Messages

Hey, what's this? Serious discussion? Are we really going to allow this thread to devolve into rational debate when we could go on making wiseass comments instead?

Let's get back on topic, (God)dammit!

Then again it is an awesome background, few things that let it down though. For starters the doors reach much to high towards the ceeling. If you look at any door within your house you'll see there is about a 5th of the wall above the door frame, where as your background has about a 10th, maybe less.

Not in my apartment, they don't. The doors practically reach the ceiling.

Most doors are roughly the same height, but ceiling height varies considerably. It tends to be lower in more modern houses. Of course, the house in the background looks to be quite old-fashioned, so you might expect high ceilings. Especially if it's a southern mansion. They relied on the heat rising to the ceiling to keep the rooms cool.

Sweet! AGS is becoming quite the powerful programming language...

What icons are you looking to add? Posting from a work computer, I can't really go and install AGS here.

The question isn't entirely clear, but I think Swegi is asking about the dithering patterns.

These patterns are created with pattern brushes, which are supported by every decent paint application. The TSOMI graphics were made in dpaint, and the artists included Steve Purcell.

Since the forum trouble a few weeks back, the "always stay logged in" feature doesn't seem to work. Now I have to keep logging into the forums whenever I've been inactive for an hour or more.

[not serve the coffee scalding hot]

Remember that woman who won a $3 mill. lawsuit against MacDonald's for burning herself on their hot coffee? Well, she had a point.

If she wasn't sittin' in her car with the coffee cup between her legs trying to open it with one hand it wouldn't have happened.

What are they [McDonald's] supposed to do?Ã,  Maybe put zippers around the lid which require both hands to open.Ã,  Maybe they should put accelerometers on the cups to make sure it's not in motion while being sipped.

They could, you know, not serve the coffee scalding hot! Sure, trying to open a cup of coffee with one hand while sitting in a car may not be the smartest thing ever, but I bet most people wouldn't be aware that spilling the drink might mean third degree burns and several days in hospital. MacDonald's were aware, and they should have done something about it.

The point isn't whether the verdict was correct or not. The point is that even though it sounds like a frivolous lawsuit, it had a good deal of merit.

Actually, the website articulates everything I have to say on the issue:

"Anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason. Winning is much more difficult, and the vast majority of lawsuits get thrown out long before victory. The media thus often overemphasizes the filing of a lawsuit - especially those that are apparently frivolous - and it gives far too little attention when the lawsuit fails, gets dismissed, or simply dies out."

"Reasonable people can disagree about whether McDonald's should have been forced to pay for the severe burns that Stella Liebeck suffered in 1992, but the legal system has been unfairly damned by people based on anecdotes and assumptions about this case without understanding a bit more about what actually happened and why."

I'm not saying that criminals don't have rights. I'm just saying that some of the situations occurring are rather ridiculous. For instance a criminal attacks a police officer, and is injured while being subdued. Then tries to sue for the injuries occurred. Thats just daft.

Attempting to sue isn't the same thing as winning a lawsuit. I could try to sue you for posting that message--I just wouldn't win.

Besides, never trust one-sentence summaries of the background for lawsuits. Remember that woman who won a $3 mill. lawsuit against MacDonald's for burning herself on their hot coffee? Well, she had a point.

But true/false are just #defines for 1 and 0, right? There's no boolean data type.

[Writing]

Thanksgiving weekend gave me a chance to catch up with some of the recent AGS games. Two of a Kind was easily the best of the bunch. In fact, it's right up there with the cream of AGS games. Thanks, guys, for making such a cool game!

Going on the idea that by offering constructive criticism I can influence future games to be more to my liking, I'd like to offer a short (well, superficial, at least) review. Hope you don't mind.

Writing
Very high quality, especially the dialog in conversations. The characters have distinctive voices which provides a lot of personality without becoming annoying. It's often funny, and rarely seems like it's trying too hard. There are only a couple of misspellings in the whole game, which is up to the high standards of the other elements.

