Topics

[Nomination and voting]

Wow, it's November already! The next AGS Awards are around the corner. Now would be a good time to start catching up playing this year's games. 

More importantly, though, I would like to discuss the future of the AGS Awards. We, the awards team (cat, @Kastchey and @Snarky), noticed a steady decline in interest. Fewer people nominate and vote, provide resources or attend the ceremony.

Nomination and voting
Good news first, @AGA has confirmed that he will take care of the voting page again. We will be able to do nominations and voting like always. However, there is a noticeable decline in the number of people who nominate and vote. While I think there will be still enough to have a significant result for 2023, it is still worrying.

Is there anything we can do to increase participation? Should we reduce the number of categories (e.g. best graphics and best animation could be merged, best gameplay could be dropped etc.)? Any other ideas?

The ceremony
The ceremony where the results are revealed has been the highlight of the AGS awards for many years. However, it comes with several problems:
* It's getting harder and harder to collect the required resources as many people either deliver them late, in weird formats or not at all. Even when they are collected, someone has to prepare them and put them in the client. We have lives beside AGS and this is taking quite some time.
* Fewer and fewer people are attending. Last year was the lowest number we ever had, as far as I remember. The huge effort of preparing the ceremony seems wasted time for such a small crowd.

Was the timing the problem? Was it just the wrong date and everything would be better with a tighter schedule and a ceremony earlier in the year? Is the ceremony not interesting anymore?

We considered various options for replacing the ceremony:

• IRC only, as in the good old times
• Chat only, but using Discord
• A discord voice call with a shared powerpoint presentation
• No ceremony at all, the result is just posted in the thread

What are your thoughts on this topic? Are you going to participate in voting or join a ceremony next year?

Online play only

Is it actually possible to download such games nonetheless? Could you download the whole wrapped package an run it locally?

@Durinde

Spoiler

I got the pillow and gave it to Karl, but how do I get him to make me a costume from it? I have the other two books already.

[close]

Apparently, AdventureX is going to happen again this year:

https://www.adventurexpo.org/


It seems there are no more tickets available. Maybe the talks will be recorded and/or streamed?

[Everyone, help us to make a new AGS demo game - we need writers, artists, musicians, coders, testers and project managers!]

Everyone, help us to make a new AGS demo game - we need writers, artists, musicians, coders, testers and project managers!

As discussed in this thread (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/adventure-related-talk-chat/crowd-sourced-of-an-open-sourced-ags-example-game-collaboration/), we want to build a new AGS demo game.

The game should demonstrate the most common features of AGS and will be targeted mostly to people new to AGS. It should showcase typical adventure game use cases and allow for easily getting them work in your own code. Ideally, the game should also be fun to play.

There has been a crowd sourced game been made before: Draculator II: Byte of the Draculator. Can we do this once again?

The first stages will be mostly discussion where to go. Everyone is invited to join in.

As Crimson Wizard has pointed out, we should start with thinking about what features should be included and what UI to use.
What is the UI that most newbies are using? What is most asked for in the beginner boards?

I'm stuck right at the beginning.

Spoiler

I fixed the balcony curtain and went outside, but I have no idea how to proceed. There are hardly any hotspots. The doctor said something about visiting various people but I can't even leave the house. There is only the bedroom with balcony, the potion room and the herb garden. Am I missing some exit?

[close]

@Kastchey @CaptainD

This is a short game that bicilotti had linked on his blog:

https://princessinternetcafe.itch.io/running-back-to-you

It can be played directly in the browser.

It is bitter sweet and sad, I almost started to cry when it ended. It reminds me somewhat of this lovely place here. And with the forums down recently, it really hit close to home.

Hi AGS people,

I'm so happy the forum is back - thanks AGA!

[🏆 AGS Awards 2022]

🏆 AGS Awards 2022

Welcome to the AGS Awards, the event where you, the player, choose the best games of the year!

Step # 0 - play them games!
You have some time to play games made in 2022. Do it!
Step # 1 - nomination time!
Select games you deem worthy in each category!
Step # 2 - vote, folks!
Pick from the nominees and we get a winner!
Step # 3 - party!
Big party to celebrate the winners!

Awards are over!

Here are the winners

Best Game Created with AGS
Nightmare Frames


Best Freeware Game Created with AGS
The Witch's Lullaby


Best Writing
Nightmare Frames


Best Character
"Alan Goldberg" from Nightmare Frames


Best Gameplay
Nightmare Frames


Best Background Art
Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard


Best Character Art
Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard


Best Animation
Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard


Best Original Music & Sound Design
Nightmare Frames


Best Voice Work
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow


Best Demo
Zid Journey (demo)


Best Non Adventure Game Created with AGS
Snow Problem


Best Short Game
The Witch's Lullaby


Best Programming
Don't Give Up the Cat


Best Puzzles
Nightmare Frames


Congratulations!



Nomination results

Best Game Created with AGS

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
Nightmare Frames
Perfect Tides
Space Quest: A Son of Xenon - Full Version (2022)
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow


Best Freeware Game Created with AGS

Clotilde Soffritti in: Never Double Park your Spaceship
Highland Spirit
Space Quest: A Son of Xenon - Full Version (2022)
The Witch's Lullaby
Where Did the Humans Go?


