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[Note:]

Note: Based on some of the feedback here, I made a small addendum to the final version of part one on my blog.  For the rest of the articles in this series, I'm going to post them here first and then modify them based on the discussion before posting the final versions to my blog.

Previous parts:

• Part One: Cursor Confusion

Part Two: The Sierra Operating System

In this edition of "Why Your Game is Broken," I'm going to pick on something near and dear to many adventure fans' hearts: the Sierra and Lucas Arts interfaces.  These two interfaces, Sierra much more than Lucas Arts, are used in an overwhelming majority of the games that come out of this community. This is largely because the Sierra interface is used in the default template provided with AGS.

Unfortunately, partially due to the inherent flaws of these interfaces, and partially due to the developers' sloppy use of them, nearly every one of these games are broken.

The Sierra Operating System

Imagine you're using a computer.  Shouldn't be too hard.  Now imagine it's a completely different operating system â€" a new one you've never used before.  There are four items on the desktop: a folder, a video file, an mp3, and a word document.  There's also a little image of a man in the bottom corner.

Let's open the folder.  Move the cursor (with its well defined hotspot) to point at the folder and double click.  Nothing happened… Oh wait, the little guy is walking up there.  That's strange.  Try the movie.  Same thing.  The little guy just walked over there.

Obviously something about this new OS works different from the ones you're used to.  You'll have to learn how to use it.  Oh look, pointing at the top of the screen reveals some buttons, let's see…

"Browse," "Watch," "Listen," "Read"?  Oh my god… I know what this is…  It's the dreaded Sierra Operating System!!! Dun dun duuuuuuuuuun!

In this nightmare OS, you have to change your cursor mode depending on the type of file you want to interact with.  Instead of simply double clicking on any type of file to open it, you now have to change your cursor to the appropriate mode depending on the filetype you want to open.  Want to watch that video?  Mouse to the top of the screen, click the "Watch" button, and notice your mouse turns into an eyeball.  Now go and click on the video.  Want to open the word document next?  First mouse up to the top of the screen again and click the "Read" button.  Alternatively, right-click to cycle through all the modes until the cursor turns into a pair of glasses.  Oops!  Clicked past it?  That's alright, just keep right-clicking, it'll come up eventually.

Sound horrible?

Well it is!  But probably not for the reason you're thinking.  The Sierra interface, and for the same reasons, the Lucas Arts interface would make terrible computer operating systems.  After posting the first "Why Your Game is Broken" article in the AGS forums, a number of people mentioned how generally annoying the whole Sierra system is.  I've also seen a few other threads and discussions about the problems with the Sierra and Lucas Arts interfaces, but none of them have gotten to the real heart of why these interfaces are broken.  But before I get to the real issue, let's talk about the most obvious problem with these two interfaces.

The obvious problem: they're annoying!

The Sierra and Lucas Arts interfaces are annoying.  Anyone who can manage to take off their nostalgia-tinted glasses should be able to see that these interfaces are irritating.  Sierra has you mousing up to the top of the screen, selecting a mouse mode, then mousing back down to the object you want to use that mouse mode on and clicking a second time.  Arguably more annoying, the Lucas Arts interface has you mousing down to the bottom of the screen and choosing from a list of around 8 (the number changes depending on game) verbs and then mousing back up. 

We may be used to mousing away from the action to select menu items in any software, or to select tools in graphics programs like Photoshop, but when I'm trying to identify with a character and lose myself in a story, making me fight with the interface is going to take me right out of the game.

The standard Sierra implementation also allows you to right-click to cycle through the modes, but as illustrated in the Sierra OS hypothetical above, this often leads you to miss the mode you were looking for and have to click through a second time.

One recent game, Ben There, Dan That, gets rid of the buttons at the top of the screen and relies solely on right-clicking to change the cursor mode.  I've seen other games do this as well, but it always results in a frustration.  I hope from the few comments in the game's thread about this issue, that they've realized their error and will remedy it in their next game.