The story is surprisingly minimal. There are only three or four plot developments altogether. The intro is the weakest part. It is wasted explaining something that turns out to have no bearing on the story. While it gives a "rational" explanation for the supernatural powers seen in the game, the story soon brings in magic and demons regardless. It seems like the explanation "people have different magic powers" would have been sufficient.

There are some half-hearted attempts at character development, but they don't really go anywhere. A hint about unpleasant events in the past is nicely underplayed. The conflict is completely external to the two protagonists, and they have no real personal stake in their quest. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes the story feel a bit lightweight.

Puzzles and Gameplay
The puzzles are all pretty reasonable. The game is highly non-linear, which I found made it significantly harder than it would otherwise have been, because the different puzzles served to obfuscate each other. That's probably a good thing, but it also went some way to ruin whatever momentum the game had. A couple of the locations that show up on the map at the beginning of the game (specifically, the store and the farm) are quite arbitrary. The story doesn't do anything to explain why the characters feel like going there. It works much better when locations appear after they are referenced.

I thought there was some inconsistency in the level of hints given out given out for each puzzle, for instance

Spoiler

getting through the gate by (among other things) getting nuts for BerserkyTails from the store by wearing a funny hat by finding a replacement for the bum

[close]

seemed excessively "breadcrumbed", while the solution of

Spoiler

having Dr Love pretty up the flower

[close]

appeared to be taken out of thin air. However, I see that some people have been stuck on puzzles I thought were obvious, while there are other bits that no one but me seem to have found difficult.

One minor complaint about a puzzle:

Spoiler

If Tim tries to OPEN/CLOSE the window where the rat is stuck there is no response, whether he's levitating or not. Shouldn't he give some kind of feedback about not being able to open the window with his hands?

[close]

The gameplay is very good. The shtick of being able to switch between two characters works extremely well. Not only does it provide a different perspective on things, it's used for all it's worth in constructing puzzles. Cooperation puzzles, conversation puzzles, puzzles that rely on one character's special ability, multiple paths, even tasks where the other character has to be absent.

The balance between the characters is a bit off, though. I counted eight animals Tiffany gets to talk to, with only three places in the entire game where Tim needs to use his floating.

Interface
The interface is solid. I grew particularly fond of the follow (or, the way I used it, summon) button, which made an enormous difference in playability. I had a problem with it once, when switching to Tim while he was following caused him to materialize outside of the walkable area, but that was easy enough to get out of (switch back to Tiffany, go to another screen, and summon Tim). I didn't like that follow got turned off when you switched characters. That seemed like a bug to me.

There are a few scripting issues with the GUI buttons, too. The text in the status bar often doesn't get updated to reflect the currently selected action, especially when over the inventory. Using one inventory item with another has to be done without any feedback.

I don't much like the layout of the action buttons. It seems like an inefficient use of space, and they were unnecessarily fiddly to hit. I really wanted one (or more) of these options while playing:
-cycle through actions with right mouse button
-keyboard shortcuts for the actions
-default action on rightclick

Any of those would have made a big difference.

Kudos for a very brief, skippable, splash screen when launching the game. The save game system is a neat gimmick, and the slots are just about sufficient for the length of the game.

Other Stuff
The graphics are great, the music is great. Good work!

Overall, it's a great game. It's not quite a masterpiece, but it's a great example of a multi-character adventure, guaranteed to be referenced whenever the topic comes up in the future.

I don't care whether you allow 0/1 parameters in place of enums as long as it doesn't interfere with anything else. It doesn't affect me. But if we're talking about renaming parameters to accomodate it, I say get rid of it.

I don't want to have to care about whether TRUE is defined as 0 or !0, or which value of an enumeration comes first. The whole point of abstraction is to get away from that level of detail.

Any parameter of boolean or enumeration type should have the simplest, most intuitive name possible, and its default value should be whatever value corresponds to the desired default behavior, whatever that may be. All default boolean parameters must be FALSE? Please no.

