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Messages - Goatmeal

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691
Quest for Infamy / Re: Designing Quest For Infamy
« on: August 01, 2012, 09:22:29 AM »
Nice one, SF! :)

This one was inspired by Lamb:
Roehm needs to enter a cave BUT he finds out that he'll need a counterbalance of 6 kilograms to raise a gate which blocks cave's entrance while he only has items which weight 1, 3 and 5 kilos. So he puts the lightest and the heaviest items he carries on mechanism and enters the cave. Inside he realises that he'll need one of the items he left (sword, for example) to proceed, so he takes some useless item which weights 2 kilos (boulder?) from the cave. He leaves items weighting 1, 2 and 3 kilos and gets his sword so he can finish his quest inside the cave.


Good one, Dr Slash!

Reminds me of the Datacorder puzzle from SQ6.  I happened to have liked it, but not sure how many else did.  It was more a variation of the common "GAMES Magazine" type of logic puzzle:

"Six people came to dinner.  Each brought a different desert and wore a different colored coat.  Who brought and wore what?  (1) John doesn't like fudge that the person with the brown coat brought..."

692
Quest for Infamy / Re: Designing Quest For Infamy
« on: July 31, 2012, 12:58:25 PM »

Love having to take items a long way before you use them...


"Here's your fish!" -- SQ6

693
Quest for Infamy / Re: Mythical Creatures
« on: July 22, 2012, 04:55:03 PM »
The spawn that comes from the mating of a unicorn and a pegasus: either a pega-corn or a uni-sus.

You just KNOW that the offspring of two such goody-goody creatures must by its very definition be TOTALLY evil and bad-A.

He could block your attacks with its wings, and stab at you with its horn.

694
Quest for Infamy / Re: oil
« on: July 19, 2012, 04:27:22 PM »
yes but the fisherman is not out at night

Kind of makes you wonder what is out at night...

695
Quest for Infamy / Re: oil
« on: July 19, 2012, 12:19:16 PM »
Look at what Blackthorne said...

Have you run into anybody who does something with aquatic lifeforms?

696
Quest for Infamy / Re: oil
« on: July 19, 2012, 09:37:58 AM »
They used to get oil from whales...

697
At the age of late 16 / almost 17.  Here is my answer from a similar post in another Sierra-related forum:

**********

I remember the first time I saw Larry -- the summer of 1988.  My brother was at the local ball fields for a Little League game, so I took the car to a friend's house near the game.

My buddy was the type of kid who was really into computers and modems/BBSs.  While helping the local bank get rid of viruses, he would collect and store them on 5-1/4" floppies... just in case he needed to use them (!).

Anyway, he showed me Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards on his PC Clone.  Not having a PC myself at the time (I'd have to wait until my Freshman year in college -- the CoCo would have to suffice for my Senior year in high school), I was amazed by the game.  We must have played through at least half of it before I had to pick up my brother...

Got a copy of it in my Sophomore year in college from a friend who was a huge Sierra fan.  He had an original Tandy 1000 machine back in the mid-'80s, and as such, had just about every good Sierra adventure/quest game (including the original KQ).

Ah, memories.   :)

**********

My first true all-PnC was Space Quest IV.

698
Quest for Infamy / Re: Suggestions
« on: July 14, 2012, 11:31:40 PM »
Yeah, because you can't take the tongs while the Blacksmith is still there.  You have to find another way to get rid of him to take the tongs for a while...

Ah ha!

Which is why you use the OTHER way to distract him -- which causes him to run off screen...

Quite clever, BT!

699
Quest for Infamy / Re: Suggestions
« on: July 14, 2012, 10:29:11 PM »
It doesn't really have to be at the fence - it just has to be thrown at, logically, an area that would cause the Blacksmith to look at, and peer off at... instead of just throwing it at the house or something.


Hi, BT!

Just playing around this afternoon, I did find a possible bug:

If you use the glass to distract the Smith in the Evening (red sky after the execution but before the Night phase) to get the tongs, the game won't let you leave the Smith screen with the tongs.  It keeps saying you need to finish up what you are doing and replace them.

700
Quest for Infamy / Re: Suggestions
« on: July 14, 2012, 06:18:14 PM »
I can understand what you are saying Goatmeal, but the problem with that is you are essentially telling the player "You need to use this item to solve a puzzle later one".

True, but while the puzzle is entirely logical, it wasn't entirely obvious.  I found that throwing the glass against a non-descript fence to distract the smith be a little ... "How was I supposed to know to do that?"    ???

