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Woot! Finally

...I just realized I might need to replay the entire saga. It's been so long half of the jokes might be lost on me now!

Thanks! 

Considering this is the 17th game in the series, Chapter 5 contains lots and lots of references to events and people I don't bother to explain very well in this installment... a bit like the new season of Futurama.

Lol, I remember these series be among the first AGS games I played back 10+ years ago. I've always wondered how the story ended.

I hope it will be worth the wait.

And thanks for the tech suggestions. In the back of my mind, I was starting to think I might have to spend my declining years remastering the old games so people would be able to experience them in the future, when we'll all be plugged into the Meta pods. Now I don't have to worry about that. I can spend my golden years in Las vegas, sitting in front of the slot machines! 

As a quick follow up, I realize that some of you may have never played a Barn Runner game (or haven't played one for a long time). I didn't want to clutter up the already too long post above with even more information, so here is what you need to know about the Barn Runner games. First off, the numbering system is broken beyond all repair by this point – doubly so after I started releasing side-stories in the series. But here are the games and the order I would recommend playing them.

Keep in mind the older games are OLD and you might need to do a little work to get them running on a modern system. (I keep an old gaming rig around just for my older games, but I know not everyone has that option).

The Armageddon Éclair (parts 1 and 2)
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/488/

The Ejection Rejection
https://www.barnrunner.com/barn2.html

Don't Jerk The Trigger of Love
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/486/

The Mayor's New Dress
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1593/

Christmas Soup
https://www.barnrunner.com/xmas0.html

The Prick Who Came In From The Cold
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/476/

Cyclone Alley
https://www.barnrunner.com/xmas1.html

The Rich Dame Who Cut The Cheese
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1662/

Fully Automatic Mojo*
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1381/

Wreck The Halls
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/967/

The Forever Friday 1
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1041/

The Forever Friday 2
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1099/

The Forever Friday 3
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1443/

The Forever Friday 4
https://www.barnrunner.com/games/BR5_Game_4.rar

Pucker Factor*
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2459/

The Forever Friday 5
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2714/

That's a lot of games and I certainly don't expect you to play them all, but that's the Barn Runner series, not in the order it was released, but in the order the side-stories fit into the larger story. Games marked with an * have a special "AGS Awards" upgrade patch on my website that adds a little bit of extra content to commemorate a nomination or win in years past.

Sorry for the double post!

[It's here at last!]

It's here at last!



Barn Runner: The Forever Friday - Chapter 5
"An Unexpected Meanwhile"

More than FIFTEEN YEARS in development*, this game is the latest piece of the Forever Friday saga. Chapter 1 was released in 2008, if you can believe that. The most recent AGS-made installment, Chapter 3, was released way back in 2011. (Chapter 4 was released the following year, in 2012, but it was made with Game Maker, so we don't talk about that one around here ). In all that time, I have been working on this thing on and off, through a tremendous amount of personal ups and downs: The death of a parent, the loss of a job I'd held for years, a pretty nasty motorcycle wreck, the crashes of two different hard drives, the sudden end of the longest long-term relationship I'd ever had, a new career, numerous night classes, an exciting smidge of identity theft, the rise and fall of The AGS Podcast, and a move across the country from the dry, dusty hell of a beautiful desert to a lush, green, sticky land of sock-dampening humidity that I'm still struggling to enjoy. Goodness! What an adventure! But here it is at last! And just in time for not only Christmas, but also the 20th anniversary of the Barn Runner game series.

I released the first prototype Barn Runner game (The Case of the Runaway Robot) on my personal website all the way back in December of 2003. I created my AGS forum account (and blessed the world with my adorable dancing cow) about a month later. During this time, I created something I considered to be a "proper game" and eventually uploaded Barn Runner 1: The Armageddon Eclair to the AGS database in January of 2005.

Good gravy, how time flies.



In the years since chapters three and four of The Forever Friday were released, I've made several other Barn Runner games as side stories in the larger Barn Runner world, but I never stopped working on this impractical boulder of a game. I reworked it and reworked it over and over, trying to make it into a big exclamation point at the end of the great big long sentence that is the Forever Friday. In an unexpected moment of clarity, sometime last year I finally realized that unless I made some serious changes to it, I was never going to be able to release the thing. It had grown into something too unmanageably large and unwieldy for me to shape into a single, workable entity. I didn't want this, the biggest part of the biggest Barn Runner story, to be left untold (or worse yet, released half finished, like Duke Nukem Forever), so I set about tearing it down and breaking it in half. Untangling a game as complicated and interconnected as this one was quite the undertaking. It created so many bugs that I almost gave up in frustration several times, wondering it wouldn't be easier to just keep telling side stories in this world and never get around to actually trying to finish the main story. But I'm dumb (dumb enough to keep making freeware games in a world that makes it easier than ever to monetize your passion), so I kept untangling and patching, until I had finally carved this beast into two separate pieces.

You see, originally chapter five was supposed to be the final part of The Forever Friday. But it was a bit too much game for a one-man "studio" to tackle. So I've broken it in half. Chapter six will be out in about two years, I estimate (with some confidence. It's already somewhere in the neighborhood of one-half completed). In the meantime, let's take a look at the game I'm posting about today.

