Akril

Thalia James of the Computer Game Maintenance Squad (see current signature) decided to go above and beyond the call of duty and embark on what could be considered the most challenging puzzle of all: getting a male teenager to cooperate with a much older adult. Though her nephew's lineage is somewhat dubious (she's hypothesized that he's either a subspecies of human that has developed on another planet or a human-alien hybrid), she nonetheless felt he would be a perfect candidate to help promote one of the many adventure game projects that some of the people on the Outside are trying to get off the ground. (And yes, he was adopted.)

Well, looks like all I've got is the SQ1 VGA promo video (in MP4 format). I'll upload it here.

Thank you! (Technically, though, Bea is Decaffeinated Jedi's character, so I'd probably have to have his say-so if I wanted to use her in another game. :) ) Also, from what I've heard, AGS uses its own scripting language, which is very similar to C++. I don;t know if you've found this page yet, but if you haven't, it may be of some use to you.

You have my thanks too, s_d! I'm glad you're helping this game become available to as many peopls as possible. That's one of the biggest drawbacks with AGS -- the games are very Windows-centric, and I think a Mac-compliant version of the editor came out just a few years ago. Just for kicks, I thought I'd post Bea's standing poses here, about 250% larger than her in-game sprite. I colored and animated her in Flash, then shrunk her down to get that classic VGA sprite look.

I have the SQ1 VGA promo video, and maybe a couple of others. Which ones in particular were you looking for?

Thanks yet again, guys, and thanks for helping to spread the word as well! Hey, just because I asked him to write the outro theme for Adventure: The Inside Job a few years ago doesn't mean I think he's mine... (Hmm...in retrospect, maybe staying up until 3:00 AM for four nights straight working on this game wasn't the best idea I've had.) I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to make the whistled SQ6 theme sound like an retro-style ringtone. I eventually tried saving it as a 16-bit mono MP3, which seemed to do the trick.

Thanks, nextheory. Thank you for providing the excellent background art. I felt a little guilty chopping it up to make it fit my less-than-spectacular design, but it definitely improved the overall look of the game.

Aaaaaand HERE IT IS! I've also posted a link to the on the AGS forums. Feel free to plug the heck out of this thing! EDIT: Replaced the link with version 1.1 (the smell/taste messages for the desk chair are fixed now).

Well, I've fixed all the bugs that have been reported so far in this thread and added a bit of additional "hinty" dialogue (on the advice of Decaffeinated Jedi). I think I'm just about ready to upload this thing.

Okay, I've fixed all the bugs so far. Would making the "X" red make it more obvious? EDIT: Oh yeah -- thanks, everyone!

Thanks for the musical assistance, guys! At long last, I can finally say with confidence that we have reached the beta-testing stage! As much as I'd love to release this game right now, I don't want to really want to release a bug- and mistake-ridden product either. So if you're up to it, play the game and see if there are any mistakes I might have overlooked: Pledge Quest (beta version) (And just so it doesn't seem like I'm ignoring anyone, your podcast theme felt perfect for the end credits, MI. As for the intro, I found a good match in a really unlikely place: a collection of old MIDIs that Trapezoid posted to the AGS forums a year or so ago. The rest of the music in the game is unused music from SQ6 [that may have been used in the demo].)

I got in contact with nextheory and it looks like I am going to be doing the background myself now. Hopefully it shouldn't take too much time. I've also gotten most of the GUIs and cursors done (I figured I might as well go all the way and create some pretty custom icons instead of the ho-hum default ones). Post whatever possible music for the game that you find, s_d -- the more, the better.

Thanks, s_d! For the intro, I was hoping for something fairly epic and Space-Questy, but not completely over the top. For the credits, perhaps I could use something a little milder, but still fairly upbeat. I'm almost finished with Bea's walk cycle now. I asked nextheory if he was willing to work on the background, but it's been a day or so since I sent him a message, so I think I'll have to tackle it myself now.

Yeah, I've used public domain tracks in games before -- the problem is rooting through the thousands out there trying to find one that fits just right -- it can take a pretty long time, especially for a perfectionist like myself. Right now, I think I might try filling in the empty spots with some of the unused music from SQ5/6. EDIT: All right -- I've found some appropriate tracks for most of the game. All I need now is the intro and credits music.

It doesn't matter. MIDI would probably fit better with the retro look of the game, though. Thank you for the offer!

Thanks, nextheory (I actually sent you a private message regarding the background -- please reply to it as soon as you can). This prototype is coming along pretty well. I've added a lot of great lines that Jess has written, and the game is almost completely playable now. I just need to do a few short animations and double-check some of my coding, as well as a few other minor things. The one thing which I won't be able to do on my own is the music. At most, I think we'll need one piece of music for the intro, a longer piece for the main part of the game, one "victory theme" for when the final puzzle is solved and the game is winding down, and one last piece for the credits (which won't be very long.)