And I do realize that this is a demo, not the full-fledged game.  IQ couldn't have possibly put everything into it (full descriptions for everything, lots of items, etc).

701
Quest for Infamy / Re: Suggestions
« on: July 11, 2012, 10:55:49 PM »
To reduce the pixel hunt / "click everywhere" trap inherent to point-and-click games:

Add little specific descriptions of the area, and don't be afraid to have the narrator subtley point out things to the player -- things the designer wants the player to know.


When Sierra's AGI games consisted of large, blocky pixels, they couldn't put in the amount of detail that a 320x200/240 faux-VGA game can now.  They would give a general description of the room or screen, and add a bit of guiding info at the end, like:

"There is a table in the far corner and wooden chest at the foot of the bed."

or

"The ship's navigation computer is currently off-line."


As others have noted elsewhere, this convention was a hold over from the prior generation of text-only adventure games.  It wasn't really a necessity for the newly-evolving graphical adventures, because you could now actually "see" the table and chest in the room, or that the thing with the blinking lights was a computer.  However, because of the limited graphic capabilities, the inclusion of the added text by the 'narrator' in the general room description ensured that the table and chest or the navigation computer were items worthy of further attention by the player.

As game graphics evolved and screens became more detailed and realistic, it turned into the equivalent of visual overload -- if you could see it, perhaps you could even interact with it!  Even more so if you were stuck and couldn't quite 'getting' what the designer expected of you to solve the puzzle or make progress.  Without gentle prodding in the text descriptions, the game would often turn into a pixel hunt, with the player desperately searching in vain for the one item amongst the 'visual clutter' that is truly interactive...

**********
For example:
**********

In the screen with the blacksmith:

--Clicking around the screen gives the generic description of the blacksmith's cottage.  You could also add to that:

"There appears to be some broken glass near the fence."

(Adding adding some bits of glass to the scenery would help sell the concept.)

Clicking on the fence could yield the description of something like:

"The Smith's back fence looks to be the favorite target of bar patrons to hurl their empty shot glasses as they drunkenly stumble home in the night."

or

"It appears that a number of rowdy bar patrons have chosen the Smith's fence as the target for their empty shot glasses -- or this is the handiwork of one determined imbiber!"


This would help explain the action that could be performed (throwing a glass), and where the item could be found (bar patrons with glasses --> glass is found in bar).


Of course, if this is indeed a nightly occurrence, that would mean the Smith could know exactly what the sound is and immediately go to the fence, not run off-screen.  BUT if it's a rare occurrence or the Smith is usually asleep when it happens, then he might run off screen in search of the unfamiliar noise...

It's certainly something that a savvy designer / writer can work around if it's decided to be an issue.

**********

Again, in the screen with the blacksmith:

-- When the Smith is present with his tongs, he's positioned in front of them.  The tongs are only able to be seen for the few fleeting moments when the Smith fires the metal.  Not sure if that's a deliberate design choice, but you can either reposition the tongs slightly to the left OR...

...you could add to the Smith's description:
"Looks like he's really giving that iron a beating.  A pair of tongs rest against the large tub of water."

**********

In the forest screen with the skeleton and suit of armor:

-- Clicking around the screen gives the generic description of
"You're surrounded by foliage, rocks and trees.  It's a forest, after all."

You could also add to that:
"A lifeless skeleton lies motionless against a rock -- hopefully, it will remain that way."

This could help people know that there is something that can be further inspected on that screen, especially since some demo players have stated not exploring here during the day or early evening, and it was too dark to make out at night...

**********

By adding a small line or two, it can help guide the player or give them a nudge as to what needs to be done.

(Sorry for rambling on here.)

702
Quest for Infamy / Re: Suggestions
« on: July 09, 2012, 07:57:49 PM »
Greetings, all.

While playing the demo, I thought of two suggestions:

1. Ensure all icons have a "hot-spot" dot, not just the inventory items -- but I believe I read elsewhere that you were already working on it.

2. Once you have read a topic, perhaps make the topic color a medium-brown.  That way, it signifies that you have already read it, and the remaining or new/resulting topics in black will really stand out.  Of course, you can go back and re-read them again if you like.
     Not sure how much programming it will take to keep track of what's been read/'clicked-on' already... perhaps assigning a variable and changing the value? ( var = 0 --> var = 1 ? )  Been a while since I did any programming, and know nothing about AGS.

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