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They are accepting entries up until Midnight!

Which time zone would that be?

A boy gets in an accident of some sort, and ends up in a coma. Trapped inside his own mind, the boy must make his way through his dreams if he wants to recover. He has to go through everything from the most beautiful dreams to the most horrific nightmares. If he fails in the dream world, his heart rate flatlines in the real one, and he dies.

If you're interested in that, try the classic action/adventure hybrid, Weird Dreams.

Technically because AGS scripts aren't compiled, but interpreted.

Also, compilers are pretty darn fast overall, on contemporary computers.

Wonderftul topic with super-useful information. Out of curiosity, how many beta tester and how many days of testing took a monster project like ATOTK?

We had five testers, with somewhat varying levels of activity, but I should point out that a few of our artists also helped with the testing.

It took us two months to get from the first complete build to the version that was finally released. Although to be fair we also spent some time testing the game before that.

How about loading the pictures into flash, and use flash files on your website. Flash can compress images pretty well.

Sorry, but flash doesn't compress better than GIF does (and you make your site less accessible if it only works when Flash is installed, not everyone uses that).

Best compression for images that contain a lot of monochromatic areas: GIF or PNG.
Best compression for photographic images: JPEG.

The reason your site is slow is because it contains way too many images virtually everything on there is an image. Try replacing the animated images by static ones (too much animation makes the site look messy), or try using plain text. HTML can do colored bars, table boxes et cetera without requiring images. Using Flash won't fix this for you.

Is there a limit to the number of saved games?

Twenty (000-019) plus one for the autosave. Since the game has no dead ends this has not so far caused serious problems for anyone.

Those remakes actually done by Sierra (e.g. Larry 1 VGA) do have a debug mode, which is somewhat trickier to use. It is activated by pressing both shift keys, and D. This does not apply to games in AGS, though, as these generally don't have a cheat mode.

I dunno, I've never thought it was hilarious.  If nothing else it might because you're sitting there thinking what a MASSIVE loser you are for having virtual sex in virtual reality.

Have you heard the one about Red Light Zone?

Spoiler

It's a MMORPG, except instead of killing orcs, your character has sex with other characters...

[close]

What Would Jesus D...

Text adventures: you missed The Hobbit (a true classic) and the Enchanter/Sorcerer/Spellbreaker trilogy.

Indie adventures: you missed Hugo's House of Horror, which deserves the honor of being the first indie adventure game ever. It is easily five years older than AGS. It's not that great overall, but it does have the nostalgia factor.

Graphical adventures: I strongly disagree with grouping all sequels together like this, and then sticking the first part up somewhere higher. Usually, the first is not the best. For instance, Quest for Glory 2 and 4 are generally considered to be better games than the first part.

Based on forum discussions, when people are asked which adventure game they consider the Best Ever, there are two games that consistently turn up tops: King's Quest 6, and Monkey Island 2. These should probably near the top of the list, and certainly should be higher than KQ1 and MI1.

Legend of Kyrandia 1 doesn't belong in that list, it isn't that good. The third part (Malcolm's Revenge) is highly innovative, though, and the second part is certainly a lot better than the first.

Simon the Sorcerer doesn't belong either, while it's funny it's a far cry from being one of the greatest games of all time.

The Star Trek games shouldn't be listed either, as the main reason people play them is because of the "star trek" name on there.

Loom should be higher, at least in my opinion. It is truly a game like no other.

Space Quest 2-5 can't be listed together like that, as they're widely differing games (and you left out #6). While space quest 5 is great, and 2 is very nice, 4 is not all that interesting and 3 is mediocre at best.

Likewise, it is even more obvious that King's Quest 2-6 can't be listed like that, and you've left out #7 (#8 is not an adventure game). #6 is without doubt the best of the lot, closely followed by #4 (which has the honor of being the first game with a female protagonist). Otoh, #2 is frequently derided as a copy/paste of #1; #3 was disliked when it first came out because the connection to the earlier two isn't obvious, and #5 is downright abysmal in design, and is mainly liked because for many people it is the first adventure they ever played.

Some things that deserve adding are Manhunter (while I don't like it, it is certainly innovative), Future Wars (first ever adventure game in VGA), Police Quest (because of its serious design by an actual police officer) and its sequel PQ2, Myst (although one can argue that it isn't actually an adventure game) and Gold Rush (which is one of the first historical adventures, and is rather innovative as well).

