Messages

[Boiler Room Blues]

Some brief comments:

Boiler Room Blues
Liked it. Nice music. Good opening with the problem presented right in front of you.
Bugs: I could appear to turn the left valve without even passing the first leak. Never used the umbrella.

By the Numbers
AMAZING! Incredible. I must know how you did the vector/face animation.
Some suggestions: I wish that crucial story moments would have been made by the player, such as the moment when you decide that the interogee is a faker. This would have placed more emphasis on the uncertainty of the interrogation, making the player more inquisitive if he or she is really correct about the killer's true identity or not. Maybe?

Delerium
Interesting concept. Didn't like the ending where one choice is basically just a "you lose, wrong decision, dude!" I also was confused about right-click being the combo-inv click. I liked the atmosphere though.

Disquiet
Depressing, but I like it's setup. I wish there was an opportunity for some positive ending--he can still die, but I just wish there was something more to it than just a void at the end. Also, I like the grain effect -- how'd you achieve it? (Snazzy!)

Don't Worry Baby
Nice idea. I wish there was more to it. I think the funniest moment was when the baby went into the oven and came out, yet the game still told me "Congratulations! The Baby survived!"

One Room
Interesting. Abstract. Feels a bit slow to me, for accomplishing such 'miniscule' type achievements.

Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee
I really liked it from what there was. Please incorporate the synonymous phrase "Drop Box!"

Well, Well, Well, What Have We Here?
That was (unexpectedly) short! But sweet? Wells! (I don't think I finished it correctly)

A Woman For All Seasons
Excellent. I really liked it. Very charming.
Suggestions: A particle effect for something following the wand would have been nice. Just to give the eyes a visual indicator if each spell is, or was successfully completed by making a correct horizontal line or circle. And please make a longer ending!

Thanks for the games, everybody! And congrats AJA, it was well deserved.

Bah, thanks Wyz.  I didn't have a lot of time today, so I was just quitting as soon as I got remotely stuck.  Still don't see the logic to By the Numbers and

Spoiler

I thought I tried all three and got the explosion all three times, maybe something is randomized?  I just didn't have the time to sit through the long dialog again.

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Vince, here is my experience:

Spoiler

When I was interrogating the man, he mentioned that he kidnapped the child from where they naturally are, or something akin to that. When referencing the location of the two potential addresses, the kidnapper told me that his home was in the middle of nowhere, and his work was near a park. Naturally, I assumed park was the correct choice. But then he threw in that whole thing about your home and your daughter or something, and I just ignored that as pure desperation on his attempt (reading too much into it, I know). Anyway, I chose the work, for its proximity to the park, and I found the correct house with the bomb just in time. Hope that helps? (Probably not)

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Excellent, excellent games. Thanks everybody for making them.

Will post comments on all as soon as the voting is over.

Yep, GarageGothic, that's exactly it.

Your solution seems to work pretty well, thanks!

So I've run Create Voice Acting Script and numbered all my speech lines, but I have a slight problem since I have multiple player characters.

The VoiceSpeech txt file lists all player initiated dialog options under character ID 1 (the default player char). The problem is, sometimes the player character switches to ID 0, or ID 14, but all those dialog options are still under ID 1 when they should be under the other IDs.

Is there a way to switch them or does it have to be done manually in the text file?

It's made by Andrew Goulding! Of "Just Another Point n Click Adventure" fame!

I'm running into a clipping issue when Shaking the Screen on certain backgrounds.

Here is the first screen, where things are normal:

Code: ags

ShakeScreenBackground(5, 2, 99999999999999); //SHAKEY SCREEN!  WOO!

Background Specifications: 320x200 (letterbox w/ borders)

Here, the image is shaking and is normal.

Now, next screen:

Code: ags

ShakeScreenBackground(7, 4, 99999999999999); //SHAKEY SCREEN!  WOO!

Background Specs: 386x291

Here, the image starts to cut into the letterbox border and overlay it. Weird? Yes?

Then, the last screen:

Code: ags

ShakeScreenBackground(5, 1, 99999999999999); //SHAKEY SCREEN!  WOO!

BG Specs: 320x295.

Here, the cut image from the previous room is carried over onto the letterbox into the next room. This clipping continues to occur in subsequent rooms and eventually disappears, after an uncertain period of time.

I'm using AGS 3.2.0.103.

EDIT: Sorry, I just realized I posted about this a year ago. I've tried the fix from before, but I'm not sure if it's working.
Old thread: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=38362.msg504461

["Gemini Rue."]

Hey everybody!

Very important news regarding Boryokudan Rue: I have decided to change the title to "Gemini Rue."

Reasons are for both artistic and practical purposes. Hopefully you all can update your bookmarks and change every mention of the game so far in existence to "Gemini Rue," 1984 style.

Thanks!

Josh

Thanks! That fixed it.

I noticed that some--but not all--of the commented out lines (at least in the dialog editor) are still assigned voice numbers -- is that normal?

As long as your horizon line is towards the center (as in this image), you will automatically encounter scaling issues such as the ones in your picture.

If you want to create backgrounds without any scaling, my suggestion would be to place the horizon at the top of the screen (or even much further) that it creates an almost ISO, Zelda-type feel to it.

Beneath a Steel Sky was one adventure game that kind of did this:

Under this method, most of the door ways still stay the same height due to the high horizon and the characters do not scale.

Hope that helps. 

