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Hey, it'd be SUPER COOL of you guys if you could go and help Astroloco get onto Steam via Greenlight!

Here's a link to our Greenlight Page!

Here are the stats for Astroloco:

Total sprites:      1442
Sprite folders:      166
Total views:      152
Total GUIs:      21
Inventory Items:   20
Characters:      26
Dialog topics:      14
Rooms:         38
Lines of code:      9868
Recorded speech lines:   1813

I'd estimate about 2 - 3 hours of gameplay. Perhaps 4 if you're new to adventure games.

[EDIT:]

EDIT: I'm an idiot and didn't read your post properly

The problem is here:

Code: AGS

cRay.Walk(243, 245, eNoBlock, eWalkableAreas); 

You've used 'eNoBlock', which means the script carries on to the next line without waiting for the Walk command to finish. Change it to 'eBlock' and everything should work perfectly

Thanks for all the responses! I'm swamped with voice-over candidates now, which is great news (and hard work)

...

I absolutely agree. In my experience, creativity works exactly like any other part of the body - it gets stronger the more you use it.

When I first started out trying to do game design, it was so hard because I would struggle to think of anything even resembling an idea for a game. It turns out the problem wasn't that I didn't have any ideas - it was that I had too many! There were literally tens of ideas bouncing around inside my head all the time, and they were stopping me from thinking clearly. I would never bother to expand upon them because they were such tiny, 'stupid' ideas that I didn't see the point. Nevertheless, there they were - getting in the way of new ideas.

The solution was to buy a notebook and just start writing them down. It didn't matter if it was the tiniest idea or a whole plot - I had to start pulling them out and putting them onto paper.

These days I usually have two or three notebooks on the go simultaneously, and I fill them fairly quickly. Even if an idea seems pretty useless when it first comes out, writing it down frees some space in my head for something new. Also, on several occasions I've been looking for something special to add to a specific design, and I remember that I already came up with it several months ago - I just have to flick through a notebook and there it is.

If you spend all your time thinking hard to find 'that perfect game', you'll never find it. It's much better to deal with what you think of as it comes, and the perfect game will come out of its own accord eventually (even if it has to be pieced together out of parts).

Looks really great! Can't wait to get stuck in.

We've got some snazzy custom promotional cards done up, all fancy like, for Adventure X 2012!



If you're going, make sure to stop by and pick one up!

Looks amazing - can't wait to play it!

Yes, there's a lot to be said for lightening the lines. Black tends to cut into foreground elements too much (although I'm being a bit hypocritical by saying that, since Astroloco makes copious use of black outlines).

My development process is very freeform (much to the annoyance of anyone attempting to manage it). For the last couple of games, Dave and I have written the overall game structure out on paper before we open up AGS. Generally, this means at least broad strokes of story chunks and puzzles. This can take up to a week, as long as I already have a fairly good vision for what the game is about. I don't tend to worry too much about specifics at this early stage, and often leave things out with just a note to myself (e.g. 'add a puzzle here').

The important first thing for me is to get the locations and characters clear in my head. Once I've got that holistic sense of the game, I can drill down into the details. It can be tempting to just jump in with a brilliant idea for a puzzle or a scene, but it means I've lost focus before I've even started. The real disadvantage to this approach is that it makes time estimates a complete nightmare. I can guesstimate how long a part of the game will take to make, but only by extrapolating from past experience. We overshot tens of early deadlines on Astroloco for this very reason, but I seem to have gotten a lot better at making realistic estimates. Advice for newbies/people who have this problem? Always overestimate how long something will take to implement. 200% is a good margin for error, unless you're also relying on new art assets which add even more time.

Where do I start? I've yet to make an adventure game where I didn't start at the beginning, and work linearly through the story to the end. It (generally) keeps things nice and simple, but has the disadvantage that it's easy to get into a rut, where I'm stuck on one particular scene.

I'm a big fan of 'finite state machine' type setups for controlling the story sequence. Nothing too complex; it means reading through my notes and writing down all the 'story points' along with how I plan on storing them in-game. This mostly just amounts to a few global integers/booleans, and a text file with each state listed. I could do that with enums, I guess, but I don't really see the need.

My approach to dialogue and general 'flow' of scenes in the game is very fluid - I rarely have any pre-written script for the characters. A notable exception to this being scrawled notes in the margins if I thought of a particularly good line/exchange during the paper planning stage. An unintended side-effect of this approach is that the characters have a natural development arc through the story - I often don't have a real sense of a character until I've nearly finished the game. It's just like getting to know a new person, and I learn about them by writing their dialogue. Once I've done enough, a good character practically writes themselves. It can mean that I have to go back and re-write early dialogue to reflect later personality developments, but this is quite rare.

One of the things I love about AGS development is how easy it is to add in new scenes. If I have a flash of inspiration and come up with a brilliant idea for a cutscene, I can usually have it implemented within an hour. I think it gives the game a much more interesting, fresh, 'ad libbed' dynamic.

I cannot stress enough the importance of keeping 'to-do' lists. I use the built-in Windows 'sticky notes' application for this, and have the notes stuck on my other monitor, but you could just as easily use notepad. I keep separate lists of differing priorities ('high priority', 'minor' and 'wishlist') indicated by the bullet type (!, #, and *).
If I think of something that needs adding, I'll whack it onto the list and re-sort things if I need to juggle priorities. It makes sure I've always got a clear picture of what needs to be done.
For definite, though, the time it really saves my bacon is when I'm testing the game. It's pretty rare for me to test a new part of the game and not spot at least half a dozen things that need tweaking. With the sticky note open, I can jot them down really quickly and carry on testing, then fix it all in one go when I'm done.

