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ZAGNAR THE DESTROYER! by RocketGirl

and

First Against the Wall

one more

That Damn Bunny

What program you do that, RocketGirl ?

3D Studio MAX 3.1. Antiquated, I know, but my copy is legal and I'm too broke to upgrade.

this any better?

Absolutely, though the perspective seems a trifle off.

I really like what InCreator did with it. LilBlueSmurf's isn't bad either, if you want to keep your original lighting scheme.

Well, here's mine:



Don't mind the compression artifacting; it's like that for file size. The actual BG is much cleaner.

And, yes, I've put this into AGS and built it as a normal room; works great!

Oh, I d'know...I agree with ProgZmax that the panels aren't quite right. They should be more like tiles than the sort of layered-looking platforms that The Ivy made. The floor should still look like a flat plane, but with seams, like a tiled floor.

Otherwise, yes, I agree that the floor needs to be busied up a bit.

Games set on an island, especially if the name of the island figures in the name of the game.Ã, 

...

Games where you wake up in a strange place, not knowing who you are.Ã, 

...

Games set in sanitariums or mental institutions.Ã, 

I think I can explain some of this: It requires very little set-up/exposition.

I mean, let's face it, if your game is set in a complex world that has its own rules, cultures, and history, it can be a weapons-grade pain in the butt to explain it all to the player...and wouldn't most of us feel lost if we'd been thrown in the worlds of, say, Star Wars or Narnia if we hadn't already seen the movies or read the books?

But if you set you game on an island, in a looney bin, or start the character with no memories, then the player learns the rules of the world they're in right along with the protagonist.
And if the world your game is set in happens to be one of your own devising that needs this kind of explanation, then it can be very important that the player understand your world before being thrown completely in the thick of things. Hence such adventure game tropes as islands, sanitariums, and amnesia.

Adding some contour to the floor--as if it were made up of panels instead of a solid piece--would go a long way, I think.

And that green diagonal, um...thing...in the lower left corner either needs more detail to show what it is, or it need to go away. Is that part of the floor, a girder or pipe, what?

BTW you can download it here (it is perfectly legal ) [removed pending investigation!]

Well, I have the CD, so...

Anyway, thanks for the opinions, folks.

No, not the XBox game. The point-and-click PC adventure game. This one.

I was going through my games CDs a while back and this one jumped out at me. I bought it at Half-Price books about six or seven years ago and I vaguely remember thinking that the initial few puzzles were annoying and I took an instant dislike to the protagonist because he hates cats. I never got much further than an hour or two of gameplay.
Fable sat on my shelf ever since, but being that I've been deeply missing adventure games, well...I thought about giving it a second chance.

Has anyone else played this? The review I linked to above kinna pans it, but I'd like to hear what others have to say on the subject.

The problem, really, is that the traditional adventure game--Sierra or LucasArts style--doesn't really have a place in today's technology. I mean, if we use all the bells and whistles of a computer today and place an adventure game character in an immersive 3D environment, players are going to expect to do things that your traditional adventure game just never included, except under certain specific conditions. Things like running vs walking, jumping, attacking, etc. Suddenly, we don't have an adventure game anymore, we have a 3rd-person shooter. But if you leave those things out, well, some folks are going to feel cheated. I mean, adventure game or shooter, I always felt kinna irritated whenever I would find my path blocked by, say, boxes that look inherently movable or climbable.

Of course, where to draw the line on what defines an adventure game is a bit of a tightrope, too. For example, I do not consider Myst or its sequels to be adventure games. The puzzles are too math/pattern based, rather than story-based; IMHO, an adventure game's puzzles need to be more than simply unlocking new paths to new puzzles by re-arranging blocks or setting dials into specific patterns.
In the other direction, I don't consider it an adventure game if a major portion of the game has a twitch/action component. Sierra kept this to a minimum and often allowed you to skip so-called "arcade" sequences. Two examples from the Space Quest series are the skimmer trip to Ulence Flats and building the burgers at Monolith Burger in the Galaxy Galleria. Such things may be occasional elements of an adventure game, but if you're spending a large portion of the game in action sequences where you fight monsters or something, well, that's not an adventure game as far as I'm concerned. The Quest for Glory series really toed that line for me; the added action element often felt out of place.