While on that subject: now that we have enums, what about providing a bool enum with entries True and False? Actually, that's a bad idea. Forget about it. I was just looking for a cheap way to "typecheck" boolean arguments, but "bool.true" is inelegant, and people who prefer 0/1 should probably be allowed to go on doing that.

- They either go to sleep and try another day, with a fresh mind, or give in and surf for hints/walkthroughs, which guarantees they'll get stuck again very soon - they always will until they can understand the game's logic and mechanics, not on a theoretical level, of course, but on an... intuitive, "this-is-the-way-the-WORLD-works" way.

That's not been my experience. I've solved games by looking up hints and walkthroughs as well as by just keep pounding my head against the wall each time I was stuck. It didn't seem to make a difference to my ability to solve next puzzle, or my need to use a hint the next time I was stuck.

Nor do I usually feel that I'm stuck because I don't understand the game's logic and mechanics, but because I overlooked some object, didn't see why I would need THAT to do THAT, was trying to solve a puzzle I didn't have all the pieces for yet, etc. One frustrating case is when you need to trigger some event that's completely unrelated to what you're trying to do in order to advance.

It would be nice if adventure game puzzle worlds had enough personality that you'd need to get to know them in order to play them. I haven't seen that, though. They're more or less hard, and more or less fair, and some skew more to one kind of puzzle, but that's about it. And so getting into the specific mindset of the game doesn't help much.

If there's a caveat to this, it's that there's plenty of games I haven't played, sometimes because they've been too quirky for my taste. The Spellcasting games are one example. Also, I believe what you say may be more the case for text adventures (IF).

Is it now legal/possible to give a struct as an argument to a function? I seem to remember being told some time back that that was not allowed.

And what about passing arrays as arguments?

Nice contradiction, there!Ã,  Also, you might go farther in these forums if you use a 'little' candor and decency in your replies when people offer some friendly assistance.Ã,  Oh, and you're right, those boobs certainly illustrate masculinity.Ã,  :

Hey, I have to agree with Sebel that your version of Lorraine is hideous. It's not a bad sprite, it's just that it's a good sprite of a butt-ugly woman.

It's not true that we don't have any evidence of Socrates outside of Plato's dialogues. Aristophanes wrote his play 'The Clouds' as a satire of the philosopher when Socrates was in his mid-forties. Xenophon wrote about Socrates, as did Aristotle.

*ahem* lemme take my shot

Most people believe Atlantis actually existed...

Although most people are pretty stupid, I don't think you're right. I think most people believe Atlantis is a myth.

Yet most people don't believe in the Bible stories.

33% percent of the people of the world are Christian. A further 22% percent are Muslim, and a few million are Jewish. All of these religions believe in some or all of the "Bible stories". Together they make up about 55% percent of all people. Therefore, most people do believe in the "Bible stories".

It makes me wonder really.... There is more proof Jesus infact existed than Platos...

Where do you get that idea? Given that Plato, you know... wrote books, I don't see how there can be much doubt about his existence.

Yet most people doubt Jesus existed and take Platos as a real person .

First of all, not only Christians and Muslims, but also a large number of nonbelievers (including me) think that Jesus probably existed. That makes us comfortably the majority of people.

Secondly, there's a big difference between believing that Plato existed and believing in Atlantis, and between believing that Jesus was an historical figure and believing that he walked on water.

I think this is called "believing what you want to believe so you can suit your fancies"

Or alternatively "keeping two different things straight in your head".

There's no NATURAL Swedish girl with dark hair. The ones you could see would have some foreign blood.

That's completely untrue, and actually kind of offensive. I know several Swedish and Norwegian girls with black and with dark hair, who are as Scandinavian as any of their blonde peers. What is a "natural" Swede, anyway? You think there's anyone in Sweden who doesn't have an ancestor from somewhere else? Hah! Just think of the foreign slaves kidnapped by the Vikings. Their descendants have lived in the country for a thousand years or more, and by now probably include pretty much the entire population. Are they not real Swedes? Everyone (except for on Iceland) has foreign blood, there is no "pure race".

