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Has anyone even made a game for MAGS?

I wonder too... In case of need we can extend the deadline until late sunday / very early monday.

Well, the deadline is coming closer now! For those who want to submit their entries please post your game withing the next 30 hours (see timestamp of this message). Then the voting will begin...

[MashPotato]

Wow that's a really big number of entries and all so nice. How can I decide who's to win?
So first of all many thanks to all participants for these creative sprites.


ProgZmax: An old school adventure character - just like in the good old days

KristjanMan: A very good start for a whole game based on "Eragon"

Privateer Puddin': I hope she didn't use her leg for some cooking experiments

vict0r: A hard working guy. Be "careful with that axe, Eugene"

sir_gibberishbuloght: Muscles and cool equipment - what a combination

S-Made: Small and angry. This actually IS a dwarf

Mad: Grams Digwinkle might be old experienced, but your sprite is in good conditions

Saberteeth: In his red suit he does not need to care about blood

yodaman11111: Good to see people also remember the classic dwarf with cap and beard

Rap4Life42o: I wonder if a girl would want him to spin straw into gold at all. So a sword's the better choice

El_Drey: He is taking good care of his beard. That's what dwarves should do

jasonjkay: Nice sprite but - as we now know - not original

MashPotato: His clothes look pretty clean for a hard day's battle

Pablo: A salesman? I guess he'd be luckier if he got a job in a mine

Krysis: I also like this red/green combination you used

Strange Visitor: Surely he's doing a good job as a decorator

Clip: He looks a little pale but I like the colours


As almost every entry's worth to win I started to search "real" dwarves among the entries: Do I see the character as a dwarf or just as a smallsized human, a troll, a gnome or an orc? It's not about the absolute size or skin colour, it's more about physical proportions. So in the end I came up with the sprites from vict0r, buloght, S-Made, yodaman11111, MashPotato, Krysis and Clip.

These are my favourites for a dwarven adventure Now to reduce this selection just one more time I went for creativity, style and design. This was really hard to decide and I changed position 3 a number of times. And it was also difficult to define place 2 and 1... But here's my final list:

3rd: The Bronze Flower Dwarf for beautiful pixels goes to MashPotato!

2nd: The Silver Lantern Dwarf for shiny ideas goes to sir_gibberishbuloght!


1st: The Gold Mining Dwarf for great work goes to Krysis!

Congratulations to the winners and again many thanks for this nice competition.

Just bringing up this topic on your screens one last time... Is there really noone out there who can help?  :'(

If i'll ever finish it.

There are still 6 days and some hours left Good luck!

[But]

Am i allowed to use a character i made before the contest started? I haven't released a game with him yet, so i don't really see why not. But you decide

I'd prefer a character made after the competition started. But you can use your "premade" character if you don't take advantage from this: It means that the period of time you already worked on that character before the contest started you must not work on your game this month now. So in the end you have the same time to work on the complete game as someone who just started after the rules were published. You get the intention?

Um, and me? I made a tall dwarf...but I thought that was just an injoke, not a real rule. If you want, I'll draw another one.

True, the smiley seems to be confusing. Sorry. It wasn't meant to be a joke... If you don't have time to draw another character I'll simply put my screen on the floor then so your large dwarf also looks small

So am I disqualified or do I just have to redraw mine?

I second jasonjkay's suggestion: Better redraw him. He's drawn good but would actually score better in the orc contest...

Can I draw a character from a book?

Taking the "whole" idea from a book wouldn't be original then. But you can use the description for your inspiration and enchant it with your own ideas.

[Topic:]

They are working as miners, some are famous fighters and others are nice little helpers. Some have a long beard and most of them wear a big cap. You know them from books, fairy tales and from your neighbour's garden...

Topic: Dwarves

Rules:
- create an original, playable character
- maximum number of colours is 32 inclusive transparency
- sprite size must not be larger than 60x80 pixels
- any kind of dwarf is allowed (except giant dwarves )

I hope you enjoy this Jam. Good luck and have fun!

Oh! I never expected to win at all in this competition with all these nice entries. Really!
Many, many thanks buloght. Also: Fabulous trophies. Great!
Maybe this Sprite Jam is the beginning of my return to painting and drawing now

I'll start the next Jam in some hours...

It's my first ever Sprite Jam entry, too.
Hmmm... Whatever this may be: I guess it can do magic

   

EDIT: Added some animation...

Sweet. I just happened to have pretty much made a game that is like a journey. I was going to originally post it s a regular game but am I allowed using it as a MAGS?

We already had this question some time ago. Actually a long time ago There's an answer to this in a very old thread from October 2004. As probably noone can remember here's the main facts:

In upcoming contests the creation of an entry must now start with (or after) the rules were set. I think that's the best way to handle this issue in future. If someone already started on a game (s)he's always welcome to post the game in the MAGS thread but just as a reference not as a regular entry.

I hope this is okay for you and thanks for your fairness to ask about this.

