Messages

[So I've issued a bugfix;]

Found the bug: If you first dismount the rotor, then solve the saw minigame, then the rotor will start turning again after you return from the safe view. I hadn't found this when testing because I always did things the other way round: First get the saw, then dismount the rotor.

So I've issued a bugfix; get the new version via the game database or directly on itch.io

[functions]

If you take a “typical” AGS adventure program then I'd say that most of the heavywork is done in functions such as Character.Say. So if the aim is in speeding up the engine, I'd start looking for bottlenecks in these functions first, and then in the way that calls are handled.

Most probably the engine will be bored stiff most of the time waiting for the d*mn user to move their mouse around or click it again at long last.

I'd also plead for getting at actual data as a first step. Collect some typical games and some “problematical” games and get heat maps.

As far as I know, the engine misuses the "high bits" of memory locations in some circumstances to store additional information there (e.g., for linking purposes). They evidently don't believe that even all 32 bits of the address space are needed. So do we have proof that doubling the memory bits will actually buy actual game writers or actual gamers some coffee?

[do]

Since Covid has scuppered our hopes of running an in-person AdventureX in 2021, we're holding another narrative game jam starting on Nov 13th!

By the bye … you could even have a game jam in those years where you do have an in-person convention. 

It would offer lots of possibilites. You could jam after the convention and use the convention to advertise the jam. Or conversely, jam before the convention and use the convention to present the jam games in some way.

[know]

BTW. You have infinite guesses to break the safe code. So here's one way to do it:

Spoiler

First, find out what digits are part of the secret combination. Enter "11111". If a "1" features n times in the solution, this will yield n green lights.
Continue with "22222" and so on until you know what digits are part of the solution.

Now let's assume you know that "1" is part of the solution, but "9" is NOT part of the solution. Enter "19999", "91999", "99199", etc. and find out in exactly what places the "1" needs to be (the respective guesses will yield a green light).
Continue with the next digit that you know is part of the solution, but now you only need to test for the places that you know don't contain a "1".

[close]

[should]

Spoiler

I have the saw and the spork. After the ventilator is removed from the box, it starts turning again and I can't interact with it any more. 

[close]

Hi Creamy, thanks for the feedback! Concerning the ventilator, I'm not sure at what point you are:

Spoiler

The ventilator has a covering grid that is affixed with two screws. Yes, you can and should unscrew the covering grid using the spork. That's will unmount the covering grid (it'll disappear). However, the rotor beneath the covering grid will continue to turn.

If Ian tries to INTERACT with the ventilator at this point, he should say something about "I want to spare my fingers.". If Ian EXAMINES the ventilator at this point, he'll exclaim that the blades of the turning rotor are razor-sharp; no wonder that had protected the rotor with a covering grid. 

[close]

Is that so far the point you have reached?

Spoiler

So now Ian's next job is to stop the rotor from turning in some way. Ian's fingers won't do it, so perhaps jam something robust into the rotor blades to stop them spinning? You can try the saw but it's too dangerous for this job (but it will come into play later on). 

[close]

Concerning the siren: You're right, it's very annoying. I've already slated an update where the siren will only wail throughout the first announcement. From the second announcement onwards, it'll start at the beginning of the announcement but only wail three times and then stop.

Concerning the mastermind game: I'll look at the code and see whether I can find a bug. What the algorithm should do is the following:

• Let's say the secret combination is 57743 and the guess is 77123
• See what digits are correct in the correct position: The "7" is correct in position #2 and the "3" is correct in position #5.
• Thus award two green lights.
• Ignore the correct digits in the correct position, i.e., temporarily cross them out in the secret combination and in the guess: The rest of the secret combination is 5x74x and the rest of the guess is 7x12x.
• There's another "7" that is part of the guess, but this "7" is in the wrong position. It should be in position #3 but is in position #1.
• Thus award one amber light. Temporarily cross out the "7" in the secret combination and in the guess, yielding 5xx4x and xx12x.
• No further matches can be made.
• As a result: Two green lights, one amber light (the rest are red lights)

When a digit occurs more than once in the secret combination, you can get an amber light and a green light for this digit, as in the example above.