It could be argued that a well-implemented verb-coin GUI, which lists your available interactions when you click on an object, is a far more elegant solution than the Sierra and Lucas Arts interfaces since it doesn't require your mouse to go flying all over the screen when you want to try multiple interactions on an item.  However, the Sierra interface tops the verb-coin interface in one area: mode permanence.  If I click "Use" on one item and it doesn't work, I can quickly go and try "Use" on another object without changing modes.  With the verb-coin, you need to select "Use" with a second click each time you want to try an object.  Lucas Arts interfaces sometimes lack this mode permanence as well, which is another mark against it in my book.

An interface with mode permanence â€" left-click on anything to use the previously selected mode, right-click on an object to bring up a verb-coin and change the mode that you want to use on the object â€" might be a better solution. This would require fewer clicks than an interface without mode permanence (verb-coin), and require less mouse movement than an interface with fixed mode buttons (Sierra/Lucas Arts).  I haven't tried this out, nor do I know of a game right now that uses it, but it might be a workable interface.  Just throwing that out there.

Another way people can improve the Sierra/Lucas Arts interfaces' annoyance issues, also mentioned in the forum thread responding to the first article in this series, is to add keyboard shortcuts.  These can be useful to players who don't mind playing with one hand on the keyboard rather than relaxing and using just the mouse (no jokes here as to what your other hand may be up to).  However, this fix still has problems.  There are no "Use" "Walk" "Examine" "Inventory" or "Talk" buttons on my keyboard last time I checked, so the developer will have to decide which buttons would be the most intuitive.  Do you use (U)se or (I)nteract?  (L)ook or (E)xamine?  Giving the player more options like also using the 1, 2, 3… keys to represent the verbs can help, but regardless, until the shortcut keys become ingrained into the player's brain so that he can hit the right one without thinking, they're still acting as a barrier to immersion.

I have yet to play a game with either the Lucas Arts or Sierra standard interface that I didn't feel was annoying.  I don't like having to fight with the interface, and I don't like having these things get in the way of my immersion in the game.   I think that some games manage to be great despite using these interfaces, but I almost universally think that these games could have been more enjoyable with a better designed interface.

However, I still think that the whole "annoying" thing is a minor issue with these interfaces when compared to the second issue which is my real sticking point.

The real problem: They're completely superfluous

I'll admit that much of that last section dwelled on opinion and personal preference.  Some people may, for some reason, love either of these interfaces despite (or because of?) these issues.  However, what I'm going to discuss next is not opinion.  It's the hard truth.  If your game is using one of these interfaces, I can almost guarantee that your game is broken.  It's broken because your interface is completely superfluous.

What do I mean superfluous? 

One of the defenses that I always hear for using the Sierra or Lucas Arts multiple-verb interface over, say, the simple left-click to interact/walk, right-click to examine interface is that having multiple verbs gives the player more control over the player's actions.  Let's see how this argument holds up.

I'm playing a game with the Sierra interface.  I have four verbs, Walk, Look, Use, and Talk.  My character is in a room.  There's an elevator with a button and a man standing in the corner.  We know "Walk" doesn't do much.  It's usually only useful for helping us see the other end of a long scrolling room or for moving through an exit into the next room.  "Look" doesn't usually play into puzzles unless you need to examine something closely before you can do something with it.  It's usually only used for helping the player understand his surroundings and adding to immersion.  So the only real verbs that we have for gameplay are "Use" and "Talk."

Let's try "Use" on the man standing near to the elevator.

"I'm not touching him!  That would be sexual harassment!" quips my quirky character.

Oh, right.  I'm supposed to use "Talk" on him.

Let's try "Talk" on the button next to the elevator.

"I don't think buttons are very good conversationalists."

Thanks, quirky character!  I've now learned some valuable information.  I suppose I should try to "Use" the button instead.

With very little exception, every single game that I have ever played using this interface has used the "Talk" on people or other characters and "Use" on everything else.   Let's show that in a handy Venn diagram:

If the set of things that I need to use "Talk to" on is completely separate from the things that I need to use "Use" on, and trying to use the other verb just results in a useless "I can't do that" comment, your game is broken.  There's no puzzle in it.  No thinking required.  Person equals talk, thing equals use.  That's it.  It doesn't make me feel more "in control" of my character.  If anything, I feel less in control, since my character systematically refuses all my commands that don't fall in line with the above diagram.

