Messages

Hello my friends, I hope you're all doing well.

Unfortunately, I have some sad news for you. Recent developments, as well as some personal issues, left me with no choice but to terminate Atropos Studios against my will.

I won't bore you with details, let's just say that although Diamonds in the Rough sold pretty well and made me pretty confident that this company had a future, we were unable to attract the interest of potential sponsors and producers. I've heard a lot of promises during the past couple of years, a lot of guarantees, I even signed agreements and almost began working on my new game a couple of times, but the sad truth is that AS had become a hole I was shoveling money in so I had to draw the line somewhere.

I have some games left so I will sell them on Ebay for just $11 + postage, so if you haven't played Diamonds in the Rough yet check out this page because these are my last ones and after those are over I won't be making any more.

I wish you all a happy new year!

Please change:

Diamonds in the Rough - $19.90 + shipping (no direct download)

to:

Diamonds in the Rough:
Physical copy: 17.90EU (free shipping)
Digital copy: Price depends on where you live

john 8:15
"Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man."

I'm impressed that someone bothered to Google this.

One more vote for http://voice123.com/ , that's where I found all the actors who worked in Diamonds in the Rough and I was able to audition dozens of them.

JA-Staff2 still hasn't read the e-mail so I started a new thread just to be safe. I'm sure it's only a matter time before this misunderstanding is sorted out.

Mods, did you see this? Apparently Just Adventure does not believe AdventureX is real!  You'd better contact them soon, I already sent JA-Staff2 a message.

Not exactly fresh news, but I wasn't really active online when it happened so I never posted it before: My game won the 2008 Best Independent Commercial Adventure award by Adventure Gamers, and it was the public's vote not a committee's decision!

With all due respect to award committees, the public's vote means so much more to us.

On February 5th, the scriptwriters union of Greece are holding a conference titled "Script and Digital Games". I've been invited to deliver a presentation. The idea is to bring together two parallel (at least in Greece) worlds, those of professional TV & cinema scriptwriters and computer game scriptwriters, exchange ideas, maybe even discuss possibilities of collaboration.

Now, I am no stranger to the art of holding a microphone (so to speak), and I have given speeches in the past, but those were related to boring topics such as neural networks and nanotechnology, nothing as interesting and important as computer games. Furthermore, I'm kind of worried that I will be speaking to people with little to no previous experience in gaming, who perhaps consider them as childish and a waste of time. Apart from presenting my work, I want to deliver a message: that computer games can (and have done so in the past) offer professional, well-written scripts. I'm interested in proving that game script writing has more similarities to movie script writing than people may think and that is what my presentation will be focused on.

Most of the people in this forum have written scripts so I would be grateful if you had any particular pointers for me.

What about the "Rough Diamonds demo" then, where does that fit? Or the weird haiku format?

This is worse than Le Serpent Rouge! 

Oops... edited.

Pretty straightforward! You're a smarter person than I am, auriond.

I of course e-mailed her immediately asking her to describe the problem to me. But if the file she downloaded from The Adventure Shop is incomplete or corrupt, they're the only ones who can help her.

[FEMALE NAME DELETED]

The following was sent to my personal e-mail address. At first I thought it was spam and almost deleted it, but after reading it I realized that this person (woman?) is trying to tell me something. However I have no idea what it is! AGS is mentioned so who knows, perhaps she's a member and will see this. I removed her name from the e-mail.

---
Title: Alex dear (funny } I will try to download demo but it no good too

Message:
I love your games and blog
but i really got ripped off
Buy and Download PC video gn  bought your game from here
trieAGS to download your games from here
Alkis Polyrakis  file
thank you for taking money from me
I read the reveiws of this game
how come you an expert made it so hard to download and install'and cost me money which i will never get back
here is wBuy and Download PC video gam s i bought it from
thank you for nothing
p.S.. ags should rid of you
your are a scam
FEMALE NAME DELETED   your are corrupt
   fix  please download your files yourself and see what  happens
         you dummy
smile FEMALE NAME DELETED
---

Notes:
-My name is not Alex
-I don't have a blog
-I have never taken money from this person, however maybe The Adventure Shop (as the link is included) has
-If you follow the AGS link, it will take you nowhere near my game... but that page has a demo called "rough diamond demo" so I'm guessing this person confused it with mine?

It looks like DITR is attracting new people to the AGS community. Welcome and stick around; there are plenty of gems in this site and almost all of them do not cost a dime. Sequel! I doubt it.

Here is the answer:

"I am using VMware Fusion with XP SP3. In fullscreen it works a little better but it is like there are only select "squares" of area that the cursor will move to. Thus not allowing me to fully explore the areas."

