Messages

I agree with Cat.  Or if you're going to keep that, make all of "Faravid Interactive and Screen 7 present" the same font size.  Preferably a smaller one.  Right now you've got four different font styles all going on in a very small piece of real estate and it looks too messy.

Congrats to the nominees!  I confess, this is the first year in a long time that I didn't nominate.  I didn't have time to play many games.  But now I've got a nice (and much shorter) list of games to check out before the vote!  Looking forward to checking them out!

(And it's about time I got rid of this avatar.)

That is a great trailer guys!  Well done!  I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product!

Got my pledge in, and I'll be posting it to Facebook and Twitter several times over the next month!  Good luck Nik!

I resent the presumption that I'm just going to listen to every one of your podcasts.  One of these times I'm just not going to listen, and they you'll feel pretty silly when you say hi to me and I never hear it.

Another great one.  I wholeheartedly agree with the notion that watering your work down for fear of offending or being misconstrued is the worst disservice you can do your audience.

Neither of you have wives (obviously, or you'd make each other jealous), but in the project I'm currently working on, I've caught myself feeling very self-conscious when I'm writing relationship or marital problems into my story for fear that someone will assume that I must be drawing on my own marriage as inspiration and using my writing as an outlet for my frustrations.  But then I step back from it and realize I've never once watched a movie where the husband and wife are fighting and thought to myself "Man, this screenwriter must really have a shitty marriage."

[1. Relevant to the story.]

Another great podcast, guys.  Ben, you're not the only person who likes the re-wiring puzzle in Resonance.  There are at least four of us!

Re: mazes.  I added the maze to Resonance as sort of a personal challenge.  Everyone hates mazes in adventure games and I wanted to show that one could be done right.  A risky proposition, because if done wrong it can really put a damper on an otherwise great game.  Inherit the Earth, which Ben mentioned, is one of my favorite games with the one glaring exception of that damn maze.  The Space Bar, another of my faves, has a 3D maze navigated from the first person that you have to solve in the minimal number of clicks.  It's the most frustrating part of the game.  Challenge accepted. 

So here were my rules for adding a maze to a game:

1. Relevant to the story.  My maze was a child's nightmare representation of a repressed memory.  (spoiler alert?)  The dream was an integral part of the story and related, eventually, to events outside the dream.

2. Presented in a readable way. Grundislav's example of the KQ5(?) maze that changed perspectives when you turned around is a great example of what not to do.  The player has to be able to keep their bearings. I chose a top-down view for that purpose.

3. Player must be given in-game tools to solve the maze.  Yes, you can map the maze with a paper and pencil as you go, but I'm a big believer that all the knowledge needed to solve a puzzle must be IN the game.  (Which is why I put a calculator in the game with a pi key just in case some one didn't know the value of pi.)  Hence the "breadcrumbs" in the form of coins.  I also hinted at being able to use them by hiding a memory referencing Hansel and Gretel in the maze.

4. Some twist to make them unique.  As you get deeper in the maze, it starts rotating - a literal twist - giving extra challenge.  (some complained that this detracted from #2 though)

5. Optional! This might not always be possible, but I wanted my maze to be skippable.  The reward for completing it is a bit of back story and a huge hint towards solving another puzzle, namely the key to decode the journal.  The journal, of course, is also an optional puzzle, and can be decoded without the hint earned in the maze.

In my next game, I'm taking on a similar challenge: the whole game is about shaking orange juice and taking a shower.

Yeah, unfortunately, when I cancelled that old site, I backed it up to a hard drive which since died and gone to the dump.  I was actually just last week searching all my files for something else that was on that site that I needed but appears to be lost.

I've been playing it at night with my kids.  They love it.  It's definitely too easy for me, but not for them.  It's been a blast so far.  We only play a half hour or so each night, so it should last us a few days.

Art & animation are gorgeous and the writing is charming as hell and very funny.  I've had a couple visual bugs here and there, but nothing too jarring.

[HUGE SPOILERS]

The changing of the ending for Resonance, I think was a pretty good example of dealing with the whole taking feedback from others during development topic you guys were talking about.  As the writer, I was so close to the story, it's really hard to see the weaknesses and things that are not adequately explained.  I was really against any changes at first, but after sleeping on it, I was able to realize that Dave and Janet weren't making these suggestions to hijack my story, but to try and make the best game possible.  I was able to then approach their suggestions from that common goal rather than from some adversarial standpoint.  Basically, I had to try seriously hard not to be a complete primma donna about the whole thing.

And in the end, it wound up not really being that huge of a change.

For those wondering exactly what the changes were, I'm going to go full spoiler here, so don't read the spoiler section unless you've played Resonance.

At the point when Dave sent me an email with their proposed changes, the phone tracing conversation, finale crane confrontation, and ending scenes had not been written.  So, I was convinced that my version of events would totally work once that stuff was in there.  Dave's suggestion was primarily that we change Ed's motivation for the events of the game and untangle some other things with simpler explanations.

