Messages

Another vote against, for what it's worth. Is icey games acting like a complete dick? No. Is he making an effort to improve his contributions? Yes, otherwise he wouldn't have started this thread. Are some people on this thread being a little nasty towards a newbie struggling to find his way on the forums? Yes, in my opinion.

I don't see any reason for a ban on icey games. Keep an eye on his posts by all means, but a ban because he's having some difficulty with the forum rules seems a bit heavy-handed, especially as he wants to know where he's going wrong and seems genuinely to want to make a useful contribution. If someone told me "Go away and don't come back until you've learned English and the forum posting style" I wouldn't exactly be in a hurry to come back after six months.

Ben304 real nick *gets shot*

Tsk tsk tsk. You were warned, James Spanos.

Tee hee. Yeah, Dualnames, you didn't know they had a mafia in Australia, did you? Ben may make cute games, but don't mess with him if you value your kneecaps!

"I'M ONLY 15 ALL/MOST OF US TEENS TYPE LIKE THAT"

The point is you're not meant to. Honestly I've noticed that the people in my university act like kinder gardeners sometimes...okay, most of the time. (age range 18-23)

Hey, vertigoaddict, I'd rather have a kinder gardener than a nastier one, but it's just those kindergartners I can't stand Muphry's law strikes again (yep, that's Muphry's, not Murphy's).

For people that want to come here and ignore me then pile random stuff on the topic why bother its just gonna get it locked.It wasn't stupid it really just a question.

Oh, and I'm sorry but I gotta stay "Hip" to the topic or else when I come home I'll have (5+) reply's build-ed up so i'm gonna keep using my sidekick cause whats the point of paying for the web if I cant use it cause someone else so? so until you pay for my bill I'm gonna keep using what I pay for with my money. All I got to do is pay attention to how words are placed in the text box

Icey games - good, this is much more readable. You just need to pay a little more attention to how you write, as you say, and then others will pay more attention to what you write. Personally, I think it's OK to submit messages from a phone provided you make the extra effort necessary to ensure they are understandable.

Doctor Who? More like Doctor What the Fuck. When did this become a kids TV show? How hard is it to get a Dr Who game right? Why has the doctor developed into a gay icon?

When did Doctor Who become a kids' show? When it started. It always has been a kids' show. That's why they made Torchwood, which was similar but aimed at an adult audience.

I'm not sure how you see the Doctor as a gay icon, but Doctor Who has always had a large gay fanbase, and of course Russell T Davies, who wrote a lot of the episodes of the past few years, is gay, so who knows?

Anyway I want to like this game, but my beef with it is, aside from the fact that my PC goes into overdrive while the game's running (I haven't got the greatest graphics card), is that I'm stuck at the start How do you

Spoiler

get the taxi to roll down the ramp?

[close]

I don't know about other countries, but the UK song is chosen by the UK public. This year, a collection of unknown non-professional wannabe singers all sang the same song, and the winner was decided by a phone-in vote. The song was composed by Rick Waterman, famous for churning out cheesy pop numbers throughout the eighties, who churned out another cheesy pop number. As soon as the guy who was going to represent us was announced, I thought, "We're going to do really badly." With the benefit of hindsight, I should have put a bet on us coming last, but I really didn't think it would do that badly (the UK came last, by the way).

We need to take a chance and put in a decent, well-known singer or group. Last time we did that, we won (Katrina and the Waves, in 1997).

WOOOOOOOOOO !

Courage my friend !

Thank you

I got a big chunk of work done last week:

* Another character's walk cycle done
* Two rooms drawn and added
* Added a new batch of sound effects
* Scripted most of the boss battle!

There's still tons to do (mainly those pesky laborious walk cycles [sigh]), but there are only two more rooms to draw now. Watch out for further updates!

