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I think "permanent consequences" is a valid design decision, just like permadeath. And it's much better than being able to save only on checkpoints. So if your game is genuinely designed around that mechanic, I'd say go for it. If anything, you may consider an optional easy mode with unlimited saves.

Also it'd be of course good if you provided one save per playthrough rather than just 1 save forever.

Hey thanks for making it available from Linux!

Actually monkey_05_06, seeing as you clearly have already compiled x86 and x86_64 binaries of AGS for linux, can you publicly share them? I think all AGS developers (and players) would benefit from that.

Edit: Derp, right after writing that, I realized that I can just look in the folder where the Cat Lady is installed and find them there, which indeed was the case. So, thanks twice as much.

I still think they should be, like, posted somewhere on the forums and like highlighted so the developers know that they can relatively easily make Linux versions of their games.

Edit 2: You guys don't mind if I borrow the shell script you use for platform selection too, right?

The possible implications for TOR are indeed extremely unpleasant.

Though I remember reading in Snowden's leaks about sophisticated techniques NSA employed to compromise TOR. If they knew about this, they'd probably just use that instead. So there's some hope they didn't I suppose.

Well, wow. Even though the wording "So, How has AGS helped you in the long run?" seemed comedic to me at first due to the implied extent of the answer, as irony would have it, such extent is actually present in the answers. And even though I don't particularly regret my silly and (hopefully) harmless joke, I'd like to point out that I certainly don't intend it to mock e.g. Myinah's and Dave Gilbert's stories that demonstrate genuinely serious, touching and impressive impact. To reinforce that I offer you my serious answer.

For a very long time the AGS community and its creative output served as a huge inspiration to me. I've always been a daring optimistic enthusiast but games like Apprentice and Ben Jordan really helped that seed of faith in independent hobbyist gamemaking grow. It's nice to firmly believe in things because of your own reasoning, but seeing stuff that actually shows you that yup, amateur games really can be pretty damn awesome, makes a huge difference still. I've been looking up to AGS games for years and it inspired and fueled my own humble beginnings and developments a lot.

And then I became an active participant of the community. And I found some amazing friends and just indeed plenty of amazing people. There is simply no way to describe in full the impact that had without writing a novel. But you probably can imagine. Constantly interacting with more likeminded people really changed my life and my attitude towards many things. I'm just utterly happy to have had gone through that.

And last but not least, I've been a part of a handful of AGS projects myself. Considering being a game developer is my biggest desire in life, it's hard to overstate the positive effect of this. It's been fun, it's been amazing, it's been priceless in terms of experience. I'll always look back with joy at those projects and people I worked with. And the nice reception of mine and Pablo's game made a lot of difference for me. I assure you I wasn't even remotely expecting it. And while it didn't make me feel like a superstar of course, it helped a lot with alleviating the utter terror of possible reception of my work, which many of you creative people can probably understand and relate to. And that makes a huge difference too.

So, while AGS itself has never directly been my own tool of choice, the community and lots of things associated with it are a big deal to me. And I'm certainly better off because of it all.

But this undermines the whole point of critique. Why bother entertaining anyone's views on anything, ever, if the validity of a critique is based entirely on whether you agree with them or not?

Of course it's a good idea to entertain others' views despite disagreements. But I see a certain breaking point when your core beliefs differ with someone else's to such degree that it renders the potential for extracting useful information from their opinion to near zero. I'm not talking about some superficial or medium differences in opinion. I'm talking about non-reconcilable fundamental differences.

Case in point. Your opinion is the game is good. Their opinion is the game is bad. Fair enough, opinions are opinions. But why go on to label the review in a number of ways when you can't have any way of knowing the reviewers mindset? Why should the reviewer choose to be narrow-minded towards this particular game? Surely such behaviour would be prevalent across a body of reviews, and not localized to a handful of particular titles, if the reviewer was prejudiced or ill-informed about the genre in general?

And what is it about the adventure game in general that's so hard to understand, that failing to grasp it would result in the automatic dismissal of opinions?

Well, actually you have a point. If we look closely, when I'm defending Deponia for instance, the issue for me would be mostly the issue of narrative analysis rather than anything genre-specific. You can consider it happening with an adventure game a coincidence if you wish. Maybe it is.

The crux of my argument: Are these reviewers simply mistaken when they raise these issues of design? Are said design issues given a pass by fans because that's just how adventure fans like their games? Or are they not issues at all, in the eyes of adventure fans?

Well, that's a good question. After 8 hours of Moebius I'd certainly say that John Walker is definitely overreacting to what I as an adventure gamer perceive as absolutely standard fare of adventure game bullshit. He makes it sound like it's some kind of remarkable atrocity. But it's not worse than any average adventure game, I assure you. Certainly not worse than Cognition for instance. And even though "can't pick up things you don't know you'll need" principle can be frustrating, and I kept wishing it wasn't employed, it's a meaningful design decision. Permadeath in roguelikes can be frustrating too, but you can't dismiss it as some random flaw. However, on the other hand, just because it's standard adventure game bullshit, it doesn't mean it's not bullshit. I'm certainly getting more and more tired of the same artificial "here be puzzles" design philosophy in what I used to hold as favourite genre without a doubt. I'm having a lot of fun with the narrative of Moebius, even despite not liking the main idea of the plot, but I can't say the same about the puzzles, they feel like a chore. Like an old chore.

