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The translation editor looks a lot like the program i want develop now, but it do not have the auto-translation feature that i will try to include. It actually gave me some ideas for my own project.
Yes, it is a lot more usefull to just use WFN fonts if you are creating your game rigth now, but there a lot of old games which used SCI fonts. If they are going to be translated now, they will need the exchange tool.
Also, i need now yet if a standalone program could compile the TRS files to TRA ones.

Well, font managing is only one (not the most relevant) utility included in AGSTU. When it is finished, it will be able to automatically translate a entire game in few seconds. Not a perfect translation, but one that will only need some adjustments.

The language database will include:
English, Spanish, German, French and Italian.

Im actuallu outdated about the AGS editor. Maybe i could include the "compile" option to autogenerate the .TRA files directly?

Hi everyone;

Im just returning to this comunnity after many years of absence. Maybe, i still have the dream to make the "perfect" adventure game.
I just started offering my help to translate into spanish some games. Space Quest, decision of the elders, is the first one, and i found that it will be a huge task since the game have +3000 lines to tanslate. So, as a software developer, i decided to create a tool to make this work easier: AGSTU.

What the app will have? How it will work?

- Find empty characters function: which character is never used in the Default language? AGSTU will help you find this (usefull if the game use SCI fonts)
- Replace character function: If the game use SCI fonts, you will need edit the font to add special characters for different languages. AGSTU will change , for example, every "ñ" in the character number you choose. (done)
- Line by line editing: You can visualize just one line at the time, to avoid confussions and source file corruptions. (already done)
- Suggested translation: It will include a dictionary to auto-translate the line as a suggestion; if the translation is perfect, then the user just need one click to acept the sugested one. Also, the dictionary will be updated at runtime if the user wants. (to be implemented)
- Translations as separated projects: Every translation will be one different project in AGSTU. (to be implemented)
- Simultaneous multi language translations: You can translate the game to more than one language at the same time. (to be implemented if it is really useful)

Are there any other functionally someone believe need to be included?

Thanks for your time.

I was searching for the playable time for snowball but i did not found nothing. Any reference?

And, also, can a adventure game be "too big" to be good?

Absolutely. It's possible for a game to start dragging, to the point where fatigue sets in and a player thinks "isn't this over yet?"  This is personal, of course; to me, the main offenders are Ultima VII Serpent Isle (technically an RPG but it plays mostly like an adventure), The Colonel's Bequest, and of course King's Quest V.

- Number of rooms.

Probably not the most useful metric, but Snowball has about seven thousand rooms.

Which is, in your opinion, the biggest adventure game ever(comercial or not).

By biggest, in this case, i meant:

- Number of rooms.
- Number of puzzles.
- Number of items.
- Playable time.
- Cutscenes.

... and so on.

And, also, can a adventure game be "too big" to be good?

Thanks in advance for yours opinions.

Even when i do not posted for a long time in this forum, i always come here a play some games.

This one was really nice, and as a SQ fan forever, I just contacted the author to translate the game into spanish. It will take, hopefully, less than 1 month to have the translation available.

Im pretty sure that 15 $ per BG its a very good revenue here. Maybe, if we were a games company, we must pay more than that, but this in only a project from 3 persons who loves the adventure games and we thinks that we could create something really nice, even if it costs money to us. A lot of people spend money on their hobbies, think on that (paint ball, for example, is a very expensive hobbie, at least here or in Spain, were i live too)

If we finally believes that the game is not enough good to release it as a commercial one, we will release it as a freeware for sure. What we are looking one to tell you the history, not win money or enter in the games industry.

Anyway, the game is still very far and i try to not mention it to avoid make publicity here 

JpGames

I checked and I found out that the minimum wage in Venezuela is around 614,790.00 VEB = 286.669 USD per month. So you should be getting at least some $70 per week no matter what you do (if you work full time). That's still very low for a minimum wage. It's a third of the official US minimum wage, and that's already considered very low in a civilized country. But I guess living expenses aren't that high in Venezuela?

Here in Venezuela you cant buy $ or â,¬ (or any other) in a currency exchange; the goverment have the foreign exchange blocked, so if you want buy it you must pay it in the "black market", around 4000 VEB / 1 US$, not the "official" 2150 VEB/ 1 US$ you can see in the offical change.
And yes, here the living expenses are cheap, but not enough to compensate the difference.
I could speak you about the difference between live in Finland and Venezuela, but i guess this is not the appropiate place.

JpGames

Art costs loads more than that, too. An hourly rate for a graphic designer is often over $40/hour, especially if you're freelancing. And personally I would say creating a really good-quality bg takes at least a working day (8h) to accomplish. $15 in euros is roughly 12e, which is a pretty standard hourly pay for starting workers (at least in Finland).

Venezuela economy: Here you could win 40 $ weekly in a job, maybe 80-100 $ if you are professional. The artist who is working for our game have his own job (not as an artist, of course) where he win around 50 $ weekly, so he win an extra money creating graphics for our game. Also, we found him via a common friend, so he agreed to cooperate for that money.