Another thing that's often mentioned but is worth reiterating: team up with someone else, especially if you're good at one thing but not so good at something else that the other person finds a breeze. That way you can concentrate on the easy stuff and leave the donkey work to the other person, except that they will think they are doing the easy stuff and you are doing the donkey work This is also very good for motivation and for getting a game finished, as if you feel like giving up on the game, they can help get you going again (and giving up would mean letting another person down too). Not only that but two heads are better than one for solving tricky problems like plot holes or coming up with original puzzles.

Well, this forum is supposed to be used for asking for feedback and criticism on AGS content rather than a showcase for artwork, so here's mine: I love this style. Have you considered posting a comment in the Offer Your Services thread, offering your talents as a background artist?

Also how nice is to have a lighter when a pretty girl asks.

Well, there's nothing stopping a non-smoker from carrying a lighter too. It's interesting you should mention pretty girls asking for a light as they tend not to be anything like as pretty after another decade or so of smoking.

OK, I'm just going to throw my comments into the mix...

Steven and Ben, excellent job! I love the graphics, I love the weather overlays and I love the lyrical nature of the game. My only criticism is that the puzzles were a little bit easy, but that doesn't bother me because to my mind it's more like an interactive story than a game.

I played this at work where I don't have any speakers, so now I've downloaded it at home so I can hear the music and the voice acting (I hope Ben won't mind me paraphrasing what he said to me when I told him this: "You've only had half the experience".)

Regarding other people's criticisms, there have been some fair points made but I think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this game was made in under a month (and it's freeware too).

Anyway, that's enough from me. It's a beautiful game, guys, and congratulations on your well-deserved win.

Congratulations Ben and Steven! It doesn't surprise me that Snakes of Avalon was close on the tail of Eternally Us tail as I found it pretty hard to decide between these two games.

And what a great crop of games submitted this time! Let's hope the new two-month MAGS format continues to encourage more of the same.

Chicky - haha your entry made me chuckle ^_^

If/when you do get a programmer, make sure he uses the nice, newer versions of AGS that are way nicer to build games with . 2.72 is nowhere near as nice to use as the current version!

Awesome! Laughter is the greatest gift, Merry May Ben!  

I am on the prowl for a smoking hot AGS programmer to be my game making buddy 4EVA N EVA. Applicants must have nice eyes.

As Ben said "he" and referred to 2.72, which is the version of AGS I am still using (yes, I know...) I'm fairly sure he must be talking about me   I am a smoking hot programmer and my eyes are gorgeous, as anyone will tell you, but unfortunately at the moment they are firmly fixed on This City at Night, which isn't going to finish itself...

Oh yes, I remember what I came here for now... I'm stuck in Snakes of Avalon:

Spoiler

I have the honey and the billiards cue, but have no idea what to do next.

[close]

Can anyone help? Thanks.

Oh, and where can I download Hard Space from? I keep getting "Invalid or deleted file" from the links ProgZMax has given.

Ben Jordan Case 8!

I second that!

For now, IGF 2010 Student Finalist Boryokudan Rue by teen potential TheJBurger, The Far Corners of the World by Wesray and The City at Night by paolo are games I will want to keep my tab on.

Believe me, I'm looking forward to This City at Night coming out too. Lots done but still so much to do... I reckon it's probably about 60% finished now.

I've just finished this. Congratulations, Grundislav - the remastering was really worth it, and the gameplay is now much more solid.

One question:

Spoiler

I see Mama was voiced by a man. I thought she was a man in drag the first time I saw her portrait... Was this intentional, I wonder?

[close]

...and one quibble wrapped up in a compliment:

Spoiler

I liked the song-writing puzzle because it was original and you had to let it develop before you could solve it, but they are similes, not metaphors.

[close]

A trick I've learned (and come to use myself) over the years with more detailed art is to do it in phases.  With portraits, for instance, there's nothing wrong with getting the base anatomy right and stopping when you've got a reasonable looking cartoony face.  Then after a bit, go back and work some realistic shading into the cheekbones, beneath the lip, under the nose, and around the eye sockets.  A little bit later, add some highlights that mesh with your shadows.  Soon you'll see something really good coming together as long as you keep your color count modest to start.

