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Awwww... The AGS awards are already being discussed and I have yet to play half of the games released this year.

When the official AGS awards website will be updated next month, to show the winners and nominees, would it be possible to show the 5 runners up who didn't manage to make it to the nominations, additionally to the awards winners and nominees for each categories? I generally trust the AGS awards to tell if I missed some great games in the previous year but last year I felt that only showing the winner and 5 nominees wasn't enough when the number of quality games increases every years.

Every rating system is arbitrary.

False.

Fun and beauty aren't facts and cannot be rated on a scale from 1 to 10. Something may be a turd for someone and a gem to somebody else and vice versa.

Back on the topic, if I was cut from the internet for several months, I'd simply trust the AGS awards to keep me up to date with what I could have missed, and I'd just download all award winners and nominees. It has yet to fail me, even if 5 nominations per categories aren't enough when the number of quality games keep increasing every years.

I wonder why they would sign up for the forums and not post at all.

To easily see which thread received new posts since one's last visit. A must for any self-respecting lurker.

More than once I've seen someone say they don't make or have any intention of making games. So why are they here? No offence to those people but there are plenty of adventure gaming forums which might suit them better. And ffs, if someone takes that personally I will spank them, it's just a suggestion!

Not being interested in making a game doesn't mean we have no knowledges or ideas about game designing. It doesn't mean we have no ideas of what we liked/disliked and want to see improved/corrected in future games. It doesn't mean that we aren't interested in taking part in the giant discussions and debates that will determine the direction this community will venture next, which boundary will be pushed forward next.

And this forum also happen to the best place to compliment the game makers' work and a great place to discuss about the games themselves without falling into an annoying "AGS SUCKS!" argument. And before you spank me, no offenses were taken, and I do plan to make a game one of those day, or at least die trying.

Helm: As long you are happy it's all that matter. I know I will miss your intelligent, insightful opinions and advices regarding game design and adventure games in general.

I kind of disagree with the music too. If I had in front of me a static forest background with a music, or a forest background where a river flows, leaves are blown by the wind, clouds move in the sky, where the river, wind, birds and bees can be heard but without music, this would certainly looks more lively than a static room with music. Music is good to vehiculate emotions, but sound is better to simulate life. Spooky music or complete silence with mysterious footsteps and creepy cracking noises in an haunted mansion?

It somehow reminds me of Knytt, which combined both, entering a new environment would trigger a short music to immediately put you in the environment's mood then the music would fade and the water, echo, wind and drops would do their job.

Back on the main subject, pedestrians could walk in the streets, but if we push that idea further, one could create a system similar to Grand Theft Auto where time keep going on, nights and days cycle, so does weather but the activities you can do in the game remain the same most of the time. As long puzzles and important characters remain accessibles 99% of the time, an adventure game could take place in an urban or populated area where every 2 minutes spend make the clock advances by 1 hour. Parked cars cycles as the clock progress. Stores could close at precise hours, characters you met somewhere could be seen at work, shopping, relaxing in a bar or called on the phone at different moments of the day. Each day could have a different weather, generating different reactions from the pedestrians. Headlines on newspapers and TV stations could change too.

Pushed to the extreme, this idea could be extended to seasons as well. Let's say every 30 days a new season begins, there would have a 5 days gradual transition, trees would gradually lose their leaves for autumn, water would freeze, snow would slowly stack on the ground for winter and melt for spring, flowers would bloom for summer, snow and wind would replace the rain, fog and thunderstorms. Clothes, characters' and animals' activities would changes according to the seasons. On certain days there could be festivities, with decorations appearing in the trees and windows... It would be insanely difficult to implement, but even for a 1-5 rooms game, it would make a pretty unique gaming experience.

In fact, even without the 2 minutes = 1 hour cycle, with such care on the little details, a game spreading over several days or seasons would certainly look alive.

Examples of games that did a good job to seems alive:
Knytt and Knytt Stories (Animals and critters stroll around, leaves are blown in the wind, emphasis is put on sound effects rather than music)

Gold Rush (people leave their houses and walk around the streets minding their own business, carts rolls in the streets)

Yahtzee's cancelled Poseidon 12 (24 hours cycle, people can be seen in different part of the station as the hours cycle)

And of course it's impossible to forget Quest For Glory 2 (night and day cycle, people walk down the alleys minding their own business, store closes at night, the player is greet by merchants when he walks close to them, every days has its own activities and events associated to it...)

Blueskirt, why are you talking like I left!

Not like you left. In the last 2 years you've probably been working a lot on Drug Bust in the background, but I miss the short yet awesome games, like the OROW, that you and several other talented makers drowned us with (in a good kind of way) back in 2005-2006.