And by the way, you're forgetting the Sami people, the native tribes who have lived in Sweden for a lot longer than the Germanic peoples. They are pretty much all black-haired.

A color watermark in an otherwise grayscale picture is no good. If the picture has any red in it it becomes much more difficult to remove cleanly.

It shouldn't be necessary to convert gray in the lines to pure monochrome. Just place it as a separate layer on top and set it to multiply. The lines will look smoother, not so jagged. If you need the outlines for selecting areas, you can make a monochrome copy of the layer for that purpose.

[Adventure Game Interfaces]

Radiant, is there any causal relationship between seguso's "manifesto" and this GTD thread?

You seem to be trying to define a "smallest expressive set of verbs". I'm not quite sure what the point is. Most people seem to think that the LucasArt set of verbs is rich enough, and I haven't heard anyone say that it has too many. What do you gain from reducing it further?

Since this thread is kind of about interfaces, I'm going to go ahead and post an article I wrote some time ago, for something else. Seems more appropriate than starting a new thread. I'd appreciate feedback, and be interested in earlier examples for the features I talk about, and particularly other types of controls and displays that I haven't covered.

Adventure Game Interfaces

A comprehensive discussion of all interfaces that have ever been used in adventure games is probably not possible, because the line between adventure games and other genres is blurred to an unusual extent. It's possible to make an adventure game in almost any game engine, so designers have created adventures in the tradition of other genres (first-person 3D, platform arcade…), using interfaces typical for those game types. This article, therefore, focuses on innovation in the mainstream adventure game tradition, not one-offs existing within other genres.

The evolution of adventure game interfaces has been an almost unbroken progression towards simplicity. While certain input techniques often go together with specific types of display, the innovations in each interface aspect have often happened independently. It is therefore clearest to discuss them separately.

Input
The majority of PC adventure games have used one of the following input techniques (listed roughly in chronological order): option-select, text parser, parser+arcade control, verb-select, modal cursor, simple cursor, or pop-up menu.

Option-Select (1972)
In a game with option-select controls, the player is presented with a list of available actions and selects one of them. The selection can be indicated by typing a keyboard shortcut, or by highlighting the list item with keyboard arrows or mouse cursor and clicking/pressing an action key (ENTER or SPACE, typically). Option-select was the input method used in the very first proto-adventure game, "Hunt the Wumpus" (Gregory Yobs, 1972). It is widely used for selecting dialogue responses in adventure games that allow the player to control conversations. It remains the input mechanism of choice for Japanese (often pornographic, hentai/ecchi) adventure games.


Option-select used for dialog in The Secret of Monkey Island 2

One problem with option-select controls is that it makes it difficult to design challenging puzzles, since there are no non-obvious actions. Unless some options are fatal, puzzle-solving is simply a matter of working through the alternatives. Consequently, option-select games are often trivial.

Text Parser (1975)
In text parser games, player input is entered as written commands. Examples of common syntax are "go north", "take stone". The classic "Adventure" (aka "Colossal Cave") (Will Crowther, 1975), which is generally regarded as the first adventure game, used text parser input. Text parsers were used in almost all text adventures and many graphical adventures throughout the 1980s. However, in the 1990s it was overwhelmingly abandoned in favor of mouse-based interaction techniques. One notable exception is "Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail!" (Sierra, 1996), which included optional text input as a nostalgia feature.

Playing a text parser game can be a frustrating experience, because of the limited capabilities of the parser to recognize natural language. It only recognizes certain words, so in order to perform an action the player has to find the right word to describe the action. The player cannot tell whether an action fails because it cannot be done in the game or because the game designer used a different word to describe it. Spelling errors (by the player â€" or by the designer!) can make a puzzle unsolvable. In text parser games, coming up with synonyms is often a bigger challenge than actually solving the puzzles.

