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Photoshop's okay but the pencil tool at 1px makes staircases when you draw diagonally, not a true 1px line. This is something that bugs me even in some programs specifically made for pixel art.

I guess part of the queasiness of photo/video elements is that it makes it more obvious when you jump from one animation to another (turning, or walking and then stopping.) Animation and pixel art is less jarring because it's in an abstract realm; your imagination fills in the blanks.

Thank you for Yoda Stories, LucasArts.

I like the art style. The animation is kind of off, though-- too tweeny.

http://davidoreilly.com/post/44683359919/timing
http://davidoreilly.com/post/44808009355/this-is-a-simple-motion-diagram-thing-i-made-when

Here's a couple neat links that illustrate how much of a difference frame timing makes in animation.

I'm not that fond of the idea of multiple endings. I think it undercuts the importance of one ending for there to be another. That's not always the worst thing, I guess, but I think if you've written your story well, the way it ends should feel like it's the only it way it could end.

Take into consideration how popular you realistically expect your game to be, and whether you want to release it as a free download or charge money. If this game is something you're mainly doing for fun and learning experience, like the vast majority of AGS games are, I'd say just stick it in there with credit and don't worry about it. If your aspirations are a little greater than that, or the game's something you'd like to have in your professional portfolio, then definitely license, commission, or seek out free music.

IIRC Sam and Max didn't have any actual dialogue trees. If you wanted to have somewhat complex dialogue puzzles, you'd be tasked with coming up with a lot of icons to represent different responses. And making sure they're not confusing.

ddq: You're right, using the term "offended" is really beside the point and is arguing on the terms of the apologists, who try to characterize the victim as merely "taking offense" for attention.

I think that's a silly way of thinking of offense, in any case. Even if you're not personally hurt by something, you can still be validly offended by it. monkey_05_06 on page 1 talked about "supporting a culture where nothing is acceptable because you might step on someone's toes"... which is a load of nonsense. That culture doesn't exist, and doesn't pose any sort of threat. Most people act offended because they ARE offended. I think the types who are most vocally against a "PC" world are just afraid that they'll get called out for having awful opinions.

A friend of mine said this on twitter earlier today, I thought it was pretty apt:
"Edgy comedy used to be about making the establishment feel uneasy. Now it's about making victims want to die??? Good job at not being funny."

I think people should be allowed to make whatever jokes they want. The public should be allowed to react how they want and respond with criticism or shunning. How about that?

If you offend a victim, and they explain why your words have hurt them, what you do next is what's important. Do you hear their side, apologize and grow as a person? Or do you find it more important to defend yourself and to never have to consider your words? I think the second route is lazier and makes you look like a child. There's nothing I can (or would) do to stop you, but that's how you look.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure

Awesome! Look at all the money it's pulled already. People love Double Fine.
There are no details about the game itself, but it does specifically say it would be a point and click, though one with a small team and what seems like a short production period. Still, it's been way too long since Schafer designed an adventure game, so this is exciting. I really hope it pans out.

I managed to get my 256-color test game working. A problem I noticed right away: Right clicking causes two right clicks. One when you put down your second finger, another when you release.

RickJ, you seem to be under the impression that she's had sexual reassignment surgery. She's only taking hormones, which is legal and considered safe even at that age.

On a related note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Petras The youngest person to actually get such surgery was 16. She knew since age 2 that she was a girl, and her parents only reluctantly came to accept it, i.e., it was not at their pushing.


By the way, if a person identifies as female it's a polite gesture to refer to them with female pronouns. Calling them by the opposite is rightly considered a big "fuck you."

It's very complicated: What if he (she?) is NOT pretty sure about his (her?) own gender, but his (her?) parents are just trying to help the best way they can do, even if they are not really helping?

It's wrong or not? Where's the line?

I'm afraid there are no "good" answers just right now....

If that were the case, later in life the kid would have to come to terms with being cisgendered. Oh, the trauma! Imagine what a battle it would be to suddenly have to live with the horrible stigma of "being accepted by society and all major religions".

Okay, kids are weird. Maybe sometimes they play around with gender and identity as a "phase." But in this society, in which gender roles are hammered into everyone's heads from birth from all sides, if a young child can still believe they're a gender other than the one issued to them, there's probably a reason.
And if a family seems to be happy and liberated by their choices and their understanding of one another, my instinct is to trust their experiences over my own notions.

Getting a little cynical in here.
I'm pretty sure I knew *my* own gender by age 7. Didn't you? The trouble starts when your parents start telling you you're wrong.
These are just parents who didn't presume that there was no way their kid could be trans. Perhaps they were aware of how often childhood discouragement fucks up transgendered people later on.
Transitioning is difficult enough as is, and it starts much younger than most parents are comfortable with, if they're comfortable with it at all. Why draw it out? Why force her to rack up the same laundry list of issues that so many transgendered people deal with in their adolescences?

[tl;dr:]

Does anyone else feel that the current graphical setup for AGS games is somewhat... archaic?

I don't suggest removing any options or capabilities, but I think the default presentation of a game oughta be this:

NOT "fullscreen" in the sense that it alters your monitor's current resolution, but rather a black, maximized, window devoid of title-bar and corner icons.
Within this black void would be the game's screen, which automatically sets to 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x depending on what will fit in the monitor's current resolution. Too big for your comfort? Luckily you can press Ctrl-Alt-Minus or Ctrl-Alt-Plus to shift through different levels of magnification, ala ScummVM. Want to be able to see Windows again? Alt-Enter will toggle away the blackness back to a regular window and let you drag the game around to your heart's content.

Traditional "fullscreen" mode seems to be increasingly problematic as LCD monitors gain favor. There are now so many different brands of monitors with their own quirks and native resolutions, there's no way to release a game designed for full-screen immersion without a large percentage of players experiencing blurry interpolation, stretched out aspect ratio, or a simple error preventing fullscreen altogether.

The player shouldn't have to muck around with different checkboxes and graphics drivers that may or may not even work, just to achieve a graphical treatment that's easy on their eyes.

(P.S. I'm not a programmer and I'm clueless about how difficult this sort of feature would be to add, so please smack me down if you must. I've also been pretty absent from the forums for years, so I'm sorry if there's already be a similar discussion before.)


tl;dr: Windowed mode is ugly. Fullscreen mode is flaky. It should be more like DOSbox's fullscreen, with the on-the-fly key commands of ScummVM.

Cute game. Which is why the woman-slapping seems unnecessary. You can't really put that in a game and hope everyone magically forgets that it's a sensitive visual.

I like the drag cursor. It helps to not have your finger blocking what you're trying to click on, and AGS games are designed for a real mouse (which you drag), not a cursor that can teleport all over the place.

Testing on a Thunderbolt. 8-bit games show the loading icon for a moment and then just a black screen. You can quit or show the keyboard, but the game never appears.
I tried loading the LucasArts-verb template demo, which worked, but once I changed its graphic mode to 8-bit it failed as above. I haven't tried any older games, just builds from 3.2.1.

Yeah, it won't recognize ColouriseArea. No matter if I put it in Palgorithms.asc's on_event, or in a room script, with or without the PALgorithms. prefix.

edit: Ok, I guess I had to use spr.ColouriseArea. I can run the game with no error now, but nothing seems to happen.

Yeah, I figured it would require some Overlay method. It's too bad I'd have to manually script stuff for talking animations and timers, etc, when they work perfectly as is, so maybe a future version of AGS could have game.speech_follows variable built in.
Is there a current suggestion/bug tracker?