Here's a rundown of the differences between the version of events I had planned and the ending as proposed: HUGE SPOILERS

Spoiler

Original story Ed's entire motivation from the beginning is to destroy Antevorta. He works with The Eleven Foundation because he believes that they are also working against Antevorta, but he is misled.  They are just using Ed to get Resonance using their own program, Antevorta, as the bait. Ed mistakenly believes that Reno and The Eleven Foundation will use Resonance to simultaneously destroy all the many Antevorta servers around the country, crippling the program.  He is told that he, personally, will be the one to take out the server in the Aventine hospital. Reno sets Ray and Bennet on Ed's trail knowing (with her "mystical" future predicting powers) that they will stop the attack on the hospital and kill Ed.  She will then be able to set Ray and Bennet up as the fall guys for the whole thing. In the final crane scene, Ray and Bennet would have had to convince Ed that Amul and Reno were not, actually, on Ed's side and that they had no interest in destroying Antevorta because they were, in fact, behind the whole thing.  But it would end up in the same explosive finale. After stopping Ed, Ray and Bennet would uncover Ed's phone, which would have several recorded phone conversations documenting Amul and Reno's involvement in the whole thing.  As they ride the elevator down from the crane, the recordings would play over the end credits. These phone recordings would reveal that Amul was the driving point behind a number of events in the game. Ed setup the resonance device that killed Morales, but it was Amul that decided to trigger it.  Amul also sent the thug to Anna's apartment in an effort to speed things up and push her towards finding Resonance. Ed is angry about all these steps Amul takes without consulting him. In the post-credits ending, Bennet and Ray would take Ed's phone recordings and publish them on Ray's website as proof against The Eleven Foundation and Antevorta. I also wanted beating the game to unlock a New Game + where these phone conversations would happen during the story allowing you to see it all play out chronologically.

Dave and Janet's suggestion Simplify the complex Eleven Foundation/Ed relationship.  Ed just wants to preserve Resonance for the common good.  The Eleven Foundation promised to help him to that end. Ed set off the device killing Morales. No complex thing with Amul. (Though we had to add the thing with the timer to allow this, since we're looking at Ed in the subway when the event takes place.  This allows us to cut out all the recorded phone calls and New Game + stuff. After delivering the devices to the Eleven Foundation, Ed discovers their true motivations and decides to stop them.  Ed's motivations are not about the "Orwellian nightmare", but just a desire to stop Reno and Amul. There is only one Antevorta server instead of many, and destroying it will stop the whole thing, giving more weight to the act. Crane scene is instead about convincing Ed that blowing up a chunk of the Hospital is not the best way to stop Antevorta, rather than convincing him that the people pulling his strings are behind it and that he's playing straight into their hands. Janet at this point came up with the second ending at this point where Ray can choose to let Ed go through with it.

The recorded conversations were to be:

• Ed calls Amul after the very first scene in the game.  He tells Amul that Morales plans on destroying Resonance.  Amul tells him to set up the device, just in case they need it.
• Ed calls Amul after seeing the destroyed Lab from the cemetery hill.  He is angry.  "Why did you set it off? It was supposed to be a fail safe!" Amul tells him that time is running out to stop Antevorta and that Ed proceed with plan B, "the girl."
• Ed reports to Amul the evening of Morales' death.  Amul tells Ed he should go immediately to Anna's apartment building to "play the Hero."  Ed asks Amul "What have you done now?"
• Ed calls Amul after the thug chases Anna on the stairwell.  He is angry that Amul keeps taking steps without Ed's ok.  Amul explains that the thug was there to help move things along faster."
• Ed calls to report that he has secured Resonance.  He sounds overwhelmed with emotion (from killing Anna) and asks if it was really all worth it.  Amul assures him that the destruction of Antevorta will be worth it and urges him to hurry and deliver Resonance to him.

In the end, I had to admit (as should have been obvious, but was hard to see at the time), mine was way too complex and required far too much exposition that might have worked better on a TV show or a movie, but not in a game.  Furthermore, there were just too many plot points that would not have been explained until the ending credits.  Dave and Janet's version got to the point faster and only really required a retooling of a few scenes.  I was sad to let go of my version, but as I said, I had to come to terms with the fact that they were making these suggestions to make the game better and that Dave had quite a bit more experience than I had at this whole thing.

A few parts of my ending still bled into what we ended up using. (Ed turned vehemently against Antevorta once he learned of the "Orwellian Nightmare" of the thing, rather than just being out to destroy it to get back at Amul and Reno for misleading him about their intentions for Resonance.) 

I was sad to see the phone recordings go because they gave a bit more context to Ed's motivations and state of mind and may have helped to make him somewhat sympathetic.  Without them, eliciting any sympathy for Ed's actions was a lot harder. 

I was also sad to see my New Game + idea go, but at this point it was March, and we were shooting for a release date that was three months away, so obviously it just wasn't going to happen.  Better to simplify the whole thing and eliminate all that extra exposition.

Although, after releasing the game, I realized that we kind of orphaned the thug that chases Anna at her apartment.  There was never really a good explanation in the game for that except to assume that Ed sent him to speed things up or that The Eleven Foundation was making a move.  Oh well.

