Spot The Difference

Just a small demo available of a game I'm making for my two young daughters, featuring characters / scenes from my other games (whether complete or in progress).

http://gamejolt.com/games/spot-the-difference/107267

I'll give this thread a bump when I've managed to get all 28 screens finished. It's a little time-consuming to do (and I'll add extra bells and whistles as I think of them) so it probably won't be till next year. Bear in mind that this is designed for very young children!

Thanks for the link. Will download later.
You have lucky daughters.

What a neat idea for a project, and what fun for your daughters.

Hi Cap'n -

This is a really cute idea for your kids. They should like it.

As a self-appointed beta tester, I have a couple of things I noticed:
First, if you play on a large screen the individual pixels get really HUGE, and the details in the scene can get lost because of that.
The effect was more of a problem in the busier scene (Trolls) and less of a problem in the simpler scene (clouds)

Second, if you are going to use color-differences, try to make them really obvious, and not too close.

Third, at one point my cursor totally vanished, and did not re-appear until I pressed Esc.
Running Windows 7 Home, 64 bit.

Hope this helps!

Thanks MaG and Marion!

@Tally Ho - that's really useful feedback, thanks!

I'm not sure what I can do about the size issue (the resolution is stupidly low by modern standards but I just love working with 320x200) - apart from suggesting running it in a window if people have a small monitor. Originally I was going to use all extremely simple graphics (from another children's educational game I'm working on concurrently), but the temptation to get the Trolls and Captain Disaster into the mix proved too great...

The colours issue is tricky. Until a few years ago when working on A Playwright's Tale and in a discussion with our amazing artist about the colour in some of his backgrounds, I had no idea that the saturation appears so differently on different monitors. The colour differences I've used look very obvious on my screen. Could you let me know which one(s) don't appear too different on yours?

I have no idea why that bug appeared. The game was compiled using AGS run on a 32-bit system, but AFAIK that should make absolutely no difference. Please let me know if it recurs and when it happened / what display settings you were using.

Thanks again for your feedback, I really appreciate it

I've also added the demo to Itch - http://captaind.itch.io/spot-the-difference - which atm has 4 screens compared to 3 on GameJolt (will update both with more soon - now that I've done a few screens I've got a lot faster at adding them!).

The colors were very obvious on my monitor as well CaptainD. And mine ran in a small windowed mode that was just perfect.

Your kids will love it!

Ana

Thanks Ana - glad to know it's not my eyes going funny! :-D

Played it again. The colour differences that I thought were possibly too similar were in the yellow creature's orange/brown left arm, and the two blue eyes.

The first time I played, I got it to go full-screen (playing on a 30-inch Hi-def TV) hence the large pixels. And when the cursor vanished, it was totally gone. Oddly, I am unable to get the full-screen mode again.

This time, I played it in its windowed mode, and got the cursor to go away again by using Ctrl-MouseWheel in an attempt to change the size. The cursor is then visible on the rest of the screen, but appears to go behind the game screen. I could control things by running the cursor around the outside, then moving it into the game, approximating its position to click on help, quit, or one of the scenes. Cursor remained hidden throughout.

I am also able to get the cursor to vanish by right-clicking on the game screen.

===============

Later - - -

I downloaded it on another computer, and this time the colour differences were not a problem at all.

As for the cursor; I was again able to make it go away, but discovered that I can restore it by moving the mouse wheel. That technique works on both systems. Windows 7 and XP. (Shh don't tell anyone I am still using XP)

By the way, F9 equals pressing the Menu button.

Gotta go work now; hope this is helpful!

Doug

Thanks for the further feedback Tally Ho - not sure about some of the issues you mention but will look into them, think they must be something to do with the scripting of the blank game template. I've been designing games for some years now but really new to the nitty-gritty of AGS scripting!

In the meantime, I've released a new version.
http://gamejolt.com/games/spot-the-difference/107267

Changes:
- 1 extra screen added (7 in total now) - this one's quite a bit harder than most of the others!
- Option to change mouse cursor / cross-hairs
- SFX taken out for now
- Text at start of each screen telling you about the scene and what game it’s from
- Menu screen now indicates screens you have already completed

Coming soon:
- More screens including some from A Landlord’s Dream and Fanbots
- Background music

Thanks, CaptainD

Latest version uploaded. Now up to 10 screens to solve, some reasonably difficult. A few minor tweaks and improvements (certainly right-clicking should no longer make your mouse cursor disappear! :p). First screen (of many, hopefully?!) donated by another AGS gamemaker! Music coming soon.

http://gamejolt.com/games/spot-the-difference/107267

Thanks for the update.

Wonderful CaptainD!

Another update, mainly:
- Music added (5 track loop - extremely relaxing :))
- Another puzzle added (a bit harder than most of them)

http://gamejolt.com/games/spot-the-difference/107267

"Credits" doesn't work yet, it will in the next build.

Thanks, CaptainD.