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[January 26]

Er, hello everyone! I hope I'm in the right forum, it's been a long time since I posted here. Once upon a time I made some AGS games you might have heard of called Spooks, Nanobots, Little Girl in Underland, and Puzzle Bots.

I have a new game called Gravity Ghost - I hope it's cool if I share it here. While it's not an adventure game, it retains a few adventure-y features. It's got a few puzzles, a fully voiced story, and plus the main character carries all the inventory on her person . It'll be released on January 26, and if you want to save $5 you can preorder it at my website. All right, end of shameless plug. It's really cool to see so many familiar names on the forums - how are you guys?

Here are some screenshots:

Check it!

And someone linked to a bunch of AGS games in the comments section. Extra cool.

[and]

And so, with the publication of this trailer, evidence of the game officially exists.

Screenshots!



You found the key!





Hero and Ultrabot make a discovery.




Love is in the air. Also, toast.





The bot habitat allows robots to relax in an environment that is both interactive and groovy.



If you are so inclined, you can learn more about the characters, storyline, and, um, poster here at Wadjet Eye Games.

The release is set for Fall 2009, so you shouldn't have to wait too long.

Um...me and this other lady ended up winning. And some of the press has been ridiculous.

I've also been getting some weird congratulatory calls from old school friends. As I keep saying, it could be any Erin Robinson they're talking about...

Hey dudes.

A couple weeks ago I had the chance to interview three indie developers who were at the Montreal "MIGS" conference. The results are here:

#1: Petri Purho (Crayon Physics Deluxe)
#2: Alec Holowka (Aquaria)
#3: Jonathan Blow (Braid)

It was a fantastic experience for me, and I felt genuinely honoured that these three gentlemen took the time to answer my questions. And Jon Blow apparently likes text adventures. I am unsure how to end this, so I'll just steal Eric's thunder and say, "Hooray!"

Watch this.

It's some kind of propaganda film about the King's Quest series. Wow, the 90s were an awesome time to be alive.

[Summer of [YEAR CLASSIFIED]: Top Soviet scientists discover copy of "American McGee's Alice." Then, in unrelated happening, they make this game.]

Summer of [YEAR CLASSIFIED]:

Top Soviet scientists discover copy of "American McGee's Alice."

Then, in unrelated happening, they make this game.

DIRECT DOWNLOAD HERE!







Design, Art, Writing & Propaganda by The Ivy

Scripting & Sound by Grundislav

In-game music by m0ds

Little Girl in Underland (original IP) was created for the TIGS Bootleg Demakes Competition. Voice acting was generously provided at Mittens 2008 by:

Creed Malay
DutchMarco
Finkenstein
Goldmund
Grundislav
Layabout
Miez
m0ds
MrColossal
Radiant

Enjoy it, lovelies! 

[[ THE GAME IS COMPLETED - GET IT HERE!! ]]

Hello!

[ THE GAME IS COMPLETED - GET IT HERE!! ]
- edit by darth

In secret undisclosed location, top Soviet scientists discover copy of "American McGee's Alice."

Then, in unrelated happening, they make this game.





Three secret weapons! Five secret levels! Killing! Capitalism! Magic Smiling Cat!

Voiced by very best voice actors available at 2008 AGS convention "Mittens."

Okay!

Woo! Nanobots was "Free Indie of the Week" at Bytejacker.com.

See here. (Nanobots starts around 4:58).

So a couple weeks ago I entered an online competition for "Aspiring Women Game Artists." I certainly did not expect this.

I was seriously walking around for half an hour with a huge grin on my face. I'm not sure what this means, but the universe is certainly giving me a lot of signs lately.

Internet, I am proud to introduce my second freeware adventure game, "Nanobots"!

Download it here! (rar)
Or here! (zip)

Design, art, and writing by Erin "The Ivy" Robinson
Scripting by Vince Twelve
Music by Chris "Scorposer" Moorson

The story:



Groovy Greg set out to make robots that could love. He created six nanobots: Hotbot, Brainbot, Tallbot, Audbot, Strongbot, and Chembot. Each was designed with one special ability, enabling them to work together as a team to overcome challenges. There was only one problem: the nanobots hated each other.

Now, with the evil Professor Killfun threatening to give him a failing grade, Groovy Greg has almost given up on his experiment. Little does he know that his beloved bots are about to meet an even bigger challenge than they had been programmed for...

