Black Cauldron remake 1.2

iron_man · Fri 22/10/2004 17:03:42

sometimes we have more need to be creative than just having more of 'a social life' . The result of creativity can be very rewarding. These results definately deserve two months of less social life i think.Besides it is only a small period of time.Well done.

dreammaster · Tue 26/10/2004 14:41:21

Thanks for the praise. I've finally gotten version 1.1 finished and ready for download. I took some extra time to add some spiffy features, like a custom save/restore wrapper to allow more than 20 savegames, and enhanced keyboard and mouse support in the new save/restore dialogs.

Joacim Andersson · Wed 27/10/2004 02:05:07

I've found an annoying bug... When I die (which you obviously very easily can do in this game) I'm presented with a small GUI with three buttons, Reload, Restart, and Exit but clicking the Reload button causes the game to crash. I had to click the Restart button and then reload a saved game.

Otherwise I don't have any problems with the GUI except that since some of the hotspots are a bit small I wish you would draw hotspot dots on the cursors.

lakerz · Mon 06/12/2004 07:07:01

Hi,

I never played the original Black Cauldron, so I was interested in giving this remake a shot. But now I think I may have ran into a bug:

Spoiler

I got to the end of the game. I'm standing on the ledge above the cauldron and choose to jump in. That furry animal I befriended sacrifices himself instead of me. The text says he jumps in, yet he remains standing besides me. Then, when the cauldron blows up, the game says I get thrown out of the castle and into the moat holding on to a piece of wood. However, I'm actually back on that switchback path above the moat instead. The ending never comes.

[close]

Mickey Bitsko · Tue 07/12/2004 16:42:43

Dreammaster - you've done a great job! You've really caught the feel of old school Sierra.

I would go into more detail about what I enjoy about your game, but I've got the flu and am heavily medicated at the moment. Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoy what you've done!

DragonRose · Sat 18/12/2004 00:10:07

Woah! I found a HUGE bug.

Spoiler

I started wandering around in the forest after Gurgi jumped in the cauldron, and all of a sudden- boom! Gurgi appears and starts following me around. Whoopsy!

[close]

Really though, is there any way to finish this game? As I mentioned above, I did the thing that SHOULD end the game, but the game just keeps going. So... I'm confused.

Church · Fri 31/12/2004 15:08:02

I am new to AGS, and I plan on making old-school Sierra-style games. Well, one of the ways I planned on learning the scripting was by downloading this Black Cauldron remake and referencing the source code. Bottom line: I can't seem to be able to load the source material into AGS.

I have the newest version of AGS (just downloaded 2 weeks ago), so I don't know if that's the reason why. Also, I noticed that after unzipping the SOURCE folder there is a file called 'edit this.ags game' or something like that, but when I open an already existing game in AGS it doesn't allow me the option of loading any files that AREN'T in a .dta extension.

I hope someone can help me with this problem? Maybe you, Dreammaster? I really love your version of this game! It's just like the original that I remember so dearly from when I was a kid. It would have been better with VGA graphics of course, but no complaints here!

If I can figure out AGS scripting soon enough, I plan on re-doing all of the Space Quests in SVGA graphics!

-Church

strazer · Fri 31/12/2004 15:23:22

The "Edit this .AGSGame" is just for making an association with the AGS editor so you can double-click it to load the game into the editor:

Quote from: Pumaman on Mon 10/05/2004 21:54:42In the version of AGS that was distributed as a windows installer, it created an association for ".AGSGame" files so that you could double-click the "Edit this AGSGame" file to open the game in the editor.

You can create this association manually if you like, just set up .AGSGame files so that their association is:

c:\path\to\ags\agsedit.exe -shelllaunch "%1"

But isn't there a .dta file in the source that you can open with the editor?

Church · Mon 03/01/2005 16:10:39

Yes there is a .dta, but when I load it into AGS it says that there is a file missing, and that AGS might not be able to load it properly... so I ignore that and go ahead and load it anyway, and when I go up to TEST GAME in the file menu, I get all these crazy error messages and then the computer locks up, kicking me out of AGS and Windows Explorer.

It's weird, cause I've got an awesome computer, so there's no hardware issues. Other AGS games I've downloaded work fine within AGS. I *have* encountered some games that were written on old versions og AGS, and I have the newest one, so is that maybe what I'm dealing with, with Black Cauldron?