Definitely. This is working well for me with the portraits I'm drawing for my game. Initially, they look dreadful (bulbous noses, wonky eyes, etc) but by getting the anatomy right to start with and then constantly building on and refining the image I can eventually end up with something half decent after an hour or two's work.

Releasing the source of an entire game though might be a little difficult to understand if you're not an OCD code commenter.

Oh Calin, commented code is good! As long as you don't mean a huge block comment above just about every line and comments like

Code: ags

int b = 1;    //set b to 1

Now that really would be OCD

Much of this may have been said already, but here goes anyway.

When you combine two nouns to make a compound noun (as in "bow tie"), the first noun is still a noun, even though it modifies the second noun. It's called a modifier when it's used like this. In English, *any* noun can be used in this way ("weather forecaster", "computer keyboard") and it is even possible to form strings of nouns, as newspaper headline writers (there's an example right there) are fond of doing: (eg, "LONDON JEWEL HEIST SUSPECT ARRESTED"). That would make every noun an adjective as well, which is just not the case.

Some grammarians require that inflected forms must exist for a word to be an adjective (so "red" is an adjective because the inflected forms "redder" and "reddest" exist, but "land", as in "land animal", is not) but this does not apply to all true adjectives (eg, "alive" in the sense of "living").

Accents where are* is not pronounced except before a vowel or at the end of a word when the following word begins with a vowel are called non-rhotic accents, while those where it is are rhotic. Do kids in regions were the accent is rhotic get taught not to pronounce the letter are* before a consonant? No, of course not, because kids learn to speak before they learn to read, so they already know when to pronounce an are* in a spoken word and when not to. I would think they have no difficulty with understanding why there are silent are*s in some written words and ones that are pronounced in others, because all are*s before consonants will be preceded by a vowel ("or", "ar", etc) and when kids learn to read they are taught that these combinations are pronounced in the same way as "aw", "ah", etc, respectively.

It's debatable whether translingual homophones exist because, while the same phonemes may exist in two languages, they may not be phonetically identical. For example, French "lit" ("bed") and Italian "li" ("them") are phonemically identical (/li/) but may be pronounced slightly differently by French and Italian native speakers. If you are only after a phonemic match, then you can probably come up with dozens for any given pair of languages that use a similar set of phonemes.

EDIT: Modify my posting for txt-style spelling, would you? Grrr! Those "are*s" above refer to the plural of the eighteenth letter of the alphabet

OK, that makes sense.

I've managed to reproduce the crash when using Alt+Tab switch application from a 1024x768 game played on a 1024x768 monitor:


---------------------------
Adventure Game Studio
---------------------------
An internal error has occurred. Please note down the following information.
If the problem persists, post the details on the AGS Technical Forum.
(ACI version 3.12.1074)

Error: CreateVertexBuffer for texture failed

---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

Can you provide the exact error message that you get, rather than "an error about drawing the image"?

It's intermittent and I didn't make a note of  it, unfortunately. In any case, I think it is a Direct3D error rather than an AGS error. If I get it again, I'll let you know.

Funnily enough, I don't get the error mentioned above when I play the game windowed - it's as if the game switches to full screen automatically because the resolution is not big enough for the window.

I take it there isn't a way of playing a game at a lower resolution than the intended one, then, even by editing acsetup.cfg?

The game creator can change the game resolution in AGS, of course, but is there a risk of corrupting the game if they do this?

My monitor resolution is 1024 x 768, which means that if I play a game that is at that resolution, I can't play it in a separate window. If I then press Alt+Tab to switch from the game to a separate application, sometimes the game crashes with an error about drawing the image. I don't think it's an error in the game itself.

Is there any way of playing a 1024 x 768 game in a half-resolution window? There is no option to do so from winsetup (although the resolution can be increased), but is it possible some other way?

I am running the game on Windows XP SP3.

Thanks.