Here, if you win 40 $/hour in your job you are REALLY RICH, and REALLY LUCKY 

JpGames

 

Well I've seen some of your work in the CL, and no offense, but I don't think that it would cost $3,000 to make that kind of art.
And without even playing your first game, I noticed the sprites ripped from another game- that's a big no-no if you're planning on selling a commercial game. 

Thats the reason why we are wasting money: creating the graphics. We found a young local artist and he is creating the BGs, chars and animations. Any 320x200 BG (really good quality)costs around $15, and the game needs 116 !! The game also have 13 chars, all full animated, and around 100 animations. We also need someone who translate it into english, and it will cost around $300-400 more (more than 2000 lines of dialogs only). We were lucky to find an artist so cheap! Only creating the BGs for the intro and some chars and animations we spendt more than $700 .

Of course, we could create the BGs ourselves (like in our first game) and take some chars from the juncmodule collection (as we did in our first game), but then it will be not a commercial-quality game (again, as our first game was) Paul Quest was created only to begin using AGS, and we maked it in only 9 days (thanks again to the people who helped us in the forums) But like i were trying to explain before, to create a good game, you need spend money, and you will VERY PROBABLY not win nothing for that even, if you sell your final product. But im sure that you could sell some copys. Thats the point.

Lucky, a fan game maker do not create games for money, just for the satisfaction to know that someone else could play and enjoy his game.

JpGames

Are you sure? Millions of people pays $ 3 for really sample games for their mobile phones. More millions pays $ 1-2 for things like just 1 porn video. And thousands just copeerate with some $ to some free MMORG's (like astrowars, for example).

The key? all this payments can be made in a very easy way, usually with a phone message or using PayPal. I believe that if you can find a easy way for the people to pay your game, you can sell it for some money if your game is only NOT BAD (3-5 $). Maybe you will not be rich, but at least you will feel the satisfaction to get something for your work (when usually the game maker is just looking for personal satisfaction, not for money)

Of course, you need create the game, then probably translate it into multiple languages and finally create a place to sell it in internet (create a webpage, stablish payments methods, etc). The cost? Thousands of $$ !! Of course, you need sell too many games to recover that money, and usually no one can or want take the risk to lost money. Specially, when usually the creator have the feeling that the quality of the game is not enough to pay for it.

Just a thoungt. We are creating a full-lenght game and we stimate that it will cost around $ 3,000 before we finish it, without calculate hundreds of hours of self-work. We want make it commercial, but we dont expect win money, just, if possible, recover some bucks to create the next one.

JpGames

mp3? thats the only trouble? So if i dont use Mp3 on my game i can sell it without problems or restrictions?

Of course mp3 its not a big problem. Really, its not a problem at all.

JpGames

¿¿??

Thanks, that was my mistake to forgot that. Now i working great

JpGames

Ashen, thanks for your tip.

ok, i have this in the player enters room before fade in:

if (puertaabierta == 0) {
removewalkablearea(2);
}

when the players opens the door, i change the variable (puertaabierta = 1), but the player cant enter in the walkablearea 2 

Im sure the variable is good declared and i also imported it. I put a little command to see the value (the player say the value)

if (puertaabierta == 0) {
ccapitan.say ("Its close");
}
if (puertaabierta == 1) {
ccapitan.say ("Its open");
}

And the players says "its open". I cheked, and there are not unfilled spaces between both areas (1 & 2).

I miss something??? Im feeling frustrate with this  :'(

JpGames

I did that. I used walkable area 1 for the part where the player can walk free, and walkable area 2 for the area acroos the door. When the players open the door, i activate the walkable area 2, but the player can go into that area. I verify the masks, ans both are in contact.

JpGames

Well, I'm lost with this 

I want create a walkable area, but in one part of it, the player just can access after he complete a puzzle. I mind, a walkable area with a door in the middle. Until the player do not opens the door, he cant access to the other side.

I tried with regions, but the result was no good. Also using 2 diferent walbale areas, but again i cant do it.

Any suggestion? Im sure the solution is very easy, but after almost 2 days i really appreciatte a help here.

JpGames

EDIT Im sorry, i made a mistake and posted this in the wrong thread  :

Did anyone knows why we can upload our game to

http://www.americangirlscouts.org/agsuploads/index.php

??

We enter our login and passwrod but we get this message:

failed to EXEC.

Any help is very appreciated.

JpGames

The opening to Another World was great. I like the openings to Monkey Island also, but I'm probably biased in that respect.

Yes, i think that game was released in 1992, and in that time it was amazing to saw it in your 80386  . I think it was the most innovative intro i ever saw.

JpGames

Well, four sure The Dig(TM) had a wondeful opening. You just feel like if you were watching a movie. It takes you directly into the game history. I always felt that the final scene were terrible short compared with the openning.

JpGames