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Ah, l'amour....

My absolute favorite game of all time, at least of all the time when I was a wee laddie, had to be, beyond the shadow of a doubt, ROADWAR 2000.

Of course, it's already 6 years past 2000 and we haven't yet experienced any kind of nuclear holocaust or anything like that, but still...

I remember, as a kid, playing this game that by today's standards would be looked at as one of THE MOST BORING THINGS IN EXISTENCE with a group of friends gathered around me.

"Call the gang the "weiner poopoodoodoo heads!" "Attack Chicago!" "Kill the Reborners and take over their town!" It was great. Today, probably the only thing that anyone might find acceptable in this game is the fact that you can name your gang "Disco" and then lose quickly, so the game tells you "Disco is dead, and so are you..."

Not me...

I love this game. However, every version of it I find is the suck. I mean, the total suck. I still own all my old C-64 games, although not the C-64, so I have no compulsions whatsoever about owning emulated copies of the game. However, every emulated copy I found crashed and sucked. Or, vice versa.... you know... Sucked and crashed... Maybe it crashed because it sucked, although I'm pretty sure one reason it sucked is because it crashed.

I was recently looking for it again, after a failed attempt to do a remake of it in Game Maker, and found a version of it that looked absolutely pimptacular... although it was for Mac OS. Mouse support and everything... Oh, how I longed for that, but there was no way I could get it to even unzip to my computer, never mind get it working.

Does anyone else know of this game, like this game, and maybe have a working copy they could hook me up with, or know of a remake?

::edit:: BTW, I know of the version on Underdogs for IBM. It crashes the first time you talk to a scientist, and is really old and, somehow, even crappier than the C64 version.

For some reason, after having made my objects in Photoshop CS in PNG format and importing them into my game, I found that there was some strange distortion on them in the inventory screen, and sometimes on the actual room. However, when an object is pulled out of the inventory for use in the world, it is perfect. It seems as though the colors are becoming big squares in the background of the item. What have I done wrong, and is it something I can fix by the OROW deadline?

Another question to anyone in charge of OROW who might wander in here: do I even have a chance of winning if I submit the game with that problem?

I've been wasting most of my time trying to get this to work, and so I'm VERY behind on my OROW game. Hopefully somebody will be able to give me a hand.

I only want ONE cursor, a "use" cursor... and then the inventory cursor (when trying to use an inventory item in the world). All attempts (and there have been many) to do this have failed. I can't for the life of me figure out what I'm doing wrong. Can anyone who knows how to do this simply tell me? I'm sorry for what seems like it should be so easy... I remember in my last game cursors gave me a problem too... When I tried to make new cursors I copied the exact same settings and scripts out of the ones I needed, and they still didn't work until I just imported a new sprite over the old one... This time, though, I don't want right-clicking to change the cursor... I ONLY want the one, and then an inventory cursor if you select an item from your inventory.

This is the single funniest thing I think I've EVER seen in my life...

http://media.putfile.com/Kimmel-1yr-of-Unnecessary-Censorship

SPLIT FROM AGS AWARDS FYC THREAD

Speaking of the Wiki (sorry, this is kind of out of place, and maybe I just haven't been looking hard enough...)

Why isn't there some kind of direct link to the Wiki? The other day I had to look through the general forums until I found the post entitled "AGS Wiki: Seen this yet?" and get the link from there. It should be very easy to find, considering what it is, from the main page. And, BTW: I haven't looked for it, since the web address is easy to remember, but is there a direct link to americangirlscouts somewhere easy to find, too?

Hmmm. This might be difficult...

I am trying to figure out if there is a way to make a panoramic view of a room, where I make a room that is very long and very tall, and the edges on the left and right sides are connected so the character can actually TURN AROUND, look up, look down.... Almost like first person, with the ability to rotate the camera on its x and y axes, but not actually move through the world.

I am trying to come up with a way to have a "second-person" game, where the character is visible onscreen and you look over his shoulder. When you click "use" on a door, the character would walk away from the camera toward the door and enter it.

I'm not sure what type of control scheme I'm going to be using yet. This might be impossible, especially the part about having the background picture loop once you've looked too far to one side. If that's the case, I'll scrap this idea and come up with some other way to do it. However, as it will be a horror game, I think this would really add to the experience...

Attention: This is NOT how I draw! I use a Wacom tablet and Dogwaffle and normally spend a couple hours on my pics... This is a mockup I did at work (hence I don't have my tablet or my lappy w/ Dogwaffle on it) with MSPaint in a couple minutes after sketching out the pose on a piece of scrap paper. I just had to get that out of the way...



