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Glad you liked them! Thanks.

Nowadays I'm more for electronic stuff. Psychedelic dance music, ambient, DnB. I'm also starting as guitarist in a kind of funk rock band, which suits me better as a guitarist than playing hard rock.

We'll probably make a site for the electronic stuff as soon as we finish some material... We usually just end up jamming on some beats.

Nice try, man! Can't wait 'til they're up!

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Cool.
Now back to C++...

Dammit, of course I know Sylpher were sarcastic when making this thread, but he also said in another thread that he wanted to participate in the mp3-thread that was closed. I too like to discuss this matter, so why not here? The thread hasn't been closed yet (though it by all rules should, I guess).
So instead of saying "WOWO!!!11!!! SLYPH, THATS SSOOOO PHUNNY!!!!11!!!1!!!" I try to discuss. If someone wants to discuss to, fine! We have a discussion. If you don't, well, there's no discussion. Big deal. 200 keyboard presses in vain, but so what?

Visti: What direction are you talking about?

Hm, why is everybody so discouraging? I guess it's the forum fever or something...
It's definately possible to make an action game in AGS and I think it's a great way to learn some serious scripting as well. How much have you scripted before? You'll have to be a pretty decent scripter to be able to make anything playable... That comes out of practice though. Just learn the basics at first (if/else,functions,loops). Then experiment with the interface, because that's where the harder parts usually begin. Change what happens on mouse clicks and so on. Once you've got that covered I think you can go on making an action game without much problem. Of course there are things in AGS not suited for the genre, but if AGS is what you want to use, then use it.
And don't come back to the forums until you have a better question (these "is this possible threads can usually only lead to one answer")!

Now go do some scripting, dammit! Asking around the forums won't get you anywhere.

Ok, let's make things a little clearer here...

1: The law of digital music (we can just say mp3 so that you know what we're talking about...) is slightly different between nations, but basically it's legal, or at least not quite unlegal, to download a song to your harddrive, but illegal to share songs from your harddrive. In some countries (EU wants all their members to follow this) it's also illegal to download a song and burn it to a cd. RIAA and IFPI wants to make every part of it illegal but haven't quite succeded yet, at least not in Europe (don't know about the laws in the states, so fill me in if you know).

2: When legally distributing a song there are a few problems. All copyright owners (composers, publisher, record company) should have their share as well as the performers. In Sweden this has become a big problem which means that if you want to distribute music on the net legally you have to pay absurd amounts of money (on a per download basis). Again, I'm not sure how this works in the rest of the world, but I believe the problem is quite the same. Anyway, that means you, as consumer, will have to pay more money but will get less, no CD that is. Just a bunch of 1s and 0s.

3: There are legal ways of downloading music off the net. Check out http://www.pressplay.com .  There's another one as well, just don't remember its name. Question is: Would you pay for it? Probably not. We are just so damn used to get those files for free that it's just not an option. Well, the service on that site kinda sucks anyway, but I don't believe that's the big issue. It's just basic internet behaviour (it's pretty ironic we pay enormous amount for one short SMS, but would rage if someone said you'll have to pay to send an e-mail, no matter how long - there's internet behaviour for you!). We simply believe internet to be free.

4: Mp3 is a decent format and it's not free. The format itself is owned by Fraunhofer Institutes which have been trying to get a few bucks out of the extensive use of mp3s around the world. Every time a mp3 is encoded the encoder is supposed to pay to Fraunhofer. If you make an mp3-player you should pay to Fraunhofer (that's why there's a version of AGS without mp3 support). Ogg, however is a free format. Better sound quality as well.

Ok, I'll just end here and make a little resolution out of this morale talk. Do I think mp3 downloading is bad, then? Nope. But I do think it will somehow turn the music industry upside down. We see the signs already: Most of the industries incomes comes from reissues, less and less new artists get record deals with the big ones. Hopefully all this will result in creativity over money. Less big idols, more good music.
Happy illegal downloading, friends!

(for some free mp3:s you can always go here: http://www.soundclick.com/coma     )

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You'd also be surprised how few albums and artists that actually break even (money spent gets back). The companies lives off the big artists.

In King's Quest II VGA+ they had Sierra speech while moving characters on screen, but they might have "cheated" in some way, by showing text on a normal GUI, making it look just like the in-game-speech.

Like this, maybe?

