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[Yes, that's the definition I chose]

My problem with your argument, M. OUXX, is that you seem to perceive casual games as some sort of homogeneous entity designed by marketing people and molded into its most commercially viable form through focus group testing.

Yes, that's the definition I chose. It was a choice. I assumed from the beginning that we were talking about the kind of "casual gaming" that's accepted by the very same people who invented that term (communicants and marketers of the video-games industry).
As a reminder, a "standard" casual game (as understood by those people) is based on very few golden rules :
1/ Attractive immediately (no learning curve and an appealing feel),
2/ Addictive (there's a whole theory about that: a) Small, easily reachable goals, b) Apparently increasing rewards, c) Unreachable, distant goals)
3/ Can be interrupted any time (players should be able to easily switch in and out of the game's context - both the plot and the actual application).

There are small games that don't require a huge investment or a large team, in fact you'll have a lot better chance as an indie developer to compete in the casual market than against "hardcore" games

Yes, but there you broaden your scope. You're talking about Indie games in general. And then, inside Indie games, there are those that are casual and those that are not. Most of them have a strong casual factor, though:
They're "attractive immediately" (golden rule #1 above). How? For 2 reasons:
1/ Because they appear on a catalog. You see a picture and a description, and you buy it, like you'd buy a cheap gadget.
2/ Because, very often, they're light and it'll be very quick to download and run them.

Allow me to repeat that I'm not saying that all Indie Games are casual. Quite the opposite. The concepts must not be confused.

A lot of developers DO take pride in their games, and DO have standards that they won't compromise. Maybe they won't move quite as many units, but at least their games will be out there for people to buy, on Steam or through the App Store or whatever.

Exactly. And for that, they have to fit in an industry standard: light games, hosted on a standardized platform, that appear on an endless catalog.
It seems like an opportunity to innovate. My opinion is that it's indeed like a Renaissance of the creativity in the video games, but it will be a short one. Read below why.

You pointed out that commercial interest forced standards 20 years ago. I'd say it happened more recently, when video games went past the stage where a guy could create a blockbuster alone in his garage (I exclude the world of consoles, that moved at a completely different pace). Let's say it happened 10 years ago.
My point here is that this scenario always happens in 2 steps:
1/ Nexus of creativity, when everybody can create something and has a different idea of innovation
2/ the industry eventually understands the underlying mechanisms, creates a mould, and starts mass production

At the moment we are on the verge of phase 2, after what I'd call the "broadband renaissance": the industry has just understood 2 things:
1/ It's no use investing a lot of money immediately. Add downloadable contents if the game is a success (think of TellTale games)
2/ Flood the gamers with contents of averagely lower quality. For that, use Indie games makers, amongst other things. It's not by chance that Gabe Newell opened Steam to Indie games. The very existence of Steam depends on content.

The industry calls for content (whatever its quality), to sustain consumption. Not the opposite. Consumers would be better off with a slower pace and high-quality products. But they're force-fed with "games contents", like they've been force-fed with "TV contents" with the arrival of cable and satellite. Just like "casual gaming", the word "content" is a word invented by the industry for the industry.


The conclusion of what I wrote is that, once again, I'd love to see high-quality games. And I'd love to raise the intellectual challenge of games.
But I'm pointing out that the mutation that's happening now is out of control. It's good AND bad at the same time. If, like me, you think that consumerism is the plague of humanity, then you'll find it mostly bad. Casual gaming is an opportunity for a few artists to make better games BUT the very nature of what's happening will also pull the quality down (especially in the case of those games strongly relying on an immersive plot, like Adventure games -- because it obviously conflicts with casual gaming's golden rule "easily in and out").

Both will happen at the same time. And good games will be hidden by a mass of mediocre games. And they will still be adventure games -- but casualadventure games. Not necessarily Indie, but necessarily casual.

Provocation for the mods: if a game has only one screen, can there be only one screenshot?

. . .

Good analysis of the discussion. My thesis is that both sides are off topic. My thesis is that casual gaming is a paradigm led by economics, not artists. Therefore, our opinions (whatever our side) will eventually be worthless.

If I take your post:
- we are not the intended audience of these games. Very true. We're what I called "the experts" in my very first post.
- we're basically arguing whether or not training wheels are valid in learning to ride a bike. That's indeed the argument here. But that's not the right argument. IMHO, casual gaming is not only about the aid offered, but about the whole gameplay. It's something outside the game. The bikes we're talking about don't exist yet, but they're coming. And they won't even look like a bike. And they won't be designed by bike designers.

And the hint of paranioa you mentionned doesn't help having a clear vision.

EDIT2: Name one person that has the salvaged version of the Quake Console module that Ashen scripted with me some years ago.

I think I have it - I wanted to compare it with mine. Remind me this week end by PM (I'm at work at the moment).

AA 1360 lines/second.
DL 96928 lines/second.

Woaw, I didn't expect that at all.
The reason why I was considering comparing AA and DLx3 is because I'm thinking of doing a fake AA using 2 grey lines and one white line (total: 3 lines). But considering the results, I could even afford plenty more gray lines...

In this discussion there's a huge confusion between the concepts of "simple UI" and "simple gameplay", which are fundamentally different (even though a simple gameplay often requires a simple UI, of course).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does the issue also happen in that scenario :

Code: ags

  DynamicSprite *test;
  test = //any non-null value
  test = //any non-null value

It would mean that you simply can't affect a value to a variable of type  DynamicSprite * twice in a row. It has to be null.



EDIT: Hey wait a minute. did you edit your very first post? If not, then I apologize, I completely misread it.

it would be great if one could download all single modules.

Yes. That wiki page is becoming really obsolete. The modules should be sorted by version compatibility, if possible.

