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Well, it took me a while to get around to this, but here we go.

The biggest sticking point has to do with the movie theater.

Fixed. Although I have no idea what "a simple push-button" is

it is somewhat of a missed opportunity to add some character depth to little/new characters

That's a good point, and I'll keep that in mind for future games. When writing Root, I was simply not familiar enough with little and new characters to include those.

The description of the alley between the Parkview restaurant & Pelboz flowers as "stinking of garbage" is one I find inaccurate

Also fixed.

http://crystalshard.net/zip/ROOT.ZIP - please let me know if this is more acceptable.

Thanks!

I was wondering if anyone had the WFN files for the three fonts that come automatically with a newly created AGS game. I'd like to edit them (for accented letters and such) but I can't find them. Thanks!

Oh yeah, and let's not forget Snail Quest...

We'll be given three random wikipedia articles from which we'll pick one to make the game from so not going to do anything in advance, other than having AGS ready to go

Heh. I hope they have a better randomizer than Wikipedia's Special:Randompage button, because otherwise you're likely to end up with spam, or a tiny article on something trivial, or a village with 10 inhabitants

Anyway, I find that the trick to MAGS is to write down a design, and then cut away everything that isn't necessary, because you won't have time for that. Reduce the amount of rooms by half. Drop those two chararacters that don't do much. And so forth. K.I.S.S.

Just a minor nitpick, but I find the buttons on the website rather small. They're, what, 10x10 pixels? I like the overall site design but these are just tiny

But I'm proud to say that I've finished 59 games so far which is just above an avarage of one game a week!

Anyway, for my 61st recording (the 60th is already finished) I'll take requests.
So just shout out an AGS freeware game that I haven't recorded yet and I'll upload the most popular one next week. Voting ends 26th so don't delay.

That's pretty neat, I didn't know you were doing that.

If you're looking for suggestions, how about Warthogs?

Spoiler

1. Laverne from DOTT
2. Bobbin Threadbare from LOOM
3. Looks like a Roger Wilco starcon uniform
4. Zanthia from Kyrandia II
5. Reaper dude from Grim Fandango
6. no clue
7. Plenty of games feature scorpions, e.g. QFG2
8. a guy with a mirror... could be Gwydion from KQ3
9. no clue
10. Deanna Troi from any star trek game
11. Indy
12. Guybrush Threepwood

[close]

My question is when does it stop being parody and become plagiarism?

The answer is determined by whichever party has the most money to spend on lawyers.

I know that I bugged Amanda Finch (www.amaranthia.com) and Jeff Vogel (http://www.spidweb.com/) ad infinitum when I started out.  We're always happy to pay it forward.

Hey, I didn't know you knew Jeff too. That's pretty cool, tell him I say hi

Cirque de Zale.

Should I go ahead and include the dead-end in the game, or does it irritate you as a player to have to go back and restore a prior saved game to continue?  I can personally go either way with it.

Here's a thought: barring all progress for the player because he forgot something earlier is strongly frowned upon these days; however, barring the best ending for a player, or the maximum score, because he forgot something earlier is fair game.

I noticed that AGD (Remakes of KQ1,2 & QFG2) got permission for remaking these games from Sierra.

Yes. However, note that they released the game first, stating that they knew it was illegal and would take it down if asked. Several years later, they actually got permission (which mandated their name change from Tierra to AGDI). They thought that this was an exclusive deal, but a short time later Infamous Adventures also got permission for their KQ3 game.

Is it thus correct to assume that if one want sto create a remake of a game/movie or use materials/names/ideas etc. from already existing games/movies/books that it will be illegal?!

Yes, except that using a character as a cameo in an unrelated work may be considered fair use, and that parodic works are explicitly allowed. Note that shifting a few names around and adding a joke or two is not sufficient for a work to qualify as "parody", and note that it is rather hard to parodize something that wasn't serious to begin with (e.g. Monkey Island).

If so, how do one go about getting permission to use ideas/materials/names/etc.  from these companies, e.g. Sierra?

Short answer, you don't. Several companies, including Sierra, have been known to terminate fangames via legal action. For instance, Quest for Orgy was taken down, as was Garfield and the Mutant Lasagna. Overall, asking in advance is a sure-fire way of getting either no response or a firm "no". Asking after you have a mostly-completed project of sufficient quality might get you permission. Or, it might still get no response or a firm "no".