What I'm looking for here isn't critique on the art, but on the pose. I want a much more dynamic pose, but I can't think of how to do it. I wanted maybe to drop the camera angle a bit down and to the right so the face and the steering wheel were closer together in the panel. Does anyone have any ideas, or is this pose okay?

EDIT: The idea, by the way, is that he's driving fast and he has something heavy on his mind... I want the camera angle to help get this idea across...

EDIT 2: BTW, this is just a quick sketch... He won't be naked in the final draft

I just got this in the body of an email sent from a Ms. Liz Titor (apparently mother of internet phenomenon and time-traveller, John Titor)...

Does it actually mean something, or what? Is there a secret code hidden in this, or did someone just smoke too much pot last night?



Hello timothy.hendricks@bigfoot.com, (This is not my email adress, or even close to it... )


In this new season, new hoty stuff has come up.

THE PARENT arrived back on the scene. She gave me a tape by Dr. Laura Meyers
from UCLA. I listened to that tape eight times. I listened over and over and
heard the same thing again and again. Ms. Meyers said, 'These kids may need to
hear a word many times (perhaps 72 times) before they ever say a word. A
computer can be patient and say it the same way every time.' Now I understood. I
was not patient enough. I did not allow the student to hear the words over and
over. I was interrupting their learning by interjecting, when they were totally
engrossed in what they were doing. I was asking questions they were not ready to
answer. They were just learning language. They didn't have the answers yet..

Do those gardners regret walking carefully?.

today i need to goto the store. .

I made my original programs available to the teachers around me. They were
getting the same kind of success. I finally decided I had to make my noun
program available to teachers and parents around the nation. We have been
working on it for over 2 years. Many of you have waited patiently. Thank you for
your patience..

EDWARDS: ... more negative attacks -- aren't you sick of it?.

The musicians have missed playing since a few days ago..

I could go on and on, but I won't. We have many programs the children love. But
I would give them ALL up to keep my BORING noun program. I thank THE PARENT
daily for her insight..

That farmer is not missing reading..

That flight attendant is not missing playing below the bridge at this exact
moment..

She has disliked cooking for a day or two..

10. Ninety six bottles of beer, three a's, three b's, one c, two d's, thirty six
e's, three f's, two g's, seven h's, eleven i's, one j, one k, six l's, one m,
twenty n's, twelve o's, one p, one q, six are's, twenty eight s's, nineteen t's,
seven v's, seven w's, six x's, and five y's on the wall..

lets goto mcdonalds soon. we can get a hamburger or too..

Those janitors aren't missing sleeping right now..

Lawrence had already liked dancing..

Some store clerks like working in London..

Have you practiced jumping yet?.

Get back to you later,
Dr. Brown



WTF?? Does this mean something in an alien language suspiciously close to English?

I have been trying to break into the world of DOING ANY FRIGGIN' THING for quite some time. Any friggin' thing of actual use or interest. At present, I work in a hotel. The most interesting thing that happened this week was that I found a dead body that had been locked in a room for three days.

Actually, wait, that is kind of interesting.

Anyway, I'm fed up with working just so some rich cracksmoker can get richer. I want to do something with my life besides help people cheat on their wives and have a place to commit suicide. I'm sick of watching drunken morons coming in and making sweet, passionate monkey love to potted plants in my lobby, or possibly just drop a deuce in them... or in my elevator... Or on the hood of a police car in front of the hotel, like what happened three months ago.

Anyway, here is where the topic of this thread comes into play:

I have just been asked by Silven Publishing to submit an extended RPG proposal for a new system of horror pen and paper RPG after having sent them a query letter. Here's my two big questions:

1) Is there anyone that knows anything about Silven Publishing? I have two books published, per exemplis, but I used PublishAmerica, which is a shite publisher, and not even my local McDonalds will advertise my books because of how crappy the publisher is. I certainly could use a publisher that will actually do something with my books besides attempted rectal insertion, and then send me a dollar bill on publishing and a check for two dollars and eighteen cents every six months...

2) Is there anyone that likes Chill or Call of Cthulhu or any other horror RPG's... or just RPG's in general... That would like to help me out? I'm not sure what manner of help I could use right now, but writing an entire rulebook for an RPG is a daunting task, and is normally done by a crew of more than one guy sitting at a desk in a hotel.