Holidays are coming, I wonder if it would be a good moment for another OROW competition.

Yes, the number of post is declining but 5000 new post every month is still healthy in my opinion, and AGS is still my number one stop to hear opinions from all side of the debates and stay in touch with reality and this vast world. The number that interest me the most personally isn't the number of post per month but the number of quality games released every years. The moment it will get pretty low, I'll start worrying.

And while the numbers of quality games might have slightly decreased in the last year, the quality greatly increased, and quality games take more time to produce, we just have to compare the delay between each Ben Jordan games. It seems like it's the spirit of 2003 that's making a come back, back when we collectively had big hopes, great projects but little experience. The epic projects collapsed but after 3 years of short yet completed games, it seems like game makers are confidents and feel they have the experience to take on projects we dreamed of back in 2003.

Also, increase in game quality means our standards also increase. I was much more tolerant with games' quality back when I discovered about AGS in 2002 than I am nowadays. And in such environment, I can understand that it might be intimidating and discouraging to submit a little game and get very few downloads and comments compared to a big name like ATOTK or the Blackwell series.

That being said, I will not deny that I miss the 2005-2006 era, which represent in my opinion the pinacle of AGS games productivity, and I wonder what happened to Buloght, ProgZ, Bernie and the others who made games like Knightsquires, Family Treasure or Dance 'Til You Drop... some of these games might have been small but these games still made my day. I also miss a lot of faces who used to post here a lot, I do hope some of them will find the time to come back during the holidays.

Move the popular threads back into gen-gen. That way gen-gen stays interesting even when nothing is happening because of the old stalwarts and encourages people to think of interesting new things to chat about.

That would be counter productive. The purpose of the Popular Threads is to give popular threads visibility, in the Gen-Gen these threads would be lost in the flow of new threads and we'd constantly have to search for them. Also, not every forum sections need to be as active as the Gen-Gen. I say we leave the Popular Threads section alone. Same thing with the Adventure Related Talk, no need of merging.

Regarding the decline in C+C and Competitions, could it be linked to the rise of Pixel Joint and similar websites? I mean, why limit yourself to the comments and competition received from a few artists here while you can have all the comments and competition you want on a community entirely dedicated to that?

Time limit/reward is worst, since stealth games usually reward patience and careful planning, not senseless rushing through guards and cameras. You cannot enjoy lurking in the shadows and watching that stupid guard walking around with no idea. Why? There's no time! And game is extremely unforgiving when making a mistake.

No. If you do it right, collect all the loot, don't trip any alarm or taze anyone, but take your time, you should get a Time: C, Loot: T, Alarm: T, Tazer: T score, for an overall rating of A, which reward with 100 RP less than a T rating so it's quite enough of a reward. My advice to those who want to complete the missions with T ratings is to aim to finish all missions with overall rating of A first, then you aim for T.

At the end of the game, when you have enough gaming experience and purchased the right skills, the time limit is very easy to beat.

[How important is it to include seperate "look," "talk," and "hands" commands?]

How important is it to include seperate "look," "talk," and "hands" commands?

It's not really important, what is important is to find an equilibrium between the simplicity of left click/right click and the challenge of text parser interfaces. A two mouse buttons interface's simplicity can be compensated with intelligent and more challenging inventory puzzles, witty dialogue trees and a varying range of puzzles. An interface need to be easy to use without being a "click the button to solve the puzzle" kind of game. Gobliins 2 come to my mind as another example of adventure game that only had a 1 button that was used to look, take, use, talk and yet was very challenging. The Kyrandia games too only had a 1 or 2 mouse button interfaces and were very good games.

Verbs and interface can also serve a bigger role in adventure game, an unique interface/set of verbs can greatly improve the game's experience and the range of verb available to the player can also tell a bit about your protagonist's personality. Loom's musical interface and Full Throttle's "Look, Talk, Interact/Punch, Kick" verb-coin interface are good examples of that.

Do I really need to worry about the 286s in the audience?

Personally the only thing that might pull me off is the installer file's size. For a .torrent I won't mind, but begining at 250mb, I'll think twice before I download an installer only available in direct download.

How comfortable are you with me tainting the Adventure Game format with other genres?

I am very confortable with it, but I represent only a fraction of a 0.0001% of the adventure community. From general experience, a significant chunk of the adventure community is allergic to any adventure games that doesn't fit their own personal definition of a traditionnal adventure game. For some not only arcade sequences are a problem but they would completly ditch the puzzle solving aspect of it and just keep the storytelling and exploration aspects.

