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There have been numerous discussions about that recently, and with the rise of smartphones, now there's a consensus that there should be only one click (left click).
I suppose that's why Wadjet eye now has the "look at" directly displayed when you hover, without even clicking. I personally hate that, but I understand where they're coming from.
The alternative is verbcoin, but without having to hold. The left click opens the coin and a second left-click selects the action.

I've installed the sources of scummvm and I'm running it in step-by-step debug because I had this crazy idea that I'd love to dump all graphics of Cruise for a Corpse into some sprite sheets.

As far as I know, the majority of things that moved in-game were vectors, so I don't think there will be equivalent bitmaps to dump.

Well they're stored as vectors -- but on-screen they're ultimately rendered as pixels. So I want to save the whole thing as sets of sprites, in good old PNG files.

1) I think the graphics are gorgeous (in an Amiga 64-colors way)

32 colours, without HAM.

Yes, sorry. I never had an Amiga but I can spot when there ar emore than 16 colors but less than 256.

- if there were some proper music and sound effects (the current music is painful because chiptune doesn't fit 1930's French opera/jazzy music well)

I had the Amiga version, and remember the music being okay (and very effective for the intro sequence), but playing the game was pretty much silent.

The intro music is cool. But then, later in the game, when you visit some rooms there are some extremely invasive chiptune melodies. They make you want to flee the room immediately.

- if the interface was slightly pimped up (less pixel hunt and more hinting)

...I never finished it, and always seemed to get stuck at the same point. You could 'talk' to the wooden mermaid to get a code, which I think would give you a hint from the copy protection wheel. It is on the bucket list to try it again one day...

The wooden mermaid thing was just an easter egg (if it ever existed). The terrible thing with that game is the complete absence of hinting which forced you to patrol the entire ship again and again in the hope of spotting a new object having appeared somewhere.
Apart from this gameplay aspect, the story itself was pretty cool (whodunit)

I've installed the sources of scummvm and I'm running it in step-by-step debug because I had this crazy idea that I'd love to dump all graphics of Cruise for a Corpse into some sprite sheets.

There are several reasons :
1) I think the graphics are gorgeous (in an Amiga 64-colors way) and I think it's a pity that they're not used as golden-age pixel art tribute as often and as easily as Lucasarts graphics.
2) I realized that this game could be much much more fun :
     - if there were some proper music and sound effects (the current music is painful because chiptune doesn't fit 1930's French opera/jazzy music well)
     - if the interface was slightly pimped up (less pixel hunt and more hinting)

The fact that the story isn't really branched (no big choices to make) makes it easy to revert-engineer.

I'd love to make it available as a template for AGS and then see what happens.

EDIT: I was daydreaming and I'm wondering who currently owns the rights to this? It was Delphine software --> Virgin --> ??

Arbitiarily low entity/pointer consttrains and other engine limits. It's time to...

I don't think it is worth to expect something like this in AGS. It's easier to choose another engine that is already based around 3D. AGS will not necessarily suit your needs.

For example, you could sugest those features in the subfourm dedicated to MonoAGS http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?board=29.0

[and yet]

Well, you say it's a folly, and you challenge the vocabulary (patterns, motifs, elements...) and yet you give a perfect answer and you perfectly understood the idea.
Well done and thank you!!!

Anyone has more ideas? That can't be all puzzle models (by the way, every "logic" puzzle need not be included. It's just a logic puzzle)

An extreme example of "Staircase to nowhere" is in monkey island 2, where a hint is hidden after an absurdly long dialog tree of color names.
Each color name can only be guessed once, they are all false. After exhausting trough the long list of responses, [the rest of the adventure gets unlocked].

Great example

[dystopian twice]

By the way I never had the opportunity to say this, but I loved how immersive is the world you created.

Especially as a French person: Since it's inspired by New Orleans, everything has this flavor of French, without being really French. What I'm trying to say is that for me, this game is dystopian twice : because it's set in this alternate industrial world, and also because it's like my own cultural 19th century but with unexpected differences.

[Liquid in a container]

Liquid in a container
There's some sort of liquid, usually water, and you need to pick it up by putting it in something, like a bucket.
Seen in : Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Deponia, and many many others.

