Messages

You're probably right regarding the ancient games - I have the Infocom Masterpieces CD, but I still haven't finished any of those games. But I think practically all modern games treats examine and look at as synomyms. That's also the default behavior of Inform, which is the IF development system that I'm familiar with. (I also think that's true for the other big systems - TADS and Hugo - but there I'm not certain.)

If you decide to do any such distinctions between similar words, be sure to clue the player in on it carefully. Nobody likes to play "guess the verb". That goes for any puzzle in a parser-based game. The basic rule is that any reasonable synonym should work.

The IFWiki may also be of interest to you. There's a lot there on the art and craft of creating interactive fiction, and some of it would apply to your game. (Some is even relevant to non-parser driven point and click games.)

As radiant says (we seem to agree quite a bit here), anyone familiar with IF will expect look at and examine to be synonyms. If you want to hide things more, you could make use of either search/look under/look behind or layers (X PHOTOGRAPH gives "It's an old photograph depicting uncle Albert." X ALBERT "The tie Albert is wearing looks familiar." ...).

Screenie is looking nice!

See Radiant's post. The extra coding will really be worth it! It'll make the game feel a lot more polished instead of annoying the player.

Now there's three more paths through the game to play, if you haven't already done so!

It's hard to get a sound file to loop seamlessly (is that a real word?), particulary if you have applied some reverb to it (which is a good idea to do). Maybe you could consider re-making the music so it doesn't have to loop seamlessly?

Another option would be to use ... (looks at the AGS feature list) XM. It's sort of like MIDI, but with the instruments inluded in the file. The downside is that the rythmic resolution is lower, and that the XM file can be a bit of trouble to create. (I used a related format, MO3, for my game.)

Why not move the player to where he needs to be rather than complaining that he's not close enough? That sounds like something that's potentially quite annoying.

Looks interesting, though.

this is not a forum that I explore to see if there are any games, I usually go into completed games or games in progress like most of the ags players do.

Then you should get a new habit! You should get out more, and start visiting AD or the underground forum of Adventure Gamers. Then you won't miss the good non-AGS games anymore. (Such as TGTTPOACS and my game.Ã,  )

And a hint for you:

Spoiler

She has not gone far. Use a "special" action that have been of little use before.[/hide

[close]

Easiest solution: Open the sound file in a sound editor and cut away the silence.

FWIW, I'd like you to be as harsh as you want if you'll include my game in your February writeup. I want to hear it all - the good, the bad and the ugly.

I thought AGS was capable of scaling? If that's the case, why not worry about the size of the character later? Draw the background first, and then figure out how to scale the characters so that they'll be the right size.

(Yay Sludge!)

Glad to see you back, Jozef!

I agree that dithering would miss the point. Then you could just as well make it grey-scale.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6144828.html

Add an undo option after death and you'll have elliminated the tedious replays and the "Ouch, I haven't saved in the last two hours. Stupid game." problems.

Yep, works nicely. I still think it would benefit from, say, 640x480 at least. Since it's in B/W, the images will compress extremely well, so file size shouldn't be an issue. (I don't know anything about the inner workings of AGS, but I assume it compresses the images.)

Well its not meant to be to detaled, its in 320/240 res.

I think it's a mistake to use such a low resolution if you want to limit the colour palette that drastically. It'll make things hard to make out and very blocky. I imagine it could be a nice effect in a higher resolution, though.

Thanks. 

I meant first person with pretty, realistic graphics - like all the graphical Zorks. Doing Zork as a LA/Sierra-style adventure would feel wrong, IMHO. (Be unsuitable for the games, if you wish.)

So many juicy text games that deserve graphics

No game deserves graphics. There's absolutely nothing wrong with text-only games! In some ways they are superior to graphical games.

Having said that, if you want to do something with the old Infocom games, I think you should talk to Activision. There exists some fangames that are written with permission. (See for example Mr Bill's Adventureland for a list.) And in that case, I think also you should do it in the style of Zork GI.