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In 2007 I had to much time in my hands and while learning Python, in an effort to make it easier to play AGS games in Linux, I wrote a mess of spaghetti code that I called Adventure Game Goddess (see my signature), apparently a few people found it useful and it's even mentioned in the AGS' Wikipedia page.  I abandoned my Goddess when EvilTypeGuy abandoned  the Linux engine project and right now it would need some changes to be usable again.

Recently I have discovered that not only Electroshokker refloated the Linux engine project but also that CJ has gone Open Source (Thanks!!!), so I've been wondering if I should dedicate a couple of weekends to fix the Goddess, but I have 2 doubts.

1) The license change has given new life to the Linux engine, but the official thread by Electroshokker is silent since April the 1st, and RedDwarf abruptly stopped updating his gitorous repository in May 23rd, so is anyone working on the Linux engine? (I don't have the knowledge to do it myself, sorry)

2) I have read that there are some talks with ScummVM. That would be an infinitely better solution than my crappy script, what's the status of this?

Thanks everyone,

Tartalo

I tried today to play another AGS game, but AGS 2.72 for linux seems unable to find liballeg.so.42 and ags-setup can't find libxml.so.1.

Both seem to be correctly installed.

This is the first time I try it since I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04. Anyone else experiences this problem?

@EvilTypeGuy
I don't really *need* the Linux port, but I *use* it. I even wrote a program around it (see my signature).
AGS for Linux is the other big source besides ScummVM for Linux adventurers (In terms of quantity, the biggest). Discontinuing it would make my computer really sad.
Whatever you decide about the future, thanks all the joy in the past.

@CJ
No chance that you reconsider the license of AGS? I bet that it would help a lot in keeping contributions like this alive when the original author needs to abandon the project for whatever reason. To rephrase your question: How many Linux developers are ready to work under the current terms?

Thanks for pointing to the right thread about the editor, I guess that's were I read about the windows native code dependency. If I have anything else to say about the editor I'll do there.

I'll take the lack of answer about the engine as a "we don't know if anyone is at it"

About trying a Mono version, I don't have a clue about .Net/Mono programming, but if someone goes for it I wouldn't mind to help (betatesting for example)

Thank you,
I'll give another opportunity to WINE
Do you know the answer to any of the questions I made?

[AGS 3 editor]

I decided to open a new thread instead of adding more unrelated things to the 2.7 sticky thread. if this is not the right forum please move

I've been searching the forums and didn't really find my answers, please help me to get the facts right:

AGS 3 editor
Ok, it looks like it doesn't work using MONO, but some answers I saw point to lacks in MONO project itself and some others talk about native Windows code in a DLL used by AGS. So, what's really the matter?

And if it's the second case, can we expect a future effort to make AGS editor work on other platforms than Windows natively or better if I kill my hopes right now and forever?

(Please save WINE recommendations, I know it works for most of you, but I've had some issues, I must try again anyway)

EDIT: Reading through the suggestions for AGS 3.0.1 I've found a mention to a Linux port... is this what I think? Were more info?

AGS 3 engine
Is EvilTypeGuy still active?
Is someone working on the AGS 3 engine for Linux?

Thank You

Tartalo

A new rating system is in the works, but it won't affect the way that the user ratings are done.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I saw a mention to that after writing my original super-long post. (I've been outside for almost a year and in my previous to writing search I didn't actually read everything).

But as the new rating system is not finished yet I'll try to convince you of the goodness of this idea:

- It makes creating new accounts for rating-spam useless
- It rewards and encourages rating many games.

I'm not sure that people who have rated more games should necessarily be given a higher weighting. If SSH goes in and gives all 10 Princess Marian games top ratings, does that mean that his opinions are more valid than someone who's only played a couple of games?

Hmmm, Yes? It's not more "valid" per-se, but it's more trustworthy, if someone played hundreds of games she has probably a better built criteria. And for sure, it's not someone creating new accounts to overrate his own game.

If a veteran user acts childish and overrates some own not so good games (not talking about you SSH, I didn't play your games yet), there are other veteran users to counter the effect.

But just in case... some ideas:

If putting a too easy way for veterans to overrate their own games worries  you there's an straightforward solution: disallow rating own games. The need of a new account will kill most rule-the-world temptations.

An alternative is making votes public, most people does use common sense, specially when not anonymous.

Also someone trying to spam a rating system that takes in account the number of previous ratings would have quite a lot of work to do to achieve a significant influence. You can put a limit like "you can't rate more that 1 game a day" (or any other threshold you like) to make spamming efforts less tempting.

Tartalo
PS: Where can I read about what you are working on now?  Maybe I'm duplicating previously discussed ideas.
Nevermind, I just found it. An expert panel? How complicated, no? Well, the ratings will be trustworthy, that's sure. You might want to consider this idea for "user's rating"

[I'll edit my original post]

IAnd won't the first few games people rate be poorly influenced?

Yes, every game rated by  a user with little influence would move to the center no matter what they rated.

