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Thanks, Nicky, for taking the time to rate and Trapezoid for having a look. Unbeknownst to all of you, I am indeed taking notes of all these comments. One thing I'm taking home from this is the fact that an elaborate world is hard to communicate. Ponderabilia evolved, and things got more complex and diverse. I was able to communicate some of what was obvious to me, and other parts fell into places where they weren't obvious from the start.

The entire scenario of Ponderabilia is about a hundred pages long, with all characters having a background and the surroundings being there for a reason. Hardly anything in Ponderabilia is random. When people were getting confused the first time around, I added tons of extra explanations, and Vergil (the fish) is there to provide extra background on a lot of things. I realise this isn't enough.

Nicky, the hotspot indicator is a great idea, and the only reason I didn't yet implement it is lack of time (I'm running a business, building a house and raising a newborn at the same time, so it gets rather busy.). If you happen to have any great ideas to make things smoother, I'm all ears.

Trapezoid, the character motivation is a valid issue. I think it's necessary to have a look at what Nikee really is. She's the last active remnant of comatose brain, and a complete antagonist to Steve. As such, she's impulsive, easy-going and random. She cannot be aware of her surroundings, as she's never been actively remembered. Every location has to be new to her. I'm thinking of her as a sort of Charlie the Unicorn, where the lead is pushed along against his own will, ending up in places he never had any intention of getting to.

That said, I'm a horrible character writer. IMHO, this is often done by women to far greater success than I can ever hope to achieve. If any female writers among you wish to round the characters, please let me know. You may have some pages of script and notes to plough through first, though.

Thanks, Nicky. 800 downloads and 2 reviews is starting to look pitiful.

Soooo... Spoilers ahead. Nothing to drastic, but may save you some frustration.

Spoiler

Did you find the remote yet? You're gonna need it to get past the robot. This is also the one part of the game people really get stuck: the remote has to be used twice in the attic. I tried making that obvious and failed miserably...

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Did you use the cartridge on the BodyMapper? It's the one you get from the Attic.

Downloading, albeit very slowly. Thanks for doing all this, Snarky. I can imagine this being an enormous effort to make everything work out, and it looks amazing.

Well, you'd think I'd just be able to mirror the left walkcycle, but the dress splits on the right side, so no go there. It's different and custom with leg showing. The AGS sprite editor allows you to simply flip a frame or reuse a different frame whereever you like. It's fiddly and tedious, but it's the only way I know how.

As said, I didnt' have a PC at hand to check consistency. That said, I do now, and tbh I don't think I had any of these problems. The standing frames are there, the tile size is simply the image divided by the instances (it shows the image size when tiling, so just divide that size by the instances of the character.).

I am sorry I made this difficult for you, however, especially since you're already willing to do me this favor. I exported a .cha file for you to use, so if all goes well this ought to work. Here it is.

Apparently this topic hasn't closed yet, so I'm nominating Ponderabilia. It has gorgeous animations, an enthralling story line, interesting characters, minigames and an amazing soundtrack. More specifically, I believe it can shine in these categories:

*Most creative use of latex
*Most perverted
*Most offensive to majorities
*Best use of dinosaur skeletons stuck in ice
*Most instances of the words "pleasure model"
*Most interesting sex toy made from fossils
*Least expensive to play (unless there are games that actually cost less than Ponderabilia, of course...)

I will provide some screenshots because pictures say more than words, and because most of what I usually say is retarded.

Time to add a touch of class, then. Here's a special award avatar. We're not going home with any, so may as well outclass the rest. . That said, this feels very uncharacteristic for her. Let me know if these will do.

