Topics

[AGS Awards]

Welcome to the AGS Awards, the event where the you, the player, choose the best games of the year!

Step # 0 - play them games!
You have some time to play games made in 2016. Do it!
Step # 1 - nomination time!
Select games you deem worthy in each category!
Step # 2 - vote, folks!
Pick from the nominees and we get a winner!
Step # 3 - party!
Big party to celebrate the winners!


Awards are over

The full result including all nominated games can be found on the wiki page.

Best Game Created with AGS
Kathy Rain by Clifftop Games

Best Freeware Game Created with AGS
Toffee Trouble in Creamville by Miez and cat

Best Writing
Shardlight by Wadjet Eye Games

Best Puzzles
Kathy Rain by Clifftop Games

Best Character
Kathy Rain (Kathy Rain)

Best Short Game
Toffee Trouble in Creamville by Miez and cat

Best Demo
The Journey of Iesir Demo by Dream Cauldron

Best Non Adventure Game Created with AGS
Until I Have You by Dualnames

Best Gameplay
Until I Have You by Dualnames

Best Background Art
Shardlight by Wadjet Eye Games

Best Character Art
Kathy Rain by Clifftop Games

Best Animation
Shardlight by Wadjet Eye Games

Best Programming
Until I Have You by Dualnames

Best Music and Sound
Kathy Rain by Clifftop Games

Best Voice Work
Kathy Rain by Clifftop Games



Best Innovation
Gurok (for improving and extending the AGS scripting language)

Lifetime Achievement
Crimson Wizard



Party like it's 1990 in this thread!

[Are you a developer?Did you make any games with AGS this year?Wait no more, add them to the AGS database now! It's grand, it's free, it provides a platform to promote your games and makes your games eligible for the AGS Awards 2016.Yes, you heard correctly - just add your game to the AGS database now and it will be eligible for the most important awards of the AGS community. Wouldn't it be great to see your game in the list of award winning games? No matter if adventure or non-adventure, free or commercial or even just a demo. Every game created with AGS can be added.Wait no longer and get your free database entry here http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/add/ - now with up to three screenshots included!]

Hello AGS community!

Another year of awesome games will soon come to an end.

So, here is a quick reminder (imagine some cheesy music in the background):


Are you a developer?
Did you make any games with AGS this year?

Wait no more, add them to the AGS database now! It's grand, it's free, it provides a platform to promote your games and makes your games eligible for the AGS Awards 2016.
Yes, you heard correctly - just add your game to the AGS database now and it will be eligible for the most important awards of the AGS community. Wouldn't it be great to see your game in the list of award winning games? No matter if adventure or non-adventure, free or commercial or even just a demo. Every game created with AGS can be added.

Wait no longer and get your free database entry here http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/add/ - now with up to three screenshots included!



Aehm... well, yes, just add it.
Thanks.

[Toffee Trouble in Creamville]

Miez and I proudly present the sweetest game of this MAGS:

Toffee Trouble in Creamville

[imgzoom]http://cat.agser.me/games/ToffeeTrouble/screenshot.png[/imgzoom]


When the mayor leaves town and Toffee is in charge of Creamville, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

Get the game here!


Winner of MAGS April 2016 "Natural Disasters".

Update 17.12.2016
There is a new version with German translation and a few fixes.

When downloading a game in Chrome where there is a direct zip download behind it (no mediafire hosting etc), there is a warning shown for the download:

xxx is not commonly downloaded and could be dangerous.

There is an option to still keep the download, but it is very scary for players. The warning does not show up in Firefox.

[Update 28.02.2016:]

Oh du lieber Augustin

The city is plagued by Black Death. Can you, Augustin the bagpiper, give the people some comfort in these hard times?


[imgzoom]http://cat.agser.me/games/Augustin/screenshot.png[/imgzoom]



"Oh du lieber Augustin" ("Oh you dear Augustin") is a popular Viennese folk song that is said to originate from the Great Plague in 1679. This game tells (very loosely) the story of its creation.

Creamy: Gamedesign, art and animation
cat: Gamedesign, writing and coding
raeff: Music and testing
Eric Matyas: Free music track "Hazy Disorientation"


Made for MAGS January 2016

Download here

Update 28.02.2016: The game now features a French translation by Creamy and a German translation by cat. Choose the desired language in the winsetup.exe

Update 08.03.2016: The game was featured in Adventure Gamer's Following Freeware!

Hi!
Not sure if this belongs to beginner or advanced, please move if needed.

