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No excuse necessary - although thanks for the insight!

Minimi - your profile states that you're only 16. Did you come to FoA etc. as late at 1997? If so, good for you!

Anyway, I tend to agree with GG and others. I consider myself an adventure fan from way back to the Infocom days, but for me its all about story, and while (good) puzzles give some feeling of furthing story through interaction, too often the puzzles get in the way leaving me frustrated - not because I want to solve the puzzle, but because I want to further the story.

Maybe that's why we're often tempted to use walkthroughs...

Hi all,

I've lurked around these groups awhile - even made the odd post now and then - and by reading the posts of my fellow AGSers I've picked up some tips on adventure game design which I'd like to run by you.

1. Adventure game plots should generally be based on time travel, dystopian sci-fi futures, pirates, Atlantis, cops, toilet humour, or some combination of the above

2. Despite the plot or setting, adventure games should be littered with filmic references and obscure in-jokes

3. Graphics are important in adventure games

4. Graphics are not important in adventure games

5. Most Lucasarts adventures are great and funny, while most Sierra adventures are twee and cloying (or is that just KQ?)

6. Nobody likes pixel-hunting puzzles

7. Use item A+B+C puzzles are tired and unoriginal

8. Conversation-based puzzles are long-winded and boring

9. This doesn't leave a lot of puzzle-types to use

10. Adventure games need neither graphics, sound, text, adventure, nor game, to create an immersive experience.

Is this about right, or do I have more to learn?

Cheers,
t

On a related note, I create my artwork in a vector drawing package - I use CorelDraw, but Illustrator, Freehand, etc. would be just as good.

One advantage of this is that when you export the scene to a bitmap, you can do it at any size you want and choose whether to apply anti-aliasing or not.

I find this gives much better results than the heavy-handed anti-aliasing in Photoshop.

Apart from the fact that you can't anti-alias sprite outlines in AGS, do people generally have a problem with anti-aliased artwork? I've seen a lot of examples on this forum of people really trying to avoid an anti-aliased image. Why do we think this could be?

Great image Erwin_Br!

I hadn't seen your stuff previously, but it's interesting how many elements we have in common -  the stools, the jukebox, the floor etc. - but I guess most peoples visions of a diner are similar.

Looking forward to seeing your game.

t

Thanks for all the comments  - I've made some revisions based on some of the suggestions.

New image here:



and bigger image at http://www.bigtrak.com/images/diner8.jpg

Basically I straighted the floor a bit, tidied up the shadow on the gumball machine, replaced the poster (much better this time), and extended the tiled area where the stools are. You were right Morgan - it would be hard to sit at the counter!

SteveMcCrea - no game for a while I'm afraid, this is more of a proof-of-concept for the art style...

Hi,

I thought I may be able to get a critique of this image - my first attempt at aiming for the Lucasarts MI / DOTT / Sam & Max kind of style.

Ultimately some of the items would be objects (rather than part of the background image), but I thought it would look better for now to put them into the scene.

Here's the pic:



and if you want to see a bigger one, it's here:
http://www.bigtrak.com/images/diner6.jpg

BTW - it's supposed to be a scrolling screen.

What do you guys think?

Cheers,
t

 

Generally for any recorded work (music or otherwise), seperate copyrights exist for the author(s) of the work, the performer of the work, and the owner of the recording (although these latter two are generally the same body).

So for example, if you had the Naxos CD of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture you wouldn't be able to legally use the music without first clearing it with Naxos - regardless of the fact that the 1812 Overture as a piece of music is out of copyright.

It's possible you could get around this by using a MIDI file of the music, but technically speaking even this could be copyrighted by the arranger of the file.

Hope this helps,
t

Well the good news is that now all seems to be working.

Not sure quite how or why though  - I copied AGS and my game over to my Win2K laptop. All worked fine (both existing compile, and new saves by AGS).

I then removed AGS from the XP machine, and re-extracted the downloaded archive file. And it works! So hurrah for that, and thanks to everyone who helped (especially TK).

Of course, now that I've got AGS working I'm sure you can expect more n00bish questions.

COMING SOON: THE "If the character movement speed is set quite high, and anti-glide mode is selected, why does EGO still seem to glide, rather than the animation just playing faster?" QUESTION....


t

I've tried creating a new game with the same (default) template, but the sam problem exists. Admittedly I haven't yet tried AGS on another PC, but I'll give it a go.

It's odd that the SCUMM templates (the ones by Proskrito) seem to compile fine. Perhaps there's something wrong with my copy of the default template...

oh, and in the Preferences, I've tried the various Game Testing States, but to no avail.

I've managed to screengrab the DOS box that appears (very briefly) upon trying to setup or test my tutorial game.



I must have grabbed before it had finished writing to the screen, but I guess it's trying to say "too big to fit in memory".

Can anyone help?

Cheers,
t

I'm on WinXP. I wondered whether it might be due to some update in 2.56 (which the tutorial was obviously written before).

I notice also that the AGS demo game throws all sorts of update requests and errors when trying to open it in 2.56. This might be not be relevant though...

t

Hi,

I recently downloaded AGS2.56d and I'm working my way through the included tutorial.

I've created and sucessfully saved a sample room, but when I try to select 'Setup Game' (or then 'Test Game'), rather than getting the game setup screen, I get a quick flash of a DOS window stating that 'an Extended Memory Manager is not installed' and sometimes 'too many parameters'.

This is despite the fact that the options are set to compile a Windows executable (not a DOS one). The error also occurs if I try to run my game directly from within the project's 'Compiled' folder.

Interestingly, if I do a 'Test Game' on one of the SCUMM templates (e.g. DOTT) available on this forum, the template compiles just fine.

Anyone else had these problems and found a solution?

Cheers,
t

Thanks - you *are* a nice guy!

Interesting what you say about the tag - I couldn't get it working in IE6, but having viewed the source of the page the list is indeed there.

As for it being asked a lot, a search on 'banner' yielded no answers...

Thanks again

t

I was browsing the forums earlier today and briefly there was an ALT tag on the AGS banner (like the one at the top of this page) which listed all the games shown in the banner.

Now it's gone. Is anyone up to the challenge of listing the games (L to R) shown in the banner?

Sorry - very first post to this board, and it's deathly-dull and n00bish...

Must do better,
t