Messages

I think this is a strong theme and I appreciate the previous winners for selecting it.

I'll see if I can come up with something, although I usually write my games mechanics-first and this would have to be story-first.

As a fellow Dutchie, I approve of this thread 

My idea: have a classic Sierra menu bar, but you cannot use the walk / hand / eye icons because you're missing those body parts. You need to find them before the interface fully works.

But I don't have time this month so if anyone wants to take my idea, they're welcome to.

Hi cOdy,

Are you the player who's still using the eight-year-old "Fix for Lake Gandvik" branch? That would explain it.

I had less time this weekend than I hoped, so please don't wait for me any further.

Oh right. Either AGS version 3.6.1.25, or version 3.6.0.53.

I'm also working on something, and I'm going to Break Some Rules by releasing it after the deadline! So there 

(seriously though, is it ok to ask for an extension until this Sunday?)

Question: What is the minimal version of MacOS that this AGS build runs on?

Needs more Monkey Wrench! 

Also, nice to hear that it's the Year Of MAGS. I wonder what that entails, is something special going to happen this year?

Well actually, notarytool ran over an hour so I decided to break it off and log out. I'll try again tomorrow, not sure what's up with that.

Thank you, that was insightful.

I'd like to add that you need to install a certificate per instructions here: https://developer.apple.com/help/account/create-certificates/create-developer-id-certificates
And also, that the steam_appid.txt file is not needed, and the Steam builder will tell you not to include it. I'd also think that using both libagsteam.dylib and libagsteam-unified.dylib is redundant. Including that is pretty harmless though. Turns out that the additional libsteam_api.dylib in MacOS is also not necessary.

My terminal is currently taking a looong time to process "xcrun notarytool". Got it to work.

So on MacOS, where do I find my saved games? For some reason, using Finder to locate agssave doesn't do anything.

Congrats to Radiant for coming up with such a original idea. I currently have a slight concussion with a killer headache but as soon as that passes I like to play Blackbird Pie.

Thanks. And congrats on your win!

Would be cool to see more competitors. Would it maybe be an idea to also post the jams on Itch.io to attract more people?

I like that idea.

On the old Hero6 website, http://visitors.hero6.com/ there is mention of sharing the last version of the source code, with a link in the middle of the page. However, the link to onlinehome.us is down and it doesn't appear on archive.org. Does anyone still have a copy?

Spoiler

I voted for Mathilde's Dream, mainly because I never got the hang of Blackbird Pie. In fact I took enough swings at it that it became frustrating and left a lot of dead birds on the playing field. Radiant gives a number of in-game clues about the mechanics, but I just never figured them out. Almost seems that I came up a bird short? Then again, based on the last several MAGS entries, I suck at solving puzzles.

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You can re-assign birds to a new route later, that should help!

[Sherwood]

Quoting from the MAGS thread to have all posts in one place:

Sherwood
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF2IFEmAs4E

Thank you, I've enjoyed watching that!

To answer some of your questions:

• Yes, the diagonal movement is intentional, including slipping between trees.
• Rocks can be
  Spoiler

  thrown against a tree to make noise (which sends enemies there), or directly at enemies to stun them.

  [close]
• Traps will
  Spoiler

  stun enemies for a long time, if you lure them over the trap. You can also rob stunned enemies.

  [close]

I'll go fix the crash and upload a new version. I'd also like to replace the font by something more legible, but I'll do that after the voting concludes.

Good to hear it! I know from experience that seeing someone else play your game can give a lot of context for feedback and help figure out how players think differently than the developer does.

Aside from adding some guide or tutorial to help the player understand what items really do, I feel I have one piece of feedback in hindsight: add a slide to the movement when moving diagonally against an object. Currently it seems that if you approach an obstacle diagonally and don't hit the corner, you just stop, have to adjust sideways and then start moving again. Having the player character slide along the edge of the obstacle until they reach either a dead end or a corner they can slip through would help make the movement feel a lot nicer (though it might also alter the balance too much).

Just my two cents, Sherwood was an impressive outing for a MAGS effort in any case!

Spoiler

Start by staying in stealth mode so enemies can't hear you, and avoid the "sound" symbols that indicate when you hear them.

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Spoiler

Throw a rock against a tree far away, and enemies will hear the thud and chase that.

[close]

Spoiler

Use gold near an enemy to bribe them into looking away. Predictably, this doesn't work on dogs, but something else does.

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HTH! There's a lot of little details like that in Sherwood.

Thanks for that. This is a very professional looking game, but not my cup-of-tea. Also, I did lever into Level 3, and found myself unable to move out of the entry slot, penned in by the wall and surrounded by foliage on the other three sides.

