Messages

... How's that for a premise? Does it work with the rules

P.s. Does this mean the game doesn't actually have to be about funk music...

To me your game idea sound absolutely fitting the rules. Also I'd say "Yes, you're right" as answer to your question in P.S. But to be sure let's better wait for a reply from Geoffkhan  

What do you mean by the world of funky music anyway?

Oh, i just mixed up the words "musician" and "funkadelic" that Geoffkhan used in his description. So you don't need to build a whole world of funkiness at all

looks like the rules dictate funky music in the game?

There's this line " the antagonist must have a weird phobia": So for one's game concept this may mean a phobia against funk music - so you don't need to use this genre of sound. But that's just an idea in case you don't like funk...

Oops. Sorry for the delay. This finally got mixed up as I waited for Magintz to present the new rules after his posting and he might have thought I'd do it this time...  

maybe Klaus and Magintz have a social life  

What's that..? At least I don't have something like this, so it really wasn't the reason.

Geoff should post the new rules. It's not like Klaus or Magintz are going to disallow the rules... are they?

Actually the rules are disallowed sometimes, but not in this case.

releasethefrogs: Perhaps we should keep this in mind - in case you don't enter now,

I am going to hire someone to tell someone do something about it!

The new rules are out and can be read in the new thread April MAGS. Have fun with Geoffkhan's rules. I hope you can forgive us and we won't run directly into hell for this delay. On the other hand they say it's pretty warm there... Hm.

[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?
BECAUSE MAGINTZ SAID SO... !  


joking


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 opportuninty to make a game, and the wonderful prize is to announce the net 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 must not get anyone else to do any part of the game for you.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Theme - Funkadelic

Geoffkhan set some rules that lead us to the world of funky music.
It's on you to decide where to place the game and what to do. See for yourself...

No restriction on colour depth or resolution.

One of the central characters in the plot must be a musician.
Also, the antagonist must have a weird phobia.

Items (pick at least two) you must have in the game:
- Lava lamp
- Tropical print shirt
- Afro wig
- Roller skates
- Guitar pick
- 70's tinted sunglasses
- Turban
- Skull medallion
- Tuning fork
- Lampshade
- Vinyl record

---------------------------------------------------------------

All games in by 27th April.
Please post a download link of your game entry to this thread, best with a screenshot. Thanks and good luck.

Hmmm... Usually Magintz announces the winner at the end of the month but as he didn't yet post and you all are sooo excited I'll do it this time:

Actually it was a very close voting and I think that's also one reason why Magintz didn't want to present a winner too early. Let's go one step further... The winner is a game about Good and Evil. Oh, that fits all these games - more or less.

Right, but in this case it can be taken by word: The winner is "Evil Enterprises" by Geoffkhan. My congratulations for this nice talky game, but also respect to all other entrants, the votes were really close.

Geoffkhan: For the new rules please send a PM to Magintz and best a copy to me, so if Magintz won't be able to check your ideas I'll do it and then start the new thread as soon as possible. Seems as if you all want to enter in April

7.10.03 - The Herculean Effort Productions site is born[...]
We value your feedback, and you can contact us by email at geoffkhan@hotmail.com or you can post a comment on the forum.[...]

Right, that's it. Nearly at the bottom of your intro page. Oh and I found your new address there too now. But it's no link like the other one so I didn't see it at my first quick search. Sorry.

My email is not geoffkhan@hotmail.com

Sorry, I took this address from your website at http://herculeaneffort.adventuredevelopers.com/
On the mags site it's fixed now. Thanks for the information.

Okay now, time is up... In the end now we have four entries. For voting please visit the MAGS site or make your choice right here:

Who killed Bambi by nope!
Evil Enterprises by Geoffkhan
Dead Star (Vol. 0.9) by Lazy Z
Crypt by mätzyboy

Please vote only once and be sure to have played all games before sending your voice! Good luck to all participants.

Just one entry so far but we're getting closer to March 28th - the deadline of this month's competition.

The voting will begin on early Monday - in about 60 hours from now
So you still have the weekend for creation. Good luck!

... I can't even imagine wanting to read a longer piece of text in a 150 pixel height window, that's just too annoying.

I already mentioned this: The height is dynamic depending on your screen resolution so it usually is much larger...

I personally think that Darth's, with all it's navigational links right at the top, makes more sense than Klaus', whose links are not centralized.

Perhaps you missed the main difference: My layout does not only offer links to the main pages (community, links pool, ...), there are also tabs for separate areas withing these pages (information, features, ...). Also I wouldn't say that they are "not centralized" as they are always at the same place.

At the moment I still can't see how this navigation is handled in Darth's layouts: They end with a border but only contain a part of the first page's whole content. Where do I find the features and the other sub topics? How will the layout work then? Is there still that border that fits so nice with the end of the image bar?

