Messages

I'm sorry to say that I don't think I'll be able to finish this in the week we have left. I should have known better than to try this during the end of classes, especially with wrangling with AGS's many quirks. Plus, I didn't realize I'd have so much to do at work this week either. Hope the rest of you manage to get something in!

I'm definitely not as fast as all of you, so I've done little more than a background and some objects (and some trolley-pushing code). I am shamefully still using the Roger sprites because the task of painting a walkcycle seems so daunting.

A background, for now:

There are no real rules other than it should somehow fit the theme. Of course, how you interpret the theme is entirely up to you. There used to be a rule against using any pre-made assets, but we abolished that rule to encourage more entrants who want to just whip up a game using whatever they can without worrying about whether they suck at art, etc.

There’s even a link in the first post to the AGS Trove, a collection of bits and bobs anyone can use. Also, look around for Eric Matyas’s archive of free-to-use textures and music.

Thanks! I might poke around the trove and use something in there while I'm getting familiar with AGS again. Last night I remembered walkcycles are a thing and wasn't sure if I was up to it right away.

I've never done MAGS before (not even back in the day, I don't think), and things have probably changed in a decade. Are there any unstated rules or things that people just don't like seeing in MAGS entries? I don't want to contribute negatively to the community you all have established here already!

I haven't been around here for ages, and I'm very rusty, but I've been itching to dive back into AGS recently. This MAGS might kickstart the old juices. It's a cool topic, too, though my terrible art skills are crying at the thought of doing something with a museum!

[after]

For me, the worst bug I can think of right now was in Broken Sword 2, when the priest wouldn't give me back whatever he was supposed to give me (my memory is failing me =/ ); I spent hours trying to figure out what I hadn't done and going all over and trying everything.  I eventually had to start the game over and get back to that point and it worked just fine.  So. Very. Annoying.

Trying to get Monkey Islands 3 & 4 to run on an operating system made after Windows 98. Mother of god, It's hard. At least MI3 can be run on Scummvm, MI4 is unplayable for me  :'(. While MI4 isn't the best adventure game (or anwhere near the best) I feel a little saddened that I can't complete the series.

It's definitely not the best in the series.  I played it on the PS2 for some reason.  Just now looking, I realized that I must have sold my copy of the game (which must have been a hard sell) but I still have my end of game save file on my memory card.

I'm really enjoying that people are continuing to talk about this   Of course, I've been thinking about what I've written and decided that I don't agree quite with it and it may need to be completely remade.  It's a pretty bad paper when you read it and you don't agree with yourself   I'm coming around to the camp of why bother defining "adventure game?"  Why not just leave it at "game?"  The reason I wanted to define "adventure game" was to break the definition, or point out where the genre is lacking (trying to pinpoint why adventure games are commercially dying out).  Of course this comes from my deep love for adventure games, and my disdain at the usual crap that I see on the shelf at the store, and a desire to not see this wonderful style of game just die out because it doesn't sell.

Of course, commercial isn't everything, and I enjoy many games that come up on AGS.  Every year I even try to make a game with AGS and fail for one reason or another, usually art-related (although I did make a "game" with AGS for a class, which I don't think is very good).  But I don't know.

By the way. I really enjoyed Anna (and voted for it in a few categories, iirc).  Anna had a deep story, really made you think about your own life, had fleshed out characters.  I don't think that Anna would have been enjoyable without the story that was in it.  Myst, on the other hand, is very enjoyable without the story (And I say this as you practically don't get any story until the very end of the game).  Don't get me wrong, I actually like Myst (though I liked Exile the most).  It's just when I play Myst it feels like a bunch of puzzles thrown together.  When I played Anna, (or Return to Zork/Zork Nemesis, since it was mentioned), I felt at all times that there was a reason why I was doing all of the puzzles.  It wasn't just to get to the next part of the game or get back to the main part of the game, but it was to repair the ship.  I was doing the puzzles in Anna because of narrative-based motive.  In Myst, you're just plopped down into the world and you start playing around with machines without any notion as to why you're doing this.

When you say "a character immersed in a narrative", it's important to remember that in many adventure games (e.g. the Zork and Myst series) the player's avatar is completely transparent and anonymous, with no personal characteristics. I'm not sure I'd call that kind of invisible, featureless avatar a "character".

The issue with this is that I don't consider Myst an adventure game.  It and games that take after it, are elaborate puzzle games.  You can take all of the story out of Myst (what there is of it) and still have a playable game.  But I know this is a highly debatable topic that I will likely receive flak for mentioning.

So should you synthesize the community's own attempts at explicit definitions, or analyze the community's consensus about which games are/are not adventures to come up with your own explanatory definition (which may contain factors that few people were consciously aware of, like your point about "heavily-scripted")?

Heavily-scripted is just a fancy way of saying that the game is static.  I chose the term because it sounded good when GarageGothic said it in his post on the other post I mentioned.  All I mean by it is the player must play a game in a particular way that the designer has dreamed up and cannot play it another way.  Yahtzee and Marek Bronstring both agree to this.  The definition is meant to expose not only the merits, which is what most posters mentioned, and the flaws.  Just to clarify, the definition is a synthesis of both the community (people here on the forums throwing out what they think an adventure game is) and the industry (people who are not necessarily part of the community who talk about games).  Of course, I'm not saying that its perfect, but it fits with what I have read, which I am finding more and more is not very much .   Oh well, I can still defend and change

I'll admit right now that the definitions didn't come together through any statistical process.  I looked at what people said and lumped together what it seemed to me to be like what people were mostly talking about.  I'm sure to have missed something, or have misinterpreted something.  Personally, I'm not sure that a definition needed to be made (definitions are problematic), but I didn't realize this until I was done looking at the whole thing.