I would advise not telling them anything whatsoever, and letting them figure everything out by themselves (if they can't, your interface is not clear enough, and needs to be fixed). That includes letting them figure out the puzzles (if they can't, your puzzles are probably too obtuse, and need to be fixed).

You know that actual players aren't going to follow your schedule either, so neither should your testers. Failure to adhere to this principle is what caused the (later) Sierra games to be so buggy if you strayed from the intended path.

Include as many options as you can think of to facilitate testing; the standard teleport and stuff pockets are highly useful; a key that pops up an InputBox() and dumps the result to a file (with the room number prefixed) is also useful.

Also, note that good testers are worth their weight in gold, and conversely, mediocre testers are a complete waste of your time. If a tester isn't able to produce a page full of bugs, tweaks and nitpicks within the first hour of gameplay, then either you are an amazing programmer, or it is the latter kind of tester. Okay, so that was slightly exaggerated, but the point should be clear. You don't need 20 or 30 testers - you need 2 or 3 good testers.

Amber Decalogy, by Roger Zelazny.

Best fantasy novel ever, hands down and by a long shot.

The world is too serious a place now-a-days, particularly with everyone sueing everyone for sueing everyone.

That's not the World, that's just the USA.

I'm really surprised to learn that anything, anything at all* would be exchangeable between a PC and a C64. Yes, the systems are that different, that I'd say there's simply no chance. For instance, memory (64 kb vs. 640 and up), processing power (PCs are radically faster), graphics (low-res 16 color vs. medium-res 256-color and up) and sound (3-channel synthesizer vs. professional sound cards). Where did this rumor come from?

*well, except for the Z-machine, but that runs on everything.

Has it ever happened that the top ones for a category have not actually been eligible?

Hm, come to think of it, the only one that comes to mind (and even that one is iffy) is any remake getting nominated for a "best story"-type of award, since arguably they didn't write the story. But, like I said, that's iffy. Oh yeah, and last year's debate over the p3n1s award, but let's not go there again 

I suppose it's not necessary to restrict how people vote, then.

To avoid that, simply open the game folder in your Windows explorer, and rename saved games until they're all numbered sequentially, starting from zero.

For instance, if they're 000, 001, 003, and 004, then obviously the number 002 is left out, so rename 004 to 002 and you're all set.

Well you can start with Tribes Vengence, Bioshock and Monster Madness.
I may not have published any AGS games yet but I do believe I know what I am talking about when it comes to development.

Be that as it may, you obviously do not know what you're talking about when it comes to civility. Or, for that matter, spelling.

Here's a thought: stop suggesting that people leave the forum because they disagree with you, and you won't have a "squarrel".

Time to grow up, dude.

Err, it was called "Best Programming" last year...

That's interesting, because on this site it says "scripting"

Are you volunteering to trawl through every release of this year and compile a list of those that have and don't have either manuals or in-game documentation? 

I'm suggesting that that won't actually be necessary. You only have to verify the top five games of the category, and take the sixth instead if one of those five doesn't have one.

Speaking of which, what happened to that other Game of the Year award we had here a month ago?

Are the categories the same as last year? If so, are we finally going to get clarification of what "best scripting" means? Because for some people, it refers to the plot, and for others, it refers to the programming.

Rather than limiting the "number of nominations across different categories", I think it may be better to simply remove games from a category if they are obviously unfitting (e.g. a "best manual" nomination for a game that doesn't have a manual, stuff like that). Otherwise, it may turn out that many people don't nominate game X for category Y because they all think that "surely somebody else will put it in category Y", and that's just weird.

AGS is a tool for the developers. As a community, Chris relies on our feedback in order to progress forward. If you feel that this is not the way things should be done then I'm afraid your in the wrong forum.

"Relying on feedback" is a far cry from "being bound by a popular vote". Given that you don't seem to have contributed to any games, it is quite easy for you to demand that it be open sourced (you're demanding a sacrifice of others that you are unable and unwilling to make yourself), but that doesn't mean anybody is going to comply with your demands. Neither am I going to comply with your completely idiotic suggestion that I shouldn't be here.