting with the Cereal Bowl several times.
I updated some graphics. Not much from the last demo. But from the full game, I have added much.


NOTES:
The game runs the same as before.

WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR:

Find some bugs. Look at the graphics and tell me how to improve it. Look at the interface and tell me how to improve it.

And what do you guys think? Should I do the Sierra Style portraits with the characters, or should I find someway of animating their mouths as if they are talking? If its the latter, I am going to need some help...

Multiple places and mirrors are always a good thing That is if the authors dont mind.

I understand all your thoughts on this, but the engine is not being programmed and developed by me. It is being developed by someone else. I just advertise and provide suggestions for it. I also provide web space.

The Web Hosting, again guys, is available now. I made the announcement so that if anyone wants hosting, they can have it now. Forums are also set up to talk. And like I said, I have done some low level publishing for some people already.

On top of that, I did release a Template game which is huger than most AGS games in general guys. And myfirst game will be done shortly as well.

I didn't do anything different than when someone posts here: "Upload your games and images to my site". Try to look at this site ina broader way.

LOL, sorry about the "But seriously" thing. I didn't mean for it to sound the way it did...

I understand that if I am going to announce something about an Engine, announce a release. But we are focusing too much on this being about a Game engine we are developing. That is just the Sites main project. But the site is much more than just about an Engine. I mean we also offer Hosting. We are gonna be a commercial Games company as well. It will contain resources.

Basically, with this announcement, I am asking you to help me out with the site. In other words, I am saying "Hey! I just started a website! Talk on my boards. Donate Tutorials and Resources. Host an adventure site on my site!" and all that.

And please dont take this the wrong way, but I am satisfied with AGS. But lets look at it this way, I love AGS, but Wintermute has certain features and IDE comfort that AGS doesn have and Vice Versa. Same with SLudge, and Agast. I like them all. Now, we are making an alternative, but I still like these other engines and I still want to promote people to make adventure games, becouse playing adventures is what I enjoy. If AGS is what they are made in, great! As long as they are being made. Thats why the site will also focus on AGS and other Engines.

Plus, our engine is not made. So for the time being, I will continue to use AGS. Plus, before we begin production and development, we want to know what all of you are looking for in an engine. Starting from scratch with an idea of what we want, would give us an organized view of our project and develop things quickly.

But dont focus on the engine. The site will be much more, with all your help.

By the way Kinoko, Gift of Aldora looks great so far! Keep it up.

Well, in all actuality, the site is mine. The Engine is Thomas Mayers. He asked if I would be interested in helping him design it and ask for input.  But, in all honesty, the site is to be much more than just about the Scrub engine. (Oh by the way, Scrub is not intended to scrub away all engines. If I remember correctly the author came up with the name as a pun with SCUMM. Like to scrub the SCUMM away, or something like that. It has no other real meaning).

We are both big AGS fans BTW. But seriously. Thats the plan I have for the site. Now I cant do it all on my own, thats why I am asking for help on this at the moment. For instance Mods, people to write tutorials and a team to make the commercial games. The publishing business is something I actually started a long time ago. Its more like Self Publishing. I am doing it as a side job. A few of my friends are writing books and what I do is get an ISBN number and then sell it on Amazon. I have a few people write reviews for it. Then I begin selling them at local bookstores. And there is a lot more to it. Basically anyone could do it. Its pretty easy once you get used to the routine. I am starting to write a book myself (Well me and a couple of friends). Its going to be called "5 guys from Brooklyn". Being from Brooklyn NY, I wanted to write a story about what it is like for Italians to live there. I wrote the outline for it out. I am writing the whole thing out. With some help from 2 other co-authors, they add in some more to it and spice the novel up a little. Then I have an editor who helps me to choose better sentence structures and writing for it. Its a big process to write it. I have been writing it for about 4 months now. Its actually quite funny, but you wouldn't get the humour unless you were Italian, or atleast European.

