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Would keep my game click to advance and the opening click to advance + timer be a good or a bad idea?

That's precisely what I do, and I haven't received complaints so far.

For example, a lot of games that normally let you advance speech by clicking make it unskippable in certain cut-scenes, because they want to have control over the timing (matching music cues to animation, for example).

If you're doing this, please do add a way to skip the cutscene entirely. Unskippable cutscenes are something I have little patience for as a player.

Most of the debate he's referring to is in this thread. I would say his summary mischaracterizes the events a great deal.

That thread appears to devolve into people who don't know copyright law arguing about copyright law; it's easy to get a negative vibe from that

There appears to be a mostly-complete AGS engine for ScummVM on Fuzzie's Github. It would be interesting to see how many AGS games run under that.

So, for speedrunning purposes, I'm trying to figure out exactly how the random number generator in Sierra games works. For AGI games, this was actually easy to find, several public AGI engines exist that perfectly copy this functionality.

Now I'm wondering about SCI and how their RNG works. However, the only public SCI engine I could find is FreeSCI (and ScummVM, which actually uses FreeSCI to run SCI games). The thing is, FreeSCI does not implement Sierra's RNG but simply relies on what's in your C libraries, which may vary per operating system. It'd only be three or four lines of code, but the constants in that code are vitally important.

Maybe somebody knows more about this - is there any other port for SCI games and/or is the source code to SCI available anywhere and/or is there more technical documentation on this randomness? Any help would be appreciated, thank you!

Oh right, it's one of those websites that only runs in a "good" old browser. I've got it now.

Thanks. Wow, the whole GOG site isn't working for me, is it overloaded because of this deal or something?

adding the word "airsick" also make "bag" into a noun (more likely the phrase "airsick bag" itself is recognised as a noun),

Yes, that is precisely what I said earlier in the thread. I have no idea why you sound so angry about that.

the catch is that you have to type "airsick bag" instead of "bag".

It did work after I moved over to the console. I got to Kerona, this time #5 didn't work. Typed while standing outside the pod, next to it. Game says "you can't see that here".

It's a proximity check. You need to stand at the lower right corner of the pod.

No. See the explanation I linked to in my last post, which was by Al Lowe himself.

Al is misremembering. Here's a Let's Play video of someone doing it without "the".

I tried this and got stuck at #17.

What, "Push all of these out of the airlock." ? That one works for me. Which version of SQ are you playing, that may make a difference (I'm running 2.2).

Except for cases when you really need to type your commands in very specific ways, because of oversight/glitches introduced by the developers. That glitch made me unable to finish the game until more than 10 years later(not a joke here), that I learned online that I must type in the "the", which were okay to be ignored except the very last command. I'm just ranting though, and I think this probably didn't apply to SQ.

That's an urban legend about Larry 2. The very last command also ignores "the", the catch is that you have to type "airsick bag" instead of "bag". You'd expect the latter to be a synonym, but it's not. The you the can the add the word the the the everywhere the and the parser the will the ignore the it.

I bet you haven"t played Space Quest this way before! For the EGA version of Space Quest I, this outlines what commands to use to complete the game! Type them exactly as written and you'll be surprised

Part one: Arcada

Code: ags

First, please clock me in, sir.
I guess Scott is flashing me now.
(left, right, left; wait for the scientist to walk in)
Please care for every dude from now on.
Look out to read out, is it out?
Sir Astral, Corpse
Get down into the cart, it is little.
(left, left)
I guess I grab at the lint with you.
Swipe every credit card.
(you can type "kick body" to LOSE one point! Even when not near one.)
(right, down elevator, right, down elevator, right)
Off the press, open me from the inside.
(right)
Fill credit card from the slot machine.
(enter elevator)
Push all of these out of the airlock.
The press is all that is left now.
A little push for me, old sir, right?
Rob is flashing another sarien uniform.
A little swipe now at the translator.
To turn you on a little, dial me now!
(left)
Push for third base now, I guess.
I stand now under the little rocket.
Push me over to the second power.
First from the press, autopilot is in.
Shut up, out of the door with you!
The buckle is flashing on that belt.
Move now to throttle me for a second.
(score is now 34)

Part two: Kerona

Code: ags

Will you pick me for a little survival.
Another open second, out of supplies.
Get down, for the belt will please you.
Get off first, craft a little for you.
I pick up that hunk from the mirror.
(right, right, right, up, right)
Toss at that little sir, for you can!
Pick another, for you part at first.
(for an easter egg, go left, up, right; then wait in the middle of the screen)
(left, down, take the path up, left)
I guess sir is a push over, it rocks.
(left, up, right, right, walk through the arch)
Get up please, rock me now!
(left, stick to the top wall to walk past the grate)
Fill the old boulder to steam it off.
(up, left)
A second set of glass is light for me.
(on the upper path go right, right, right)
You put these on to please that hunk.
(up)
Now flashing: a plug for the cart!
Take off in cart for flashing slots
Stand up, the bike is a little off now.
Turn off every switch, it is out now.
(play the arcade sequence)
(score is now 110)

