Messages

That is very true, i might just do that actually, as long as making the character invisible doesn't make anyspots over the character.

I think there are several ways to ensure that won't happen. I assume you can just have the character not be in the room at all, thus she wouldn't have any clickable hotspots, but in case I'm wrong and you can't use SayAt with a character not present in the room (I don't know, I'm a newb myself), you can always just put the character on coordinates outside the screen (for instance; in a 320x200 game, have the character stand at 400,0 or something).

Is there an option anywhere to remove hotspots on your character?

If I understand you correctly: On the character's Properties panel, under "Design", set "Clickable" to "false".

I'm guessing its being a little too demanding to have the SayAt as white text and the dialog a different colour then.

Can't you create an invisible dummy character, set this character's dialog to be white, and use this character for your SayAts?

all i had to do was build it instead of running it.

You can also "Run without debugger" (Ctrl+F5).

Or in game design terms, its an obstacle. Mini games are usually skipable (well at least in most adventure games).

Well, that will be a problem in this MAGS...

The minigame must help the player character to go on in the main game. It should not just be an easter egg

There's nothing erotic about pornography.

Okay, thanks. Good thing I have other minigames too, then. :-) I was seriously at an early stage thinking "perhaps this could a modern kind of ATM where the machine could tell you 'Well, I *could* ask for your pin code, but there's a better way to figure out if you're really you -- since you're an ARKANOID expert, you get to play a stage of Arkanoid on the ATM screen!' or something". Fortunately I gave up that idea because that would just have been too bizarre.

(It looks as if I'm actually participating this time. I'm not promising an entry, but I've spent more time working on this game in the last 36 hours than I have spent combined on all earlier attempts to make an AGS game, so hopefully I'll manage to finish something.)

EDIT: Dammit! No, I won't be able to finish my silly little entry this time.

[The Key]

EDIT August 27th: All the votes are in, and the winner is Jack Sheehan. Congratulations!

You're free to start a new fortnightly (this one will hopefully be without forum downtimes), and I'll squeeze your name into a script as soon as I can.

Thanks to all participants!

____________________

It's the sixth round of the Fortnightly Writing Competition! Hurrah!

This fortnight's theme: The Key
The word "key" has many meanings, and keys are also well-used inventory items in adventure games, so why not devote a writing contest to them?

Rules:
- Write a text about the abovementioned theme.
- Post your story or link to it in this thread.
- All contributions must be in by August 17th, 23:59:59 PM.
- Voting will take place the following two days.
- No word limits. Two words, two million words, you decide.
- No style or genre limits. Fiction, non-fiction, haiku, Shakespearean playscripts or none of the above, you decide.

Prizes:
Worldwide fame.
Okay, not really "fame", but hear me out. I'm not terribly good at drawing pixel trophys, so I have another idea.

I am a professional writer, and for a while now I have been writing comic book scripts for the Danish publishing house that makes most of the world's Donald Duck comics. You may think that Disney comics are childish and lame, and you're entitled to think that, but in Europe, they're huge. In Norway alone, the Donald Duck weekly comic book is read by almost 20 % of the population every week (and I hear it's even bigger in Finland), and Disney comics are published in tons of countries -- so far, I've seen my stories published in 14 countries from China to Brazil.

And I'm sorry if this feels as if I'm bragging, but I'm just mentioning it to add weight to the next paragraph:

If you win this competition, I will put your name in an original Donald Duck script. I will give a background character your name, have someone call him or her by that name, and if you want to I can also try making him or her look like you in my sketches to the artist based on a picture.

If you're very fond of your anonymity, we'll think of something else.

The name will most likely be changed in most translations, but with a little luck it won't change too much, and if it's printed in the United States, they normally don't change names from the original script. And when the story is first printed (hopefully already next year), I will buy a copy of the Norwegian edition and mail it to you. How's that for a prize?

... oh, and you also get to host the next competition, of course.

I'll be darned. So now I get a book about girl scouts with my story in it? Fascinating.

I didn't follow the rules, I violated the word count to extreme lengths, but ... oh, well. New contest coming soon.

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EDIT: Uhm, I see that making new threads in this forum is restricted and should not be done without permission. Is winning synonymous with getting permission to start a new contest?

(I just want to be sure before I eventually break the rules. I know Tuomas said I was free to start a new one, but since his name is not listed among the moderators, I ask anyway. Better safe than sorry.)

My second vote goes to "Lack of Participation: Why" by Oddysseus.

[Immediacy, immediacy, immediacy.]

Do you think it would be a good idea, anyway?

Uh... Yes and no.