Parser + Arcade Controls (1983)
In games that combine parsers with arcade controls, players move their character around (in order to get from one place to the next, and to avoid dangers) using arcade controls (usually the keyboard arrows, sometimes the mouse), and perform actions by entering commands into a text parser. This control model was introduced in "King's Quest" (Sierra On-Line, 1983), and used in many classic Sierra games until 1990.


King's Quest

Verb-Select (1984)
In verb-select games, players have access to a fixed list of actions that are available (talk to, pick up, push, repair, etc.). They select their action and indicate the target for the action, e.g. "Pick up rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle". Verb-select controls were first used in "Below the Root" (Windham Classics, 1984). Later, in "Maniac Mansion" (LucasFilm Games, 1987), Ron Gilbert took the verb-select concept and created the famous LucasArts SCUMM-driven interface. It allowed players to interact with objects in the game world by clicking a verb and then clicking the object. This interface, with some further tweaks, was used in LucasArts titles such as "The Secret of Monkey Island" (LucasFilm Games, 1990), "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" (LucasArts, 1992), and "Day of the Tentacle" (LucasArts, 1993), and was widely imitated, for instance in "Simon the Sorcerer" (Adventuresoft, 1993).

The verb-select interaction model avoids the difficulty with text parsers of finding the right words to describe an action. If a player knows what to do, doing it isn't a problem. This does not render puzzles trivial, because the number of possible actions is usually large enough to make trying them all prohibitively time-consuming. However, a portion of the screen is usually permanently devoted to displaying the available actions and the player's inventory, leaving less space for game graphics.


One of the last verb-select games, Day of the Tentacle

Modal Cursor (1990)
Games with modal cursor controls are primarily mouse-based. The player interacts with the game through the mouse cursor, which has different modes for performing different actions. The mode is indicated by the appearance of the mouse cursor, and players cycle through the modes using the right mouse button. The modal cursor interface was invented for "King's Quest 5: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder" (Sierra, 1990). The modes were "walk to", "talk to", "look at", "manipulate/pick up" and "use inventory item with", and these became standard (although some games varied them slightly, such as "Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers" (Sierra, 1993), which had a separate "ask question" mode, and "Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or ..." (Sierra, 1993), which had an "unzip" mode). The modal cursor was even adopted by LucasArts, abandoning their own verb-select interface, for "Sam & Max Hit the Road" (LucasArts, 1993).

The modal cursor has a number of advantages over verb-selection. It is not necessary to devote a portion of the screen to a list or table of verbs (the inventory is usually accessed on a separate screen). That means game graphics can be full-screen. Cycling through the interaction modes is often quicker than moving the cursor to point to a verb, then back to the object on screen. However, this advantage in speed soon disappears as the number of interaction modes increases. For that reason, modal cursor games usually have fewer ways to interact with things than verb-select games. This leads to the main disadvantage of modal cursor games, that it is easier to "solve" a puzzle by trying all possible options.


Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness uses a modal cursor (here in "look at" mode)

Simple Cursor (1993)
Simple cursor interfaces work like modal cursor interfaces, except that there are no modes for the cursor to cycle through. "The Legend of Kyrandia" (Westwood, 1993) simplified the verb-select and modal cursor interfaces, creating this model. A click with the left mouse key is a command to perform an action. The game chooses an appropriate action depending on context. The right mouse key is used in some games, for example "Beneath a Steel Sky" (Revolution, 1994), to perform a secondary action (typically "look at"). Mouse strokes (dragging) can also be used in order to manipulate objects on the screen, or to move items between the main game screen and the inventory. Probably the most famous game to use the simple cursor is "Myst" (Cyan, 1993), although it is not always accepted as an adventure game. "Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars" (aka "Circle of Blood") (Revolution, 1996)Ã,  uses a two-button simple cursor that changes its appearance depending on what action will be performed, similar to a modal cursor. In some ways, it can be considered a modal cursor where the mode is determined by the game, not the player.

The simple cursor shares the advantages of modal cursor control. One additional advantage is that it is very easy to use (which may in part explain the success of "Myst"). However, the constraints on interaction make it very difficult to design challenging puzzles in the traditional adventure game style.