I asked him, I'll let you know when he replies. Cheers.

A customer is trying to run Diamonds in the Rough on a Windows XP emulator in Mac osx. He says the tracking is way off and he can't click or even position the cursor. He tried the mouse settings in both winxp and osx. Has anyone tried this with an AGS game?

Good tips in that thread. The video is not encoded so you don't even need the XviD codecs but there have been some issues with some computers, especially those who have mass codecs packs such as K-Lite installed.

Try overwriting Atropos.avi with this file. If it still doesn't work, simply move it to another directory.

Let me know if it works.

Hey guys. I will try to answer your questions:

First: The thought system. Is it intuitive and easy-to-use? While I immediately love the thought of having full control of the character's thoughts, I don't really like the idea of having a second inventory screen unless it's done really, really well.

A related question: is there an easy way to scroll through the different thoughts, or do I have to go back to the post-it board every time I want to change which thought I present to people?

I believe that the Thoughts Panel takes a few minutes to get used to but it becomes quite intuitive after a while. You will only need to open the Panel if you want to examine individual Thoughts or use one Thought or another. During the game, while you are holding the special "post-it" inventory item you can scroll through the available Thoughts using the mouse wheel.

And if your game is anything like that, the last thing I want is "another inventory screen", adding more options to the big and meaningless mix.

My belief is that puzzles should go along with the game's theme. The puzzle you just described wouldn't bother me if it was part of a humorous and totally wacky game. Diamonds in the Rough on the other hand has a very "serious" theme so its puzzles are more down to earth. In my humble opinion, every puzzle in DITR can be solved using deductive logic and a little bit of imagination. The Thoughts Panel just makes the "use everything on everything" method (which IMO is a lousy way of trying to solve a puzzle anyway) rather impossible.

Second: From the reviews I've read, I get the impression that the interface is Sierra-inspired (they mention that you use the right button to cycle through the various kinds of interactions). If this is correct: have you picked that interface because you think it's the best available interface for this game, or for other reasons (e.g. nostalgia)? As Vince Twelve recently wrote an excellent article on, the Sierra interface more often than not really doesn't fit its games. In most games, there's only one way of interacting with 99 % or more of all characters/objects/hotspots/etcetera in the game: You talk to people, interact with large items, pick up small items, open drawers, and so on. So what I'm wondering is: Is your game one of the games where I have to scroll through many different mouse cursors just to avoid getting messages like "I don't want to talk to the doormat"  or "I think that woman would slap me if I touched her there" where a simple one-click interface would have worked a lot better, or do you have all the available interactions there for a reason, e.g. that it in several cases can be useful to try all different interactions on an object?

I know of Vince's opinion, we have agreed to disagree on this one. I simply chose the Sierra interface because it's my favorite one, and I hate magic all-purpose cursors. I personally like to play with my left hand on the keyboard to chose the appropriate icon, I realize that some people don't like doing that but even so I don't think cycling through the icons becomes too annoying. Someone said to me that he liked to examine everything first on a screen, then try to use the other icons. That is perhaps another convenient way.

I'll check out "Other Worlds" to get an impression of your takes on story and gameplay (yeah, the graphics look great, but personally I don't care whether the graphics are made in Poser or MSPaint as long as the story sucks me in and the gameplay isn't too annoying), and most likely I will chip in with a couple of more questions here before I buy the game. Not because I don't really want to buy your game -- I really do. I just want to know exactly what it is that I'm buying before I buy it.

Other Worlds is a very different game but by all means try it out.

Also I am a little confused by "another inventory screen", what do you mean by this? I'm asking this as I am not familiar with the wording, so something new for me to learn in understanding how to develop games and avoid killer pitfalls that prevent people wanting to play my games.

You can read my description of the Thoughts Panel here.

Alkis, I am looking forward to purchasing your game when I am able to afford it - the price I am afraid is in Euros, which will make it WAY too expensive in Australian dollars. There should be thoughts on currencies but it is your choice. Other than that, I think its a game worth playing and supporting you in your endeavours. I am very glad to see another AGS member embark on a commercial venture with AGS games .

The game is sold by The Adventure Shop in multiple currencies (and prices) depending on where you live, I'm not sure but I think in your case it will be in USD.

Some news that may please my friend Rui:

-Our game is now available from our web page at a new price: â,¬17.90.

-We now offer free worldwide shipping (as opposed to only non-European countries as it used to be).

-For the gamers who like to have the option to download games, the digital version of Diamonds in the Rough can now be purchased at an even lower price from The Adventure Shop (
http://adventureshop.gamesplanet.com ).

Thank you for that excellent work, bicilotti. Very interesting read.