This might not be the right thread, so someone might kill me for this, but I just uploaded all songs from my old band's last two 'albums' to Soundclick. They are a little old and not really what I do anymore but I thought I'd share them with you as I'd hate them to be forever forgotten :)

Listen and enjoy:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/1/comamusic.htm

Well, I'm pretty sure the future of adventure games (if there is such...) lies in 3d environments and probably also cross-genres. I think there's a lot of console titles (most of which probably exists for PC as well) that goes in the right direction: Splinter Cell, Project Zero (which we discussed during Mittens and I didn't remember the name of - probably the scariest game I've ever played! Haven't yet tried System Shock though...) and we'll see where Broken Sword III ends up. These games have a solid story, which I would say is the essence of most adventure games, and a fair amount of puzzle solving. The difference though is that the puzzles usually are pretty basic or based on a specific action. I'd call these action-adventures. They are not FPS's, although they bear some resemblances of such, and not traditional adventures. Interfaces are almost invisible, although what I meant with transparent doesn't always have to mean invisible - there are always levels, and they're often non-linear to a point, meaning there are several ways to complete a level and it might have some impact later in the game.

I think the future of adventure games lies somewhere here. So you may all just kill me now for saying this...
But that's maybe another discussion.

The problem with a classic adventure game is that the game world is not realistic enough for an interface as transparent as explained above. But what can be done to get as realistic as possible? However, I think that's very different from person to person and there are also a lot of other things that makes you believe you're really in the game world - the entire mood the game creates. The illusion. The experience. If _everything_ in your game: story, graphics, interface, music etc, aims to maintain that illusion the player is more likely to get involved in your game. And that's what we all aim for, right? At least I hope so.
What I mean is: If your game is comical, make everything that way, is it comical but with dark undertones, state that in any way you can. Consistency, basically.

Again coming to the puzzle bit then... Puzzle, I think, must also be story driven (or sub-story driven). Why would you combine those two stupid items if you don't see the point in it? If the player ever does that, there's a design flaw. Ron Gilbert said something smart in an interview - goes something like this: "If you find a locked door and you have to get through, you have puzzle - you have to find the key. But if you find a key before you find a door, you know there will someplace be a locked door you'll have to go through." There's a difference there. The first puzzle is story driven (hopefully), the player wants to go through the door. The second puzzle is not. The player has no idea why he/she has to go through a door, just that somewhere there is a door that is locked. Mr Gilbert said that one thing they tried to do was to avoid such things. You should always find the door first.

I hope I made some sense and wasn't awfully off topic...

I can fill you in with the most important word of the Swedish language: "Bajs" (pronounced "bice", just like "vice" or "nice" or "mice" in English). It means poop but is a useful swear word in any occasion.

This was probably not the "roaches" you thought of, hehe...


Nest up: Poster for the movie you would make.

I know I for one use a lot of "high" vocabulary in not so appropriate situations... I'm often accused of sounding posh or gay, neither of which I particularily am.

Anyway, I don't know about you other non-native English users, but I think it's easier to spot bad English from someone who normally speaks my native language (Swedish that is) than someone who speaks a different language. Unless it's obvious, of course ("Is there possibilites to see naked girls?" No offense, Nacho!). Still, Swedes are usually very good at English compared to many other nationalities. If I play a German game, for example, the English is often a lot worse, but I don't really see a pattern in the mistakes as I often do in a Swedish game (or anywhere a Swede uses english). I also do find it more annoying to see bad English from a Swede, probably because I see just those patterns (Permanent Daylight features some very typical mistakes, I recall). If an englishman say something in a wrongway, however, you just think that's the way it actually should be, which is probably wrong.

Goldmund: It's interesting what you say about names. Zenon to me sounds like a pretty cool name. I will definately use a Polish guy named Zenon in some game... But your pronunciation of the letter Z is quite different from the English/German/Swedish way of saying it, right? And I also want your music badly!

Don't know if I actually got somewhere in this thread... I just think language is an interesting think to discuss.

I don't think back-to-parser will help get adventure games anywhere. Of course I say this from the perspective of not having been very fond of the old Infocom games, probably because my english 10 years ago wasn't what it is today...
However, I think an interface have to be more transparent to be appealing (you shouldn't feel you're using an interface, rather you should feel you're manipulating the game world). It has to be more integrated with the game world. Also I think in terms of intuitivity. Is a parser intuitive? I guess it is for someone used to parsers, for me it's not. However, it's probably possible to make a good half-parser interface, but then you get the problem of having to switch between keyboard and mouse all the time.
I don't know what the perfect interface would be... I'm thinking something in the line of Broken Sword combined with the verb coin. For a game I'm currently trying to write a story for I think I'll use an interface where left mouse click is walk and look and right mouse click performs a standard action for the particular object (take, use etc). However, holding the right mouse would bring up a small menu of other verbs, all relevant to that particular object.