Best Writing

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
Nightmare Frames
Perfect Tides
Space Quest: A Son of Xenon - Full Version (2022)
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow


Best Character

"Alan Goldberg" from Nightmare Frames
"Clotilde Soffritti" from Clotilde Soffritti in: Never Double Park your Spaceship
"Finn" from Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
"Mara Whitefish" from Perfect Tides
"Thomasina Bateman" from The Excavation of Hob's Barrow


Best Gameplay

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
Clotilde Soffritti in: Never Double Park your Spaceship
Nightmare Frames
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow
The Witch's Lullaby


Best Background Art

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
Nightmare Frames
Rock 'n' Roll Will Never Die!
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow
The Witch's Lullaby


Best Character Art

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
Clotilde Soffritti in: Never Double Park your Spaceship
Nightmare Frames
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow
The Witch's Lullaby


Best Animation

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
Nightmare Frames
Perfect Tides
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow
Zid Journey (demo)


Best Music & Sound

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
Nightmare Frames
Space Quest: A Son of Xenon - Full Version (2022)
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow



Best Voice Work

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
Challenge of the Tentacle
SPHONX
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow



Best Demo

Castle Dornstein - DEMO
Menial; a Utopian Bagel Simulator (demo)
Signal & Echo: Iris is Missing (demo)
Zid Journey (demo)



Best Non Adventure Game Created with AGS

Beat the Buzzer
Don't Give Up the Cat
Mr. Tijerakis
Snow Problem



Best Short Game

Clotilde Soffritti in: Never Double Park your Spaceship
Don't Give Up the Cat
The Witch's Lullaby
There's Something in the Pipes
Where Did the Humans Go?


Best Programming

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
Don't Give Up the Cat
Nightmare Frames
Snow Problem
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow


Best Puzzles

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard
Nightmare Frames
Signal & Echo: Iris is Missing (demo)
Space Quest: A Son of Xenon - Full Version (2022)
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow


Congratulations!


How do the AGS Awards work?
(This is information mostly for new members, same procedure as every year)

Every year, the AGS community embarks on a quest to find the best games made in the last year. All games are eligible, that were added to the AGS Database in the year 2022. There is a For Your Consideration thread where authors can promote their games and players get a good overview what might be worth playing.

The awards are a two-step process: First there is a nomination phase where all community members can nominate the eligible games in several categories (it will be the same categories as last year). The top five games of each category make it to the voting (as long as they've received at least five nominations). Again, all members of the community can vote on their favourite games.
The final result is then announced in a live ceremony that can be joined either with a special client or any regular irc client.

Party like it's 1990 in this thread!

[AGS Awards 2022]

Have you made a game in 2022 and want it to compete in the AGS Awards 2022? This is the topic where to showcase it!
Post a database link, a brief description and some pictures (thumbnails preferred, here is an excellent FYC post from last year).

Do not be shy, by posting your game you are helping the players who will take some of their time to play/nominate/vote!

Usual remarks:

• Please include a link to your games page on the AGS games database
• If you think a game deserves mention but the author isn't around, post an FYC for them! The more worthy games we get here, the better it is for everyone!
• This thread is for FYC posts only, if you want to discuss the awards go here!

A bit short notice, but today is the last chance to add your game to the database for the 2022 AGS Awards.

Only games that were added to the database in 2022 are eligible for the AGS Awards 2022.

Apparently, there has been an AdventureX this year in November. Sadly, no-one has written anything about it here on the forums, so I didn't know about it  . I would have loved to go there or at least watch the live-streams.

It seems there are some videos available at twitch, but this is not the same. However, you might want to have a look: https://www.twitch.tv/adventurexpo/videos

Has anyone been there and can tell us a bit about the event?

Who of you is playing wordle?

I started playing a few weeks ago, but I clear my browser cache often, so I don't track my results over time. I think it's a nice challange and I enjoy learning new words. I usually play in regular mode but try to keep to the hard mode rules. This allows for the occasional win on the second guess. Only when I can't think of any more words that could fit (or too many, like still, skill, spill, etc) I use a word to exclude as many characters as possible.
Do you have a standard starting word? How do you play?

Today I got the word on second try

[AGS 4.0]

Sooner or later, a new version of AGS will be needed. I want to start a discussion because I want to see the general vibe of the community about this.

Several people started projects for this, to my mind come

• AGS 4.0 which is a cleanup of the existing AGS engine
• MonoAGS, created by tzachs as AGS successor
• XAGE by Clarvalon

The question is, how should we, as AGS community, treat those projects? I started this topic because of Monsieur OUXX's thread. He suggested that MonoAGS should be allowed for MAGS. How much space do we want to give it in the forum already? He also suggested to make topics about it in the technical boards.

Some advantages I see in giving MonoAGS or XAGE more attention:

• Make it more visible, spread the knowledge
• The sooner people use it, the sooner there is feedback for the developer(s)
• Prepare for a smooth transition to a new tool

Some disadvantages

• It is in a very early stage and probably only useable to a few hardcore game developers, not the majority here.
• There is no official successor of AGS
• It could be confusing, especially for the technical boards, especially with more different engines

Do we want to define an official AGS successor? Shall we wait and see how projects develop? Maybe it is time to have a separate board for MonoAGS where all technical stuff can be discussed? Shall it be allowed for MAGS?

What are the thoughts of the engine developers, game deveopers, the community?