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Response at first glance: Forty-six-thousand!? WHAT!?

I'll need to read through this when I have more time, I like the pretty pictures a lot, but FORTY-SIX-THOUSAND!?

Hells bells, that's a lot of money...

EDIT: Read some more, amount of money makes a little more sense after that, but it's still a lot. I might chip in later this week, though, once I've read all of the stuff.

I'll be there!

[Big Blue World Domination!]

Am I late to the party?

Allow me to present to you: Big Blue World Domination!
[Running for: Best Non-Adventure, Best Music, Best Marshmallows, Best Everything]

In this short MAGS game you take on the role of an evil genius, hell-bent on conquering the world using espionage, assassinations and other underhanded tactics, while constructing a base, hiring secret agents, scientists, technicians and security guards and, of course, watching a marshamallow dance in the map room. Oh, and don't forget to repay your loan to the World Bank of Evilhood, or else...

The game features a high-quality soundtrack by Guney Ozsan, additional artwork by Ghost and the rest of it by me (with the support of some great playtesters!).

Click image to download:

Ah, another one of those "damned if you do, damned if you dont" -situations.

If you make a long game, some players will get bored halfway through the game and quit, especially if they come across one or more puzzles they cannot solve on their own (this may or may not be affected by puzzle and story design).

If you make a short game, and you make it a good one, a lot of people will be sad that it ended too soon and will want more. But then again, if this happens, what's keeping you from making a sequel? Prequel? NOTHING! Thus I would say a short game is a better solution of the two, as it also requires less effort from you as a developer.

Then again, I wouldn't really bother planning the length of the game beforehand, as it is one of those things that will take shape as the game takes shape. I always feel my games are too short to be taken seriously, but whenever I see someone else play them, the playtime easily doubles. This is simply an illusion I think we all have as we examine our own games, as we know how they work and thus underestimate the time consumed by gameplay.

Hells! Awesome! Too! Stunned! For! Anything! But! One! Word! Sentences!

Everything's possible, Ponch, but with a new game starting developement yesterday and four major projects (He Watches, LaSol 2, Infection 2 and one unrevealed project) on the backburner I'm not sure what to do with this. Afrika korps was designed to be pretty open-ended. There was going to be an antagonist, but I did not know what that antagonist might be. Mummies, aliens, allied agents and desert raiders were all possible and their appearance would have depended on the player input received throughout the game, in a way, the game would have reacted to player input in a more complex way. In a proper AGS game I would have to shape the story more actively and set more rules and limitations on how the game can proceed, and so far I've found that pretty difficult.

I have always wanted to make a game sort of like this, one in which the player gets to play through some sort of world war 2 -related event from the point of view of a german soldier, as that is a point of view that, to my knowledge, has never been properly explored in videogames, let alone adventure games (I have no mouth and I must scream is the closest counterpart, I think, and even there the experience was depicted as mental torture).

I feel pretty guilty, and I had huge plans for this, but huge plans have usually been a sure sign of doom for me, so perhaps a small project might bring more success. Besides, February MAGS is fast approaching and I aim to make it three for three this yer!

[> Take Helga the stove, steal the kubelwagen and drive off into the deser, into freedom and love]

Oh all right, but just because you guys are so awesome!

> Take Helga the stove, steal the kubelwagen and drive off into the deser, into freedom and love

Helga joins you glagly, and the two of you escape your former lives and head off to fulfill your dreams.

Well, it's time to stop ignoring the AGS forums, but the method of it might not please everyone.
I've been delaying my projects and starting new ones and now I finally have to accept that I am trying to do too many things at once and some projects need to die in order to retain my sanity.

Yes, as you might have guessed, that means no more Africa Korps. Or youtube videos, probably. And my miniatures will go on hold for a while.

But hey, it's not all doom and gloom for me, a new game project has been started to get me working with AGS again, and this one will be a short one to warm up for more active work in developing He Watches! Look forward to a GiP thread in a few weeks if all goes well, if not, then a bit later than that.

Lock me up, scotty!

The event's over, and sadly so. I had a ton of fun talking to people both in the event and after it, also had the first proper indian food in my life, so that has to count for something!
To top it all off, seeing all these people, talks, panels and more really got me motivated to get back to work on my games and get back to being active on the forums. Maybe participating in a MAGS or OROW or something like that might be the right way to get started again.

