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Looks pretty good.. that's a lot of animation, at least for amaetur/independet
where'd you get that so-called "sprite editor"?

I started on this game  a long while ago, but then I came up with a better idea so I put off my original project for this.

I think sometimes new ideas really inspire you to make a totally different game instead of adding those ideas to the original game. Personally, it's because I don't want to mess with my original game and add those ideas but instead I want to experiment with those ideas by themselves before I think of including them in my original game.

Yep, I'm working on a new game, and I'v put off my original game idea because I think this new game will satisfy me a lot more.  

The college thing to do is not shave. I don't mind not shaving, except that my pimples seem to be getting worse when I don't, so I have to. Plus, I can't grow anythign decend other than larry vales  like chops. Why am I still 20 and have pimples? that just makes me angry

Oh, and If you can't grow anything decent (like you're a young teen) don't try groing anything. I remember back when I had a thin little mustache, and it was mostly because my dad said someting about not shaving or something. anywho, I got tired of it, and shaved it off... because it looked like crap.

This doesn't have to do with the topic specifically, but it's just a thought. How come the setup for acdos is still the same? I shouldn't it be updated a little bit with at least "Adventure Game Studio" instead of "Adventure Creator"? and what features in AGS's winsetup do not work on dos anyway?

convert it with rad video tools  available at http://www.radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm
it's free

I have redhat 8 installed on a tiny little hard drive from an older computer I had, so I use it ocassionally but not for an useful purpose other than messing with it. I did make the linux runtime of the Granny Zombiekiller (http://netmonkey.cellosoft.com/granny/) teaser demo, tho, with it.

Get FILZIP. It's free, unlike the very annoying winzip - http://www.filzip.com/

it can uncompress anything including rar, and zip (of course).

* eVOLVE bows... Great features though Chris, we're alll impressed!

WE? I'm not.

[SUBTEXT AND SYMBOLISM IN ADVENTURE GAMES]

Maybe I should try.

This next topic is SUBTEXT AND SYMBOLISM IN ADVENTURE GAMES

What are your favourite examples from the commercial games?

How about examples of your own?

My favourite is the gun exchange between Manny and Meche in Grim Fandango:

"(Hands over the gun) Here. What's a relationship without trust, right?"

"True, a relationship without trust is like a gun without a bullet!"

but adventure games already have this. I think we should concentrate more on gameplay other than anything else because this is really why people are not playing them...  I'm still not too sure why; maybe they're not game enough .

Right. I'm shit. I can't remember if Broken Sword 3 has been released yet.

it'll be released on october 10 of this year!!11

I'm looking forward to it.. I'm pretty interested on its new adventure refining ways.

What an intersting game. I liked the ending

I had that PC Gamer with the "greatest games never made" and I remember WarCraft adventures. I was looking forward to it...

I still don't understand how the whole dynamic thing works. what's the difference between static and dynamic in for dummies terms? Also, I noticed that in the 2.55's setup window said 2.4.etc....

Isn't that what MacOS X is based upon? I guess we're getting one step closer to the mac version of AGS! or something

FreeBSD? geeze, why does unix have to come in som many flavors.. now I have to release a freebsd version? I should release my games in unix and linux package... unix h4x0rs will just have to deal with the bigger download

well, the parser thing was just a thought... yeah, back in the 90s I had no clue how to play LSL other than typing open door because I barely knew anything about the english language.

About the interface being invisble... well it really depends on what you want to accomplish. The closest cousins to adventure games such as RPGs or even RTS (well, they have similar point+click interfaces) or even god sims (except for black and white) have a very visible interface; after all, you're just playing a game. You'll always have a visible interface, because sometime you're going to have to access the inventory or save your game, or change the sound volume, so there's no reason why to hide it as long as it's not intrusive.

So, from what I'm reading so far puzzles need to be less dumb and pointless, and a lot less rigid and more flexible. With this flexiblity, tho, there's the chance of going back to the old adventure games. for example, on King's quest 1 you have to find the three lost items, but that's really all you know. then you have to walk around and find out where they are, and you're totally clueless of what to do, therefore losing your attention span. Yeah, I haven't finished King's Quest I mainly because I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. With zak mckracken and maniac mansion it was the similar style because you could basicly go anywhere and do stuff. Of course, this has changed over the years but to a super-rigid linear style that still has the same old I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing style here and there. So maybe players need more direction on what to do,... but that's all I've got. I have no idea how to accomplish this without making the game too stupid.

