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Holy cow!  Congratulations Dave!

And as someone who has recently completed the months of paperwork and paid the $1000 dollars during multiple trips to the local US consulate for the privilege of importing his foreigner wife, my condolences.

Perhaps I should have linked here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=30454.0

You can still download my parody of it, and imagine what the original was like.

Spoiler

Regarding the twist:  there is one quite powerful and effective moment that really worked for me.  When Jason is standing in the black and white dream and realizes that the numbers he's picking coincide with all the women who are black.  That sent a chill down my spine and instantly made me realize where the plot was going.

After that, however, and I've expressed this to Alkis in email, the writing and plot becomes completely overwrought.  First there's the line "They're all a bunch of neo-nazis!" which was slightly silly to begin with, since it was already clear ten minutes previously that we were dealing with a master-race evil plot, but made quite comical by the musical punctuation, which suggested a lot more grandiosity than the line managed to deliver.

Then, in the final cutscene, the lengthy mustache twirling exposition of the bad guy, spilling the beans on the entire plan is, as you have said, quite underwhelming and entirely overwritten.  I can't help but think that the small scale of the plot (only 100 infertile women?) stems from the author living in Greece, where 100 infertile black women would be a much larger representative percentile of the population.  (Heck, there were at least 500 black girls in my high school.)  Bumping that number up several orders of ten and eliminating the whole threatening the rest to leave the country thing would have been a lot more evil and interesting.  As it stands, you're right, other than the paranormal way in which they were going about it, their "evil" plan wouldn't even have made the evening news.

After reading the notes at the end about Alkis' research into racist groups, my thoughts on the ending softened a bit.   I could imagine that the completely ridiculous final speech made by Hungerton would be of the same kind of coherency and self-importance as you might read on a message board of that kind of community.  Still, I wouldn't expect Hungerton to be able to organize what he did without having the intelligence to see through his own crappy logic.

I didn't mind the fairly useless role that Jason was playing in the whole plot.  I thought it was interesting that the bad guys were using him to justify the whole thing.  He was choosing the right choice, and the right choice coincided with their beliefs, therefore their beliefs were right.  This is the same kind of circular logic that religions use to justify horrible acts, so I thought it worked well in that way.  The only stumble here was that somehow Hungerton, who seemed to understand Jason more than Jason, didn't know that Jason didn't choose the "right" choice but instead the choice that others wanted him to choose.  How did Jason know that, but the people studying him (and telling him what was going on) didn't?

And the deadly kiss with Sydelle, I believe, was purposefully a Romeo and Juliet reference, with the one twist that Jason said he "chose" a kiss.  I think that this was to mean that he was using his power, and therefore the choice he made was what Sydelle wanted.  She wanted to die for her actions.  Which I think was kind of neat if a little cheesy.

What I took away from the games ending, and what sticks in my mind the strongest, (I finished the game shortly after it came out, so some of it is foggy) is that scene in Sydelle's dream, which I still thought was quite well done.  If the rest of the ending had lived up to that moment (subtly shocking, rather than exposition exposition exposition) it would have been a fantastic ending.  As it stands, it still worked for me as the conclusion to an intriguing storyline that did keep me playing (and often utilizing a walkthrough) to find out what was going on in that twisted little town.

Regardless of how well the ending worked, I'm quite happy that Alkis tried to take on some taboo-ish subject matter (not that "racism=bad" is a particularly controversial standpoint) in a different way.

Perhaps if the ending weren't so hyped up, even before the release of the game, (Alkis' letter included with the game and it's warning about the amazing ending made it into every review that I read prior to playing) it would have satisfied more.

[close]

Well said, hof.  Specifically that eloquent last sentence.   

But yeah, what hof said.  Rather than being a hindrance, Being low/no budget can be a boon to innovation and unique (and important) storytelling.  And I'm all for stories that deal with issues that the mainstream developers would shy away from.