[not]

So here's a conundrum that I've pondered on for a long time:

Riddles, by necessity, Halt. The. Story.

Take “Thinker”: Thinker wakes up, rises from that crate and leaves his bunker to explore the world. So he goes through that blast door, and … but no, no, no, he cannot go through that blast door, at least not that easily: A long string of puzzles needs to be solved. And that halts the story, very badly.

For instance, the battery puzzle: At a certain point, a certain battery needs to be charged. So what now? There's nothing readily apparent in the room to charge the battery with. So the player will search the room for some sort of a charging device, potentially taking hours and hours, clicking on random spots ever more frustratedly. And throughout all that search they might think: “Now let me out of that damn blast door already so that I can carry on with the story!”

What makes this worse for the player is that they don't want to expend much effort on that puzzle: They consider it as a pesky obstruction that stops them from getting on to the “good parts” of the game. If only they were through the blast door yet. And that damn bunker isn't all that nice to look at, anyway.

So yes, I see that.

But I'm stumped for alternatives. The main selling point of a narrative game, as opposed to, e.g., a book or a film, is that the player can engage with the story. And that by needs means expending mental effort. What can I do to engage the player's mind other than riddle-posing? Because the players that hate riddles seem to hate mini-games, too, especially tile-moving games. “Don't waste my time, let me get at the ‘good parts’ already.” And chore-type tasks, such as making the player fed-ex things from one part of the game world to the other, tidy up rooms, play “Where's Waldo” etc., are time-wasters, too, that stop them from getting to the “good parts”.

So just what am I supposed to do with the players in order to give them story enjoyment for ready consumption?

Hi folks,

Remember Thinker?

One thing he's particularly bad at is Atmosphere (Rank #27 of 31, i.e., fourth-last place).
He wakes up in a philosophical mood in a kind of bunker, but players seemingly can't relate.
The background music doesn't seem to help any.

He seems to have kind of a forgettable characterization, too (#19).


So how do you improve on that.

So, after all this time, @heltenjon found a game bug.
Time for an update!
Load the new version through the AGS Game directory

[at all]

The trouble with all this is, I can't relate to this kind of buying process at all .

I have been presented lists of just “capsules”, e.g., in the IndieGala newsletters. Lists that look like this:

Spoiler

[close]

In all cases, without fail, I've immediately left the shop, i.e., the presenting page or newsletter.

I CAN NOT deal with a list of pictures without context, optionally adorned with "x % off". I need completely different information in order to judge whether I want to buy a game. I feel that I'm in for a complete waste of my time, by needing to click on All. Those. Damn. Pics. One. By. One. In. Order. To. Get. At. Founded. Information., so I shy away and leave.

I do have got a largish portfolio of games in my Steam account, of course, but I've never arrived at any of those games through a “browsing” process as described. In each case, I'd always been pointed to some specific Steam page through other means, and I went to that page in order to buy, when I was already  sold. For instance, I'm on the Internet (!) homepage of some game, find it cool, see a "Buy it on Steam" type button and then switch to the Steam page to buy.

I don't think I've ever "wishlisted" any game in all my life, and I wouldn't see any advantage to it from the prospect's perspective, either. I'll buy it when I'm ready, irrespective of release drama or sales timelines. I don't waste my time with kitchen fridge lists of what I “wish”, and I don't think that's any of Valve's business to peek their inquisitive nose into, thank you plenty.

Yes, there are sales. But let's be honest and look past the artificial drama. Games have their specific price at each phase of the selling lifetime, and when a “good” price has once been made, it'll soon come back, or an even better one.

Have I become that old? 

