Messages

@morganw Thanks for extra testing I'll make sure I get the save and menu mistake fixed when I come back to this after the jam! I think I may have made a mistake as well setting the default to 'Bind to game scaling' so will make sure in future I just default it to start in a window as that seems to fix any issues with the background.

@SHADOW Thanks for playing dude, I really want to come back to this as I have the full story planned out and it should make a nice medium length game.

Cheeky addition:

There are 8 days left to vote for Memoriae in Adventure Jam 2016 and I'd very much appreciate it if you are able to take the time to play and vote. You'll need a GameJolt account but it's free to sign up http://jams.gamejolt.io/adventurejam2016/games/memoriae/150115

I'm sure some of the other AGS entries would also very much appreciate your votes as well if you have the time! I don't know the links to all of them but you can find all the games on this page: http://jams.gamejolt.io/adventurejam2016/games

• Mamoriae by Xil - 1 vote

You would think a breast simulator would have gotten more votes!

Haha! (noted as well )

Congrats to everyone who took part and congrats to Cassie, a well deserved win!

[Slasher]

Hey everyone, thanks for the comments

I'd probably describe Memoriae as an interactive story, heavily inspired by games like Kentucky Route Zero. I think it will always be a bit like Marmite as to whether you enjoy that kind of thing but I'm glad people liked the graphics. I never intended to cliff-hanger it as well and do have a full story created, I just lacked the time unfortunately.

Bit of extra info about my game re the feedback:

Spoiler

Kumple: The whole experience would have become much more clear if I had had the time to complete it but I was never quite going for a cold-hearted killer vibe. Mandel got it pretty spot on - it's very much riffing off the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. In that film (which is set in the near future) the act of removing memories is now just another legal everyday operation (think laser-eye surgery) that people can just go have with little to no bad side effects or risks.

The relative ease and the way removing a memory is almost a nonchalant act in the game's future should paint a stark contrast to how things are in present day for the player. I created a sort of memory removal company (kinda like a private detective) for my protagonist Jack and, in a cruel attempt to fool the player, I refer to him as a contract killer. However, I almost immediately let the player know that all is not as it seems with my initial dialogue choices as no one in their right mind would answer the phone 'Memoriae Contract Killings, how can I help?' if they truly were in the business of murdering people!

[close]

Onto the other games though! I've just about got through all the games so will give my thoughts.

Slasher

You already know this but you are an absolute machine when it comes to making games. Whilst obviously not the most polished you excel in something that I myself am pretty terrible at: finishing what you started! I really enjoyed the story and how in such a small game you managed to get a nice arc . I did get stuck quite a bit but I got there in the end!

Kumpel

The intro was absolutely fantastic! It's also really hard to pull off a night-time scene but you did that really well. It was a shame you didn't quite get all the interactions scripted in, but it didn't really spoil anything for me to be honest. I did fail miserably a few times at the maths bit though haha.

Cassie

Awesome game and my favourite of the lot! Your graphics are constantly improving and as others have stated I really like the charm of the characters. It would have been nice to have larger areas to click on the NPCs but it didn't get in the way of the nice story and puzzles.

Retro Wolf

It took me ages as well to realise that I had to plant the seeds before watering the ground haha but I soon had a tomato forest going on! You've done quite a few games I've seen on Game Jolt in this style and it really works. I also really appreciate this style achieved within AGS.

@Mandle Thanks for playing dude I'd like to think I got somewhere with the idea just a shame I didn't have time for the game haha I shall indeed at some point be returning to this to finish it off as I actually have the whole story planned and it was nice doing it with my other half who did pretty much all the writing.

As for me now, I'm off to download and play all the games! I shall be back soon with my thoughts

[Shameless plug with the bump]

Thanks for the kind words guys. I did (as always) bite of much more than I could chew in the 2 week time-frame but I feel like I have a good base to go back to and to properly finish off the whole story I envisioned.