I have several music snippets. When I press a play button, I want to have all MIDI files played one after another. I do this with AudioClip.Play for the first and AudioClip.PlayQueued for the rest. This works perfectly fine.

Now I want to have a button to stop the playback. On button click I tried to call Stop() for all AudioChannels in System.AudioChannels. However, this only stops the currently played snipped and automatically starts the next queued one. Is there a possibility to somehow clear the queue?

I managed to stop the playback of all items by playing an empty audio with the same priority when the stop button is clicked.

But is there a better solution than this? Or this reliable enough?

Last weekend we finished playing Life Is Strange (i.e. episode 5). We were 3 people playing on the XBox with a friend operating the controls and making decisions together.

Have you played the game?
How did you like it?
How did you decide?

WARNING, HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD, DON'T READ UNLESS YOU HAVE ALREADY FINISHED THE GAME!

Spoiler

I think it was a great game. The time-rewind mechanic worked pretty well for most of the game. The puzzles were a mixed bunch with several stupid fetch quests, but the dialog puzzles were great. Also the puzzles that required rewinding after going somewhere or taking an item were often very clever. The voice acting was great and worked well with the facial expressions. I did like the graphic style a lot, I think it fitted the atmosphere.
I also loved that you could explore so much stuff, read random posters and flyers, talk to characters, the pictures at the gallery...

About the decisions:
We sacrificed Chloe. We thought she was annoying throughout the game, so it was an easy decision.
We tried to set up Warren with Brooks, which sadly didn't work.
We saved Kate.

[close]

An uncontrollable pest plagues a village and the only one who can help is Cornelius Cat's Pest Control.
Take control of the finger puppets and help to solve the mystery!



Get the game here!

This game was made for OROW 2015 and features

• Hand-crafted finger puppets and backgrounds
• Cling film animated water
• A cute and hillarious story

The resolution of the game is 1280x720. If you encounter any display problems, please run winsetup.exe and choose other setting options.

On a side note: Yeah, feels good to finally release a game again... it's been quite a while.

I think I'm almost at the end but now I'm stuck.

Spoiler

I have fed all creatures except the "Panhandler". I just have my suit and nails left in the inventory. I can't find the board the guy in the bar with the bird skeleton is talking about.

[close]

Hi!

I have a weird problem in my game: sometimes playing an audio stops the background music.
I have narrowed down WHEN it happens, but I don't know why or how I can solve the problem.

After an intro screen, the player enters the main room. There I start the music in room_FirstLoad()

Code: ags

aKanji.Play(eAudioPriorityNormal, eRepeat);

Which works as expected. Later in the game, I play a sound when looking at an inventory item

Code: ags

aRubberDuck.Play();

This sometimes stops the background music and it doesn't start again.
The weirdest thing is, when this happens. Because it all depends on the first intro screen.
The full room script:

Code: ags

function room_AfterFadeIn()
{
   StartCutscene(eSkipESCOnly);   
   Wait(6 * GetGameSpeed());
   EndCutscene();
   aStart.Stop();
   player.ChangeRoom(1);
}

function room_Load()
{
   gInventory.Visible = false;
   aStart.Play(eAudioPriorityNormal, eOnce);
}

When I cancel the screen with ESC, everything is ok. But when I wait for the cutscene to finish, the aRubberDuck.Play() will stop the music later in the game.

What I intend to do is showing the intro screen and play the sound and only navigate to the main screen when the music has finished. When the user presses ESC, the game should stop the sound and switch to the main screen immediately.

My guess is, that aStart.Stop causes some internal error when the audio is not playing anymore, but I'm not sure.

Is my description clear? I know it sounds very confusing.

Is there a workaround for this problem?

Edit: I'm using AGS 3.3.3

[The game has been released!]

The game has been released!


Originally created for OROW 8, this is going to be the enhanced version of the game.

Kanji are Chinese characters that are used to write the Japanese language. There are several thousands of them. All Japanese children have to learn about 2000 kanji at school. Gakusei (pronounced "gucksay") means student.

Help our little girl to finish her homework by finding the six required Kanji.



Once you have found the characters, it is YOUR task to write them in her notebook.
An animation shows the correct writing stroke by stroke. Can you write them in the correct order?



The game uses Besh's MOUSE GESTURE SYSTEM script module that I enhanced a bit to support kanji.

06/01/2015 Testers found

04/01/2015 Testers needed!
I'm looking for testers who want to test both, the adventure as well as the drawing part of this game. Ideally, there would be one person who knows Japanese and a few who don't.