If you're going to make two separate verbs, there had better be a reason for them.  That is, the set of things that I can use one verb on had damn well better overlap the set of things that I can use the other on otherwise there's no reason to ask me, the player, to specify which verb I want to use.

Think back to that Operating System example at the start of this article.  Remember how terrible it sounded?  Each file had only one obvious use, but I still had to change the cursor mode to tell the computer how to use each file.  Your game works this same way as this system.  It's pointless.

If, on the other hand, you design your game with the peculiarities of the interface in mind, the Venn diagram would look more like this:

Considerable overlap means that there is good reason for me to have different cursor modes.  Imagine if that Sierra Operating System had only one file on the desktop called "Resonance data" and using the "Watch" mode on it would open up the movie files contained therein.  Using the "Read" mode would open up any design documents, or maybe code.  "Listen" would play any mp3s contained within the data.  Now, this OS has good reason to have these cursor modes.  (It's still annoying… but at least it's justified.)

Games using the Sierra interface that fit the second Venn diagram are not broken.  At least not for the reasons I'm discussing now.

However, 90% of the games that I've tried that use the Sierra interface (and that's a conservative estimate) more closely resembles the first Venn diagram than the second.  And if the sets are distinct, then there is absolutely no reason for you to inconvenience me with the previously discussed annoyances.  Combine the separate verbs into one cursor and be done with it.  This has two big benefits.  One, I don't need to right click through an extra cursor mode, and two, you don't have to write so many "I'm not gonna do that, ha ha" messages.

One game that I worked on, Spooks, fits into this 90%.  I can only remember one time in the game  where you have to use the hand cursor on a character, and that was before you realized he was a character.  After that, you must always use talk on him.  Every other object/character fits into the two distinct "Use" and "Talk to" groups.  I didn't realize it back then, but I do now: Spooks is broken.

Let's see if the Lucas Arts interface does any better:

Nope.  Pretty much all the items are distinct in most games.  Small objects can be picked up.  Big objects can be used.  Characters can be spoken to.  Things with hinges can be opened and closed, and things that are movable can be pushed and pulled.  There may be some overlap here and there (a mechanism that you can use and also push aside to reveal the plug behind it), but for the most part it's all completely superfluous.  Even though the open/close and push/pull circles overlap, you can usually only use one at any given time on an object, for example, open on a closed door, close on an open one.

Again, this doesn't require any real thought by the player.  It doesn't give me more control.  It just makes my character refuse my commands more often.  All you're doing is adding this overcomplicated barrier between me and the game, and if I have to struggle with this slow and unnecessary process just to give commands to my character, I'm not getting immersed, I'm being cut off.

This is just the Sierra Operating System with even more verbs.

So, combine the superfluous verbs into one cursor mode.  Let the computer figure out what I'm trying to do.  It'll usually be right.  If I clicked on a closed door, quite likely I was trying to open it.  If I clicked on a crowbar lying on the ground, yeah, I was probably trying to pick it up.  Clicked on Jerry the bellhop?  Fair chance I was trying to talk to him.  The system works and it works without wedging an interface between me and the character I'm trying to connect with.

As such, I am a strong advocate of the two button system.  A left click interacts with whatever I clicked on in whatever way is likely my intention.  If I click where there is nothing to interact with, that's a walk command.  A right click examines whatever I click on.  This system doesn't require taking my mouse away from the action, it doesn't put a GUI between me and the story, it has mode permanence, and it doesn't require any keyboard shortcuts or other tweaks to make it bearable.  Moreover it is fast and easy for me to communicate my intentions to my on-screen character.

If I were to convert your game over to this simple system, I would have eliminated pretty much every issue we discussed in the section about the annoyances of the Sierra and Lucas Arts interfaces AND if your game matched that first Venn diagram (and seriously at least 90% of them do) I would have managed to do it without sacrificing any of the gameplay or puzzles that you had in your game.

