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I'd advise you to start by building a barebones version of the game first, using placeholders and sketches. This will allow you to quickly test if a puzzle works and is fun, and you can get a basic playthrough of your entire game up and running very quickly. Then afterwards all you have to do is fill it up with graphics and animations. This approach also makes making changes to the design easier, as you won't have to redraw an entire room or all the walkcycles if you decide to change something.

Puzzle Agent is pretty good too, and ofcourse Broken Sword 1 and 2. Furthermore I hear 1112 is quite good but I've never tried it. And Superbrothers Sword & Sworcery is sorta an adventure game too I guess, more akin to Zelda, but you're doing yourself a disservice if you haven't played it.

Excellent, good luck with your game

Heh thanks. I uploaded everything I used for the poster here. It's all in layers in the PSD so you can mess with it.
The font I used is called Can Can de Bois, and yeah those little thingamajigs are part of the font, they replace the capital letters. I also included two custom photoshop brushes with stains that I sampled from. If you need any further help with it let me know.

I don't really need any credit, but thanks anyway Just be sure to mention the guy who made the font, it's part of the usage license.

I don't know what time period the orphanage is from, but maybe try embracing the advertising style of that era. Presumably when they put those posters up they were only slightly creepy and meant more to inspire good behavior among its residents.

A little something I've been tinkering with off-and-on for a while.

Awesome! Yes sorry I should have specified, all buttons are on the same GUI. And your first solution works like a charm Cheers!

Hey guys, quick question - is there a way to loop through a list of GUI buttons?
I wanna change one property on 18 different buttons at once, and instead of copy-pasting like a chump I thought maybe there's a more efficient way, maybe constructing a while-loop akin to:

int number = 1;
while (number < 18) {
 Button[number].TextColor = 15;
 number += 1;
}

Except I don't think the Button type supports that kind of modularity. I looked at using the button ID but I couldn't figure out how to use that. Might have missed something in the manual, I'm not too knowledgeable about the tricky stuff like structs, arrays and pointers.

SayBackground is a non-blocking command, which means that while the first line is being spoken, the script keeps on going forward in the meantime. When it then stumbles across another line to be spoken, it 'overrides' the previous one. And so it will skip ahead through all the SayBackground lines until only the last one is left. So yeah, that's where that module comes in.

I know what you mean Dom, as a senior in college now I'm right there with you. Luckily the state finances a lot here in Holland, so I'm more worried about how I'm gonna cope when that well runs dry after I graduate. Though I already have a job lined up at the place I work part-time as an illustrator now, but sometimes I worry about what I'll do in the off-chance that's going to fall through. One thing I know for sure is I'm never going back to being a supermarket clerk or a mailman though...

But all in all I can vouch for much of the aforementioned advice. Luckily I'm not a big spender to start with, and I don't really drink (or smoke etc), so I don't have to worry about that. I'm perfectly fine too with eating a tub of potato salad and a burger for dinner all week (much to the chagrin of my mom obviously), something that can really keep the costs down. Cooking for yourself could also save you some, but when I get home at 6 I usually just wanna eat and not spend another 20 minutes in the kitchen. So in that regard I'd say when shopping don't go with the brands you know, find the cheapest ones (that still taste good ofcourse), it can save you a lot. I drink a lot of coke for instance, and instead of the 1.20 I'd pay for pepsi, I get the inhouse brand which is 0.30 and tastes almost as good.

Roommates are also really nice to have. Aside from the solidarity and the free companionship in lieu of sacrificing your social life, you can split costs for internet and utilities, which really helps.

Another thing I'd advise you is to keep close track of your budget. I use AceBudget for iPhone, where you can enter all your expenses and income. Especially at the start it's a good method to chart how much you generally spend on certain things, so you can plan accordingly. I have a budget for anything related to food, and a budget for incidental purchases, which might include tickets to a concert or videogame purchases. Then I can see exactly how much I can spend that month while still breaking even, so to speak.

Good luck man and let us know how it goes!

Are you on a desktop or a laptop?

[cName.FaceDirection("DownRight");]

Here's the code I use to do FaceDirection stuff, written as an extender function, if anyone's interested.

Add at the top of the Globalscript.asc:

Code: ags

function FaceDirection(this Character*, String dir) {
  if (dir=="Down") this.FaceLocation(this.x, this.y+10, eBlock);
  else if (dir=="Left") this.FaceLocation(this.x-10, this.y, eBlock);
  else if (dir=="Right") this.FaceLocation(this.x+10, this.y, eBlock);
  else if (dir=="Up") this.FaceLocation(this.x, this.y-10, eBlock);
  else if (dir=="DownRight") this.FaceLocation(this.x+10, this.y+10, eBlock);
  else if (dir=="UpRight") this.FaceLocation(this.x+10, this.y-10, eBlock);
  else if (dir=="DownLeft") this.FaceLocation(this.x-10, this.y+10, eBlock);
  else if (dir=="UpLeft") this.FaceLocation(this.x-10, this.y-10, eBlock);
}

Add at the bottom of the Globalscript.ash:

Code: ags

import function FaceDirection(this Character*, String dir);

Use by calling cName.FaceDirection("DownRight"); for example.

