OK, so this month, I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news.
Oh yeah. Welcome to this month’s edition of testgame.exe: Making the Adventure. This month’s update has some cool stuff in it, etc. etc.
So yeah, the bad news. A couple of weeks ago, my trusty computer—the one I use to work on testgame—decided to start dying. (Well, technically it started dying about five years ago, what with the respiration problems and the lightning strike and all, but that’s a different story.) We’ve been through a lot together, and when it began telling me that it couldn’t find its hard drive, I took that as a very bad sign.
Now, the good news. Between blue screens of death (well, actually, they were black screens, but we’ll go with the usual terminology), I managed to back up all of my hard drive, including testgame. So everything’s safe, thank goodness. I also just got a brand new computer, and AGS seems to be working on it so far, so the future of testgame is ensured.
However, in the space between the old computer dying and the new computer coming in, I didn’t exactly get a lot of testgame work done. You’ll see what I mean when you look at the list of new stuff this month. I don’t even know if I would call it a list…. And did I mention that this past month was midterm season?
But all that’s beside the point. (Right? Right.) I’m currently trying to figure out testgame on this new-fangled machine. First of all, it’s all widescreen-like. Has anyone else attempted to play testgame on a widescreen computer? Maybe there’s a way to keep the display from stretching the screens out, but I haven’t tried to figure it out yet. I’m also a little worried that somehow the compiled game itself will be affected by the change in machines…. I really don’t think that’ll happen, since I’m using the same exact version of the AGS editor, but I’m always wary about that sort of thing. So if you guys try the game out this month and find something glaringly wrong and/or different, let me know.
I’m also unfortunately lacking in image editing software. Photoshop was my best friend before, but it didn’t make it onto the new machine, so I’m going to have to wait a little while before I can install it using an actual CD. So until then, there will be no graphics updates in testgame.
And so hopefully that’ll be it for disasters for a good while. There isn’t really much of anything new to do, but at this point, I’m just happy that everything still seems to work.
Try the game out and tell me if it’s broken!
(no extra programs needed to run this file)
Things to do/new features of note:
- A bit of work on the Artie drinking Spasm sequence: Paul does less moving around now, which looks a lot smoother.
- Some small tweaking of scale in the hidden staircase room—Paul and the fireplace are both a bit larger, which I think looks better.
- Background work: hidden staircase in castle.