Edit: Just discovered the two-arrow combo that allows diagonal movement, so... Never Mind.  ;-)

I'm not really familiar with the rogue or roguelike games. This one is technically very impressive. I ran around, not bothering too much about stealth, but trying to run into hiding instead. When spotted, I hit the action keys in a panic, often hitting the wrong one, like bribing a soldier, then chucking a rock at him, trying to rob the gold back. I managed to rescue Robin Hood and Little John. I thought it was a nice touch to be able to continue the game as Little John after Much was defeated. I didn't really use the diversion tactics Radiant has made possible. Bottom line is that the programming is very good, while the game suffers from being from a genre I don't play much.

Great idea to make a tile-based, medieval-theme combat quest in AGS! I found that the tiles were a bit small to see what's going on and I had trouble using items using the keyboard controls to use items in inventory. I tried the strategy of just bolting for the exit which worked for a few screens. I realize that part of the gameplay is to figure it out after being defeated and having to start over enough times, but after about 10 minutes of this I felt that I was just not enjoying it enough to continue.

Not really my cup of tea and very buggy. The font was almost impossible to read for me, so I didn't understand the controls. The whole time I didn't really have a clue what I was doing. I was running around, trying to escape other persons. When I died, I sometimes respawned at locations I haven't even been before. Some of the waypoints would put me somewhere in the middle of another map, not at the border. When an archer hit me, I couldn't do anything. Only wait until he would get one field closer and hit me again. At one point, I was suddenly a dog???
I found two different persons that I rescued.
I liked the graphics of the tiles, but I didn't like the portraits (they didn't fit the rest of the game at all). The music was nice.[/spoiler]

Sherwood - a roguelike game made in AGS, impressive! I did not comple it but had some fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_iysm3Xrao

Impressive!

I played around with this, but only managed to make money from lemon pie, and only at the confectionary and the trash. Am I doing something wrong with the other two pies? I thought I was to deliver them at the sites showing the corresponding graphic, but I don't seem to be able to. I played until my money count was more than 24, just to see if that was a win condition, but I guess there aren't any?

Very creative and nice concept! Even as a prototype, this was fun. And juggling three birds was difficult - I frequently ended up filling a site with only one type of item by accident.

Blackbird Pie is clearly the most impressive when considering the programming. It's a sort of strategy game like others that have you pick up resources and build/make stuff in order to advance, and i think it's very cool to have that made in AGS. The problem is that the MAGS version isn't really a finished game, but rather more of a prototype. Still, I've spent the most time with this game and had fun with it.

I never got the hang of Blackbird Pie. In fact I took enough swings at it that it became frustrating and left a lot of dead birds on the playing field. Radiant gives a number of in-game clues about the mechanics, but I just never figured them out. Almost seems that I came up a bird short? Then again, based on the last several MAGS entries, I suck at solving puzzles.

It's a cute idea, but I'm confused by the controls. I have various routes between points, the birds have their own "inventories" with various resources, but they don't seem to unload them on any of the nodes. I sometimes had a triangular route, but again, the bird wasn't unloading anything. They mostly travel back and forth between their points but not changing anything in the resources. However, I managed to make a few pies and earn 7$

A fun game idea, but I couldn't finish it due to some bugs and lacking direction. I hope there will be a polished version of it, with proper tutorial.

Congrats to Radiant for coming up with such a original idea. I currently have a slight concussion with a killer headache but as soon as that passes I like to play Blackbird Pie.

Quoting this here to have all the posts in one place.

Some issues still: When I start the game, it asks me for another app to run this ms-gamingoverlay.

That's odd... that would be an issue with the AGS engine, I think? Maybe we can ask CW.

When I have messed it up and placed five identical ingredients at the bakery. Without a free spot, the birds cannot drop flour/milk and bake a crust. I don't know if that's intentional or not.

That's on my fix list, thanks.

Smaller issue: the pie type needed at the confectionary will always be consumed at once, which means that no other building can get deliveries of that kind of pie.

That too. Actually the "needed" symbol is supposed to disappear after you've made one delivery.

The game is intended to have a win condition but the current build doesn't have it yet.

Is this a single-screen game?

No, it's meant to be multi-screen. I've added a screenshot of the second level WIP, HTH!

[Blackbird Pie]

Blackbird Pie
You control a flock of blackbirds that deliver pie. But first you have to deliver milk and flour to the bakery (to make a crust) and get the crust and topping to the confectionery (to make your choice of various kinds of pie). It's pretty straightforward mouse controls to click on a bird and set its route. This was written for the May MAGS, and is probably a concept that should be expanded further outside MAGS, but I've managed to downscope it enough to be playable within the month. Enjoy!

https://crystalshard.net/zip/BLACKBIRD.ZIP
Art and Music courtesy of opengameart.org

I played around with this, but only managed to make money from lemon pie, and only at the confectionary and the trash. Am I doing something wrong with the other two pies? I thought I was to deliver them at the sites showing the corresponding graphic, but I don't seem to be able to.

Thank you!

And yes, that should work the way you describe it. I've just checked, and that's a typo in the script. I'd say that it counts as a game-breaking bug if some deliveries don't work in a game about deliveries; so I've uploaded a fix.