In another talk by the same author Chris Zukowski (1 hour long), they point out that typical Steam shoppers go through eight steps to arrive at a verdict about an unknown Steam game, a process that takes the shopper roughly just 1½ minutes. The following steps are particularly interesting (at t =11:58 and following):

1. The shoppers are presented a list of potentially interesting games; in that list, each game is only represented by its capsule. That list is what they need to choose their game from.

2. They hover their mouse over the capsule of those games that they consider interesting. This triggers an animation that shows the first four pics of the game page in sequence, repeatedly.

3. If still interested at that point, they click through. That's the first point in time when they will even see the actual game page.

4. When on the actual game page, they basically first inspect the game on the basis of the same assets that they used before seeing the game page (tags, pics, capsule). Only then do they work with items that are only on the game page (short description, user reviews)

The main way that the game writer can influence the browsing list is by tagging their game correctly, so that Steam will include their game on appropriate pages. So from the vantage point of the game writer, that would mean adhering to the following priorities:
1. Give the game optimal tags
2. Design an optimal capsule
3. See to it that the first four pics are optimal, and that the optimal pics are in places #1 to #4.

Surprisingly, it would seem that the actual game page itself is rather unimportant in comparison.

That's the Steam view (if the talk author is right). Are Gamejolt and itch any different?

[you]

So what do you think about the points in that talk (above)? How does this apply to Point & Click adventures, and in which aspects?

Do you react to unknown games that are presented to you in a similar way as the talk author supposes?

Are Point & Click authors a special crowd that has different tastes than (pure) Point & Click players?

In what way would this specifically apply to game jams, i.e., do jam game players select those games first whose capsule is most enticing, and in what way would that capsule need to be enticing?

If you've recently looked at game jams in order to find games to play, what games made you want to look at them first?

Are Steam, Gamejolt and itch different markets as concerns the likes of the users? Do games need to be presented in different ways in order to please their respective audiences?

[Put real effort into the packaging]

As for your question, I was just watching a video recently that touched on it:
[GDC 30-minute Steam page makeovers]

This is a 30-minute talk, and so I'm going summarize what I perceive to be the main points.

General:
Put real effort into the packaging as a proof that you've put real effort into developing the game itself.

• There's a lot of low-quality competition on Steam: You need to rise above it. It's about demonstrating that your game has higher quality than the rest.
• Buyers want to ensure that the game is high-quality before they have taken the effort of playing the actual game itself.
• At this stage, they can only judge the quality of your game by proxy of the quality of its packaging (shop page). If that page looks as though the studio has put effort into it, then buyers take it as a signal that the studio has put effort into developing the game itself.

Capsule / cover image / thumbnail:
It should feature concept art, not a game screenshot.

• A game screenshot with a title slapped on can be realized without any effort, so buyers will take a screenshot capsule as signal that effort hasn't been expended on the shop page, by proxy hasn't been expended on the game itself.
• Even and especially if your game is in low-res, you should not feature low-res art on the capsule.
  
  
  
  • A lot of games have been pushed to the market that used low-res in order to skimp on design and art; it's easier and faster to design low-res art than high-res.
  • So lots of buyers associate low-res games with low-quality games.
  • That makes the low resolution of a pic in and of itself a signal for poor quality.
  • Putting this potentially off-putting signal into the extra conspicuous capsule is a bad idea.

Shop page:

• Pack your shop page with graphical assets (screenshots, animated gifs) rather than text
  
  
  
  • Select the assets with the aim of telling as much about the game as possible (atmosphere, genre, gameplay).
  • Only put into words what can't be inferred through the assets.
  • Specifically, let the assets tell about atmosphere and gameplay.
• Your screenshots should differ significantly from one another â€" they shouldn't look similar. Otherwise, buyers might conclude that the game builds on very few assets that have been expensively bought and then re-used everywhere to the point of boring the player.
  
