Messages

[15 minutes:]

Here are my 2c about the games

15 minutes:
Well this game is almost perfect, the concept, the style, the fonts, the biowareish talksystem,  so well polished and fit together like a charm, no doubt my vote goes to 15 minutes, it was so much joy to play, congrats this is real gem.
If i look with the magnifying glass for critism, the only point that i would mention is the lack of a few soundeffects.


concurrence:
really great presentation, are the graphics drawd by yourself?, the controls are really good and similar to prince of persia 1, at least so far i can figure it out, cause my main criticpoint is the lack of a readme with the exact keycontrols. So i get to the vines and stucked there, i gave up, after hitting all keys on the keyboard but didnt manage to go over this obstacles. What brings me to the next point, which is maybe related to the fact, that i didnt see more of the game, but i cant see the Time Theme in your Game, cause except the quote from Einstein in the beginning, there was no relation to the mags theme, maybe this will appear later.


In essence:
Well, the intro.... i cant stand it longer then 3 times, but what i see so far was very promising, cause at game start it reminds me on Who dares wins or Commando, so i was a little bit dissapointed, as there was no meaningful opportunity to use the shootgun.
i struggled at the tanks, maybe i missed a later section, where it come in use.
So it was only running to right until you die.

OSD:
Ok, so there is nothing more to be said.

Dave Miller 30.4.2011

RunAway:
I liked this concept very much, one of my favorite AGS Games is  Forklift -> http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=42094.0
which a somehow similar approach, from Technocrat. So it was funny, to run a bit around an blew some things up, but it was obivious that this game needs a lot more work to be finished. Hope you will continue this concept. I got a game crash while playing:
in "room1.asc", line 853
Error: NewRoom: room change requested to invalid room number -1.
 

Lurking horror
The atmosphere was very well captured, but i didnt came very far, and im not that patient in the moment when im stuck,
cause the work which i laid back for this MAGS, has to be done now. 

sorry dopplepost. 

[City of Thieves]

I will post my 2cents about all entrys tonight.
when is the voting deadline (the next one.  )

Arj0n: Please can you alter the zip pack with the updated version from City of Thieves?
So i guess i have time tonight, to look at the other entries. 

MAGS April 2011 pack (7 games): direct download

thanks, Arj0n. 

bigthanks for your comments.  

City of Thieves
> Not a fan of 3D models turned into sprites, although this is one of the better ones
> Mouse control is less than ideal for this type of game, keyboard control would have given
much more feel of urgency and preciseness to the game (see Yahtzee's Art of Theft)
> GUI seems to function a bit strangely. The buttons don't all seem to react the same way
> I have to reduce points for lack of manual and use of music from a Troika game (that music is holy! Using it anywhere else than the original game is sacrilege!)

well there is actually a halfbaked keyboard control implemented,

WASD -> move player
G,L,U, ->  AGS standard keys for switching mousemodes
so its actually possible to play the game with keyboard and mouse combined.
my aim was also to make it fully playable with keyboard,
but after thinking about it, i didnt really know a decent solution to pick inventoryitems with the keyboard and act with them on the hotspots near the player, but i will look into this..

the music issue:
two weeks ago, i started thinking about the music, my first intention was to use a remix from They stole a million.
So i searched and found one, then i email the author about the permissin to use it, but never get an answer.
as the game evolves i realized, that the They stole a Million Theme won't work anyway,
cause its more a fun-sounding and wont approach the feel of the game.  
Vampire:Bloodlines is one of my all time favourite games, and so i knew the music would fit very well to the game.
And it does, especially for the theme when the police is nearby.
I was also under heavy pressure to get a music in the game, at all.
I started includeing sound and music on monday as well, so there wasn't much space for wrong decisions.
AndI'm pretty happy with the result, and sorry i dont want to sacrifice Troika or Vampire:Bloodlines, i see it as an obeisance to them.
Not to mention that this music is only used for the mags version of the game.

Manual:
The basic infos about the minigames are in the readme, the inventory gui in the bottom was introduced in the intro,
and to change mouse.modes with the right cursor key isnt that unusual in AGS - Games.
Which control infos are you missing?  

> GUI seems to function a bit strangely. The buttons don't all seem to react the same way
Please can you point out for me, what you mean exactly?

Final and proofreaded Version (City of Thieves) is now online.
link is the same as before -> http://www.maniac-mansion-mania.de/downloads/AGS/CityofThieves_RescueSandy.zip

Spoiler

Just finished it, is it possible to get the 20,000? I'm pretty sure I got all the money out of both locations.

[close]

Yes it is possible, so i guess you missed something, but its very close. Total money ammount is around 20900.

Spoiler

I felt actual tension when the police showed up during the second burglary

[close]

This is the best comment for me,  cause my biggest fear was that you cant feel the tension, and without that the whole game wouldnt work. 
(And i started to implement the police on monday this week.)

MAGS April 2011 pack (7 games): direct download

Arj0n: Please can you alter the zip pack with the updated version from City of Thieves?

So i guess i have time tonight, to look at the other entries. 

[City of Thieves: Rescue Sandy]

City of Thieves: Rescue Sandy




Burglar Simulation


Download the game HERE.

Awesome six entries thanks and well done to everybody. Wham the pressures on!

i'm awaiting the proofreading badly, so the pressure is on me now, i guess. 

I need betatesters for my mags game.
This is urgent cause the deadline is today.
I will upload the betaversion in about an hour, so please pm me in the meantime if you want to betatest.

Attention: Its a burglar simulation and no typicall adventure

Welcome to the club of the distinguished supporters of fanmade Computergames,
sitting until 3 or 4 in the morning, and coding like hell.  

