Messages

I really, really want to do this in my game.  However, it's a lot of work, and I'm not sure if I want to do it if it detracts from the game overall.

Just do it then.

Start small and create a basic scenario that implements it. Personally, I think it depends on the game and particularly its style. In a wide-open game like The Sims, it works great. If it's some gritty Film Noir game, probably not. Maybe an option

Also see the druidic (I think it was of such) alphabet used in the Ultima games. It was only used on signs as far as I remember, so it was a neat little diversion for a player to translate something and it wasn't crucial to do so.

Let's just nevermind games. Remember Tolkien's LOTR? The elves language? It sounded cool..and well, it was based on an ancient dialect.
Thing is if you create a language yourself that doesn't have random words(like you have two sentences where a word appears differently) it might work. As for yes, usually game feature just a little bit of random language.

To be fair, Tolkien himself was a linguistic expert and English teacher, hence how Sindarin works very well as an actual language. Not that I want to dissuade people, but it is a big task to accomplish. Tho Fan in Bioware's Jade Empire RPg was interesting but a quick google shows that some people (Including Asians) didn't think it was so great.

I can't believe no one has mentioned Yahtzee's adventure games. They're not fully horror games, maybe "thriller" is a better term. They have their share of spookiness and gore though.

http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/games.htm

Start with Five Days a Stranger and take it from there.

Hello there.

I run Samods, a modding website with a history stretching back to the original StarCraft and the fan-made campaigns people produced for it. We've long since branched out to other games and genres.

You can read about the group here: http://samods.org/about

You can also read about our hosting policy here: http://samods.org/hosting

I say "policy" but there's not much to it - it's free hosting for fan-made work, because I hate it when people use those advert-filled free hosting sites. You can have simple file hosting and I'll effectively mirror them, or you can have that plus a domain and pages on our front page (Like this: http://samods.org/144 ).

So just email (ben.brown@talk21.com) or IM me if you're interested. Easy.

It's a bit gloomy to begin, it's slow but I presume that's intentional, maybe it's the part of the game when the logo's appear or a description of the setting. When it picks up at 00:15 it's really good

It works extremely well as the music for a fantasy world with an epic story to be told. It really reminds me of Quest for Glory in parts which is a good thing.

Use  - light sabre - on Darth Maul

Why is Qui-gon carrying some poo? 

I kid, I kid.

That seriously looks awesome, I'm very impressed. I wouldn't be too fussed about the perspective unless it's a quick and easy fix, it still looks great. Good work.

Achtung! I have finished recording some new samples of my voice:

Download

Readme:
MAGIC'S VOICE ACTING SAMPLES
============================

By Ben 'Magic' Brown - ben.brown@talk21.com

Included in this rar file are some voice acting samples I've put together, primarily for producers to judge if I'm suitable for any roles. I'm available for any work (Paid or free) and willing to give anything a try so feel free to contact me.

Sample Notes:

Chorus-1-1 - This is the opening line of the chorus from Henry V. I've never done any actual real-life acting of Shakespeare but I really enjoyed studying the play at school, as well as the Kenneth Branagh film adaption, and so decided to recreate it. I think the acting is well performed, though the voice not perfect and a few minor slip ups.

Frodo&Gandalf - A take of myself as both characters in one the most quoted scenes of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which shows off both a lighter, simple voice (Frodo) and a deep, wise one (Gandalf).

MaxPayne1 - A recording of Max's first line from the original video game. I focussed more on the raspy, daunting voice than the accent. A pitched version is included to show the effect that a simple effect has.

OrcWarChief-Speech - An attempt at imitating a character akin to Thrall from WarCraft 3, a noble and courageous Orc warchief.

Knight - A quick line showing off a focussed English accent, including a pitch version.


Let me know what you think of them.

Note: I run a voice acting guild (SAVAGE) but it is mostly quiet at the moment. I have a few active requests at the moment but will consider anything you have for me. PMs or mails to ben.brown@talk21.com are best.

Here's a mirror set up by myself, folks:
http://www.samods.org/staff/magic/NQ1-1003.zip

I'll play the game for myself this weekend.

[ATTENTION - FREE HOSTING AVAILABLE]

ATTENTION - FREE HOSTING AVAILABLE

I run a modding \ gaming website for fan-made content and we're always looking for new projects to host. The site is Samods - http://www.samods.org

I've posted my own AGS project Techs (An IT helpdesk simulation) on the site here. People can either get their own subdomain and put up their own website or use our CMS (Content Management System) to add pages like my Techs in the link above. Plus we have our own forum.

Where can I find out more?
Read this for details on hosting: http://samods.org/hosting
For general info on Samods read this: http://samods.org/about
The instructions will tell you what to email me at ben.brown@talk21.com - send some screenshots (in a zip if you can manage it) and information on your project then we'll take things from there.

Do you have enough space to host projects?
I certainly think so. We're only using 17% of almost 450 GB disk space and have 8995 GB bandwidth to use. I've been annoyed in the past that we've struggled to use it up since I'm paying for it but I did intentionally get more than we used just in case.

