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The Dallas Quest - C64

There's also most survival horror games like Resident Evil which involve exploration, collecting items, solving puzzles and unlocking new area as much as collecting ammo and killing monsters.

I myself am not atheist, but then again, I am not much of a religious person too, I don't follow some written manifest. Therefore, I quite cannot understand atheists, how can someone believe in nothing? I know some atheists who tend to believe in ghosts, now how can they be atheists because ghosts resemble some kind of afterlife?

There are days where I don't believe in afterlife as it makes us responsible of the world around us, it gives our actions, good or bad, much more weight, importance and emphasis, and the sole thing you'll keep on your short passage on this big blue ball will be how the world will remember you, and in which state you'll leave the place for the world's future generations. There are also days, where I'm forced to eat news about absurd genocides and other horror stories, where I see people suffering years of agony before dying in the most horrible way, where I do hope for them that there is actually something good and peaceful on the other side.

But there is a big difference between believing in some sort of afterlife and believing in god(s) from books written in a different era, who are responsible for/created everything careless of what science discovers everydays, and, while making some of us capable of the best things, made/makes the rest of us capable of horrible things that haunt and affect us for centuries to come and will leave unforgettable scars to this world.

But this one is from a LucasArts game, not an AGS one.

I'd say the best quotes I've seen in AGS games were from Knightsquire, Cedric and the Revolution and Nelly Cootalot.

Knightsquire had the Knight's arrogant lines.

For CatR, begining at the castle, the characters you met were insanely memorable and hilarious, additionally to the dynamic between Ced and Victor.

And Nelly Cootalot was a treasure chest full of beautiful and amazing lines, so much that in the end I was looking, talking and interracting with every hotspots and using every inventory objects on every characters just to find more hilarious lines. There were so many, the net on the Barnacle, the pirate oath, the objects in the store and library, the Raven, the cat burglar, the Baron's wife, the lepercaun... You may think it's too tedious to try every actions and items on everything, but for sure you don't know this game unless if you've shown all inventory items to the Raven.

LUniqueDan: When I try to determine what I find most important in a game I usually do it from my point of view. So if I don't find something fun nor challenging I don't call it a game, even if others do. Gaming is quite obviously a subjective experience even if more than one person participate in one game. An objective definition would just describe the mechanical parts of a game leaving out subjective sensations which I think is more important.

The problem with such thinking is that it means absolutly nothing really. Even if your definition of a car is something that goes real fast and your definition of a movie is something that is fun to watch, cars that are slow are still cars and movies that aren't fun to watch are still movies, no matter what you say. Not only this, but "fun + challenge" worth absolutly nothing on an educationnal level. If we ask what a pie is and what are the fundamental ingredients for a pie and someone reply "Pies are good and sweet, they are made of something good and sweet" well, we're not really more advanced, and it will help absolutly nobody to improve their pie cooking skill.

I liked the article from the link Anym posted, but I think the guy is way off about story, toy and puzzle. A game isn't half or 10% of a game because it contains or lacks puzzles, plot or sandbox aspects, like he says about Zork. As long a game presents 5 or 6 of the elements he mentions below (decision, goal, opposition, ressource management...) then it's a game IMO.

The interesting thing is when I look at certain things like linear, story based adventure games, even though I call them games (probably because they run on a computer, they come on cds like other computer games, I play them for fun, they look like games), they just don't fit. Something like Monkey Island is a lot more like Sudoku than Chess. It proceeds through a sequence of set puzzles, solved with logic, or luck, and very little in there is a response to my actions. Should I stop calling them games?

Personally I think it's the opposite sometimes, linear and story heavy adventure games with little puzzle or decision to make give me the impression I'm simply watching a movie or an animation. When most of what I have to do is walking around and discussing with characters, I wonder if it wouldn't fit better in another media form.

The first half of Ben Jordan 4 is a good example of this, where the 50 first points involved talking with people and talking with them again to see if a new conversation subjects appeared. Somehow, the puzzle heavy Ben Jordan 3 had more to do with games than Ben Jordan 4.

I don't agree with the fact that only award winner should be put in banners, i think all ART that is good should be put in the banners...

I have no problem with this as long we are careful to not include good looking average/bad games.

...even from critique lounge...

However, I don't agree about including art from the critique lounge or BG competition. AGS is first about games, I think the banners should promote its best games, not backgrounds and characters that may or may not find their way into a game, nor games that have yet to be released, lest we lure more fans wondering what are the names of all these unreleased games on the banners.