I could do this because your game was broken.

Choosing an appropriate interface

You chose to use the Sierra interface in your game, either because you like that interface or because it came prepackaged with AGS and was the easiest option.  Or maybe you managed to tack on the Lucas Arts interface because you're aiming for the nostalgic value of those old classics.  However, an interface should be tailored to the game, not chosen because of nostalgia value or ease of implementation.  I really like Photoshop's interface, but I wouldn't want to slap it on Firefox, that just wouldn't work.  I really like cover flow in iTunes because it's fun to flip my albums using it.  However, I think it makes a shitty file browser in OSX Leopard.

Your game is broken because you chose an interface for reasons other than how it would lend itself to the gameplay that you designed.

Before you choose an interface for your game, you need to know if it's going to be appropriate for your game.  I think a lot of us amateurs just pick up AGS and go, "Yay, I can make games.  Ok, let's see, default template… It has an inventory!  I'm going to have my character pick stuff up!"  I mean, working within your limitations is an important skill for an amateur game developer, but don't impose limitations on your work that aren't there.  Inventories are fine, but you don't have to use one.  Lots of great AGS games don't have inventory items.  Likewise, you don't have to have multiple verbs just because they're there. 

You don't have to use the interface that comes with AGS.  You don't even have to use an interface that you've seen on any game before.  Figure out the kind of game you want to make, and then figure out the best way that you can let the player interface with it.  Nanobots, for example, has a very unique gameplay style and an interface that, I hope, lends itself to that gameplay.  Anna also has a very non-standard interface that I think works really well for that type of game.

Before making your game, take a long look at your design, be it on paper or in your head.  What is the best way for the player to play this game without even realizing that he's communicating with the character through an interface?  That's the interface you should be using.  If it isn't, your game is broken.

One other reason for the high variance among one-cup games is the number of people voting on them.  Without many votes, it's much harder to determine an actual representation of the game's quality.  I would wager that an examination of the database would reveal that the one-cup games, on average, have far fewer votes than the generally more popular three or four cup games.  Clicking on some random ones now, many of them have been around for years and still have never gotten enough votes to even show a percentage.  This lower number of votes could be greatly attributing to the high variance in the average scores. 

Hell, you'll probably even see a huge drop in the number of votes between the average 5 cup game and the average 4.

This, coupled with the vote vandalism (Unbound) and inflation (is there a reason we're not pointing directly at Rapstar?) that Limpy mentioned makes the user votes almost meaningless to me.  The panel cup rating seems far more useful in general.

Great work here, though.  A very interesting study!  Thanks!

Ooh, I had been using that font loophole too for Resonance.  I quite liked having smooth fonts on the 320x240 game.  I had been checking internally if the game was running in 320x240 or 640x480 and if it's the former, use a small bitmap font, and if it's the latter, use a nice ttf font.

I guess this locks me in 3.0.2 which is fine for now.  It has all the features I need. Though if you ever get around to that audio overhaul, I might be forced to look into working around this.

Ok, my morbid curiosity led me to pick this up again.  I did what you said and fired multiple times in the opposite direction as the projectile was traveling (nothing in the game suggested to me that I was supposed to do this, if you hadn't told me I would never have even gotten this far) and finally got the vortex to appear and clicked around to direct it onto the dog thing.  So, I've done the whole practice thing.  Then, nothing happened for a while, I talked to everyone, but the other monsters wouldn't come.  After five minutes or so of wondering what I was supposed to do, they finally started coming, but I'm not sure what I did to trigger it.  I killed a couple, and I now know that some are not good for offering.  Now, some other red guys come and steal my meat.  I'm not sure how to stop them.  One of the villagers in the new house says he'll try to stop them, but I have to hold the mirror to them first.  I do so.  But nothing happens.  He still steals my meat.  What am I supposed to do to stop him?  EDIT: Never mind, I think a bug led me to receive something I wasn't supposed to have and it let me skip something now.  And then I noticed that you left on debug mode, so I skipped forward through many rooms and saw how long this game was.  There's no way I'm going to slog through all of that with the game being as unplayable as it is now.  I guess whatever it is that makes this a new genre is going to have to remain a mystery to me, because I can't be bothered to find out until the game gets some polish.

