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[invMain.ItemWidth = 50;]

function game_start() { 
  invMain.ItemWidth = 50;
  invMain.ItemHeight = 30;

initialize_control_panel();

  KeyboardMovement.SetMode(eKeyboardMovement_Tapping);

}

No, this is definitely right.

I suspect your problem has to do with the sprites you use.
The lines invMain.ItemWidth = 50;  &  invMain.ItemHeight = 30; tell AGS your inventory items are never bigger than 50 pixels wide and 30 pixels high.

So what you need to do is check how wide in pixels your widest inventory sprite is and enter that number (or larger) after invMain.ItemWidth = . The same with the height.

That should take care of the overlapping.

Hm, the previous times I entered having a deadline really kept me going... while I've postponed drawing the bad guy for my 'normal' game for weeks.

Why don't I try to get back into the flow by announcing I'll enter this. If I don't make it at least I'll have a character I wanted to draw anyway.

Probably the record for most unusual critic request

Personally, I like it simple too.
Something very high contrast like #4 (while giving that immediate association with music) doesn't look very nice to me, but #6 does. But with a waveform instead of a fractal it would be more fitting.

Well, it is kind of a horror/thriller type tune. So I wrote a horror story.

Link: http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/25/1835627/Disneys%20Nightmare.doc

Nice work! You're improving, this definitely looks better than those first bg's in the Jack Hurt - WiP thread.

I don't spend a lot of time in hotel rooms, but two sinks? I only see one single bed.

On second glance I think I'll remove those ugly lines running down the walls. They were supposed to be the seems in the wallpaper.

I think the line behind the painting gives the room character. I'd keep that one.

Also, leakage usually only happens at a few spots. Having stains through the whole room looks a bit excessive.

[Heroes of the Big Blue Pencil]

I think we can consider this competition a (small) success: 11 entries isn't bad. But, without further ado, let the ceremony begin:

TIED with three votes each at fourth, third and second place:
Dark Adrenaline by Candall
Dark Waters by ShoneAiGuy
Seychelles by Colxfile

You're all knighted as Heroes of the Big Blue Pencil!



And the winner is *slowly opening envelope*
Pure by Petteri!

The Champion of the Big Blue Pencil!

I notified Petteri he could start the next one when he's ready, be on the lookout for it!

Sorry it's somewhat chaotic, I'm having some personal things to deal with.

Voting ends monday morning.


I forgot to mention that while Dualnames' entry is over 350 words, it's still allowed. As a rule of thumb I keep a 10% margin, so 380 words would be the maximum.
I don't like to be overstrict, but of course I didn't tell you about the margin

[The Beach]

VOTING'S ON!

Everyone gets two votes. Explain why you liked those entries.
Giving comments on other entries is encouraged

As a kickoff, I'd like to give my thoughts on the entries. I'll look mainly at structure, style and how well it holds the reader's attention. Spelling and grammar won't be commented upon too much since not everyone has English as their first language.
Every comment will consist of something positive followed by something negative.


The Beach
+ Switching between Tim's thoughts and descriptions of what's happening drives the story forward.
- Tim's attitude towards the girl is totally passive. I'd understand him better if he told her that breaking into a beachhouse wasn't such a good idea.

Backswash
+ The dialogs are very good; remarks like 'you work too hard' and 'how's Angelica' really make the characters come alive. The foreboding is good: Andrea hates the beach, there's a sharp wind, etc. all point towards the unfortunate ending.
- I don't like all those white lines between the dialogs.

PixelPerfect
+ "I'm sorry I didn't kiss you yesterday." This sounds realistic; of course that's what is most important at a moment like this.
Alternating between personal (Trai and An) and impersonal (the village) works very well.
- After the first line "It was a beautiful afternoon", if you give a long description and exaggerate how beautiful the afternoon is, the line "Then an airplane came" has much more impact.

Dark Waters
+ I like your style of writing: "endless eternity sculpted from liquid glass", words like "forlorn" and "marooned" really suit the dark romantic mood.
- If you described Andrew as a more desperate man, I'd understand his suicide more. He still dreams of rescue, and is sane enough to distinguish reality from illusion. Even when stranded on a deserted island, it's difficult to kill yourself.

Seychelles
+ Descriptions: Sound of waves, smell of sea salt, sound of ice cubes. These can invoke a lot in readers.
- The downbeat ending is unsatisfying, giving it's a humorous story. Maybe if there were more clues this guy is a slacker I'd feel less sorry for him.

Dark Adrenaline
+ The great sarcasm makes this so much fun to read. (At least, I hope it's sarcasm.) The style fits perfectly.
- The last sentence: "her mother's gratitude saved my life." which I don't understand.