  
  
  • Different environments, different visual effects
  • Show in-game menus, as a proxy to proving that the game been given effort even in the "unimportant" parts
  • It's better to have fewer screenshots than repeating screenshots
• Make it abundantly clear what the genre of your game is, so that it can't possibly be misunderstood.
  
  
  
  • People know what game genres they (dis-) like and use this as their first sorting criterion. If they misunderstand the game's genre at first glance, you will not get a second chance to explain it.
  • If there are tropes that all the contemporary games in your genre use then hop on the bandwagon and use those tropes, too. (E.g., all the building games feature capsules featuring a hammer, so if you do a building game then your capsule needs to feature a hammer, too.)


• Demonstrate on the shop page what the gamers actually do in the game.  Your copy text needs to use verbs that point out the player actions. Especially clarify:
  
  
  
  • What happens when you click on the specific buttons of your input device
  • What kind of death does your game feature (do you die, is it permanent etc.)
  • What kind of time does your game feature (real-time, turn based, real-world clock)

(I'm not going to summarize the subjects "dead games", "Steam algorithm", and "genre mix" here, cf. the talk for that.)

[that]

Aside from his (quite impractical, if you ask me) suggestion that you should pay someone $500-1000 to do it for you,

The trouble with that approach is that it defeats the whole point of the exercise from the get-go. You might equally say, “To get a really good Point & Click adventure, pay a professional to write one for you.”

No.

Instead, get me access to the books, articles, and courses that the professional studied in order to make themselves professional.

I'm not sure ... I have misgivings that if I do offer a variant of a thinking hat, that will still be "too little" in their eyes. Probably because they can't bring themselves to put up with the graphics I can provide.

It's a lost cause. I simply can't cater to the casual game crowd.

[GOAL]

To please that crowd, a hard game would probably have to include something ridiculous like a Walkthrough-mode, where Ian could solve all the problems on his own when the player just clicked on the appropriate hotspot. It would be a little like watching MacGyver. (This is not a serious suggestion, more of a lamentation.)

Wait a minute: This might, to the contrary, be An Idea.

All the casual games feature a Hint system: You click on a “Hint hat” or something that is always conveniently located at the left or right bottom screen corner, and then a ray highlights exactly the thing that you need to click on next. Usually the hat needs to “recharge” before it will yield the next hint.

I don't know how they do this exactly, but the kits for casual games probably have something built in that provides that functionality in a convenient way (probably in combination with modules for the dozen minigames that seem to feature in aaaall the casual games aaaall the time).

Now let's suppose we have a separate file with GOALs and DESCRIPTIONs of how to reach them.

• A GOAL would be an identifier that you can choose freely.
• A DESCRIPTION would say:  "In order to reach GOAL, if CONDITIONS are met, you RIGHTCLICK|LEFTCLICK on OBJECT|HOTSPOT|CHARACTER|INVITEM."
• A CONDITION could be any valid AGS expression that only uses goal names and global variables/attributes (e.g., oPitchfork.Clickable)

This should be enough for a plugin to automatically generate a function, called, e.g., "room_ShowHint()", that looks around and sees what is currently true and then calls "HintRightClickObj(Object *)", "HintLeftClickObj(Object *)", "HintRightClickIitem(InventoryItem *)", etc., as the case may be.

The functions "HintRightClickObj()", etc., would need to be provided by the game coder and point out that the user needs to do that respective thing next (by highlighting that thing with a ray on an overlay or something). Example or default code might be provided for that. These functions go into GlobalScript() or some script module.

The Hint hat is on a GUI, and when it is clicked, it dispatches a "CallRoomScript(99)". Each room that uses the plugin would need to have

Code: ags

function on_call(script) 
{ 
    if (script == 99) 
        room_ShowHint(); 
}

at the bottom of the room file, and the generated "room_ShowHint()" function in front of that block of code. (The plugin could see to that.)

As a result, whenever the Hint hat is clicked on, the user would get exact visual feedback on what to do next.