Well, danke, everyone that spent time reading this.

 I was just thinking the other day about the worst nightmare I ever had. When I was younger, my older brother used to read me The Hobbit and the Chronicles of Narnia (which, by the way, are so unrelated to this nightmare that it makes little sense as to why I'd even mention it). One night, after the council of Thorin and the seige of the elven armies of Mirkwood and the men of the Lake on Lonely Mountain, I fell asleep, and my brother fell asleep in a chair beside me with the book over his face.

Ã,  Ã, I dreamed that night that a giant mouth... No physical form outside of just the lips, teeth, etc. (in other words, it wasn't a monster with a big mouth, it was simply a giant, disembodied mouth, which if you think about it violates so many laws of nature it isn't funny) came floating through the night sky, backed by the biggest and most threatening Sanguine moon I've ever beheld. We lived in the second floor of a duplex in Newport, Rhode Island, which is an old colonial town, so the architecture in the background created a kind of Peter-Pan meets Lovecraft feel to the dream.

Ã,  In this dream, the mouth bit through the wall, digesting the matter it collected in it's rather ordinary, un-fanged teeth through an esophagus and into a stomach which existed in some displaced alternate dimension. It then proceded to devour my brother (who was completely oblivious due to the Hobbit remaining perched on his face) in two hellaciously painful-looking bites. Chasing me around the room, it finally enveloped me in its jaws, and when the lips had closed around me, locking me in a shadowy enclave which seemed to exist outside of space and time, I awoke.

Ã,  Ã, Looking back on this, it is actually rather humorous, especially when I put the added flair of my creative writing skills to it... However, I remember it was, at the time, one of the most horrendous nightmares I've had in my life. While the purpose of this little bit of blatherschytation was to amuse and entertain, since such a story could hardly frighten anyone NOT actually experiencing it, I was wondering if anyone else here had similar childhood terrors... amusing now but horrible at the time.

Service droid ROB-29 comes online one day with an awful headache and a system full of errors. Within an hour, the entire universe will be changed irreperably, and it is up to Robbie to make sure these changes do not continue.

In the distant future, one small service droid will learn what it means to be human.

He will learn what it means to love...

And he will learn the true maning of Evil...

A game made in AGS by Esper, music by Nikolas, and backgrounds by (the as-of-yet unintroduced) Ravean. If anyone would like to help with character sprites, it would be great, but if not, the game will still get made.

Here are a couple early screenies from ROBBIE-29. I actually made these BG's as mock-ups, and used them here since the real ones aren't ready yet. Also note the lack of tinting... It'll happen, it just hadn't yet as of these screenies.

Robbie at the crash site on the planet Yuggoth.


Robbie investigating the warp core chamber, mid-breach.


and the character sprite:

Finally. After four years of being told it was going to be released, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is available for XBox, although not for PC as it was originally intended.

I figured I would tell everyone about this game, because on the whole, no one knows about it. Even the guy at my local EB Games, who knows everything video game related, knew nothing about it.

CoC:DCotE is a role-playing game, an adventure game... But wrapped in the shell of a FPS. There is actually little S'ing involved, since the creatures that roam the dark Lovecraftian realms of CoC can't be harmed by armies, never mind any manner of gun you may collect in the game. What distinguishes the game is that the only reason they used first person was for deeper immersion. Horror just isn't that scary when you aren't the person going through it. There is no target reticule. There is no HUD. You want to know how badly you're hurt? Look down at yourself. You want to know how many bullets are left in your revolver? Open the chamber. You want to get a piece of inventory? Fiddle around in your pockets... (but not too deeply... Don't want to be accused of playing pocket pool)

The other thing that makes the game absolutely fantastic is your ability to go mad. They were thinking they were going to have a problem with this because Nintendo, like the asshats they are, decided to COPYRIGHT sanity systems (not the particular sanity system used in Eternal Darkness... no... Sanity Systems in general. I say Microsoft should copyright the health meter...) but the sanity system in Call of Cthulhu is completely different than anything else. You can hear voices, you can see things that aren't there (as a matter of fact, in the first section of the game, look in all the windows on the first floor of the buildings in the city... You don't need to be crazy to see things then!)... Your character will sometimes start seeing innocent civilians as monsters, and he might even try firing off a few shots that you didn't command him to. As a matter of fact, if things are going really badly for you, put your gun away, because the main character has been known to spontaneously commit suicide...

