Messages

Congratulations Abstauber! I think most people knew who was going to win from the start though... it was a great entry.

I really liked the first game, looking forward to this.

Very good game. The graphics are amazing, the music is brilliant and the characters are interesting. Putting in arcade sequences was probably a bit of a gamble as there's plenty of people on these forums who don't like action games, but personally I thought they added really well to the game. Definitely a good idea to put them in-between standard adventuring sections though. The puzzle sections were pretty good too.

A few bugs I noticed (I was playing version 1.01, so these may have been fixed already)

Spoiler

- While quizzing Stanley about where your dad is, you can say "I'm looking for my dad" at any time which opens up the "Do you know where he is" option again, even if you've opened up the "Dear pride of creation" option, or already found out where he is.
- If you use the mascara on the doggy bag then use the bag with mascara on the bottle, Elfie says "That won't do any good". It works the other way around though.
- After Elfie puts the clipboards down on the ship, she can pick them up again
- Several times in the arcade sequences I died, re-spawned, then immediately died again (re-spawned on top of something). This might (or might not) have been due to me cranking the game speed up to its highest setting on a second play through?

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Also the way dialogue paused the action sequences got annoying after a while, especially when you get hit.

Anyway, a really high quality entry, I enjoyed it a lot. My highscore was 99500 on my first play through. Not quite Ben's level, but not too far off.

Just finished this and I enjoyed it, though I admit to looking at the walkthrough twice

Spoiler

(I couldn't work out where to use the rope or the needle)

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Anyway, what it lacked in graphic shine it made up for in charm. Having three playable characters, each with their own abilities was a good feature (though some text to tell you what those abilities were would have been useful). The characters had a lot of... character, and the music was good. It reminded me of finding an adventure game by chance on one of those CDs with hundreds of shareware games on, and that's not a bad thing.

I hardly come across any bugs. I saw the previously mentioned "Hotspot5" label for the tap and noticed that Dog can walk around the title screen. Also the title itself has a mouse-over label of "oAlpha". Nothing major.

Good work!

Thanks for all the comments.

@Joseph DiPerla
Thanks, I hope you enjoyed it

@Merte
Heh, yeah it was supposed to catch your attention, though it's not a bad game concept either...

@Abstauber
Glad you liked the puzzles. I though they were good when I came up with them, then became rather unsure when I started programming. I don't think I'll be doing a sequel, though an extended version isn't impossible.

Spoiler

I said that for Breakdown, and that hasn't happened yet.

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Isometric perspective is awesome, but it's a real pain to do walkbehinds in. Originally I wanted everything to be almost completely two dimensional like a platform game but it didn't work well with things like the fire escape so I switched to the current style.

@DrWhite
Glad you liked it.

Spoiler

Allowing the mug to be filled with seawater would have made an already complicated puzzle even harder to script, so I took the easy way out and stopped you doing it . Seriously though, I didn't want to have both characters being able to solve their first puzzles on their own, because you may as well play two different games.

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Ah music. Generally speaking I refuse to commit myself to entering MAGS until I'm about 85% complete, and that's usually not enough time to expect someone to compose some music in. This time I was really rushed and didn't have time to look for free music on the web either.

[Edit:]

  Guess we'll find out when a different game suddenly wins.

Edit:
I've now finished the other three entries, and all are very nice games. I'm not going to vote 'cos that wouldn't be fair, but I enjoyed playing.

@Bulbapuck
One area I got stuck on:

Spoiler

I figured I had to squash the spider in the bowl with the rock in order to get the red sphere, but the game wouldn't let me do this (nothing happened). After consulting Leon's walkthrough I concentrated on opening the gate, then suddenly I could squash the spider. I guess this is to stop the player getting into the next room without opening the gate, but I was focused on trying to get the red sphere and couldn't. Perhaps you could stop the characters being able to trade the rock (it's too big to fit under the door or something)?

Also all of the interactable areas of the inventory items seemed to be at the bottom right of the arrow, rather than the point, which made using object a little difficult.

Was that a bit of a Pan's Labyrinth reference at the end?

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Okay, I've put in a quick workaround that should let you keep on playing if the bug strikes. As I said it seems to be quite rare, so it's probably not worth updating your game unless you're having problems. Anyway, all new downloads are version 1.1 with the fix. If anyone can give me more details about when the problem happens or how to reproduce it I'd be very grateful. It's really got me stumped.

