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Having played through this to the end last night, I've got to say that I enjoyed it. I found the storytelling and dialogue throughout the majority of the game to be really good.

However, I personally thought the ending seemed rushed and there was definately scope for you to drag the game out alot more. Then again, perhaps the lead character is just particularly good at this detective stuff. 

The other negative that springs to mind is the inconsistencies in the style of the character art, both between different characters, and between each character and his/her portrait.

Overall though, good work! Was definately worth a play, and will look out for any future releases in the series.

Thanks for the feedback Find Therma.  I didn't want to drag the game out too much, plus it was my first attempt.  I am a good bit into game #2 and it is MUCH more in-depth.  Should be a good bit longer and more developed.  One thing I will definitely focus on this time through is continuity between the artwork / characters / murals.

Thanks!

Bill

Leon, I can't thank you enough.  I have corrected all the bugs you found.  I also re-did the ending credits and gave you credit as the un-official beta tester (since it was done post-release).

I gotta say I've definitely learned the value of doing a beta test, I was just so excited to finish my first game

I have also (as the patch notes say) added extra differences between the two possible endings, and fixed some other stuff.

-Bill

Thanks so much for the feedback!  I repaired those errors, and version 1.01 just got uploaded to my server.

Maybe next time I do a beta test  

Thanks again,

Bill

Congratulations! I like the combination of photo's and characters. The dialog characters could use some work though. Some of them speak like puppets..

Nice story and good background music.

Nice to see Al's brother Larry here too... familiar face ;-)

Thanks   It was quite exciting to finally finish my first game (and I've been here since 2004, so I dunno what my problem is) lol.


I noticed the talking animations as I was doing the game.  Some are better than others..  I might go back and re-vamp them all so they look a little more natural.

As for Al's brother Larry, did you :

Spoiler

Talk to Sgt. Stitcher about Larry Lowe once you found out about him?  He mentions his nickname.

[close]

Just a little nod to the Leisure Suit Larry series

Thanks,

Bill

**UPDATE**
Version 1.10 has been released and available on my site.  Leon found a bunch of bugs, crashes, and I added some additional content to the endgame, end cutscene, put some extra differentiation into the two endings, and make the credits a little prettier.

-----


I have been a member here for many years, begun and abandoned many games, but I have finally finished and released my first game!  It is made in 2.71 since I began it years ago, but the next installment will be done in the latest and greatest.

The game is rather short, probably taking around 2 hours to play, but I hope you will find it to be entertaining.

Inspired by Francisco Gonzalez's Ben Jordan series, the X-Files and many other nerdy sci-fi type stuff, I present the first episode of the Murran Chronicles: The Jersey Devil!

Website : www.billandnicole.net/games

Download : www.billandnicole.net/games/murran1.zip   (14.5mb)

Story: While visiting your cousin in Leeds Point, New Jersey, a neighbor child goes missing.  Being in the FBI (though a desk-jockey, not the field-op type), you are thrust into the middle of the investigation.  Did the legendary creature take the child, as the mother claims?  Or is something more nefarious at hand in the sleepy southern New Jersey pine barrens?













Thanks,

Bill

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=349

No, because then it would be ambiguous what you actually clicked on: if two objects/characters/room hotspots were adjacent, and your cursor was partially over both of them, which of them are you clicking on?

I read that post.  I don't want the entire cursor to be the hotspot, or even the entire image.  I just wanted something visible so the player would know where to center the cursor.

I never thought to do what SSH said.  That would be a really good thing to do.  Thanks for the suggestion.

I have a custom set of icons for my game.  I have the hotspot for each cursor exactly where I want it (the middle of the foot for walk, the tip of the finger for grab, the middle of the eye for look, etc, etc).  However, I dislike that the hotspot is a little teeny teeny dot.  Is there a way to change the size or image of the hotspot in the icons?  Maybe something like a X or a + or maybe a star or something?  If not, its no big deal, but I am just curious.

Thanks.

Perhaps if you change the text to @OVERHOTSPOT@ instead of @MOUSEOVER@ it will work?

......

Hahhaa.  That did the trick.  thank you so much..  God I feel silly.

