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high download count should not be the only goal you have while making a freeware game.

The need for appreciation is not the same for everyone, but any creator that releases something to the public wishes to please or at least provoke a reaction. There's nothing bad in it, it makes you want to be better or to abandon. But without this exhibitionism we wouldn't enjoy any creation.

According to that, cleaning my room would be an adventure. However, it really isn't. Really.

Cleaning my room would be an epic adventure, but not a game.

Things excluded from the concept of game:
- Things that mom tells you to do
- Picking up random objects in the supermarket.

wtf is an adventure game?

A game where you have to pick up keys

Let's face it, nobody likes adventure games, not even you.

How do you explain otherwise that the only game with 100% Enjoyment in AGS database is a shooter game?

I'm sorry, I didn't want to hurt you, but yes, you better cancel that "Yet another Sierra Remake".  In Doom you have to pick up keys, so it can be considered an adventure, maybe you can convert it to "Yet another Doom remake".

This was another advise by: Lies based on numbers (TM)

Tartalo

Your website doesn't work

Thanks, it's up again now

GNU/Linux users!

I am announcing AGT Adventure Game Goddess 0.04 for GNU/Linux as the first "usable" version.


Features:
- Database of adventure games (currently replica of AGS website) with search, filter and sort functions
- NEW: One step to download and install the game, and one step to play.
- NEW: Engine guesser (Thanks for the hint Blashyrkh!)
- Ugly text Interface (ahem)

Supports:
- AGS games with ACI version 2.5x, 2.6x, 2.7x
- Compression: zip, rar, tar, gz, bz2 and occasionally ace
- Handle Windows installers from the application

I would sincerely appreciate if someone would test it and shared with me bugs, improvements ideas and other thoughts

Web: http://agt.paranoiagames.uk.to

Tartalo

Man, it's awesome that I'll be able to run AGS games in Ubuntu.
I just need to install Allegro (and the other required things)
Any chance of being able to download and install this through Ubuntu's "Click and Run" service? This would really help beginners like me.

Yes, a lot of required things! But you already can play most AGS games, only it's a repetitive process for each game.

If by "this" you mean AGS Linux, I guess it won't be in Ubuntu's repositories for now because CJ's distribution conditions are incompatible with Debian policy, and Ubuntu is only breaking this policy for "important" things. (CJ, go GPL! All your code are belong to us!)

If "this" means AGT Toolkit. I might prepare a deb package in a future, but before that there's quite work to do.

BTW... Anyone knows the answer to my question? Some changes to the installer are waiting to confirm if I can go just with the first two digits of the version and only 3 engines.

I must confess I didn't play but one RoN game (I just discovered it), that I haven't read the whole thread, and that I didn't prove my game making skills yet, but I have an idea and a big mouth.

Some are worried about consistency, but that seems difficult to achieve when the collective creation is made of independent pieces. The strong point of this is the amount of ideas that are created, not it's coherence as a unity.

Have you thought about creating a distillation of RoN? After one year, for example, take all the chapters and make a consistent story of it, choose the best puzzles, graphics, etc and create a Full length adventure with it, something like "RoN The Movie". To allow participations make open teams for each task: story, graphics, music... that would allow people that don't know how to make a complete game participating in what they prefer.

Just an idea

I have a question. Not sure if I should reply here or create a new post.

While playing with AGT it seemed to me that all games that use ACI engine 2.7x work well with AGS Linux  2.72 and the same goes for 2.6x -> 2.62 and  2.5x -> 2.54

Can I expect this to happen always or I was very lucky until now? (This would simplify part of the project).

Thanks

if you only had one idea, and you believed it was the only shot you had, and if it didn't get downloaded enough, then it was a failure and the only game you'd ever make?

This is interesting because some AGS games I have played where very good ideas in technically very bad bodies. Usually people will tell you what's failing in your game. But not many authors seem to see their games as continuous works, so ignore these hints or have them in mind for the next project instead of improving what's done.

In Lif and the Treasure of the Tanones' case, people is telling you the game is buggy, so don't see this as a failure, it only means you didn't walk all the way yet.

[correction]

All this reminds me a case

You might know that Sevilla, in Spain, is famous for the religious celebrations in "Semana Santa", with all the "cofradias" (these brotherhoods that look like KKK) moving  the saints around the city and hordes of tourist's taking pictures.

Not every Sevillian is happy when these days come, and a guy made "Matanza Cofrade" a free shooter where you had to kill catholic zombies

A rock band said they were going to include it in their next CD, and so the game arrived to the brotherhoods ears who didn't like it too much, so one of the brotherhoods sued the guy, because the game harmed religious feelings and ... and he had used their "logos" without permission. Muaa ha ha ha ! I guess they realized that going against freedom of speech was more difficult than claiming private property.

The guy was released without charges after he said something like "Oops, I'm sorry".

