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If you're talking about my reference to Bram Stoker's Dracula then here's my opinion on the book: yes it is a step-stone work about vampires and a fascinating story, but the endless diary pages between the main character and his beloved and yet more diary entries are, in my opinion, the most boring time I've ever had while reading. But, and this is the issue, because I know that there's more to the book than those middle pages I did read them and can distance myself from that. So, to me it is a flaw. For you might be exciting to go though the diary entries. It's all a matter of taste in the end. And the reason me and you can discuss Bram's book is because the book meant something and was ultimately--good.

The Bridge on the River Kwai?

I tend not to like sierra games much. I can see the nostalgia for the early King's Quest and Quest or Glory games, and the humour of Space Quest kept me going in spite of the horrible puzzles.

However Gabriel Knight is a category on its own, for me. GK III is really one of the best adventure games ever. All the criticism levelled against it is true. The graphics and interface are awful, and the cat-moustache puzzle is as silly as they get. But it the atmosphere and plotting is so enthralling that I forgive everything.

It's not a 6/10 game. It's 2/10 AND 9/10.

That's exactly how I feel about it.
I guess adventure games turn out to be as any other art form. Like people can love the Beatles Yeah-yeah-yeah simplicity or a classic book like Bram's Dracula. Although things have changed we all learned to distance ourselves from the flaws and admire those works of art for its innovation and concept.

So, I guess we guys, true lovers of adventure games, must cherish the classics of adventure gaming, and remember new-comers that a lot had to be done for the earned possibility that we now have to criticize (based on solid understanding of the genre)  every new game that comes out.

Those Sierra and Infocom games are a gift to us, it allowed room for LucasArts and the rest to emerge and polish the genre.

I get a bit upset when critics (GameSpot, etc...) rate GK3 with no more than 6 stars out of 10. Even Tim Curry gets a bash with the voice over Gabriel. The reviews criticise all the things that I loved about the game. And I'm still waiting for THAT feeling of being on a village, in France, solving templar myth riddles and puzzles. Was it me that played the game at the right time to play it? I remember that getting away from the common fantasy element of MI and the likes felt really refreshing to me.

As for the topic issue, I guess I've played most of the games out there, from classics till Gray Matter more or less, and I do agree that adventure game players don't have to try that hard to finish a modern game. And that's bad, IMO.

Sierra's KQ belong to a era where things were pretty different and when looking at them we must distance ourselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV-0Nj7sA24&feature=related   

Welcome to the club Joseph. This winter was the worst winter of my life, I have kids too and know what you're going through. My advice is don't ever make a loan to pay loans, try to borrow from family and friends.
I wish you good luck and remember that this is just a phase you're going, you will manage to work it out! Don't let yourself down.

Next to nurses, Incinerator Operators are my favourite female professions.

I knew that items were added to characters, not inv windows, sorry for that.
Only now I noticed the character's ID in the properties because I've never used more than one inv gui before!

I can now simplify my test game and new clues will be added into the second gui without having to do lots of scripting, thank you again Khris.

Steptoe, I'm sorry I've high-jacked your post but I believe that we where seeking for the same answer. 

I knew Khris would show up!

So, I could make a simple function that sets the dummycharacter as the activeplayer and use GUI.ID to add items to the new inv window? Is there a way to permanently relate the new inv gui to the dummycharacter?

I'm having the same problem, after http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=45616.0 I decided to give it a go and build a icon based dialogue system where you could mix items to produce other icons that you could use on a conversation. I did a 1 room test and I managed to make it work.
This was my approach:

-I built a custom INV gui and gave the player to start a icon representing a generic location and one that represents a generic character (unknown);
-I let the player click on several objects and hotspots on the room, also a NPC; everytime the players does that a icon is added to the custom INV window;
-icons can be mixed just like normal INV items could;
-when the player talks to the NPC the INV gui shows up on the bottom of the screen and a new gui on the top of the screen;
-the player can click on icons in any order, those are added to the upper gui in order to build sentences;

I also used the second gui with empty (graphically) buttons and checked if they were empty so that an icon would be added to it; of course this was done with shitty coding (lot's of IF's) and I know that an Array should do it.

So, the thing is perfectly executable even for a bad coder like me, but it does take a lot of work. I had to program every choice available for the player and even with a few objects (knife,pen) and hotspots (vase,window,door knob) the possibilities are immense.
But I must say it was really cool testing it myself, I could start with the generic location icon and add the knife and produce a question related to a plot, "This is a kitchen knife, mind if I check your kitchen?". Use the window icon with the generic character icon and ask "Is it possible that someone could have seen the murder from outside the window?".

Weird Runner?

I had the pleasure of playing a bit with this new instalment and I assure you that even the beta I played is already a very solid and fun game. There's already a huge amount of BG's and animations comparing to the AGS average standard game.
This game mechanics is more complex than the first one and should take a while to pull it off but Nick is a perfectionist and we can expect a wonderful game!