Thanks again

I swear, I have spent HOURS on this.Ã,  Its making me want to pull my hair out...

I have literally spent about 3 hours pouring through the various messages on the forum here, looking for a way to get the mouseover of hotspots to show the text of what they are.Ã,  Nothing is working for me

I want this :Ã,  When the player moves the mouse over a hotspot, the text of the hotspot shows up in an invisible GUI.Ã,  I DO NOT want the text to follow the mouse.

I have downloaded the various modules, but don't want to use them.Ã,  I want to do it myself..Ã, 

I tried BOTH methods listed here : http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=26177.0

Nothing worked for me.Ã,  I keep getting errors or nothing at all, just @MOUSEOVER@ showing up on the GUI bar.Ã,  I don't know if it is because I am using AGS 2.71 and this code is for an older version, or what, but its frustrating as heck.

Can someone PLEASE help me with a quick description of how to get a GUI to show the Hotspot Name value in it when the hotspot is mouseovered?

I know this has been asked 1000+ times, as I have read all those posts, but for the life of me, I just can't figure out how to do it...

Thanks.

Hmm..  Nope.  Never heard of Return to Oz.  I'll check into it.  If it is what I am doing, I'll either change it to be based on the movie, or scrap the project. 

Was it a mainstream movie?  Or an indie flick?  Google here I come

Thanks for all the advice guys.  I am going to go with a 2-click interface.

My game currently has a very simplistic GUI setup.  I wanted advice on whether I should change it prior to going any further with the game, because I am having second thoughts about it.

The current setup has a single mouse cursor (an arrow-looking thing).  The player moves it around the screen, and if it goes over something it can interract with, it turns into an "OZ" symbol.  The player can then left-click on the object.  If the object can be talked to, it automatically talks.  If it can be picked up, it gets picked up.  If it can be moved, it is moved.  Etc, etc.  So no cycling through icons, or worrying about what to do.  Its all automated.

If the player right-clicks on an object, it is 'looked' at.  This goes for all things.  Both highlightable and non-highlightable things, like objects, floors, walls, people, etc, etc..

I am now worried it is too simplistic.  I know simple is good, but too simple might dumb down the experience...  I am a fan of all kinds of GUI setups.  I must say I liked the ones in 5 Days / 7 Days series of games, the Apprentice games, as well as in the classic Sierra and Lucasarts games. 

I was hoping to get some advice/input from you guys.

Thanks,

Bill

Ok, i think you have a good spin on a classic story. I like it... (seems all very twisted..perhaps a bit morbid)

on the screenshots however... i dont know... they seem.. well... strange! I dont really dont know some of the images seem out of place. But hey if thats part of the feel of the game.

It is supposed to be like that.  Those are overlays of various disturbing/morbid visions that Dorothy has.   There are a bunch more, but those are the ones I showed because they have the Tin Man and Scarecrow in them.   It is supposed to look out of place, because they are technically happening in her head.

Look weird but very interesting. Are those characters Sims-Sprites?

Nope.  I made/rendered them in Blender (www.blender.org) and exported the animation as .png files, and then imported them into AGS.

After the hard disk failure that caused me to lose my years worth of work on my Quest For Glory game, I began a brand new project.Ã,  I present OZ - Dorothy Returns (still a working title, dunno if it will be called that when finished).

PLOT

The game takes place 5 years after 'The Wizard of Oz' movie that most everyone on earth has seen.Ã,  This game assumes that all the other books Frank L Baum and others have written in the series were never done.Ã,  As stated in the game's disclaimer, this means that the events in the game won't hold up to scrutiny by true fans of the series.

This is a very adult-based and dark view of Dorothy and Oz.Ã,  Dorothy has been talking of Oz and her friends there for the past five years.Ã,  Auntie Em and Uncle Henry have basically come to the conclusion that she has gone insane.Ã,  They take her to an Asylum for Teaching Young Women Household Work (or a Loony Bin).Ã, 

She finds out after being beaten by the orderlies at the request of a nurse, that this is not the place she wants to be.Ã,  The game begins with you locked in your 'room' (more of a jail cell than anything), and you are having morbid and psychotic visions and hallucinations.Ã,  You realize something is wrong, and you must escape the Asylum.