It's plain wrong, I don't know what I was thinking,  the idea of the influence is the right path, but it's much simpler than that, you learn this when you are 8 years old and I overlooked it and tried to reinvent the wheel:

((rate by user A* ratings by user A) + (rate by user B* ratings by user B)+...) / total ratings

I'll edit my original post to avoid other users the confusion.

About your idea: I'd like a combination of rating and downloads, but not instead of plain rating, but as another option.

[A better rating system]

EDITED and removed a lot of useless crap I wrote based on a plain wrong idea:

A better rating system

I remember an old message by CJ that said something like "Ratings are not working well because most users rate without having played many games so they are not comparable" Maybe he didn't say exactly that, but that's where I think the problem lies.

So what about making the number of games you rated count?

((rate by user A* ratings by user A) + (rate by user B* ratings by user B)+...) / total ratings

Tartalo

I just found this article about multilinearity by Emily Short:
http://emshort.wordpress.com/writing-if/my-articles/multilinear-if-older/
I think you will find most of the blog quite interesting.

If you don't know Emily's work and want to, I recommend the game City of Secrets

Edit:
Another interesting article about adventure creation, by Graham Nelson:
http://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/info/Craft.Of.Adventure.txt

Graham Nelson is the author of Inform (So to say, THE text adventure making tool) and games like Curses! and Jigsaw

This .NET rewrite creates hope of cross platform compatibility, is it an objective?

It's true that alcohol is present in several games, the goal of La Gran Castanya and AciDDD is to drink.

So, at the end not so few appearances, at least accidental. My perception was irreal.

[This thread is for adults only.]

This thread is for adults only.
(just in case)

I'm old enough to remember the "Winners don't use drugs" in Arcades, and there are lots of games where the bad ones are Narcos. But unless you understand the arcade "pow"s as a metaphor, usage of drugs appear very few times in games as part of the story compared to other popular culture expressions like comics or music.

In Adventure Games The Dead City is a shocking example, as taking Heroin is essential in the story.

Do you remember any other example? And what do you think about this apparent difference between amateur adventure games and other popular culture forms? I am curious (About your opinions, not Heroin).

Edited to add another example

It's funny and related:
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/opinion/a-fundamental-wrong-in-letting-some-marry/2007/03/30/1174761750887.html

I'd be very interested in hearing about any culture where the concept of "marriage" didn't originally have the hand of that culture's major religion in it.

Marriage is a social structure that seems present in all cultures with slight differences. Religion is too, and every important social issue has been traditionally blessed. So I don't see secular marriage as extracting something from Religion, but extracting Religion from a traditional social structure.

Penn and Teller would say that marriage itself is Bullshit, wouldn't they?

About adoption, I'm curious...are single males/females are allowed to adopt?

Initially yes, in Spain it's possible for a single person to adopt a child. But it doesn't look like easy, as it's considered that a single person will have more trouble to grow a child alone than a couple.

It's pleasing to hear that some governments take care of the really important issues.

Is that comparable to this?

It's almost impossible to talk about penalized sexual life without getting into Religion, but I'll try.

When Gay marriage was discussed in the Spanish parliament, the conservatives brought an expert to talk against it. This psychiatrist that claimed to "cure" Gays  vomited a bunch of retarded and disordered ideas (Edited: these ideas) and not only gave the Government no other choice but legalizing Gay marriage, he also put his professional career in danger.

Transgender is considered as a disorder, the person is suffering inside his/her own body, not only because of social misunderstanding. In Spain, public health will practice gender change operations if the psychiatrist recommends so. Anyway from my ignorance I imagine these people would still suffer even if irrational social pressure dissipated.

Heheheheh...like someone who mentions that God is primative and silly? Where's the IMO there?

This is the second time you mention and I think I was the one who said "bullshit" and primitive.

I used these words telling a personal experience because they expressed with few words that it was a conflictive transition. Sorry if I offended you (too).

Anyway I hope that you agree with me that at least some of the examples I posted are "primitive" / unnacceptable / right word here / from the current point of view. And you are right Steel Drumer, religions abandon partially texts but keep still as the word of God some of them.

What worries me is this "word of god", dogma, thing you can't question because it's like it is. To most of people it only helps them to be good persons, but sometimes some get worried if the neighbor is having oral sex with her wife, or deny that humankind sharing knowledge for thousands of years can arrive to a better understanding of the world than our ancestors, or even worse, purify the brothers with fire. Why?

Having own principles that you can explain makes you being a good person easier, but as long as you are, like most, a good and reasonable person that doesn't interfere in other persons life in a disturbing manner, I don't really mind if some of your principles have as a basis a "God likes it"

Give some reasons why it's so primitive. 

An specific example of an specific Religion. Not so much years ago the Catholic Church made a revision of their Catechism, they don't do this often and is an important text. They still condemned Homosexuality.

And what is the basis for that? A text that in the next paragraph condemns mixing wool and leather, eating pork and going to Church with a harmed testicle. A bit later this book recommends killing your son in public if he is lazy and eats too much.

That text (Was it Deuteronomy?) is a bit too primitive for my taste to be taken seriously as an basis for my ethics.

But the problem, as I see it, is not the Bible alone, is this idea that something can be right without need of analysis or discussion.