I'll take a half hour brake now, and then somewhere later in the night should be the exhilarating moment,
when i play my game the first time from start to finish. Yeahhh......  


So 4:08 and its done, i played it the first time from start to finish. 

Oh no, i had worked like a MADMAN!!! on this game the whole month,
and i will release it, thats for sure, in the worst case without extern betatests and without a proofreaded english version,
what makes me a little sad, cause my english is bad, and its for sure that i play the game not in the same way, like an extern person,
who will encounter bugs, that i never face bymyself,
but i can't do more as work on the game until i slide off from my chair (which i did the last days and weeks.  )

btw. its not possible to cut things off in this kind of game.

I can understand Hudders, and the guys waiting for the new mags, (couldnt start a new one anyway?),
but Whams statement seems a bit two faced to me,

I have to agree with Hudders on this one. Since one of the basic ideas behind MAGS is to practice working with deadlines, ...

cause its easy to decide against a 1 day extension, when you have finished your game allready,
and maybe you forgot you were in the same position 1 week ago to beg for an extension.

butI'm wasting my time here in the forum philosophize, when an unfinished MAGS Game waits on my harddrive.  :o  :o

Big thx, i have my own mouse.mode modul now running,
but after the actual MAGS deadline,
we can maybe merge this two and make a modul which can obliterate the downsides of the actual mouse mode handling. 

Its not so promising here.
Feels and looks slowly like a real game,
but there so much unexpeted issues suddenly coming up.
And if sorted all this things out, which will take at least one day,
the game has to be balanced, tested and proofreaded.

Unfortunatly there are so much issues to solve that i dont can give the game to betatesters and proofreading today.
If i must realease tomorrow, i guess i must submit a game which isnt finished and polished as i wish,
and in the state it could and has to be, so i want to ask if its possible to extend the deadline again until Thursday night. 

ok, my observation brings this facts. (the same as yours.)

my function Interface_Interact() works only if i put it in room_load, and only for this particular room.
after a roomchange, (and i didn't enable the walkmode in this roomchange explizit) i got the behavior mentioned above,
mouse_cursor starts on interact and with rightclick it switches to walkto.
the same if i put this code in game_start, it wont work without the walkto,
so my solution is to put this code in every room_load regardless if i need it 3 rooms in a row,
have to put it in every room_load, cause the room_change will do something (strange?) with mouse.modes.

so i suggest a

Code: ags

mouse.Mode = eModeInteract_only;

for the editor wishlist, who will automatically make this mode the only available.


thx for the help. 

there is no eModeUseinv in use so this isnt the mainproblem,
unfortunatly this line mouse.SelectNextMode();
switch to the walkto mode - maybe why its the first in the list,
regardless if this mode is switched off or not.

well the actual cursormode management is a pain in the ass.

ok i have several functions to prevent some modes to show up, but it wont work without problems:

Code: ags

 
function Interface_Interact()
{
    mouse.DisableMode(eModeTalkto);
    mouse.DisableMode(eModeUseinv);
    mouse.DisableMode(eModeWalkto);
    mouse.DisableMode(eModeLookat);
    
    mouse.Mode = eModeInteract;
}

I call this function for example on room_load,
but when i click the right button or turn the mousewheel, the first mode eModeWalkto appears and further rightclicking changes between the interact and walkto mode, which is an undesired behavior, cause i disabled the walkto mode explicit.

It obiviously is related to this line(s) in the global script:

Code: ags

else if (button == eMouseRight || button == eMouseWheelSouth){
    // right-click our mouse-wheel down, so cycle cursor

    if (mouse.Mode == eModeUseinv) {
      player.ActiveInventory = null;
      mouse.Mode = eModeWalkto;
    }
    else mouse.SelectNextMode();

..

else if (button == eMouseWheelNorth) { 
    // Mouse-wheel up, cycle cursors 
    // If mode isn't WALK, set the previous mode (notice usage of numbers instead
    // of eNums, when it suits us)...
    if (mouse.Mode>0) mouse.Mode=mouse.Mode-1; 

.....
if (player.ActiveInventory!=null) 
      {
        //...and the player has a selected inventory item, set mouse mode to UseInv. 
        mouse.Mode=eModeUseinv; 
      }
      else 
      {
        // If they don't, however, just set it to mode TALK (change this line if you add more cursor modes)
        mouse.Mode=eModeTalkto; 

is there another solution beside to operate in this code sections?

[MODULES:]

I can host this on the maniac mansion mania webspace.
I have already the two files with demos included, so i can upload these two immediatly.
But need the other 2 noDemoVersions.

ok so here we go with the first two:

MODULES:

Download Modules with Demos
All modules and their demos and occasionally old versions are included. That explains the 55 MB size of them.


PLUGINS:

Download Plugins with Demos
All plugins and their demos and occasionally old versions are included. That explains the 29 MB size of them.


If the list is troubling you, I'm sorry, this was done in the best way i could categorize them. If a module/tool isn't there, sorry it's hard to constantly upload them, but it can be done so report it.

Thats good news.

I hopefully get the game in a playable state without music and sound on monday.
So i can give it to betatester(s) and proofreading on monday evening,
and have tuesday and wednesday for adding music, sound, the corrected text and bugfixes. 

thanks, this is absolutly neccesary for me, otherwise it would be at least a very silent and buggy game. 

So i suggest a deadline extension until  Wednesday 4. May!

i cant finished the game before that day, i suspect. 
Lost yesterday completly, and havn't enough time to work the whole upcoming weekend on the game,
so wednesday 4th May would be great.

oh this is quite cool, thx for the info.
The help File should be updated.
There are several unknown code issues which would be useful to know sometimes.

well the deadline for Mags is coming close, the blood pressure is high,
so there is no time for such trivial things like playing around with text colors.