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Portal is Free

Alright bitches if there's still someone out in the world who HASN'T played the best game of last decade. Well... It's now free.

I'll just spend the rest of the topic doing some Portal-loving. Portal is a great example of how it's not the length that matters but how you use it. Portal has probably one of the best scripts ever found in a computer game. With one of the most memorable villains ever as well as some truly great comedy.

Everyone who tries to make their own game can take lessons from the way Portal works. From the script and characters to introducing the player to new elements in the game to level-design and storytelling by showing, not telling.

Portal has all that. (for a deeper look I might suggest the commentary mode where you can get a lot of great insight)

Portal is close to the perfect game. It is a very clever game. It is THE game.

And even though we're all sick of cakes and AI by now there's a reason those things became so big. Because they really. Really. Are that great.

(and even if you're a mac user Portal will be free for you!)

Speaking of new engines to the site...




Adventure Game Studio
Website: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/
Creator: Chris Jones
License: Freeware (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/aclegal.htm)

Short description:
Adventure Game Studio allows you to create your own point-and-click adventure games, similar to the early 90's Sierra and Lucasarts adventures.

More description:
Adventure Game Studio allows you to create your own point-and-click adventure games, similar to the early 90's Sierra and Lucasarts adventures. It consists of an easy-to-use editor to create your games, and a run-time engine to play them.

The game interface is fully customizable, with classic Sierra and Verb Coin templates provided by default. AGS manages most of the game so that you don't have to - it does all the donkey work like load/save game functions, pathfinding and scrolling rooms so that you can concentrate on the parts of your game that make it unique.

Set up your rooms, characters and sprites visually in the editor, then add some script to handle game events and you're done! You can even create a standalone EXE file containing your entire game, which you can then distribute to your adoring fans worldwide.



(all of the flavour text was stolen from the AGS website. I mean AGS is awesome and all but I don't know how to make proper flavour text for it. I know there are a couple of games made using AGS on this site (both of mine for example!) so I wouldn't mind this having a place on the list.

Shinan's Interview Series

Some years ago I attempted to give back to the community by making audio interviews with people about their games. I managed to do two and a half interviews before my computer crashed and I never got back to it.

The first was an interview with jjesper82 about a Final Fantasy VI fangame.
http://littlepig.sitesled.com/shinan/interviewjjesper82_.mp3

The second was one with Merte but it had some major audio issues unfortunately. I still posted it up though but it's not really that listenable http://littlepig.sitesled.com/shinan/interviewmerte.mp3

I see on the upload dates that they were made in December 2007, so it's almost two years since I tried and failed. (They also sound very awkward to me... Though I guess if I had done a few more I'd eventually have gotten used to it)


But this is all boring backstory. I was thinking that perhaps I should try to get them started again. And I was wondering if there was 1) any interest in listening to these and 2) if there are any volunteers for a first "test run".

Everyone loves to pimp their game right? And even if English is not your native language that shouldn't be a problem since it's not mine either so we'll sound stupid together :)

EDIT 15.12.2009:
Episode 1 has been released! Interview with Kentona and ChaosProductions.

EDIT 22.1.2010;
Episode 2 has been release!
Interview with catmitts.

Nanowrimo

National Novel Writing Month.

50 000 words in 30 days.

I'm doing it. Just like I've (tried) to do it the last bunch of years. Anyone else over here doing it? It starts tonight so just thought I'd give you the heads up.

I would write something longer but to be honest I won't. Share your experiences and your story ideas here. As well as your nano usernames if you want. I'm obviously Shinan

RMN Documentation

I'm not sure how much of a beta stage the page still is in but while submitting a game (yeah I submitted a game woo) the thought occurred to me that this page really lacks in documentation. I mean for an experienced web user most of the stuff is pretty obvious. But there are certain other things that aren't.

For example the red asterisks, the probably mean that a field is mandatory. But it doesn't actually say anywhere that a red asterisk means that a field is mandatory. Similar with submissions. The submission guidelines for articles and reviews essentially consist of one general line.

Then also various kind of forum post codes and similar. I don't think that I've found a comprehensive list of all the tags that are available to a user. An experienced user may think oh yeah obviously the regular tags work but then there are probably some tags that don't (I don't actually know which work and which don't. Is there a spoiler tag in this forum?)

There are a lot of features to this site but I don't really think that there's any good documentation for any of it. I don't really know who'd be best suited for this kid of documentation or if there should be a community effort "let's find features". But I do think that some more information on guidelines and forum code and all kinds of other stuff would be nice.

Love is a many-splendoured thing

Inspired by the over-sexualisation topic there came up the issue of romance in them games.

So I thought I'd make a topic on it. Tips and tricks on how to make romance subplots. How to make them effective even when they are sidetrack in the overall arc.

I'm a big fan of love myself so I will let this love topic include everything from the typical romances to also using other kinds of love effectively. (I guess the family love and patriotic love are two other common themes that can be useful to deliver that emotional punch you sometimes need)

Following will be some very rambly thoughts.

1) Non-main character PC love.
One thing I think can be very useful in subplots are a budding romance between characters that are not the main character. I'm an RPGer so I don't like it when "my" character is forced to do things I don't generally want to do. With other characters it's a lot easier. And since you may not be privy to EVERYTHING other characters do you can leave some to the imagination. (especially if you suck at writing romance and courting)

Example: have two sidekick PCs obviously fall in love. Use all the regular tropes but do not play out the scenes where the main character is present. Instead use those lovely "confidence moments" when a party member approaches the main character for advice. For a gameplay payoff you can always end up with one of the pairing getting kidnapped and helping the other one to save the day and reuniting the lovebirds!

2) Minor character love
This one's useful for short dramatic punches. One of my favorite past-times is encouraging deaths and having characters die left and right. So you can introduce loving couple and kill one of them off for dramatic effect and showing how evil the bad guy really is! Of course you will have to establish this couple. Usually by introducing them early and not stamp cannon fodder on their foreheads. It could just be a small thing.

Example: The emotional payoff of talking to a newlywed couple early on in the game and later encountering the same couple after a terrorist bombing is usually better than just seeing one side of it once.

3) Family
This one's probably the easiest to do for main characters too. Having a sibling or other family member that the character holds dear. It can be someone older to look up to or someone younger who is just cute and friendly. If established correctly the player will want to help this family member ones he/she gets into that inevitable trouble you established him/her for. (alternatively you can kill him/her off. That works too.) Of course not all players will feel sympathetic towards the family member but as always you can't win them all. And you can always do it with another non main player character.

Alright those were some of my examples of easy-to-use romantic subplots. How to go about doing them? I guess the hardest part is probably the writing. Juggling between "going nowhere" and "fucking on a first date" is probably difficult. Personally I have little experience in writing romances, I like to skip all the parts where the romance develops and just see snapshots of other people (see 1)). You can probably tell that I haven't got that much experience in "real life" romances either so I can't draw from that, which is why I hardly ever bother to try.

However those of you who are trying. Give tips and tricks on simple things to make it work. Musical numbers? Dialogue choices? Turning down the lights and putting on some early nineties music?

Note that this isn't really a topic on whether you should do it or not or if it's even a good idea. This is more of an implementation topic.
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