Your game is lacking in several areas other than graphics, so don't worry about graphics for now, there are plenty of people on these forums who care nothing for graphics, just story and gameplay.  What you need to do is make sure this game is playable, because right now it's pretty much a mess.  The cursors have no clear hotspots which makes clicking on the tiny guys frustrating, you can walk right through trees, you can't re-enter the house in the center without pressing the help button which warps you in there, there's no in-game indication of how you're supposed to go about what you're supposed to be doing, multiple bugs, walk cycles playing in reverse (have you not noticed that your main character is walking backwards?), typos, and a slew of other problems.  And those are just in the few parts of the game that I've managed to stumble my way into.  No matter how interesting a story might be, these things are going to prevent anyone from noticing.

And I think what ghost was trying to tell you was not that it's bad to not know what's going on until the end, which is fine if you want to save everything for a big reveal.  That's quite a common storytelling technique, go for it.  What Ghost was telling you is that there's nothing here that makes this a new genre, no matter what you reveal to us at the end of the game.  Again, a new game mechanic doesn't make a new game genre.

Wisp:

Spoiler

I've gotten into all the rooms but the attic.  I've found the safe, and I've found the combination on the wall... but when I click on the safe he says he doesn't know the combination.  I can see it, and I know that it's the combo, but how do I make my wisp figure it out?

[close]

Dear god. I think 17665 lines of code gives you the right to call me something stronger than "zany" .

And that doesn't even count the dialogs!

Haha, this was very cute!  A nice and deliciously evil little diversion.  Art and puzzles were tops all around.  Great work for one little week!

[Baltazar:]

Finally got back from my vacation and am having a chance to look at these!  I wish I had been able to vote!  I'm going to leave comments as I play them.  If the game has its own thread in Completed Games, I'll post there.

Baltazar:

I really liked the cute art and the funny dialog, though there was too much talking.  The colors were really nice all around.  The puzzles seemed interesting, with some that were not quite your standard adventure fare, so way to go there.  However, a lot of things were toooo frustrating.  One mistake you made that many people make is to have no clear hotspot on your cursors.  I have no idea what I'm pointing at with almost all of the cursors.  Cursors and inventory objects all need to have a clear point or arrow that shows what I'm pointing at.  Also, the charging of items was really frustrating since I had to click the second time in a tiny little window of time to send a charge.  It took me around ten tries per charge to get it right, and to add to this annoyance, I was only given like two seconds with the floating robot.  I would have never figured out that I needed to use him via the inventory in that amount of time if I hadn't read it in hints and tips.  I never finished the game because of the mentioned frustrations, but I liked your concept and clever writing.  I just wish you had been able to spend more time on ironing out the kinks.  Great job for a week, though!


Beauties and Beasts:

commented in Completed Games thread

Chatroom:

I've already talked to JBurger about this, but for the record, I really like how he took what is essentially a chat bot and framed a working story around it.  There's no way that he'd be able to cover all the responses for all the things someone might try to type (but I know he's been tweaking it and adding more before adding it to the DB) but he still did an admirable job.  Nice, unique, and atmospheric, despite being just a computer screen!  Well done!

Cheerful Science

Haha, I loved the ridiculous writing and story.  I LQTMRTOLBIWAW'ed (laughed quietly to myself rather than out loud because i was at work) at the superfluous narration machine.  The gameplay and graphics were not very interesting.  Your graphic style is cute and definitely lends itself well to your writing style.  The gameplay was just simple one inventory item nets you the next inventory item, repeat, repeat, finished.  Nothing to call home about.  But at least it wasn't completely illogical and convoluted.  If I may put on my usability designer cap again, I think this game would have lent itself better to a simple two button play style.  There was really no need for talk/use/walk/look/inv and right clicking through all those always annoys me when there are no items in which two different verbs produce two different, useful actions.  But it was a nice, funny, short game.  Well done.