Yes because I can't imagine any male not being thrilled and extatic from getting such a gift.

No because making a decent game, even in AGS, is hard work. I don't know you, so I don't know if you have the scripting experience etcetera to build an interesting game all on your own, but even if you are, you'll probably have to do ALL tweaking, beta testing and so on all by yourself with a project like this. And if it's to be a gift, I assume you want everything to work perfectly, so that means tons of hard work.

I imagine that your boyfriend wouldn't be very happy if he launched the game and the opening credits said "Thanks to [twenty male names] for beta testing" (and I assume that's not how you would want to make such a present either).



If you're willing to take on this task all by yourself, I wish you best of luck. Though I don't have much experience with this kind of games, here are a few recommendations (many of which I think goes for any game):

- Immediacy, immediacy, immediacy. There are basically two ways of making any kind of document. You can try to make your interface so transparent that the player feels like he's really a part of it and forgets that he's just clicking a mouse and watching sprites on a computer screen (immediacy), or you can try to make your interface so interesting that it becomes part of the experience and the player values the interface because it adds something (hypermediacy). For this kind of game, I would definitely say that you want immediacy. You want your boyfriend to feel like there is no game and that he's inside the game, so make sure your interface doesn't pull him too much out of the experience of "being there".

- Design your form to fit your content. Use AGS's settings wisely, and make sure that whenever you have the choice, you make the game serve your story instead of adapting the story to suit the game. For instance, I assume this will be a rather photo-heavy game, so 320x200 resolution with 8-bit color is a no-no. Since you're making this for your boyfriend, you can give it to him on a memory stick or CD, so there's absolutely no reason to take e.g. download size into consideration.

- Create a story. Not all games need a good story, but you're trying to create an experience here, and you don't get a good erotic game by taking a bad game and throwing in a couple of erotic photos, no matter how great the pictures are. I mean, it wouldn't be that hard to make "Strip Tetris" or something like that in AGS, but what would be the point? You're not giving him an erotic game to exercise his brain.

Create a complete experience. Make sure that every tiny little aspect of your game supports what you want to make here. If, for instance, the music in your game is awful, change it! You don't want him to remember this game as "That collection of photos with the default Sierra iconbar and ABBA in the background".

Don't forget the interactivity. This is a game, not a "My pictures" folder, so make sure that whatever kind of game you're making, your boyfriend actually gets to play it and not just watch it.

Make it personal. You have a target group of one person. That is a luxury most game makers don't have, so use that for what it's worth. Integrate his personality in the game. You can call him by name, you can refer to or play his favorite bands, and so on, and so on. On a larger scale: What kind of video games is he interested in? You can create a story tailor-suited for his interests. If he loved Nelly Cootalot, dress up as Nelly and make him a pirate game with an erotic twist. Also, don't forget the love. The great thing about a gift game is that it can be personal. This is a gift from a girlfriend (I assume you are a girl, apologies if I'm wrong) to a boyfriend. Make sure that the message you send with this game isn't "hi, I'm a dirty skank and I want you to do me" -- make the game as spicy as you want, but the bottom line you're mediating should be more like "I love you, and this is my way of showing it".

Best of luck on the game. I agree with all statements saying that this sounds like a really great gift, but let me add that one of the things that make it great is that you make it yourself. If you send photos to SSH as suggested, it would still be a good game (possibly better), but it's a difference between a great game and a great gift, and making something yourself, no matter what it is, is the best way of making the gift personal.

I'm sure I'm not the only one here who wants everything in my games and other works to be as perfect as possible. I want all my facts to be correct, I want my characters to follow the laws of physics, and so on, and so on. But can we fix EVERYTHING in our games? Given tons of betatesting and lots of new releases after the game is actually released, many errors can be fixed when found, of course.

But then, there are those errors it would simply be too much work to fix, or they are impossible to fix without seriously damaging the gameplay. I'm dealing with one of these right now, and I'm surprised to notice that I don't WANT to fix it. I probably could, but I don't see how I can do that without at the same time wrecking much of what I want to do with this game.

The thing is: I let my game use the system clock to figure out what day it is, so that the date in the game is always the same as the date in real life.

Now, in the game, one of the characters is said to have her 24th birthday "tomorrow". Yes, I'm aware that won't make sense if the player chooses to play the game over several days, but I choose to ignore that -- that's not very important.

The problem, however, which occured to me when I tried to calculate this person's date of birth (which is mentioned at a point in the game), lies in the Gregorian calendar.