[Definite attendees]

Hello, fellow Mitteneers!

Mittens is going to take place in Portugal in this villa http://www.sol-domus.com/sintra-manor-house/ from July 19th till July 26th.

Definite attendees
Disco (July 17th)
cat (July 19th 16:55 - 26th 16:45)
raeff (July 19th 16:55 - 26th 16:45)
AGA (July 19th 12:35 - 26th 20:05)
Arj0n (July 19th 13:45 - 26th 19:55)
Tamara (July 19th 13:45 - 26th 19:55)
Snarky (July 19th 11:55 - 26th 20:00)
Esseb (July 19th 10:10 - 26th 16:25)
MillsJROSS (July 19th 09:45 - 26th 12:35)
Andail (2014-07-21, 7.05 pm - 2014-07-25 7:05 am)
CJ (July 22nd 16:35 - 26th 16:10)
CJ's better half
violetnotpurple (July 17th)
DutchMarco (21:40)

Shown interest
bicilotti
LimpingFish
Radiant
Mods
Grundislav
Grim
Ascovel
Chicky
Miez

==== old text for archive ====

Now is the time of the year, where many companies require their employees to plan their vacation days. So let's talk about next Mittens!

Last year we decided that next Mittens should be in a somewhat warmer place and we were talking about Croatia or Malta, also Portugal was mentioned as far as I remember.

What are your preferred times and locations this year?

AGA made a doodle poll, so vote for your favourite house:
http://doodle.com/gmpc8yqfpqkv3v9g

New poll: http://www.doodle.com/b2h88i2dxhu96hnb

Yesterday I played a very buggy demo and I recently played a commercial game with obvious quirks.

So my question is for the game developers and testers here, commercial or non-commercial:

How much time do you plan for beta testing? When you have a release date, how long before it do you start with testing? Do you also do alpha testing? Do you have different testers for alpha and beta testing? What is your development/testing time ratio?
A software is never free of bugs, so when do you draw the line and release the game anyway?

I'm curious, because I get the feeling that some people here take testing very seriously while others seem to be happy by just releasing a buggy product and wait for the players to do the testing.

The Butler

Spoiler

The doctor and the brother are dead, I think I tried all objects. Do I need to somehow open the closet?

[close]

[Welcome to OROW 8!]

Welcome to OROW 8!


I'm excited to announce that we have 15 entries!

In alphabetical order:

Betrayal - Bulbapuck and Mathias Niemand
Draconis! - Radiant and Fizzii
Educating Adventures of Girl and Rabbit - Pablo and qptain Nemo
Fly Paper - Limping Fish
Jack Trekker - Sunny Penguin and Alpy
Kanji Gakusei - cat and raeff
MI - calicoreverie
One Dungeon One Week - Khris
Sinking - WHAM and Ghost
Tattooroom - squame
The Addict - Adeel S. Ahmed and Handsfree
The butler didn't do it - Tzach and Noa
The Crystal Ball - oraxon
The Reaper - ThreeOhFour
The Rebirth - Grundislav


And here are the top 5 of every category:

Best Game

Educating Adventures of Girl and Rabbit - Pablo and qptain Nemo
The Rebirth - Grundislav
The Reaper - ThreeOhFour
MI - calicoreverie
Jack Trekker - Sunny Penguin and Alpy


Best Graphics

The Reaper - ThreeOhFour
The Rebirth - Grundislav
The Crystal Ball - oraxon
Educating Adventures of Girl and Rabbit - Pablo and qptain Nemo
Tattooroom - squame


Best Concept / Writing

Educating Adventures of Girl and Rabbit - Pablo and qptain Nemo
The Rebirth - Grundislav
The Reaper - ThreeOhFour
The Crystal Ball - oraxon
The butler didn't do it - Tzach and Noa


Best Sound / Music Design

MI - calicoreverie
The Rebirth - Grundislav
The Reaper - ThreeOhFour
The butler didn't do it - Tzach and Noa
Kanji Gakusei - cat and raeff


Best Programming / Coding

One Dungeon One Week - Khris
Sinking - WHAM and Ghost
Draconis! - Radiant and Fizzii
Betrayal - Bulbapuck and Mathias Niemand
MI - calicoreverie

Congratulations to all participants and thanks for voting!

DOWNLOAD THE GAMES HERE!

====================================================

What is OROW, you may ask. Well, here is a short definition, copied and adapted from an old thread:

The OROW competition is a very simple competition were you make a game that is one room big in just one week. This competition has in the past proven what the members of this community are capable of, and it will be interesting to see what comes of this.

