An impromptu trip to the thrift store where I bought the Roberta Williams Anthology today turned out to be a very good idea: I discovered and purchased a copy of The Neverhood (Dreamworks Interactive made this game? I had no idea).

However, the CD wasn't in its original case, but one of these things. I've never seen a CD caddy before, let alone heard of one. The metal sleeve is similar to the one on a 3.5" floppy disk, and it took me the better part of a minute just to figure out how to get the thing open (by pinching the two tabs on the bottom).

You know you're in for a hard game when it takes you that long just to get its CD out of its box...

A few interesting observations I've made using YouTube's Insight feature:

(Note: The Hot Spots feature displays a graph showing what portions of a video are being watched the most)

The Hot Spots graph for Memorable Lines and Moments from SQ6 shows a dramatic peak right before the clip where the narrator says, "Wow! This makes my nipples hard!", then steadily slopes downwards until the end of the video. Conversely, the graph for Part 2 bounces up and down but doesn't reach its highest point until near the very end.

The highest peak on Memorable Lines and Moments from SQ4 is when the clip where the player is smelling and tasting the Monolith Burger condiments (and getting responses from them) begins.

The Hot Spots graph for my Woodruff and the Schnibble montage trends gently downward for the first half of the video, then spikes at the point where Woodruff is escaping his padded cell.

The KQ7 Intro Storyboard's highest Hot Spots point is at the beginning of Rosella's solo, but it peters out shortly after the last line of the missing verse ends.

The first noticeable peak in the FPFP Outtakes video is right at the beginning of the sword fighting outtake, while the most dramatic dip is near the end of the same outtake. The highest peak is shortly afterward, around the time when Antonio growls, "Thatsa what I theenk of your lousy ants!"

Also, most of my Sierra videos have views primarily from the USA, but for some strange reason, most of the viewers of my Woodruff and the Schnibble video are from Spain, most of the viewers of my KQ7 Intro Storyboard video are from Germany and most of the viewers of my trailer for Adventure: The Inside Job are from Norway.


One more (somewhat related) thing: Death Gate is a damn good adventure game, and I'm not saying that just because I was able to complete it without any external hints whatsoever. It's not nearly as morbid as the title would suggest, and it has to be one of the most original fantasy adventures I've played. The puzzles are equally refreshing and original, and the various worlds of the game are wildly imaginative. This game was based on a series of books, but I'm a bit hesitant to read them, since whenever I've tried reading a book series that a game was based on, I've been somewhat disappointed, and I'm not sure if this third try will have the same result or not.

Holy flame-broiled mother of Dionysus...

Apparently when Hell got frozen in Telltale Games' last Sam and Max: Season 2 episode, it froze over for real sometime afterward.

"Telltale and who Presents"!?!?

Elaine's eyes are green again! And Guybrush...

...has a BEARD! A visible BEARD!!

Two years ago, someone requested that somebody make a version of Adventure Game Studio without the default font (which happens to be from Space Quest IV), since the prospect of making a free game that uses a font from a 17-year-old commercial one was causing him some moral conflict.

Two years later he resurrects his own thread and makes the same request, this time asking for a version that doesn't have MP3 support, advising all who read the thread to "Repent and turn from sin to God". Remarkably, one of the members of the forum was thoughtful enough to actually do what this person asked, creating an entire new version of AGS just so this person wouldn't have to be tempted to the default font or import MP3s into his game.

Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't it have taken a lot less time and effort for this person to, say, delete the default font and use one of the many others available to download? Or only use MIDIs or Ogg Vorbis files instead of MP3s?

And then he starts another thread essentially asking for a Christian version of AGS. When you start acting in such a way that even other members of your religion start criticizing you, I'd say it's time to step back and start re-evaluating things.


And just to show that I'm not completely full of negativity, after a month's absence, my tablet is finally back, fully repaired and almost good as new. It's been so long since I used it that I had to retrain my drawing hand for a bit.

And Adventure: The Inside Job scored 3 out of 5 cups from the AGS review panel and fairly positive review.

So I've successfully put together a semi-decent adventure game. Now I'll have to try even harder to create a better one next time.

I found this post on Just Adventure recently and found its contents very amusing. You don't have to be a fan of adventure games -- commercial or amateur -- to appreciate this.

Pirating computer games: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

The announcement is a bit late, but here it is anyway:

Adventure: The Inside Job is done and ready for download!

Check out the website here.

After almost three months of waiting, the fellow I've asked to write the outro music for my game is almost finished! So far the powers that be have sought to impede his progress at every opportunity, but now it seems as if their efforts will be for naught, because gosh-darn it, MY NEW ADVENTURE GAME IS ALMOST DONE!

It had to be said.



EDIT: And speaking of adventure games, I normally have no desire whatsoever for things like this, but dang, I want a cap with this design on it. To heck with pirates vs. ninjas...

...what the game my current icon comes from looks like...

You need wonder no longer.

Is it just me, or do the various noises that Woodruff sometimes makes sound a little like Wall-E's vocalizations?

In case a couple of my previous posts haven't given my actions away yet...

I am working on another adventure game.

Not only that, but it's very nearly finished, save for a bug in the save/restore interface and a temporary dearth of music for the end credits. Unlike Area 50.5, it's going to be downloadable, but like Area 50.5, it's going to be pretty big.

So stay tuned!

+111,233 words, 3.3 MB of graphics.

KQ10: Age Before Duty

KQ11: Blood is Thicker than Seawater

And don't forget the Special Features page.

---

And though I doubt anyone reading this journal has played Toonstruck, I've also finished putting together a page documenting many sound files that don't appear in the actual game.

My informal review of Toonstruck...yet another game that I wish I hadn't put off until now.

Toonstruck is a 1996 adventure game starring Christopher Lloyd of "Back to the Future" fame, in which he plays a down-on-his-luck cartoonist named Drew Blanc (yes, there is much punnage in this game) who finds himself in a land populated entirely by cartoons, many of his own creation. They and their world are mostly the wacky Loony Toons type, but there are also nauseatingly sweet toons at one extreme and twisted, sinister ones at the other. The game is in many ways similar to "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" but it has its own distinct flavor as well...( continued behind cut )

I actually wrote this about a week ago, but I waited until I had gotten a *cough, ahem* LEGAL copy of Toonstruck before spewing my appreciation for it all over the world. If you want to get a good look at the game without resorting to any *hack, wheeze* ILLEGAL methods, do a search for "Toonstruck" on YouTube. There's a playthrough of it posted there (although the sound is a tad out of sync on some of the videos).

Lastly, the theme of this game got me thinking...how about a game or a movie of some kind where a character from a poorly done 3D animated flick gets transported into one of the 2D animated masterpieces of yesteryear, full of very displeased 2D characters? Tee-hee.

That's right, the game I've been working on for the past month is finally done. I hope it's short yet sweet for everyone who plays it:

Area 50.5

Enjoy!

I've spent the past few weeks working on a Flash adventure game. It's a very short game, but it's taking a very long time to complete, due to my inexperience with Flash. It should be completed sometime this month, so get ready for 2D animations and semi-2D backgrounds, an outlandish plot, and some really obscure in-jokes.

The name of the game is Area 50.5.