Companies are slowly cluing in to the fact that terminating fangames is not such a great publicity stunt, so for most fangames on the internet simply slip below the radar.

Maybe some of the mods could split the OYS thread into an archive (anything over 3 months old) and a recent version. Or, perhaps you could just start reading from the bottom. Really, any OYS that isn't recent is highly unlikely to still be useful any more, because the person posting it may have found someone who took his offer, or may have run out of time for other reasons, or may not be looking at these forums any more.

Back in 1999-2002, King's Quest and Monkey Island were champion when it came to fangames attempts, Space Quest did well too when SQ: The Lost Chapter was released, and I'm sure if we searched hard enough, we'd be able to find many other series with more than two dozens of failed fangames attempts out there.

That's interesting to hear. Do you perhaps have some links or demos for those KQ/MI/SQ fangames? This is rather before my time, so to speak, and I'm curious what's out there.

Make a fangame or remake, put it on the web and if the look is consistent and the quality is the same as the original game's, mainstream news outlet will pick the news and the downloads will skyrocket. Try to do the same with an original game and even if the quality is the same or better, you will have have to spread the word a whole lot if you want to achieve the same audience.

This is very true. Using a well-known name is the easiest way to get a big audience.

Heck, one could argue that a good way one could build themselves a name and attract attention to their original work would be to make a fangame.

I'm not too sure about that, actually. First, I don't think that would really work. Second, you'll always be mostly known for your remake: you're putting yourself in the shadow of Sierra/Lucasarts/whatever, and that is such a big shadow that you'll simply remain there.

there's a good number of QFG-inspired games in progress (including one of my own). Since QFG is a specific type of game, you could consider many of them fangames--yet they still have completely original material.

QFG is a unique genre, indeed. I used to keep a list of these, and to my knowledge pretty much all of them have been abandoned by now (which is a shame but, given the overall size and complexity of a QFG game, hardly surprising). Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the only one I think is still being worked on is Hero/6, and I'm not even sure about that given the organisatorial problems they faced in the past years.

Hm. The most popular target is probably Maniac Mansion, given the sheer amount of fangames that are actually complete for that.

I can think of the following reasons:
(1) the recent Indy movie.
(2) Indy is an iconic action hero, whereas Guybrush, Roger Wilco and Rincewind are funny buffoons; it would seem to be easier for indie writers to design a new buffoon, than to create a believable action hero.
(3) Indy has a relatively easy genre to write for (you can always place some artifact in some exotic location, and add nazi antagonists); compare to DOTT which has a rather limited world which is simply complete after one game. Mind you, I'm not saying it's easy to write a good Indy game, but it's easy to write an Indy game.
(4) there seem to be too many people over the age of 15 who simply don't think Larry is at all funny.

This here map right here is the most up to date map of the town so far.

Frankly I don't see any discrepancies between that map and Root. Perhaps you can enlighten me what exactly the issue is, otherwise I'm just shooting in the dark.

The only thing I can think of is that Root posits that the nameless law office on the map went bankrupt and the building is now being used for something else. Is that an issue? Or am I missing something?

Another thing you should be wary of is the speed issue. AGS can make platformers, but a smooth-scrolling, speedy platformer with scrolling levels... no.

Care to place a bet on that? 


Yes, AGS is right for the job of a platformer. That notwithstanding, you will likely have an easier job coding a platformer in Gamemaker.

He wasn't, actually, the NES version of Captain Comic was an unlicensed game, therefore had nothing to do with Nintendo

Oh, that might explain its extreme suckiness (as opposed to the PC version, which was very good for its time)

Did you know that Epic MegaGames was to publish the game as a sequel to Jill of the Jungle.
But Epic was not happy with the quality of the game :o, and published Jazz Jackrabbit instead.
The story was then changed and published by Union Logic as an original game.

Considering that Jill of the Jungle is rather low quality in and of itself (compared to everything Apogee and id were making at that time) I find that very ironic

A golden oldie from 21 years back: The Adventures of Captain Comic

I loved that game (and its mostly-unknown sequel, Fractured Reality). Michael Denio is probably the first successful indie game author, considering he eventually got published by Nintendo.

Edit: Actually, about "The Lost Vikings", I think I had it on a shareware disc, the same one as the Thors Hammer game...

PC Format demo disk, probably.