Coders could ask on the start screen whether the player wants "expert" mode or "casual" mode; if they want "expert" mode then the GUI that features the Hint hat is simply made invisible.

something like this:
https://dam1976.home.xs4all.nl/AGS/FotRv3a.png

I get a Page 404 error?

Hi community,

itch describes the "cover image" as follows: “[It] is used whenever itch.io wants to link to your project from another part of the site.”
They say that it can be 315x250 or larger, but in particular on screen, I've seen it as tiny as 243x192. That's not a lot of room:


Gamejolt has a similar concept called "thumbnail": “Think of [it] as [your game's] box cover if it was sold off a shelf in a store ... It should attract attention and give an impression of what the game is like … should be more than just a title floating on a blank background.”

So how do you come up with a good pic for that purpose?

Take “Flight from the robots” as an example. It's in essence a one-roomer. I've got empty playing space, a bed bunk, some technical gizmos, a cabinet and a round table. Ian, of course, and a kind of robot that is only featured in a cutscene. That's not much to work with but not so untypical for the games I seem to write. How am I supposed to arrive at anything spectacular â€" a “box cover” â€" from that? 

How do you do it?
Any ideas?

Here are some hints and tips from the “Emergency saw” minigame.

So what's the solution?

Spoiler

There isn't any fixed solution. It's determined dynamically when you first look at the puzzle screen and changes from game to game.

[close]

It's a five-symbol code; the symbols needn't be different from each other.
Note that you have infinite guesses to find the solution. The guesses and their feedback on the right side of the screen simply scroll down.

What do the feedback diodes mean?

Spoiler

Each green diode stands for a symbol of your guess that is in its correct position.
Ignoring those symbols, then each amber diode stands for a symbol of your guess that is part of the solution (but is not in the right position).
The red diodes fill up the line.

[close]

I can't make heads or tails of the puzzle. So is there any way to shortcut it?

Spoiler

When you're looking on your puzzle screen, save your game.
Look into your savegame folder (under Windows 10, this will be C:\Users\YourUsername\Saved Games\Flight from the robots). There's a file “safe_combination.bmp” in there that contains the solution to the minigame.

[close]

[right]

Here's a Hints and Tips thread for “Flight from the robots”.

Let's start off with a general one: Don't try to examine things with the left mouse button. You'll make Ian interact with them instead which will usually turn out to be something different than you had in mind. (Use the right mouse button to examine things.)

[very shortly]

Hello folks,

I'd like to proudly present:

Flight from the Robots

A sci-fi Point & Click adventure.

It's the year 2154. The climate catastrophe has happened. Life on earth has become too hot, so humanity has had to move underground. The robots have become autonomous. All work for humans is exclusively provided by the robots' anonymous organization “Cinorq”. The few human rebels that exist don't stand a chance against the robot's superiority.

Chapter 1
Meet Ian, a human that is actively collaborating with the robots and helping them to increase their technological advantage.He's been promised a train ticket to the robots' HQ and a promotion. But very shortly, he's going to change his mind about the robots being on his side. And a tomato incident is going to play an important role.

Ian needs your help.

He needs to to stop the police bots from entering through his front door, and then find a different way than that door to leave the flat and escape.

All new: Chapter 2
Ian has escaped out of his flat by the breadth of a hair. All the bots are on the lookout for him, and he's standing there pantsless â€" literally.

He's cornered behind a hedge on the Recreation Deck and must outwit a gardening robot to get away.
And he still wants to catch his train to the robots' HQ â€" he's a fugitive now and can't enter it normally. so he must find another way.

Help Ian escape!
Without your determined struggle, Ian won't get out of his plight. He will need

• your ingenuity,
• your good eye for visual clues,
• your perseverance,
• and your logical thinking “out of the box” (and yes, boxes of sorts play a role in this adventure, too!).

Download the game here:

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2 (free on itch.io for Linux (untested) and Windows)