As for the transformative definition... sure, whatever. That's just an expression of your own vision for the future of the genre, right? Did you read Vince Twelve's idea for a futuristic not-really-adventure game?

I hadn't read that (and given the recent timestamp, there's a good reason why).  Definitely an interesting idea!   Everytime I turn around there seems to be something else I should have read.  I drew from games and from the issues that are discussed in AdventureGamer article "The Future of Videogames:" http://adventuregamers.com/article/id,318 .   But, yes, the transformative definition (I need to find something better to call this, it's not a definition at all, it just stems from the previous definition) is mostly my expression for the future of adventure games.

Really, it's just a paper for a class, and I don't think that there's enough time in the world for me to have done all the things I had wanted to make it a better paper

Thanks everyone for taking the time to provide thoughtful answers to my question.  I'll let you all know that I also found a post from back in 2004 about the same topic: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=13599.0  The reason behind my question was that I was writing a paper for a class on videogame rhetoric, and I wanted to make a good definition for adventure games, synthesized from what people have written about (eg. articles and books) and what the actual community thinks.  I wanted a definition so that I could properly talk about adventure games, while also being able to have something at hand to make into a transformative definition, that is, a definition of where adventure games can go to grow.

To possibly spark debate, I'm going to post what I came up with for these two definitions.

Synthesized definition:

Adventure games are heavily-scripted games in which a player assumes the role of a character immersed in a narrative, in which the gameplay centers around non-linear space navigation, and solving narrative-based problems by means of object manipulation, dialogue and logical thinking.

Transformative definition (describing a direction in which adventure games can grow):

Adventure games can be games in which the player takes control of a character who lives in a living, breathing environment, set against a narrative, in which the gameplay revolves around the player helping to form the narrative by changing the way in which he or she tackles problems, be it by means of object manipulation, dialogue, logical thinking and ingenuity.

In no way do I assume that these are "correct" or "desirable" or "closed."  They are certainly open for shredding. 

Again thank you for taking the time to answer.  I hope that discussion about this will continue (as that's how things get better).

I pose before the masses a simple question: What are adventure games?

Mood for discussion: serious, thoughtful, contemplative.

I'm trying to suss out a community definition of "Adventure Game" and what better community to do it than this one.

`TygerWulf~

Aha!  See, I knew it was something stupid like that.  I'll make sure I test with Display including some extra text at the beginning from now on    Yeah, the point of the first three if statements is to catch if the number is already less than 60 and therefore doesn't need to go through the whole bif if statement jungle  :  Anyway, thanks everyone, my code is running ok now

It seems my function has decided to stop processing if statement conditions.  I am perplexed.  I can't seem to find any missing brackets or anything that would make if statements go haywire.  I've even tried to get a response out of it by making something purposefully true, but it even seems to be ignoring if(true).  Could anybody help me out here and point out my, possibly idiot mistake in the following function (my finageling, you can see in the last set of if statements.)

Code: ags

String GameTime::GetDuration(int sec)
{
	if(sec < 60 && sec > 1)
		return String.Format("%d seconds", sec);
	if(sec == 1)
		return "1 second";
	if(sec < 1)
		return "no time at all";
	mDateTime holder;
	holder.Second = 0;
	holder.Minute = 0;
	holder.Hour = 0;
	holder.DayOfMonth = 0;
	holder.Month = 0;
	holder.Year = 0;
	holder.AddSec(sec);
	String rStr;
	rStr = "";
	if(holder.Year != 0){
		rStr.Append(String.Format("%d year",holder.Year));}
	if(holder.Year > 1){
		rStr.Append("s");}
	if(holder.Month != 0)
	{
		if(rStr != ""){
			rStr.Append(", ");}
		rStr.Append(String.Format("%d month",holder.Month));
	}
	if(holder.Month > 1){
		rStr.Append("s");}
	if(holder.DayOfMonth != 0)
	{
		if(rStr != ""){
			rStr.Append(", ");}
		rStr.Append(String.Format("%d day",holder.DayOfMonth));
	}
	if(holder.DayOfMonth > 1){
		rStr.Append("s");}
	if(holder.Hour != 0)
	{
		if(rStr != ""){
			rStr.Append(", ");}
		rStr.Append(String.Format("%d hour",holder.Hour));
	}
	if(holder.Hour > 1){
		rStr.Append("s");}
	if(holder.Minute != 0)
	{
		if(rStr != ""){
			rStr.Append(", ");}
		rStr.Append(String.Format("%d minute",holder.Minute));
	}
	if(holder.Minute > 1){
		rStr.Append("s");}
	Display("%d", holder.Second != 0); //this executes
	if(true)
	{
		Display("%s", rStr); //this does not execute
		if(rStr != ""){
			rStr.Append(", ");}
		rStr.Append(String.Format("%d second",holder.Second));
	}
	if(holder.Second > 1)
		rStr.Append("s");
	
	return rStr;
}

I apologize for the long block of code.  I'm sure the error is in there somewhere, but I can't find it.  The if(true) statement was previously if(holder.Second != 0), which evaluates to true as well, according to the Display() call.

I'm really looking forward to using this.  I did want to say that while you mention that the module requires 3.02 AGS or higher, it looks like it's actually using the 3.0.1 beta.  I had to change IndexOf to Contains in order to use it on my non-beta AGS (the beta changed it to IndexOf back in beta 1, apparently: "* Renamed String.Contains to String.IndexOf to reduce confusion with other languages such as Java and C#. String.Contains will continue to work as well for the foreseeable future").  Just thought you might like to know and others might if they also get this problem when trying to compile their games.