The Legend of Kyrandia 2: Hand of Fate uses a simple cursor interface

Pop-Up Menu (1992)
In a pop-up menu (aka “verb coin”) interface, the player clicks on an object to interact with it, which brings up a menu of the possible interactions, right by the cursor. The menu can be fixed, or change depending on context. This interface was first used in "Lure of the Temptress" (Revolution, 1992), and around the same time in the less well-known "Nippon Safes Inc." (Dynabyte, 1992). Since then it has been used in titles such as "Return to Zork" (Infocom, 1993), "The Curse of Monkey Island" (LucasArts, 1997), "Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned" (Sierra, 1999), and "The Longest Journey" (FunCom, 2000).

Pop-up menus save screen space and allow full-screen graphics, like modal cursors. They can support richer interactions than modal cursors can comfortably support, and certainly more than simple cursors can. However, they can be fiddly to use, and they obscure large parts of the screen while the action is selected.


Lure of the Temptress

Display
There are fewer types of adventure game display types than there are control types: text description, illustration, third-person view and first-person view.

Text Descriptions (1975)
This is what text adventures have. There are no graphics, only a written description of locations and objects. "Adventure" (aka "Colossal Cave") (Don Woods, 1975) introduced text descriptions. They linger on in many graphic adventures as the description players get when they ask their character to examine the background or scenery.

Illustrations (1979)
Illustrations are static pictures of things in the game, in addition to or as an alternative to text descriptions. An illustration cannot in general be interacted with, and it doesn't necessarily show all the important things in a given location. Therefore, they serve to add color and style to text adventures, but don't really serve any purpose in the interface. The first adventure game with illustrations was "Mystery House" (On-Line Systems, 1979), from the company that later became Sierra.


Mystery House

Third-Person View (1984)
In third-person view, the player sees things from a point of view outside of the player's character, who is visible on screen. Third-person views can be broken down into 2D graphics and 3D graphics. In 2D, the point of view cannot move around freely (although the graphics may originally have been rendered in 3D). The first adventure game with third-person 2D graphics was "King's Quest" (Sierra On-Line, 1984). Possible views include top-down, side view, isometric and cinematic, and all of these have been used in many different adventure games. In 3D, the point of view can smoothly move around the environment, either freely or following the player's character. Possibly the first true third-person 3D adventure game was "Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned" (Sierra, 1999).

First-Person View (1985)
In first-person view, the player looks out of the eyes of the in-game character, seeing things as from their eyes. First-person views can also be broken down into 2D and 3D. 2D features static screens, and players move by jumps from screen to screen. The first adventure game to use this point of view was "Deja Vu: A Nightmare Come True" (ICOM Simulations, 1985). It was later used in games like "Dune" (Cryo, 1992) and "Myst" (Cyan, 1993). First-person 3D view, known from games like "Quake" (id Software, 1996), has been used in several games with strong adventure elements, with "System Shock" (Looking Glass Studio, 1994) an early and prominent example.


Dune gives a first-person view of the desert planet

Never heard of Quest for Orgy before, but I still found it in 0.21 seconds!

http://membres.lycos.fr/agisite/autre2.htm

The morale of the story? If you can't find it, type the name into Google.Ã,  Easy!

That's not Quest for Orgy, that's just a teaser or demo or something. There was a full, real game made by Xierragames (LucasFan), but Vivendi made him take it down. Anyone who has it on their harddrive, feel free to send it to me (leave me a msg). I used to have the German version, which wasn't very helpful to me.

But, as somebody pointed out before. If LucasArts don't actively protect their copyright, including shutting down fan-games, they loose their copyright. Then Electronic Arts or whoever can start making commercial Monkey Island games, earning money on a brand they didn't build. I agree that it sucks that free fan-games are being shut down, but I can understand LucasArts' (or any other gaming company's) position.

I can't believe this misconception is still being propagated. No, you don't lose a copyright if you don't defend it. That's Big Myth About Copyrights #5.