Topics

41

Adventure Related Talk & Chat / London Ron Gilbert meeting (after report)

« on: 22 Apr 2005, 07:25 »

Looks like Grumpy Gamer (aka Ron Gilbert, father of the good adventure games) is going to England, and maybe it's time you guys host Brittens or something if you want to meet him.

More info: http://grumpygamer.com/6425809

42

Advanced Technical Forum / Hidden Font Characters

« on: 21 Apr 2005, 01:36 »

Puma, or someone:

I was wondering what the hidden characters for the AGS fonts are. For example, I screwed up on commenting the wrong script line and I ended up with the following message on the screen: 

That's right, I got a little face that looked like  , so I'd like to use that kind of stuff! I think it should be documented too.

43

Advanced Technical Forum / Suggestion: More Property Options!

« on: 18 Apr 2005, 05:56 »

Hey, this might be something for ags 2.8 or ags 2.71 or whatever:

On the properties, I know you can have a string, boolean, or integer to set the values, but what if you could also point to characters, objects, and inventory items?

Here's an example of how this is useful: Let's say that characters can get married. There could be a property that states who the character is married to. Yes, I'm aware that you can also use numbers to identify characters, but you always have to think "oh, what's 7 again? Oh, that's Tim!" and such....

44

Advanced Technical Forum / About Conditional Statements...

« on: 17 Apr 2005, 18:29 »

Some programming languages allow you to do the following gimmick:

[code]int *a;
(...)
if(a && *a > 5) {}[/code]

But I tried doing something similar on AGS and it broke! does it not have some sort of "short-circuit" mechanism? or do I have to do it this way:

[code]if(a){
  if(*a >5) {}
}[/code]

Actually, what I did had nothing to do with pointer, what I checked for was if a property did not have a certain value and then if the player had the inventory with the property value... which broke when I didn't set a value to the property (default being -1)

45

General Discussion / The Excellent Game Psychonauts

« on: 11 Apr 2005, 22:09 »

The game is out! At least in the United States. PS2 version coming out the 21st of June.

Formerly known as the Psychonauts PC demo available for download thread

----

For those of you who have a PC and broadband, you might want to check out the demo for the excellent game Psychonauts. It's 457 MB big, and you can download it from:

http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=6682 (registration required)
http://dlx.gamespot.com/pc/psychonauts/moreinfo_6121978.html (registration required)
http://www.filerush.com/download.php?target=PsychonautsDemoInstaller.exe (Bittorrent but no registration)
http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/games/psychonauts/psychonautsdemoinstaller.exe.html (Bitorrent but no registration)

END OF TAPE

46

General Discussion / Psychoportals

« on: 05 Apr 2005, 23:14 »

Hey, guys, just to let you know that you should participate on this:

http://www.psychoportals.com/

It's unfortunately for US Residents (and people who live in BC) [edit: um... I meant DC] only, and you have to be at least 13...

Basically it's this Psychonauts promotion thing going on April 16 where oou solve puzzles as a team or something like that. You can win prizes like Psychonauts itslef, or even an entertainment system (hopufully that means a home theater of some kind). All the info is in the page, so check it out.

And remember, "if you're not a Psychonaut, then you might as well be dead."

47

General Discussion / What's the time?

« on: 03 Apr 2005, 10:08 »

Don't forget, Daylight savings is in effect for those who have that kind of thing going on...

My real question is, though, what is the time on the AGS forums? I live at GMT/UTC -6, but the forums is set to a time so that I have to set it to -7. I think that is very odd. Is this a bug?

I could have posted this on the Technical Forum, but I wasn't sure were it would be more appropriate.

48

Completed Game Announcements / Ben Jordan: Paranormal Warrior Within

« on: 02 Apr 2005, 03:42 »

And you thought it was merely a Photohsop....

The truth is that since Grundislav gave me copyright authority over Ben Jordan while he was part of the MonkeyGames Empire, I was able to make an official Ben Jordan game!  I noticed that Grundi is all going 3D on Ben Jordan 5,  but what better way to take away everyone's attention from that with this new and improved Ben Jordan:

Download (5.79 MB)

Warning: This game is not suitable for young audiences... It might even check your age!

49

Advanced Technical Forum / About Restoring/Loading old saved games

« on: 28 Mar 2005, 07:22 »

I remember when if you had a newer version of a game and you were trying to load an old saved game, if the new version had changes to the global script, it would not load the game. However, as I'm working on my game I realized that this is no longer the case. I tried searching the changes file, but I couldn't find anything that would say that this was ever changed.

My question is... when did this happen? I'm glad that I can tweak the global script and still load an old game, but I'm curious to know.

50

Advanced Technical Forum / AGS and WXGA Resolutions

« on: 22 Feb 2005, 22:47 »

Hey, I was wondering if anyone else has a Wiiiiidescreen monitor. Why? Because I was wondering if you could run AGS game nicely on them.

