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Whelp, I realized I haven't player a lot of AGS games lately and wanted to change that. So, to motivate myself, I decided to start making a video series of AGS games that have made the pick of the month. Basically the format is just me grabbing the game, starting it blind and seeing if I can beat it in one or two sessions of gameplay.

First part, starting from January 2016 and the game "The Unprintable Magenta", is here: LINK

Not my best work, but I hope to improve as I delve deeper into the cream of the AGS crop.

My plan is to release a new episode every 1 or 2 weeks, slowly catching up to the current time so I get to play the most modern games, while also doing separate series's of past year picks.

WHAM, you still in time!

I'm getting home at about 8 or 9 PM tonight. Gonna be a hell of a crunch to play all the games I haven't played yet!

I really, really hope they don't go too high of the price gate for entry. I've been working to re-do Gnrblex and my intention was to pay up to get it on Greenlight with the goal being to get the game on Steam as a freeware release. Now, if the price of admission goes up considerably, I might well be screwed when it comes to that little endeavour.

Goddammit! I really should read the forums more frequently, I completely missed this!

[GNRBLEX]

I humbly propose, for your consideration:

GNRBLEX

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2074/

A short adventure where you are tasked with saving the "adorable" (though some might say "terrifying", don't listen to those people, they're biased) Grblexian mind-maggot from extinction.
Just make sure it doesn't eat YOUR brain, okay?

The game is now feature complete, although it is still missing voice acting, cutscene artwork and new music.

If you would be interested in testing the game in it's current state, please let me know via PM!

-WHAM

I've got two books going on right now.

A while back I felt like reading some horror, so I got my hands on a copy of Clive Barker's Books of Blood.
I'm a bit over halfway through it and so far it's been hit and miss with its short stories. There was one in particular that did get under my skin and actually robbed me of a night of sleep, but otherwise it's been a bit too over-the-top, a bit too full of sex for no real reason but to shock the reader and a bit too many silly plotlines for my taste.

The other book I'm reading is Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble by Antony Beevor, a brutally direct and detailed description of the Third Reich's final offensive in the west. After all the war-hero stories of great American heroes saving the day and winning the war in games, books and movies, it's refreshing to see descriptions of the harsh reality where even the Americans are actually affected by the horrors of war. A particularly memorable bit was an officer's account on how he watched an unwilling American soldier pick up a grenade, walk up to a large tree, pull the pin and hug said tree so he could blow up his hand and get sent away from the front. Likewise it shows how the German's nationalist fervor and insane level of fanaticism comes to bite them in the ass as, after an American unit mows down an attacking SS platoon, they discover all the men reeking of alcohol and all of thei water canteens filled with booze rather than water, with letters on the dead soldiers detailing how they've pre-emptively celebrated their victory "for the Fatherland" over the previous night.

A good read for history buffs, I'd say.

[irrelevant]

Sort of backing up Atelier's last comment here:

I believe the conversation on "what is a race" is mostly pointless anyway, since it focuses on the word "race". Yes, as Monsieur OUXX says, nearly all cultures have moved away from using the term "race" to divide people into categories, so instead we have moved on to using other terms for the same purpose, since the old term is now considered "racist". As time goes on, any and all such new terms will come to be used by racists, and thus those terms, too, will become tainted by culture, eroding any scientific merit they may hold. Whether an individual thinks that human beings can or cannot be divided into "races" or "ethnic groups" or whatever is irrelevant, as there is proven scientific credit to the fact that different types of humans have different physiological, biological and psychological and cultural traits.

We can look into other areas for examples of this happening. Take, for instance, the word "retard", a term describing simply a person who's mental development could be measured as, quite literally and in the true meaning of the word; retarded. When it was coined, it was an accepted scientific term. Later on it spread into popular culture, became a slur and it's scientific usage declined until it was replaced by a new term, which merely began the cycle anew. Scientists have already noticed this and are making the terminology they use increasingly complex and unwieldly in an attempt to establish more permanent and credible terminology that is more difficult to co-opt into slurs and insults by us common folk.

(Small remotely related side note: symbols, just like words, also have a habit of being associated with the negative, forgetting any and all other uses. Take the ol' classic: swastika. The symbol has a rich history and has been used all over the world, including in Finland as a military insignia with long (considering Finland is less than 100 years old as an independent country, #ThanksRussia, #ThanksSweden) traditions from times well before the Germans used it. Then came the Reich, they adopted the symbol and now nobody can use the symbol for fear of being considered a neo-nazi.)