About items and puzzle... I think puzzles and item combination should be "liberal", so that any decently logical solution to the problem is possible, maybe with slightly different results. I think many RPGs does this pretty good, with different solutions to many problems (or you just don't care about the problem). This would probably require beta testers with good feedback as the designer just can't think of all the possible ways of solving that particular puzzle.
It's kinda like in that Indy film where there's a guy waving his swords in front of Indy and instead of fighting him he just draws his revolver and shoot him. The director (mr Lucas I presume) didn't think of this, rather mr Ford just did it as a joke after being tired of reshooting the fight scene.
Another, more adventure game related, example: There's a locked door, but you can see the key is in the keyhole. Hmm... Better find a newspaper and something pointy to do that old trick. In this case it should work with a screwdriver or a pocket knife or another key. On the other hand you've got that crowbar, so why bother?
I guess this is harder to implement on 'use inventory on inventory' puzzles though.

I haven't played Black & White, but from what I've heard the interface in it is pretty inventive.

I think what Kennedy meant was that while you'd like to have some items appear several times if your character 'owns' more than one, other items, like coins, would be better off using the same inventory space (having a thousand coins in your inventory would be a little unpractical).
How about an option for each inventory to override the global setting, wether it's the default setting or not?

Slam, though I'm not the moderator of this board I have to say this: Your use of quotes is totally unnecessary and only clutters up the thread. Ben's pic was already posted, so you don't have to do it again.

Ben, I'm impressed!

LGM, the interview with the producer says nothing like that though... A shame it didn't come out but I somehow have too agree with what he says.

I believe that is changing a lot between games. In Last Crusade you there was practically no way of telling that those were the places you had to click to avoid decapitation.
The books in the library in the same game is also kind of a pixelhunt puzzle although there the only way of showing what was an interesting book was that the caption changed to "Book" from "Books".

I think you really should add more hints than that towards what you're actually searching for. I don't think there were any hints to what books you needed, although I'm not sure. What happened if you didn't get the airplane book? Because wether you embarked the zeppeling or not, you needed to start a plane up.

So basically, just like all other puzzles, a pixel hunt puzzle must MAKE SENSE (some BASS-speech here...). And definately don't leave the player walking dead if not found! If it's not in any way pointed out to the player you just get frustrated.

For example:
You know you have to search this particular room for something. If there are no captions (Walk to Book etc) or other ways of showing interesting parts in your game, you don't need any other hint than that. The player would probably search around the room and look at things in the screen that look in interesting and would after some random clicks find it.
However, if your game uses some way of pointing out interesting spots, flashing cursor or captions, you'll basically HAVE to do that on the things interesting in this room as well. If not you'll have to deal with a great deal of player frustration. Unfortunately this makes the pixel hunt quite unnecessary as the player, instead of looking at the graphics, will just brows the cursor over the screen, looking for the flashing cursor. Basically: You can't change the interface to make your puzzle harder!

Hope these random thoughts helped a little! :)

Ok, have you been scripting anything yet? If not, just forget it for now and start making something easier with AGS to begin with. No tutorial would help you if you don't know basics of scripting. Your game would be unstable and buggy and none of us wants that.

Basically you need a GUI with the actions available and you'll need things to happen when you press each button. What would happen depends a lot on which type of battle system you would like to use. Basically you'll need some sort of randomize function to see if the action was successful and a basic AI for the opponents.
The stats could either be a GUI or drawn using the Raw-functions. I prefer a GUI, but if you need a lot of text the Raw-functions are probably better.
The exp-counter is no problem. Just check after each combat if exp is higher than 1000 and do your levelling up afterwards.

But as I said, this'll all require quite heavy scripting so if you don't consider yourself a good scripter, which is basically when you think you could do most of this without any serious amounts of help.

I'm not trying to discourage you, quite the opposite, I'm trying to encourage you to start scripting. Good luck!

Is there anything specific you need help with, Sammy?

Hm, that is odd, Wolfgang. I haven't at all encountered that, but that may be because I usually out something more in the scripts than just those two lines.
What happens if you put just _anything_ between or after the GUI commands? Like this, which basically does nothing:

int test;
GUIOff (1);
GUIOn (2);
test = test;

or put it between the two.

Also, what happens if you turn on a GUI with a lower id, and therefor, if both were to be turned on, would overlap the other? Does the old still overlap the new although it remains non-interactive?