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Better to rework the Pick of the Month feature into a "Random Game" type deal,

I second that. Once the rating panel is done, randomly show any four- or five-star game from the database.

That was funny!

Well, yeah...so? I'm still not jealous.

You're just envious because we're jealous and you're not.

Don't rename files manually, the new editor keeps a track of your rooms rather than just scanning the directory for all room files like the old editor used to do.

Really? I'd find that impractical. I move room files around all the time to speed up compile time (i.e. moving all files not needed at the moment to a temp folder).

We're now also hosting this on the Crystal Shard site, and have expanded it slightly to cover a few missing details.

Perhaps we can add a section on easter eggs or deaths at some point.

http://crystalshard.net/atotk.php?page=atotk_wt

At a guess, that would be the beginning of the game?

Do you have your wand? If not, ask Cuppit.

Simply walk downstairs through the portal, and explore.

Spoiler

Crossing the river - no, the scripting uses regions, hence if you get too close to the water, there's the message. AGS walking doesn't work the way you think it does

Unsurprisingly, climbing down a wall is easier than climbing up a wall.

With respect to walking to doors, it is a conscious design decision to not make Maeldun walk to every hotspot or object when clicking on it, because given the sheer amount of such spots per room that would rather increase the amount of time it took a player to look through it. I don't think I want to be inconsistent in this just to add a few places for Maeldun to get caught when clicking on a spot that doesn't really have a game purpose.

Interestingly, in Dutch the things on a harp are indeed called snares.

Please spare me the grammar lessons. I am aware of English grammar, what you point out are simply typoes. Also, Cuppits misspellings of pretty much every second word are very much deliberate (there was at least one game reviewer who thought META was a serious game, go figure... )

My encyclopedia shows half a dozen entries for FAE, including "fundamental attribution error" and the "Ecuadorian Air Force", as well as it being a synonym for faerie.

Ironically, in medieval English, "thee" was the common form and "you" was the formal form; however, since nowadays the latter is commonly used and the former deprecated, this has been reversed in fantasy books.

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Cadaver - various consoles plus PC

The Immortal - various consoles plus PC, Sega version is best

The Hobbit - C64 and probably others

Now that you mention it, I can't even recall any RPGs that do character development. Well, except numerically, of course, but that doesn't count. One of the weird parts of, say, Baldur's Gate is that the guy who's afraid of everything remains afraid of everything even after leveling up five times and kicking serious ass.

Oh cool, more Cuppits!

Some random moves I found:

Guybrush:
spit = hold back, press control
piece of wood = back, forward, shift

Indy:
whip = back, down, forward, shift or control

Tentacle:
bite = forward, back, control

Haven't got any Bobbin moves yet

Spoiler

Graham's fatality is the same as his teleport move. He telefrags his opponent. The QfG hero's fatality is dropping an Antwerp on the enemy

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Plain keyboard, as much as possible. I'm one of those rare folks that play better on a keyboard than on a gamepad, or on a keyboard/mouse combo. Yes, even in most FPS games.

Now get the fuck outta our country, PLEASE. Also, here's some money.

But leave your apples at the desk.

Yes, but obviously there can Be Only One, which is why all these Joneses carry heavy two-handed swords under their trenchcoats or other attire, and if two of them meet they will battle to the death to absorb the other's Chrissitude!

I vote for "le mittens francais."

Moufles, actually

(Radiant, I'm looking in your direction ).

Moi? Parler Francais? Mais non, c'est ridicule!

He obviously has a couple of identical twin or triplet brothers.

This really goes both ways, as you're going to have people on either side who can't/won't come every time.

Yes, it does go both ways. If the 2008 Mittens is in France, I would use this argument to reason that the 2009 Mittens should be in America. Or Australia

Say I wanted to make a game a bit like Transport Tycoon, construction etc. Is there a way to make a tile-based grid in AGS so that you can select say a hotel & place it on a particular "tile"?

Yes. It isn't even all that hard, just create an array (pretend it has two dimensions, e.g. arr[xpos + 50 * ypos]) that holds the tile data, and use two nested while-loops to put them on-screen with RawDraw. Objects and characters conveniently go on top of that.

Also, what if I wanted to have cars moving about? Can AGS handle defined & random paths, and can it handle the strange angles too,

This is slightly trickier because you'd have to code it yourself. You can use MoveCharacterPath and such, but you'd have to calculate the distance and implement some pathfinding algorithm.

Add me to the "likely" list.

And also,





Seriously though, given the trouble some people have at "crossing the pond", I think it's only fair to hold next Mittens in Europe if the last one was in America. Also, we should try to hold one in Australia one of these years.

Is there any possible way to identify flake-outs before you sign them on to the project?

What I usually do is give them any kind of assignment that would be useful within the game, and see if they complete it in a timely fashion. For instance, a room or a character with 4-way walk cycles or a minute or two of music.

If they do, you can give them more things to do and/or ask their feedback on whatever, plus you get to see if their style and quality matches what you had in mind.

If they don't, chances are good they're a flake-out (not always, real life has a tendency of interfering with any and all of us). If they're nice, they'll tell you that they had less time than they expected; if not, you'll simply never hear from them again.

Incidentally, except for some non-native speakers, there tends to be a strong correlation between a person's level of English (grammar, vocabulary, punctuation) used in forum posts, and that person's competence in whatever you might ask their help for.

I've already had some people say "I wanna help, but I don't know what I could do." To which my reply is, "I'll put you on the list of play testers...

If you want my advice, don't. Good playtesters are less common than you might think, and mediocre playtesters are pretty much worthless. A good playtester is analytical, will try to wreck your game, try a hundred things you hadn't thought of, and find a bucketful of bugs in the first room.

A bad playtester will hang around your forum asking how to solve the first puzzle, then come back the next day asking how to solve the second, effectively being a time sink. A single good playtester is better than a dozen poor ones. For comparison, ATOTK had three good playtesters, and that's all we needed.

You don't need a large amount of people to help you. Quality over quantity. Be realistic in your expectations of other people - if someone wants to help but doesn't actually do anything constructive, it's up to you whether you want to keep them around or not, but at least admit to yourself that said person isn't really helping the project.