Nothing prevent you from making experiment with the adventure game genre, but release one or two polished prototypes for free to test the market before you venture yourself in commercially releasing an adventure game that combine aspect of other genres.

Let's agree that Adventure Games are NOT dead.  Which would you prefer: nostalgia, or continued advancement of the genre?

I'm all for continued advancement of the genre, but this advancement isn't only limited to the graphical aspect of the game. Increasing the screen resolution or bringing 3D is a way, but so is introducing new graphical style, like noir for example, introducing new GUI and set of Verbs, introducing a new gameplay experience in an adventure game, new way to deal with puzzles, new way to tell a story or telling new kind of story unseen in the adventure genre before... A game may be visually retro, yet 10 years forward gameplay or storytelling speaking, or may be visually stunning yet 20 years backward gameplay or storytelling speaking.

I actually have played one or two interactive fiction games before, and I've got three words for you.  Obvious Exits Are:

I couldn't agree more with you there. Information in game should be obvious, not subtly hidden somewhere because the creator felt it would be a good idea to make their game not feel like a game. "Obvious exits are:" is as vital as seeing the ressources collected in a RTS, the amount of health in an action game or ammo in a FPS. How many people threw a fit because the amount of health in 1213 was subtly hidden in the heart beat noise?

Spoiler

Gecko hold: This upgrade I'm pretty sure is necessary to beat LVL 6 with a rank of T (that's how I did it, and I dont think you can otherwise). You can use this upgrade to hide yourself in all those places where there's open light.

[close]

Spoiler

You can. I got all my T ratings and maximum RP score without this skill. Where do you need it for in the 6th heist? If it's for the second screen when all the lights are still turned on, here's my method:


(Warning massive spoiler below)


It requires the Roll and Reasonable Doubt skills. As soon you enter the second screen, follow the guard in front of you, as soon you can go down, climb down twice, then quickly run and roll past the guard at the desk to reach the far end of the room and climb twice and you just reached the light switch in one fluid motion, you'll be spotted 3 or 4 times but you'll be gone before anything trigger an alarm.

[close]

I don't agree with some of your tips for the skills, Radiant.

Spoiler

Locksmith 2/3: All heists are completable without Locksmith 2/3, more difficult but completable.

Sidle: EXTREMELY useful to cross complex laser beams patern, like the 2 vertical and 1 horizontal lasers partern of heist #6, without beaking a sweat. It also allow you to move in penumbra and, still in penumbra, place yourself closer to where you need to be while you're waiting for the cameras and guards to synchronize themselves or look the other way, saving a couple fractions of seconds here and there that can make a big difference later on. It is, with Roll and Locksmith 2, the most useful skill in the game, and it is also required to earn the maximum RP score of 8802.

Bargain hunter: This has an effect as it allow you to earn the required amount of loot to finish a level without having to collect the most guarded loots. That being said, it doesn't help in the completion of the main objective, it only help to achieve the loot quota to leave the mission. With this skill it is also possible to get perfect ratings without collecting all the loots during the heist. That being said, unless if loot quota give you troubles, I suggest getting this skill with the master challenge's RP, before you try to achieve the perfect ratings.

Reasonable doubt: Very useful, this skill give you enough margin to get more reckless and run past guards and leave their field of view, hide in shadow or behind them without getting any alarm. With this skill you can turn a series of tedious waiting for guards to look the other way into one fluid motion where you enter and leave people's field of view without giving them the time to realise what just happened.

[close]

I just finished it with perfect ratings and all of that. It is truly Yahtzee's best game so far. And m0ds, I hope you'll release the soundtrack of that game soon, I want to listen at the training mission theme 24 hours on 24. 

Blueskirt's reply made my head hurt

Alright, let's simplify it a bit. From my personal experience:

Hot Chocolate Powder + Hot Water = Hot Chocolate (Good)
Chocolate Milk Powder + Cold Milk = Chocolate Milk (Good)
Chocolate Milk Powder + Hot Water = Hot Chocolate with weird taste (Not good)
Hot Chocolate Powder + Cold Milk = Milk with chocolate powder floating on top (Not good)

I never tried with hot milk, so I have no idea what it would result with.

But what about the hot chocolate powder that is made to be dissolved in hot milk? Would that mix with cold milk as well?

I suppose the dissolving is linked to the temperature rather than the substance it is dissolved in, but there's only one way to find out, to the Fat-Cave!

Is hot chocolate powder thingy and chocolate milk powder thingy the same thing?