Well, at the end the brotherhoods won something but lost a lot, the game was not included in the CD but it became an underground classic, it was mentioned in news and forums, and many people mirrored it for a time even if it wasn't any good game. Some time later an anonymous user released a sequel through edonkey "Matanza Cofrade 2" with the Pope as big baddie.

correction
It wasn't the logos.The game used real pictures of those walking saints, and in Spain these images are industrial (sic) property of The Church. If you want a brand like "San Miguel" you pay to the church too. It's for the poors.

Harley Davidson have the name so heavily copyrighted technically you couldn't call your child "Harley"

And those with the Harley logo tatooed in the ass are paying a lot in fees.

In this copyrights issue you can find extremely different attitudes, from Japanese Comic makers tolerance that has allowed a whole sub genre of "non official" stories to LucasArts getting horny by killing Fan projects.

BBC has a quite progressive attitude, they are a public TV so they try to act in consequence and release some of their material with licenses that allow free distribution. What they have released freely is not much, but they are pioneers in this.

On the other hand, among the free things they distribute there is the (oficial) remake of "Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" IF:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml

So, I don't imagine BBC prosecuting a Fan game about the Young ones.

Who wants to play that game for sure is me!

Tartalo

About AV, I'll share a trick for those that repair other people's PCs. Everybody knows that it's easier to clean viruses if you don't boot from the infected partition, but the available free antivirus programs whether need to be installed or creating boot diskettes for them is difficult.

Lately, when I have to clean an infected Windows I use TRK (Trinity Rescue Kit):


It's a Linux Live CD with NTFS write support, the possibility to install F-Prot antivirus, and an auto-update feature so it's a good tool for Windows virus cleaning. (It also has many other tools that can be useful for information recovery in general)

The drawbacks are that it has no grafical interface, so be ready to learn a couple of commands, and that the documentation is not very good, so you better read it twice.

[Edited to add:]

I have written a small python script that creates automagically a Linux version of any(*) AGS game. This script can be distributed with the game as a "Linux installer".

(*) Requirements: AGS engine must be at least 2.50 and no incompatible plugins can be used.

http://agt.paranoiagames.uk.to/friendly.html

linuxInstaller.py does the following.

- Read INSTALLATION.txt
- Duplicate the game folder as game-linux
- Check if appropiate AGS engine files are available, if not download them from mindshadow.
- Copy and rename necessary files in Linux folder.


Rather than encouraging you to include the installer in all your games right now, I would like to hear your opinion about creating a "Any OS Friendly" format to distribute AGS games.

And... someone would like to make a Windows installer for games in Friendly Format? It's task would be to copy the game files to the appropriate folder and create the "Start" menu entries.

Edited to add: I forgot to mention that the Installer script should run in any OS, so you can test if it's working for your game even if you don't have Linux, just install python if you don't have it already.

This project has a web :
http://feags.sourceforge.net

I'd rather see someone fails miserably at implementing something new than someone releasing dozens of games with interchangable graphics, stories, characters and puzzles. You can always say that at least they tried.

You are right. I should have said something like "but it's not easy" instead.

edited

edited

FSi is right, even if the game is not for Linux it's Linux friendly, and making a "Linux version" for every game is an unnecessary mess.

The only two problems are having to guess the right engine and when the game comes as an installer (not simply compressed).

So a friendly format can be as simple as the game compressed with a LinuxAndMacInstallation.txt file inside.

This text file will be readable and useful for humans but have a format that will allow treating the game with the Frontend and make automatically the repetivive tasks. (Different depending the OS) One click to install the game, one click to play. Something like:

REACTOR 09 INSTALLATION

---
Engine: 2.70
Data: reactor09.run
---

WINDOWS INSTALLATION
- No installation needed, just run starter.exe

LINUX INSTALLATION
1) Download midiptch.tar.bz2 and AGS engine version 2.70 from http://drevil.warpcore.org/ags/
2) Uncompress the files
3) copy "midipatch-dat", "ags-setup" and "ags" files into the folder of the game
4) Rename reactor09.run to ac2game.dat
4) Run ags-setup to set the game preferences and ags to play the game

MAC INSTALLATION
1) Download AGS engine from - http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=30021.0
2) Open the downloaded AGS271beta3.dmg
3) Open the AGS271beta3 disk image
4) Drag the AGS271beta3 folder inside to your Applications directory
5) Drag AGSRunTime.app from the AGS271beta3 folder in Applications to the dock
6) To run Reactor09: Drag file "reactor09.run" to the app in the dock


Do you like this idea?

how much webspace would you need? i'm enough spare space to host the project website, but not a load of converted games

For the moment I could only hang a pre-pre-alpha version, so a simple Hello page with a link to a file is enough to start. it's 1MB now database included.

To avoid confusion: These external DLLs we call plugins, not modules.

Thank you. Corrected already