We're getting super-close to release with Astroloco: Worst Contact, but there are still a few characters that need voicing! They're (mostly) minor characters, so it'd be great if you can do more than one.

Here's a list of what's up for grabs, and a brief description of what we're after:

Name	Description	# of lines
R4-LPH	R4-LPH, or Ralph, is Arianne's AI engineer. He's responsible for keeping the train in good, running order, and always defers to the orders of his driver. He's known Arianne for years, and is very wary of her impulsive personality. He tries his best to give her good advice, but always remains respectful. Something like a computerised butler.	69
Shady Jim	Shady Jim is an old school friend fo Ronald's, turned to a life of (not very exciting) crime. He makes out that he is part of a global conspiracy/criminal underworld, but barely even qualifies as a small-time crook. Gravelly voice (although he's only putting it on to sound 'cool').	60
Safety Attendant	The attendant is a picky, annoying health & safety officer. His only job is to make sure that proper procedures are observed, even if it means inconveniencing everyone else. Despite his existence being almost entirely pointless, he smugly believes he is one of the most important people on Gilbert Station. He has the kind of annoying, always-faux-happy voices which makes everyone want to punch him.	43
Crewman Smythe	Smythe is a simple pirate with barely two brain cells to knock together. The other pirates laugh at him behind his back, and give him menial tasks like swabbing the decks and guarding the prisoners. He speaks with naive honesty, and a worried temperament. His voice should be something like Frank Spencer.	30
Pirate Guard	A simple, stereotypical pirate type.	23
Security Guard	The second of only two members of the Gilbert Station security force, the guard is willingly subservient to Chief Shepherd. He knows the rules off-by-heart, and will never go against the letter of the law.	21
Unhealthy Pirate	An irate pirate.	13
Dr. Hubris	Gilbert Station's resident doctor. If he is required more than once, he gets increasingly resentful of having to babysit the player.	13
First Mate Hawkins	Captain Smallbeard's First Mate. Hawkins is a natural pirate, and loves the idea of flying around space doing as he pleases. He is growing tired of Smallbeard's small-time piracy, and is thinking of starting a mutiny.	12
Convoy Captain	The captain of a civilian convoy being escorted by Arianne. He's very wary of her reputation, and terrified that he and his crew won't make it back alive.	11
Evil Laughing Pirate	An evil pirate who loves to shoot at people.	1

Reply to this thread or PM me if you're interested. We can't guarantee amazing rates of pay, but we can certainly arrange things like free copies of the game (and, of course, your name in the credits).

For more info on the game, check out the Astroloco: Worst Contact production thread here.

Well, crap. I was hoping I wouldn't have to go through and set a new custom property for each room, but I might have to if there's no other way.

Is there an easy way to get the current room name ('Description' property in the editor) via script? I'd like to append it to save game names.

This may be a really obvious question, but I couldn't find anything on a quick glance through the manual.

Wow - that looks gorgeous!

Although the right direction, this -

Code: ags

    if(Game.DoOnceOnly("%s %d"),tempObj.Name,player.Room){

is totally wrong thing wrong to write.

Whoops! Yes, you're right - I got the syntax all jumbled up

Oh yeah. Just noticed that I didn't try to set 'looked_at' when you look at something 

Edit: What about something like this:

Code: AGS

Object* tempObj = Object.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y);
if(tempObj != null){
    if(Game.DoOnceOnly("%s %d", tempObj.Name, player.Room)){
        tempObj.RunInteraction(eModeLookAt);
    }else{
        tempObj.RunInteraction(eModeInteract);
    }
}

[EDIT: Ignore all this. It won't work. Check out my later reply instead!]

EDIT: Ignore all this. It won't work. Check out my later reply instead!

You can add custom properties in the editor and have them apply to all things of a certain type (i.e. Object) - see the AGS manual for more info on this.

Add a new custom boolean property like 'looked_at', and have the default value be 'false'. Now, in your globalscript, you can do something like this:

Code: AGS

function on_mouse_click(MouseButton button) // called when a mouse button is clicked. button is either LEFT or RIGHT
{
    if (IsGamePaused() == 1){// Game is paused, so do nothing (ie. don't allow mouse click)
        return;
    }else if(button == eMouseLeft)
	{
                Object* tempObj = Object.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y);
		if(tempObj != null && tempObj.GetProperty("looked_at") == false){
	            ProcessClick(mouse.x, mouse.y, eModeLookAt);
                }else{
                    ProcessClick(mouse.x, mouse.y, eModeInteract);
                }
        }
    }
}

Arr! 'Tis a good day to die!

Thanks to IndieGames.com for posting about Astroloco on their blog!

Speech is being recorded, sounds are being added... release is getting closer every day!

Oh god - tables

You should have no problem creating all the nice menus you have there using just the images, and line breaks between them (
, not </br> as you've used in a few places. The
 form is only used in XHTML, and the slash comes at the end). There's no need to use tables, which are now almost-universally regarded as bad practice (except for, y'know, displaying tabulated data).

You can also create a gradient background much more easily (and with IE compatibility) by making a 1px wide gradient in the graphics editor of your choice, then tiling it horizontally with:

Code: CSS

background-image:url('bg_gradient.png');
background-repeat:repeat-x;

You can add a 'real' copyright symbol by using '&copy' in the text (it'll get replaced with ©).

Finally, try adding some CSS rules to your links so they match the rest of the colour scheme!

Code: CSS

// Example from my website
a:link,a:visited
{
	text-decoration:none;
	color:#c52b1a; // Prevents links from changing colour after they get clicked
}

a:active
{
	outline:none; // Removes the horrible dotted outline that some browsers add when you click a link
}

a:hover
{
	text-decoration:underline;
	color:#c52b1a;
}

Hope that helps, and doesn't sound too negative! The site looks great otherwise