Rather, the problem as I see it, is that many designers use it as an excuse to dump every single bit of character backstory and history of the game's setting from their design document onto the player. Now, a lot of gamers would claim that these details contribute to the richness of the game world, but I would argue the opposite. Remember the dialog exchange in Star Wars where Obi-Wan tells Luke that he fought with his father in the Clone Wars? No explanation is given, it's a throwaway line hinting at a world existing before and beyond the scope of the film. Now, imagine that this was an adventure game, and that Obi-Wan's remark unlocked the dialog topic "Tell me more about the Clone Wars". You click it of course, and the aging Jedi spends the next 10-15 minutes recounting the plot of Attack of the Clones. Did this improve the story in any way, or just remove any sense of mystery while providing the writer an opportunity to flaunt his obsessive attention to detail?

Exactly.

The other alternative I'm considering is hiding most of this dialog behind STM/LTM interactions, which people following Res's development will understand.  The player will have to specifically be seeking out the information to find it.  It will be more like solving a puzzle to get at the dialog, and people who aren't curious about said information won't even know the "puzzle" is there.  It's hard to do this in some points, though.

I think this is the best possible solution.

I agree, and I was actually puzzled that Vince didn't mention the memory interface at all in his first post. I would think this kind of optional dialog to be an inherent part of the flexibility and transparency of such a system, even if you may have to force it a little to allow for more abstract topics - i.e. a book on quantum physics may represent the topic rather than that specific book itself.

I think cases where players specifically choose to seek out further information, rather than have the information laid out in front of them and they just choose to read it or not, are better for expository dumps (excuse the negative connotation). That way, only players who even want to explore the world are even presented with the option of choosing it or not, removing the obligatory vs. optional conundrum. So, I would too agree that your (Vince's) last idea would be a good solution.

[unless]

On the topic of Mass Effect, I started playing it for about 30 minutes yesterday, and I don't know if it's me, but games are just too demanding these days--I'll try to keep this on topic, I promise. The tutorial screens themselves have the player navigate what seems like 5 sublevels of interface screens to accomplish one tutorial point and even then, I'm still lost and don't know how to get back.

On the topic of dialog, I'm starting to believe more in short, but sweet. As a kid, I always had time to click through every option, listen to every quip, and still have plenty of time to waste away getting stuck on puzzles. However, being a more civilized person (hopefully), I no longer have the time to let games drag me off into their expository world unless I'm sure that it's worth my time. In the case of Mass Effect (at least from the first 30 minutes), I didn't care about this world, or these characters yet. Why should I pursue a dialog topic to discover what the planet of Eden Prime is about? Sure, I can skip it, but since it's there I feel obligated to take in this information lest I later find out it becomes useful.

Perhaps if there was a way to subtly feed the player all the important information into the non-skippable dialogs as succinctly as possible, much in the same way of a film (less talk--more action), then the player could receive all the necessary information without having to feel that he or she has missed anything. I'm sure you're doing this already, but I feel that if you can give the player all he or she needs to know in the least amount of words possible, that's the best solution. Besides, if you leave certain things up to the player's imagination, that can make the world all more rich and mysterious (with some exceptions, of course).

Edit: It's kind of what is embodied in this excellent talk "Less Talk More Rock" http://boingboing.net/features/morerock.html

I've sent you a PM. Let me know if you got it, thanks!

I keep getting an error when trying to use the "Create Voice Acting Script" from the drop down menu. I've run Auto-number speech lines first and that went through fine. However, when choosing the Create Voice Acting Script I get this error:

Code: ags

Unterminated string in script

I posted about this before here, but I didn't find a solution, unfortunately. Is there a way to fix this problem?

I'm in (as long as you start after June 9)!

email: thejburger (at) gmail (dot) com

The May 2010 Issue of Game Developer magazine has a 1 page write up on Boryokudan Rue.

Courtesy of Edmundo: http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/6773/brgamedeveloperarticle.jpg

Hey guys!

This month's issue (May) of Game Developer magazine has a 1 page write up on Boryokudan Rue!

Here is the article: http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/5466/gamedeveloperboryokudan.jpg

Edit - Better version (courtesy of Edmundo): http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/6773/brgamedeveloperarticle.jpg

Very surreal. I like the fish a lot. And the moose. I was sad when their parts in the game ended.

Good work, Ascovel & Baron. 8)

Very nice game. I enjoyed it quite much. On the production side, it was pretty impressive. (How did you do those rain/snow/leave effects??) 

Some minor gripes (in my humble opinion):

Spoiler

- The left tree's talking animation starts about 3 seconds before the voice file, and is about twice the speed of the voice anyway.
- You could speed up the credits a bit.
- I wonder if there is a way to infer the different stages of grieving, rather than state it outright, because I feel that this may be one of those cases where there is more power in leaving something to be interpreted to the player, rather than outright told.
- The "villain" of the story: I thought the atmosphere change was a bit jarring in the beginning, from tranquility to downright horror. Perhaps if there was a more gradual change into it. (You know, in Trilby's Notes how the dark world slowly manifests itself and you don't know what's going on... then finally the Tall Man appears after numerous build ups of suspense). You could just open the door and leave the player in mystique as they seem to be going down into a proverbial rabbit hole.

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Anyway, that's just my opinion. I really enjoyed it. Good job on all fronts!

The Third Man.

Oops. Not modern, sorry!