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Hi there!

There's a minor thing wrong with the forum message count... according to the screen header I have two messages. However, in actuality there are three. This happened when I got CJ's global message about changing forum rules - it didn't increment my msg count, but deleting it did decrement my msg count. FYI.

Sorry if this is the wrong forum, but it is for an AGS cutscene...

Does anyone know a good tool that can convert AVI files to MPEG, to save space?
I've downloaded half a dozen tools I found with Google, but all of them had problems (didn't work, could only input MPG but not output it, could only output 10 seconds until you paid them money, etc).

If, in a dialog, only a single option is enabled, AGS will automatically trigger that option without user interaction.
By contrast, LucasFilm games still display the dialog menu, even if only a single option is possible.
It would be nice to have a SetGameParameter or something similar that switches between these two behaviors.

Rules: Every couple of weeks, a post will be made with a list of items and a scenario. Using your wit and skill find a way to complete the scenario with the items provided. You can only use a set number of items of your own choice. When I say use your skill, use it. The deadline is a bit later than for earlier puzzle contests, to give people the chance to respond. If there are less than three entries by then, I'll probably want to extend it a bit.

Voting: After the deadline, voting shall begin to commence an initiating start.

The Grand Prize: The winner gets a lifetime FREE supply of green pixels! Supplied real soon to a monitor near you. In addition, the winner may use those green pixels (among others) in a brand new Puzzle Time.

Scenario: The location is Ancient Rome. You wish to become one of the senatores, but you don't have enough popular support yet.
This does not have to be historically accurate at all, just go with popular opinion of what Rome was like - or read a couple of Asterix comics. Nothing wrong with a subtle anachronism or two.

Problems: There are not enough people that would vote for you (it's up to you whether that means one person short, or nobody at all, or anything in between). You'll have to convince them through bribery, intimidation, hypnosis, becoming a folk hero, or whatever else comes to mind.
Bonus points for adding a secondary problem with some historical basis, e.g. someone with elephants who has lain siege to the city, or a slave riot, or trouble with the gladiators over at the colosseum.

Equipment: Three or more of the following, plus up to three items of your own choice.
Toga
Gladius (i.e. sword)
Laurel
Wrist watch (well, they always show up in cowboy films, too)
Helmet
Parchment
Quill
Quail
Chariot
Forked stick
Boomerang
Goose
Divine statuette of Jupiter
Myrrh

Sadly, I have to bring you the news that the game project known as King's Quest 2.5 has been abandoned.

This was not an easy discussion, but there are two important reasons. First, several important people who were with KQ2.5 from nearly the beginning, are no longer around to help us. And second, we have considered the possibility of getting a Cease and Desist notice from Vivendi, and decided we did not want to risk that.

But we must say that we've learned a lot from working on it, and we wish to thank you all for your support. But now it is time to turn off the lights and say goodbye to the land of Avali, vizier Aaiden and King Castor.

Yours,
Pieter Simoons, aka Radiant

A friend told me and I couldn't help checking... love your easter egg, CJ!

Hi there!

I've been thinking about an aspect interface design, and would like some feedback and discussion on the matter. Just about every point-n-click adventure game I've played has a GUI that resembles Sierra classics (KQ5/6, SQ4/5, QfG3/4, etc), or one that resembles LucasArts classics (DoTT, TSOMI, Maniac), or a variation on the verb coins. For this discussion I'm not really interested in what shape it takes, but rather what verbs are on there.

The classic Sierra interface is rather limited, offering the five options of Walk, Look, Touch, Speak and Use Item. Barring some exotic cases such as Loom, I believe that using these five verbs goes without saying (with the possible exception that Touch can be split up).
Most verb coin interfaces use roughly the same commands.

The LucasArts interface has gone through some evolution. Their first game, Maniac Mansion, uses the following fifteen verbs:

Code: ags

Open Close Read
Push Pull Give
What_is Walk_to Pick_up
Turn_on Turn_off Fix
Unlock Use New_Kid

In Zak McKracken, Unlock and Fix were replaced with Put_on and Take_off; Indy3 and TSOMI refine the list a bit and add the missing Look and Talk verbs. The most often used variation contains
Open Close Look Push Pull Give Talk Use PickUp
and was used in many games from Monkey/2 to FOA, and even kind of adopted by Sierra for Gabriel Knight.

Now there are some verbs that are more interesting than others. However, on playing some interactive fiction (text adventure) games, I realized that they also tend not to use too many verbs. So it seems to me that there aren't that many verbs that actually offer puzzle potential (or immersion) in a game. And there are always verbs that could be simply replaced by 'use item on', if the item has an obvious function. Clearly 'use hammer on nail' requires no explanation.