"Nanobots" is a classic-style point and click adventure game that lets you control the six different robots as they race to save themselves from being turned into scrap metal. Can they make use of their surroundings, fashion an escape plan, and avoid coming face-to-fist with Professor Killfun? Only if they give peace a chance.




I'm so thrilled to finally be done with this, and that never would have happened without the countless hours that the team put in. Vince was a scripting powerhouse throughout the whole project, and did some things with AGS that I didn't know were possible. Chris kindly composed another catchy and original soundtrack, including a bunch of last-minute extra tracks for the moments of interest. And my beta testers, Adventuress, JBurger, voh, and Sheepisher, were patient enough to put up with at least four rounds of testing in order to find all the lurking bugs. Thanks everyone.  

I'm eager to hear what you think of it. There's one catch though...I'm about to disappear from the grid for about four days (Canada Day ). Also, Vince is going to be away for the next week or so. So please don't get upset if we don't respond to your posts right away. Come Tuesday, I'll be back to personally reply to everyone.

Hope you like it, lovelies!

P.S. If you get stuck, Audbot is pretty good at giving hints.

Whee! My atheist comic got featured on Pharyngula, one of the biggest atheist blogs out there.

The author, P.Z. Myers, is an evolutionary biologist who recently made the New York Times for his attempt to sneak Richard Dawkins into the screening of the creationist movie "Expelled."

So either I'm standing on the shoulders of giants or stepping on their toes...but I don't really mind either way.

[Edit]

Nanobots

Scripting by Vince Twelve
Music by The Scorposer
Design, art, and writing by The Ivy

Groovy Greg, a fresh-faced robotics student, set out to make robots that could love. He designed six nanobots, each with one special skill that made it different from the others. His hard work and idealism paid off. Soon Hotbot, Tallbot, Brainbot, Audbot, Strongbot, and Chembot were ready to take on the world. Although they were completely useless on their own, if they worked together they could accomplish anything.



There was just one problem. The Nanobots hated each other.

Everything changes when a jealous professor attempts to sabotage Groovy Greg's work.

Can the Nanobots avoid coming face-to-fist with Professor Killfun? Only if they give peace a chance.



Thwart a sketchy professor.



Control all six bots for their special abilities.



Solve brightly-coloured puzzles.

ETA: June 27.

Edit: Looks like we've filled our quota for beta testers. Now the fun part begins.

Hey All!

After two months in the works, I'm happy to present my website,

www.LivelyIvy.com.

Thanks to my friend and web guy Tim, the site has a blog page, stuff about my game(s?), my comics from the 2006-2007 year, and some other random extras. I hope to eventually turn it into an AGS resource, complete with sprite tutorials, background stuff, and my hopeless attempts to learn scripting. I'm accepting suggestions for the first tutorial, so feel free to post a comment if you've got any ideas.

Cheers!



~The Ivy~

For those who don't know, I'm a staff writer/cartoonist for a comedy paper. I've been pretty busy since the last time I posted my comics (here are 14 I've done since September). Believe it or not, I've actually implemented a lot of the suggestions I got from these forums. For example, the characters now have body language! Yes!

Note: some of these have grown-up language, a lighthearted take on religion, or bad things happening to googly-eyed people. Read at your own risk; I make no apologies.

Here we go!



The first of what would be several bad-things-happening-to-cute-children comics.



I had to learn how to draw a real bear for this comic. I'll let you decide if I came close to succeeding.



Aw, and the guy on the left just wanted to read his book.



See, the clapping adds a whole 'nother layer of awful.



Sorry about the crap quality of this one, not sure what happened to the file. It was inspired by reading too many Perry Bible Fellowhip comics.



Lots of accurate tidbits for you Egypt freaks out there, right down to the missing eyebrows on the guy in the last panel. I'm serious, their gods frowned upon eyebrows.



Not quite outside the realm of possibility. Dilbert thrives on this principle.



Some people didn't get this one. Hint: David Blaine is there to get his picture taken.



A new take on an old joke, plus profanity.



This one's a little weak, but I had been reading a lot of Dilbert and it leaked through into the comic.



Stupid space filler thing we cartoonists are famous for. Gaping holes in the layout beware.



I think this is my favourite of the batch. Once again, the "it could happen" principle.



This made a lot of people want to buy a Gizmo Bot. Careful, you can't turn off its love!