Here's an example of my problem: I'm running Ben Jordan 3 as a test, and the game is 320x200. Of course, I can't run it at that low res, so I changed the resolution to 640x400. This screen supports 1280x800 (640x2 and 400x2) but when I run the game, it acts like it's letterbox and puts black bars on the top and bottom of the screen, making even wider screen. Everything looks mega stretched.

It's not a big dea, but it's just a thought... I mean, it would be cool if it didn't have those black bars on the top and bottom so that I can play the game at a perfect screen ratio. 

51

General Discussion / AGS and the European Patents

« on: 19 Feb 2005, 03:56 »

Read these:
http://news.com.com/Software-patent+battle+set+to+flare+up/2100-1014_3-5432364.html?tag=nl
http://news.com.com/Europes+patent+proposal+pending/2100-1014_3-5582138.html?tag=nl

Now, how would this affect our beloved Adventure Get Studio? Is Chris Jones going to run to get patents if this is aproved? or is Chris already out on the streets protesting like the people in the pictures?

Discuss.

52

Advanced Technical Forum / MEDIA MANAGER 0.3 beta 2 2/3 (An AGS Editor Plugin)

« on: 06 Feb 2005, 03:34 »

Hey... you thought I forgot about this plugin, right? Well, you're all wrong!!! (Actually, it had been so long I almost forgot how to program it  ).

Beta 2 features:
2. Added support (sort of) to Ogg Vorbis files. You need to download an external program like Winamp or a codec that can play ogg files. What the media manager will do is just open an external program to play the file. Thanks to Neccy for guiding me into the right direction!

Anyway, I've added a couple of features:
1. The ability to play, pause, and stop files!
2. Speech file descriptions will have the dialog lines, but only dialog lines from the script editor

Issues to be resolved:
1. OGG files can't be played from the AGS Editor. There seems to be some major problem with DirectX when trying to open the file.
2. I've yet to figure out the previous and next track buttons... so that it works more like a playlist.
3. People get the white background which means the plugin didn't load correctly, and I rarely get it myself.

Please test it and tell me how it works, specially on loading those dialog lines...  feel free to give out suggestions too!

It can be used with AGS 2.61 and above.

http:// monkeygames.mixnmojo.com/ ags / AGS_MediaMan_NET_03beta2.zip
(If you really want to download it and become a tester, copy and paste this link on your browser adn get rid of the spaces. Currently it's having problems loading on AGS, and I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with it.)

53

Adventure Related Talk & Chat / AGS games recognized by CGW, AGS ignored completely

« on: 14 Jan 2005, 04:03 »

So I was flipping through my friend's Computer Gaming World January 2005 issue and they had this article on freeware games you can download. I look at page 65 and I say "Hey, it's Maniac Mansion....! Oh, wait...." and then I looked closer:



My friend had two copies of the magazine, so I grabbed one and took it home to scan. No mentioning of AGS... then again, why would they mention it anyway?

54

Advanced Technical Forum / Suggestions: AC runtime tweaks

« on: 22 Nov 2004, 16:25 »

Here's a couple of things that are long ovedue, IMO, and should be addressed:

1) when you alt+tab out of an ACWIN-powered game, the music keeps playing, but... it's stuck in a loop so it's pretty annoying. Most games just solve this problem by not playing the music while the program is still running in the background. Is there any way this can be done?

2) You can't load games saved in a different resolutions. So, what's the point of playing the game windowed with a visible size if you can't even load what you've been playing so far?

Thanks.

55

Advanced Technical Forum / Inconsistency in the help?

« on: 10 Nov 2004, 03:55 »

I ran into this glitch where MUSICx.WAV may be an option, but I'm not sure because:

In the Distributing Your Game section says:
"NOTE: MP3 and OGG music files are not included in the exe. They will instead be built into a file called MUSIC.VOX when you click the "Rebuild VOX files" option in the editor. Since OGGs and MP3s override all other music file types, this allows you to have an Digital Music Pack which you can distribute seperately to your game. If it is present in the game directory it will be used, otherwise any other music available (eg. MIDI) will be played instead."

But the Music and Sound section says:
"For background music, AGS can use OGG, MP3, MIDI, WAV, MOD, XM, and S3M music files. For sound effects, you can use OGG, MP3, WAV and VOC files. When AGS needs to play music number X, it will search for the files in the following order. The first file it finds, it plays: MUSICx.OGG, MUSICx.MP3, MUSICx.WAV, MUSICx,MID, MUSICx.MOD, MUSICx.XM, MUSICx.S3M."

and...
"NOTE: WAV, MP3 and OGG music files are not included in the game EXE, but are instead bundled into a seperate file called MUSIC.VOX. Whenever you add any new music files of those types to your game folder, you need to choose "Rebuild VOX Files" from the Game menu in order to update the store and make them work in-game."

