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Advantages of Unity are that you can lock it to a 2D plane and then just work in that. You don't HAVE to go 3D. I'm thinking about tinkering with Unity 3D just to essentially make something AGS like, but which I can publish to a variety of platforms.

This is a cool idea, BUT you will have to do a couple of things to get the ball rolling:

First - copyright. There have been too many fan projects that have been worked on extensively, neared completion or been released only to receive a cease and desist order due to copyright violations. It would a tragedy if you produced something as a labour of love only to have it shutdown and render you unable to share it with the world.

Second - I've been to the site and there's nothing there. Not really anything to indicate what the game will look like, play like etc. You need to get some design docs together and screen shots of works in progress to get people excited, on board to help you, and generate buzz.

Hope it takes off well.

How come the Pi can run Quake 3 at a fairly good lick but can't run old school adventures as well?

I'm sure there's a reason, I'm just curious.

My brain just melted. I'll stick with AGS Script in the first instance then....

Just thought it'd be a good way to help me learn Lua. I'll go back to my plan for Space Invaders in Love2D!

So if I wanted to start using AGS this year (probably within the next couple of months or so), would I be okay using it as an opportunity to learn Lua and dispense with learning AGS Script? Or are there things that can't be done in Lua that can in AGS Script, and are there still tutorials for Lua in AGS?

Moving over to Lua would be a good move for the future development and propagation of the engine and the community. Lua is a de facto standard in the games industry and lots of people program in it outside of that. It's meant to be one of the easiest languages to learn. Already, now that I've learned that AGS uses Lua, I'll be more likely to think about doing some serious development in AGS rather than looking at something else like Unity (at least to start with).

It's worth thinking about what will benefit the community and development of AGS long-term. It's open source now - you want to think about pushing the Lua side so that more people will get involved.

Onker, you truly are a complete tool.

Unity themselves may well wish to come and do a workshop and sponsor the event a little - in the interests of publicity for Unity Engine.

As one of the chosen ones who attended last year's Adventure X, I'm really impressed with the leap that the convention made this year.

*Double the number of people - not to be sniffed at!

*Much better venue: Whilst I of course missed the permanent source of alcohol in the building (drinking ale all afternoon AND talking about Adventure Games IS pretty cool!) the venue was fantastic and had great facilities which is what you really need for this kind of event (in terms of projectors/mics etc.). Good variety of food outlets nearby guaranteed due to its busy location (albeit with the Petticoat Lane market there!).

*Better location: Of course, I would say this (I live not too far from Liverpool St.!), but I think it was a lot easier for everyone to get to London rather than Didcot. I stayed overnight in Oxford, so there were accommodation options available but these will of course pale in comparison to London. I don't think that options in London would necessarily be more expensive either (especially if you factor in travel costs where you may have to go via London anyway). I also think that London is a much better place for international delegates to get to, and it easier to navigate since we're used to having loads of tourists.

*Talks were really good. Similar to last year you got a good selection of people to speak that were interesting. Like some others said at the event, it was good to reach out to 'outsiders' (;-P) from text adventures and MMF (even if it is MMF - sorry Fano!). Panels were a great idea and the mix of amateur and professional speakers was great.

*Raffle is still a great idea and is good fun! (especially when you win something ;-) )

Possible improvements for next year:

*Would be nice to organise the space so that people presenting their games were in a cordoned off space if possible. Much of the time there was no where to chat without disturbing what was going on in the games presentation space. Maybe have exhibitors set up in the rooms by the lifts and then people can present where they were? Either way, a slightly different focus of where the 'default' space might be worth toying with.

*More marketing. It's a great event and I'm sure that people would be interested in being there, pros, amateurs, players, developers whatever. What Dave said about social marketing is a case in point here.

*Some more breaks in between talks to allow people to hang out/check out other things/grab lunch/network etc. Maybe put in early, lunch and late breaks?

*Some retrospective style talks would be good. i.e. someone's made and released a game: How did it start? How did they design it? What was the process? What did they learn? What would they do differently next time? Advice/comments for others? That kind of thing. A bit like Dave's talk - although his was from the point of view of business and making a living. I think loads of people would be interested in story of a game/developer diary kind of thing.