In escaping (only a few puzzles to get out), you somehow arrive back in Oz (surprise!) and come to find that everything has changed.Ã,  The munchkins are... no longer munchkins...Ã,  The yellow brick road has been destroyed.Ã,  Glinda, the good witch, and her evil counterpart are now slaves to an evil force taking over the land.Ã, 

You will be tasked with defeating the evil force which took over Oz, freeing the witches from their enslavement, and basically restoring peace and tranquility to Oz.Ã,  At the same time, you are on a quest to discover if you are truly insane or not.

This is a very adult game, very twisted..Ã,  Kind of how American McGee re-did the Alice in Wonderland game a few years back.

The game is full of characters rendered in Blender, complete with full animations (surprised/scared gestures, climbing, diving - see screenshot -, being attacked, etc, etc).

The game is going to be huge when complete.

PS: As of these screenshots, I am using the colorized version of dorothy's sprites.Ã,  Just as in the movie, it will be black and white until Oz, then go to color.

SCREENSHOTS

Title Screen


Disclaimer


Warning Screen


Some of the Sprites


Assylum Sign


Dorothy's House


Morbid Vision of the Tinman


Morbid Vision of the Scarecrow


Dorothy Attacking an Orderly

I upgraded a while back to 2.62.

I am an IT person.  I work for a computer company, and did all the normal diagnostic stuff I could do.  It is indeed dead, appears to have seised up somehow..  Maybe overheating, I dunno...  We have a vendor I can send it to, but it costs hundreds to thousands of dollars to pull data from a dead/damaged HDD.   That is not something I am willing to do.

I have been working on my "Quest For Glory, A Hero's Death" for almost a year now.  It has come along very nicely, and is quite huge at the moment.  I recently ran into a BIG problem...  I had a hard disk failure and had to install a brand new HDD with a complete reinstall of my OS and everything else.  As such, my AGS files, including the 200+ megs of data for my game, are gone!

I tried hooking the HDD up as a secondary drive to browse it and see if I can pull any files off, but unfortunately, the drive won't spin.  It is dead.  I am now stuck with the fact that I only have the most recent compiled .EXE file and NONE of the source code, graphics, etc, etc that I had done.  Does anyone have any idea if it is possible to decompile my most recent .EXE file to give me all my source stuff back? 

Any help appreciated.

Thanks,

Bill

This scene, despite it's stylishness, is hard to understand.
What's these volume lights up on the...Ã,  Ã, ....ceiling?

Thats a reflection. Ã, I will need to turn the reflectivity down.

Why are ...torches? Lighting up so little of this wall the're attached to, but a big area on water?

The water reflects more than brick.

How do medieval people make so almost-neon red light?

Its a torch light. Ã, It flickers orange/red, that screen is just one of the screens.

You definelty have to give some more light to this room. Low ambient perhaps?

Probably a good idea, thanks.

Bill

Arhmm...   

Well...

It was "Player Walks Onto Region"...


It works great on "Stands On Region"

The else statements were needed too.

Thanks!

As always, excellent criticism guys, thanks.

Pod : The roof wasn't made when I did that picture.  It is rounded and kind of oval.  No fullbright render.  Lighting ambiance is important here.  Plus, no need to see the jagged curves in the walls

Babar, Pod and Abulafia:  The sewer system in question is under the capital city of the realm.  It is a big city, almost a 'medieval metropolous' if you will.

Abulafia: I really like the idea of condensing the image to make it claustrophobic.  Sounds like a good idea.  I will be re-doing the screens I've already done now

Thanks!

Bill

I remember a game a while back called the 7th Guest.  I remember that being a point-click and move type game.

Would it be possible to make a long screen (something like 1280x240).  The first 320 pixels would be the view of the screen 'looking left', the second 320 pixels would be the view of the 'camera turning left' (which would need to be done with perspective and motion blur in mind).  The 3rd 320 pixels would be the 'straight ahead' view.  Then the 4th and 5th would be like the 1st and 2nd but to the right hand side.

I think it might work, but it'd take some artistic ability.