However, it is not mentioned in the Multimedia Functions section under PlayMusic:
"PlayMusic
PlayMusic (int music_number)

Changes the currently playing background music to MUSICx.OGG, MUSICx.MP3, MUSICx.MID, MUSICx.MOD or MUSICx.XM (where X is MUSIC_NUMBER). The game will search for the files in that order until it finds one to play."

So, which one is it? what is the situation with MUSICx.WAV files? I really can't remember since most of us use OGG/MP3s these days... can anyone clarify?

56

Advanced Technical Forum / Concerning Save Game Screenshots...

« on: 09 Nov 2004, 02:13 »

Here's an interesting thing I noticed about the whole save screenshot system.

Let's say that you save the game in full screen mode with a screenshot-based save game system. If you save the same exact game in windowed mode, the screenshot on windowed mode has better scaling! Is there any reason for this?

Here's some samples I took from "BJSOURCE" as seen in Mittens (well, only by AGA and Grundislav, I believe. Everyone else was just playing Puzzle Fighter or eating Sour Cream n' Onion Crisps):


Game saved under 320x200,  Screenshot taken at 640x400


Game saved under 640x400, Screenshot taken at 640x400

Another interesting thing is that if you look at the two saved games on 320x200 full screen, they look exactly alike, except that the old man in the 640 saved game looks better scaled (You can see his buttons).

57

Advanced Technical Forum / Problems with ProcessClick

« on: 20 Oct 2004, 03:34 »

Hey,

So, I have this automated code that I want to happen after an action has been processed, like this:

under on_mouse_click
[code]
if (button == LEFT) {
    ProcessClick(...);
    MyCode();
}
[/code]

The problem is that MyCode is being executed before process click! and I don't want that! Am I doing something wrong, or is processclick one of those oddball functions like NewRoom, etc?

58

Adventure Related Talk & Chat / Altoids Adventure Game?!

« on: 24 Aug 2004, 02:31 »

Check this out:

http://www.altoids.com/index.aspx?area=game&sitegameid=87&relationid=405

I haven't beaten the game yet, but it's an adventure game! It's got a nice interface too!

59

General Discussion / Online relationships... an interesting topic for all ages

« on: 23 Aug 2004, 05:01 »

You know, I've been online for a big chunk of my life... 6 years, specially for most of my years as a growing and awkward teenager. A while back, when I was an IRC junkie, I always ran into cases where online people were dating other online people, which I thought was kind of silly and whatnot. I don't mind making friends at all, like the folks I met at Mittens I think I can trust them (except for that Christopher Jones!), but I'm referring to dating and whatnot, and even long distance relationships in general.

I was wondering if anyone else had any experiences with it (through yourself or others) and opinions on the subject. I wonder if anyone on #AGS is dating another person in the channel, from the few girls that exist there (I think I can count them with my fingers ). I've not only seen situations online, but I know people in real life who have gone insane and dropped out of high school for sex with some online stranger (true story). Maybe I'll tell these stories in later replies, if the thread gets pretty popular.

60

Adventure Related Talk & Chat / Adventure Rant

« on: 12 Aug 2004, 21:50 »

I was going to post this on Grumpy Gamer's latest post, http://www.grumpygamer.com/1878449, but then i thought it was too long so I decided to place it here and start "some shit":

._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-.

I don't give a damn that anyone makes adventure games for comercial purposes. It's been more than 15 years since Maniac Mansion, and all that has been advanced in adventure games is the GUI and the graphics (Except for like Grim Fandango, sort of, because the gameplay was partially based on the 1993 Alone in the Dark engine). All adventure games have the exact same exact basic solve puzzle gameplay, and even some adventure games have gotten worse in perfecting the puzzle process (Runaway, apparently), making it illogical and stupid. Even first person shooters, which are pretty mindless games, had added new things with each iteration, like multiple floors, the ability to jump, the change in movement, actual storylines (which came from adventure games), and now days realistic physics. I guess you could say "uh.. you still shoot around", but there is more things you can do! The number of outcomes has increased. Some things as not as predictable as they used to be (maybe Doom 3 breaks the rule?).

LucasArts for years revolutionized games with things like the graphic adventure Point & Click GUI, voice speech, full motion video and so forth before many caught on, and they put so much effort into quality, but then they eventually got too carried away with adventure games, and they realized they had spent millions of dollars on (adventure) games that were not going to sell zillions of copies by the time of their release and saw that their star wars games were making good money. So instead of coming up with revolutionary new methods of game design (in the field of adventure, for example) like they did years ago, they just threw everything away and just relied on making star wars games. I don't know who is to blame... maybe it's because all the good people with actual ideas left, and all they got is a bunch of star war fans making games. Or maybe it's preasure from the LucasFilm Empire. Who knows.

._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-.

That's it. It's mostly about gameplay, true. After all, Adventure Games are supposed to be Games, if you thought they were some sort of interactive movie, and they have perfected the story telling quite well. Shouldn't we just try to get over with how witty and great the story is and develop better gameplay? It's something that LucasArts and Sierra sort of took for granted when the money was coming until the later 90's.