Messages

I'm Greek too (and a geek, but that's irrelevant ). Welcome, Nik!

Having read too many books that are considered "classics" for my English lit class lately, I wanted to read something more contemporary in my spare time, so I went for "The DaVinci Code" by Dan Brown. And I find it to be really damn good.

I don't really care much about his style of writing, to be honest, and his characters aren't that great, but the guy knows how to weave a story. I haven't been this hooked with a book in years. I always want to read "just one more chapter". Plus, it's filled with puzzles and riddles, I'm thinking that people who like adventure games would probably find this book amusing.

Sigh... so basically instead of Gray Matter we get... Booby Trap? Isn't it a bit late for April Fool's jokes? Reality is becoming a bit too absurd lately.

BTW, from the article:

"“Dreamcatcher's big adventure game titles like Broken Sword: Sleeping Dragon and Syberia have not been very profitable"

I'm guessing they refer to Syberia 2, right? Anyone got the actual number of copies each game sold?

Adventure collective also provides a very good and eloquent definition: http://www.adventurecollective.com/features/feature-idealadventure-1.htm

Zor©: So it's all a matter of perspective, then? I'm not sure I quite get your definition, but does your definition mean that the Adventures of JP & Cosmo isn't an adventure game? Or Gabriel Knight 3? Moreover,

Adventure games don't use any AI, and nothing can happen unless the programmer tells it to happen.

That's not true. While adventure games have a more deterministic nature than other genres, that doesn't mean that there can't be advanced AI routines that help change the game world in any way. Just because the old adventure games didn't use advanced AI doesn't mean that newer ones can't do that. Heck, wasn't Revolution's Virtua Theater gimmick supposed to provide a game world where NPC's behaved in their own way, so that even the game designers could expect it?

As for my definition of what an adventure game is... it's way to convoluted for it to make sense to anyone. I'll get back to you on this.

I remember bursting into tears when I first heard about it... Such irony, the man who was perhaps the best F1 driver ever dying in a race... F1 hasn't been the same ever since he died, and I lost almost all interest about it.

That being said, to say that Schumacher killed him is a bit much, I think.

The standard stuff for me... Mazes, timed puzzles, untimely deaths, too much pixel hunting. Oh, and lame main characters, the "born loser" main character especially, it's more than overdone.

[Playtesting]

Playtesting:
I've an AMD Athlon XP 1700 with 256MB of RAM, and a lot of free time!

Proof Reading:
I like proof reading, believe it or not. And I'd like to think that my grasp of the English language is quite decent.

Story Design:
I'm a fairly creative person, with a lot of ideas, especially with stories that deal with the supernatural. I'm also quite good with dialogs.  

My email is angelusgr (at) wildmail (dot) com

I'm an English major and Philosophy minor, currently struggling through my junior year. Once I'm finished, I'd like to get a masters in Linguistics, but I'm not 100% sure about that yet. Besides that, I'm unemployed, and thanks to my laziness, I'll prolly stay like that for a few more years.

I'm 23, going on 24. Feel like 40-something most of the time, though.

1) Athlon 1700
2) GeForce 2 MX (bleargh)
3) 256
4) Win XP
5) Upgrade, hopefully
6) Graphics card, harddrive

From all the games you mention, I've only played the Dig. I'd say that it has the worst gameplay of all Lucasarts' adventures (and by worse, I mean less good), but it has the best friggin' atmosphere ever. The style of this game and the music make it so good, you (or at least I ) didn't care much about nonsensical puzzles. The story was quite good too.

redruM, I think the expression is "with a grain of salt", not sure though.  I think I know what it means too, but I'd rather let a natural speaker of English explain it.

(edit) My PC is acting weird, it decided to post my answer while I was still typing, geez.

I haven't played Toonstruck, but I really wanted to buy it when it first came out. My friends got me to buy NBA Live '97 instead, bleh. Rama is not my kinda game, and I heard CSI had some gameplay problems. I love the show though (rhyme ), and I recently found it for $15. Is it worth it?

I just played it, and I have to say it's excellent! Well done, Geoffkhan! I especially liked the voice acting and the music.

Turning of your PC completely would definitely help, too many distractions on a PC (I speak from experience).  Other than that, I just try to ignore anything that might distract me, I turn off the TV (sometimes I have others hide the TV controller, haha), unplug the phone, turn off my cell etc. Generally, I try to make things so there's nothing else I can do besides studying.

BTW, I'll write that essay for ya. If you write my 20-pages essay on subjectivism and mysticism in Byron and Blake.

I got around to playing your game, and I have to say I really like the graphics! Funny game, too. For some reason though, I got a "failed to initialize audio hardware" message. when the game boots.

I actually like this idea a lot! I love Doom. But I can't download the file. :/

(edit) Doh, where are my manners, welcome to the AGS community!

mätzyboy: Thought I'd answer your comments here. Thanks for the nice words! The sound effect for walking is actually a placeholder one, I wanted to change it but never got around to it.  The puzzles are simple on purpose, by the way, although they are a bit too simplistic, it has to be said. Thanks for the bug report too, sounds like the same bug as in the menu screen...

foz: I wanna make people expect the worst game ever, so that when they actually get to play it, it won't seem quite as bad j/k.

Steve: Actually, I never thought of posting some dialogs, that's a nice idea.  I'll update the first post with some more info on the story, maybe I'll add some dialogs if I find something spiffy enough. And I thought that most people had WinRAR? I actually wanted it to be an .exe, but my host wouldn't allow me that.

[In the menu screen, right click on the options instead of left-clicking. Trust me on this one.]

Hear ye, hear ye. This be my first AGS game evar. Though it's not much of a game, it has to be said.

I am not going to post any screenshots for the game, mainly because my graphics suck and then nobody would download it .

Instead, here is some info on the story. The game is set in the near future, in a city that has been invaded and conquered by demons.  The player character is a veteran exorcist named Jonathan McKinney who tries to solve the mystery behind the demon invasion, but the game is seen through the viewpoint of the villain, Sovere, an old acquaintance of Jonathan's.

I'd like to hear some opinions on the game itself (which ain't much better than the graphics, it has to be said, I'm not good with scripting either).  At least it fulfills the MAGS guidelines, or I think it does.

In any case, download it at:
http://12.22.230.41/MicroTech/Hosted/Files-A/DeadStarv09.rar

I'll try to find a better host in the near future. Be sure to read the readme file first, and especially the disclaimer. BTW, this is mentioned in the readme, but I might as well say it here too: In the menu screen, right click on the options instead of left-clicking. Trust me on this one.

Argh, finally. After many hardships, here is Dark Star (Vol. 0.9). Don't play it

Download it here:
http://12.22.230.41/MicroTech/Hosted/Files-A/DeadStarv09.rar

Well, the error message is this:

(Global script line 134)
Error: SetGUIPosition: co-ordinates must lie in range (0,0) - (RMWID,RMHIT)

And the line from my global script is:
SetGUIPosition(TEXT, xpos, ypos);

I'm using the Beneath a Steel Sky template, by the way. I apologise for posting this here, I should have made a thread in the technical forum long ago, but I haven't had the time to do so...

I've almost finished my game,  but there's this really nasty bug that causes the game to crash if you move the mouse cursor to the bottom of the screen, and I dunno if I'll have the time to fix this, 'cuz my free time is almost nonexistant...

Should I release it anyway? Besides that bug, the game is almost finished. If this sounds like a really n00bish question, well, that's because I've never released a game before.