@morganw I'm not aware of any bugs with the save feature but I'll check it out, was there any place in particular it was not saving? As for the skyline I guess that's probably a framerate issue which will be hard for me to test/fix so I'll probably just block the colour in or do a single outline of pixels when I come back to it! Thank for letting me know anyway

Shameless plug with the bump: You can vote for the game in this month's MAGS (MAGS May vote - forum topic - make sure you've played all the games first!) and also on GameJolt for AdventureJam 2016 (Adventure Jam 2016 vote page - you'll need a gamejolt account for that though) - and finally (!) if you have a GameJolt account you can also rate it on it's Game Jolt page (that's separate to Adventure Jam 2016).

Spoiler

Am I supposed to give Kasper a drug? I couldn't find anything around.

[close]

Hint:

Spoiler

If I were to say drugs get you 'high', where would you look?

[close]

Answer:

Spoiler

Try waking up the dude on the roof!

[close]

Never have I saved so much in an adventure game in my life hahaha - awesome little idea that is surprisingly well fleshed out and I would be upset if this didn't get some sort of prize for Adventure Jam 2016.

Spoiler

I got to the top but couldn't bring myself to go back down. I'll see how I feel tomorrow about completing the great decent... too far guys... too far.

[close]

Great game! I did get stuck on that first puzzle for an embarrassing amount of time but I got there in the end

The vibe was great throughout and I thought the graphics worked really well!

@shaun Thanks for downloading mate, I'm just about to play aerinde now

@cassie Mirror is up!

@selmiak thanks for checking it out

@Cassiebsg I'll have it up on my website mirror later today and will update the thread once it's available!

Hey guys, long time no see!

I managed to scrape some time together to make a game for Adventure Jam 2016 that also fits the MAGS May rules (just about ).

The game is called Memoriae.

Game topic here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=53570.0
GameJolt page and download here: http://gamejolt.com/games/memoriae/150115

[imgzoom]http://calicoreverie.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/memoriae-ss1.png[/imgzoom]

I'll get it added to the AGS database ASAP as well.

Memoriae was made for MAGS May 2016 & AdventureJam 2016.

Press ESC to access the menu in-game.
If you have mouse speed issues run winsetup.exe and make the game windowed.

Because of the 2 week time limit, only the first part is available so this is a fairly short game. It is heavily inspired by Kentucky Route Zero so it plays more like an interactive story than a traditional point and click adventure.

Ben Smith: Art, music, scripting, story and dialogue
Gillian Green: Story and dialogue

DOWNLOAD (GameJolt)

DOWNLOAD (Mirror)

[imgzoom]http://calicoreverie.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/memoriae-ss1.png[/imgzoom]

[imgzoom]http://calicoreverie.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/memoriae-ss2.png[/imgzoom]

[imgzoom]http://calicoreverie.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/memoriae-ss3.png[/imgzoom]

DOWNLOAD (GameJolt)

DOWNLOAD (Mirror)

Two and half year bump baby!

I don't suppose anyone has a working link for 3.01 by any chance?

Looks lovely (very professional!) and I think the latest one brings in everyone's ideas well.

However, I think the feet might be a little too flat now when hitting the floor. Even when walking slowly, the heel will visibly hit the floor first slightly more prominently in my opinion.

Just my 2 cents!

AGS is probably easier for a complete beginner to start programming with, but arguably it's not the best if you are choosing not to create a standard adventure game using one of the templates provided.

You might want to take a look a RPG Maker: http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/ (worth noting that it only has a free version, so if you are choosing AGS because it's completely free, then ignore RPG Maker! )

I wouldn't say one was better than the other or one is easier to learn because it's really 6 of one, half a dozen of the other, there is no right and wrong if you are starting out. One thing I would say though is that you should aim small to start off with, even with RPG Maker, you'll still need a good knowledge of programming to create a full game with battles, stats, items etc.

Personally, I would start very, very small - I'd simply try RPG Maker and do some prototyping, and then I'd try AGS - again, with a prototype. I'd take one small element of the genre 'RPG' say for example the stats, and apply that to a puzzle. Let's have Strength, Agility and Intellect. If the player chooses strength then they can move a big object to proceed, if they choose agility they can jump over big chasm to proceed, or if they have enough intellect they can talk someone around to helping them proceed. Keep it simple!

Thank you Atelier for all the dedication and hard work you put into MAGS

Good luck Stupot+, I hope getting to this MAGS cave I hear about is not too difficult and that the mantle therein provides you with warmth and comfort during your tenure

[can]

Impressive!