Yeah, I know that might seem a bit too generic. But it is usually a genuine attempt at a puzzle in adventure games. Simply figuring out that the container can be used as a container is usually part of the puzzle.

I would rephrase it like this :
Liquid in a container
Somehow there is only one container in the world to carry this liquid.
Seen in : Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Deponia, and many many others.
Variation: You need to take an object immerged inside a container. Somehow you can't just drop the liquid on the ground, you have to find another container to swap.
Seen in : Last Crusade

[Mazes]

Mazes

Code Breaking

You need to define them. That's too vague as it is.

Tell me if this is what you had on mind :
Maze
You must walk from room to room and find the exit through trial and error.
Seen in : King's Quest VI (minotaur), Kyrandia 1 (dragon cave)

Code breaking
You must decipher or encode a word or sentence, by finding the meaning of each letter or word.
Seen in : Indy & the fountain of youth (demo), when you have to type in a sentence where all the words are pictograms and you get the definition of each pictogram from translated sentences written somewhere else.

I'm adding these new ones :

Burning candle
You're in possession of an object that consumes itself and you must use it before it's entirely gone (timer). There are two variations (seen below). Variation #1 requires you to use the object (the object is useful at the end), while variation #2 doesn't require you to use the object (it's useful for as long as it hasn't run out)
Seen in : Variation #1 = Monkey Island when you must use the grog onto the cell before the grog melts the mug.
Variation #2 = Kyrandia 1 when you must pick up fire berries and exit the maze before they run cold (and stop making light)

Walk at the same pace
Walk at the right speed and stop when you're being told to stop, until you win the puzzle
Seen in : Inside, when you have to walk in line, walk forward and stop a the same pace as every zombie in the queue, so that the video camera does not detect you amongst them.

and those from the video

Distract-and-grab
A variation of the timed puzzle where you perform an action that will distract an NPC (he will look away or move away teporarily) and you must perform your winning action while he does so.
Seen in : Maniac Mansion, when you ring the doorbell and you can steal stuff from Weird Ed while he goes to answer the door.

Tracking
An NPC leaves the room and you must follow him/her from room to room until he/she unwillingly leads you somewhere.
Seen in : Monkey Island, when you follow the shop owner into the forrest.

Memory-based
you see a sequence that you must repeat.
Seen in : monkey island when you must open the safe by repeating the combination that you've sen before. Monkey Island 3 when you must repeat the right banjo notes sequence during the duel.

Staircase to nowhere
None of the dialog options that you're being offered are interesting, but it's only after exhausting them all that you will be offred a new, hidden option.
Seen in : Monkey island 2, when you have to exhaust the absurdly long list of colors offered to the player as dialog options in response to Herman Toothrot teaching you philosophy.

Search engine
you can virtually type anything into a search box but you have to be clever with your choices to get interesting information
Seen in : her story. Primitive version of this puzzle seen in : Monkey island 2, when you have to find the wreckage coordinates in the giant book index of the library.

The password is on a sticker
You must fond a password and it's written somehwere around
Seen in : an advanced version of this puzzle is found in unavowed: There's a sticker that says "old man, man, horse" and another sticker that says "leg". The code is "3, 2, 4", the number of legs of each of those.

[Put thing in hole, aka key]

This is meant to be an extensive list of every possible type of adventure games puzzles ever used in any type of videogames.
You're invited to complete it.

If you read carefully, you'll see that some puzzles are very generic and don't need to be repeated in the list. They can be summarized in an asbtract description, as it's meant here. don't focus on the situations, focus on the mechanism.

Put thing in hole, aka key
There's a hole with a specific shape, and you must find an object tat fits in it.
Seen in : the dig, where you don't really know what you're doing but every hole seems to have a crystal with the same shape meant to fit in it.

Tool
There's a contraption that can work only with a specific tool, that you're expected to identify. You're supposed to understand that it's irreplaceable because of its shape and size.
Seen in: any game with a screwdriver. the tool can have an approximate subsitute, like the spear head in Fate of atlantis or the Monkey wrench in MI2.