The second screenshot in the original post made me laugh like an idiot. And the reference to G&R is a flattering surprise. Looking forward to this.

Please add funky animated sperms as cannonballs.

No way! Do not confuse randomness and bad taste!

I'm sure Dennis thinks sperm tastes alright

Yeah, except Goodbye Deponia doesn't consist of just those couple of moments. It has lots to offer aside from a couple of very unwise jokes. And it is still an example of good storytelling if you ask me. Which is what makes such merciless, narrowly-focused and generalizing critique especially painful.

It's such a shame we can't like this game now because Rock, Paper, Shotgun et al have given it bad reviews. I really enjoyed it.

Terrible game. 1/10.

Hah! Thanks for posting this. I'm terrible at moving on, so I needed to hear something like that. I mean it.

But that doesn't make sense to me, if I get what you're saying. How does not liking two (or three) specific games, out of the ten or so that I mentioned, invalidate their entire opinion on the genre? If Adventure Gamers gave a bad review to a game you liked, would that result in the same dismissal?

Because to me they were exemplary. If I found them simply a bit good or enjoyable I wouldn't mind. But to me they were the highlights of what makes good games and adventure games and I'd use them as examples to any players or designers. So when somebody doesn't share that, it's hard for me to regard their opinion as useful. And frankly I think it'd be very hard to reconcile your views with an opinion of somebody who completely rejects all that you hold the most dear and right even if you wanted. So yeah, after the impassionate 3 star review of Memoria I find it hard to hold the opinions of Adventure Gamers in high esteem as well. People like different things, and they're entitled to, but I also believe that there's such a thing as simply not getting it, you know?

I never set out to disprove that. My problem was never with people enjoying them, it's with people blindly defending them to the detriment of future games. I don't see why The Walking Dead can't represent adventure games, though. It's different to point and click, sure, but so is a text parser, or a verb list, but nobody questions their right.

Well you're entitled to your opinion of course, but I genuinely believe that spawning new genres instead of all clinging to one banner would make for more constructive discourse. Because I'm not talking about whether this kind of game "deserves" to be called adventure games or whatever. I'm just saying that its gameplay differs, the focus differs, the pacing differs and it ended up engaging a completely different audience as the result.

Oh and regarding the text parser? Well, text adventures do exist as a separate genre for quite a while now. They're called interactive fiction.

[completely]

Thank you.
But they loved Gemini Rue, Resonance, and The Blackwell Convergence. You can't get more traditional than that! And while Primordia perhaps didn't rate as highly, it's still a review with a number of positives.

With such games as The Inner World, The Dream Machine, and Night of the Rabbit rating very highly, and others, like Cognition, Broken Sword 5, and Journey of a Roach, rating favourably (if not glowingly), RPS seems pretty consistent in their approach to the genre.

As to their more negative adventure reviews, this latest for Moebius is by far the most damning (the review for the final Deponia game comes a close second - the initial Deponia title got a more favourable review).

I don't want to bang on about RPS (or send them any more page hits!), but as a mainstream outlet (or as mainstream as a hardcore PC-exclusive site can be), they rate pretty highly on my list of go-to adventure coverage.

Well sure, which is why I said "reliable". I'm not saying they shoot adventure games on sight, but after these examples, which are very important to me, I'd never be able to rely or even listen to their point and click-specific critique with much enthusiasm.   Not recognizing Primordia as one of the absolute pinnacles of the entire genre is also telling. You just don't get many examples of the classic formula done any better than that. And then Night of the Rabbit and Cognition get favourable reviews in spite of that? Hah.

But back to my intial point, I think adventure fans get the games they deserve. That may sound pretty harsh, and I don't mean it in a particularly negative way, but when the line between quality games and not so quality games remains blurred...Or rather, Jane Jensen and Phoenix have seemingly made a game specifically for point and click adventure fans, and the mainstream hate it. Adventure fans say it's because the mainstream doesn't get adventures (despite evidence pointing otherwise). Telltale made an adventure game that wasn't(?) for adventure fans, and the mainstream loved it. They appoint it game of the year, and claim it to be the triumphant return of the adventure as an example of gaming perfection. Adventure fans say it's not really an adventure game.

