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Clock Tower

Wait, I actually understood him there:

* Gilbot V7000a kills whoever has his/her name mentioned in this thread.

PS: Gilbot.

Amazing vintage look!

One thing I would change:  Make the "A SIDE" and "B SIDE" labels a slightly larger or smaller font-size than the track names to set them off a bit.  Otherwise it looks like they're the names of songs.

And one suggestion that might not work, but I thought might be cool:  Make the image on the backside upside-down.  Then, when you flip the sleeve horizontally, you can read the track names, but the picture from the back connects to the front, so if you flip it vertically, the picture will be seamless.

Ooh, I made a list!

While getting together a team like this would be as incredible as it is unlikely, it is plausible that you or anyone on these forums could collaborate with one or a couple of the people on this list (or with any other talented AGSers) to make a damn fine game.  The primary game that I'm working on now, for example, has three people from Calcaver's list (counting myself) contributing in some way to it. 

I've had a great time collaborating with various members of this community and really want to collaborate with more people in the future.  Depending on my schedule, anyone with a unique game idea, demonstrable talent, or a good track record could easily get me to join their team.  I'd assume the same goes for many of the people on this list and on the forum in general.

So don't just imagine forming a dream team... develop your skills, make a few games that demonstrate what you're capable of, and approach the person or persons that you'd like to collaborate with.

And on a side note, the people on top of my personal "want to collaborate with someday" list are Dave Gilbert and Helm.

Happy Birthay The Ivy!  Hurry up on Spooks II!

The TYGRON side looks really neat but the name and address side has some flaws.  People are going to need to get up all close and squinty to read your email and address.

I think that making the backside white with black (or colored) lettering, rather than having the orange and blue background, will make your card look better and read better (and cost less to print).  Remember, simple is better.

The orange font doesn't stand out well enough against the blue. If you want to keep the fancy colored back, you're going to want to change the font color.  The text with a light-orange outline on the TYGRON side is very legible.  I'd use that lighter color for the main font color on this side.

Then there's the font itself.  The front has a nice wide font.  The back is a horizontally condensed font.  I'd stretch it out considerably, and use a larger size so people don't need a magnifying glass.

The front looks really cool though!

You'll have to forgive people for being a bit defensive.  But you have to understand that your first post did come across as quite offensive.  And saying "I do not wish to offend anyone" doesn't exactly make it all better.  ("Hey lady, you're kind of chubby... no offence.")  And what's more, you did it with your first post.  Welcome to the boards, but don't start off with a mildly insulting comment.

You said that it was difficult to take these games seriously because of their amateur drawings.  These are games that we, the members of this community, have put hundreds of hours of one-man work into and you're saying that you can't take them seriously.  Furthermore, you specifically directed this at "awarded games" which are generally of a higher quality art-wise in the first place.  I understand what you're trying to say, and I don't mind it.  I just hope that you can see why some people felt a bit insulted or offended.

Perhaps if you told us which awarded games you couldn't take seriously and explained why they turned you off we could see what you're getting at and it could be a helpful comment.  But a general "most" of these games have too-simple drawings doesn't tell us how we can improve.  Because "most" of the people making these games know that graphics are, to some extent, a very important part of these games, and they are doing the best job they can to bring their gaming creations to life. 

And I don't think it's wrong to feel sorry for you if you can't look past that.  I don't feel sorry for you because you "think graphics are everything" or something like that which may or may not be true.  I'm just a bit sorry that you won't be able to play some of the great games that you can find on this site and take them seriously and enjoy them for the great story and gameplay experiences that they offer.  Because, if you can't, you're really missing out on some great games.

Is this game going to be first person, myst-style or third-person?

Either way, I would highly recommend some paths on the screens.  If I had to navigate through that non-descript field of repetetive pillars, I would certainly get lost.  Paths on the ground or barriers in the way make it easy for the player to know where he can and cannot go. 

Room exits that aren't clearly defined are one of my pet-peeves in AGS games.  If I can't find my way out of an area because I can't find the exit or if I totally miss an area because the entrance isn't clear, I'll usually quit a game right away.

I'd recommend a foot path on the ground and some (burned out?) shrubbery or more rocks and fallen ruins as barriers.

Also, what fred said.

I should mention that I've gotten a lot better at importing the graphics from Flash as will be evidenced in my upcoming game.  Anna and DomCon both have a lot of jagged edges on the sprites that could've been avoided.  .png files are your friend.

Great game.  I look forward to the sequel, "Snakes on a Plane 2: Snakes on a Boat."