*Panels/discussions are still really good and a great way to get people talking to each other.

*Some more professional input if it's available. I think many of us are thinking about indie development and hearing about Dave's story with Blackwell was a real inspiration.

*Dare I say it - talks about other software! Getting different viewpoints on other packages out there is really good, since some are starting to say that AGS may not meet their needs in the future - especially from a commercial point of view. Wintermute? Unity? Visionaire? Moai? Whatever...

On this final point, it may be worth thinking about Adventure X morphing into something a bit more than an extension of the AGS community - although it seems you might have pre-empted me already. It's well placed, now that it's been started, to cater to the adventure gamers community at large. I think that would get more people coming, more speakers, more exhibitors and we'd all learn a lot more.

Thoughts?

Hope that all helps.

Another thing - I would be up for helping next year to make things bigger and better in whatever way I can. Maybe start a new thread where you can ask for help and/or people can offer their skills/services to help next year?

Again, thanks for a great convention. Roll on 2013!

I looked at the MOAI website and see that it's very programming heavy. That's fine, but not where I'm at at the moment. It doesn't seem to have much that would help me at the stage I'm at, whereas Unity has great support and lots of assets available for free to get started. There's also a level of drag and drop to help you get up to speed.

I've often looked at the Wintermute Engine and wondered about whether to get stuck in with it, but I can't get past the fact that it's totally dead. It's not being developed anymore, WinterMute 2.0 is approaching 'vapourware' status and hardly anyone seems to be present on the forums. This is SO important if you're using a free tool.

Having said that, the games that have been made with Wintermute look great. I know this is an AGS forum, and I'm not looking to start any fires, but can anyone who has experience of both make a comment on relative pros and cons?

As for Visionaire, well, it looks cool. But stories abound about poor support etc. But it IS cheap, and some of the games made with it RECENTLY show that it has promise of some sort. It's also not very clear on their website whether you can publish a game for free with the free version, or if you need the free version of Visionaire to run it. Also, would I be right in saying that they're German (Resources is spelt wrong on the front page!) and maybe most of the support is in that language? Anyone go experience of it?

I'm looking at Unity for the future, although I think I'll start using AGS, then see what I want to replicate in Unity.

But what other games are using MOAI (which I'd never heard of till I read this post)?

Whilst you would get more 'bang for buck' in terms of pure grunt from a PC rather than a Mac, the joy of having a Mac is that you know that the software will run well because there aren't so many variations to be had (cf. PCs and laptops). I've got an old Mac that my wife uses and it still runs very well, despite being about 5 years old and running Mountain Lion.

If your everyday work is going to be made easier by having a Mac (and judging by your brief, this REALLY seems the case) I would just get a Mac, enjoy the pretty user experience that Apple products DO give you and just dual boot into Windows 7. It's a bit more expensive, but solves a lot of problems that you might encounter if you try running OSX off a PC (many which you may not know about at the start!) and at least you'll still be able to get Apple support for all that since it's an official feature.

Some guys off my games Masters course had MacBook Pros and dual booted to use programs they couldn't get on Mac with no problems at all. If it was me, I'd want to spend a little more money and go for the simple life.

Reprise of special exclusive Yahtzee commentary? That was pretty darn cool last year.

Afterparty! Now we're talking

Is 'theSynapse' the guy who was dissing 320? He's in my bad books

Also welcome to the forums

Since I don't even know what 320 is, I'm presuming that I'm not your guy! :-)

I was one of the few who wasn't part of the AGS community at all. I just saw a post on indiegames.com and booked a ticket immediately last year!

And yes, after party certainly sounds good! We can acquaint ourselves then!

EDIT: Looking forward to spreading the word. Get that link up quick m0ds!

I know the road well (although I never bought any petticoats....). I shall be there!

And for anyone who's worried - there are so many pubs and bars round there you couldn't crawl round all of them in a week!

You chose the worst possible time to mention this, theSynapse, as I sent an email this morning confirming our booking of a different venue!