That said, there's sometimes a fine line (and sometimes a huge difference) between dealing with a difficult issue and being an asshole.  So let's be careful.

I think I found two unmarked games with broken links: Anna and Spooks.

Both games (along with Linus Bruckman, Heartland Deluxe, and La Croix Pan) are hosted on my site, which is working for me.  If the direct download doesn't work, try clicking "go to site" and then download from the link on my site using "right click, save as."

EDIT: Actually, yeah, something weird is going on with the .rar downloads when using the link from bigbluecup.  Going to my site and manually downloading still works though.  I try to see why this is happening.

[Beat]

Or the 1-step shortcut:

Beat wife until she shuts up

* Vince Twelve takes notes

Ha.  This was a fun diversion from my busy schedule.  I love the production design.  Typography, yay!

Lazily copied from the blog, an update!



I’d like to formally welcome the newest member of the Resonance team, Marina “MashPotato” Siu-Chong, who is going to be creating some close up portraits for use during some cutscenes and also for promotional purposes!

And to make up for the long period between updates, here’s a work-in-progress of Ed who has just seen something surprising. Perhaps a leprechaun!

The ink thing pisses me off too.  It used to be that you could refill a standard ink cartridge with your own ink and save tons of money.  But now, they all come with computer chips that record how many times you use them and then automatically shut off.  It's complete bullshit, too, because they usually have more ink inside the cartridge but there's no way to get at it because the company decided that you've used it enough and should have to buy a new one.

Printer companies are a special kind of evil.

I mean, ink itself is rather cheap, we're not talking liquid gold or perfume here

Amen.  Yet you'd think you were based on the prices:

• Lipton Ice Tea                $       9.52 per gallon
• Ocean Spray                  $     10.00 per gallon
• Gatorade                       $     10.17 per gallon
• Diet Snapple                  $     10.32 per gallon
• Evian water                    $     21.19 per gallon
• Brake Fluid                     $     33.60 per gallon
• Scope Mouthwash         $     84.48 per gallon
• Pepto Bismol                  $   123.20 per gallon
• Vick’s Nyquil                   $   178.13 per gallon
• HP Printer Ink                $5,200.00 per gallon

[a lot]

This guy is remarkable.  Howard Sherman's swollen sense of self-importance and his complete disdain for anyone who doesn't share in his love for Howard Sherman is just sad.

I read the Four Fat Chicks forum thread that set off his diatribe.  It was hardly made up of bile and lies.  There were a few jeers and jibes, a few unnecessary remarks about his personal looks and his, well... remarkably odd blog, but nothing that called for such an explosion of hatred.  It certainly didn't call for sexist and homophobic slurs or personal attacks on the site's owners, who are great lovers of the genre.  It was just two pages of comments mostly about how anger isn't the best way to market a convention.

When marketing, instead of coming in with his "I run the best damned adventure game company in the world" attitude and spending a significant proportion of the con's site spewing bile about all those other people who stopped the last attempt, might it be better to put yourself, the organizer, in the background along with the organization process, and put the actual event in the foreground?

Just for fun, I checked the website of Dragon Con, a comic/game/art convention that Howard mentioned on his blog about wanting to exhibit at.  No where except on the "contact us" page can I find anything about the people organizing the thing.  In fact, the only convention that I can think of where the organizers keep themselves in the forefront is PAX, which is understandable since that whole Con is based the guys who make Penny Arcade and their fans.

Maybe some people read just a bit and go, wow, this guy is important and trustworthy because he says so and then go ahead and book tickets to New Jersey, but I'd really suspect that a lot of potential attendees have been so turned off by what they can quickly surmise about his character from reading anything he writes that it cripples any attempt at organizing an event with significant attendance.

How about "Hi, I'm Howard, a lover of the Adventure games and head of a small, but dedicated text-adventure company, and I want to give something back to the adventure community."?  Doesn't that work?  It does for me.