How Many?

Very clever!  I feel dumb that the meaning of the title never struck me until it was spelled out for me upon completion.  The first time I played it seemed just like a simple domestic-setting game and I couldn't understand what made it so great until I accidentally walked into the bear trap.  Walking around with just one leg without my character caring was so funny.  I replayed several times just to see how many ways I could kill myself.  I wish I could have continued walking around with my stumps.   I got electrocuted, de-legged, set on fire, and burned the house down.  Did I miss any?  Another nice one room by the king of the OROW!  Congrats, AJA!

Man Boy vs Doctor Sock

The graphics in this game were fantastic!  Very adorable.  The writing was also quite good.  I think that a game like this with some light platforming elements (see any of Bernie's platformers) would be fantastic.  As it stands, the gameplay is a bit of a letdown when it's set in such a gorgeous game.  As has been mentioned it's just following orders and requires little to no thinking.  Part of that is the small number of things you can interact with, and part is the extreme linearity of "I don't know, go ask X" "Here you go, take this to Y".  Again, with some light platforming elements and a bit more puzzle variety, this could be a real winner.  I would love to see you expand it a little bit.  Perhaps more islands beyond the one you start on.  More of a quest to find the book/molly.  Anything to see this little gem get the polish it deserves!  Great job Ben!

One Room One Week

Not really sure what I'm supposed to say...  Yay?

ONNA

Nice Hitchhiker reference.  The falling/scaling effect worked well.  But I'm not really sure what to do.  You just click on the whale at the appropriate altitude?  I managed to land on the whale and I managed to not land on the whale.  Neither resulted in anything interesting happening, I just got kicked back to the title screen.  Was that all there was?

Seed

Excellent presentation as always from Limping Fish!  Not a whole lot to say here.  Obviously there's not much gameplay.  I was interested enough in the story to want to continue.  Pity that's all there was.  I would have liked to see a puzzle or some kind of meaningful interaction.  Anyways, it looks purdy!

Think Outside the Boxland

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do.  Don't know the magic word or how to get behind the big red thing.  Interesting presentation and concept though.

Unfinished Business

I really liked the idea of ordering around the guys.  It was a little annoying, though, that sending one guy into the cabin results in nothing, but sending the dumb guy in gets you the crowbar.  So, essentially, you have to try everything twice.  The game might be better with just the main character and one side character, and making them cooperate is important for the puzzles.  Nice concept.  Pity it was so short, but obviously you were just held back by the time limit, and it came out really well.  Good job!  I'd like to see this idea expanded upon.

Wisp

Still playing... little stuck... asking in the hints and tips forum...

I've just updated the downloads to version 1.1.

If you've already finished the game, you probably don't care unless you're a collector.  If you're mid-play-through, only switch to this version if you don't mind starting over because the saves won't work, sorry!  If you've downloaded the game and haven't started yet, definitely download this new version. 

If you don't know which version you have, check the included .txt file.  Version 1.1 has a list of the changes.

There were only five bugs (four quite minor) found, and absolutely zero dead ends (Even though people kept insisting they had found one!  There aren't any!!!  )

I've fixed the five bugs in this new version.  The only bug worth mentioning is the formula for making the first chemical.  I'm putting an explanation here because it confused a lot of people but I'm putting it in spoilers to protect people who haven't played yet:

Spoiler

When making the acid, you're instructed to bring two units of purple to a boil.  In the code, it checks that you're boiling just purple and then sets a variable that allows you to move onto the next step (adding the yellow).  Unfortunately, when fixing a bug in RC1 during beta testing, I mucked up the part of that check that is supposed to check how much purple was in the beaker.  And since this had been thoroughly tested before, it didn't get proper testing after I made the change, so it slipped by us!

So, the people that were of the thinking that 2 red + 2 blue = 2 purple were able to successfully complete the acid, when they should have been left with brown.  This caused a lot of them to go on to the second chemical with the same mis-interpretation of the chemical recipes and be very confused when it didn't work!

As a side effect, having nothing in the beaker also worked, since it was just checking that there was nothing other than purple in there!  So boiling an empty beaker left you with purple in the beaker.