How's that supposed to work with Thunderbird? I don't find it at all logical that you're suggesting to input something in an address field which simply isn't there :p

Well, the "trick" is not to open the configuration table by typing "about:config" into its address field. It's about adjusting the settings. 
Of course editing the configuration of Thunderbird is different. As this topic is/was about Firefox I only wanted to offer this as a short additional sidenote (for those who already know about adjustments in Thunderbird and only need that label information). Actually for the e-mail client it's more difficult as you need to edit its config file with a text editor.
Anyway here's how to do it (it looks more difficult as it actually is):

You need to close Thunderbird first.
Then browse to Thunderbird's application folder (maybe one of the folders used in the paths
below is hidden, eg "Application Data", so you need to unhide it first (Windows folder options).
Depending on your OS you should find it there:

• XP, 2000: Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\<CryptedName>
• NT: WINNT\Profiles\<UserName>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\<CryptedName>
• 98, ME: Windows\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\<CryptedName>
• MacOS X: ~/Library/Thunderbird\Profiles\<CryptedName>
• Linux, Unix: ~/.thunderbird\Profiles\<CryptedName>

Open the file "prefs.js" with a text editor like notepad.
Finally add this line at the end of the existing code
   user_pref("config.trim_on_minimize", true);
Save the document (standard ascii text file format, not as a Word document or similar).

That's it... You see why I only made a short info about it

[Terence Independent Terminator]

Maybe someone can help me with this problem:

At the moment I'm looking for some old AGS games. I already checked the download links in the AGS games section and also had a look on AGA's aafiles bicycle site. Unfortunately these files are not available there. I already contacted the authors but these are also unable to offer the game (file deleted, not archived, no reply, ...).
Well, these are the games that I am searching:

Sep 2003-09 Terence Independent Terminator by Paranoia
Aug 2001-08 Monkeyville by Nickboy77
Jul 2001-07 Fad of Devils Hash by MonkeySpank

I hope someone can find these games in his archive... Thanks for checking your disks.

There's at least a way to free memory that's used by Firefox when you minimize its window.

Open the configuration table of Firefox by typing "about:config" into its address field.
Then right click within the window and select "New Boolean".
Name this new label as "config.trim_on_minimize" and set it to "True".

For me it reduces allocated memory (Firefox) from about 50000k down to 5000k on minimizing the browser window.
By the way: This trick also works with Thunderbird.

- what is the maximum age of a "child"?

If your question refers to a "standard human" child I'd say the maximum age should be about 12 to 14 years (then follows "youth", then "grown-up" - it's all floating with no fix limits in age).

- does the animal have to be alive? and could it be an object resembling an animal? (like a teddy bear)

For the animal I'd say it does not need to be alive but it has to be a real animal. Only if your story is based in a toy world a teddy bear would also count as an animal.

That's just how I read the rules. Let's see what nihilyst, who set this month's guidelines, answers to your questions. If this is different just forget about my reply

[What is MAGS?]

What is MAGS?
MAGS is a monthly competition for all amateur adventure game makers. The idea is to use AGS to create a game in under a month, following the rules set by the previous winner.

For more information please visit the Official MAGS Website

Why should I enter MAGS?
We're not here to tell you that you should enter MAGS, but merely allow it as a creative opportunity to help you work to a deadline, improve your skills, and generally as a good kick-start for the new comers (a.k.a n00bies).

MAGS is the perfect opportunity to make a game, and the wonderful prize is to announce the next month's rules, and all competitiors get the game placed on the MAGS website.

MAGS is meant to be fun and is aimed at everyone, despite their skill. If you have poor art skills work on graphics, and vice-versa, as the voting is based on "favourite" games, and not the most artistic, you may get help for the competiton, but should try not get anyone else to do any part of the game for you.

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Here are the rules set by last month's winner nihilyst:

Topic: The Journey

This month you should make a game about some kind of journey. This can be a story of a holiday travel, a runaway, a biker road-movie, a chase, a journey to another planet, into a human body or anything else you can think of.
The journey should be complete, i.e. with preparations, the travel itself (that should fill out the greatest part of your game) and the arrival (optional the way back, too, if you want to). The preparations and the arrival can be cutscenes only or playable, that's up to you.

You HAVE TO
- have at least 1 scrolling room
- involve a child in some kind (if you for example would choose the journey into a body, then you have to find an adequate replacement like a child virus or something; you could also make the main character a child)
- involve an animal in one of the puzzles (again, if you choose an unusual setting, find a workaround)
- include some kind of fight; it may be interactive or not.

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All entries need to be in by May 26th.

Please post a download link of your game entry to this thread, best with a screenshot. Thanks and good luck.

[nihilyst]

The voting is over and the winner is very clear again even if it wasn't that easy to decide who's to win, what we can see from the published pros and cons...

So this month's congratulations go to
nihilyst and his entry The Last Harvest

Many thanks to all other participants, too.


For those who are interested in the voting statistics the result in detail can be seen in the voting section of the official MAGS website for the next days. It's just a click away: here. On mouseover you see the percentage of votes for each entry.
I'll keep this system for the next competitions but if in general you prefer to see the absolute number of voters instead of percentages just tell me via PM. Thanks.

Does this mean that it's possible to vote more than once?

It was possible in the early votings as I confided "too much" in the fairness of all voters ("only vote once" term) and there was no automated check. But double voters were deleted manually and the result was always correct in the end. Now double voting is not that easy anymore but I still hope people respect the rule only to vote once so checking the votings manually is easier now...

But actually I was thinking about showing them on the monthly thread (like this one).
...
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I really don't know if showing the number of votes would be a good idea....

Let's see how we can go on with this after some more opinions are posted, okay?

Maybe I wasn't thorough enough before. So here's some extra comments - about why, in the end, I decided to vote for Stefan Z's Snake.

I think your first comments about the games were already very helpful. The hidden details make it even more complete, thanks