Just finish it!

I played it full screen and the detail and style of the graphics are very cool, the backgrounds are painted over drawings witch I love!
There was a significant work put on the main character and his comments on every object are really fun. All NPC are well designed as well.

I bet that if this was a AGS community game the authors were asking for money... 

Hi Victor,

as a gamer I hate not being able to save my game every time I want to. I understand that a real-time battle wouldn't allow it but if it is a turn-based one that allows me to think and plan my moves then it makes no sense not to allow me to save it.

As for the "cheating" issue, it all comes to the type of player, I do reload a lot if playing Icewind Dale for example but never do it if I'm playing a football manager game.

The Flowing Spice is a Must

*cough-cough*

Why not replace text input for icons?
This is what I have in mind:

Room: a room that has objects (some are clues) and NPC;

Phase One: exploring: the player will examine objects and/or the NPC looking for clues, every item that he examines will be stored has an icon; this way having the object or not isn't important because the player has the knowledge of it; if the player is actually on a "action" room then he'll need some physical key (example) but will have figure it out;

Phase Two: dialogue: the player can talk with the NPC and use the icons he found on the exploring phase; the conversation output should deliver more icons that represent locations, different characters or objects; the player then gains the knowledge of some new evidence for example;

Phase Three: Conclusion: a sort of inventory where the player can mix icons and draw some more conclusions (icons);

Eliminating items that were sorted out has obsolete would make the icon count manageable;

On Phase Two: the dialogue would allow the player some basic start-ups like an icon representing a generic location, so that he could start with the location icon and then add the key icon: he'll be asking if the NPC knows or knew where the key is/was or any story driven importance of the objects being discussed;

I know it can be done with text input but some people may prefer icons (me).

Any thoughts on this?  

The difference I see is not it being a casual game or a more "serious" one. The difference is in what clever coding is there.
What if you see the gym bag first? Does the player gets that into his STM? Wouldn't the player be allowed to ask about it to the owner? Is the player never allowed to see the bag first? What "freedom" is given to the player?

We are all talking about a system here that can deal with all the objects/thoughts/suspects/locations in a way that would "feel" the least linear as possible.
There are two approaches, 1, you let the player collect all the evidence in a room (even if its a chair like someone mentioned) and therefore is able to combine them and create thoughts and ultimately deductions. This approach feels fair to me.
2, you carefully choose what the player is able to collect, you lead the player, sometimes even mislead the player for narrative sake, but the obvious skill is to trick the player into thinking he's in charge.

Both can work but the first one seems more fair to the player.   

This is really a good topic, looks like everybody thought about this at least once since started to use AGS or other game engine.

Do you guys remember the game Captain Blood? The way the player could talk to aliens through a set of icons that meant something? I remember being hard but really rewarding. It was like learning a new language. I can see all that we've been talking about done through a similar system, where you would build sentences and thoughts in a sequence by arranging icons that could be ideas, places, objects... Any ideas on this?

I know what you're saying here, but the player's possible thought about a certain situation has to be programmed before.

Let's say you have the following note on Alice's (she's one of your suspects):
  Alice said she went to Tony's Pizza on Tuesday;

On John Carpenter notes you have:
  John Carpenter heard a discussion between Alice and a waiter, she was upset that the sauce tasted like meat;

You could use JC note on Alice's note to conclude that she is a vegan.

That is some kind of detective work, right? I can't see it done in any other way.

Hi Andail, I've been reading a lot on the internet about writing for adventure games, there are even blogs and forums about it although they are more RPG oriented.

I liked the way Diskworld Noir allowed the notes you'd write on the notepad to be used on characters. GK3 used icons instead of notes that would be available or not depending on what the player knew about the plot.

In my opinion, the worst option is having 10 dialogue options like :1) What do you think about John Doe? 2) What do you think about Ronald Doe? 3) What do you think... and so on... I get really frustrated having to go all the options because I'll do it in a sequence and that means that for the next 10 minutes or so I'll be reading a lot of text and not exploring the game.

For what I've been reading, it all goes on the quality of the writing, if it's well done almost any way of doing it - works! Using NPC to work with the main player and feed him knowledge about puzzle situations is the most common way that game makers use.

So, for me:

a) relevant notes (notepad) that can be used with NPC's,objects, other notes;
b) team-work between the player and a friend(s) NPC;
c) do not put the player having to read 10 pieces of dialogue straight! Sometimes it even happens that you're given the chance to ask something about a character that you haven't really met yet;
d) the plot and quality of writing is 90% of a adventure game;

This said I also believe that the Detective Genre is the best suited for adventure games, and because I can't write a good interesting plot is the reason I don't try to make one myself on a more serious approach.