Now, in 99,997947 % of the cases (yes, I did the math), this is not a problem. Today is August 2nd 2008, so the date of birth is August 3rd 1984. If I play the game December 31st 1996, the date of birth is January 1st 1973. If I play the game February 28th 2008, then my character was born February 29th 1984.

But what if the system time is set to the year 1924, 2124, 2224 or anything like that (not 2024, that's fortunately a safe one), and it's February 28th? If today is 02/28/1924, that means tomorrow is 02/29/1924, and that means the character must have been born on 02/29/1900. And that date doesn't exist, as years dividable by 100 and not by 400 aren't leap years.

The way I see it, there are three ways to fix this problem:

- I can drop the whole system time idea and set the game time to be a given date instead. But I don't want to do that. I think using real time in the game adds a level of realism, and at the same time it makes one of my puzzles somewhat harder, and I don't want to get rid of that.

- I can add a script so that IF it is 02/28/2124 or another tricky date, the character's birthday is said to be "today" or "in two days" instead of "tomorrow". But it being "tomorrow" really suits the story, and I don't really want to give it up.

- Or: I can add a script so that IF it is 02/28/2124 or another tricky date, the character's AGE is not 24, but 20 or 28. I'm leaning towards that one, but it just feels... wrong, somehow.

So I'm seriously thinking of leaving this "bug" in the game. It's not like it's a fatal error -- it will be problematic only three seperate days in the next four hundred years, the closest being more than 115 years into the future, and even WHEN it occurs, it doesn't make your game crash or anything, it just displays a date that doesn't exist. And of course, my little MAGS game will be long forgotten in 115 years, so this will only be a problem if a player actively changes the system time to FIND this error.

Knowing that it's in there drives me crazy, perfectionist as I am, but I don't really want to fix it in any of the possible ways. So... I'm making a flawed game, and I'm fully aware of it.

Anyone here with similar experiences you want to share? How small and unimportant must an error be for you to just ignore it?

Are there any limits to how good or complex does the minigame have to be?

An example: I have a part of the game where the player has to guess an ATM pincode. I assume this could qualify as a minigame since it has a different GUI and it is a break from the point-and-click to do something different, but... The whole interactivity level consists of punching in a number, and if the player picks up the hints, the whole minigame is done in five seconds. Is that good enough to call it a minigame?

(Of course, I plan to have more than that one minigame, but I still would like to know if it qualifies or not.)

Where can I get the coins to play on the arcade machine?

Spoiler

The condom machine in America-World.

[close]

But... But... I want to vote for Jack Sheehan's entry!

Spoiler

Give the guys videogames!

[close]

Spoiler

You find them in a cardboard box in dino world; use scissors to open the box.

[close]

Spoiler

You have to throw something at it.

[close]

Spoiler

Cover the lens with mud.

[close]

Spoiler

If you don't have the mud, you can get it in the museum (same room as the dioramas and comic books).

[close]

Spoiler

To take the mud, swap the rock with it.

[close]

because wishing to end war and stop world hunger is so terribly cliché.

I wish people would stop using the default Sierra GUI...

Help please:

Spoiler

There's two dimensions I'm stuck in - I can't break the lamp to get the Yin (but I guess that comes later) and I can't pass the lava to get the spanner. Inventory: lighter, scissors, hand, bible, rock, blue tack, sponge, thermus filled with lava, moonshine, loo cakes. What's my next move?

[close]

Please give a full direct answer, NOT hints!

Spoiler

Lava world: Go to fish-n-chips shop, get a board from the boarded-up door. Use board on lava.

[close]

If you haven't got the required item to remove this item:

Spoiler

In spaceship, check the area between two doors -- I seem to recall it was the dino world door and the 51st state world door -- there's a hidden door there which wasn't there before, but you can now open it. In there, you'll find the crowbar.

[close]

The item you need for the other puzzle you're mentioning is in a world you haven't unlocked yet.

Spoiler

The key to the hot world is the model X-wing, from the dino world.

[close]

Spoiler

To get it, you have to "distract" the T-Rex who won't let you have it.

[close]

Spoiler

There is another item in the room which can help you with that.

[close]

Spoiler

The nerdosaurus' Death Star. But of course, the nerdosaurus won't let you use that either, so he needs to be distracted...

[close]

Spoiler

In the conversation with the nerdosaurus he mentions a hobby that he takes very much pride in, and could probably get him away from his desk...

[close]

Spoiler

He holds the high score on one of the arcade machines in the back of the room. Beat his highscore, and he'll come after you to try beating it again.

[close]

Spoiler

Ben sucks at the arcade game, so let Dan play it.

[close]

Spoiler

Now, interact with the death star.

[close]

... and the key is free for you to take!