How does it handle scaling old fashioned low res pixel art though? It can look like shit when not scaled correctly.

In short, it can't. I've bashed my head against Unity so many times trying to get pixel art to look proper, I've bought assets that promise it but to no use. It just can't do 2D well at all. Granted, Unity game Read Only Memories just came out and it has slightly off scaled pixel art everywhere but it didn't really bother me cause I loved the story so much. But still, even a professional Kickstarted game over two years couldn't get it right.

Well....

Although I do agree, this probably is a very harsh statement and if you were going to answer it fairly you would probably say: In short, it can, but with a huge amount of effort. Plus saying it can't do 2D well at all, I guess you mean it can't do pixel perfect well at all as it really is fine with 2D in general?

What I found after a similar period of head bashing is that you simply have to limit the resolution options for your project, and if you were to switch a camera for a zoom for a cut scene or into an object, that camera must have a specific zoom setting that works in the same aspect ratio as your main camera. There is also a very cheap asset (about $7) that can do pixel perfect movement, but again, I agree it's not 'perfect' unless you use specific settings.

So all in all, AGS just does pixel art so much better because it is so much more restrictive. I personally have had a really bad time with Unity and pixel art, but I did get it to work, and if you have a style like dungeon of the endless for example, then you can make it look absolutely awesome.

If AGS could export to multiple platforms with ease then I wouldn't go near Unity for a pixel art project, but I think if a programmer could control the art and asset creation to make specific pixel art then Unity is an option if they really know what they are doing with resolutions etc.

From a glance at the video you posted, it looks like the author of Adventure Creator has made the same oversight about animation as the Visionaire Studio guys did. The character is animated at a certain frame rate, but moves at 60 frames per second, creating a sliding effect. The only real workaround being to make a 60 FPS animation loop. I stick with AGS because it handles details like these correctly. It's also free, has an arguably better object model and is well documented.

Really interesting, I didn't do too much work with the animations when I messed around in Unity but that sounds really annoying if it can't be sorted. I can't stand sliding characters!

[team]

Yes unfortunately life got in the way a bit for me and I had to make the decision to stop (for my own sanity). I ended up doing 6 games in 6 months but I still haven't released the one I did for the Hendrix MAGS (I will soon I promise) and I also did a game in Stencyl rather than do the MAGS because I simply didn't have enough time in that particular month.

After 6 months I also felt absolutely drained to be honest, so I'm taking a nice big break at the moment and will be re-entering the fray towards the end of this year with a larger project that I'm doing with a musician.

From that 6 month experience/experiment, my main advice for the overall task (12 games in a year) is that you should be aiming to make an entire game within a week. I made the mistake of thinking I had 30 days to literally make the game... WRONG! . Try a simple one room approach first, try to think of a story that begins and ends even if it's stupidly simple, and don't get too caught up on the MAGS theme if you are entering that. Once your game is done you will want to test it (need to test it ) so don't forget how long that can take! (Hint: sometimes testing can take longer than making the game). And most importantly, after a week of making a game, then a week of testing and tinkering:

Take. A. Break.

I cannot stress that enough! When after the third month of jam packing everything into the month with only seconds to spare. I woke up the next day and see the next MAGS theme and it was not a great feeling I promise. I was putting too much pressure on myself to create some epic masterpiece in a fraction of the time that potentially a team of people would take

Slasher's advice is also spot on and comes from an extremely reliable source if you count how many games he has started and finished!

P.S. One extra thought, try to 'jump' into the game as much as possible. Don't spend a day completing 4 walk cycles for a character and doing the main screen. Get a single character sprite done and make the first room first! Once you've started and have something tangible, you can then go back and add what polish you like depending on the time you have left.

Thanks for giving it another go!

I think the problem you're facing is that the 'massive acceleration' only seems to affect certain mouse drivers. This makes fixing it in code a bit of an odd solution as for a lot of people it's perfectly useable.

I think opening up the values for acceleration and speed would be a great idea and I'd be happy to do some testing once OROW is over.

Good luck everyone. I can't partake but I'll be following closely, so lots of screenshots please :-)

I don't think you'll be seeing too many screenshots Stupot as it's all anonymous!

Although, top marks if that was sarcasm!