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I like Icey threads. They make me lol out loud.

Long, Long Rant

Chip on shoulder much?

I personally think that *any* use of Tesla improves a game, in whatever context. Plus, as someone who's yet to finish work on an adventure game at all, good job on completing it!

- limit inventory, that way player thinks before takes and automatically has a "stop" sign - well my character can't possibly carry that around

I'm tempted to use a weight system for restriction, actually. I've sometimes found it odd when characters use a grid-based or limited number-based inventory, since apparently four bags of crisps take the same amount of effort for JC Denton to carry as one rocket launcher.

As someone who has thus far made nothing but non-adventures, I'd have argued in favour of keeping the two categories apart. Then again, seeing some non-adventures in the list of winners does tell me it's not as if it's completely biased in the adventure direction!

In adventure games, there will always be people who are having a second playthrough of a game, or are making use of a walkthrough. Sometimes, they may find themselves, because of their own knowledge, getting a character to do something that the character themself, at this stage, has no good reason to know about needing to do.

For example, Billy needs to cut a piece of rope, but to do that, he needs to have taken the teeth out of a lion in a different room.

Should Billy therefore be allowed at any stage to de-dentify that lion, just for the hell of it, only to then find what he's acquired is useful? Or do you prefer it when the character objects to that kind of thing (e.g. "What the hell would I need the lion's teeth for?!") before later finding out the reason.

Granted, silly example, but hopefully from it people can see where I'm coming from in terms of characters saying no to actions that they themselves would not yet find logical and reasonable.

Clarity I know for certain, but nothing wrong with being associated with merchants (and by extension, wealth!)

So, you're now living in a world in which none of the religions that are currently considered "major" ever took off. Rome crushed the Jews, Buddha had a stroke at a young age, whatever you will. The result of this is that the older pantheons are still hanging around, and it's the socially normal thing to do to choose one particular deity (or maybe a couple) as your patron. Perhaps chosen in youth by your parents as part of their aspirations for you, or later in life by yourself.

So - which deity is yours? Any religion/mythology you like, provided it's not one of the big ones in the real world.

Me personally, it'd have to be Mercury. A Roman god who represents creativity and clarity, they're the kind of goals I strive for. Additionally, since my father left the Royal Signals (army), every time I've seen his old beret, it has a little badge of Mercury on it, as the messenger of the Gods. Always makes me think of the inspiration my father was.

Sunshine, definitely. It's incredibly atmospheric, as long as you don't go into it expecting a slasher movie, or Star Wars. It feels a lot more how I'd have liked 2001 to feel, a tangible sense of isolation.

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I've a feeling that things like this are doomed to failure eventually, especially with the adaptive and almost organic nature of emergent technologies like the internet. This is the old elite trying to grasp control of something they don't quite understand, under pressure from their industrial backers but as with any human force, they are not omnipotent, nor even close to omniscient.

I remember the good old days of primary school, when I'd rush home to play DN3d, and our 486 would always have trouble with the editor.

Come to think of it, what on earth were my parents thinking letting me play it?

C Jones seems remarkably pleased with earning £0. Then again, it's as much as most of us have to put up with in this line!

Hell yeah, eighth down from the top!

AGS has an excellent subforum for comments and critique, but for something I think I may start soon, I'll need to look elsewhere. I've a story that I need to see if it makes logical sense to people, but I don't want to start blaring about it here on the AGS forum - after all, it'd ruin the twist to the people who are most likely to play it.

So, can anybody recommend other places for helpful advice on the content of stories? Something like fiction websites, for example.

So, after graduating with your BA in history of art, you've been scrabbling around desperately looking for work. You've managed to seize a reasonable paper-pushing job working for a finance company. The work isn't hard, it pays about £18,000 P/A (or whatever a low-ish desk-jockey earns in your part of the world), the benefits and environment are nice, and the colleagues are friendly. You're not quite sure what the company itself does, but they don't ask a great deal of you.

Eventually, you come across documents showing that the company are involved in some incredibly unethical activity. Think "Quantum" from James Bond. Things like causing droughts to drive local populations away and enable business exploitation of rural South America, or the sale of armaments to African warzones. Actions which, while having no direct bearing on you, are likely to lead to the death, sickness, or homelessness of thousands around the world, to further business and political goals of their clients.

Your position is but a cog in the machine. Your job involves making sure that all the t's are crossed and i's are dotted, and your departure from the company would result in someone replacing you. Having found out what the company does though, how would you act with your new knowledge?


a) Quit as soon as I can, and take whatever evidence I can to blow the whistle.

b) Quit for bland, generic reasons, not letting them on to your knowledge (e.g. I need to spend more time with my mother, etc)

c) A job's a job - put effort in, and keep at it with a good work ethic. It's not like it affects me too much, after all.

d) Be the best damned employee I can be. After all, if I prove my worth around here, I could be rich sooner or later! Or end up calling the shots.

e) Something else

The pink line comes from the outer edge of pixels on your character being semi-transparent, and AGS filling in the rest of transparency with pink. Depending what you're using for drawing, there are a few ways you could get rid of it, from simply shaving off the semi-transparent area, to using alpha channels to make it partially transparent in-game.

It's a very nice concept though, I like the backdrops a lot! How much Clarke are you drawing on for inspiration?

Well, I've

Spoiler

spoken to Hansel, and gotten the password from the staring competition...now what do I have to do with the password?

[close]

Heck, if I can build an Advance Wars knock-off in AGS, I think your game would be doable!

This is heavy!

The game's well on its way towards the closing stages, so in order to keep stringing people along build further anticipation, here's another fine contribution to the project by Shivermesideways to the glorious peoples' game project, before he starts on the SPUDD side of the soundtrack.


Remember, vote "5" for it on Newgrounds, or the Commisar will find you guilty of anti-party dissident thought.

[League of Nations]

Right, just to prove everything's still going, here's a few introductions to the protagonists. After some prodding and poking from Shivermesideways, about a third of the campaign will be played from the perspective of a SPUDD battalion. So, with limited ado, here are the main characters. You're not any of these folk, you're an anonymous, faceless "commander" to whom these folk speak.

League of Nations
Colonel Kraft


An American veteran of numerous conflicts in Eastern Europe, Colonel Kraft has been placed in charge of the League's peacekeeping taskforce dispatched to the Vontinalys islands. Ever the "old fashioned soldier", he can sometimes rub his men up the wrong way, but the consistent record of successes of forces under his command speaks for his skill - or that or those he happens to be commanding.

Private Peces


A volunteer to the peacekeepers from the Czech Republic, Peces sometimes feels he might have chosen the wrong career, despising the corruption and incompetence that seems proportional with rank in the League. Until he can find a good use for his History of Art BA however, he'll have to stick with the soldiering.


S.P.U.D.D.
General Arierat



One of numerous generals in SPUDD's top-heavy command structure, nobody can accuse Arierat of being unsuited to warfare. On the contrary, his vicious and sadistic nature have led SPUDD's forces to many victories. Some of the rank-and-file have expressed doubts about his commitment to the revolution, but such dissent tends to be short-lived, as do those voicing it.


Private Prost



An illiterate peasant farmer from the Balkans, Prost is nonetheless an extremely enthusiastic cog in the machine that is SPUDD. Fairly gullible, he takes the organisation's party line unquestioningly, believing it to be the path to true peace and equality in the world. Is more concerned by the General's apparent lapses in Socialist thought, than by his frequent colourful genocides. Sends his paycheques home to his elderly mother on the family potato-farm.