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Final week of dev time is underway. I already know I'll have to scale back some ideas I'd wanted to do, and some art assets won't be of the kind of quality I'd like, but I'm fairly certain my game will be in a playable and completable state by wednesday evening, leaving me a couple days of time left to do final polish, tinkering with sound effects and music and such.

Crunch time has been booked for the weekend so I can push hard on finalizing the game for release.

So far the feedback from friends has been very positive, at least in the sense that my game does seem to capture the atmosphere, look and feel of being a certain kind of Finnish very well. What kind of an experience will that be for non-finnish players? I've honestly no idea, but I look forward to hearing what people think!

EDIT: Why didn't anyone tell me that if I make my game bilingual I have to write everything twice!? HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW IT'D BE THIS MUCH WORK!
But all in all I'm getting quite close to the game being in a beatable state now. A bit behind schedule, but not too badly. Things are starting to click into place here.

MAGS game status update. 3 room backgrounds are pretty much finished, 4 more are required. Talking animations are added in and I have scripted the players interactions with the doors. There are three functional doors in the game so far and they take 300+ lines of code to operate! I may have been consumed by madness in my effort to create functionality to simulate how difficult it can be to operate something as simple as a door when massively hungover. There's the locking and unlocking, remembering to turn the handle, pushing or pulling in the right way... It might be easier to just get Tauno buzzed again so it all doesn't seem so complicated.

I also have all the room navigation done and all the sound effects already in place, so those rooms can now be fully explored. The rest of the room transitions in the game will be simpler interactions.

Despite my effort of minimizing animations by omitting the up and down walkcycles, I'll have to go and do those anyway since I decided to add stairs the player uses in those directions for a mini-puzzle about avoiding the neighbors in the stairwell so the pensioner living downstairs doesn't shout at you for being too loud at night. Tauno can't really handle that kind of interaction in his current state.

EDIT: another sneak peek image with a more final verb UI and a test inventory item


EDIT 2: another sneak peek to prove

Spoiler

(to whom? myself mostly...)

[close]

I'm still making progress. Don't want to do new posts on a chain.

I'm having fun toying with the dithering tool in Aseprite, but the lack of a noise generation tool for texturing large surfaces is a major issue that forces me to use a secondary software to finalize some of my backgrounds.

Thank you, folks! Immensely informative and useful!

[is there an easy way to detect if a character.say command has finished]

Since I failed to find this in the manual and in the search: is there an easy way to detect if a character.say command has finished and the text dispalyed over the characters head has disappeared?
I am using the Lucasarts style speech and haven't found out any GUI element that the character.say text is bound to so I could check its text value or visibility, so I'm guessing its tucked away somewhere inaccessible.

What I'm trying to accomplish here is a simple subtitle system where a text label is assigned a bit of text whenever the say command triggers, which works fine, but trying to figure out when to clear the subtitle text (whether because the player skipped the dialogue or the timer ran out) so it doesn't linger on screen for longer than the standard speech text is what I'm failing to accomplish here. My initial idea was a simple repeatedly executed script that checks if any speech command is ongoing, and if not, clear the subtitle text away.

The minute I post the question I figure it out! The say command is blocking so I can just clear the label in the next line of code and not overthink things so much! IT WAS OBVIOUS!

Still, a bonus question: how does AGS calculate the time the .say command text stays up if no voice line is attached? I'm guessing its X milliseconds/frames per character, but didn't find this in the manual either. Just a vague "The text will remain on screen for a limited time".

You mean finnish in time

Exactly that!

Here's what I have after 1 evening of work:
- Tauno, our protagonist, has 2 walkcycles and 2 standing frames done.
- First half of Tauno's home has had its first pass done. Still needs posters, trash, grime and detail to make it feel authentic.
- Script outline is written, story is set and I have my list of tasks to complete for the game (7-8 backgrounds in total, couple GUI's, 2 minor cutscenes with unique art)

Challenges I've set for myself this MAGS:
- First time using a verb-based UI
- Bilingual game (all dialogue and most text is on screen in both Finnish and English at same time)



EDIT: Oh yeah, the tentative name of the game is "Tuulipuku-Tauno ja Darrakahvi" (English translation, while changing the name in order to retain the Leisure suit Larry inspired alliteration, could be something like "Windbreaker Willy and the Hangover Coffee"). I have a few ideas for this character, as he has existed as a sort of in-joke in my friend group for years and years now, so I might reuse these assets for other games in the future, assuming this one is ever finished of course.

