Messages

Thanks for the nice words, everybody!

I posted this on Twitter a while ago and figured it would be nice to share here also: a process gif showing how one of the scenes for the game takes shape.

Cool to see progress on this. I am fascinated with the idea of buildings within a building, and have been for some time, I like that you're doing something of that sort here.

I think I may have been one of the people who said Shartlight. If so, I'm sorry

I don't want to seem like a massively humorless arse with my rejection of that bastardization; I'm light-hearted enough to see the funny side in it, I just reject it as a legitimate criticism of the name, and there were some people who treated it as thus! No need to worry about actually offending me or anything!

I discovered the BlueCupTools podcast just about a week ago and whenever I hear your voice Ben, I can't help but see you as Simon Amstell. So you can't ever reveal your appearance or it will be a very confusing experience for me.

Whether or not I look anything like Simon Amstell is up to your imagination, but I'm definitely a fan of his work and will accept this as my new imagined appearance with grace.

I want this.

Haha nice, this looks awesome. I live in the Australian wheatbelt.

This is super cool! It's really interesting to create little biomes and then see them interact with each other. Lovely way to play with the concept, thanks a lot for this!

PS: Hooray for Australia!

I super duper admire how much effort you're putting into this. Very inspiring.

[Dialog Options]

Dialog Options

The highlight colour for dialog options (default rendering) is no longer hard coded as yellow (14). You can use:

Code: ags

game.dialog_options_highlight_color = xxx;

And set the dialog options highlight colour to whatever you like. The default is 14.

I have been waiting for this little change for so long.

It looks pretty dark to me also! I suggest at least making the text a brighter colour to make it a little easier to read.

Very interesting! I quite like doing mazes in adventure games, I wish you luck with this!

Just wanted to drop in and say that I'm using this build myself for the first time ever and custom resolutions and dynamic properties are a dream come true! Thank you very much sir, I'm very grateful for both of these additions!

This looks so good!

Was sorry I missed this, but the final date meant it took place at a time during which I was in the US and also attending a wedding, so I couldn't make it along. Proud to see TB do so well, congrats to all the winners and nominees, and I hope to see a little bit more diversity in award winners next year! Thanks, everybody!

Looking great, Andail! Glad to see you and Joel working on this, been watching it closely on twitter and definitely pleased to see the plans for a 2017 release date!

[love]

Stu: I've been thinking about this a lot, and there's a couple of points I've considered.

The first is that I think I don't mind "bad taste" as long as it's clear that in the context of the game it's not being promoted as a positive thing. For example, I cannot stand Leisure Suit Larry 5, because when I play it I feel like the people who made it are the ones making the awful jokes. This is probably because everybody in the world is in on the jokes, they all feel like this is how they always act.

One the other hand, I love Beavis & Butt-head in Virtual Stupidity, and I think that's because it's written to show "Look at these two misfits in a world full of more ordinary people, see how messed up they are."

Showing them being these awful people is funny to me, because it's clear that everybody else around them (well, not everybody, of course, but the majority) are more in line with how I feel about the world. When I play Beavis & Butt-head, I get the feeling that the two main characters are the sexists, the problematic people. When I play Leisure Suit Larry 5, I get the feeling that it's Al Lowe himself. Doesn't mean this is the truth, it's just how I feel.

With regards to the thing about Amy, I totally agree:

Spoiler

Didn't think about that until John Walker mentioned it in his review, at which point I instantly regretted the fact that we put that in the game instead of a more cunning solution. I think we missed it because we were focused on making the game interesting rather than staying true to the character, especially considering the difficulty she has ending someone's life at the beginning of the game.

Funnily enough, when Dave first showed me the ending of Blackwell Deception it was written slightly differently, and I pointed out to him "You realize that Rosa's murdering someone here? This doesn't feel like Rosa". By that point I knew her well enough, over the course of several games, that I knew that such a thing felt totally wrong for her character, and Dave agreed and adjusted it. I guess we didn't know Amy well enough at the point at which that part was written into the game to understand why it was a problem.

[close]

I got my definition from a dictionary several years ago when I first heard the term - and it defined 'trope' as the use of figurative language. The fact that TVTropes is devoted to breaking media down into its component motifs seemed to support this definition. I since see the word use everywhere to mean 'cliché', but to me it seems as though we've a perfectly good word for that already.

I agree that 'cliché' has a negative connotation, but here we were directly referring to an apparent overuse of something and suggesting it's overdone has a negative connotation anyway.

Sorry for derailing everything entirely again.

Perhaps we should do a podcast on the use of established techniques and motifs as opposed to 'being original' seeing as there's much interest in this discussion.

EDIT: I wish to point out that I am in no way opposed to criticism of any element in any game, I just feel it should be more specific than "Don't ever do this again, I am bored of it!"

Is not everything in contemporary storytelling able to be categorized into a collection of 'tropes'? I've yet to see anything that cannot be deconstructed and shown as a series of standard motifs and devices.

Arguments that are against poor execution, rather than the form itself, are naturally acceptable, but saying 'relying on tropes' is akin to saying 'relying on devices and motifs' which is the backbone of all creative work. It seems as though 'trope' is conflated with 'cliché', which is incorrect.

Hair splitting aside, one of my favourite things is when a creative person introduces me to a clichéd idea in a manner which subverts my expectation. I agree that it's rare, which is possibly what makes it as exciting as it is. I'm saying, like others, 'If you're going to do it, do it well, and try to be original', which is about as condescending and uninstructive as I could be with my advice. Nobody tries to avoid doing things well unless we're making Oceanspirit Dennis projects again (and even then people perverted that disastrously and beautifully by making decent games with the character, which was most upsetting and wonderful).

That's entirely fair - I took your 100% agreement to be an agreement with Francisco's imploring designers to stay away from it. If we can agree that it depends entirely on sensitivity to the strengths and weaknesses of the specific approach (or any) then I don't think it needs much more discussion. I entirely agree that when a thing is overdone it's tiresome, and that comedy that I don't personally find funny turns me off a game (or film, or anything) instantly. I just felt like I was seeing (especially in my discussion with Francisco) a blanket refusal to accept potential in the form, and misread your agreement as supportive of that!

I agree that it's super hard to do well. I also think drama is super hard to do well. I don't believe that something being super hard should mean we dissuade people from trying it.

Some of my favourite jokes in classic adventure games involve breaking the fourth wall. Just because I haven't seen it done well in quite a while doesn't mean I don't think it's worth trying.

I don't value immersion very highly in comedy, nowhere near as much as I do in drama. Some of my favourite comics break immersion for comedy, I refer you again to Stewart Lee. Maybe you don't think he's funny, but that's fine. As always, comedy is very specific to an individual.

As always, execution matters as much as concept.

Point is: I think most people are getting upset at specific poorly implemented examples, of which there are many, but as a result of this are saying the entire concept is without worth. That is what I disagree with.

This looks so good!