That really is a great background, nextheory, and I've found myself in a somewhat difficult situation because of it. I've nearly finished a very rough prototype of the game in AGS using my background and sprites (320x200 now, to give it that classic low-res flavor), but I don't want nextheory's gorgeous art to just be pushed aside because I jumped the gun. Any ideas on how we can make some sort of compromise without either of our labors going completely to waste?

Great! Speaking of Bea, I thought I'd try coloring her in and making her clothing a bit less sketchy:

I honestly didn't think I'd be up for it, but I slapped together a very, very rough background, plus the various objects that can be removed/manipulated. The first picture is the background itself, the second one is the background with the objects in place (plus two sketches of the main character at various scales), and the third one is the various objects, some of which will use more than one image (e.g., the drawer, the toolbox). The only things I changed were adding the solar system model hanging from the ceiling and making the TV and the table it's on slightly obscured -- the cell phone is hidden between the two sofa cushions here. ;) Again, it's really rough, the perspective is wonky, I'm still in the dark about what is and isn't going to be in this game, but I figured I might as well do something.

Even though I am hopeful that this project will make it, I am a little concerned that the LSL remake reached its halfway point with about 20 days before its deadline, and we've reached our halfway point with less than two weeks left. Still, I decided to double my pledge and make an announcement about this event on that one site I used to update a lot a few years ago, hoping that there's still a person or two on its RSS feed that might not have heard the news about this yet.

Yeah, that's sort of the impression that I got as well. No, she's definitely talking to Nigel and Singent (this scene does beg the question as to how she knew he was going to be on Polysorbate, though). Good point -- there's so little revealed about him that he really is a quandary. Whether he really is a bad guy or just some unwitting pawn is a also little difficult to judge when he not only has a cold, menacing voice, but looks like one of the Borg.

AGS has a text parser and an "arrow keys-only" option, and I'm sure there's a facsimile of the AGI/SCI menus around somewhere.* I've never had any success with AGI Studio or experimented with the parser option in AGS, but I'd say an AGI-style game in AGS is definitely possible. *EDIT: And I was right!

One of the crimes Roger is convicted of by the enigmatic Admiral Toolman in the SQ6 intro is "Perpetrating a sequel without authorization". Maybe I'm just a little slow, but I never really "got" that line. I'm pretty certain the sequel in question is SQ5, but that line still doesn't make sense to me. It sort of has a "Hey, we haven't blatantly broken the fourth wall in this series for a while -- why don't we do it right here, in the intro?" kind of vibe to it. On the overanalytical side, I feel like I might be overlooking some sort of deeper context the game's writers were hinting at (i.e., the way SQ5 is more or less swept under the rug in SQ6: barely any mention of SQ5's characters [save Beatrice], the absence of any souvenirs from SQ5 in Roger's quarters, and especially the outrageously inaccurate retelling of the SQ5 finale). However, if I were to look at this line as well as Admiral Toolman's later actions from an "in-game" perspective,it makes me wonder if he was one of Vohaul's Sequel Policemen that became stranded in the past but still attempted to carry out his master's orders while masquerading as a StarCon official -- why else would he level such an accusation at Roger, strip him of both his rank and credibility, then turn out to have a connection with a woman that attempted to have Roger (well, his brain, anyway) eliminated? So...those are my thoughts. Yours?

I think the characters' animation was rotoscoped (much like the animation in SQ5, but it does seem much smoother and fluid than animation from most other games around that time. It's pretty detailed, and sometimes the hand-drawn animation doesn't quite mesh with the rotoscoped animation or the pre-rendered 3D, but overall, it is pretty impressive. That was one of my favorite parts too -- I'm not sure if I've encountered a "puzzle" like that anywhere else. I first saw that mentioned on a review on MobyGames, but I've never seen it alluded that it was intentional. Oh yeah -- and I highly recommend Dragonsphere. Though it may have been an attempt to cash in on the popularity of King's Quest, it has a completely different feel (not to mention one of the biggest plot twists I've ever encountered in an adventure game).

I contemplated this thread's topic for some time before coming to the conclusion that it would take a lengthy series of flowcharts, timelines and Venn diagrams to form a coherent explanation regarding my fondness for the series. I guess you could say that I like it because it's a lot like other things that I like, and it has in turn led me to like other things that are not unlike the things that I liked in the first place -- sort of like a positive feedback loop. In short, I can't honestly say for certain. I guess it could all be chalked up to my limited but somewhat "unique" tastes.