What's the catch?
Absolutely none. I'm a gamer who enjoys working on fan-made stuff (Campaigns, mods, voice acting, etc) and have attempted over many years to keep a site going for fans to put their stuff on. I want projects so we can get more visitors who in turn will give feedback for our hard work.

Sorted, cheers (especially for such a quick response). I'm still finding my way around the new interface but should get used to it soon.

That is a very useful website, thanks for posting it. I'm not an artist whatsoever so it could be very useful.

And don't worry about your age, it's how you act that matters.

Hi guys.

I've imported an old game I was working on a year ago and it's generally fine except for this error message I get whenever I enter (as you can tell below) room 9.

An internal has occurred ... (blah blah)

(ACI version 3.01.1018)

Error: prepare_script: error -18 (no such function in script) trying to run 'room_AfterFadeIn' (Room 9)

I've tried removing the AfterFadeIn script but still get the error while I can't find any mention of 'prepare_script' in the script files. Any suggestions?

Hi Linda.

My last adventure game-based project wasn't an adaption of Monkey Island but it was certainly inspired by it (What adventure games aren't?). It's an IT helpdesk simulation called Techs. Check it out here. I knew a few people who were doing an adaption of MI and I was virtually doing one myself ("The Legend of Monkey Island") but that was just one of several basic fan ideas around the time of Curse of Monkey Island around ten years ago.

For your second question, regarding Mr Jerkin's article, I agree with the first two points but not the third - there are several games that people mod without specific approval or encouragement of the industry (thus making them practically "hacks" - the work of the modders, not the companies). Some people just do what they want if it's possible. I suppose any general encouragement for game X may entice a coder to experiment with game Y, though.

For some of the specific questions of the second part, I don't actually know since I'm not in the MI community. I do know that LEC have discouraged fan-made MI games with their 'cease and desist' legal proclamations (Was it 'Shawarts' or someone who did a decent MI game that was virtually threatened, I think?), but corporate-wise that is their responsibility, to protect their copyrights.

- Is it true that corporate industries support participatory cultures, or would they actually just sue you if you would use any of their characters/worlds/etc. in your game? Furthermore, are some industries more supportive than others

Several companies are very encouraging, though some modders get irritated at companies that release tools when the programs aren't COMPLETELY suitable for what what they want to do and aren't easy and convenient enough for them to use. Blizzard and Relic, as examples, usually release a mapmaking program and sometimes other tools with their games while other developers don't give out anything and it's usually too much effort (and uncertain whether it will be appreciated) for someone to eventually code some tools themselves. Modmaking prolongs the life of a game and it can attract some gamers to it just for modding, so I think both contribute to sales somehow (thereby justifying the specific effort to the publisher). I think developers also like to see what people do with their work and not to let their ~two years of hard work pass by as another consumed product.

For whether "some industries more supportive than others" I presume you mean developers of different genres - I don't think there are any differences here, though it's easier to mod, and therefore support, certain genres. RTS and FPS games are popular while I don't know about much fan-made support for sports games.

There's a thin line with productions that border on copyright infringement. The best thing I can do here is to cite an example from many years ago in the StarCraft community. To summarise, a guy called 'The Oracle' had a very successful campaign called "Legacy of the Confederation" and as campaigns go it had all the works - new units, animated portraits, voice acting, music and even movie cinematics. I think it was when Blizzard were bought by Vivendi that they had a shake-up in their legal department and Oracle was contacted. All they wanted, however, was for his copyright text to be set with specific words, such as changing "campaign" to "mod" since this apparently includes the connotation of "fan-made" with it, thereby achieving the effect of something like helping, for lack of a better term, 'dimwitted' players to realise that his work was not an official Blizzard product. So I think this demonstrates what companies have to do - protect their copyrights. They didn't demand that he take his campaign off the internet and never do it again, I think that's an important point before people rage against "The Man"!
Blizzard, as far as I'm aware, have never severely clamped down on unauthorised programs that I know of which by legal rights I'm sure they could have. I think they just paid a blind eye to it since it wasn't worth their time or effort and they weren't a threat (Unlike, say, Diablo 2 cheating hacks or battle.net emulators).

It sounds like a very interesting study that you're doing and I've bookmarked Mr Jerkin's article (If I get the time I'll read it - I hope to at least). I run a modmaking site (www.samods.org) and I'm interested in how this applies to general fan-made productions.

That was a long post - I guess it was because I've just done a final university report (for the helpdesk simulation I mentioned above) and I know how much feedback is valued (and it adds to your wordcount ).

I hope that helps.

Edit: Lol, I just realised that this post is practically obsolete. That's my fault for not reading the whole thread. I hope you enjoy it anyway. 

Either Full Throttle (Bikers, political intrigue and VIOLENCE!) or Sam and Max (A mad scientist, a potentially vulnerable hostage situation and VIOLENCE!).

All introductions in a game have to grab the player by the ... short and curlies.  Sure, mystery is great but designer's REALLY have to draw the player in and engross them in an effort to make them WANT to play the game for at least the next few hours.