Okay, I have a game concept themed around alcoholism, depression and caffeine that is inspired by Leisure Suit Larry. If this isn't going to be the most thematically Finnish game ever I don't know what will!
Now to see if I can execute in time!

Damn, Finland has been mentioned (torilla tavataan!) so I guess I have to start drafting something here...

I've been toying with a bunch of ideas, but haven't actually gotten beyond that ideas stage.  My brain keeps going to some dark places with this theme and I don't like those right now.

['The Year of MAGS' by OneDollar]

A new month, a new batch of games! As always, play the games yourself if able, but if you just can't find the time before the vote, check out the videos and consider voting anyway!
I messed up during the stream and so the latter third of The Expedition is missing visuals. My bad!

'The Year of MAGS' by OneDollar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji8xOL-obfc

'The Expedition' by Soulstuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMtQ9UQD5ZY

'The Twilight Zone - The Lost Episode' by Repi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7I1OPv7Pi4

[incredibly unqualified]

A new month, a new batch of games! As always, play the games yourself if able, but if you just can't find the time, check out the videos and consider voting.
A fair warning to viewers, these are games on topics I am incredibly unqualified to comment on and also the chat in my livestream is not the best behaved. Also I recorded these while having some sort of flu-like disease so I sound and look marginally more awful than usual.

Burn Down the Closet: A Game About Being Agender (by Rootbound)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8scY9PsD5l4

Let's Talk About Anal Sex (by Mandle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIWETY_Hb-Q

Weaving Time (by Soulstuff)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szDA-32a7Xc

[Limblob (by Soulstuff)]

Behold, WHAM's Regular Monthly MAGS Videos (WRMMAGSV)! As always, play the games yourself if able, but if you just can't find the time, check out the videos and consider voting.

Limblob (by Soulstuff)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLehNMEmN8k

Finding Balzac (by pell)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF8aYnVGMzw

MAGSMan by (Kara Jo Kalinowski)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWYNCPwOM3M

Alpha Beta Gamer on Youtube has covered the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXEoD3ZR7-U

Neat!

Yeah, I'm out for this month. Too volatile and too prone to upsetting someone with something, no matter what I'd do, as seen above already.

[playing the games yourself is always going to be the better option!]

Glad to see my videos finding a potential use! I'm hoping to cover all of the entries of 2025 so you'll have a full set next year.

In case someone is confused by the context of my videos: I stream MAGS games on Twitch, mostly for my own entertainment. During those streams I get to both react to the games as I experience them and try to provide commentary on them from the point of view of both a player and a hobbyist developer. I try to point out interesting or odd designs, features and quirks and occasionally think out loud on how something might be improved or altered in a way I personally think might be better.

The videos I make are not trying to be objective reviews, nor are they always complete playthroughs, so as I always try to say when linking to them and as Stupot says above: playing the games yourself is always going to be the better option! You get to experience the game yourself, react to it yourself and form your own opinions of it without a hairy Finnish man talking over it!

Hmm, there are some very good arguments being put forward on what to vote by. Tough call, tough call...

[Artifact]

Here we go again! I played all four games, even managed to beat one of them within my self-imposed one hour time limit, and now you can find the videos of my attempts below. While I'll always recommend you play the games yourself, if you just can't find the time then this might be an option for you:

Artifact
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCGtbyj0rJ4

Bière Américaine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BXCzkagPP0

One Million Years Dungeon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjTvmo2pnhI

Skrexeval's Quest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW01BZC-X9Q


All in all I found it funny that 'breaking the rules' was mostly interpreted here as just going back to how games used to be back in the olden days, before design evolved to be more kind, gentle and accommodating towards the player. In many ways these games were a fun romp back to the good old days for me and I struggled to really find many ways in which any real design rules might have been broken! If anything, these games could all have been much more mean and creative with how they violate the player's expectations. Because of this I'm kind of struggling to decide how to vote on these. Do I vote for the game I feel is genuinely the best designed entry, or the one that breaks the most rules of game design? Hmmmm...

