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Oh yeah you're right! Gemini Rue still doesn't work in fullscreen for me either. I never play AGS games fullscreen so I never noticed this problem, but now that you mentioned it I went back to try other Directdraw games like McCarthy Chronicles (which works fine in windowed mode since it's 32bit) and La Croix Pan (which uses an older engine version so I can't even select a renderer), and it had the same problem in fullscreen! Super weird. However my own games, which run under Direct3D in 32bit, had no problems either windowed or fullscreen (aside from being stretched).

And somehow Windows 7 doesn't understand the winsetup, every time I close it it asks me whether it was installed correctly or not... but that's another problem.

Really digging the game so far Josh, nice job! To be honest I started off a little bit hesitant, but the moment I set out towards Hibiscus Heights and that Blade Runner-esque style music kicked in against the background with the flying cars in the distance, it totally pulled me in.

I just started experiencing this issue today actually, with Gemini Rue! I've never seen it before with any other AGS game. But then again I haven't played many old AGS games since I got this machine.

Lyaer, these older games, they run under DirectDraw, yes? Not Direct3D? Try going into your display settings and changing the color depth of your monitor down to 16 bit. That did the trick for me.

I just got around to playing this game when browsing through the AGS Awards nominees, but man this game is great! I'm so glad to see someone try something new with (facial) animations, and it really paid off, for a game that primarily relies on dialogue the motion capture really took it to the next level. I hope we'll see more use of this technology in the future.

Concerning the gameplay,

Spoiler

I feel more could have been done with figuring out the location of 'number nine'. When the kidnapper dropped hints about the location being around the corner I first suspected it would be near or in the police station, and considering the adresses he already gave you the first thought that popped into my head was 'I gotta find out what the adress of the police station is!' A little map-based puzzle at the end perhaps would have really driven that point home, since you could pretty much rule out the two adresses the kidnapper named himself. But overall very well written! I loved the twist at the end.

[close]

For a quick experimental game I quite enjoyed it, you really succeeded in building a certain atmosphere. I was just a little disappointed during my second playthrough that the responses and outcome do not differ if you answer differently. But overall nice job!

Yes I assumed that would be where the issue stemmed from. The thing is that with the old keyboardmovement module there was no speed difference, but ofcourse that one uses the built-in walk handling. I turned off the MovementLinkedToAnimation because the walkcycle has a lot of frames and it looks choppy otherwise.

But couldn't I add a +5 to the walkspeed variable in your script somewhere? I looked around a bit but I couldn't discern exactly where you set/adjust those values. It's not that big of a deal though, I don't really need running for this game, so I could get by fine with the old module.

This sounds really cool! I like the fact that you can now change speed and view whíle you're walking, that's good. I just tried it with my game though and the character walks way slower with the keys than he does by point-and-click.

I've set AnimationDelay to 1, MovementLinkedToAnimation to false, MovementSpeedX to 5 and MovementSpeedY to 3. Is there anywhere in your script I can maybe apply a speed modifier or something?

I love these backgrounds, they look great and really evoke a mood. Looking forward to seeing them ingame!

Hi, when I'm working on my PC and I pour a bucket of water into the case like a crazy the PC stops working.
I think the problem is in the bucket of water indeed when I pour water over other electric appliances they stop working, too.

Can anyone help me?

If this was Facebook I would have Like'd that post.

The situation you describe seems like a very OCD thing to do, I don't think you have to be afraid many people will act this way. The only time I ever did something similar was to find that óne pixel in the wheel puzzle room in Broken Sword 2 that lets you skip that whole section.
But if you're really serious about it the suggestions above should go a long way to help you with this 'problem'.

Cool. Oh and another thing I just encountered related to that: adding a new piece of interaction code from the room editor like 'player walks onto region' or 'any click on hotspot' expands everything in the room script, regardless of whether it has to do with the code block you just added or not.

Tried it out for a few days and so far it works perfectly. Flipping entire View rows is such a lifesaver on my current project! Mass replacing/reloading a group of sprites would be fantastic too. And one thing I noticed is if you collapse the code and there is an error at build time, doubleclicking it won't expand the collapsed code, so you have to go look where the error is referring to.