Useless verbs
From Maniac Mansion, the verbs Fix and Unlock are rather useless. Since 1) you always require an item to perform these actions, and 2) the item in question is obviously meant for this verb (fix staircase with tools, unlock padlock with glowing key), these could be replaced by 'use tools on staircase'.
Zak's put-on and take-off are also pretty obvious, since they only apply to articles of clothing, which could be put-on by using them on the player character (or just using them, as in FoA, since in Lucas games you can't actually click on the player character). The same goes for eating edibles.
In Sierra's Conquest of the Longbow, the 'shoot' icon is rather superfluous since it means to 'use bow on <target>'. However it does add to the atmosphere of the game.
Along the same line, Larry adds the zipper icon. However, the smell and taste icons in space quest games are almost entirely useless and don't add much to the gameplay experience.
It does not seem to be the case that adding more verbs leads to a more difficult game. Judging by the size of the hints-n-tips forum, people can get stuck easily enough with just four or five verbs. Of course there's the hunt-the-verb problem of some old parser games, but that's just poor game design in almost all cases (e.g. the 'reach in hole' puzzle in Enchanter, or Larry 2's infamous 'put airsick bag in hair rejuvenator').

Spellcasting
Several IF games contain magic spells. Now for some games (enchanter trilogy) these could be easily handled by inventory items, since you 'carry' each spell on a scroll or spellbook. So 'frotz bread' could be done in Quest for Glory fashion. However in other classics, there are words that just happen to be spells ('plugh' and 'xyzzy' come to mind). This puzzle is very hard to pull off in a p'n'c game.

Verb redundancy
There is a difference between a graphical interface (Sierra) and one that uses words (LucasArts), because in the latter case, a sentence appears on a command line, and the sentence should make sense. While Sierra can get away with 'use door' to open it and 'use box' to pick it up, LucasArts would require the separate open/close/take commands. However, these do add to an occasional puzzle, where you have to open something that isn't obvious (the radio in MM) or pick up something that doesn't appear to be pick-uppable (the monkey and dog in MI2). I should point out that the latter tends to be frustratingly hard on most players, and I can't think of any circumstances where it was used in an entirely serious game.
In general I would say that Lucas games would not be off worse puzzle-wise if they had no open, close or pick up verbs.

The Show vs. Give dilemma
While using an item on a hotspot seldom implies more than one meaning, using an item on a character does. Click sword on soldier... am I trying to give him the sword? Show it to him? Ask him about it? Stab him with it?
Luckily the former three can be combined. Showing an item and asking about it tends to be the same (unless the item isn't around, in which case a notebook system like Laura Bow's would be useful). Giving can be included as well... clearly when you give an item to somebody, you show it to him first - and if you don't want your game to have walking dead situations, the player character must be unable to give the item away if he needs it later (or has to be able to get it back).
Stabbing him with the sword is a separate case, and could feasibly require an attack verb. However in most games there is an obvious distinction between 'good' people whom you cannot kill period, and 'evil' people whom you can't do much else with.

Physical actions
Certain actions may be required of the player character that simply cannot be expressed in other ways... for instance, jump/duck (Kq1), or run/sneak (QfG series). These actions tend to be rather seldomly used in puzzles, though (duck and run aren't necessary in either of those games, for instance, and jump is localized to a single locale where it is rather obvious). KQ3 has a puzzle that requires jumping, but logically Gwydion could also have climbed the crate since it isn't that high.
Some physical actions could still be done by adding an item that can be used for precisely that purpose, e.g. lockpicking or digging.

The Hand multifunctionality dilemma
The obvious problem with Sierra's hand cursor is that it does too much, and it isn't always clear whether you're going to open the door or knock on it, or to climb the gate or force it, or to pick up the cat or kick it.
LucasArts's push & pull verbs (which could be combined into one 'move' verb) make for a nice solution, even if they aren't used that often for puzzles (the knife thrower puzzle from FoA does come to mind).
An 'attack' verb would be useful in several cases (and is well-used in Grrrr, for instance).

Placement puzzles
The ability to drop inventory items does make for some interesting cases. In classic IF, there is a restriction on how much you can carry, forcing you to drop things in convenient places (but this could easily lead to dead ends if used carelessly, and people seem a bit spoiled these days with the limitless-pockets effect). But I've seen some good puzzles with item placement in Kyrandia, and the bait-the-dog puzzle in S301.
Of course droppable invitems is tricky to pull off in AGS, so that may stop some people from allowing each item to be dropped everywhere. If you want to save space, the 'get' icon could be changed to 'get/drop', depending on whether you click on the room or on your inventory.