Maybe we should start working on some set of general rules we can use for future adventure games; we could call it something like "the adventure game code" (idea stolen from the comic book code )

I can speak spanish and english. In fact, spanish is my first language. I also took two years of french in high school so je parle un peu de francais mais non tres bien.

The interface.
I mean, it's so stupid!
I click "use" on a furnace and I have no idea whether the protagonist will open it, push it, sit on it, piss on it, try to eat it...
Of course, there are GUIs with more detailed actions, but still it's nothing compared to the Richness of Interactive Fiction. In IF you really have to think, not just click everywhere with every item from your inventory.
The solution could lie in the text input, like it was done in Police Quest II, but then we would need a better parser, something along the lines of TADS combined with AGS.

Another thing is combining inventory items, which I find ridiculous mostly because I usually have no idea what the protagonist is trying to build.
NO, dear Longest-Journey-designers, the player didn't use clamp on the duck as a result of 5-hour brain-storming and planning, it just happened during the act of every-clicking-on-everything-with-everything-of-my-inventory, Ma!
Again, text parser to the rescue.

I'm starting to think fondly about graphic adventures with text parser mostly because TADS and HUGO proved that a flexible parser with which you don't need to "guess verb" is possible. And as it IS easier to become involved when some nifty graphics are on the screen, the combination seems perfect... hm?

I thought about it, and I think I have this fun little idea.. there's three cursor modes, walk, action, and inventory. when you do action a text box appears and you can type the action you want like look, open, close, pick up, look at,  use, push, pull... and so on.

There's also the whole linearlity aspect. Most adventure games are quite linear, where in order to solve a puzzle (well, maybe we can blame puzzles again) you have to get a specific object and then do this and that. sure, you can do the main puzzles in any order, like say the three trials in monkey island, but in the end you're going to end up doing pretty much the same sequence of things in order to complete the puzzle when you replay the game. If you're playing other genres, say...  warcraft, you have to complete a certain quiest, but the way you build the units and strategize is totally different each time you play it. you can try several things, specially if you've improved.

Maybe adventure games lack a degree of skill too... like for example, take the console adventure game (that's what they classify it as) Splinter Cell. You have to have some skill to climb walls, walk slowly, and stuff, but mainly you have to move around in the dark and sneak around, and you still have a lot of freedom to what you can do. Yeah, I guess this would be kind of hard to do in 2d, but 3d is the mainstream now, so there are new directions.

And back to linearity, definitely adventure games are too linear. the game ends the same way you play every time, although there are some exceptions. For example you have Maniac Mansion where if you did different things you got totally different endings, which I won't go in detail so I won't spoil anyone. My roomate was just playing Riven (the slide show advneture game, you know?) and he was showing me all the different endings you could run into...

Definitely things adventure games should not have is clicking in the wrong place and then daying. there is not fun in that; that's just torture. Dying is ok in the case you're in some sword fight or gun battle, but other than that I hate the "you walked off the cliff; you die."  This is like having a car racing game and when you hint one of the bumps you go out and blow up and lose the whole championship. that would suck.

Ultimately, I think I'm getting to the point that adventure games should be more free than ever, and not so rigid and linear. Oh, and also double clicking and running is pretty cool, you need some of that as well!

people always just default to things like "Lucasarts only cares about TEHMONEY!!" when you've never once ever ever set foot in the offices or been there for any meeting. Where are you people getting this information? I'd love to know.

Well, every company cares about the money. I believe that the real reason why full throttle 2 was cancelled is that they didn't want to put more money into fixing the game. it would probably cost too much. If money wans't involved,then they could have easily worked on the game for a lot longer.

Ok, I don't have any problem with Ron and Tim leaving lec. in fact; ron was out of there 11 years ago, and lucasarts made at least 6 great adventure games since then, where only 2 of them were fully commanded by tim (DOTT was co-produced by him and dave grossman).

But recently, LucasArts hasn't been progressing on the adventure side; all they want to do is come up with sequels with a whole bunch of stuff the fans want to see. Kind of sounds like those prequels about a galaxy far, far away.... which suck because of that. I don't wanna be pleased with injokes and sequels. I want original adventure games that push the boundaries of previous adventure games made.

So, you love SQIII, Rode