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My Post GDC writeup: http://jburger.blogspot.com/2010/03/igf-aftermath.html

Nah, most people who came up were adventure-game fans, except the nature of the story and not knowing what to do drove them off after wandering aimlessly.

Eventually, I just used the tutorial for the action-sequences to demo off, and that seemed to work well. People would play for 5-10 minutes instead of just 1 or 2.

I'll try that out tomorrow. Two minutes of non-stop combustion.

Didn't win! (But the competition was great, so it's all good)

I'm finding out very fast that it's hard to demo a slow-paced, story-driven adventure game to an audience of passer-bys with only two minutes to spare.

Thanks guys + girls for the kind comments!

CaptainD has posted some *exclusive*(!) screenshots for Boryokudan Rue on IndieGameNews: http://www.indiegamenews.com/2010/03/exclusive-screenshots-from-boryokudan.html

In other news, I'll be leaving to San Francisco and the GDC/IGF this Tuesday. The award ceremony will be Thursday Night at 6:30pm PST and will be streamed live! (Check here for more details: http://www.igf.com/2010/03/2010_independent_games_festiva_4.html)

Wish me luck!

I'm trying to login from Mibbit but it says "[Close window]
irc.adventuregamestudio.co.uk: Closing Link: TheJBurger[webchat.mibbit.com] (Too many connections from your IP)"

Anybody know what the problem is?

Anyway, I just moved the edges closer to the real edges of the BG (they were off, admittedly, so that may have been the problem?), but I'm not sure if the problem was fixed, as the bug is very hard to reproduce. Here are some images just for clarification.

Before you moved the edges, was the place where the character gets stuck outside of them?

Yes, it was. Do you think it's fixed, now?

When traversing a large, scrolling room, sometimes the player character will get stuck at a specific spot, with the result being very difficult to reproduce.

The room is a scrolling room (385x290) and I'm using AGS 3.1.2 SP1.

I briefly checked this thread http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=38465.0, and this thread http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=37530.0 where I believe it stated that you needed to move the room edges in the room editor so that the edges would lie more on the sides?

Anyway, I just moved the edges closer to the real edges of the BG (they were off, admittedly, so that may have been the problem?), but I'm not sure if the problem was fixed, as the bug is very hard to reproduce. Here are some images just for clarification.

Where the player normally gets stuck:


Walkable Areas:


Any thoughts?

I joined. http://twitter.com/TheJBurger

Somebody told me people need to know who you are (via Twitter) in order to justify your existence.

Yes, you need a twitter in order to be mutually acknowledged in some areas of the world.

I assume you have both run "Auto Number Speech" first?

Oops, No. Do you always have to do that?

Anyway, I ran "Auto Number Speech" but I still get the same error afterwards.

It's a student game. I just used an awkward word choice, "pretense," to say that I entered it as a student game.

Hope that clarifies it.

Very cool collab. I enjoyed it.

If you had more than 48 hours (see what I did there?), I would suggest:
- It would be cool if the final dialog was an interactive philosophical debate, much in the same way of the final scene in Fate of Atlantis. I think this would've put more emphasis on the theme of the game, as well.
- This would be hard since the game was short, but it would be interesting to see the exposition about the world sprinkled throughout the game, rather than unloaded in one short dialog with the girl.

The puzzles were a bit simple, but I still enjoyed it, regardless.

Nice job to both of you! Thanks for making it, and I hope to see more.

When selecting the "Create Voice Acting Script" from the drop down file menu, I get this error during compile:

Code: ags

Unterminated string in script

There's no file or line listed, so I'm assuming it's impossible to find the "unterminated string" in question. Is there another way of extracting all the dialog in the game, or just fixing this error?

Official Trailer 1 up now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh2YYDcfT1Y

ANNOUNCEMENT:

Hey all. After much deliberation and thinking over the past several months, I have decided to make Boryokudan Rue a commercial release, although a release date has not yet been decided.