Anyways... Getting back on track. I figured that if I could do this, why not do it for Video games as well? Why not start a web page about it? So I figured, once I get things on track, my site will also be used to publish books and games. This is far down the line. Maybe like by Next year.

But I agree with you SSH, but my site is not completely without nothing to show for it. Like I said, I am offering hosting for it. Thats available now. So if anyone needs hosting, let me know now. Also, I am offering Image hosting for your games as well. So thats available now.

The forums are open to discuss things that wont be available on the site, such as Abandonware topics, General programming, off-topic chat etc... These are forums that are there for people to discuss, which you will not be able to see topics about on the regular page. Plus the forums leave it available for you to find help for your game and to advertise your game. There is much to do.

On top of that, The forum is also designed to take in opinions and suggestions on how to improve the site and the engine.

Also, like I said, I made the announcement for the website so that I can start getting people ready to be hired for my commercial game and for other staff positions on the site, such as moderators for the forum.

And in a day or so, I will have my Simpsons page there as well. So its not too bad, its not completely without anything to show. And again, this is just to alert CJ that I will keep a mirror of his builds of AGS on my site too.

But thanks for the help many of you have given already and for the positivie feedback and encouragement. Remember, the engine part of the site is for us, but the rest of the site is for the adventure games throughout the world.

-------------------------------------------
I hope nobody minds, I just wanted to modify this post a bit:

To Nikolas, m0ds, Helm, MrColossal: Thanks.

Pumaman: I dont know, it might be tough to make something better than AGS. But Thomas is a great programmer, just like you. But each programmer brings different great things to their programs. Its hard to say which is better than the other. I think its what your more comfortable with. CJ, I would love to have you work on a team and help me make a commercial game one day, even if all you do is write a plot and puzzles and have others take care of the scripting and graphics.

As for Poser 6 tutorials: I own poser 5 and 6. I would like to start putting up some basic tutorials on the web soon. I cant seem to find them anywhere. Most games can be made using Poser sprites if you think about it. Anyone can contribute tutorials you know. And just FYI, the site is not just limited to AGS, and Scrub or adventures. It does also include Sludge, Wintermute, Agast and other engines too.

SSH: Dont know about openGL. Up to Tommy. Also, dont know about importing AGS scripts. Maybe someone could write a plugin for that down the line... But, Portable to handheld devices is on the list believe it or not.

Squinky, aka coveredinSludge, This isn't really for superiority over other engines. I like different engines becouse of different reasons. We are just attempting to make our own engine. We are not trying to out-rival AGS or Sludge or wintermute. We just want to offer an alternative. Like any other true adventure gamer, we just want to see good games. Thanks to AGS, we have seen a lot of good games.

LJUBI: Hey, if you fancy AGS, thats fine. But the site will contain stuff about AGS and adventure games in general. So feel free to visit it anyway.

Mr Colossal: I understand your concern about the PM's and things. I dont want to read anyones PM's. Really, and I wont. In all honesty, people should stick to E-mail for privacy options. Keep simple not to private stuff to PM's. But in reality I wont be looking through anyones PM's. If for security purposes, such as harassment or life threats or other illegal activity, then I will have to look through it and take proper action. I dont want to get in trouble for something someone else does, nor do I want my visitors to be harassed. I put that warning out there so that people will always remain respectful to one another and to alert them "hey, your stuff may not be so private, so be careful to not post anything super important or illegal." But I wont, just for kicks, go looking through peoples PM's.

I have been sending out e-mails to a few people, actually, a lot of people asking them what they would look for in an Adventure Game engine. So this site should now be public to everyone.

About two months ago, I contacted Thomas Mayer about his Engine he was working on. He always had made some promising stuff. I was wondering about its status. From then on we discussed a few things and he had decided to create a new Adventure game engine. He has decided to call the Engine "Scrub".

Let me give you some quick links to look at first and then I will explain some more about the site.

