Messages

..I did want to point out what was probably a bug while I'm thinking about it.

Spoiler

I made hot chocolate drinks and gave the girl a cup before spiking it with alcohol. Then when I spiked the remaining cups with the licquor, the girl got sick without drinking another cup.

[close]

Thanks! I'll put up a fix for this after the MAGS voting ends for this round. Not a major issue, but a good example of the kind of thing that slips through the cracks when rushing to finish a project.

I didn't make it in time before voting this time, but I've still played all of the contestants. You can find the videos of my attempts below.

Bad to the Coral
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThUlS3EN6gE

Botos do Diabo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VQLdGkUQBc

Gill Bus Party
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXX9kLzSAtM

I don't have an actual release of my own this year, but since I've been doing videos of MAGS games lately, I could expand that into this: once the nominations are published I'll make a list of the games and try to play and record as many of them as I can to try and raise awareness and give people a chance to get a look at the nominees even if they don't have the time for proper playthroughs of their own.

Here's "Mazzled!"

The downloadable zip is busted and doesn't contain the actual game executable. You've probably made changes in AGS after compiling the game, so the compiled exe is gone.
Simple recompile, zip and upload should fix that up for you!

I feel your mistake here is believing the the score range of "3 cups" magically makes the two games equally valuable, which is not the case.

And to remind you: while you and I 'waste our lives' to make games, so do the volunteer reviewers 'waste their lives' playing these games, assigning scores and writing short reviews for them. I still have games here that never received a score or review.

We know what is going on here: you completed a project and released a game, and someone out there took the time to play it and review it and to assign it a score they felt best represented its general quality amidst other releases on this site at this time.
 
That effort, for you and the panel, is valuable and means something. Be happy for that!

The reviewer writes to inform the general audience of their views and opinions. Whatever the game developers intent was or wasn't doesn't really factor into that. If the reviewer feels that the audience might be looking for something (High art? Ultraviolence? Addictive gameplay? Infinite replayability? Whatever, it doesn't matter) and won't find it, then informing the audience of that can be useful. The reviewers own views and expectations will always colour the final opinion and wording, at least for as long as we have volunteers spending their own time and effort to provide these scores and reviews, and the community don't pool up money to hire paid reviewers who follow strict technical guidelines and absolute professionalism (insert your own joke about the integrity of modern day paid-to-work games journalism here).

As for increasing the number range of reviews, I don't see much point. It'd throw off all existing reviews since the values wouldn't convert 1 to 1 and, as noted in my previous message, that just leads to a new "average" score emerging arbitrarily, and then we'll just have someone else complaining that their piece was rated "only a 7 out of 10" while a game they subjectively see as less valuable or less good was given the same or similar score and they then feel upset.

The scores provide a general guidance, and as the old guidelines state: a game with 2 or 3 cups is worth playing. This implies that a 4 or a 5 is a standout and a score of 1 is reserved for games that suffer from some major issues or shortcomings that make it too difficult to recommend.

Since reviews are always subjective, when using a 5-star (5-cup) system of grading it seems pretty human and natural for a lot of games to end up with a score of 3. I feel this mostly comes down to reviewers, whether it be the AGS panel or individuals, being polite. A 3 is a solid effort that doesn't stand out. A 2 would be a weak performance but the reviewer felt it had some merit, while a 4 is exceptionally good. A score of 1 is usually reserved for either personal issues (this game has X and I don't like X so I'll give it a 1 out of principle) or in the case of the panel reviews a genuine belief that the game lacks any considerable effort or skill in its makeup. Meanwhile a score of 5 is practically a superlative, reserved only for rare and special occasions where a game achieves the kind of quality seen as appropriate for premium commercial grade games.

A game can be scored outside of these norms, even if it generally falls under one, if it has a specific feature or quirk that stands out, but that's the exception and not the norm. One exception I think is easily given is one of trying to encourage new developers, scoring their first efforts more generously and using that review and score not so much to showcase actual quality of a game, but to highlight the effort of finishing a project for a new developer. Fun fact: my first game has this exact panel review: "A good first effort by a new game author." 3 cups.

This whole "3 cups is average" conversation reminds me of some internet outrage of old, where a Nintendo Zelda game was reviewed as a 7 out of 10 and some people were furious at the "low score". It's not a low score, it's average, the average just happens to have crept up in a nominally 0-10 scoring system over time.