For loominous design these questions don't appear as it is exactly the required redesign of the website. It sticks to the current way of navigation. But here we still have the problem that Rick mentioned and that I also had in mind:

There are a number of pages that I have no idea how to get to from the main page.  The only reason I know about them is that someone posted a link to them at one time or another in the forum.

I think the optimal  solution is to  incorporate Darth's and/orLoomis' graphics in to Klaus' navigational system.  Maybe scrap the iframes in favor of a "more.." link at the bottom of the box.

I think without the iframes my concept wouldn't work that well. The tabs will turn to simple links. Of course this is also possible but not the intention of this layout. So it must be changed completely if no iframes are used: The navigation icons at the bottom could disappear with long contents and need to be put to the top. In the end we have a completely different thing. Perhaps it would look like one of the other versions with an additional sub menu line... Okay, not for real but who knows?

In any case it makes little sense to not use some kind of portal or content management system to render the site.

Doesn't Chris already do this in "some" way? I thought so...  

Using this methododolgy Klaus was able to deliver a working model in the same time frame the others were able to deliver only screenies.

Nice that at least one person takes this into account. But as you see: It was a mistake.

Why don't you guys, Darth, Klaus, and Loomis,  get together and come up with a solution that incorporates the best features of each of your submissions?   Let this discussion be your guide.   8)

Yes, that's one way to go...

Why don't we just leave the site as it is?

...and that's the other way

[Perhaps Chris can show us a statistic about the browsers used by the visitors of this site!?]

The only one that really screws it up was Opera, The Iframes were really small, making the whole page really short, they didn't adjust sizes like the other browsers.

Yes, I already knew about this one (see some posts above) but I think it can be solved. What about "all the other browsers" that everyone is talking about..?

I know it's hard to get everything to work on every system.

Actually I didn't yet really check this layout for compatibility in detail. Of course I would do so if it comes to the point of setting it up for real. On the other hand I think Opera (nothing against it) is no longer that popular than it was 2 years ago - Mozilla is on its way up now.  Perhaps Chris can show us a statistic about the browsers used by the visitors of this site!?

Just on the Iframes issue, Is it necessary?, I know It probably makes the outside design static and it just scrolls in the little bits, but you still have to scroll anyway.

As the navigation icons are set at the bottom it is better to have them always reachable. If the length of the content field goes longer they might leave the visible screen. So you see it's part of the concept. But as I wrote we can also make the iframes go nonscrolling areas and so end in a layout with different length on probably every page.

Also if you use a mouse wheel you have to put the mouse in the box to scroll, rather than just scrolling anywhere (that's also picky but how I prefer to browse)

That really is picky

Perhaps this is something to think about: It seems as if it was a mistake to already set up my entry as a working html page. Noone would have taken care about things like "iframes" if I only presented it as a screenshot with content that perfectly fits the boxes... Just from a screenshot you can't see how the page will look on other screen resolutions: Will the other submissions be placed on the upper left side and offer a lot of space at the bottem then? What happens for example if the news section in these screenshots gets more messages or simply counts another number of lines? I don't know...

For the iframe discussion: I really wonder who had troubles here to see the content of the iframes when browsing with his/her standard browser (not after trying this thing out with all browsers just for checking it. And even then...) Talking of W3C and its future is nice but probably only without taking into account some few people that are still using Internet Explorer or even developing it...

The scrollbars could also be set up with dhtml causing even more compatibility problems. That's why noone uses dhtml No, of course this layout can also be created with fix content and without iframes. So the website's pages would probably all be different in length - but only have one scrollbar. Also every tab needs to load a whole new page then and not just switches between the content in the iframe.

Finally: To make it clear I also like compatibility and think it's one of the most important things in webdesign. But I can't see the iframe problem at the moment (so please tell me what standard browser doesn't show the content as I only know about NS4 - see some posts before).

Time for me to also say some word now:

Although Klaus' ought to be larger vertically, I think.

Actually the size of the layout is dynamic as you can see in the online demo.

I think Klaus thinks that FOY will be released by the time the site goes up or something... I somehow doubt that though... what do you reckon m0ds?

Okay, perhaps FOY will be available before a new AGS site design

Klaus's iframes are annoying.

Well, they are not always visible: Depends on your screen resolution and the contents of the iframe of course...

Also the photo-style graphics don't really correspond with the style most AGSers make their games with (ie. hand coloured/MSpainted graphics are usually implemented for a cartoony style).

I already wrote about this in the original thread: With some more time I'd have added pixelart to the headers and navigation areas and of course some other minor changes still need to be done.

Klaus, I hope you don't mind, but I just stole your news rather than typing new stuff.

Actually they are from the original AGS news section... So you didn't find them there? Interesting.

iframes ...  I feel it's better to just completely avoid compatibility issues rather than have a design that's probably compatible with most browsers.

