Heh, thanks. Here's to hoping I actually get this made. 

Hey kids! Do you know, how your parents keep and keep droning on about "patriotism" and "loving your fatherland" and somesuch? Well, as I'm sure your daddy already told you, that is a very good thing, and revolves mostly about blowing up communists and being a member of the military (or at least drunk and armed). Well, it's the same in the small South American nation of Tropicana, and although Tropicana has many good people, none are more patriotic than Il Generalissimo Magnifico!


"Hi kids!"

Yessir, there's nothing he likes more than keeping the country safe, and he has definitly never blown up a village out of sheer boredom, and the bad, bad men on tee-vee kept saying! But - oh no! What's this?

Mean old president Meaniface "Roach" McBadstuff (CNN usually lies about his name, too) keeps supporting the terrorists! He has even introduced a Land Reform program, which steals from the nice, wealthy eilte and gives to the unwashed braindead masses! And he's even about to declare "elections", like those that brought the bad dark-skinned man into office (your father keeps screaming about it when he's drunk, remember?)!


"Blargh blargh blargh! I hate fun! Blargh blargh blargh!"

Can Il Generalissimo stop him before it's too late? You have to help him, kids!! 


So, yeah. If I actually get around to doing this, it's gonna be a classical point'n'click adventure game, with enough cynicism to give Ol' Scratch the heebly-jeeblies. Resolution-wise, I'm thinking 640x480, maybe 800x600, depends on how much detail I want to cram into the sprites. It's going to use AGS.

Does it actually have to be educative? Or could one, for example, make an ART GAME spoof about... the sociocultural impacts of the phlogistone theory or somesuch?

If it truly doesn't require any artistic talent (and it's not to late already), I'd like to get in on this, too. 'Tis smells of awesome.

Basically, it means that multiple players play at the same machine, one after another. Used to be pretty popular back in the pre-Internet days, especially with Turn Based Strategy (well, DUH).

"You have to drink until you think you're the American"... yay, beer! 

"You have to edit the physics": Like The Incredible Machine, but instead of building contraptions, you have to make existing ones work by fooling around with universal constants and physics. "Maybe this thing will drive if π=2!"

"You have to rebuild the Berlin Wall": USSR's back, bitches!

"You have to stab the pixel": DIE, tiny blotch of color, DIE! 

"You have to optimize the post-apocalyptic nightmare world" And a mutant HERE... and poisoned water supplies THERE...

"You have to google for Rule 34 of the first black President of the USA" ... urgh.

:D Chinese pirate clones competition. That'd be awesome.

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=2865.0
 

REmakes, not DEmakes.

Obviously next we'll do ... postmakes?

PREMAKES

If this really comes around, I'd like to call dibs on a Calvinball adaption.

BLANDWARE

Ok, PSU has been replaced and I've installed an additional fan to delay the next meltdown. I've finally, finally fixed the walljumps and collision detection. Next up are some bugs with the climbing and the addition of additional levels and cutscenes.

Also, hooray for being 22nd out of 68 (place 16) or something.

Soooo...

Following some advice from the AGS forums and a quick talk, Corner's Shiny is now officially back in production for (some) bug-smiting, (a bit of) rebalancing, (some) refining and (quite a deal of) polishing.

Saint: As long as you didn't send him E-Mail along the lines of "sue their sorry asses into oblivion", I don't mind for sure. 

In different (but still awesome news), Ben304, another dude from the AGS forums, has tried some pixel artistry and came up with this:

Allllright, I know, the game is a metaphorical house build out of twigs and spit... but I insist on it being playable, and quite fun if you know what you're doing. Would it be against the compo's rules if I fixed some of the more annoying issues, such as the lack of checkpoints, the "persistent" velocity and the flimsy concrete?

Who knows, after this competition ends, maybe I'll spend a few weeks with de-glitchifying it (to a reasonable extend) and bothering BaronCid to draw more levels and do whatever he did to get these cutscene pictures.

For now, you're stuck with the glitchy semi-broken heap of code ruins, though. 

I couldn't get up the wall where you need to walljump.

The secret is the timing. Try hitting the jump key a little earlier than seems sensible.

It's also mirrored over at RAPidsharE, just in case.

But yeah, it would have taken way more than a month to iron out the glitches (including re-writing the way walls are handled more or less from scratch because it's bogus  ), so we focused on the really awful game-crashing stuff. The game is playable, and you can view trying to get around the glitches as part of the challenge - as in, aiming exactly for the middle of the small platforms so you don't fall through them.

And if things really go awry, you can hit F9 to restart the game. Because that is an undocumented feature, it will also make you feel cool.

It's completely unplayable for me, but this game pretty much is the holy grail of cheap bootlegging.

I think I'll take that as a compliment. 

[actual ingame screenshots]

Alright, we're drawing closer and closer, so maybe it's time to finally give a short summary of what the game will exactly be like. You'll probably know some of it already, but still. It also has actual ingame screenshots !





(The green stuff is our version of Runner's Vision, in case you were confused  )

An entry for TIGSource's bootleg demake competition, this game is a 2D-platformer-adaption of Mirror's Edge. It's rather straightforward: Using a wide array of moves, including running, sliding, (wall-)jumping, climbing and more, you have to travel through the levels as fast as possible in your unrelenting quest to deliver some mail and, much more important, gather a high score. Controls and gameplay are semi-realistic: You have to run a little to get to maximum speed and you can't stop dead in your tracks, but controls still are a lot more precise than in, say, the original Prince of Persia. Another unique feature is the "momentum gauge" at the top of the screen. While you're running, it starts to fill up. The further it gets to the right end, the more moves you'll be able to execute - for example, you can't slide while in the blue region of the gauge.

That's pretty much all there is to it. It's a small, non-pretentious, but hopefully fun game. If you care, please also visit the thread over in the AGS forums (which also has a post like this).

Expected date of release is September 7th, because that's when the competition ends, and I guess we'll need the time. The game is in a playable state right now, but... it's a total glitchfest.

Just a heads up: I was struck by disease (well... the common cold, but still), but nevertheless, the game engine is nearing completion and levels are being created as we speak. Expect the release soon(ish).

Hope this is still being made.

Yeah, it is. A coding-per-time graph would probably resemble a sinus curve, but in the end, there's still work happening, so don't worry. 

So... I've started with scripting the basic platformer engine. So far, things are moving on smoother than expected. Right now, the whole thing is more or less held together by prayers and spit, but for something I more or less pulled out of my ass, it works surprisingly well.

In case anybody was wondering whether this is live.

[/thinly disguised bump]

Yay, I'm in! 

But first: Are you shure you can do a rather complex platformer (with grabbing ledges, waljumping etc.) in AGS? Don't know too much about it yet.

Absolutely yes, one can do that. Art of Theft was made in AGS, and although the controls in THAT game are 100% arcade, making a game with physics-based movement should be possible, too. With the proper time commitment, I'm positive I could do that.

Just drop me a PM with what exactly you need, and I'll look into it. 

I have a little experience with scripting platformers. That one has a little glitchy enemy behaviour, but that's because I spent the whole of 5 minutes scripting the AI. 

Anyway. With a bit of dedication, a whole month of time and AGS, I should be able to do the job. Get back to me if you're interested.

(P.S. Your team management skills had better be damn good.  )