Popular with the jaded college student crowd, i.e. our readers. :-,

I've been toying with the idea of having a few different civilizations in my next game that the player character could interact with. I'd like the player to be able to easily trade, share information, and form political ties, but that would require some kind of common
communication.

It would be more "realistic" to have each civilization speak their own language, with the player learning a bit as they go, but that would time-consuming and probably unexciting.

So, in the interests of balancing realism and good gameplay, here are the options I've come up with for this "language problem."

1) Have everyone speak English and don't even address the issue. I'm sure it's been done, but I feel like I can be more creative than that.

2) Have the character use a simplified kind of "pidgin" language that could be universal for trading. For example, simple phrases for "Would you like to trade?" "That's too expensive/not enough" "Do you sell food?" could be an interesting touch.  However, for more complex conversations, it wouldn't really be enough.

3) Suggest there's something about the player character that makes him very good with languages. That doesn't fit strictly within the plot, although it would add a bit of intrigue to the character.

4) Use some kind of "magic" to translate everything the player hears. I'm not really a fan of magic for magic's sake, so I'll say that's out.

5) Have another character act as a translator for various interactions. An interesting idea, but again wouldn't fit strictly within the plot of the game (i.e. the player character is an outsider wherever he goes).

That's all I've come up with for now. To be honest I don't play a lot of video games, so I don't really know how the language problem has been handled in the past. On a hunch, though, I figured the AGS community might have played its share of civilization and trade games.

Any suggestions?

Since this is about the coolest thing I've read about all year, I thought I'd share. 

In the year 1900, a sponge diver in Greece discovered the wreck of an ancient cargo ship of the coast of Antikythera island.  Archaeologists soon began exploring the wreck, and on May 17, 1902, they discovered what appeared to be a rock with a metal star embedded into it.  Further inspection revealed that the "rock" was actually a corroded mechanism, and the star was a toothed metal gear.  It dated from approximately 100 years B.C.



Since its discovery, mathematicians have attempted to uncover its purpose, and create a working reconstruction of the mechanism.  For over 70 years, though, all they were able to deduce was that it was probably a device for calculating the movements of the stars and planets.

In the 1970s, X-Ray technology allowed scientists to peer inside the device, and what they found revealed a level of technological complexity that no one thought possible.  The device once included over 30 interlocking bronze gears, and uses a differential gear technology that wasn't thought to be invented until the 1600s.  Further examination revealed that this was not a simple orrery (moving diagram of the planets), but that it actually had an input device (a crank handle).  The current belief is that one could enter in a date, and the Antikythera Device would calculate the positions of the stars and planets for that date.  This would make it the world's oldest analog computer.



A few working reconstructions have been made, although they exclude the nearly 2000 characters of text found on the device's exterior. 





The translation is around 95% complete, but has not yet been published.

Add me to the list of people who can't wait to see what it says. 

Check out the Wikipedia article here.

Read up on the ongoing Antikythera Mechanism Research Project here.

[Where's Waldo]

The subject of this Sprite Jam is Where's Waldo.Ã,  We all know that Waldo is a master of disguise...your task is to draw a sprite of him in his next unlikely situation.Ã,  Your sprite can be any character from the Waldo universe, including Odlaw, Wenda, Wizard Whitebeard, or Woof the dog.

Restrictions:

Max: 200 x 200
15 colours

Wikipedia tells me that this series is also known as "Where's Wally?",Ã,  "Ou est Charlie?", "Wo ist Walter?", etc. depending on which country you're in.

Well, go on, find him!

Aloha gang.Ã,  I've spent a good part of the afternoon working on this walkcycle, but there are a few things I can't seem to get right (the green ribbon, for starters).





Don't worry about the nitpicky stuff for now, I know there are a few odd pixels that need cleaning.Ã,  I haven't worked on the skirt much, either.

All advice welcome

Cheers,

~The Ivy~

A familiar face, for those who have played Spooks.Ã,  I guess this can only mean one thing... ;DÃ, 

This game is going to be in 640 x 400, hopefully so I can showcase some decent graphics this time around.





I'm trying to come up with a style with a decent level of detail that won't take me forever to animate.Ã, 

Any advice is appreciated, although I'm looking for ideas on how to make the face fit in more with the rest of the spriteÃ, (The face has a black outline, while everywhere else I just used dark colours).Ã, 

Cheers!

~The Ivy~