Tickets aren't actually available yet, so you haven't missed your chance.  While Elephant might be a good location (albeit a bit iffy), the venue we've booked is actually only a few minutes from Liverpool Street station, which is on the Stansted Express line, as well as four Underground lines.  It certainly could be worth m0ds speaking to these GameCamp people though, at least to get some advice, if not some attendees and publicity...

Sorry! Wasn't trying to mess things up! It's just that I was thinking about starting to get into AGS and came to the forums, but for the first time in about 8/9 months!

How are we securing funds then? I'm intrigued as to how this is going to be a free event!

What is the venue then if you don't mind me asking. I live quite nearby (South Woodford) so Liverpool St. is much better for me anyway!

Incidentally, I hope that someone's already thought of it (I'm sure you have!) but something that will be different from last year will be the level of security required...

I know this is a late suggestion. I've only just come to the forums for the first time since just after AdventureX last year!

And mOds - I can't believe you didn't give me the chance to be the first to get a ticket for the second year in a row!

Anyway, you may want to speak to some of the guys on the Games Culture course at London South Bank University (LSBU) and/or Gamecamp. The campus is in Elephant and Castle which is in central London and near a number of overland train stations and is on the Northern line (for Londoners like me) so it's dead easy to get to.

They have held the GameCamp event a coupe times at the Keyworth building. For those that don't know, it's an (un)conference (http://gamecamp.org.uk/). I went to the last one and it had a couple hundred people, so they can cater for that, plus there are a few rooms of different sizes to choose from in the complex (no offence, no sure AdventureX is going to draw quite such a crowd!) to suit your purposes.

They would be very friendly I'm sure to giving advice on venues and running the event if you need it. Hope the advice helps. Keep me posted on what happens.

I think the main thing you need to do this year m0ds is to do more marketing. it doesn't have to be you per se, just get someone else to do if you like. Definitely take advantage of facebook, advertise on websites. Get a press pack to send out to magazine websites to make it easy for them to do a post about AdventureX so you'll get easy publicity (once you've made the pack up and a template email, it's just a case of sending it out to various people).

Look forward to making it again this year!

Cheers

Tom (random dude from last year who came!).

(EDIT: I've also just noticed that I haven't received an email about AdventureX 2012 yet....has one been sent or is there something wrong with the email list? Obviously the first port of call for publicity...)

Yeah, that iOS exporter got released in the last year or so. Makes a big difference really! Plus at least ClickTeam are a professional company with some full-time support people on hand (although things like GM have an outstanding community).

I know you have to pay for MMF2, but it's really not a lot of money for what you get. £180ish pounds to export to xcode for iOS devices? Damn site cheaper than many other programs!

The only problem is that there aren't as many good examples of MMF2 games clearly on display as say with AGS or GM, which annoys me somewhat. Having said that, might that be due to the fact that MMF2 is slightly more commercially focused and people wouldn't want to proclaim their products in the open? I'm not sure.

I DO know that the people doing that Star Wars point and click have moved from AGS over to MMF2. I wonder how they found it making the engine from scratch though. Seems like a bit of a mission to be honest.

Just strange it was so un-noticeable in person, hehe! Just to say, sorry I haven't sent out another newsletter yet, Christmas has been most merrily hectic, but it is a priorty for me to have it out by tomorrow.

If you email me then I'll endeavour to send the videos of the music man at the end and the other photos I got of the event.

I think the answer is looking more and more that I have to build my own engine in MMF2 and then run with that if I want to make something for iOS and other formats.

I already own MMF2 (for my uni course) so cost is not a problem. I have no issue paying for the iOS exporter - it's still a cheap way to get games to iOS devices. Plus it has all the other exporters, so for cross-platform purposes (with minimum of recoding/fuss) it seems the best.

But I think that I'll use AGS for a bit to see how the tool does things well so I've got some idea of how to implement things in MMF2. I've always wanted to dabble in AGS for a bit anyway! As I said at AdventureX, an iOS exporter would be a real 'game changer' (excuse pun!) for many people I think.

I appreciate people's comments and time. Cheers. If anyone's got any other comments I'd like to hear them....