The word used is pointless and meaningless, it is the idea that word represents in the mind of the speaker that needs to be understood and considered. In order to understand what someone means by the word "race", you must engage that individual and learn what they actually believe and what that belief is based on and only then can you judge if their use of the term is warranted or not. Establish context before judging someone as racist and afford everyone the benefit of a doubt no matter which side of the argument they stand on.

The problem is that English speakers use the word "race" for pretty much anything (including humans!) whereas in every other languages this word is only for pets or farm animals. Race is not used in other languages because it doesn't mean anything scientifically.

The "every other language" -part is false.

Finnish has the word "Rotu" which is used both ways. In some context we refer to "mankind" as the "ihmisrotu" ie. "human race" as a whole. However, in many textbooks and in the common parlance we use the same word to denote different subraces such as whites, african blacks, asians etc. or just as readily some more narrow ethnic groupings such as scandinavians, russians, romanians etc. In practice, mixing nationality with race in our language.

Just as elsewhere, the word is used loosely and mostly on cultural basis, not so much scientific.

The Finnish wikipedia page notes that the use of the word "race" in categorizing the origins and cultures of different groups of people has diminished greatly due to the fact that the term is seen as "politically incorrect", so (in my opinion) it would seem this is yet another case where useful terminology is being self-censored in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings out there, and thus trying to avoid causing a scene that would lead attention and resources away from doing actual science.

Also on Wikipedia (curiously the wording in the english wiki, unlike the finnish one, constantly brings up the American cultural viewpoint):
"In clinical settings, race has sometimes been considered in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions. Doctors have noted that some medical conditions are more prevalent in certain racial or ethnic groups than in others, without being sure of the cause of those differences."

The finnish version is more direct in stating that race, in the context of different subraces of human, is used to identify trends in the spread of diseases as well as in evaluating methods of care. However it also notes that many scientists have raised the issue that the term "race" should be avoided whenever possible due to it's nebulous nature and culturally questionable uses, though there is no word on what term might be used in its stead.

Progress update:

> One new minor puzzle added towards the very end of the game
> Scripting overhaul to how the game ending sequences are triggered is complete and less prone to glitching out
> Voice actor auditions are completed and I have four voice actors assigned to the project
> Metric fuckton of bugs and issues fixed with another 20 or so minor issues and visual fixes still on my "to do" list

I moved to a new apartment late last month and that whole affair took a lot more time than I expected it to take, so the project has suffered a few weeks worth of delays.
Work continues, however, and I hope to have the game out to testers by end of the year.

(I did NOT read through the whole thread, so feel free to ignore this post if you feel it lacks context in some way. This is mostly just my two cents in reply to the first post of the thread.)

Despite being European (Finnish to be precise) I watched the pre-election and the election with a lot of interest and tried to do some reading up on both primary candidates and their campaign messages. While neither of the two are especially good candidates, I do feel that Trump was by far the lesser of two evils, especially from the European point of view.

Clinton drove, as part of her past career and her bid for presidency, a tougher attitude towards Russia, a country already floundering and starting to get desperate due to economic sanctions and rapidly growing inflation due to US and EU actions, as well as America taking a more aggressive role in Syria through establishing and enforcing a no-fly zone that would ground Russian and Syrian aircraft in Syria, an act that many, myself included, feared would lead to an open armed conflict between US and Russia (as the idea that Syria and Russia would just allow the US to set the rules in Syria is, in my opinion, laughable).

Trump, instead, has talked of warming up the US / Russia relations, lowering economic barriers and sanctions and reducing hostility in how the two nations interact directly and indirectly. Additionally Trump's view on the EU and NATO have been far more realistic and, while admittedly self-centered (America First, Make America Great Again), practical in wishing to reduce the US's role as the aggressive world police and the dominant military power in Europe, instead expecting European nations to care for European defense interests. It is no wonder that Putin has had a far warmer response to Trump throughout the campaign, as of the two candidates, Trump was not the one openly aggressive and hostile towards him.

As for matters that do not as directly affect Europe and me, such as America's relations with China and Mexico, I can easily see why Trump's campaign message was far better received than Clinton's. His views are selfish and self-centered, but as he represents the United States, he is by extension interested in advancing their national agenda, even at the cost of international popularity. If he can do what he says he wants to do: create jobs and reinforce the US economy into a more effective and competitive entity, I believe that will also be a long-term positive to Europe as well.

The upcoming 4 years will be interesting, and I will be curious to see which parts of Trump's campaign translate into actual acts and changes. All in all I feel the US elected a president that well represents the public image of their nation. I hope he does well and that the unrest and violence in the schools and streets of the US calm down soon.

Cassiebsg has the right of it. I would like to add the following point just in case you are still having issues after reading the previously posted tips:

Spoiler

Note that you only need the three-digit DATE code as part of the password, not the year.