Oh and one more thing: a thicker automatic font outline. On light backgrounds that 1 pixel outline is barely enough to make a custom font readable. Being able to adjust the thickness of it would be super.

Oh yes, good point. I wrote a whole paper on how the wear and tear of an environment can tell you its entire history without using a single word. Just look at Bioshock. Environmental storytelling is a powerful tool.

I have an unexplained affinity with exotic locales, so anything mediterranian quickly catches my fancy. I can never get enough of Ketch's Landing and Zombie Island in Broken Sword 2, I frequently take a stroll along the beaches of Crysis, and the Marrakesh levels in Lost Horizon just filled me with glee.

Another unexplained phenomena is that I love games set in hotels and the like. I spent hours in the Thermal Bath Hotel level in Hitman just walking around, pretending to be a guest. I suppose it's a place inheritly filled with stories.

Windy british isles also do it for me, especially in the Victorian era. There's some inherit mystery to those places with their fog and waving wheat. Go watch The Ghost Writer and you'll see what I mean.

Snow, on the contrary, leaves me cold (hurr). I don't know what it is, but stuff like Tibet and the like, it's not my thing. I love Uncharted so much I could stomach it there, and Lost Horizon somehow eludes many of the factors that make me dislike those settings, but when The Mummy 3 went to Tibet, it was dead to me.

Oh and Paris. I'm in love with Paris. (although I can't stand the French)

Very nice! I like the character designs and the quirky perspective, and the puzzles all made sense and were easy to solve - in terms of what you needed to do, not nescessarily in terms of how long it took me to figure them out

Spoiler

although really only the suit and the soap had me stumped, the first because the janitor says the keys are only for the closet, and the second because the soap was hard to spot next to the faucets. Clever use of items too. My favourite part was turning the rat into a rabbit!

[close]

As for suggestions, like you said some feedback when an item is used wrongly would be nice, although this way it is clearer what works and what doesn't, you don't have to extract that information from the narrative. I like how you stayed away from dialogs with choices, that's good. I'd raise the walking speed a tinge aswell, that or make double-clicking room exits transition immediately (which is easily done by wrapping the walkto and changeroom lines in a cutscene that can only be skipped with another click).
For the visual style the animations were perfect, I wouldn't feel bad about not putting more effort into those.

Overall a very enjoyable game. Nice style, good puzzles and just long enough. Good luck on your next project!

[EDIT] Right! spoiler tags, yes, sorry!

A-MAZING. Works perfectly now. Thanks for the speedy fix!

[If you had to list 3 things that make up a good game what would they be?]

Well said paolo, that's exactly how I feel about it too. You would always do well to avoid big no-no's like mazes and such, but beyond that it really comes down to personal preference. Like you said, you can't please everyone, so the most important thing is that you please yourself.

That.. sounded kinda wrong, but you know what I mean.



Oh and as for my answers:

If you had to list 3 things that make up a good game what would they be?
I would say the most important thing for me is immersion, which is achieved through a combination of these three factors:
- Fun gameplay (challenging or clever puzzles, responsive controls, proper feedback and rewards)
- World/Setting/Atmosphere (a sense that you are really part of a living, breathing world)
- Narrative (good story, logical objectives, well-written characters, memorable moments)

What is it about a game that inspires you?
When the the factors I mentioned above mesh together, and you go from thinking "I am playing this game where I am X" to "I AM X".

What do you consider 'off putting' about a game?
Poor controls. If walking around is already a hassle, there is little chance I'm going to continue playing the game.

Your Preference: Lucasarts or Sierra or other?
I've never been much of a fan of Sierra games, so between the two I favor Lucasarts for various reasons, mostly because of the more playful way they approach settings and characters. But overall I prefer Revolution for the intuitive controls and advanced graphical trinkets of their Virtual Theatre Engine.

Mouse or Keyboard controls?
Touchscreen. It's basically the same as mouse controls, but somehow it feels better. But on PC I favored the one-click mouse system for a long time, although I'm starting to experiment with keyboard controls aswell. I'm never going back to cycling through available cursor modes though...

Thanks for the responses guys, you've raised some interesting points so far.