Pure
+ Very strong writing (reminiscent of Dylan Thomas), Nancy was totally believable.
- Repeating the name Nancy got slightly annoying after a while. Maybe first person would suit this better.

rock_chick
+ The structure is very good. From perceptions to recollection to flashback and then to the harsh reality. Flows really natural.
- Using more paragraphs would make it easier to read. Examples of where I'd start a new paragraph would be after the lines:  "...filled with other things.",  "concentrating on riding a wave."  and  "woman to our place?"

Like Red Wine
+ The skipping of the actual deed works great, since your mind fills in the blank with more
horrific detail any description could. Also, this suggests the murder was done in a blind rage.
- Nothing really, except if you rephrase the last sentence as: "...her sorority hazing, he knew she
would never hurt a man again." it would be a more punchy ending.

Dualnames
(I feel I'm missing the point of your story, but I tried to give some criticism anyway.)

+ It has a unique and original style; I like how it moves fast through a lot of details.
- This story consists of unrelated facts: why is it necessary to mention Janine hates a lot of things? Why the long abstract talk about whether the opening sentence is wrong or right? Why did
they talk for hours about the beach? If you made things connect more it'd be a better story.

On The Beach
+ The characters of the three people - Isaac, Derrick and Barker - are clearly established, which is no easy task in 350 words.
- There's no plot twist, as a standalone story it's not very interesting.


My two votes go to:
"Pure" by Petteri
"Dark Adrenaline" by Candall



The top three entrants will be awarded the
“Order of the Big Blue Pencil” 

The first runner up will in addition receive the title
“Hero of the Big Blue Pencil”


and the winner will be awarded the title
“Champion of the Big Blue Pencil”


Oh, and btw: there are small, insignificant trophies which come with these grand, prestigious titles:
      

I feel it's arrogant for me alone to decide which are the best, I prefer people to vote. Maybe I'm being too optimistic about this, we'll just have to see.

The DaVinci Code is popular because every chapter presents a new plot twist / surprise. People like thrillers. (By the way, people who say it's their favourite book ARE morons, since most of the facts presented in it are wrong.)

I don't agree with you Tuomas about the quality, I think there are a few genuinely well-written entries.

I get the error message about "application not being able to run..." that I once got when I installed 3.0 on a computer without Net2- but this time, I have Net 2 installed, 3.0.1 runs flawlessly, and so I am a bit baffled.

Sounds like you have the same problem I did.

The solution on my computer was to install 3.5. You can remove it afterwards, I'm running it with only 2.0 now.

Leisure suit larry 2(?) When walking out from river and noticing that Larry's feet are eaten by

Really? I thought it was a pretty lame joke, not scary at all. Strange how different people can be.

I forgot to mention the "Clockwork Orange" guys in Space Quest 4 / XII. Every time I got the close up where his lips start shaking I'd instinctively reach for the volume knob and turn it down. Man, that screaming was hideous.

This was with the installer.

That's definitely not the case, I don't even have .net 3.5 installed. But probably the installation of 3.5 installs something else that has fixed it.

It must have. It's pretty weird.
I installed the dotnet framework when AGS 3.0 was released - I don't use it for anything else. I definitely didn't fidget with it. I "repaired" 3.0 which according to Microsoft resets it. AGS 3.0.1 didn't work.

But after I installed 3.5 I could remove 3.5 AND 3.0 and RC 1 still works.
Maybe I didn't do the full installation the last time or something.

The last two days were intended for voting. The 24th is when the voting was supposed to end. I'll admit that it's confusing since the title mentions it ends the 24th.

I'll extend it to saturday morning, ok?

Congrats LM!

Wow third place, glad I remembered to enter

First of all: Great work on all the updates! I'm seeing a lot of new features I can't wait to try. But you already know everyone here loves you, right?

When I start the editor, it crashed on me during the splashscreen with the same error screen GrogGames had (page two of this thread).
I updated .Net 3.0 to 3.5 and now it works. So it seems a minimum requirement for AGS is dotnetframework version 3.5.

EDIT: Well, at least in XP, since that's what I'm using.

Last chance to enter!

Could you give some example of how you want to use variables? What doesn't work?

You can declare variables at any time btw, not just at the top of the script.

info.info?

If I tried to be silly I'd say everythingyoualwayswantedtoknowabout.info

While not a real shocker, Trilby's Notes made me feel sick with that excessive amount of gore.

I'm a little two-minded about this. I like useless rooms, however as a (fledgling) gamemaker I tend to avoid them.
If the player has a clear view of what he's supposed to do, it could add to the experience. But I would suggest putting something in there.
Players expect something in a room, unless it's clearly only a room between rooms.

So, to conclude: I suggest making that room, if you have the time to do the artwork. But put either a puzzle, something funny or some character in there that provides background information about the gaming world.