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I'll try and take an evening to play all of these over the weekend.
Will use this as an opportunity to do some twitch streaming testing / recording as well.

-W

Yaay! Ratings!

Sadly very few comments (none for me), but I guess the panel members have their hands full. Glad to see them so active, anyway.

My own two cents.

While working on my games that have scrolling rooms, I quickly decided that there was no way to get the perspective looking satisfactory in my taste. My solution was two distinct vanishing points, with everything outside said vanishing points obeying perspective, while everything in between was displayed as directly head-on. In my case I found that this helped keep workload to a minimum, as in the case of massive rooms it allows for simple copy/paste rather than having to draw each individual object to a strict perspective. The player gets to see the sides with the perspective and can quite easily mentally fill in the missing bits that are hidden by the wonky perspective.


Vanishing points used in this quick mock-up circled in pink.

When looking at the image like this, the error in perspective is quite noticeable, but when you consider that the player only sees a segment of the room at a time (this room mock-up was for a 320x200 game and the background is 640x200) the error becomes far less pronounced.

This approach works best when the vanishing point is very close to the ceiling or right on it. My personal preference is to keep them precisely at the ceiling level so that I don't have to draw a ceiling, but that's just me being lazy.

-W

EDIT: looking back at my work, I seem to have done some very minor tricks so that things to the right of the center line are draws just a tiny bit slanted towards the center, and opposite for the left side. You can sort of see the effect in this old image I did way back when:


Notice how the billiards table does not seem to have any perspective. The booze cabinet also falls between the vanishing points, but has been given just a single pixel's worth of slant to add in on the illusion. Majority of the floorboards are also faked in this regard, having fallen between the two vanishing points.

Progress update:

> All rooms now have a foreground layer with some minor detail and/or shading effects to give the game a more atmospheric feel
> I now have an artist working on a whole new batch of music for the game, with the aim being to replace all of the royalty-free Kevin MacLeod -music with original pieces.
> So far I've had 15 people auditioning for voice acting roles, and I think I have very good matches for most of the roles. More auditions are still accepted, though.
> 1 new puzzle has been added to the game with a few more still remaining to be added.
> 6 new GUI's have been added to the game as well to serve as basis for interactions and new puzzles.
> Game now has a proper options menu which will allow players to adjust volume levels and some minor visual aspects such as lights flickering in certain rooms.
> All old GUI's are going through an overhaul to make them easier to use. Some players reported issues with closing GUI's with esc and righ-click, so now all GUI's come with an actual "close" button. The right-click script was also fixed so that it should now work no matter what you are hovering over.
> Several old GUI's are also getting a visual upgrade to make them more in line with the rest of the visuals (I'm looking at you, chair control panel with your flat gray background!)
> GUI's opening and closing are now animated, making the game look just that little bit more polished than before.
> Added a proper tutorial for the game to help first-time players get oriented

With all the new puzzles and voice acting, I'd expect the game to get pushed from a "short game" to a medium-length game that'll take an hour or two to complete on your first run.

That's all for now, more info coming up as the project evolves!

-WHAM

Aww crud. I feel bad since I can't make it in person. Maybe next year, then. Have a great event, everyone!

..I'm not able to do much of anything in the very, very beginning.  I'm stuck.  Can't leave the room, can't pick up anything.

Don't worry, the first room is a sort of tutorial that aims to make sure the player is familiar with some classic adventure gaming tropes.
I'm hoping to improve the tutorial in the upgraded version of the game which I am currently working on, to make it a bit more obvious, since quite a few players had problems with the first room.

As for how to get started:

Spoiler

Remember that you can use inventory items on objects in the game world.

Spoiler

Try using the communicator on items. This will invoke Mary, your colleague, to comment on the objects in the game world.

[close]

[close]

Hope this helps you to get started!

-WHAM

[Did you dodge making a walkcycle?!]

Did you dodge making a walkcycle?!

Yes, yes, and a triple YES. Best decision of making this game! Saved about two full evenings of development time during MAGS and I'm sticking with it!

The next game I make will have all the characters on segways and wheelchairs!

Let me know when beta is ready.

Will do!

I'm in the middle of playing the MAGS version now (and liking it!). I'm pleased there will be a more polished version.

Happy to hear you are liking the game so far. I hope to have enough new content in the final version to make a second playthrough worthwhile!

I've been meaning to play this one, but the announcement of this version makes me want to wait for the shinier version! Good luck getting this thing tightened up!

Waiting is a valid strategy as well. The core of the game will stay the same even with the new added content and personally I always prefer to go into games blind so they can surprise me.
I only hope I can make it worth the wait.