Alternate reality
You can visit the same room either in another dimension or in a different time period, and whatever you do here will affect the state of the room in the other "reality".
Seen in : Day of the tentacle (future/past rooms), Unavowed (when you're a ghost nobody sees you while you visit the room)
See also : Only when the lights are off

Remote trigger, aka magnet
The lever in the room is blocked by something that you are never meant to overcome, but you can remotely trigger the object with some other device.
Seen in : Monkey Island, when you steal the key using the magnet. Nelly cootalot, when you work out the lift controls to drop a crate onto the villain.

I can't walk there
There's a part of the room where you can't go but there's counterintuitive way to go there.
Seen in : Fate of Atlantis, when you crawl down the ventialtion shaft to spawn in a different room behind the robot statue. Flight of the amazon queen, when you're in the amazon city and must take the proper corridors to wlak on the other side of a channel.

Trap
There's a critter in a room that walks around seemingly randomly and you must wait for the right time or push it to catch it.
seen in Fate of Atlantis, when you put the ribcage in a pond and wait for a crab to get caught. Also seen in Fate of Atlantis when you wait for the jungle rodent to move in front of the right jungle path.

Hidden dialog
There's a dialog option that will appear only if you follow a specific dialog options sequence and/or exhaust all dialog options. If you choose the wrong option then the dialog "reboots" and the hidden option goes unnoticed.
Seen in : Fate of Atlantis, when you try to convince the bouncer to let you in. Any dialog line where you criticize Madame Sophia brings you back to dialog start. The final winning option is a compliment.

question-answer fight
Any sentence said by the other characer must be answered by you with the corresponding line of dialog until you win.
Seen in : Monkey island (swordfight)
Seen in : Monkey island 3 (insults fight on the seas)
Not to be confused with : memory game, where you have to reproduce a sequence (e.g. the banjo fight in Monkey Island 3)

Have someone else do it
You cannot perform the action yourself but you can ask your sidekick to do it.
Seen in : fate of Atlantis (ask Sophia to do it)

Wait for the right time
The action that you perform will succeed only if you click at the right time / if it matches some not-too-obvious ingame timer.
Seen in : Monkey Island 2 when you must spit precisely when the wind is blowing.

The parrot knows
A dialog option in suggested to you by a character that seems to talk unrelated nonsense.
Seen in : Fate of Atlantis, when the parrot says "hermocrates", which is actually the answer to Sternhardt's riddle. Until then the player character is offered a seemingly infinite number of wrong answers.

Follow the navigator's head
In every room the player must consult a tracking device that tells him to go North, South, East or West.
Seen in : Fate f Atlantis, when you check the orichalcum fish on a string. Monkey Island, when you ceck the navigator's head.
See also : Listen to the noises

Listen to the noises
In every room the player must listen to a sound that tells him/her to go North, South, East or West.
Seen in : Telltale Monkey Island.
See also : Follow the navigator's head

Trigger something in a different room
You activate something in the current room, expecting it to have a consequence in another room, off-screen.
Seen in : last Crusade, in the catacombs, when you unplug the plug on the ceiling and it emptues the pond the room above.
See also : Pull something from a different room

Pull something from a different room
In the passageway leading to the previous room where you left an object, you can still (barely) see that object. You find a way to pull it into the current room.
Seen in : Fate of Atlantis, when you whip in a statue head into the current room, in the Crete labyrinth.
see also : Trigger something in a different room
Empty pond/fill pond

Approximate recipe
You must follow a recipe but you use substitue ingredients, based on puns or resemblance.
Seen in : Monkey Island (use black powder instead of pepper). Kyrandia 2 : all the magic spells.

Disguise
You are forbidden to walk past a certain area unless your character is wearing some outfit
Seen in : Last crusade, where you have to dress as a nazi or as a waiter.