I'm planning to do my usual MAGS Twitch stream this Thursday at around 17:00 UTC, playing all the games released to see if I can beat them. So if you'd like to come see me fumble my way through your contest entry live, feel free to join up! Videos of each game will be put up on Youtube as well and linked here later.

https://www.twitch.tv/whamtheman

You can't see it, but I'm doing a little happy dance to celebrate!

I did try to stream both of the other contestants to make my usual videos of them, but couldn't make up enough material of them to warrant proper videos this time. Mazzled seems like an interesting concept, but with just the one level there wasn't much to show. I think I see the concept of Mystery Mansion Mayhem, but when I tried it out I mostly encountered non-functioning interactions and placeholders, and without direction on what to even try to do, I got a bit stumped. From what I can tell the concept is a randomly generated murder mystery game that can provide replayability and variation, which is a really interesting concept, but in its current state there just wasn't enough to show off.


Now, a brief look back on my own project:

As I always do, I set myself some challenges for this project. The first one was to push myself to draw more unique characters and walkcycles, though in the end I had to cut all non-player walkcycles for time. Another challenge was trying to see how many variations of a single relatively simple room I could pull off, using the same base image as the background and just overlaying assets on top of it, with the goal being five distinct variations. The fifth iteration ended up almost totally being cut away for time, turning into a brief cutscene rather than a properly interactable scene. Originally the final scene was intended to be a way to reflect on all the past scenes and see how they influenced one another.

Finally, I also took up learning a new graphics tool, Asperite, to replace the aging Paint Shop Pro I've been using, since PSP suffers of massive issues on modern systems and regularly crashes. While I still can't quite replicate all of my past workflows in Aseprite (especially gradients are tricky to work with, and it lacks the tool for creating feathered selections, which I use extensively to create light and shadow effects quickly), I think I'll try to adapt to it in the future and see what I can do. I think its built-in animation editor can be really powerful if properly adopted into the workflow, but in this project I didn't really use it, since I'm used to drawing my animations on a grid-style spritesheet and eyeballing things from there.

So, a lot to learn and a lot of time pressure!

All in all I'm really satisfied with the end result, especially since I had other commitments to deal with and could effectively only work on the game for just over one week of the full month.

This is such a cool idea, and it's very well implemented, too. Recommended play.

Thank you, much appreciated!

It's great to see people have found the game fun enough to try multiple times, even though there might not actually be all that much to replay. I think I may have accidentally created the illusion of far more extensive selection of story paths when in fact there is only really one major one.

Spoiler

I replayed to try to get the girl, and save the brother like 4 times and gave up.. I couldn't get either of those   (gave back the flask, tried to not give her the blanket, skip some dialogs...  Now I'm just feeling like I'm playing this like a Larry game.)

[close]

Reply:

Spoiler

Can't save the brother, unfortunately, so I'm sorry you wasted time on that one. You can get the girl, though, but it might be tricky. All I can really say is: try and be nice, but don't push things too hard.

[close]

Spoiler

The candle light effect was very cool too, I kept trying to see where it looped, but I couldnt...  cheers!

[close]

The magic trick is: it doesn't loop!

Place of Importance by WHAM!

Spoiler

Is there a way to get the girl? I had her throw up and go to sleep.

[close]

Spoiler

Yes there is, but you may have to suppress your adventure game instinct a little bit. And yeah, I can see how the timers might be annoying if playing the game over several times. I designed the game as a single playthrough experience, where the first time through is each players 'true' path, since I personally don't like to re-play games after finishing them. Hubris on my part, I know, but I also just really like the idea that some things happen over time, naturally, and are not completely bound to the players actions.

[close]