Messages

16

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Play community-created games in a browser

« on: May 16, 2011, 08:46:14 AM »

Dosbox, by default, keeps the mouse inside the window (offline Dosbox, that is). I believe it's a parameter in the config file somewhere. Maybe for jDosbox, you can change that parameter so it doesn't lock the mouse?

The exit part's tricky, even from a theoretical point of view. In offline Dosbox, exit closes the entire program, so window and all. Since jDosbox is embedded in a page, what's concidered as "closed"? That the plugin's stopped? Or that the embedded object's removed from the page entirely? Or that jDosbox gives a black screen with "Switched off" on? I don't really see how, from jDosbox's view, they could define what "exit" should do.

As said before, killing off the plugin itself's not an option either, since you'd kill any Smileycentral noisy banner as well. Those people pay good money so it shouts through your webpages, so you better not turn that off along with jDosbox!

17

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Play community-created games in a browser

« on: May 15, 2011, 04:49:15 AM »

Raf - do you know of a couple of games that don't work with the original interpreter so we can test them against other implementations?

Enclosure (if I'm not mistaken), Klownstein's Hobbits (100% sure) and Ninja Forever (100%, but it's not released yet)

18

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Play community-created games in a browser

« on: May 14, 2011, 09:04:42 AM »

Nagi does run under Windows, but uses SDL. I don't even know if it's usable in Java (although Dosbox does use it as well). In the worst-case scenario, we'd have to ask Nick to port it.

The question 'bout the savegames is exactly for that reason: Can we use it for try-before-you-download idea, or would it fit the in the cloud idea? Either one's useful, but it'd be good to know which one's possible.

19

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Play community-created games in a browser

« on: May 14, 2011, 07:47:24 AM »

Some fanmade AGI games have memory issues with the original interpreter, and got to be run through Nagi. Nagi doesn't run in Dosbox, though. So... will this allow us AGI folks to play those games?

Also, how do savegames work with that setup?

20

Everything-Else / Re: agigames.com

« on: May 13, 2011, 11:40:02 AM »

Haven't been building yet (haven't got a clear idea what to make yet) I can start setting up a basic built with a forum, a game DB and a tutorial DB, and we'll see from there.

I like the blue theme from the forum here, because yep, it reminds me of MT. But I was thinking of making the site a bit lighter (theme'd be along the lines of AGI -- with the white background and red border and such), so the forum's theme'd break with that.

I'll set a basic thing up this weekend (hurray for Drupal making this a matter of hours instead of days ), and we'll go from there.

Personally, I prefer agi-adventures.com, btw (it looks less weird than agiadventures.com). I guess I'll register both, though, so it'll be up to visitors' preferences.

21

Everything-Else / Re: agigames.com

« on: May 13, 2011, 08:04:20 AM »

FREE
agiprogramming.com
adventuregamedev.com
adventuregamedevelopment.com
adventuregamedeveloping.com
agiadventures.com
agi-adventures.com

ALREADY TAKEN
adventuregames.com
adventurestartshere.com
sierragames.com
agigames.com (d'uuuuuuh)
makecoolstuff.com


Edit: Changed the list a bit

22

Everything-Else / Re: agigames.com

« on: May 13, 2011, 05:19:07 AM »

Damnit. Some Japanese guy actually bought the domain name during the bidding, for $69! I thought that was a fake bid by Chris' host to put pressure on anybody who might be interested. agigames.org and .net are still free, though, so we could switch to those.

23

SCI Community News / Re: Fan games page renovations

« on: May 13, 2011, 05:14:59 AM »

Awesome Things've calmed down at work, and there's weekend ahead, so let's give this baby a spin this evening

24

Everything-Else / Re: agigames.com

« on: April 28, 2011, 06:12:06 PM »

Except for the memory heap images that troflip had, I should have all the images. I just never finished what I had started. The problem is that nothing here seems to be a small job. 

I'll see what I can do about the tutorials, I haven't really ever been happy with them and I'm afraid it means that I will be rewriting a lot of them to make me happy with them, as soon as I finish uploading all the agi games, and then address the tool pages real quick again.  Then the tutorials, I promise, right after I clean up the pnc template game one last time...

I just can't quit working on my game though, arghh

Soooooooooooooo, how's your Spongebob game coming along? Or was that somebody else?

25

Everything-Else / Re: agigames.com

« on: April 27, 2011, 03:26:02 PM »

Sounds
The blibs and bloobs of sound can be fixed by showing off The Scorposer's work on AGI / SCI game music. That guy's a genius when it comes to getting the most out of it, and never really seemed to have much trouble making songs within these limitations. Others who made games are no musicians at all and just made random blibs and bloobs til they thought it sounded more or less ok (Failrate did so with Voodoo Girl). That's the stuff we should NOT show off, music-wise

Graphics
Graphically, I think even AGI graphics can be impressive, if done right. That AGS guy I showed the list of games immediately noticed several games that looked great. Stuff like Go West Young Hippy, Caitlyn's Destiny and Enclosure should help big time. When he tried The Gourd of Beans, he had to admit it was on par with the best of AGS games. So basically, we should show off the best graphics both engines got to offer, and it'll blow most people's minds -- even if it's "just" EGA

Engine
For SCI, it's true that alot of people left due to SCI VGA support taking so long and eventually getting abandoned. But still, I believe both AGI and SCI already offer all that people look for in an engine -- except if they want to go 3D or such, obviously. AGI scripting's REALLY easy to get into, even as a non-programmer, so you can focus on making your game instead of coding. Dunno 'bout SCI scripting, but my bet is that, once you know the basics of programming, it should be easy to pick up as well. Basically, people want sit down, start a program up and start making games without going through tutorials or doing low-end coding like defining their objects or such (not that that's even low-end, but you get my point). They also want flexibility, meaning if they decide to make a Zelda-style game, they should be able to do it. If they want to make a racing game, they should be able to do it. If you check all the mini-game arcade sequences in both AGI and SCI out, it should be pretty obvious that that's possible. People just don't realize that, that's all.