Coordinates
Your guide asks you "where do you want to go?" and you must answer with a set of coordinates that were provided to you separately. Only the proper combination of coordinates works (e.g. "12 degrees South, 6 degrees North")
Seen in : Monkey Island 2 (to find the wreckage of the ship) , Fate of Atlantis (when you go down the entrance of Atlantis in a scaphander)

Repeat until it works
Trigger a room element until it does something. The first attempt doesn't work. You're being given a hint that, even though unsuccessful, every attempt is not the same as the previous one.
Seen in : (I can't remember, but basically the character says something different every time he fails, and eventually succeeds)
See also : Exhaust neverending dialog

Exhaust neverending dialog
Say the same line of dialog repeatedly to a character. He will refuse to do what you ask every time, but finally accepts afyer many attemps.
You're usually given a different answer at every attemp, to give you a hint that each attempt is different.
Seen in : Monkey Island, when you ask the navigator head to give you his magic necklace, and he'll refuse numerous times. All you have to do is to insist.
See also : Repeat until it works

did you listen to what I said?
A character asks you a question about something he said earlier in the game. You need to give the right answer.
Seen in : Fate of Atlantis, when Trottier asks you what his favorite passtime is.
See also : Did you read the book?

Did you read the book?
A character asks you a question about something you're supposed to have read. It's a game designer trick to make sure you're ready to go on with the adventure.
Seen in : Fate of Atlantis, when Trottier asks you questions about the contents of the Lost Dialog to prove to him that you have read it.
See also : Did you listen to what I said?


What would you add to this list?

Yes. More generally, this might be a direction to follow for improvement : One should be able to configure the "ground point" of objects and characters. The fact that it's tied to the lowest pixel can be really annoying if there's, let's say, a cast shadow below. That means that the .z property should be universal, and, why not, configurable in the GUI.

We should really improve all the templates (BASS, etc.) to include custom, clean confirmation GUIs and fonts by default. The hard-coded stuff must go! (that's just my opinion)

usually when I'm searching weird operators I just type the name of the character in full letters into Google, followed by the name of the language, and there's always some stackoverflow question that deals with it. All I have to do then it to spot the official name of that operator somewhere in the discussion (here : "conditional operator") and then feed it again in google.

Example :

Code: ags

what is "C#" "question mark" operator

Could someone direct me to discussions regarding the new pathfinder? Who has tried it? Has anyone witnessed enhancements? If so, in which specific cases? I know I have small pathfinding issues in some specific rooms of my game and I'm curious if I might fall in the scenarios where there is improvement, or what I should change in my end to fix the issues.

I'm really enjoying it so far.

If you ever make a version 1.1:

Spoiler

In the "Désirée Lathan" case, there are two letters from a guy who's in love with her. In the pictures representing the sprites, there's the date when the letter was sent. But then in the case book's "documents" tab, the letters are not dated. i have no idea if it's important for the case, but I was slightly frustrated by that, because there's something about her changing her last will in late August, and the lover's letter as written in September of something. By not having the date, I (as a player) feel like I'm deprived of some information that would help me picture the chronology in my mind.

[close]

Isn't there an option in the Editor to attach a music to a room?

There is no such option.

This option existed before version 3.2, where this and few other room options were deprecated in favor of scripting. It still exists internally for importing old projects but not displayed on Editor UI.

Since Unavowed has the same issue according to cdavenport, couldn't it be that the feature wakes up somehow, even without it being available in the UI? Something to do with the game having been developed in earlier AGS versions at the beginning, or even the Editor screwing up some import or room creation at some point?

This is exactly what I had imagined :  http://creamy.r.c.f.unblog.fr/files/2018/10/photo-1.png

[bottom of the walls]

KyriakosCH, I guess that if you post here, it is because you'd like constructive feedback, so here goes :

You obviously don't have issues with modelling buildings. So you should focus on what comes after.

- I suggest you start using the practice of "painting" the models (I know it's possible in Blender) in order to add dirt in the right places. Usually at the bottom of the walls, and below windows and gutters. That's usualy what makes a building look like a building.
It doesn't have to be very accurate. Basically, just make the main corners dirty, like you would do if you were paiting a real-life model.

Spoiler

[close]

- I suggest you start working with your lighting straight away. You rarely show your models with a crude, strong lighting coming from above, but most of the time with a mild diffuse light, which makes them look like models. It would help us having a better idea with a proper sunlight.

Isn't there an option in the Editor to attach a music to a room?
If yes, then there would be the automated room music, set with the editor, and another music that cdavenport plays manually, as the actual intended music.