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So my project Neofeud has a couple rooms and probably 10-20 minutes of gameplay depending on how completist you are about reading/detectiving the scenes, and how awake you are when you fire the game up. 

I intend to make this eventually a full-length (4-8 hours?) commercial adventure, but I was wondering at what point might it be advisable to put out a demo version of the game, to whet appetites, get feedback on the direction of the game, etc??  As I understand it, Technobabylon had a few free demo versions out there year(s) in advance of the commercial release, correct?

At the moment we don't have any voice overs, although voice acting is in the gameplan for the commercial version.  Other than that, the artwork (background portraits items anims) is either done or nearing done.

A penny for your opinions on the timing, completeness, etc. of putting out a demo version of an AGS game?  Or perhaps that isn't advisable at all?

Thanks.

That would make sense, but Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V doesn't work.

According to my AGS 3.4 on right-clicking an object in a room you can "Delete", "Place new object here", or "Copy coordinates to clipboard".

@Mandle: I was mostly thinking of the convenience of making several identical objects without having to re-input all of their properties each time I create a new one.  I'd be interested in such a template option!

Thanks for the helpful tips, guys.

Well basically, there's a part of the room where you "zoom in" to a device, and need to do things like unscrew screws, remove parts, lubricate things, solder circuits, etc.  I just want the device to temporarily display over the room so the player cannot interact with anything but the device itself, until they finish fixing it.  Then the device display closes and you resume in the room.  I believe something like this happens in Primordia, where you click an area of a machine and you get a closeup, where you must perform repairs etc..

I tried doing this by having a room object with the zoomed-in view of the device become visible, with several other objects (screws, parts, etc) becoming visible as well.  It seemed simpler at the time to use GUI because of the extra work required in setting up each individual object in the minigame, hiding the normal room objects so the player can't interact with them, then re-hiding each room object and re-showing all of the normal objects after the game is completed.  With GUIs it's just one "gui.Visible = true" line to show the minigame and disable all background images, and then one more "gui.Visible = false" line to hide it again.

The game works right now, I'm mostly just thinking of the simplest way to move variables / functions out of the Global Script so it isn't cluttered.  Maybe I'll see about Snarky's solution of moving game logic into another module.

I'm talking about creating a room object, "oScrew" for example, and then duplicating that object so there are multiple copies of it lying around a room.  For example, on a table.

Is that possible?

Hm, is there a way to get to room variables from the global script, then?

I have some GUIs that are pretty specific minigames in certain rooms, and so they don't seem to belong in the Global script.  Is there a way to store GUI-related variables inside a room rather than the global script? 

Thanks

So I need many copies of a certain object, in this case a screw, which the player will use.  Is there a way to instance an object multiple times so that all the properties (image, description, etc) of each instance are identical?  If that's not possible, is there a way to copy an object?

Thanks

Right on, a million times better this one.  I also thought the volcano at first was a hurricane inbound, in the first image.  Good job!

The suspense if fatal!

Working!?  Just stop working!

Can we just have our cyberpunk cake already!?!?  I'm hungry!

(Pre-orders)

I like the Predator-chromosome heads-up display.  I hope self-detonation becomes an unlockable verb near the final third of the game.

Looks hot!

Keep on truckin'!

I've got mine on Indiedb.  I mostly link there since it's a lot easier to manage and do updates right now, given my absence of PR / web dev type personnel.

Here's some extra teaser material for you fine neofeudal lords and ladies.  After countless transforminating of cinematic robot cliches and biomechanical upcycling parts from the junkyard half a mile down the street from DARPA, I give you Neofeud Protagonist The Second, Proto-J 2.0.



Six Billion Dollar Baller

(Proto-J ft. DJ Re-Zet)

(Cue 80's MTV music video reminiscent of Public Enemy's "Fight The Power")

Uh.  Bot-boy fo' life, yo.
Proto-J steppin' up like steppin razor.
Haterz get off ma blue chromeplate shoes. 
DJ Re-Zet drop that mutha fuckin' h-bomb

(Beat Drops)

Proto-J be straight wreckin' Coastaz po-po
Crashin' fuzz drones like Zero-Cool in da no-fly zone
Vanilla Ice cold killa, thrill you in da landfilla
Terminate you face off like a Nick Cage ninja

Born a Hypetech lab, 6-billion dollar balla
Silver sparkplug in my mouth, lab rat of ma father
"Prototype for da future" but a cage for Proto-J
Raged against da machine, bots on muthafuckin' parade

Shockwave took me apart like Johnny 5, disassemble
Scraped lith from the street, jacked new arm bling from Wal Mart androz.
Rolled wit da Kromeboyz and da Frankenfreakz too
Human haters gonna hate, spit on my mothafuckin shoes

But I be risin' to da top, blowin up overseas
Now da whiteshoe meatbags all gunnin for a piece of me
Fuck you!  I online, takin over like Skynet
Nuke you phonies from orbit, time for a hard reset!