Based on the story "Shadow Over Innsmouth" by H.P. Lovecraft, Dark Corners of the Earth is definitely worth a look. The graphics are a little dated (since they were supposed to release this game four years ago) but the whole reason I'm even giving this review is because this community generally cares more about story than graphics... But they still are good, even if outdated.

www.callofcthulhu.com

Does anyone remember how in the King's Quests you could walk up a hill on the horizon, and then down the other side? Is there any way to do that in AGS, and if so, can you maintain continuous scaling?

Hi, all. I'm making the character creation process for the next ESPER game, and was wondering if anyone could throw some ideas at me, or tell me what they think of what I have so far.

It will be very unlike most "pen and paper" RPG character creation processes. The game, for those of you who didn't play Town on the Edge of Darkness (shame on you!) is about a group called ESPER (Extraordinary Supernatural Phenomena Explored and Revealed) that investigates claims of the paranormal and occult and ritual crimes. It takes place in modern times.

At first, the player will be asked which they find most important: BODY, MIND, or SPIRIT.
Once they choose, they then must select the most important trait of that attribute.

BODY: Strength (physical power), Agility (manual dexterity and bodily flexibility) or Constitution (Stamina, resilience).

MIND: Intellect (ability to store information), Wisdom (ability to think for oneself, perception), or Psyche (mental or psionic abilities).

SPIRIT: Faith (belief that luck comes from a higher power), Luck (belief that luck comes from Fate), and Will (ability to resist attacks on the mind or spirit).

Once you have chosen, you will be given a class description. The classes are (note: this is one place where I need some help. You'll notice a couple are empty)-

Ã,  Ã, Strength: Hunter- those who attempt to fight the darkness with physical weapons.
Ã,  Ã, Agility: I think something rogueish, but I don't know how to fit it in to this type of game.
Ã,  Ã, Constitution: I have no idea.
Ã,  Ã, Intellect: Investigator- a detective who uses his mind to outwit the unknown
Ã,  Ã, Wisdom: Funker- a "code word" for someone who practices magick.
Ã,  Ã, Psyche: Psionicist: Someone who uses psionic powers.
Ã,  Ã, Faith: Outcast-someone who, once a member of the clergy, has left their religion to battle the unknown. A modern version of the D&D "cleric."
Ã,  Ã, Luck: Skeptic-one who doesn't believe in the unknown, but is thrust unwillingly into battle against it. Although they have no special talents, a skeptic is ruled by luck, and so they get bonuses to almost everything they do.
Ã,  Ã, Will: Victim- one who has been thrust into the thick of evil and is only trying to get out. They, like skeptics, have no special talents, but they can resist the effects of magick, Psi, or evil more than anyone else.

So, what do you think? I would like to make this into a pen and paper RPG along the same vein as Call of Cthulhu, Chill, or the White Wolf World of Darkness games, but I also want to apply these ideas to a computer game. What do you all think, and does anyone have anything to add?

I'm sorry... This might not be worth an entire topic, but I found true glory.

While not a big fan of the movie "Van Helsing" (although I watched it simply because I am a big fan of Abraham Van Helsing, the original from Bram Stoker's novel) the music entitled "Journey To Transylvania" is one of the best pieces I've EVER heard. If you don't know it by name, which probably none of you do, it's the piece that starts out with some Omen music (chanting) and then goes into Flamenco-style guitar. I was blown away. It kinda reminded me of another "Omen" style piece, Gratua Cuun from Star Wars: Republic Commando.

So, as not to waste an entire topic, how about some other all-time favorite themesongs, or maybe themesongs you can think of that are so good as to be unworthy of the movie or game they are played in?

I made a character view, a 200X200 png. When I imported it into AGS, into a 640x480 room, it was almost as big as the entire screen. When I reduced the resolution to the smallest configuration, there was no change in the character's size. The character I made for my last game was 150x100 at 640x480 res, and he was much too small, but 50x100 pixels should not have made such a difference. Anyone know any reason for this??

I love Nostalgic things... Anything that brings me back to the time before my rather troubled childhood began to actually bloom out of control... Back to the days when I was more innocent, and could actually enjoy things such as "Thundercats," "He-Man," "She-Ra," "The Real Ghostbusters," "Transformers," and "G.I. Joe."

However, what I wanted to delve into in this topic was the more "out of the way" nostalgic items. We recently had a discussion that went into the Inhumanoids, which is very cult/unknown. Here are some things that not everybody might know about...