And since his visible anger in the organization of two conventions hasn't so far gotten either of them off the ground, I'd say that it may be ok to admit his own mistakes rather than blame the fans who didn't sign up for his convention.

So, if he were to quit sticking his head out from behind the curtain, and quit referring to himself in the self-important third-person, and stop bitching and blaming about why the thing failed the first time around, the whole thing suddenly looks a lot more legit and less dubious.  Just say, "Ok, it didn't work out last time, but I've learned a few things and hope to correct my mistakes from the first go around."  It sounds a lot better than "I'm doing the same damn thing again, so you bastards better not screw it up again!"

Finally, spend a little money on a web designer.  A little professional appearance goes a long ways.  I offer low rates!

Also, as noted by several people in this thread and many others that I've seen around the net (though possibly only in the 'bad neighborhoods'), yes, we'd be perfectly happy to meet some of our favorite adventure icons and then roll over to the nearest McDonalds for a bite before going to bed at the nearby Holiday Inn.  Even if I was interested in the con, $600 dollars per night is a deal breaker for me.  Not because I don't have a job and can't afford it which somehow makes me the bastard who did your second attempt in, but thank you very much for insulting me ass hole, but because the amount of money I would have to spend would far outweigh the experience that you are selling me.  And again, perhaps spending more time on your website promoting the actual event and telling me about all the fun things I would be doing there rather than talking about yourself and insulting potential customers might help to remedy that.

Finally, I think Howard needs to read some of his own advice:

If you insist on the perverted activity of attacking successful people then at least have the decency of doing so with some small degree of class or style.

The Four Fat Chicks run a successful and popular website and community.  They are excellent ambassadors of the genre and should be treated with all the respect overweight poultry deserves. 

And just in case Howard finds this little rant, my name is Vince "Twelve" Wesselmann and I run an insignificant but dedicated game company and I love the adventure genre.  So there.  Now you can't call me an anonymous coward.

I would like a way to draw/erase walkable areas in code.  For example, to make a game out of tile-based rooms where characters can walk freely on some tiles but not others.  With only 16 walkable areas this gets tricky and even more tricky if you want the tiles to be able to be moved via a built in level editor, such as to make it look 3d by adding height to some tiles.

Something like, say, this, I could code to display via drawing commands and with a lot of finesse, could make a level editor to build such levels.  However, editing the walkable areas on the fly?  Not currently possible as far as I know.

If there were rawDraw-ish commands for walkable areas, some cool things could be done.  For the above game idea, I'd probably make the whole screen a walkable area and then block out certain areas on the fly to shape the walkable surfaces.

Family



Leering



Chicken Pox!

My original question was along the lines of weather or not something like this possible with AGS.  And the answer seems to be yes.  But, you let me figure out how to implement this because that's where the fun in game design lies.

You nailed it on the head there!  This is definitely possible, but it will be quite tricky to implement!  I'd recommend approaching it by making a data structure that that contains the necessary data for each rooms' layout/objects/exits/position in the maze/etc.  An initialization function could randomize the rooms, filling in the data for each room's objects and walkable areas and whatever, and the tricky part: making sure that there is a way through the maze.  Then, you could either have the room build itself based on this struct when you first enter each room, or you could have the entire game take place within one AGS "room" just moving everything around each time the player changes in-game rooms.  The second way is how I made that alpha.  (which I won't be continuing in the foreseeable future, sorry!)  Each time you go through an exit, it just rearranges the current room and moves the player to the opposite side, so it looks like he's entering a new room.

Either way will be tricky but fun!

Yeah, you really do need to be more specific about what you want to do.

If all the rooms are fairly consistent and similar, you could easily shift around objects/exits/walkable areas to pre-set possible locations.

I made a quite complicated random room game where each room was a randomized board of tiles and the doors connecting the rooms would be randomized as would the enemies within.  I could specify rooms, to make them exactly as I wanted them, or just leave them to the game to randomize.