Part three: Ulence Flats

Code: ags

Get out into sand, skimmer is with you.
That is for you now, sir I.A.N.
Rob me now? This key is a little old.
(up, walk behind the building)
Climb in these to fuck off now
Grab another buck from the inside
(down)
Little is up with you, I guess, yes?
(enter bar, walk up to the barkeeper)
At present, little is under the coupon.
Inside the drink is some swill for me.
All the beer is out of me now.
Inside the drink is some swill for me.
That old ale is over in a second.
Inside the drink is some swill for me.
(play the slot machine)
Holy shit.
(left, up, right, up)
I give up, this old coupon is over now.
Buy all robots, all those for me now!
(down, left, down, left, up)
I buy you out. Craft another for me.
The old scale is through inside ladder.
Some of that is the third load now.
I guess that into HH it is, sir.
(score is now 153)

Part four: Deltaur

Code: ags

First in!put: on the jet, pack it all.
Get out of all this in the escape pod.
Turn off now, I will handle it for you.
(enter; wait for the robot to appear, then dodge around him and go up)
Open  up from inside the chest.
Enter up from inside the chest.
Open  up from inside the chest.
Shut  up from inside the chest.
Jump  up from inside the chest.
Get down from this to vent to you sir
Get in   from this to vent to you sir
(leave the vent immediately)
Jump supercalifragilistic.
Open  second cartridge retrieval unit.
Enter second cartridge retrieval unit.
Open  second cartridge retrieval unit.
Look for the space suit inside of me.
(right)
I will kiss up to this old scientist.
You speak little of the second people.
(repeat the above until he asks if you own King`s Quest II)
Another first for me, yes is up to you.
(take the left elevator, left, enter elevator, right, right, right)
Redeem it in I: id is in it, is in I.
Grab the first, second, third bombs.
(left, stand above the Sarien)
Is the cast off? The grenade is inside.
(right)
A present for you: another id card.
Take a smoke, bomb is over for now.
(left, left, enter elevator; from now on, press F6 whenever you enter a room; right, right)
Explore with me for a second, dude.
The press is off; switch it on now.
This is view control, panel is inside.
(press the buttons 6, 8, 5, 8, ENTER)
(left, enter elevator, enter the other elevator)
You stand out from every vessel.
Another sir will launch with you.
(score is now 205)

THE END

Unfortunately, I made mistake to participate in MAGS this month, and need to focus on one task at time.

I for one think it's great that you're working on a game in the engine you've spent so much time on. Go for it!

In the context of AGS's bitmap graphics (rather than vectors), how do you suggest to tween things?

With games like Heroine's Quest there would seem to be a lot more obvious scope for tricks of this kind. For example you could make the stats calculations to complete certain tasks different depending on what character class you play, in order to improve the game balance. Did you do anything like that?

Very few things in HQ are actually dependent on your class, most of it goes by skill.

One trick HQ uses is that certain tasks appear to require a very high skill level but they actually don't; this is used to prevent dead ends. For instance, if you're in a situation where the only way to proceed is Animal Ken skill (or certain cross-class skills that you're not guaranteed to have) then you can automatically do this regardless of your skill level. In non-dead-end situations, having a low skill level may cause you to fail.

And, of course, you're not allowed to cross a point-of-no-return (Svartalfheim and Gastropnir) unless you have all the items/spells required. The game tries hard to be non-obvious about this, e.g. by making it very obvious to obtain the item or spell, or by requiring it for an earlier puzzle. But there's also a hard check just to make sure the player doesn't get in a dead end situation.

Another one may be a psychological trick that is working based on the communication science term "Priming", which is basically a way to manipulate a person into thinking about something by inducing this very thought beforehand

Related is one of the classic tricks from Portal (yeah, not an adventure game, I know). How do you get players to carry an otherwise bland cube all the way to the end of the level? By starting to describe it and never shut up about it. And then,+

When your testers suggest an alternative way, particularly an easier way, to solve one of your puzzles: don't put in the umpteenth synonym of "you can't get ye flask" but put in some code to make it actually work.

Good to know, I'll see about updating that game.

When running a 320x200 game fullscreen with the hq2x filter, the game appears with black borderas at the top and bottom. That is fine. However on the first screen some graphics are painted on these borders anyway (I assume by the filter) and remain visible throughout the rest of the game. It would help to paint over the borders as black whenever the screen is updated.

[individual]

I don't this topic well enough : Couldn't that be helpful to upgrade just the EXE of a game without downloading the entire game again? I favor the principle of storing the resources outside of the EXE.

I understand the point of not having certain resources inside the EXE.

I do not understand the point of setting for each individual sound file whether that particular sound file should be inside the EXE or not. In practice you either turn it on for ALL files, or off for ALL files.

That's three pull downs that most players will not understand. So I don't think it's convenient.

Yes, that does sound too complicated for the average user... It strikes me that most players want to fill their screen as much as possible, stretching where necessary; and that most artists want to maintain aspect ratio. Find a middle road between these and you're good to go.