Additionally, why not create a big pack with most interesting modules (see Calin Leafshade initiative), also downloadable on the wiki page.

Another solution would be to include the stable modules in a subfolder of AGS, a bit like "autoit" does with the subfolder called "UDF" (user-defined functions) -- which  turns out to be of great value. (see http://www.autoitscript.com/wiki/UDF )

EDIT: rephrased my post.

Yeah, I've noticed that the compiler sometimes doesn't really like complex expressions between the square brackets of an array.
The few times it happend, as you already mentionned, I used the workaround to use a temporary variable :

temporary variable : = complex expression
array[temporary variable] : =   ...

Also, quite a lot of players consider themselves hardcore gamers and yet "are not compelled to figure it out for themselves" while playing adventure games. Unless they receive "a very clear explanation what is required of them". But the explanation usually given by those players is not that they are casual players, but rather that they simply prefer other game genres and there's only so much time they will devote to an adventure game. Is that really something different? To me those people are at the same time causal players and hardcore players then - their approach depends on the played game's genre.

You raise a very good point. There is a defintion issue.

Casual gaming has a pretty final definition (at least for people who intend to sell them): It's a game that people play on and off; but they keep being attracted to it. And it must not scare them in the first place.

However, is "Hard Core gaming" the strict opposite of "Casual gaming? You proved that it's not.
In the case of avdenture games what is a hardcore gamer?
a) Someone who'll devote a lot of time (in a row?) to the game?
b) Someone who'll buy all (good) adventure games available?
b) Someone who'll try to "beat the game" with no outside help?

Well, I think that whatever the answer, it's pointless to decide, because it's not what will make the casual games.
The golden rule of casual games is that the player:
a) gets immedialy into the game (understand the rules and is attracted by the plot/graphics),
   AND
b) that the player gets addicted by small quests with immediate rewards, seemingly increasing in value.

"What room will be left for 'real' adventure games?"

Who says that the overtaking of casual games will drive adventure gaming to extinction? Only you are saying that. What the rest of us are saying is that we shouldn't have to redefine adventure games just to keep them alive. That's just nonsense.

My post was only meant to insist that the difficulty to mix "adventure game" and "casual" won't stop the industry. They *will* succeed. Flawlessly. And I predict a LOT of over-simplified adventure games to come in the next few years - while there will be less "good" ones.

However, I completely agree that it's up to lovers of the genre to keep it up. That I never denied.

[Experts vs. unskilled people]

OH MY GOD!

This discussion, after only a few posts,  is already the *perfect* illustration of a problem that's at the core of our "society of rationalization": Experts vs. unskilled people

Experts are convinced that the trend that's opening their specialization to the mass is only temporary, and that it won't work anyway because people are too stupid.

Don't get me wrong -- I love point n'clicks and I HATE simplistic games, especially those casual games where the gamer is kept captive with cheap tricks such as achievements, simple quests, and ... particle effects.
I'm definitely for clever games, etc.

However, it'd be lying to yourself to think that "casual point-n-clicks will never work" or "casual point-n-clicks are impossible to produce". For example, the argument "if people don't like to think they're not meant for Adventure games" is completely flawed. this idea has been proven wrong in every aspect of our "rationalized" societies :
-150 years ago, handcraft (that required one single expert master/artist, who was taking his time) has been replaced with mass production (that requires thousands of guys whose only skill is to screw a bolt).
- 10 to 5 years ago, companies started replacing super-skilled IT guys with offshore guys performing super simple tasks. For example, nowadays you have only one sysadmin for 500 guys who know only how to fix Word.
- As we speak, Electronic Arts is wiping out Hard-Core gaming as we know it from the face of Earth, and has introduced casual gaming everywhere (their boss said that "games are too complicated").

When you think about it, WoW is some sort of casual gaming compared to early Dungeon-based games. And it was only the first wave of changes. Nowadays, all new online games, even "serious" RPGs, are based on mini-quests and many of them use micro-transactions.

Even Tales of Monkey Island : Short episodes, ultra simple UI, etc.


Casual gamers like to play and think. they just don't like to spend time on learning how to play. And companies will give them what they want, since they're the majority of players. Hard-core gamers have absolutely no impact on that. Only the market rules.

Don't underestimate the casual gaming "niche". Yes, casual gamers couldn't finish adventure games as we know them. But can you predict what they'll be like in 5 years, after an army of consultants has debunked all the genre's internal gameplay mechanisms and has produced the ultimate "casual gaming adventure game"? The "Farmville" of adventure games?

Once again, I pray that it won't happen. I'm just realistic. When the casual adventure games will take all the market, what room will be left for "real" adventure games? They already almost died after the mid-90's.

Sorry to dig up the thread, but I thought some might be interested in that video :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvhCLXEeSDQ&feature=player_embedded#!

I expresses what can be extrapolated from "my thoughts act on the world". No more, no less. Serious stuff.

I'm still stuck in this cave...right now...

Dude, you've got an utterly-powerful wifi antenna!

Yes! Congrats.

I pictured you with huge boobs and horny for sex, but that's just me.

How's that for a HUGE paintover provocation? 

"It's about a Doctor tunred researcher"
Screenshot: "I was hoping you have expertise in alchemy"

Wow, that guy has many skills! 

He probably photoshopped it to remove the beard for job-seeking and the like. This is the unaltered, original version of the photo:

I believe the beard is here to hide something.

Crimson Wizard = Gordon Freeman!
I also pictured you with a beard. the power of profile pictures! Would that mean that Ben304 is not pixellated in real life?

One last question: Unfortunately, I can't test your line-drawing implementation myself. Did you run some speed tests? How does it compare to AGS' built-in DrawingSurface.DrawLine ? (I know that your one is antialiased and DrawLine is not, but I can compare yours with DrawLine x 3).