Next year I might have to choose between attending mittens or AX due to budget conserns, but with a little bit of luck I'll be able to visit both and meet that many more people. We'll see.

PS: Taleweaver, I missed your presentation and felt a bit bad about it. Then I heard it was naughty and now I feel doubly bad!

PPS: Actually, is OROW still running? Or has it died out? If its the latter, can we revive it?

Im HERE!

Forgot my "Ask me about He Watches" pin at home, but if you are here and want to chat or see what Ive been doing, find a fat man in green camo pants!
Also, I have no idea how there english keyboards work!!!

Sorry guys, been preparing for my UK trip to AdventureX, and am leaving for London tomorrow morning, only to return on the 17th, so no updates.
After that I promise to stop ignoring the AGS forums again, I swears!

-WHAM

Love, at last! Nice one!

[> Take whatever food will fit in our ruck and go to the depot area]

> Take whatever food will fit in our ruck and go to the depot area

You snatch a few tins of food and stuff them to your overstrained rucksack, which is now barely able to hold it's contents.
Carrying the rucksack is now uncomfortable and straining.




You head out of the tent and walk EAST to the vehicle depot.
Well, it's not much of a depot with only the kubelwagen present, the rest of the designated vehicle depot is just so much more sand.

[> Really get everything strapped to the backpack TIGHT]

> Really get everything strapped to the backpack TIGHT

You take a moment to rearrange your rucksack and strap it's contents securely in place to minimize any noise you might cause while moving.
You now have a little bit more space in your rucksack and are more quiet, but due to the tight straps and arrangement of you gear accessing your rucksack is now slightly slower.

Something like that, but with 6000 players per server.

It's a good concept but poor execution. I tried it and hated it, here's why:
1 - install is bloody big, but ok
2 - network lag is bad but even without that the game is horribly optimized and FPS doesn't go down even on the lowest settings (my friend says it's a bit better actually if you put the settings on medium instead of lowest, but I think that's weird). And it's relatively ok when you're running across terrain, but if there's 20 people around you, it's unplayable and a slideshow.
3 - terrain is big, but that actually causes 2 major problems - you have a relatively small amount of ammo (especially if you're antitank) and you take long trips to where the action usually is - which is a really weird design
4 - once a team is armoured, you're basically f-ed - if a faction has a lot of vehicles and the other doesn't - they're screwed since ammo is scarce and if you miss a tank
5 - game is unstable as hell - first few times the game just shut down in the menu without notice, couple of times I set everything up and then the play button doesn't appear

1 - Install is big, yes, but with modern hard-drives that's a non-issue (I've got 700 gigs of disk space empty right now)
2 - Network lag depends greatly on player network connections, and is sometimes unavoidable. For me the issue is a minor one and has gotten me killed perhaps three times so far.
3 - Terrain is big and ammo is low, which is why you cannot solo anything. Recommended squads have people of all roles, especially an engineer and a medic to keep ammo and health going. Solo playing is next to impossible. I myself am part of an outift with between 6 and 30 players online at any given time, so with jolly co-operation we can overcome most obstacles.
4 - Armor wipes floor with infantry, yes, but can't cap bases so while it does great damage and is hard to kill, it needs infantry if it wants to win battles in large bases. Also, two or three liberator gunships will MURDER an armored column with ease.
5 - Currently the client, for me at least, is very stable. However the devs are having issues with some server crashes, but these are currently being worked on 24/7 according to the devs themselves. During the beta there were great many issues, but well over 90% of them have been resolved for me.

I'm pretty sure server lag will not drop your FPS, mate, althought some vehicle and infantry warping will occur. I get a steady 50 fps, with dips to 35-40fps during larger battles, so no problems for me. The game has also improved greatly since the beta, technically and otherwise, and new patches and hotfixes are coming in every few days.

Currently playin on the Miller EU server under the name of, what else; WHAM.

I'm sorry, but hasn't ANYONE thought about this yet?

Troll Song

Seriously? IT WILL NEVER LEAVE YOUR MIND!

Also: Like the look of the game, I know a few people who will have no trouble whatsoever in gettin into that troll -mindset.

I expected funnies and what I got was dead-eyed Miku -clones, stiff animation and music that does not quite fit the picure.
Dislike from me, sorry mate.