This alpha of the game demonstrates just six rooms, but each time you play they'll be different.  To clarify, the rooms aren't complicated, but the scripting sure was.

So, yes, you can make randomized rooms depending on what you're trying to do with them.

I was going to wait until all the four stories were ready for reading, but I broke down and read the two that have been shown here so far.

My intentions in writing the first bit were to just provide a setting that could easily be turned into satire, and I thought that a celebrity gossip magazine would be perfect.  I thought it was interesting that neither of the branches released so far really touched on how ridiculous celeb gossip is.  One devolved into random violence and one ignored my setting and went in a different direction right away.  Regardless of my intentions, however, both branches turned out to be pleasant, if a bit cacophonous, reads.  Here were my thoughts on the first two branches:



Branch A-1:  The part with Jigger and Ollie was brilliant.  Hats off to the writers of that part!  Too bad we only heard mention of those characters later. 

I loved the idea of having different chapters with the rhyming titles!  That's the way to change first-person narrators.  Each one was fairly clear about the character it switched to.

The ending was quite nice, even though the story got a bit muddled in all the mayhem, but it was a fun muddled anyways.  I liked the big reveal at the end.

And I thought it was (unintentionally) hilarious that somehow the name of the magazine became "Employees of Undressed" because someone misread a line in my first bit!  I was saying that the employees of the magazine "Undressed" ran to the windows.  But whatever, it was funny! 



Branch B-2:  It's amazing how different the two stories turned out.  There were some great one-liners in this bit.  "himself or Himself" ha!

The focus on the funeral was a good idea, and I liked the two professional mourners. 

Liz?  Freudian slip?  And Chris!  His name was Chris!  I couldn't think of a good name so I just gave him an initial.  Glad someone filled in that blank.  Also, I'm glad someone followed up on the romance set up that I slipped into the start!



Well done to everyone, except for the people who delayed the hell out of this thing!  Can we see the other two now?  Please?

I'm still jonesin' for a sound and music overhaul.

-At least two music channels.
-Playing music or sound returns the channel the sound is being played on.
-Ability to change the volume of each channel individually from 0 (silent! which we can't currently do with music!) to whatever the max volume is (100 or 255).
-Ability to get the volume and current music/sound number playing on each channel.
-Ability to get the current millisecond of the track playing on each channel and the remaining number of milliseconds, if possible.
-Ability to start playing a track at a certain millisecond without a loud hiccup (if possible)

Aside from the track volume, the volume modifiers need to be fixed.
-Room sound/music volume (from 0 to 100).  This plays all channels at x percent of the channel volume.  So a room volume of 0 would make all channels silent, and a room volume of 100 would play them all normally.  Only affects channel volume when player is in this room.  (it could go over 100 too, i suppose)
-Global sound/music volume (from 0 to 100).  Same as room volume, but for the whole game.  This would likely only be set by a slider in the game's options, for example.

* Vince Twelve Cleans up LGM's remains and then explodes

Previous chain story: 22 people - 19 days
This go: Four teams with at most 11 people from the start to each ending: 24 days and counting

I just recently caught this and my experience can be summed up like this:

Hud: Oh my god!
*Pan to the monster.  Show the monster out of focus for .3 seconds.  Pan away to something mundane like rubble or feet or the back of a girl's head.*
Hud: Did you guys see that?!
Me: No, I didn't you asshole.
*Repeat as necessary*

Actually, I thought it was kind of a novel idea with some nice execution and some stuff that was just too unbelievable in the "no way he kept filming during that, this is so hokey" kind of way.  A fun ride to be sure, though. 

I quite liked that it didn't even attempt to offer an explanation of anything during the whole shebang.  If a scientist had stepped into the frame suddenly and said something about nuclear waste being dumped down the deepest ocean trench and the resulting seismic activity, that "unbelievable-hokey" meter would have gone right off the scale.

Happy Bink day!