Messages

I love the sky.

I agree with SSH that it looks like it's on a cliff. Maybe you could just make the bus windows a bit lighter, or put another low building on that side, or a fence or hedge or something.

I think you should remove the dithering (or is that a reduce to gif artifact?).

To anti-alias it, I'd double it in size (without resampling), clean up the edges you want anti-aliased with the line & pencil tools, then reduce it back to normal size - using BILINEAR filtering - I find that bicubic blurs it a little too much.

That reduce to 95% then restore looks a bit nasty in my opinion - I think you'd be better off keeping the clean look it has now.

And tamper, I don't know if people have a problem with AA in general. It just has to improve the image, not detract from it.

Steve

Wow!
That was excellent.
Very straightforward puzzles, but great characters, animation, backgrounds, plot and scripting!
Funny too!
Out of the one candidates, this one gets my vote.
Thanks foz.

Are there any other severed hand productions?

Cheers,
Steve

PS It could do with some text clean up - if you want feedback on that let me know at stevemccrea@hotmail.com.

Try typing that sentence into google.
The first one that is.

DG,

What I object to in your posts are the following:

1) graphics aren't necessary.
Now you back this up by saying that anything that doesn't add to the loop of "interaction -> narrative" is unnecessary. And that graphics can be substituted with text leaving the same game. Therefore graphics are unnecessary. However, I see several excellent counterexamples in this thread to your substitution argument (loom's music, indy's following the fez). You can't argue that *either* text or graphics or sound aren't necessary to advance the narrative.

2) graphics are cosmetic.
While this is true to an extent, it implies (in many people's minds) that graphics are inferior to other elements of the game. As they are being used to advance the narrative, I suggest that good looking (in some sense) graphics are at least as important as good writing and good sound.

3) an implication that films need good visuals but games don't.
Looking at the book-film versus text adventure-graphic adventure, I can't see evidence for that.

4) you put a lot of stock in narrative.
Most of the adventure games I've played, from Infocom to Sierra to LucasArts, has the most inane, ridiculous, cliched, or banal narrative, and served only to string a bunch of entertaining puzzles, text or graphics off, much like blockbuster movies serve as vehicles for spectacular stunts and effects.

5) comparison with Galileo
For every Galileo, there are thousands of crackpots proved wrong by history. Anyway, Galileo was in a scientific field where the answers are pretty black and white. Here, it's mostly down to semantics. By comparing yourself to Galileo, you suggest that you are the misunderstood genius, rather than just another opinionated punter.

That Las Naranjas article was very interesting - thanks.

Let the theses continue.

Steve

Glad you liked it!

Yup, working on something full length and more serious.
There'll still be some humour though.
It'll take a bit longer than 6 weeks to write too!
Steve

I think he meant that it didn't disappear from your inventory - which it doesn't.

VERY nice looking game!
It's a bit of a cliched plot, but hey, who cares?

The only problem I had was finding the pond - I didn't recognise that broken up thing at the front of the screen as a path. Also, I would remove the second porcelain frog from behind the sign. I thought the puzzle was moving the sign to reveal the second frog, and was about to consign the game to the stupid illogical puzzle bin.

Also, unless there's some strong reason not to, I would call the game "Demons in the Attic" rather than "Daemons in the Attics". Even if there are multiple attics, it still sounds a bit odd.

Hope to see this finished soon!

Steve

1. Call it something like "4 diurnal periods a non-aquaintance" or "221B Baker Street" or  "11111 Aardvarks Attack" to get it at the top of the games list.
2. Pretend to be a female author.
3. Give your female protagonist large hooters.
4. Call yourself Lowe, Schafer, Meretzky or Gilbert.
5. Put in really hard puzzles so there's a dozen hint threads.
6. Keep replying to your announcement thread to get it to the top of the list, preferably under assumed names.
7. Send free CDs to reviewers such as Vel.
8. Bribe said reviewers with free meals or hard cash.
9. Spam all the other threads with intelligent responses, but hyping your game in your signature.
10. Errr...
11. That's it.

What I'm surprised to see on there are Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, and the two Zelda games.

Those can't be legal, surely - particularly since there are no copyright messages...

And a web search for "Trendy Games"+"Adventure" doesn't show up much.

Steve

> Can't they all be Disable or all Remove or all Off?

If it was that easy, you wouldn't feel any sense of achievement at learning the API!

> Maybe CJ could set up some default #defines to make a more consistent API?

Oh, and make deleting everything in the editor consistent too

I love it - when's the game coming out?
The only things I'd change would be the font on the EXIT sign, and maybe make the floor tiles smaller and less wonky.

VERY eboy!
I love it!
Presumably it's going to be 800x600?

(Edited for typo)

"you saw him taking crap from his faithless girlfriend, overbearing mother and annoying boss throughout the game, you'd probably feel disgust and yell at him to grow a spine"

So that goes on throughout Syberia? That really turned me off the demo.

There's Sophia from Fate of Atlantis too.
In wits and team modes, she's just as important as Indy (as far as I remember). And dressed about as sensibly.
Good point about Alone in the Dark - high heels indeed!

Then there's Mika in RON.

And what about Samus Aran in Metroid? You can hardly tell she's female.

That does look like Cameron Diaz, but it's not a big surprise. The Japanese quite often base characters on American film stars. When we were modelling Samus at Retro, Nintendo sent us pictures of Natalie Portman and said "something like this".

I'm just surprised there isn't a florist in Manhattan

LBA had some beautiful interior scenes, by the looks of it!

It's a little odd that you have to walk to the path before you can enter your house.

Are there really only 3 locations?

This could be very nice when it's finished!
Steve

By character array, do you mean what C means, ie, char frobozz[]?
Because you can just use a string in AGS.

As for the global int thing, like I said, put the #defines in the HEADER (go to the Script menu and select "Edit script header... (Ctrl+H)", then type in lines like
#define GLOBALINT_LIVES 0
Then, instead of typing
SetGlobalInt(0, 5);
you type
SetGlobalInt(GLOBALINT_LIVES, 5);

As for delay timers, look up SetTimer() and IsTimerExpired(). They're explained pretty well in there. I haven't used them though, so I can't offer any advice.

Cheers,
Steve

Saving could be a problem... am I working in this one, this one, or this one? I'd like to be able to edit a few at once.

Good idea though - it's an interim solution...

I'd love to have several script windows open at once, so I could easily look something up, cut and paste code, etc.

Oh, I'd love to be able to put the help window in the background too. Is that possible?

Cheers,
Steve

It would be useful if the contents of the global script header were available as auto-completions.
So any #defines and functions in the global header could be auto-completed.

That would speed up my game writing immensely

Thanks,
Steve