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I agree with most of the article. But I don't like the way it's written. Basically what he does is "Hey, there's something wrong here. There I noticed it, now it's up to you how to fix it".

Let me explain in a narcissistic way:

This week I've been really depressed because it seems life doesn't let me do anything I want. For several reasons. I've got really really frustrated out of doing nothing at all. Then I go and talk to my girlfriend and she tries to be helpful by saying "You got to do something. You can't lay in your bed all day". But christ, I just said I'm depressed because I want to do something and everything I try goes wrong by something that's not at all under my control. Then I get angry at her for not helping me by giving me a list of things that I could do but couldn't see  due to depression. But hell, this kind of thought is really selfish, so I never say it to her.

How does this relates?

Well, just like saying what's wrong with me won't help because I know exactly what's wrong. We know what's wrong with the adventure genre. Telling us again is not helping anyone fix it.  Most of the time people know what's wrong, but  fixing the problem is a lot more complicated. What would make that a great article? He should have given some ideas on how to fix it* and hope that some adventure maker (us) would read it.

But since I'm doing the same, pointing out everything that's wrong, I just started the list of Ideas that could "improve" the adventure genre.

Will post here in adventure related talk and chat, and hope that you'll read and contribute. :]

________
* Yes he gave some opinions or ideas, but they were so vague that they were like, paraphrasing Dr. Manhattan, a picture of oxygen to someone that is drowning.

I think, in my humble opinion that THERE IS innovation in the game market. But not in the form that we are hoping to see. The way I see it, Kinect  is pretty innovative, isn't it? It's innovative as in 'a new way to play video games'. Come on, Star Wars Kinect is like giving infinite candies to my inner child. (But I'll never own a console anyway. Personal rules).

The visual pornography is also an innovation in certain levels. I mean, in two day they'll probably be able to render a sun that can ACTUALLY BURN YOUR EYES when you stare at it on the screen. That's okay by me. Not that I care a lot about graphics and LENZ FLAREZ and all, it's just what they're working on now. It doesn't bother me a lot if they spend millions of dollars advancing technology in games instead of the whole experience. A day will come, probably in a few years, that the technological advancement will get slower, because there won't be to much to advance, and every game will have to focus on something else to sell.

Something like gameplay, history, it doesn't matter. And then, all will be good.

  I think I learned a valuable thing from being a poor geek. There's nothing wrong in not being able to play the games that came out this year.  Just this year I've got my first video card ever (okay, second, I had a voodoo back then), and my first graphics card is a Nvidia Mx 4000 that someone gave me because they had it gathering dust somewhere. And I'm happy with it. I CAN'T EVEN PLAY AGS GAMES IN DIRECT 3D MODE and I'm happy with it. Why?

Because there are SO MUCH GOOD GAMES that my pc can still run, so much good old games to play, why would I ignore then because some game now is 10000x times more advanced?
When I finally manage to catch up with the technology games will be better. And if not? Well, then I'll have a few rare good games that came out obscured by the CALL OF DUTY capital letters. Like DX Human Revolution. Yeah. I'll probably just play it by 2027 and then I'll say "Yeah, they we're wrong. We don't have augmented human parts now."

Untill then, my best friends are DosBox, Scummvm, and windows compatibility mode. 

Might as well try more idle views.  Thanks monkey.

And TheraHedwig, great point.

And slightly off topic, I don't know about everyone, but I would LOVE if someone implemented in the engine something like 3 part's characters, when the open sourcing of AGS is completed. Something like they had back then in Quake engine 3, where the body, head and torso could have different animations. It would be great for a lot of things, like, making a NPC or charater face something without fully turning around. It would save animators a lot of work and I guess it would reduce file sizes greatly.

Yes, I would be eternally grateful if someone did that.

This game is the nº1 thing that's putting my horror project on hold. Since I can't finish before you, I have to wait and see how high the bar will be set after the release. And PRAY that it isn't higher than I can reach.

But this new teaser made me hopeless.

The photographs looks really great.  And you managed to make them fit the game premiss perfectly. The grey colour scheme really helps creating the 'emptiness' feel without looking way too much manipulated.

Great job.

I bet you just answered my lonely dying post because I started playing Downfall today. No kidding. Okay... Yesterday.

Anyway, THAT WAS SO OBVIOUS AND YET SO GENIUS that I feel like an idiot. Really Grim. Thanks.  I'm sure that the characters will look so much better with just a couple frames for a breathing animation.

Sometimes the most simple way to do something is the better. 

FInished it. It was quite fun and easy. In a good way. It's not frustrating, and yet challenging.