I hope this hasn't spoiled the game for anyone.

The reason I haven't updated the game page is that I misspelled the password and now can't edit the game...

PM a moderator, they'll probably be able to reset it for you.

@1$: When I tried to let Alec go through the doorway of the ship, he all of a sudden was at the top of the roof. He can't get down (too heavy & rusty) and can't get to the ship (Suzy already did). Bug? Case of game over & try again?

Yeah, that's a restart. Sorry about that, there seems to be some rare glitch in the AGS pathfinding (seriously, all I'm doing is calling a Walkto ProcessClick. I saw this bug once or twice in the hundreds of times I've played through the start but could never reproduce it on demand. I thought I'd put something in to correct it if something went wrong, but it must have slipped my mind.

If it starts to become a big problem for a lot of people I'll patch the game, but as you requested

2)Partecipators are allowed to patch their games even while the voting but I should be informed via pm or here, and only IF the game has a serious bug that makes it crash. Due to the inability of keeping track of versions of the games, I've settled to this. So you can patch your game, if it crashes or if it can't be completed.

[Features:]

Robbing the Princess

Download

Alec and Suzy have tracked a stolen cargo crate to the dock, but it looks like it's already been stowed onboard a ship called The Princess. Playing as both characters you'll need to help them find a way onboard and into the hold.

Features:
*Classic 320x240 res graphics
*Several puzzles of different difficulties
*Occasional bursts of animation
*Two playable characters
*Unlockable director's commentary
*As much plot as Mission Impossible 3

This was an entry to the November 2009 MAGS competition and was made over the course of 25 days.

All comments/feedback/bug reports welcome.

Changes
Version 1.16
Fixed a bug where the game would crash when using one of the crates when both characters weren't in the same room. Thanks to LimpingFish for reporting this.

Version 1.15
Fixed a section where the game would appear to hang when you changed rooms with the commentary on, thanks to paolo for reporting this.

Version 1.10
There is a *very* occasional bug when walking around in the dock scene where Alec will seemingly randomly jump to the roof of the pub. Because he cannot climb down from there this effectively renders the game unsolvable and forces the player to restart. Version 1.10 should now detect if Alec has jumped to the roof, and immediately jump him back down to the ground again.

If anyone can figure out how to reliably reproduce this bug please post here, PM or email me and I will try and work out a more permanent solution.

Robbing the Princess

Alec and Suzy have tracked a stolen cargo crate to the dock, but it looks like it's already been stowed onboard a ship called The Princess. Playing as both characters you'll need to help them find a way onboard and into the hold.

****

This is the first MAGS I've done since becoming full time (I was a student supposed to be revising for exams with my first, and only worked three days a week for the other two) and I really noticed the lack of time. I've done much less testing and polishing than I wanted to, and there's a few areas I'd like to have done differently but the game is finished, it's on time and hopefully it's bug-free. I hope you enjoy!

Ah, I'd got numbers two and three but Darth is too fast 

Tokbox. Now.

Really interesting and inspiring. I never really thought about making an AI controlled 'game' like this before, but now I'm getting loads of ideas. If only I didn't already have a couple of complicated programming projects on the go...

There's probably ways of fixing the slowdown, possibly diving up up your repeatedly_execute code into several sections, and only processing one each frame?

Anyway, nice work!

Nice work! I always thought AGS could handle Guitar Hero, but I'm surprised at how smoothly it runs. By the way, is this of any interest to you? It's a Frets on Fire song I did a couple of years ago.

Ah Ben, missed your birthday. Hope you had a good one!

Congratulations Babar! I was going to write short reviews on each game, but my ISP decided that it would be good fun to break my internet connection.

Finished four, stuck on three and not played two yet... this is hard work

Trouble downloading yours, Pinback... or mediafire is failing me

Same here.

(Four games down, two to go...)

I'd find inbuilt support for multi-dimensional (or at least 2d) arrays really useful... but I'm trying to make non-adventure games with AGS. I can't think of much use for them in your average adventure game, but if there's enough support maybe CJ will make it a higher priority.

There were 7 games in the first MAGS competition I entered (September 2009 2007), but I don't know if that's the record.

I played Ted McBinky and Steamsquares last night, eagerly awaiting Pinback's entry!