As far as I know only Netscape 4.x doesn't support this feature, all other "important" browsers (of course especially the current versions) do so. On Opera the right iframe doesn't open in correct size at the moment but this problem could be solved.

Instead of a single scrollbar to scroll up and down, and possibly one to scroll left and right in rare circumstances you've got one or more scrollbars which completely break the methods I use to browse webpages. I can't use pageup/pagedown, up/down or the scrollwheel on my mouse and see all the content on the site.

The layout offers a maximum of two scrollbars. As the size of the complete page is variable in some cases it depends on the users screen resolution if the full content is visible or not (see above). Also some sections (let's say the news area) only need to be scrolled through one time. On your next visit there perhaps is one new message in this box, the rest is already known and so no further scrolling is neccessary. Finally you can use the scrollwheel on the iframes as you don't need it for the whole page here

Are you saying that 1280 1024 is not big enough?

Not really... I checked it with a screen resolution of 1024x768 pixels and it already fits perfect with this in a standard Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox - if the windows taskbar goes invisible.  

Now I read the "original" thread too and I think you're probably right with the "shell" thingy. So for the moment I won't do any further work on this layout. As you know pixeling is time intensive and so I'll better wait until it is clear what Chris decides: If he prefers another design that keeps the current structure or if he gives a chance to my layout. Whatever - it was nice to think of another way to present the AGS site so far

Well, I'd say enough time passed by now for everyone to present their entries. I'm very sorry that Dorcan's game yet only reached an "intro status" and so it can not take part in the voting. Anyway it's highly recommended to check out his piece of work.

For voting please visit the MAGS site or make your choice right here:

Night of the Zombie fish by releasethefrogs
Last Clown Standing by Creed Malay
Escape From The Zombie City by Gord10-Ahmet
DemonSlayer 5 by Squinky
Armageddon Margaret by ElaineMc

Please vote only once and be sure to have played all games before sending your voice! Good luck to all participants.

Many thanks for you all your nice comments. Here's a bunch of replies:

... because there was too much work involved and he didn't have the time.

Well, who sais that he needs to do that work Isn't it the designer who should do this? I also don't think it's that much more work, because every page needs to be touched in both cases...

My vote for Klaus, if the "What is Adventure Game Studio?" was big enough to fit in without scrolling

There's a solution: Change your screen resolution to a bigger size an it works

The selected tab (information,features...) could be higlighted in order to let the user know where he is.

Yes, that's actually something that I meant by "some enchantment still needs to be done...".

1) Instead of "Games Database," maybe have "Download Database," because then there's a spot to download Plug-ins.

Oh yes. A good point. But "Download Database" would also include the engine itself. So perhaps we find yet another expression that fits.

2) That picture of CJ along the top...

... but I'm not very happy about some of the icons...

To be true the icons and header graphics are also not that perfect for me. I wanted to do some pixeled stuff (like we know it from zoomed ags game screenshots or from some avatars) that fits the topic but I had not the time to do it. Sorry. I hope you can imagine what I am thinking of..?

(P.S.S: I don't like the bluecup shape at the toop... too convex, the real bluecup is totally cilindrical, I think...)

Eeeeh, okay. This can be changed Sorry for that big mistake.  

... But is it a little too ... stiff?  for AGS?  I don't get the impression it's about video games, but more like financial services?

I see. But I think it can be brushed up a little with what I called "enchantment"

Klaus...is great.

Many thanks. I'll print this out and stick it above my bed  

I thought that the last moment to submit our game was 23 February 23:59...

Hm... Not really, but if you need just some more time that's of course no problem. Actually the "time to go" message is always intended to be a request if anyone needs some extra time.
So we better use the second way that I suggested. This means the doors for submissions will close in about 17 hours from now (see timestamp of this message). Enough time for everyone all over the world

[Escape From The Zombie City]

Nice to see already three relevant entries.

And here's Escape From The Zombie City

We see there's a problem with the zip archive of Gord10-Ahmet. Please try to put a working version of your game only. Else we can not check it out...

NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIE FISH is my first AGS game and I am very proud of it, even if you arent.
It is about a fish who gets lost in the sea, and has to find a way out of a place where almost all the fish are zombies!

Just a note to new and old and special MAGS participants: Please always post a link to your entry in the MAGS thread, too. Some miss to do this. Thanks.

Now when will the voting start? Let's say in 9 hours from now (see timestamp of this post)!

If Gord can't publish his game until then we'll wait for him some more time (just to give him the change to upload) and then the voiting will start in 23 hours from now. Okay?

Okay now here's my thoughts about a re-vamp of the AGS website:

I don't think it's very useful to simply only change the looks of the website. The structure has changed a lot from the beginning and so why not better also taking this into account? Some links are really hidden or too difficult to find in the current navigation. For example I changed the "forums" to "community" as this could also contain things like the users world map or other personal stuff.

My entry ("general" area) is available here for everyone who's interested
Of course some enchantment still needs to be done...