I think there were far enough great and good looking games released in the last year and half to fill all the free slots in the banners, may they be award winner or not, to avoid selling AGS with false advertising. When the games with the screens from the critique lounge will be released, they'll most likely find their way on the banners in the next 1 - 1½ year, in the meantime, let's concentrate on the present last 1½ year, particuliary when the last 2 years represent IMHO the most productive and the most amazing era in the AGS games. I also wonder if 5 banners will be enough to fit all the great games.

Regarding the clickablility of the banners, if we can't manage to get the banners' screenshot, to directly access their respective game pages, why not make the banner a little bit longer and wider and put the name of the games below the screenshots with a 5x5 font?

I agree, there were a lot of games in the last 1 year and half that earned their place next to Apprentice 2, Mind's Eye, 1213, 7DAS, Emily Enough, KQ2vga and co.

And I don't want to sound offensive but I'm not sure that games that have yet to be released belong on the banners, at least for now.

While we are on the subject, what are the games:
Between Apprentice 2 and Mind's Eye?
To the right of 1213?
To the left of Indy and the Crown of Solomon?
Between The Uncertainty Machine and Astranded?

The first AGS game I ever played was the Demo Quest game that was included with AGS. The one starring the guy wearing the green shirt.

I love these puzzles, and while I'm as clueless as you at inventing these, as a player I know that there are a few traps to avoid when making one.

One advice I can give you is to make the goal of these puzzle fairly obvious. You are not obligated to explain how the invention function as sometimes finding how these function can be a part of the puzzle, like in The Dig for example. But there is nothing worst than not having a clue at what you're supposed to accomplish, or spending hours trying to accomplish a goal, just to discover it's not the goal of the puzzle, that the goal is something easier or something else than what you were expected.

If I take 2 puzzles that were in Nelly Cootalot, the cryptographic puzzle was well implemented, what had to be done was fairly obvious, while the final puzzle was very complicated because you had no idea what was the goal to accomplish and you were left using trial and error until something finally happened.

Also, these puzzles difficulty should be on par with the other traditionnal puzzles in the game. If it's too hard, the player will spend hours, sometimes days to solve it, which can easily ruin an atmosphere or a good story, as there are a good chance that the player will have forgotten details or parts of the plot, or if it's a creepy adventure game, after 2 days on a single puzzle, the player might no longer be scared anymore.

It is also important to have the other traditionnal puzzles on par with these invention puzzle. There are a lot of recent adventure games that fell into this trap, where the games' traditionnal puzzles consist mostly of discussion tree puzzle, or easy and straight forward puzzles involving stick, rope, rock, crowbar, key, screwdriver, knife... eventually the player has the impression these invention puzzles are the sole puzzles of the game and the rest is just filler or a mere excuse to label this a game instead of an interactive movie, or they'll have the impression these invention puzzles were only there to add lenght to the game.

[might]

Read the second article of this page before you seriously blame all on the parents.

But what exactly do kids have to be stressed about these days?

Being bullied, not exactly fitting in, loneliness, bad grades, being sucky at sport, people discovering things you'd rather keep secret until university at least, having to deal with past humiliation, still having that high pitched voice, acne all over your face, not having a b/f or g/f when nearly everyone does, breaking up with your b/f or g/f, having pushy parents/teachers, peer pressures, homeworks, exams, those annoying 10-20 pages essay works, having a body like those you can find on paintings in museum, not on fashion magazines and garage calendar, etc. There's certainly more I forgot or that I'm not aware of. Some can deal with all of this and wake up every morning. Some don't.

I just find it frightening that a lot of people seem to regard computer games as an alternative to commit real life crimes.

If I relied on video games in order to not go out and beat people up, I'd be exceedingly worried about the state of my mental health.

It is not an alternative to commit real life crimes nor an outlet to criminal ideas, people don't go around thinking "If I don't frags at least 100 n00bs in Unreal Tournament pretty soon, I'm soooooo gonna kill everyone in this room!". It is an outlet for stress and frustration. Were I to live with months or years of cumulated frustrations and stress without having a way to let it out, chances are I wouldn't be talkable, I wouldn't think straight, I might have flipped out, gone postal or commited other thoughtless and unforgivable acts already.

Maybe Take 2 isn't pushing the video game limits, maybe they are just trying to level with the limit in the other medias.

Hollywood can produce movies like Hostel and Saw, and the oriental cinema produced samurai and ninja flicks with people getting their limbs and heads chopped off and blood pumped at the rate of firehose in the direction of the camera. Both ended in the cinema, both ended in the blockbusters' shelves, and some of them became classics and cults movies. Same thing with porn movie, they all end up in the adult section of the blockbusters and the sex shops, without any lost profits.