Tools
The tools're what's the nasty part. For AGI, you got Picedit that's the big boogieman. It's a great tool if you know how to use it, but people don't want to spend time and effort learning how to use it, especially if they already're able to use, say, Photoshop.

For SCI, the painful part is that SCI Studio crashes all the time. I've tried it, back in the days, and turned back to AGI because I got frustrated with the thing constantly crashing. Couldn't make anything that way.

Main issue
The main problem, I think, is exposure. Alot of people've never heard of the two engines. Those who have heard of it, got plenty of prejudices, but have never actually given the things a try. If we can get more exposure, more people'll be likely to give things a try, and those prejudices'll slowly change. That cloud and web-based stuff is mainly to get exposure and lower the threshhold of trying a game out. If you don't have to download it and can immediately start playing, people'll be more likely to give it a try, right? And once they got a taste of it, they'll download, or look for more games like that.

26

Everything-Else / Re: agigames.com

« on: April 26, 2011, 05:37:20 PM »

I just showed Klownstein's Gourd of Beans to that same AGS guy. After getting it to work (had to explain him that template.com is the interpreter, and when he got an not enough memory error, to use Nagi), he played it and said he had to reconcider 'bout AGI.

What we need most, is some great games (we already got plenty of them. That AGS guy was already commenting on how many in the AGI list looked great. Didn't show him the SCI list yet), and various ways of letting people know it actually exists.

To let people know AGI exists -- and to let them see what's made with it, instead of sticking within their prejudices -- I can use the Hare. I could also ask some people (mainly AGDI and Phoenix Online) if they don't mind mentioning some of our games. If AGI and SCI games get regular mentions by those two, it should help as well.

Allowing people to have a taste online (I'm thinking using that Sarien online as a try-before-you-download kind of thing) might help as well.

27

Everything-Else / Re: agigames.com

« on: April 26, 2011, 03:57:49 PM »

It would contain the stuff we'd like the most (both SCI and AGI guys), cause most of the interesting stuff's at least 5 years old. I hope that sooner or later, Chris'll get to the machine it's on and can send us the backup.

Until then, though, we can't stand still. Gotta blow some life into the scene again. I think Klownstein's release of his Hobbit game (that one was new to me, just found out 'bout it today! ) will help.

I've talked to an AGS user who didn't grow up with AGI, to hear how they see these things. His response comes down to this:

1. They don't understand AGI games. They think they're too hard and don't appreciate the death scenes.
2. They seem to think AGI can do one type of game, and one type of game only, while AGS is flexible enough to do a myriad of types.
3. With AGS, they got the freedom to use whatever graphics tool they want.

1 and 2're easy enough to fix (2 especially since there's AGI Tetris and the likes). 3 might be trickier. It's great to see that Lance turned Picedit into Java, so we can run it on any platform, but it doesn't take the problem away. The Joker (one of the guys behind Enclosure) once taught me a great way of doing this, though. I think Klownstein does the same. It comes down to making a very rough outline in Picedit (to get the pixels right), export it as BMP, edit it in whatever tool you want, then turning it into a pic resource with Vector. Inbetween, you can finish it up with the views editor. It might still be a bit of a clunky way of doing things, but it helps on point 3 a bit.

Patrick's suggested trying to take AGI to portable devices and the web. Sarien's well on its way for the web part, and I believe they got a tablet version of the interpreter out, too, so that should help as well.

That's the ideas (or outlines, more like) we got at the moment. I've been also toying around with the idea of making collaboration groups possible, to share documents and discussions in a closed part (so only the dev. team can access it so as not to spoil things for others), but I guess AGI's too small a group of people for that.

It'd be interesting to hear your ideas and opinions, and any suggestions as to how we can link AGI and SCI back together!

28

SCI Community News / Re: Making space for our AGI friends

« on: April 26, 2011, 10:10:12 AM »

Which tools do you still have?

29

SCI Community News / Re: And so come the rest of the AGI games...

« on: April 26, 2011, 10:09:19 AM »

Why not try Nagi? If it doesn't run on Nagi, it's broken. If it doesn't run on Scumm, maybe it isn't compatible.

30

Everything-Else / Re: agigames.com

« on: April 26, 2011, 02:26:12 AM »

Registered.

Just for the record, the domain's parked by Chris' hosting. They seem to want to sell it to the highest bidder (0 bidders so far), which will stop tomorrow. Gotta make sure I grab the domain as soon as it comes free, so we're capable of getting back into business.

The database (including forum posts) are probably lost. Sucks donkeynuts, as it was a treasure trove of AGI and SCI info. I believe Chris's last personal backup was about a year ago. If I can ever get in touch with him, and he can get to the machine this backup's on, we might get it back, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. It seems 'bout time to make a fresh start. Linking both AGI and SCI together does seem like a good idea (it always felt weird having the two split up)