Just wanted to say, though, that I think the Intro and ending didn't quite fit the tone of the game. :l

Spoiler

The beard was the easiest part for me.  : I don't know.

[close]

and about the ending:

Spoiler

And I didn't quite get the ending too, but I assumed he just wanted the rock for some personal reasons and used Riel to get it.

[close]

Good game. Congratulations, Antipus.

Now I can finally say:

HOW THE $%@#% I DID NOT SEE THAT DAMNMED DIARY BUG???

A week ago I was just finishing my OROW game (which is also the first game I've made in years of messing around with AGS that had a little playability)  and it got me thinking about how static and 'dead' my character looked most of the time, except maybe in some animated sequences, for obvious reasons. This is common in most games, character that don't move a pixel unless they're doing something (like walking, talking...). And that's okay and you'll understand why if you watch this video. Of course this isn't the best source of explanation of the uncanny valley in video games theory, but it was the first that came to mind.

If you watched it or just know what I'm talking about you'll know that a character that looks like this
won't look off if he doesn't move at all because he's a cartoon. But this:

(sorry AJA)
looks off most of the time.

Now that you understand what the hell I'm talking about, let's go to my question.

I'm making a horror game that uses live action video for the cut scenes but for the in game characters, in order to avoid what I just explained, the game uses cut out animation from photos of the game's actors. This Idea really improved the way the game looks and feels since the cut-outs fits perfectly the theme and tone of the game EXCEPT the scenes where the character isn't animating or is going from static to, let's say a pick up animation. I know I could use Idle views for making animations while the character doesn't move, but most of the time what would someone do while standing around in a scary place? Tap his foot? No, I don't think I like the idea.

Then a couple days ago I had a idea to avoid the character being static most of the time without using just Idle Views. I'm not sure if I can explain it, but I'll try:

>The character moves depending of the mouse X, Y coordinates. If the mouse is over the character, then he doesn't move. Depending of how far the mouse is from the character the faster he walks in that direction.
(And yes,  I know that this makes interacting with anything besides the player character impossible. I could set some key on the keyboard as a 'Interact Key' or make the same system I described above, but instead of just moving the mouse to walk the player would have to click  and drag the mouse on the screen, but this would be the same thing as the default walking/not walking system)
                  This 'solves' my problem because it reduces a lot of the time the character stops moving, and it could possibly make the character seems a lot less calm and peaceful, since he's supposed to be scared or something. BUT this can be VERY VERY annoying if not done right.

>IF  the system I choose is the one I described inside the brackets above, where you have to click for the character to move, his eyes, head, body and, I don't know, flash light if his holding one turn to face the mouse position.

How do I go about implementing it? Is it possible?
And a unrelated question: I've read in several places that too many objects on screen causes slow downs on the engine. Can someone say about how many objects with an alpha layer it would take for this to happen in a average system?

(Christ, every post I make is HUGE)

Can I ask what's the difference between boys and girls in a software forum? It's not like anyone is going to get a date or something...

Devil:

Spoiler

Hit him with the mirror

[close]

So I'd like to express my personal impressions of some of submitted entries so their creators may get their bonus moment of glee even if the golden trophy doesn't end up in their hands.

I can't express how much I support this attitude.

Well, I thought I could wait and play, but I need to get some sleep.
Best of luck for all of you guys.

I'm almost finished. 

[tears]

I'm making so many mistakes and playing the game over and over again so many times that every time  I see the main character I feel like I just made the worst game in the whole world.

And since we're quoting The Beatles, I'll quote Velvet Underground because someone HAS to do it.

"I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears"

Try messing with the contrast. And in photoshop, there's an option on 'adjustments' called 'selective colour'. There you select the 'blacks' colours from a drop down list and then you adjust the 'black' slider to 100%.

There must be a similar option in gimp.

Kill yourself would you? I clicked the damn link.

I bet you just posted the link so we lose 15 minutes of work. That's cheating.
:b

It was all good when I was only drawing the sprites and setting up the game. Now I'm all late because I forgot how to script most of things in AGS. That's the trouble of working in a team in a long project, you have to keep doing in side projects what you don't do in your main one.

And when this is finished we should do a contest called "Who suffered more brain damage by orowing" 

Yeah. Severe sleep displacement.
Never been so happy about being unemployed.
(But somehow I've never been happy about having a job, sometimes life just isn't fair).

Am I too fast? I just need to do one walking animation, one (spoiler) animation and then write the dialogues and the puzzles.

Does this mean that after 7 years wanting to make a game with AGS, after 7 years starting and never finishing several projects I may finally finish one?

I think I work waaaay better under pressure.