You've come to the right place, my friend. :)IMHO, what you may want to do is take this into the 21st century. Designwise, I'd suggest the following:

*Limit your colour scheme. Drastically. 4 Colours will be more than sufficient, and allow for a hierarchy and structure in colouring. Make similar elements similar colors, so actionable objects stand out. Pick one color that is pleasing to the eye and use that for about 90 percent of the board, in different hues. 
*Lose the disco background. It doesn't contribute to the overall feel.
*Use depth to your advantage. These objects have dimensional qualities along the Z axis, but none of them seem to protrude in any way. Allow players to feel the dimensionality
*I'd steer away from clichéd materials and objects. Find a new, more fun theme for the objects your using. Make everything paper craft, or introduce a jungle, medieval, space, or even erotic theme. Once you pick a theme, you'll be inspired to create a fresh, actual layout.
*Fun is key. This is a game, so what you really want to do is make an aspect stand out. Exaggerate an object or action, introduce something no other game has seen before or animations that feel human and fun.

Hope this helps!

I'd love to send in Ponderabilia's Nikee, but I have no access to a PC atm, just the walking and standing sprite animations. Do you think it would be possible for you to convert them? . I realize this is inconvenient, so I'd be much obliged...

All the best,
Moloko

I created Ponderabilia by sketching out the world in it first. You wouldn't think so, but there's an entire Ponderabilia World Overview, laid out along the lines of the different levels of consciousness. The idea was that the player started out as being unaware, explored the dark recesses of the mind and then finished in expanded awareness. When I had that schematic laid out, I came up with different characters for various parts of the game. Every character then received a reason for being exactly where they were. Once the characters were developed, I started thinking about the puzzles. It needed to feel confusing and outlandish, but had to make sense in the global structure.

Then came the script. I handled this very much like the old Hintbooks, like the ones published for Leisure Suit Larry. I wrote out the entire game as a walkthrough, with actions, dialogue and location in place. Then I designed the Avatar for Nikee, the main character, and all her cycles (climbing, crawling, walking, being ground up... There's even a nude cycles that were never used.). Then the rooms, the objects and the other characters. By then it was an organic process, with extra details added in as went along, but still working towards the goal of the final script. I coded the entire thing together, and round about that stage, the amazing people on the forum offered their help in getting the sound effects done, with wonderful tracks written selflessly by Shansean, Eldogond, Handsfree...

Finally, we're several rounds of bug fixing later, I crammed the entire thing up on a tiny website, Monsieur OUIXX wrote the walkthrough, and I added in a different ending for good measure. Hope this helps!

Wondering about that, too. I'm in a position where building a new game on Mac will be tons easier, but I'm afraid I'll lose half if not all of AGS compatibility...

Congratulations mate. Now do everything you always wanted to do!

Congratulations to all nominees! Might I suggest an additional category, however? I wouldn't mind nominating Ponderabilia to the "Most depraved" or "Least likely to make sense" category, as I feel it would do well in both.

Chrome does that, simply because it's an executable. There must be a simple workaround, but I haven't found it yet. Downloading in Firefox (and probably most other browsers) works fine. If anyone knows the easy workaround on Chrome, I'd be much obliged.

Thanks, btw Arj0n. I needed to post this update, especially since the AGS musicians have done what I think is an insanely nice job. All people mentioned in the credits were patient, competent and professional. If ever you need someone, these are wonderful people.

Really hope you're hearing sound now. Please keep me posted on the run-through. I love hearing people's gaming experience.

Billbis, you're a hero. You saved my ass not once, but twice. This is a brilliant solution to both my storage AND audio trouble. I retried, and everything works fine here. Think you could have a look, too?
Ponderabilia!

All the best,
Moloko

The game I'm finishing up (Ponderabilia) plays music fine on compile, and when I execute the .exe file, but all music disappears as soon as I upload to the web and redownload. Any idea as to what may be causing this?

Thanks a lot, LimpingFish! This looks a lot better. It was my fault to repost, and I'm glad you fixed it. Feel free to give it a shot when you get to it!

EDIT: Thanks to user Billbis, I solved both problems at once (I was having hosting and audio trouble). You can now download a .zip file with the audio, and it seems to be working fine. If any of you could have a go, too. I'd be much obliged.