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The dead ends are a valid point (http://kingsquest.wikia.com/wiki/Dead_end), just frustrating and feel cheap. But do they not add to the challenge?

No - they're fake difficulty.

Would the games be as difficult without dead ends?

Certainly. For example, Monkey Island 2 (if not set to lite mode) is a very difficult game, with zero dead ends.

Basically, it's more satisfying to finally solve a puzzle and realize how it made sense all along, than to finally finish something and wonder how on earth you were supposed to know that you shouldn't eat a pie when hungry.

I find it's good if the game is not too linear, so that if you're stuck in one puzzle you can do another instead. And if some of the harder puzzles are optional.

...that's probably also something that Lucas Arts was better at than Sierra.

Some of my favorite games I've bought on Steam have been indie-games with a small budget, and I'm worried the new system might make it harder for good indie developers to get their games released on Steam while failing to stop the ones deliberately churning out bad and broken games to make a quick buck.

I agree that this appears to be the case.

just hiring a couple of interns to test-play the games an hour and bar those with missing executable, stolen assets, game-breaking bugs and obviously copy-right infringing material would stop at least two thirds of all the garbage asset flips flooding Steam.

Can you show some examples of games on Steam that have a missing executable, game-breaking bug, or stolen assets? I've seen a lot of garbage on Steam but none of it appears to be obviously unplayable or obvious copyright infringement.

Thanks, that did the trick. I'll be sure to include that cfg in future releases.

Steam is on the verge of being a total shit-show, like Apple or Google's "stores", yet they remain determined to put everything related to curating into the hands of it's user-base, who, it must be said, are hilariously (and perhaps purposefully) inept.

When there's already no barrier of entry to people submitting what are essentially just worse versions of Unity tutorial assets... well whatever the change is...

Oddly enough, these worst-of-the-worst games you mention generally didn't pass greenlight anyway. I'm not entirely sure how they end up on steam, but it wasn't greenlight (so getting rid of greenlight won't necessarily mean you get less of that).

Frankly, this sounds like something that should be in a module (that's also what it is in languages like C++). This is just not something developers frequently need when designing adventure games.

Thanks to everyone for nominating Monkeys to the Moon! May you all have a banana-filled year!

Ok, guys, please just don't vote for yourself. We might or might not check it, but actually I'd prefer if I can trust everyone.

I'm fine with that; however I would prefer a simple rule that votes for your own games are discounted, over a reminder to "please don't do that" which some people may not notice. Scripting it (as JSH suggests) is even better.

What is the version of AGS the game was built with?

3.3.0.1162. The game is Heroine's Quest, and most players don't have this problem.

Great, thanks for the tip.

While I agree that Steam has a big problem with shovelware, I've found that a number of shovelware companies have an agreement with Valve that they don't need to greenlight any of their games (basically, search for games with a regular price under $2 and you'll see my point). If this agreement will also allow them to bypass Steam Direct, then I don't see how this solves anything.

A player on Linux Mint reports that in Heroine's Quest, the music comes through has garbled and the voices are speaking too fast to comprehend. Does anyone recognize this? We don't usually test on Mint but there appears to be no reason why it shouldn't work.

A player reports on Windows 10 x64 that AGS has mouse acceleration: the cursor moves at a different rate depending on if I'm going slow or quicker and it results in me misclicking sometimes. As soon as I bring up the Steam overlay, my mouse goes back to working as normal (same for if I quit). Is there any way to turn it off? He's using a Logitech mouse but not the Setpoint tool (which is a known problem with AGS). The Logitech Gaming Software app is running, but I've tried exiting that and it didn't have any effect on the cursor.

Is anyone familiar with this kind of issue? Thanks!

Anyone who wants to build for Mac, check out the port Nick Sonneveld did for Wadjet Eye!

Thank you, I have found the git branch but I'm wondering if a compiled executable is on the web somewhere.

Could we switch it on and try?

All right, I can do that.

But can you tell me why artifacts are disabled for OSX on Teamcity? That would be an easy place to get a sample executable, otherwise.

I'm interested in checking this out, but before delving in the complexities of OSX development I'd really like to see an AGS executable at work.

I've found that the Engine OSX branch on the AGS Team City successfully compiles but produces no artifacts. I'm not sure why that is, perhaps someone could enable it?
Conversely the code in Janet's repo is somewhat newer but doesn't include a build.

Can someone give me a hand please? I think I could probably set up a team city account, include a fork of Janet's repo, and have it automatically build that; but somebody else has probably already done that? TIA!

[name]

The definitions we have at the moment are adequate for what the awards are trying to accomplish,

I'm not aware that we have definitions of any of the awards. Is this written down somewhere?

The solution may be as easy as giving an existing award a new name for the upcoming year.

Since we're discussing this, an issue from some time ago is that a lot of voters seem to be unclear on what exactly "best character art" is supposed to be for. Is it portrait art (and if so, why not call it that?) Is it character animation (and if so, how is that different from "best animation"?) Is it something else or does it depend on the game?

Looking over the past few years, BCA and BA tend to get mostly the same nominations, and have consistently had the same winner for the past four years. Food for thought?

just the UI that is bothersome? How could this be improved?

The main problem with the UI is that you can reset all your nominations (by returning to the page and doing it all over again) but you cannot edit them (i.e. returning to the page AND seeing your previous selections).