In version 1.1, the acid recipe (rightly) requires two parts purple and one part yellow.  Two parts purple is made by mixing one red with one blue, since 1+1=2.

I hope this clears up all confusion on this pretty major bug!

[close]

Hopefully the game is all clean now.  I've got to say, with all the wacky stuff going on in this game courtesy of Ivy's zany mind, this is the most complicated game I've ever programmed (17665 lines of code if you're counting!) and I'm pleased that so few bugs managed to slip past us!

Thanks for all the kind comments everyone!

Oy vey, piper!  You found a pretty big bug there!  :o

Spoiler

Heating the empty beaker is absolutely not supposed to result in a purple chemical!  ARG!  I wonder when that started happening, as it certainly didn't used to do that...

[close]

Thanks for spotting that.  Unfortunately, I'm about to hop on a plane and have no time to fix it!  I'll have to fix that bug when I get back next week.

I'm not really sure what's going on in this game.  I certainly don't see anything that makes it a new genre.  A new game mechanic, or unique type of puzzle, maybe, but that doesn't really make a whole genre.  Maybe I just didn't get far enough.  I couldn't even kill the dog thing.

Shooting missiles makes them fly down and slightly left no matter where I aim them.  This is due to the "Flux" I'm told. (If that's what makes it a new genre, then playing baseball in a stiff wind would be a new sport.  )  I can orient the arrow based on what area of the screen I click on.  However, I'm still not sure how I'm supposed to kill the dog thing.  It seems to me that I should stand above and slightly right of the creature and then fire an arrow with it oriented down or down-left as it would look if I actually were shooting an arrow at the thing.  However, the arrow just passes through the dog and it continues following me.  Perhaps there's a part to this challenge that I'm not getting.  You disabled my speech command, so I can no longer talk to the trainer guy, and the guy in the cottage at the crossroads offers no real help.  Perhaps whatever it is that I'm not understanding is the same thing that makes this some exciting new genre.

Also, I think the inteface and controls could use some work.  Actually, there's a general lack of polish all over, including broken walkbehinds, no way to walk back into an open door that you've just walked out of, useless dialog options that don't disappear, weird mishmashes of sprites, and a walkcycle that appears to be playing backwards.  Default GUI graphics.  And slapdash paint backgrounds.  I don't mean to sound harsh, I know you're not demanding money for this, I was just curious as to why you think this game warrants me sliding you a donation.

Strict gun control apparently works here in Japan.  All guns are banned with very few exceptions.  Even if you manage to get through the lengthy certification required to own a hunting rifle (the only type of firearm possible to legally obtain in Japan) you cannot hand it to someone else, even to hold.  Holding a gun is illegal.

Every year, there are just a tiny number of violent gun crimes in the whole country, and these are almost always organized crime gangs committing violence against other organized crime gangs.

Heck, even swords are illegal here.

Just a few weeks ago, a young adult decided to run his truck through a crowd of people, and then hop out and begin stabbing everyone he could reach with a very long (pushing the legal limit) knife before he was subdued.  He managed to kill seven people.  (The media of course blamed this on video games.)  Afterwords, politicians were talking about making these knifes illegal across the country.

Strict, yes, but it certainly seems to be working.  (Of course it begs the question if the strict laws are to blame for the low violence rate or if it's some other cultural factor, or both.)  These kinds of regulation would certainly not work in America, since you'd have to get all the guns out first, which would never happen.  Japan is, however, able to stop the trafficking of weapons for the most part.  One of the advantages of being a relatively small island nation, I reckon.

This game is extremely hard!

I also get really frustrated at getting killed right at the end of the bridge, when the fireballs spawn and I have zero time to react.  I think that if the fireballs came from in front of the castle on the left side, it would me much more fair, since I would have time to plan for the ending.  It would also make more sense, since it looks like the fireballs would hit me whether or not I'm standing behind the castle entrance.

I haven't managed to get more than 5 rooms or so in.  I need more patience.  How many rooms are there.