(Snare rush, dub-step blaze)

DJ Re-Zet rockin yo sox, Proto-J rockin da robo-Rebox.

Bot-boy, out.



Reebok "Futurestepz", custom modded with durithium spring soles, snap straight into Proto-J's Achilles' swivel-joint.

I'd put some shadows in the corners, like where the fence touches the ground. and at the base of the tree.  Maybe think more about the direction the light is coming from? 

What is on the ground exactly?  Is it dry grass, dirt, sand?  I see what looks like green grass in the foreground.

It does look pretty foggy in there, maybe that's on purpose.

Definitely looks better!  Glad you shone some light on the subject!  

Remember, darker skin makes for brighter highlights, in my experience.  White / caucasian faces are so bright already that there's less contrast -- you don't really see the bright spots on the cheeks / nose cause it's... whitewashed.  There's a tendency to just make everything darker in African portraits, but that can result in the picture just looking light the lighting is really dim. 

For example:





Notice how you can really see the light, near-white parts on the darker girl's cheeks, whereas you can barely see anything on the white girl's?  Mostly you just see her reddish blush.

I did consider doing that, Mandle, although I figured there might be something simpler, and less likely to have issues if anything about the UI changes.  Thanks for the suggestion though.

I have a GUI at the top of the screen similar to the default AGS GUI  whose visibility is set to, "When mouse moves to top of the screen."

I want to have this GUI visible temporarily during an intro portion of the game while I'm explaining what the GUI buttons do. 

I tried setting the GUI's "Visible" parameter to true but it seems to stay invisible.  I tried setting the mouse cursor to the top of the screen, but the mouse.x and mouse.y are read-only, it says.

Is there a way to force this GUI to show for a bit?

Thanks

Hm, how would you disable the scrolling so to script it yourself?

lasca: Ah well, probably time to move on to the hair so I don't end up wasting the rest of my life rubbing on that eye.

I super get you on this!  I tend to micromanage every iota of art detail.  It's like a splinter in my mind if something's off. (Forgive my CMRD: Compulsive Matrix Reference Disorder)

The mantra I use to keep from popping open Photoshop again to retouch that damned wrinkle when I'm supposed to be doing my TPS reports at work is, "No one cares about this gross abomination against all that is Sacred to Art!  it's all in your head!"

Because most of the time, it is.  Most players are not art critics, and probably won't even notice.  They are more likely to alt-F4 or left-swipe, or whatever shit they do to force-close nowadays due to a flat story, boring gameplay, uncompelling characters, or uninteresting art style.  Worry about the hole in the ship's hyperdrive, rather than the color of the coffee cups in the mess hall.  Primordia is if not the, at least near the apex of what Lucasian p-n-c adventure games can be.



Imagine if Primordia artist Victor Pflug let his inner art-Nazi tell himself, "What in the seven hells was I thinking?!?!  The shape of his left iris is HORRIBLE!"



"Oh God, this is a disaster!  It looks like a German wax museum in the middle of the Dresden Firebombing!  Am I genetically preprogrammed to be incapable of drawing straight lines!?}

Thank God, (or Man, if you're Horatio, the oblong-eyed protagonist), Victor didn't let his inner editor shut him down, or let him waste countless hours scrubbing and redrawing and redoing Horatio's eye.

(Full disclosure: Wadjet Eye is not paying me for this plug, I truly think Primordia is one of the greatest pieces of game art out there.)

I think it was Leo Dicaprio (or was it Brad Pitt?  I think it was both), who said, "I cannot watch any of my own films, cause all I see are the mistakes, how good it could've been".  Yet these are award-winning guys, with real talent.  The film (or game) will always be better in your head.

All of that is a convoluted but hopefully more illustrative way to say, "It's ok to let the eye go.  The world, and your game, will not end." 

Take your mistakes and turn them into strokes of genius.  Remember, the audience doesn't know the difference!

(/rant)


For some hair advice: get a wide brush and kind of lay down the darkest color.  Then up the brightness a bit, and go in with a slightly narrower brush.   Again, I'd recommend throwing some more light in there, somewhere.  Once you know where the light is coming from, add some near-white highlights in the locks that face the light source.  Curly hair is a bit more tricky, but the same applies with the brush-width advice.

Good luck!  You got this!