The site can be found here: www.scrubengine.com
The forum can be found here: www.scrubengine.com/forum
Board Rules: http://scrubengine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2
For some news: http://scrubengine.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=35
For some suggestions we could use: http://scrubengine.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2

This is why you should begin making suggestions now, becouse development has not begun on the engine, but many of you know Thomas Mayer and know about his sciencefact game engine back in the day and even Sage Classic and SFCI.

Check out some links to his older stuff:
SFCI : http://www.tomkatgames.com/SFCI1.htm
Sciencefact Interactive Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20020105110650/www.sfsoftware.com/index.html

You can check out his MobyGames profile here: http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,196072/

So, since he hasn't begun programming on it, making suggestions now would give him an idea of how he would go about it. So the sooner you get suggestions out there, the better.

Now on to the site... I didn't come here to promote this engine. Well, partly I did, but I also come here to get people to populate the site a bit. The site and its name is mostly focused on the engine. But it would be a lot more.

For one thing, I am a great AGS fan. The site will still contain as many possible resources for AGS as it can. In fact, at one point, I would like to add the modules, plugins and other resources to the site. I would like to have Older and new builds of AGS on there. Some AGS tutorials, some links to games and possibly be a mirror for all AGS games and resources and AGS builds.

I also wanted to host the RON type Community game based on the AGS community on this site when it gets launched. So Vel and others, if you would like to participate with this, let me know and I will get a setup for you guys to start uploading files and stuff. I would even create a forum for you.

What else am I going to do? I am going to provide Web Hosting for adventure games and all things related to adventure games! For now, the hosting will be completely free. I might even setup a MySQL database for you and a your own personal forum.

What else do you get for being hosted on the site? Here is a list of features:
*Yourname@scrubengine.com email address.
*Support for PHP
*Real Audio and Video
*Streaming audio
*External Linking
*FTP access to your folder.
*Space allowed? 500 megabytes. If you need more for a promising reason, I will give you more.

Okay, okay what are the requirements? Here they are:
*You can host anything you want, as long as its Adventure Game related. It could be a site that reviews games or previews games. It could be a blog site about Adventure games, It could be even a site on Adventure E-zines. Or if you are making a game, you could host it on mine. You can even transfer all your AGS made games to my site.
*You must include a link to the Scrub main site (www.scrubengine.com)
*When we have  a banner or small button image, you must include it somewhere on every page of your site. This is, sorry to say, for promotional reasons.
*No Porn material, or links. Nothing illegal or that would get me arrested.
*If you have resources and games and certain public files, You must allow me to include it on a CD for redistribution on Cafepress.com or lulu.com. The disc would be compiled with other material from the site. The reason for this is becouse the more people join the site and the more popular it gets, the more money I will need to pay for it to stay up. This is mostly for bandwidth and Disk Space. Sorry.

I am actually hoping that most of you move your site over to ours actually. And Chris, I will mirror all new AGS Builds as well if you would like.

And just for your info, my 2 Simpsons games I am making and the Template will still be made with AGS. Future games of the Simpsons will be made with Scrub.

The site will offer more than just a new game engine and hosting. I am going to open up my own Book and Game publishing business as well. We will offer ISBN numbers as well. We will market your game for you, create manuals, etc...

We loved the Crows Nest and Ambrosine.com, so I will be making a resource site similar to that as well, where you can post engines, tutorials, sites and games you made with any engine.

We also like the Garagegames and Sourceforge approach to finding teams, so I will be setting up a way to find a team for your games through there.

There will also be some tutorials for Poser, Gimp and other programs so you can make games with your own graphics and sounds etc...

Also, we are going to be making a team to develop a commercial product. We have two in mind, but all we are capable of doing is come up with a story and plot etc... We need some more members to join the team. Payments will be made.