Found 2 bugs:

1) I can duck and press left and slide across the room while ducking.  Is this intended?
2) I once managed to fall through the bridge in the opening intro room (up the hill, past the sign, pressed duck and down I went...)

Really impressive game, though!  Excellent job with the scripting!

What he's referring to, ProgZ, is the Supreme Court's recent decision that the ban of handguns that has been in place in Washington DC for some time is to be declared unconstitutional and struck down.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hI_391ceS32bZUKVLu39ejwty3Ew

Better add hide tags to that last post, just to make sure! 

Spoiler

The two different views having the hands at different positions isn't exactly a bug, I think Ivy just wanted to avoid the player from seeing them and guessing the combo before gaining access to the upper shelf.  However, you're right, it's a bit clumsy at best, and a bit confusing at worst.  Perhaps there should have just been some shine on the glass preventing you from seeing the hands on the zoomed out view.

As for the combo, you don't have to try out all the combinations of the three numbers.  There's something out there that tells you the proper order.  I hinted at it before: check out the computer's desktop wallpaper!

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There were a couple of bugs where the bots walked on areas that weren't walkable areas, but it was a minor thing in an otherwise fantastic little game!

Yeah, there are a few ways to make the bots walk through the items in the room, but this is due to it being really difficult in AGS to make movable objects make realistic holes in the walkable areas.  You should see the ridiculous amount of code it took to make it work as well as it does!

I see.  The only reason I suggested was because musicOnLoad is the simplest way to control music in a game, and while I rarely use it, I decided to do so in Nanobots, only to run into the reason I don't use it.  When I wanted to make the opening cutscene or any other multi-room cutscene play with the same music throughout, I didn't know of some way to make the game ignore the musicOnLoad setting just for that room.  So, I reverted to the old way of playing the music in the room's onLoad function instead.  But that way has some drawbacks too, like I had previously programmed the pause GUI to play some music when you opened it and go back to the musicOnLoad music after closing it.  Instead, I had to change it to remember the music it had been playing before you opened it.

Being able to change the MusicOnLoad setting would have made that much easier.  Not a big deal, just wanted to throw that out there.

Piper:

Spoiler

Unless there's a bug in the game that I didn't know about, you got the code to the computer right by entering the correct combo from the clock (see the computer's wallpaper for more of a hint on that!).  When you did so, instead of flashing "Incorrect password" it flashed "Loading Chem Drop" and then filled the test tubes along the back wall with red, blue, and yellow chemicals.

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Now, if I may be a little bossy, let's take the hints and tips conversation to the hints and tips board and leave this one for feedback!  Thanks!   

I just had a moment in code where it would have been nice to be able to change the musicOnLoad value, but it's readonly and so I had to do a little work around.  Not difficult, but would me convenient.  Unless there's a way to do this that I'm overlooking.

Spoiler

Ooh, making the 100 all the wives of congressmen, or prominent black women would make the point a lot more impressive!

"Either Hungerton & Brown knew very well what Jason's special ability was but decided to use him to convince their superiors, or their blind obsession made them disregard that obvious fast and they decided to believe what they wanted to believe."

Ooh, good point.  I never even considered for a second that Hungerton had superiors.  I don't think there was any reason to suspect that hinted at in the game.  However, such a notion would have been a great explanation for the necessity of Jason.  Their blind obsession is also an acceptable answer (and the one I had been believing.)

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Snarky:

Spoiler

In defense of the game, the dichotomy between the seemingly silly super powers and the serious idea of racism or racial genocide don't seem so dichotomous in the game because the special abilities and the town itself are all framed in a very somber, serious mood.  There's a dark vibe from the beginning of the game that helps these two things blend that you can't really get from reading spoilers out of context. 

When playing the game, I didn't feel that the fantastic and the serious contrasted deeply with each other because of how realistically the special abilities were treated.  It's not like X-Men where there are people flying and shooting knives out of their hands while quipping one-liners all over the place.

This isn't to say that the plot doesn't have its issues, just that the flaws are greatly magnified by reading this thread without the context of having played the game.  I do agree with much of what you've said.

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