Rules:
    -Entries must be made using AGS.
    -Entries should have only one playable room/location. *)
    -Entries may have cut scenes, menus or limited controlled sequences outside the main room.
    -Entries must not use any premade content except published AGS templates, modules and plugins.
    -Entries must be submitted anonymously, more on that below.
    -You may get one other person to help you with your game (e.g. music, sounds). Maximum teamsize is two!

*) This means a room in real-life definition, not an AGS room. So feel free to do close-ups, different views of the same room, scrolling rooms, outdoor scenes,... The main purpose of this rule is to keep it small and simple. Making a game in one week is an enormous task so starting small is a good way to actually finish it in time. We are not too strict about this rule, though.

Anonymous submission
An important aspect in this competition is the anonymity. This means that you cannot share any information about your entry. Nor can your game contain your name. This is because the game should be voted on by its own merits. Please also not include your name in the game info, as this can be seen in the file info.

You submit the game by sending me a link via PM. I will then upload it to another site.

OROW starts on Monday, 1st of July 00:00 GMT and ends Sunday, 7th of July 23:59 GMT.
You may start thinking about your story before that date, but you are not allowed to produce anything yet (i.e. no graphics, coding, music...)

The winner will be decided by public vote once the competition ends. There will be 5 categories: BEST GAME, GRAPHICS, CONCEPT/WRITING, SOUND/MUSIC DESIGN, PROGRAMMING/CODING.

To support testing of the next AGS version, participants are encouraged to use the latest Beta which can be found here. Of course, this is purely optional.

Absolutely no information about your game should be shared with anyone until the competition and voting has ended. Please reply to this post if you intend to take part, but don't give any idea of what your game will be about.

In case you need some inspiration try this: http://videogamena.me/ (thanks Miez!)

Have fun!

Hi!

For the most recent background blitz I made this picture. I tried a completely new style and would like to get some C&C on how to improve it.



I know the composition is boring but I was making this BG with playability in mind. I really wanted to have a scrolling room for this. That's also why the perspective is off on several places.

Cheers, cat

Hi!

I'm helping someone with a custom dialog GUI that should have a semi-transparent background. This is a part of the code I use

Code: AGS

function dialog_options_render(DialogOptionsRenderingInfo *info)
{
  // Clear the area
  info.Surface.Clear();

  // Draw border
    ...

  // Fill transparent background
  
  DynamicSprite * ds = DynamicSprite.Create(info.Surface.Width, info.Surface.Height, true);
  DrawingSurface * sf = ds.GetDrawingSurface();
  sf.DrawingColor = Game.GetColorFromRGB(0, 0, 0);
  sf.DrawRectangle(1, 1, info.Surface.Width - 2, info.Surface.Height - 2);
  info.Surface.DrawImage(0, 0, ds.Graphic, 50);
  sf.Release();
  ds.Delete();

// Render all the options that are enabled
    ...
}

However, all I get are different shades of purple, depending on the transparency value. Only if I use 0 I get a fully black and if I use 100 I get a fully transparent background. The text and border I draw are shown correctly.
Am I doing something wrong or is this an AGS bug?

Thanks, cat

Hi!

I'm currently working on a German translation that needs some special characters.
I copied one of the wfn files in the game folder and edited it with Radiant's font editor. But now I don't know how I can get the font back into AGS. When I try to import it, I get an error message "Unable to import the font. Not a valid SCI font file".

How do I get the changed font back into my project?

Spoiler

Where do I find bacon? I have all other ingrediences.

[close]

[cat]

After several years of production I proudly present

Molly the lamb has run away! Can you help shepherd Angus to find her?

Meet quirky villagers, collect items kleptomanically and enjoy colorful graphics during your quest. This game features a simple left/right click interface and a fluffy white sheep GUI.

This game is suited for children as well as adults and can be completed in less than an hour, so give it a try!


Oh no, where is Molly?


Can she help you with your mission?

This game is brought to you by:

cat Story, graphics, coding
HandsFree Music, testing
Tabata Testing, proofreading
Crimson Wizard Testing
Arj0n Testing
LimpingFish Proofreading

Reviews
Adventure Gamers - Following Freeware
German review on asamakabino.de
Skullkid3 plays the first 15 min on Youtube

Music
A sample of the soundtrack made by HandsFree
Pub
Fair

This game is playable in English and German.

Hints and Tips thread: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=47427

Download here!