I know there are other AGS games that are larger and more impressive than this one, but I'm not exaggerating when I say this is the single biggest game I've ever made (or will ever make). There are at least a few hours of gameplay here, and an additional hour or two if you unlock all the hidden sub-plots. It tells the story of what Noriko was up to while Prick and Harry were off doing their part to save the city of Arcology 19 during chapter three (the one released in 2011). Let's talk about some specific details. This thing has...

4,374 sprites
763 rooms
125 inventory items
67 dialog trees (I didn't count how many actual dialog options there are)
3 top-down driving / flying arcade sequences,
4 platformer levels
1 optional maze
2 QTEs (gosh, I hope those are still in fashion!)
8 hidden object puzzles
3 kisekae dolls (terribly retro, but quite fun to make, as it turns out)
16 miscellaneous mini-games (sliding tiles, spot the difference, etc.)
Numerous animated cutscenes
Excessive flashbacks
Two dozen unlockable storylets (a term I stole from Fallen London)
A "Director's Cut" toggle that enables even more dialog and cutscenes
Importable campaign codes that allow you to carry on sub-plots from previous chapters
And a complete, deeply hidden bonus adventure game, "The Case of the Classy Chassis," (if you can figure out to unlock it) packed with its own puzzles, inventory, NPCs, and all the stuff you expect from a Barn Runner game, starring Prick Peckard himself as the playable character.


(And some risqué content too. Appropriate because Noriko is French!)

Gosh! So much content you'd think it took me years and years to make!

Why not download it and validate my efforts just a little bit?

DOWNLOAD THE GAME HERE
115 Mb download
583 Mb installed
Made with AGS 3.5.1**


(As always, all the arcade and maze bits are optional. You are under no obligation to appreciate the hours and hours and hours I spent crafting them.)

And a big "thank you" to Frodo, for patiently testing one release candidate after another for the past year or so. Real life was coming at her fast too, but she always found time to look for bugs. I appreciate it! And also my deepest thanks to all the AGSers here who helped me out with technical questions or just general encouragement over these past twenty years. Some of them are still with us. Some of them are gone. I'm still grateful to them, and to each and every one of you. This place is still the best little community on the internet!



EDIT: Updated to version 1.1 to fix a nasty bug that Creamy found. 

---------------------
  * On and off, of course. Not fifteen years of non-stop development.
** The oldest parts of this game's code go all the way back to my early days using AGS 2.56d. This thing has been upconverted to newer versions of Adventure Game Studio so many times that I'm not entirely sure it wouldn't qualify as some sort of undead creature by this point. Keep it away from holy water just in case.

it could simply be that the "finish your entry" winner doesn't pick anything, and the winner the month before the finish-old-things theme picks the theme for the month after it.

I like this idea.

For me, it comes down to time. I used to have quite a bit of free time. Now I don't have a lot of that. A side effect of getting older and having a job that demands more of me than previous jobs did in my younger, more carefree years. Goodness, real life is so inconvenient! I suspect that's true for a lot of the users here, at least judging from the ages I see at the bottom of the page, in the users birthdays area (mine included).

I really like the notion of "Finish Your MAGS" returning as a theme. Heck, if anything, I'd have a hard time choosing which unfinished project to finish!  Why, it should be an annual thing! Once a year, we could all look forward to a great deluge of hastily assembled games given a second chance at life!

Also, I had no idea some places discouraged the use of AGS.    GMTK jam, shame on you! 

as a pessimist, I'd expect only bad things if we opened the voting to non-members.

I agree.

For my two cents, I'd hate to lose the ceremony. I look forward to attending it every year. I would also hate to lose "Best Character" because characters are what usually draw me to adventure games. I'd also hate to lose Best Short Game. Those are the games I play most (and the kinds of games I tend to make myself). Commercial games usually carry the day for Best Game, but so long as Best Freeware Game has a category, I'm happy. With the exception of the two AGS Bake Sale games I made, I only make games for free. I also like the MAGGIES having a tiny corner of the ceremony.

Having the ceremony earlier in the year is a good idea, but how short of a window do we want for nominations/voting?

Thanks!

Keys of a Gamespace. A beautifully drawn, darkly themed little nugget of a game that will stick in your mind for a quite a while after you've finished it.

Two Birds.

Huzzah! A proper competition! 

 Animal House?

Stu's call, of course, but I'm for it. I've certainly needed an extension to finish a few of my MAGS games in the past.

I finished one!

Also, this thread has made me nostalgic for OROW. How long as it been since we had one of those? My most recent MAGS game was a semi sequel to an old OROW game I did years ago.

I've started something yesterday. Tapping into my pile of doodles to catch up. Result not guaranteed. An amazing game will be delivered shortly. 

  You are awesome! I was starting to think this was a terrible theme and I was going to have to leave the forums forever. 

Happy birthdays eriOo and OneDollar

the Roger Corman (and sometimes the Ed Wood) of AGS in many ways.

I think Slasher would be very happy with that comparison! 

Thanks for the votes, guys. And thanks, tbook for giving us a competition. Nobody wants to win by default. Your entry had a lot of mood and ambience. 

RIP, dude. 

Being old today and playing old people music.