Comics books and manga can have as much nudity, sex and violence too. You've got some manga that often feature both at the same time, with samurai chopping each others into slices, spiced with some gratuitous sex scenes in between. It's also the same with european and american comics industry. Frank Miller come to my mind here, with his Sin City and Hardboiled. Yet, all of those end up in comics and manga shops, yet again without any loss in their profits.

Cartoons? Is there anything animes or South Park haven't done? And these both end up on the cartoons channels next to the Simpsons, Futurama and King of the Hill.

Books? Now I don't really know much about the book industry, but you can write on both subjects, and as long you can find a publishers, you can get your books in the library shelves. Anybody remember reading the Rats books series back in high school? The edition who published this was specialized in publishing that kind of stuff IIRC.

But if you make the mistake of making a video game with too much blood, too much violence or porn with crappy looking vectorized characters, you'll be accused of corrupting the youth and nobody will put your game on their shelves. Careless of the fact that the video games demography keep on getting older.

Maybe it's simply Take 2 who are trying to get too close to the other medias' limit while the video game media is still in its infancy and regarded as something for kids only, not for a broad spectrum of ages. Regarding the comparison between Manhunt 2 and child porn, were Take 2 to make a game that involve child pornography, racism, antisemitism or ethnic cleansing propaganda, I think we would react the same way as if one of the previous media I listed above did the same.

Regarding the symptom/cause argument, every generations tried to find a scapegoat for all that was wrong in the youth of today. It has been rock and roll music that pushed teenagers to rebel from their parents authority, those immoral Elvis's pelvic thrusts and Johnny Cash that corrupted the mind of the teenages girls, comic books with Batman and Robin sleeping in the same bed, motorcycle, tattoo, Dungeon and Dragon that turned kids into satanists, rock, punk, metal and gangsta rap music, horror and violent movies, Harry Potter, Marilyn Manson, goth culture, GTA and all the violent video games...

And it never worked. Every generations will have its bullies, its punks and its screwed up kids, kids who'll have been badly raised, kids who's parents were missing, beating them or too busy working to watch what their kids did or who never had a good and serious discussion about sex, drug, violence, what was right and what was wrong in this world, kids who'd need a good kick in the butt to put them back on the right track, kids with parents too laxist, or simply hopeless kids who are already lost causes, no matter how many time their parents will try. Ban violent games and they'll simply find something else to fill that hole until they get bored and decide to pass to the acts.

Personally, I prefer to have these kids relieving their stress and frustration and living their slums fantasies confortably sitting in their room playing GTA rather than having them in the streets and screwing their life out of boredom or pressures.

This is not even in question here. Even if the stores wouldn't mind having it on their shelves, or even if they decided to sell it online directly from their website, the AO rating completly prevent them from releasing their game on Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft's consoles.

EDIT: If this is about freedom of speech, in the US at least, nobody was stopping Take 2 from releasing Manhunt 2 uncut with an AO (Adults Only) rating. Of course, this would impact dramatically on profits, hence Take 2's temporary shelving of the game.

But if this is a game meant for adults, then what's Take 2's problem?

This is where it become problematic. Even if Take 2 wanted to release it with an AO rating and the dramatically reduced profits, they couldn't even do so as Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony forbid third party publishers to release AO rated products on their consoles.

I bought a pack labeled "5001 Games" back in 98 or 99 that contained 4 CDs full of demos, shareware, freeware and a few occasionnal complete games in it, like Leisure Suit Larry 1 EGA. Larry Vales 1 and the old DOS version of AGS were on it too. Made a bunch of backgrounds in MSpaint, messed a bit with it but that was it. Larry Vales 1 didn't impressed me at the time.

Then a few years later while I was playing QFG2, I stumbled on a website with "QFG2VGA remake" written all over it and with pictures, I was very impressed, I downloaded KQ1VGA, a year later I downloaded KQ2VGA+, and 3 months after that I decided to give a try at a few AGS games to see if there were any other good games. I began with Permanent Daylight, which impressed me, then I tried Pleurghburg and 4 days later I was forever hooked to AGS.

And now when I want to scare me, I just have to wonder how different my life would have been if I gave up during the first day on that dreaded locked door puzzle in the morgue.

Mafia is a good game, the plot isn't juvenile like the GTAs, it has some well designed levels, the Freeride Extreme mode offer a lot of fun, challenging and original missions and it catches the feel of the 30s very well, even if there are a few things that are out of place, like turbo cars and the like.