I think the IT Crowd had the potential to be fantastic, but it gradually degraded into a more generic sitcom of several characters in X situation with Y event(s) happening each episode. They could have been more like The Office in exploring ICT concepts and their effects. I got the impression that if they went this way then the writers were worried that it would confuse the audience as not everyone is IT savvy enough to get all the techy jokes.

I liked the episode where the Irish guy actually got some praise for his work and he couldn't believe it - that's one of several moments that anyone who has worked in IT will appreciate!

US \ British comedy: The usual comment (Which I don't necessarily completely believe) is that British comedy is more clever and uses concepts such as irony. The Office, for example, isn't about obvious punchlines and setups - it has a lot of observational humour, involving a viewer realising or "get" something on their own (Which is honestly far better than the standard sitcom where anyone can guess when jokes are coming which in turn is repetitve), and cringeworthy moments where something is so unbelievably awkward that one can't help but laugh out of embarassment. But hey, The Office was heavily inspired by This is Spinal Tap which was written by Americans.

Enough.

See the 'Sweet Dreams' package here. We're barely using most of our bandwidth.

[Rab C Nesbitt]

I was just posting some on another forum so here goes...

Rab C Nesbitt

Lower class Glasweigan (That's a form of Scottish ya knae) Rab is a scummy, overweight idiot and goes through the trials and tribulations of family life. If anyone can really understand this, I'll be amazed.
First part of "Work" episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R41y5k4wXC0

Red Dwarf
Awesome sci-fi comedy, with the last human, Lister, being alive left on a mining ship with the ship's AI Holly (Which has lost all of its IQ due to the years without contact), Rimmer (A smug, annoying prick and honest coward), Kat (A humanoid creature that evolved from Lister's cat Frankenstein) and, eventually, a mechanoid named Kryten. Each episode takes some bizarre sci-fi based phenomenon and throws in gross amounts of hilarity.

Liser teaching Kryten to lie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXCRHPaB36E


Big Train

UK sketch show. It's got Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) and other famous current-gen British comedians in.

"Me Not Being Married"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wey6X7gG4Y&

"Jesus and Satan The Office Prankster"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtUM3IF6rvk&mode=related&search=

I think the title shows the general gist of what I'm going to say here - I run a mod gaming site (www.samods.org) that hosts mods, articles and 'stuff' for the fans that make it and we've started hosting indie games, mainly a wholly fan-made RTS at the moment.

Since I've come into contact with the AGS forum during my Techs project, I'm wondering if adventure game makers here (with finished versions) need hosting. It would be entirely free (The only thing I ever want out of hosted projects is for them to bring attention to the rest of the site  ) but initially users would be left to set up their own site over FTP as we're redeveloping our main site.

Any thoughts?

Hello everyone. I'm the same 'Magic' that used to work on AFA. I'm surprised no one has linked (Unless I missed it) the actual FOA2 site: http://www.amberfisharts.com/

I'll try and summarise since I could go on for pages and pages. I mentioned that I used to work there since I officially left ... ooh, one year ago now I think. I originally joined up after seeing a thread on the classic Scumm Bar forum, way back around 1998 (Almost a decade :o), as a puzzle designer since that's the sort of thing I enjoy designing. I became a scenario designer and worked on a Spain scenario that was naturally part of the main plot (eventually:P), then I eventually took on the ambitious task of designing the whole game on my own (Albeit using material and basic ideas that the team had assembled) - the point of which was simply to detail and flesh out how FOA2 could be in its entirety. I didn't expect it to be perfect but I wanted to help generate ideas and it ended up at around 68 pages and 27,000 words. Since I didn't receive much feedback (Things were slow at the time, unfortunately) I wished everyone well and practically left. It wasn't just the lack of feedback especially but that the project was another part of my "internet-life" that required my attention and time so I felt it was the appropiate moment to depart.

That said, it was incredibly enormous fun over the years, especially to see the project grow and evolve, for everyone to throw in ideas, for the programmers, artists and storyline designers to develop their work and to be a part of that. I'm still on good terms with the guys and I'll happily re-join when there's enough progress that I'm required. However, it's undoubtedly had lots of setbacks, the sort  typical to any kind of fan-made effort: real life responsibilities and social ties, bouts of inactivity and restarts, to name but a few. A great deal of problems with the storyline were keeping things going by the Indy formula (See TLC and ROTLA), connecting to FOA enough (Which also restricted certain aspects) and putting in fresh and interesting ideas that we wanted. For the level of quality we all wanted, that was a big struggle, and don't forget that it took several seasoned designers and a full team of developers approximately two years to produce the original FOA!

Due to all of these problems, the team eventually decided to focus on working without major news posts and updates, so they're practically working behind closed doors and - to use the classic developers line - it'll be done when it's done. I certainly hope so, but I have no indication of when.

I came in here to say Covert Action. The basis (for any hacking like yours) is on circuits and so the player has to select the right line. You could even just have images and the player has to trace the correct line - perhaps with some mathematical equation to work out crossing wires (e.g. the correct 'end' adds up to 9 so two wires at X lengths of 4 and 5 are correct).

I loved the mushrooms in Ultima 8 (It's close enough to an adventure ). Heck, was there a storyline in there or were biting bits of huge mushrooms enough for us players to have fun?