[close]

I demand that you make Dave do DeliveRANTs!

I'm sensing some jealousy on Grundislav's part re: the love connection between Ben and Richard Cobbett.  Love triangle drama!

Actually, I'm going to cautiously defend Trowe on that point. According to that article, one version of the story is that the girl (fifteen years old) was dating one of the men in the video. In that case, it seems like it's perhaps less a matter of perverting a minor than proving to her that her boyfriend was cheating on her. (The intention behind it might even have been good, if it was meant to make her realize that this wasn't a smart relationship to be in.

Ooh, look at you. Investigating the context before damning someone outright.  Get lost, Snarky. You act like there is some kind of "moral grey area" when we all know full well that everything is black and white. (It's just easier that way.)

There are dick bags of all sexualities and political leanings.

Exactly my point. Some people just tend to vilify Doug and other conservatives only because of their views.

Oh, ok.  I didn't know who Doug was and had to Google him.  I glossed over the title of your post.  I still don't really get the comparison unless it's that Doug's views on homosexuality may be on the wrong side of history, but at least he didn't send porn to a kid.  But whatevs.  Nobody's defending Trowe's actions.

Not sure what him being openly gay or an advocate of gay marriage has to do with it.  There are dick bags of all sexualities and political leanings.

Loved the game making process discussion in this episode!  I had been getting a bit tired of the long-winded conversations about which AAA games you're playing.  I mostly listen to the podcast while driving and it kept putting me to sleep.  I'll send you the bill.

But yeah, the game making talk was super interesting hearing you guys break down the inspirations and completely different processes you follow.  More of that, please!

Actually, I'd really love to listen to other AGSers run down their own processes for making their games.

Throwing out ideas for future shows:

-Working with teams
-Writing interesting characters
-Non-standard adventures
-Dialog writing in general
-Interface design!

I loved the first game when I was a kid, but never got my hands on the sequel.  When 7th Guest was re-released for iPad, I picked it up and holy crap is it a terrible game by today's standards.  I always knew the acting was awful, but as a kid I didn't realize how lazy the loosely-connected completely-arbitrary puzzles were. 

Love the soundtrack though!

Wow, looking great DKH! Woo AGS platformers!

I got to see this particular virus up close at my work yesterday.  Our IT department was fixing some computers for some clients who got hit by this.  And by "fixing" I mean completely wiping and re-installing windows.  It's the only solution with this one.

This virus finds all the networked drives and files it can, and encrypts them too.  So, it really can impact a company network.

In this case, the client's voice mail system sends emails with an audio file each time the person gets a voice mail.  This is fairly common.  So, a secretary at the office got an email looking maybe somewhat (but not really) similar to their voice mail system's emails.  It contained an attachment called "Voicemail.zip" which she downloaded and double clicked.  Inside is an executable called "voicemail.exe" which, thanks to Window's stupid "hide known file type extensions" setting, she did not notice was an exe.  She ran it and it fucked their whole company network.  Luckily this company has nightly backups of all networked drives so their critical documents were saved.

I'm wondering: If I use dropbox and get a virus on one machine, does that mean I need to assume it's spread to all the machines connected to my dropbox account?

If you have a drop box, it would encrypt all the files on that dropbox rendering them useless for all the machines who access that account.  However, the encrypted files would not in-turn infect another box on that dropbox unless the .exe was also placed in the dropbox and it was opened on another machine.

Unfortunately, AGS doesn't support unicode fonts.  So you have to fit all the characters into the first 256 slots of a ttf font and then use some code-fu to get it all working.

Or, you can do what I did and painstakingly export an image of each piece of dialog in the game.

Note: don't do what I did.

[meaningful]

If the game designer tries to make various responses/animations to most hotspots for almost every verb, adds hotkeys to each verb (walk, talk, interact, inventory)...then is a Sierra-Style interface "acceptable"?

Yes.  They're all acceptable.  But is it the best choice?  What I advocate is that the "various responses/animations" should be meaningful in order to justify the interface. 

If I click "Talk to" + "Brick wall", it doesn't matter to me if the player character says "I can't talk to that." or if he walks over to the wall and attempts, humorously, to engage in conversation with it while gesturing wildly.  Neither of those responses are meaningful (though one is more entertaining than the other) and they don't justify the interface. 

To justify the multi-verb interface you must satisfy at least one of the following two conditions on at least one puzzle. Obviously, doing these on many puzzles is preferable.

• At least two of the verbs must have different meaningful responses on a single item.  For example you can "Push" a heavy chest to block a doorway when someone is chasing you, but you can also "Open" the heavy chest to find a useful item inside.
• A verb must be used in an unexpected or non-intuitive situation.  For example, you have to "Talk to" that brick wall because it's actually a magical brick wall that can talk, and figuring that out is part of the puzzle. "Talking to" NPCs or "Interacting with" light switches does not satisfy this condition.

I think that if your game doesn't do at least one of these two things, and maybe even if it does these things but doesn't do them enough, you probably would have been better off with a simpler interface.

(Exceptions allowed for games that just have really funny responses to multiple verbs, even if they're not actually meaningful.)