But it's an extremely linear game where you simply chain one mission after the other until the game is done because the sandbox mode offer very little to do other than driving, kill gangsters/cops and taxi fares and as soon you are out of ammo/health you must drive 7 minutes, often more, to reach a weapon shop/hospital since that's the only way to refill those.

In my book the GTAs remain the best, with Vice City at the top of the list with its great atmosphere, great soundtrack, lot of freedom and lot of things to do. Plus it has this subtle little thing, also present in the MI games, that make it so you don't know anything about Vice City until you watch Scarface and Miami Vice up 'til half of the third seasons, because it is to those what Spaceballs is to Star Wars and scifi movies.

Also, it doesn't have this maniac humor GTA characters have. Like main character being a really nice guy and smiling and wasting 600 people in very gory way while being symphatetic and supposedly humorous.

I somehow prefer playing a nice and smiling guy while wasting 600 people in a very gory way, than play a very serious character who confess, in a serious tone, his crimes to a cop while these crimes include several hundreds, if not thousand, of roadkills and pedestrians killed in cold blood, and expect a lighter sentence. It would be like a Hitman game where 47 gets remorses for accidentaly killing an innocent, while the player could stabs every bodyguards, cops and civilians in the face during the previous mission. I somehow prefer protagonist with blank personality in sandbox games, this way the main character may be a maniac, but at least, it's a consistent maniac.

I got it in my head to do a sort of Double Dragon clone/remake, with the premise being a schoolgirl trying to get her backpack back from a street thug, and by the end of the game she ends up bringing down the whole crime organization. I envision a look/feel of a Hong Kong kung-fu movie and heavy inspiration by the Kill Bill movies.

"Crouching Hello Kitty fighting stance!"

Awwwww, man, that idea is awesome!

This is quite what I meant when I said that each game that didn't have interface problems nor bugs featured advanced scripting to me. Of course, games such as Linus Brockman(sp?) are astounding and even I, who don't usually care for those things, marvelled at the scripting genius. However, the puzzles ruined the impression. Anyway, while 1337 scripting skills should be appreciated, their lack should not deprive otherwise excellent games of a full blue cup score.

Yes, but there is also more than just making things slick. It seems to me that we are in front of yet another aspect, with music originality and interface originality, where we'd like to have some elements of this aspect to count a bit more than others, so that slicks games don't fail even if they don't feature complicated arcade sequence, non-linearity or something like LEC's iMuse. I'm also wondering if it's a good idea. It seems to me that if we do this treatment for every games (music ain't original but it fits, interface ain't original but it's easy to use, game doesn't have incredibly complex scripting but it's slick), we'll simply reward mediocre games, or penalize awe-inspiring detailed games, or do both.

It's an interesting discussion. With every new post I seems to discover another little, subtle and insignificant details that can make a game better or worst.

BTW, how are going the discussions inside the panel? If it ain't too much asking and if progress were made, could we get a little update to see the improved outline to the rating document, or are there too many elements that are still being debated and aren't fixed in cement yet?

To me, any game that runs smoothly and without any bugs features advanced scripting.

Then how would you define games that features special graphical effects, intuitive, uninterupted soundtrack that change as the events change (like the LEC's iMuse), arcade sequence, combat sequence, RPG elements, non-linearity, open ended gameplay and other similar features that aren't in most adventure games?

It looks like the rating system will have to go through various changes as time goes by just like AGS itself. Im sure that the people that rate the games will understand that changes will have to be made to the rules of rating due to things like the advancements made to ags. People should not worry about the ratings I'm sure that the people who are rating will do a good job and who knows if the ratings are rerevised then maybe the game will score higher who knows.
If you feel that your game should have a higher rating try looking thru your game again to see what you can improve.

I too begins to think the system will have to be upgraded every years as our standards will improve. There are plenty of things that can affect the rating but that aren't mainstream yet, like the use of speech pack or special features like I listed above. Maybe while games are rated, some games that present elements that can't be judged correctly yet, could be given a special tag, so the next time we upgrade the rating system to include the elements that became more mainstream, these games could be rated a second, third or fourth time to take into account the new standards. Games that fare too well in certain categories (like scoring 6 cups out of 5 if given the chance for example), could be easily enlisted for a second or third review and be rated again in case we decide to increase the total number of cups as the our standards increase.

Regarding unique GUI, I have no idea how rating the music will be done, but I suggest that it get rated the same way music will be rated. GUI should be rated for their precision, intuitivity, ease to understand, ease to use and good look, but originality should be considered as a bonus. A badly implemented unique GUI shouldn't pass merely because it is an unique GUI, and a well implemented GUI shouldn't sink because it's the same Sierra or LEC GUI we've seen so often.