No, chocolate milk powder is made to be dissolved in cold milk while hot chocolate powder is made to be dissolved in hot water. And while it's possible to make an hot chocolate with chocolate milk powder (although the taste will greatly differ), it's not possible to make chocolate milk with hot chocolate powder, the powder will remain at the top of the milk and stick together rather than getting dissolved.

Well, I'd hate to say this, but you should read this thread again, because you're just plain entirely wrong. From the legal aspect, there are many problems with ripping, as pointed out again and again. Yes, legally speaking, ripping is illegal.

My bad. I should have wrote "For the whole legal moral aspect, I don't see any problem with ripping." So to clarify:
Is it illegal? Yes.
Is it morally wrong? It's debatable. It's a matter of case by case for me, for KOF sprites, as long credits are given where due and as long no profits are made, I don't think it's wrong.
Can they take legal actions? Yes.
Will they? Unless if you try to make money from it, unless if they feel your work threaten their reputation, profits, or their their work in term of quality, that's pretty unlikely.

AGDI actually has permission from Vivendi to use their material in their remakes

As far as I know, KQ1VGA was released with KQ5 sprites before the whole contract and legal deal happened with Vivendi.

and actually got rewards for best graphics in spite of that; and so forth.

And we can both agree that if they won for best graphic it was because there was a real effort put in them. As for the best animation award, it wasn't the KQ5 Graham walking animations that won that award but the dozens of other original animations the game featured.

For the whole legal aspect, I don't see any problem with ripping. 8Bit Theater use sprites from FF1, there's kids who use Mario, Luigi or Mega Man sprites to create flash movies on Newgrounds, there's people who make flash video clip out of real songs without asking for permission, AGDI used Graham's sprites from KQ5 for their remakes, Ready Starring Ready Eddie was pure genius, ProgZ used actual songs for Dance 'Til You Drop... We don't make such a big fuzz about it when games use existing songs and musics instead of having an original soundtrack, I don't see why it should be a problem on the legality side to use ripped graphics for an AGS game. As long you don't rip another AGSer's work, you don't make profit off your game and you don't expect an AGS award for best graphics and best soundtrack with your ripped stuff, I say you can do it.

That being said, my personal opinion regarding ripped graphics, graphics in general and my appreciation of the effort put into them can be shortened to this:
Good original graphics > Average original graphics > Bad original graphics > Graphics made of copy/pasted ripped graphics > Ripped graphics > Inconsistant graphics

And generally ripped graphics fall in the inconsistant graphic category with 2D, 3D and clip arts overlapping, characters from different graphical styles meeting each others, walking in the SCUMM bar in one screen and a bad original background in the next screen... things to give my eyes headaches.

The sole exception I make to this rule is with fangames and remakes using a few sprites and background from the original game, as long the ripped graphic is consistant with the fanmade graphics, I won't mind.

If one has troubles drawing animations, like Atakosh said, one just have to keep the animations cartoony and as simple as possible and call it a style, not unlike the Wink series on Newgrounds. For the backgrounds, there's always the Pleurghburg Dark Ages' graphical style which in my opinion has the best ratio between Difficulty To Draw and Good Look.

I have the feeling, when I look at ildu's sprite, that this Sprite Jam will twist the knife in the wound lefts by the absence of sequel for Superhero League of Hoboken.

If you seriously plan to release Revenants, don't scale down anything, even it takes 10 years to complete it, even if you need to find a team to help you, don't scale down anything.

These backgrounds are quite good, but I find them too cold for MI's overall mood, and the circus one is awfully undetailed.

That being said, a MI1 remake is a big no-no. It is the pinacle of overkill useless remake idea as MI1 is one if not the best adventure game out there and there are still dozens of adventure games with marvelous story that are plagued with bad graphics, bad interface, lot of bugs and bad design flaws, stories which, unlike MI1, truly deserve to be re-told.

Footnote: After reading this you may be wanting to ask "if you've Seen It All Before and want something new from video games, why do you hang around on a forum dedicated to retro gameplay that has not only been Seen Many Times Before but has long since collapsed in on itself due to it's own inherent flaws". My response to this would be "Um..." and to disappear in a puff of hypocrasy!

I was thinking about this all the time I read your post.

Personally I'd say we're the ones who decide how much "Seen It All Before" we want this community to be and I believe there's plenty of room to add a bit more than walk, look, interract and talk to adventure games. The more I hear people with that same "Seen It All Before" problem, the more I am convinced that after reaching an equal or superior aesthetical level compared to adventure games from the golden era, the next step forward this community will take will be to diversify the gameplay experience so everyone can find something they like with AGS games.