@anian/Baron - I like real-world tie-ins, I try to include them in my games whenever possible. Things like existing locations, a historical fact or otherwise, it makes the narrative feel more authentic. Actually doing ARG type stuff would be a step further. I loved the way In Memoriam handled it, sending players across the internet to find answers to riddles. Or Majestic sending you creepy text messages. Though I'm not sure the Kinect or Wii would be the most suitable for that right now. But people usually carry their iphones around anyway, and with things like barcode scanners and that insane Wordlens app you could really do some interesting things. It might lower the threshold for getting people out of the house at least.

@hofmeier - That race game is total win. And I also like your idea of the infant dialog. I once had an idea for a puzzle where you have to communicate with an NPC across the room using only hand signals. Different languages or speech impairments could make for some interesting gameplay.

@Wyz - I love the idea of persistence. Having an effect on the world around you is crucial to create a sense of place, time and progress. At one point we tossed around the idea of linking the game's time of day to the computer clock. But you are right, time makes many things a lot more difficult.

I think maybe the dialog engine has the most potential right now. Not just shoving the Mass Effect system in there but really trying to figure out what makes conversations realistic, and try to translate that into the game.

@Ascovel - I hear that, I don't want to insert some hamfisted innovation for the sake of innovation, if we do something it has to make sense (and indeed preferrably not cause us a truckload of work).

@Radiant - You're right, multiple playable characters is a rarity. Maybe because of all the extra animation work that goes into an extra character? But if you do it there are certainly possibilities for cool coop-style puzzles. Especially if you could control both at the same time - something that also starts to go towards @cosmicr's multiplayer idea (which would be really cool, yes).

It's true that we are kinda limited by the time we have, the lack of budget and the limitations of AGS, but if the idea is potent enough I think we can get away with only writing a thesis about it, maybe backed up by a few prototypes, alongside the 'standard' adventure game we are planning to build.

[what would be a feature you have always wanted to see in an adventure game, but have rarely/never encountered (yet)?]

Hey all,

I want to ask you guys for help.

See, I'm currently starting my graduation project at game design college, and together with a friend we are planning to put together an adventure game. I think we have a pretty good story already and we both love adventure games to death and are quite proficient with AGS, but the problem is that we are doing the Masters programme, so it's not enough to just deliver a polished game, we have to do something innovative with it, something that has never been done before and really adds something to the genre. (no pressure!)

So we've been thinking on this, and we have a couple of ideas, but we're afraid they're not strong enough. They may be things we've rarely seen in adventure games, or at least not in AGS games, but for this project we really need something convincing, so even people who are not adventure game connaisseurs will sit up and take notice.

Barefoot already started a good thread on what our preferences are for great adventure games, but there we're discussing the things already on the table, the tools we already have in our belts. I would love to discuss with you guys ways we could push the genre forward, really come up with something new, something we could turn into a module for others to use aswell. Something that fundamentally alters the way we interact with adventure games. A way to put adventure games back on the map!

So my question to you is this:

what would be a feature you have always wanted to see in an adventure game, but have rarely/never encountered (yet)?

And I don't mean things like 'a three-legged clown' or 'a dance verb', I'm talking entire systems, things that affect the way you control or experience adventure games.


For starters, here are a few things we were thinking of:

- a dialog engine that frees you from standing still and talking stiffly, where you can walk around and mess with stuff during the conversation, where you can involve other NPC's in the conversation or even just walk away.

- a game where [jackbauer] events occur.. in realtime. [/jackbauer] (although arguably The Last Express already did that)

- with the renaissance of the genre on the iPhone, we're seeing a lot of 'classic' adventure games, but what about multitouch? What about the accelerometer? GPS even? The potential for all-new type puzzles is enormous. (only problem is AGS does not run on iPhone (yet)!)

- my friend is an interaction designer, so he is very interested in finding a new way to control the game, besides mouse or keyboard. Again, this could tie into the touchscreen thing.

- iPhone games are typically games you play for a brief time while you are out and about. Adventure games take time and often a lot of reading to get invested in. How could we adapt storytelling to better fit into a pickup-and-play model? Should we even try?


What do you guys think?

I'm running the latest official release of Chrome 9 and both links work absolutely fine over here. I do need to press each of those buttons twice for it to work, but it works