It would be really hard to define what an adventure game is without a thousand people coming out of the woodwork to point out exceptions. But needless to say, there are certainly some examples one could point at and declare as a good baseline for defining the genre: King's Quest, Space Quest, Monkey Island, The Dig, Full Throttle, to name a few.

But trying to imagine these games as, say, 3D PC or console games, well...I can't do it. I can see gamers being dissatisfied until certain features are added that would take, say, Space Quest, and turn it into Knight's of the Old Republic. And I can't honestly say they're wrong to want this...I would find a 3D adventure game kinna dull, I think. The lines are too blurred. Yet the traditional 2D games still capture me, even if they don't capture most of today's gamers. And not just the old games I grew up with; some of the newer ones I've found were like a breath of fresh air in the constant stink of FPS and RTS games that most gamers are demanding these days.

What needs to evolve...? I don't know. I will admit that graphics are certainly an issue. There are a lot of AGS games I haven't downloaded because of stick-figure level art. But that seems like an awfully simple thing to correct; after all, the rather old-school LucasArtsy quality of, say, 5 Days a Stranger was enough to satisfy my tastes. But I think that, for example, PopCap Games has proved that you don't need to use all the bells and whistles of today's computers to make a good game, even if they're not making adventure games. I'll play a 2D game of any kind and still love it. So I don't think going 3D is necessarily the answer.
I do know that adding an action element to adventure games is the wrong way to go, even if that's what gamers want these days.

Ah, well...

I was going to answer your question, but I guess you're joking right?

Assuming you mean me...well, no, actually.

See, I was thinking about how to make a room with multiple exits and thus, by extension, multiple entrances as well. Being that AGS only gives us four "walls" with which to define the boundaries of a room, having, say, a northwest and a southwest exit could produce some problems, so one would have to use hotspots to trigger the room change, right? Well, suppose one of those exits was a door and we wanted it to close behind the player if they entered from that hallway, for example.
But what if, instead, those exits both led to the same room, but a different part of it. Two parallel bridges leading across a chasm, for example. Suddenly it's not the room that matters so much as how the player exits one and enters the other. But if you want something different to happen based on the entrance one uses, well...it could make a difference.

Of course, if all you want is to have something happen based on the four cardinal directions one could enter from, well, that simplifies things, yes, but it also completely changes how one might operate.

So, no, I was seriously curious what you were trying to accomplish.

Hmmm...what sorts of things will the character be doing when coming from one room or another?

Ed Sullivan.

I live in Seattle, WA, and have been here for the last ten years.

You really don't want to know. Trust me.

I'm not sure but DOS-BOX might be able to play them...

Google-ing... cool! Thanks!

Okay, maybe this is showing my age too much, but...

I absolutely loved Lane Mastodon versus the Blubbermen back in the day.  8)

I absolutely loved the first two Kyrandia games. (Incidentally, does anyone know a way to make them run under XP? I still have the original discs but they won't run worth a damn...)
I thought the artwork and music were well above par, the humor was worthwhile, the voice acting was...video game voice acting; I'd heard worse. The atmosphere of the games was really great; they captured an epic-fairytale style that I've not seen done before or since (even compared to King's Quest, which was guilty of trying too hard, IMHO) with the possible exception of the recent Narnia movie. Sure, some of the puzzles were annoying, but that's every adventure game, IMHO. Some hits, some misses. Nothing ever really bugged me to the point of not playing the game anymore.

But Kyrandia 3 was horrible...IMHO. The puzzles were all annoying, I hated Malcolm, and the sudden departure from the art style that had so engrossed me before was unfortunate. It just didn't feel like Kyrandia anymore. It's like the difference between Star Control 2 and Star Control 3, of Master of Orion 2 and Master of Orion 3 (what is it with the third game in a series? Why do they always feel the need to "re-imagine" games on the third try?). It was almost as if the game had been given to a different team to make, and the team lead didn't really like the original material...

Anyway, yes, I've heard of 'em and loved the first two.

I was kidding!  :

...though usually an elemental does have something to do with nature.

Is "white" an element?