I had been contemplating the merits of releasing it free vs. paid for the past several months, and this decision comes only after much discussion with both friends and colleagues. After nearly two years of working on the game and putting in many, many hours of my own time into the project, I decided that it would be best for me to release it commercially. This announcement, although coming after the IGF nomination, was not directly influenced by that decision, although it was a great encouragement.

At this time, a release date and cost has not yet been decided, but I hope that this decision will allow me to improve the quality much more.

I hope you all understand my decision, as I do not wish to ignore an audience that is dedicated to playing and supporting adventure games, free or otherwise.

Thanks for all your support on this project, and I appreciate all your encouragement!

Thanks, guys!

I don't think the reality of being a student finalist has hit me yet, but the notion of going to GDC sounds nice.

Very cute. 
My two suggestions:
- Some music for the scene would be nice. Just anything from the soundtrack would work.
- I kind of feel that there should be only one plane of movement. I think that the scaling detracts from the immersion and to have Wall-E move only horizontally would look nicer.

Nice job!

I saw it in IMAX/3D.

If I tried to judge Avatar as a "film," taking into account entertainment, originality, plot and all that other nonsense, I probably wouldn't like it that much.

It was only when I was out of the theater several hours later did I realize I wasn't in Pandora anymore. For nearly 3 hours I was in that world, fully immersed, and part of its habitat. For that, I would say the film succeeded, not because of its plot, or characters, or anything else strictly related to film. Because to me, Avatar is not really a movie--it's an experience.

So I'm curious, where does the love for nonlinearity come from? Or is it a love for the potential or the idea of nonlinearity?

"In fact, I like nonlinearity in the sense of "Hey, why don't I forget the door, and go find the lost Helmet of Evel Knieval instead?" as well."

This line confuses me too, can you be more specific? Also offer an example of where you can do this in previous games?

The reason for all these questions is because I am not sold on the idea of nonlinearity in traditional point and click adventure games and want to be persuaded!

I think Duty & Beyond (by Mordalles) had something like this. In each of the four stages/worlds of the game, you could complete the main quest, but there was always an optional side quest with extra puzzles in order to get a special gem, not needed to complete the game (unless you wanted the best ending). I quite liked this approach, because it gave you optional puzzles to solve in case you were bored or stuck with the main puzzles, but you never really had to solve the extra puzzles.

Looking back at non-linear gaming as a whole, I think Zelda really got it right. Most of the Zelda games set up optional non-linear scenarios, scattered around the world, such as a cave filled in, or an inaccessible piece of heart across a chasm. You're never required to complete these puzzles, but they exist independently of the somewhat linear narrative.

I think one of the keys to non-linearity, in that sense, is making it optional.

But you can't give the player tons of obstacles at once.  It should be like opening a door within a door within a door.
Not multiple doors, that lead to more doors.  That's just plain confusing.

Actually, you've just described non-linear gameplay, which is generally considered a good thing.

I'll just quote Ron Gilbert from his quintessential overview on adventure game design: "Why Adventure Games Suck." (If you haven't read it, it's a must read)

A lot of story games employ a technique that can best be described as caging the player.  This occurs when the player is required to solve a small set of puzzles in order to advance to the next section of the game, at which point she is presented with another small set of puzzles.  Once these puzzles are solved, in a seemingly endless series of cages, the player enters the next section.  This can be particularly frustrating if the player is unable to solve a particular puzzle.  The areas to explore tend to be small, so the only activity is walking around trying to find the one solution out.

Try to imagine this type of puzzle as a cage the player is caught in, and the only way out is to find the key.  Once the key is found, the player finds herself in another cage.  A better way to approach designing this is to think of the player as outside the cages, and the puzzles as locked up within.  In this model, the player has a lot more options about what to do next.  She can select from a wide variety of cages to open.  If the solution to one puzzle stumps her, she can go on to another, thus increasing the amount of useful activity going on.

The non-linear, "multiple-doors approach," arguably works better because when you get stuck, you don't sit around endlessly frustrated. Instead, you can try to solve a different puzzle and get endlessly frustrated a second time until you run out of puzzles to be solved.