Right now, we have a forum made up which will really be useful to the visitors. We set up for technical help, and discuss general things such as games and hints and tips. We also have a programming section to share tips and ask for help in a particular language. We even allow abandonware. In fact, there is a section in the forum directly related to that.

There will be more soon. I know the site looks bare now, but within the coming months we are still going to be adding to it. Right now, I need some moderators and some team members who want to help create a commercial game. If you are interested in helping in anyway or having your site hosted, either post below or e-mail me at admin@scrubengine.com


Joey DiPerla

[Best AGS resourceBest Non-adventure--- as this can be used as a virtual springfield type thing.Best Player Character --- Homer SimpsonBest Non Player character ---- Mr. Burns]

Huh, SSH says my Game Template qualifies for a resource, so I am going to post it here as well.

The game I am asking for consideration is
"The Simpsons AGS Game Template".

"The HomePage can be found here."

Here is ONE sample image to check out: (edited by SSH: sorry, Joe, one pic per thing, please)




What specifically am I asking consideration for?

Best AGS resource

Best Non-adventure--- as this can be used as a virtual springfield type thing.

Best Player Character --- Homer Simpson

Best Non Player character ---- Mr. Burns



And thats it. Thanks for your consideration.

Gee thanks Pablo. :p

Well yeah. But I meant I would get it started when we atleast had some rooms and characters and possibly one game to show for it.

Sorry, should have specified that.

True, gradually expanding the character would be good. I still think the 1 room thing would still be a good thing.

But as far as existing planets.... Remote Planets are existent, they are just remote... Besides, of all the gazillions planets out there, not all of them are named, Yet. We could give them names in a fictional world. Unless you just wanted one planet or world to work off of.

Just my thought on it. Vel. You mind if I make a little website with a bit of an upload area for this? I can call it Worldofbluecups.com and you and others could moderate the site along with me. It could be a contribution I will make to the community.

Sektor I like your banner design.

Anyways, What if we had an animated GIF banner. It wouldn't cycle through a script, but rather just keep animating. Each new side would show something new like every 30 seconds. We could possible even make it have some cool transitions too.

Just my idea.

I second GeoffKhans idea. Everyone make your own character. Based on how the majority of the characters look, then we can decide the major part of the art style. Maybe we can also do our own little AGS cyber home as well. Drawings. Vel or someone could then organize an AGS map.

I say the cyber homes are fictional and not real. So a space station or some other planet would be cool. Even you yourself can have differences from a normal human or what you really are in real life. For instance maybe you can fly. Maybe you wear a super hero costume. I personally would dress myself like a Sith or a Jedi or something.

Maybe Vel, you can make some prerequisites for us to submit our characters, for instance:

*Must have 4 walking directions.
*Must have a pick up, pull, drop, push animation.
*Must have a talk, laugh, cry animation
*Must have a death animation.
*Must have an animation that would be trademark of you.
*Must have a sit down animation.
*Must have an animation of you drinking out of some Blue Cup.
*Must have a run animation.
*Must have a falling animation.

*Also each character must be submitted with his own cyber home. Atleast 1 room.
*All rooms must have walkable area's and walkbehinds already done and saved in room file (CRM) format.
*You must also include in a text file some words of wisdom that you would say.
*Must include atleast 3 items that you would want to use in an adventure and draw some graphics of them being combined.


If everyone submitted something like this, there would be enough artwork and resources for people to Make games, just like RON.

All you have to do next is just find a site to host this on, pick a setting for the universe of this game and then make a way.................

Good idea Vel! Good idea contribution GeoffKhan! I am game for this. In fact, I just started drawing myself. I look like crap, but what the hell, I dont look to bad. Now I just gotta get the next 400 frames in.

I will upgrade to Vista. I have a powerful enough computer to upgrade with. Although, it will be a while before I upgrade. Maybe one year or two after initial release.

I like writing, but what kind of commitment are you looking for? Would you take freelance writers, EG: write an article and then submit it to you and you may or may not include it?