But it isn't! It's beside the point whether it's a better or worse genre than our beloved adventure-games-with-profoundly-anti-intuitive-inventory-puzzles, but it's a very different genre even though we still cling to the same names. I really fail to see how do you intend to disprove the issue of people really not enjoying the gameplay of classical point and clicks using as example games... that specifically cut it out completely and focus on stuff that classic point and clicks often don't even touch on. Seriously, you may think the TWD style is an improvement over the traditional adventure games all you want, and I may agree with you in a way (in the sense that I think the way TWD does it is fucking shit, Blade Runner, Culpa Innata, The Vacuum or the recent Kentucky Route Zero did it way better, but yeah), but claiming that those games somehow retained everything traditional adventure games have and so they can meaningfully represent them is just bizarre to me. I just don't think you can make people who cling to intentionally pretty much illogical inventory puzzles and people who absolutely hate that (i.e. the majority of gamers) forget their differences and stop wanting what they want, and just start liking the same things.

Adventure fans have embraced the tropes and foibles of the genre, to the apparent detriment of the actual games. Of course, they may be fine with that, and if so, I salute them. But in doing so, they have given up their right to complain about opinions outside the scene.

I largely agree with the sentiment. There are still absolutely mindblowingly good examples of the genre done right and now then (e.g. Primordia, Memoria), but they're a minority. And the audience of the genre is very much responsible for the overall stiffness of it. Not everything benefits from sticking to the classic formula so bloody much.

However, even though I get the notion, I don't think I can agree with that it completely deprives them from their right to counter-critique. They may be partial to some stagnation in their niche, they may be blinded a bit, but it doesn't mean everybody outside of it is unbiased and correct about everything. I'd like to point out that TWD is very likely so successful mainly because it is very accessible and has enjoyable content. And not because it's some ingenius masterpiece of game design or drama writing.

Well for completely unrelated reasons I actually happen to have a SE account already so I went and voted yes.
Even though it's a somewhat untruthful vote.

Thanks to AGS I stopped doing drugs and hookers, lost weight, found myself and got a job. It also helped me overcome my irrational fear of teapots.

Well, it's not a one-sided situation I think. On one hand I'd hardly go to RPS for reliable opinions on traditional point and click adventure games. Not after they drowned Deponia and Yesterday in mud. And needless to say, there are plenty of people who simply can't appreciate the traditional point and click gameplay (or even only the stories if they're told through such), and I think that matters of course. Not even to mention that adventure games do sometimes tend to be subtler in their content and not everybody can appreciate that either. But having said that, I do think traditional adventure gamers do tend to ignore the other side of the fence a bit too much at times as well.

And I think regardless of all that, things like The Walking Dead aren't really in the same genre as point and click adventure games. I mean, it's simply a different genre with different gameplay. Which makes all the difference in the world. Just look at the sales and compare to sales of any traditional point and click. If you can argue with that then... yeah I think that's the case I (we?) was talking about, ignoring the reality outside of your niche.

As for the game itself... well I'm only 2 hours in and it hasn't captivated me as much as Gray Matter did, but neither has it really disappointed me with anything. I'm fully enjoying it so far.

"I'm not a robot, I'm a UNICORN"

(kudos for those who get the reference)

It's from that anime about Dualnames, right?

it's a favorite game of mine

Let's be friends forever please ok thanks.

Haha miguel! Your game got style! And it's hilarious and adorable. And I love Dennis' main sprite. I'd say we're looking at one of the finest installments of the series in the making. I'll be looking forward to this.

At first I read "Seek out the lair of the Wumpus while avoiding penis along the way!".

But even regardless, what a brilliant cover.

Radiant, is this the Antimoderator Man?

Right. Some opinions.

I can kinda get behind merging music with sound effects, even though I completely agree with Ilyich on that you really shouldn't, but merging voice acting and music in one award can't come off as anything else than you hating voice actors and composers and considering their efforts so completely unremarkable and irrelevant that you can just lump it all in one ambiguous blob, tag it 8/10 and forget about it. Oh, and don't call it "best sound". You can't leave out the word "music" out of the awards without making music seem completely unimportant.

Next. I'll say again, I think we need a "best comedy" award. (and perhaps other genre-specific awards that Baron mentioned) A game can have crappy graphics, unremarkable puzzles, mediocre music and easily not even have the most impressive story or writing of the year, but still be very memorable and pleasant because of its humour. Case in point from the last year Chrisopher Columbus Is An Idiot. I think that kind of thing still deserves to be awarded. Especially considering how often the genre lends itself to comedic games that rely on humour as their main pillar. To say the least.

I'm against separating commercial and free games for reasons I (and Ghost) outlined in an earlier similar topic. In short, it doesn't encourage or reward anything good in particular.

Now if we're to tackle the award sweeping problem seriously, we could also try the following. All votes are weighted. Every voter has to face a simple quiz that has basic questions pertaining to random games from the eligible pool. How many questions they get right defines the weight of their vote, plain and simple. Also I think it'd be wise to make it so the weight of their vote isn't revealed to them. However personally I don't see this issue as very important, because indeed it all depends on the meaning of the awards.

Oh and I agree on having a "best game design" award. I'd much prefer it to best gameplay/puzzles/etc awards. It encompasses all of that while staying on the spot and without introducing any ambiguity.

That was nice to listen to. You two were lovely.