2 other search categories or tags that could be mentionned next to the cup rating:
The "experimental" tag, so the games that don't fare very well in graphics, music, etc, but present something unique and new that wasn't seen before and that could please to a niche (META and Into The Light come to my mind here, BogEasy3D too even if it fared a bit better) could be labeled as such so their uniqueness would not be penalized by their other aspects.

Another one, similar to the one above, the "underdog" tag. For the games like Larry Vales, which doesn't fare very well graphically, musically, and use the default GUI, but that still deserve to be played.

However, if people need to do something to stay interested, the database entries with download link that aren't working, and the joke games can be dealt with right now in the meantime that we all or that a majority of us agree on a system.

Nobody said this was a democratic process. A system of rating that pleases everybody is more or less an impossibility. Either all 3000+ members of this community have a say in the process, or it goes to a group of regular, longtime members to sort out.

There's no room for "Well every member doesn't need to have a say, but I think that...", which will only prove to slow the job at hand to a crawl and mire it in petty forum politics which may arise out of someboby's perceived dissatisfaction with the process.

I, for one, would like to see some action now, rather than sit through everybody's two cents on the subject.

Alright, alright.

*Blueskirt adds "concensus" to the list of word he'll never ever use again.

I did not say (or meant to say) it had to please everybody, I said it had to please a majority, 50%+1. Chances are we'll be able to see the rating system in action before it's on. If the rating system is really close to be finalized, then nevermind what I say, but if it were to take another bunch days and if in the meantime we can find another system that could be a good or better alternative, I fail to see how one additionnal day to rate the games with the second system, 2 additionnal days to do some corrections and up to 4 days to vote (depending of who between everyone who can apply to the panel, the panel or the moderators get the power to decide on which system to use), will considerably delay the process.

I too personally trust our moderators to decide what is the best for us and I don't have anything against the one proposed, even if I'd like to see it in action. I'd just rather avoid seeing this topic brought up again 7 years from now because we were too impatients to wait 7 more days when the rating system was created. Things are easier to correct right now than they will be when people will have invested years to rate all those games.

Snarky, the speed issue isn't primarily because it has to be done before a certain date, it's because the project is more likely to die out if it turns into a very lengthy process.

Also, this current interest is a reaction to my initiative. There have been plenty of discussions in the past, but they never really had any fruitful outcome. Sure, people have done a great job uploading and mirroring various catalogues of games (Scotch among others), but the official AGS database has only slowly deteriorated.
To make things happen you sometimes need more decisive actions and less talk.

I'm not against input (I'm very willing to give up my initial ideas about the rating - and have evidently done so in the designated forum to give room for better ideas) but if every single member of this community should be able to bring the progress to a halt just because they envision how their favourite game will be rated low, nothing will happen. After all, this is CJ's personal site, not the UN.

All that will happen is that the games database will have more working links, better classifications and a rating. People should be very happy that there exist a group who will deal with this.

It might just be me, but this sound a tiny little bit like "Let's marry now because in a month we may not love each other anymore."

If you want to rush the project, feel free to do so, but for a project of such proportion, I too think that it would be better to take the time to debate the thing openly, propose new ideas, reach a concensus or find a system that will please nearly everyone or at least a big majority and get the thing done correctly after the first try, rather than rush everything, end up with a system that only please an handful, get people involved and in a few years from now have a similar discussion like we're having right now to replace the rating system with another one, which would only piss off all the persons who invested energies in this proposed rating system.

It is also important that we reach a system that will convince as many persons as possible because it's these persons who'll propose their help and time to play and rate each games, and like some persons pointed earlier, if they don't like the rating system they won't be interested in joining the project.

So I say, let's not skip steps and let's openly propose 2 or 3 models and throw ideas to optimize those models. Then we could find a dozen of games of all kind and all backgrounds and review them with each of these models to see if they work well, see their strength, weakness and correct them if we need to, then we'll choose or vote for one model which will be the final one and get started with it. Who know, the original model could have been the best one all along, but if we don't compare it to the others, we'll never know for sure. It ain't the UN, but let's think of it more like presidential election. In the end one system will be chosen over the other by a majority and it's this system that will be used. If there must absolutly have one system, let's at least try them all, and give every systems their chance before picking one that we'll use for years.

However, if people need to do something to stay interested, the database entries with download link that aren't working, and the joke games can be dealt with right now in the meantime that we all or that a majority of us agree on a system.