1. Kazi no Tani no Naushika: The first anime I ever saw, before Disney got their hands on it and made it Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (I think the translated title as I saw it back in the eighties was Warriors of the Wind, which wasn't a very good title since the movie was all about pacifism). Does anyone remember having watched this back in the day? When I recently rented it from Netflix and heard Patrick Stewart say "The toxic jungle has claimed yet another victim" rather than some unknown eighties voice actor saying "Another family... lost... to the toxic jungle," I knew I was in for a good experience, but not the nostalgic one I was hoping for.

2. Grendel Grendel Grendel!!! An Australian cartoon based on Beowulf, but focusing more on Grendel, the evil ogre who turns out to be a lonely, depressed little boy. I remember feeling very sorry for him when Beowulf rips his arm off. I recently found used copies of this on Amazon.com for 120 USD.

3. The Wizard... I think it was called, about a Simon-like game that was really a test to see if kids were smart enough to be carried away by aliens.

4. Cloak and Dagger, about secret messages hidden in Atari games.

Some others that you might remember, maybe not as little known as the above but nostalgic nonetheless:
The Goonies... The Flight of the Navigator... The Dungeons and Dragons cartoon... The Snorks... FooFur... Heathcliff (which, for some reason, I heard the themesong to at my local GameStop the other day)... Mickey's Christmas Carol, which was followed immediately by The Legend of Sleepy Hollow... The Wind in the Willows... The Plague Dogs... Watership Down....

Can anybody else think of any others, or do any of these have "special meanings" for you?

I did a search for several things, including ".dat," which is how I figured this would work. I found several similar topics, but none that helped me at all, or were about exactly what I want to do.

I want to make an AGS game where you can make your character (think QFG, only more in-depth) and use him in the game, then, at the end of the game, you could export his stats, possessions, etc. for use in another game. I can't find out how to do this. I'm sure it's possible, because I could program that to happen in QBasic (and once did, actually)...

This is the closest I could find to what I'm talking about: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=12409.0

It still isn't exactly what I want, plus Migs never explains exactly how to do it...

Hey! I just wanted to show some of the backgrounds for the new game I have coming out soon: ROBBIE-29, the story of service droid ROB-E29.
Ã,  Ã, One day, E29 senses a malfunction in his circuits and goes to see the Chief Engineer aboard the U.I.F. Maelstrom about it. Unable to express his problem verbally, she overlooks it and sends him off to do some chores, one of which is to clean up in the room of the strange visitor the ship picked up on Thoth two weeks ago. Robbie collects a sample of a strange biomass unlike anything in the ship's computers, and when the entire crew of the ship is shortly wiped out and the strange guest goes missing, Robbie starts a quest in which he will learn what it is to be human, what it means to love, and the meaning of true Evil.

The following are some BG's for critiquing. Realize that I'm not the best BG artist, and while stylistic and artistic critiquing (including repairs and paintovers!!!) are welcome, what I really want to know is, will the combination of that plot lne and these BG's make a respectable game?

EDITS: Fixed the Chairs on the Bridge and eased up the harsh black lines to a lighter color.

The Engineering Room


The Ship's Bridge


The Engine Chamber


The "Poop Chute"


The Supply Closet, just so you can see what the main character will look like (that's not him, but it's another service droid just like him)

Since AGS is full of developers, I was wondering what everyone did when they first knew they wanted to produce games. What was the very first project you ever undertook, whether or not you completed it, and does it even exist anymore?

I remember back in the day, when I was only seven years old, tapping away at my keyboard on my Commodore 64 (the keyboard on a Commodore 64 WAS the Commodore 64) typing out simple BASIC to make a game like ZORK, the first video game I ever played. I believe I called it Castle Quest, and it was a simple eight-room castle adventure with no real puzzles... just exploration. I followed it up shortly afterward with a choose-your-own-adventure style Fantastic Four game which featured a pretty big maze in Doctor Doom's dungeon, and then made the first game I ever gave away to someone when I was ten: an expanded version of Castle Quest with some puzzles and simple spells.

I also remember lying to my friend Rusty telling him I made the game Mondu's Fight Palace (Tongue of the Fatman) with a lightpen... But all of that was lost when my parents sold my Commodore and accompanying 1521 floppy diskette drive at an auction. For a lousy 20 bucks, I might add.

So, what was the first ever game or first couple games you ever made? What started what is at this point a seemingly lifelong obsession? And is it still around, lying dormant and forgotten on some untravelled sector of your hard drive?