I use flash all the time.  All the sprites, animations, and backgrounds in Anna and The Domestic Conspiracy Demo were done in Flash (except a few Photoshopped touchups).  I'm using similar techniques for much of my unannounced upcoming game, too.

I do this because I'm comfortable in Flash and I suck at animating, which Flash can help me with a lot. 

However, with the animations, you still have to export them from Flash frame by frame and import them into AGS for best results.  If you'd like some tips on the different ways I do that quickly, PM me.

Domestic Conspiracy also has one movie file that I exported from Flash as a Quicktime Movie, and then converted to a better-compressed format.  This is a good way to do long, full-screen animations.

I do think it would be a good deterrent.  I certainly wouldn't put a commercial game up for free download if I knew that it could be tracked back to me.  (I wouldn't put a commercial game up for download anyway... but whatever.) 

However, for it to be a deterrent, you would have to inform the customers that such a system was in place.  Otherwise they'll just do it anyways not knowing that you'll know who did it.  But if I saw a game that said "Warning: Each copy is watermarked and WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE!" on the side, I'd feel a bit insulted by the lack of trust the company has placed in me as a consumer.

Wicked case mod, Gilbot!

The problem with that, Dan, is that all someone needs to do to "pirate" a game with that copy protection, is to distribute the game with the key file already included.  That copy protection only takes one sale to break.  In effect, it provides no improvement, security wise, over simply distributing the game with no copy protection.

The only advantage that could have is if the player is allowed a free trial period (a few chapters, levels, or minutes) and then the game requires the purchase of the key to continue playing.  But again, someone could simply share the file on any filesharing network with the key included and the copy protection is "cracked."

I'm planning on implementing a simple system like this in my game (though I haven't gotten to that point yet and am not sure if it'll make the final game.)  But what I'm planning is simply to have the game supply a code and a webpage upon completion of the game.  For example:

Congratulations, you've won!  Go to http://www._____.com/____ and enter the following code to join the high score list: XKJERAL

It adds an extra step for the player, but you don't have to mess around writing plugins (which I have no idea how to do).

The more difficult part is coming up with a cryptographic scheme that can encode the player's score along with a sufficiently large random number (generated at the start of a new game so the player doesn't save just before finishing and then load repeatedly to add his name to the high score list many times), and have competent error checking included (so that a random guess or attempt at hacking the encoding scheme won't work).

Wow, this has come a long ways graphically since I last saw it!  The art looks fantastic.  And I love your original game ideas!  I'm looking forward to seeing how this one turns out!

Heh, Famittens...

Why don't you just have a little get together where Nik and family go to SSH's house and then extend an open invite to anyone else who wants to come?  I guess without the "ittens" in the name you don't get the interest of the rest of the AGSers...  and with the "ittens" comes certain expectations that might not be met at a gathering that includes kids.

I'd love to come to something like this with my wife and daughter because if there are two things I like talking about, it's adventure games and poop.  But I know that I wouldn't be able to come because: A.) it would be really expensive to fly from Japan with the whole family, and B.) my wife would feel uncomfortable because she wouldn't be able to understand our conversations.

That's very weird.

Congrats, Dave!  Getting on Manifesto (or Man Festo as their logo implies... I'm not bitter... my logo submission was among the final six) is really cool.

DRM basically makes it slightly more difficult to pirate your game (it can and will be overcome by the determined), but does so at the expense of ease of use and often annoys your paying customers.  I know it's a necessary evil as seen through the eyes of publishers, but I don't see why it needs to be put in place for a small five dollar (assuming Manifesto would be keeping that price) game.

You should suggest to Greg that he just leave off the DRM.  I'm sure he wouldn't mind, since he preaches that the publisher works for the developer not the other way around.

I really wouldn't expect your game to lose any sales to piracy.  It's not really the type of game that is actively pirated.

This thread reminds me, I still need to get my copy of Shivah Delux!

On a similar note, I frequently use Microsoft OneNote's screen clipping function to quickly grab a screenshot of a certain part of the screen (say part of a Flash sketch) to import it into a game.  OneNote lets you drag a rectangle over the screen and then copies that part of the screen to the clipboard.

If I paste the clipping into MS Paint or Photoshop, it looks fine, but if I paste it into the AGS editor, it takes three pixel columns off the right side of the picture and moves them to the left side.  Then it adds three randomly colored pixels to the bottom left hand corner of the image.

To get around this, I paste into Paint, then copy again and paste into AGS.  But I'm not sure why I'm having this problem.