[A Place of Significance]

A Place of Significance
A short game about a simple cave and how we, humans, perceive it across various time periods.
Developed for the December 2024 MAGS contest.

Download link: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2814-a-place-of-significance
Want to play without downloading? Here's the game on itch.io: https://wham.itch.io/a-place-of-significance

• Single button user interface (both mouse buttons perform the same action).
• I finally took the time to figure out how to use the AGS dialogue tree functionality in this one!
• Multiple playable characters.

My game is finally out! It's had woefully limited testing done to it, but I hope it will survive your playhtroughs without too much issue:

https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2814-a-place-of-significance

I wound up having to use .wav format audio, which ballooned the game size considerably, so as to avoid issues with audio not looping correctly. Sorry about that!

Much appreciated! That should give me some time to wrap up a few loose ends and to try and playtest the game a bit more. I'll probably turn the assets for the segments I won't have time to properly turn into gameplay into a small epilogue instead, so a bit less of the effort already done goes to waste.

Considering the December circumstances of having Christmas holidays, post-Christmas bloat and New Years all eating into work time, is there any hope for a 1-2 day extension?
I'm pretty close to having my game sufficiently functional, after having to cut some content already, but I've got to work on the 31st and someone once told me it was advisable to sleep for more than 3 hours a night.

I am BADLY behind schedule, and have two of potential five scenes functionally completed with 5 days to go, but I'll try to have at least 3 done by crunching like mad, before slapping on some royalty free music and a few key sound effects right before the end.

Scene 1 of 5 is now functionally complete, though it still lacks some visual effects and sound. The other 4 scenes of which my game is planned to be made up of should be fairly quick to build upon that same template, and I have already designed the project so that I can drop up to 2 of the scenes if I'm running out of time. A lot of dev time will be over the Christmas holidays, so busy times ahead if I intend to make the deadline!

Idea has been had, first graphics drafts have been drawn (and I discovered a fun bug in my Paint Shop Pro 2022 that causes it to crash whenever I tab out of it, so that's fun), though it might require more art than I can feasibly produce in a month, but pushing the limits is what MAGS is for!

I'm back at it with my usual shenanigans and have once again played all of the contestants. 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:

Hour Al
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjo99fgPCoE

The Sphinx of Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gKDOvJhYfU

Chupacabra Crunch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44WARwyzRXU

MvM Demo: Patience is a Virtue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPDe6_zwS5k

Feel free to use any AGS and MAGS related footage on my Youtube channel as you see fit and let me know if you're looking for anything specific. October MAGS game videos are coming up later today in the MAGS thread, too!

Well, yes. Thanks to geography in the region, Sweden has had Finland acting as its de-facto bulwark against the only obvious regional threat, so basically Finland has paid for Sweden's national defence simply by existing as an independent country after WW2, a thing that we very nearly failed to do and paid considerably for. Seeing Sweden and Finland both in NATO seems to me like a solid way to create a credible framework for Nordic defence collaboration, allowing Sweden to play its part in a potential future conflict. To me, personally, seeing Finland and Sweden delaying joining NATO until so very late, doing so only after a threat had solidified on European soil, is a great shame.

Better late than never!

As a non-American, I do hope Trump continues to rattle European nations awake from their slumber when it comes to American world-police status. He wasn't wrong when he raised the issue of Europe trusting America to save their asses in case a conflict broke out and with Ukraine we've seen over and over again how utterly unprepared the UK, Germany and France have been to face any kind of extended conflict, as they cannot even scrounge up munitions to support a more limited one on the edge of Europe, let alone hope to defend themselves if needed. As difficult a time as Trump and his isolationist policies may bring to parts of the world, I see potential for developing better futures outside of the US as long as our leaders take what Trump says seriously enough, instead of laughing in his face as they did last time around.

I'm toying with at least three different ideas but haven't gotten more than three sentences into any of them. Will try to make up my mind over the weekend and crunch out a result by deadline.

[Becalmed]

I'm back at it with my usual shenanigans and have once played the sole contender this time around. You can find the video of my attempt here. While I'll happily recommend you play the game yourself, if you just can't be bothered then this might be an option for you:

Becalmed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GfOsOPfCbg