Funky responses
Of course one disadvantage of adding more verbs is the fact that the game should have a decent response to many of them. LucasArts games seem to get a way with a lot of 'I cannot move it' and 'Nice tree', whereas Sierra games are almost expected to have a snappy answer to any look/touch/talk click. Clearly this is a tradeoff, but having too many generic responses does lower the game immersion.

So if I were to extend a Sierra verblist, or change a Lucas one, my first recommendation would be along the lines of
walk look
touch move use-inv
talk attack get/drop
(and Laura's notepad and Larry's zipper added in those games that could use it)
Interestingly enough an 'attack' verb can be extended to inventory items (to break them), and a move icon could shake inventory items.
A very good final addition would be the 'do something appropriate' verb from the Garfield game, which has such nice uses as 'kick odie' and 'save jon'. Also it could feasibly open doors, since I omitted the open/close verbs from my sample above.

Finally I would like to state the obvious case that a LucasArts conversation (with a tree of options) offers more puzzle potential than the Sierra way of clicking the talk icon on an NPC until it stops repeating itself, or the QfG way of giving a list of options where you have to ask about all of them.

A question I'd like to pose, is for examples of other verbs succesfully used in puzzles, in either IF games or parser graphics games (a la the older Sierra) or any verblist/verbcoin games that have a rare verb I have missed.

Rules: Every couple of weeks, a post will be made with a list of items and a scenario. Using your wit and skill find a way to complete the scenario with the items provided. You can only use a set number of items of your own choice. When I say use your skill, use it. I've tried to take Ashen's suggestions at the last contest, and I've also made the deadline a bit later than usual, to give people the chance to respond. If there are less than three entries by then, I'll probably want to extend it a bit.

Voting: After the deadline, voting shall begin to initiate a starting commencement!

The Grand Prize: The winner shall receive a FREE copy of the latest version of AGS! Oh wait, AGS is already free... so I guess the winner will just have the honor of hosting the next contest.

Scenario: A famous celebrity (you may pick one yourself) is staying in the local hotel for just one night - and, as a small-time reporter and would-be pulitzer winner, this is your only chance for an interview! So get up there and speak to him, or her, or it!

Problems: There are three potential compilcations that I could think of; you must use at least one of these in the puzzle (and you are free to add other compilications). One, something is wrong or missing with your equipment; two, the celebrity is guarded by someone or something (bonus points for something ludicrous as a guardian); and three, the celeb may not want to speak to you in the first place and may require some convincing.

Equipment: Use at least three of the following, and up to three items of your own choice. All of these may be in your inventory at the beginning, or picked up somewhere, or whatever, as you see fit.
camera
notebook and pen
dictaphone
wrist watch
tennis ball
blank recordable CD
miniature eiffel tower
can of shoeshine
pencil eraser
driver's license
comb
broom
chessboard
bug repellent
yo-yo

Does anyone know the details on becoming a Paladin in Quest for Glory III? I am a fighter with plenty of honor and did all sorts of things like rescuing Manu and getting Yesufu out of the trap, but I must have hit some disqualifier somewhere as Rakeesh won't paladize me...

Hi there,

question - how many QfO games are there, anyway? I know of at least three different subtitles, "sodom, Graham and Gomorra", "So You Want To Be A Porn Star" and "So You Think She Was A Virgin" (sic)... I know of at least two different games, one being the one where Crispin sends you to rescue Rosella and you have to catch a fish to enter castle Daventry, the other being a one-room demo with a nude girl walking around. What's up with all that?

[Puzzle Time: Out of Sight, Out of Mind!]

Puzzle Time: Out of Sight, Out of Mind!

Rules: Every week a post will be made with a list of items and a scenario. Using your wit and skill find a way to complete the scenario with the items provided. You can only use a set number of items of your own choice. When I say use your skill, use it.

Voting: After the week, voting shall commence!

What if I win?: The winner chooses the next scenario and list of items. Plus a slice of digital pie. Or digital cookies. Or something more digitally wholesome, like a digital apple.

Scenario: You can't see a thing, and it's driving you crazy! This could be because of excessive smoke, a blindfold, damage to your eyes, a darkening spell cast by an evil wizard, or whatever. Obviously this means you can't use the look command. You must vent your angry vengeful feelings at whoever is the cause of this blindness, then find some way to reverse the effect (in that order).

Items: You must use at least four of the items listed below, and half of those must be found and picked up somewhere (as opposed to being in your inventory from the beginning). Additionally, you may use up to three items of your own choice.
A sponge
A paperclip
A fresh, juicy orange
A stepladder
A book
Salt
A crescent-shaped amulet
A squirrel
Tulip seeds
A red herring
A spork
An equilateral triangle
A frisbee
A magnifying glass
and/or pepperoni.

Special: You must meet at least one well-known character from another game, or movie, or book, or tv-show.