Feel free to absorb it into a module if no recent one exists.

Using the built-in viewport handling there's not really a way to do that. But you may get fairly close to what you need with the Smoothscroll module.

I recently did a similar thing with 15 Minutes where I shift the center of the viewport to make room for a splitscreen frame while keeping the character centered in his own frame. But even then jumps were hard to avoid. I discussed possible workarounds with Ali (the author of the Smoothscroll module), but we haven't discovered a definitive method yet. Though contacting him once you've implemented the Smoothscroll module would probably be your best bet.

Hmm interesting, I will look into that Arj0n!

The Alpha Protocol-esque dealio I built here was one of the first prototypes in my ongoing quest for a better dialog system. Initially it enabled you to walk around during the dialog too and you could interrupt the other speaker if you wanted. But it quickly became apparent that the non-blocking-ness of it was a total nightmare when using animations, or just any sort of blocking type stuff. So I axed that aspect for 15 Minutes.

Weathered special agent Jake Brewer is called upon once more to secure the safety of his nation. But this time he only has 15 minutes before everything goes tits-up. ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO STOP THESE TERRORISTS IN TIME?

15 Minutes is a short adventure game built for the April 2011 MAGS as a loving parody of the traditions and tropes of the hit tv-show 24.




Download the game HERE

Cool! I'm honored that people appreciated 15 Minutes this much while the competition was so strong. And on my first MAGS too! Thank you everyone for voting and congrats to the other participants for finishing their fine games (and even getting them on Kotaku, nice one mode!). That makes you all winners in my book.

Sunshine is a great scifi movie in the same strait as Moon and Solaris.

Man Tech, I can't believe how fast you're cranking these out. Keep it up!

[Concurrence]

Wow thanks Rocco, that's some high praise Glad you enjoyed it.

Incidentally, I put up a new version fixing the bug WHAM encountered: http://bit.ly/mGwSvH

And now that I've had the time to play through the other entries, here's some more feedback.

Concurrence
Loved the art style and the animations, very fluid and very true to it's inspiration! Congrats also on making it just as frustrating as it's inspiration I think I died about 40 times at the wobbly rock bit before I gave up. If the controls were a little more forgiving this would make a fine full-length commercial game no doubt.

Of The Essence
Great game aside from that intro business. The direct keyboard control worked extremely well and I had a ot of fun dodging bullets and ducking into craters. Didn't make it to the end but if you ever make that intro skippable I definitely will try again! Liked the art too, the little mans were very nicely designed. A full campaign with more varied gameplay would kick ass!

OSD3D
A very interesting idea, I've never considered making a 3D game like that. Must've been quite a headache too, syncing both sides to eachother. Sadly my eyes are inverted or something because when I do the cross-eyed thing everything goes backwards instead of forwards. This happens with other 3D stuff aswell, for me I need to have it inverted for it to work. But nice idea nonetheless.

RunAway
Took a try or two before I got the hang of it but then it was quite enjoyable. Sometimes the randomly generated map makes it a little unforgiving to go the wrong way as I found myself trapped on the wrong side of a fence or tree several times. But it's something I haven't seen before and behind the basic graphics and interaction it reminded me a little of the fun I had playing the Commandos series.

Lurking Horror
I'm a big fan of horror games so I quite enjoyed this one. The atmosphere is super important with this genre, and you got it down pat right away. I then realized it may not be the smartest to play it right before bed so I left it for further exploration during the daytime.

City of Thieves
Excellent game, reminded me a lot of this game I played back in the day where you were a sneaky mustached fella doing burglaries around a free-roaming cartoon town in a very similar manner. I think it was by those Jowood fellas that also did the Neighbours from Hell games. Once I got the hang of it the lockpicking game was very cool, and the tension of searching around with the cops outside was nicely done. Having to turn off the flashlight was a nice touch, although for burgling purposes you might as well leave it off since you could see everything just fine without it. The flashlight corona also looked a little strange since it overlays across the background, but ofcourse realtime lighting in such a way would have been impossible, so still a good solution. Agreed that it would make a great full-length game too.

Again, nice job everyone!

I got the game to bug out quite badly within the first minute =( Seems a little unfinished, or perhaps just lack of testing

Send me a PM with the details, I thought I squished all gamebreakers! Thanks for the kind words though, glad you liked it

I don't follow MAGS that closely in general but this does seem like a strong and bountiful edition. So many interesting games! Haven't had time to check them all out yet, will do so in the next few days. Great job everyone.

[Presenting]

Presenting




Weathered special agent Jake Brewer is called upon once more to secure the safety of his nation. But this time he only has 15 minutes before everything goes tits-up. ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO STOP THESE TERRORISTS IN TIME?




Download the game HERE.

p.s. Thank god for sprite file compression. It sized the EXE down from 123 mb to 23 mb! Ironically if I zip them both up the resulting files only differ by 1 mb...