Hi there,

I'm sure all of you are familiar with the excellent Maniac Mansion Deluxe...
Now I've found some differences with the original game, aka easter eggs, and would like to ask people if they've found others...

* old record now plays the Loom soundtrack
* poster in Green's room reads "Tierra sucks"

Problem:
I want to set up the following:
  1.Play music A
  2.Once it's done, check if player did a certain action
  3.If not, return to 1
  4.Play music B

This seems not actually possible in AGS. The best I can come up with is checking IfMusicPlaying() in rep_ex_always, but that doesn't get called if the game is, for instance, blocked by a display() function, so that would cause the music to halt. PlayQueued(B) won't work either since if A repeats, B never gets played.

Hi there,

I was playing this German MM clone (called Manick Mansion, also the entire game is in German and it has a very different house than MM does, even if the mad scientist premiss is the same).
Anyway how do I get past the cactus?

I'd like to be able to DisplayTopBar as a blocking call, and/or Display as a non-blocking call. Is this possible?


Unrelated question:
Would it be possible to add an option to sort views by name, rather than number?

[hotkey]

Hello y'all,

I have been playing quite a lot of AGS games, and I noticed that many of them don't have any kind of keyboard support. Personally, I believe that creating hotkeys for the commands (esp. in a LucasArts GUI) greatly improves playabililty. Also in some situations, the ability to control EGO with the keyboard would help in getting to some places. If you think about it, all Sierra and LucasArts games have some kind of keyboard control, and that's probably there for a reason.

So I believe it would be a good thing (tm) to encourage game designers to use keyboard controls. It would be easy to make some basic additions to the standard script to allow this (cursor arrows do something like MoveCharacterDirect(EGO, character[EGO].x - 1000, char[EGO].y); for instance).

Maybe GUI buttons could have a hotkey assigned to them in the AGS editor. Thus, if that GUI is visible and that key is pressed, it is treated as a mouseclick on that button. Or, maybe the default 'popup GUIs' could all be removed by pressing ESC; this could for instance be a separate type of GUI, in the pull-down menu. Or, if this is too much trouble, it could simply be added to the basic global script (the one in the Standard Template).

Or maybe the people who have designed GUI templates and put them available for download, could please consider adding keyboard support there so that people will copy it and use it.

One other idea that crossed my mind is this. I'm not sure if this is even remotely feasible... but if I understand correctly, most AGS game files can be run with the current version of the AGS player application, possibly even if the AGS game file was already in EXE format.
What if the standard AGS player application would allow the user to define custom keys, simply in a text file or something, that state that "key 65 = GUI 3 button 4", so that if the player presses 'A' (=65) it is treated as a mouse click on GUI 3 button 4, if that GUI is visible.
This would allow older AGS games to be played with keyboard control even if they didn't have it in the first place. But like I said I have no idea if this is feasible.

Comments welcome!

Hi there,

I hope this is the right place to post bug reports for a game in production; on the game's main webpage there's only a download button and no contact info.
(sorry for putting it in the wrong forum earlier!!)

Anyway I was instantly charmed by the idea and looks of NAJ.

I have one bug report (from my warning.log file)
(in room 1): SetCharacterIdle called while character view locked with SetCharacterView; idle ignored
(in room 1): Warning: ChangeCharacterView was used while the view was fixed - call ReleaseCharView first

And one request... please please please add keyboard support to the GUI? Simply something like L = look, O = open, etc. All lucasarts games use it and it really improves playability.

[AGI]

Hi there,

This is kind of weird question, sorry if it's inappropriate...
Anyway does anybody here have the AGI version of King's Quest IV?
Because I do (happened to find it at an old stuff market somewhere), but because of a faulty floppy disk, I'm now missing one file (specifically, KQ4VOL.3). I was wondering if someone could please mail it to me.
I'm not asking for warez, just for one missing file of a game I already have.

Thanks!

Hi there,

I've been downloading a lot of AGS games today (in particular, most anything that I'd heard of before or that has an AGS award). Anyway I noticed that quite a lot of links on the games page are outdated, maybe someone should look over them when they have time?

Also I couldn't find Quest for Glory 4.5 or Quest for Orgy anywhere. Can someone please provide a link? Thanks!
(oh, and by 'cant find' I mean that the link at qfg2001.cjb.net doesn't work any more; is there another way to get the game?)

Would it be possible to add function prototyping to AGS? E.g.

Code: ags

declare function a (int, string);

function b (int) {
  a (4, "hello");
}

function a (int, string) {
  b (5);
}

Also compiler-related, it may be useful to generate a compiler error if the player uses for instance MoveCharacter (SOME_GUY, ...) if SOME_GUY is in fact the identifier for a view rather than for a character.