I just want to learn how AGS works through the art of mimicry, and what better to mimic than a game that I actually played when I was a kid! I mean, if I could get the source code for Tierra's KQ2 remake, that would be even better, but I'm almost as impressed with the BC remake.

I grew up with these 3D adventure games, both the old text-based ones and the newer point and click ones. The first game I ever played (which changed my life, not to sound so dramatic, sorry) was King's Quest 4, and I knew that someday I would make games just like it. Then, of course, games evolved into the Playstation/1st person shooter/3D world-kind of games the kiddies are playing today, and I have no interest in them. I'm still stuck in the early 90s where computer games immersed you into a fantasy world full of pretty colors and MIDI music, and you actually had to THINK to play these games.... does anyone remember that... THINKING?

Anyway, thanks for your help strazer!

Church

strazer · Mon 03/01/2005 16:35:18

QuoteYes there is a .dta, but when I load it into AGS it says that there is a file missing, and that AGS might not be able to load it properly...

That's because BC was made using the agsCreditz plugin. When you test the game, it can't find the functions provided by the plugin and crashes. Why it would crash and not give an error message, I don't know.
Anyway, copy the agsCreditz.dll file from executable.zip to your AGS editor directory and the Compiled folder of the game.

Church · Mon 03/01/2005 22:05:01

Okay, so I did what you told me... I copied the .dll to both the AGS Editor main folder AND the BC/Source/Compiled folder. Interesting thing is, now the game supposedly loads up correctly into AGS (meaning I don't get the "AGS Credits.dll is missing" error upon loading the game), but then when I go up to Test Game it gives me a crazy error message that says:

*************************************************************
---------------------------
Illegal exception
---------------------------
An exception 0xC0000005 occured in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x004A1A2E ; program pointer is +9902, ACI version 2.61.747, gtags (2036,32)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and notify CJ on the Tech forum.

Most versions of Windows allow you to press Ctrl+C now to copy this entire message to the clipboard for easy reporting.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------
*************************************************************

... And then upon exiting AGS I go and look in the Compiled folder and that .dll is no longer there! It's still in the main AGS folder, but not in the BC/Source/Compiled folder. So I tried sending a copy of it to BC/Source (instead of going all the way to Compiled), which is where the majority of all the source files are anyway, but I still get the above error.

This sucks. Is it me? I guess I got a lot of learning to do here if I'm going to understand this program. I used to write adventure games in regular old Quick Basic back in the day, and I never had any problems way back then. I wish I could just run Quick Basic on this computer... <sigh>

Are there any other good AGS games I can download that contain the source code I can learn from?

Church

strazer · Mon 03/01/2005 22:37:43

First of all, download the latest stable version of AGS, v2.62 and try that.

Some other games with source that that come to mind are Airbreak, Exile and Keptosh.

dreammaster · Tue 11/01/2005 23:28:17

Hey Strazer, thanks for providing for providing such good support for people asking questions.. I just got back from my summer holidays, so if anyone has any further questions, I can answer them now.

Dragonrose, if you're still around, I'm not sure how you managed to start walking around the forest again.. when Gurgi's entered the Cauldron, and the cutscene of going down the river is finished, the walk cursor is meant to become disabled, preventing you from moving, and forcing you to talk to the witches and end the game.

DragonRose · Thu 13/01/2005 18:32:57

Okay... I got no cutscene. The castle shakes, Black cauldron is destroyed, I get a message saying I grab onto a piece of wood and hold on for dear life, then I'm at the end of the river and I can do whatever I want. I'm VERY confused!

dreammaster · Thu 13/01/2005 22:16:05

If you could send me a savegame from the cauldron room before you try to jump in (and Gurgi takes your place) to tg_files@hotmail.com, I'll have a look into the problem.

dreammaster · Tue 18/01/2005 11:58:21

Okay, I sorted out the problem. It seems that several lines dealing with Gurgi actually falling into the cauldron, and flagging his death were missing - I must have accidentally removed it. I've put the appropriate code back, and uploaded a new version of both source and executable to my website.

Thanks for pointing it out to me.

Iv4n · Wed 19/01/2005 08:22:25

So where we can download 1.2? On your site is 1.1.

dreammaster · Wed 19/01/2005 22:39:03

Whoopsie. The download is version 1.2.. I guess I forgot to simply update the labels on the webpage. I'll do it tonight.

Ieremiou · Fri 28/01/2005 18:45:48

By the date, I'm sure the version is 1.2 but inside the game's gui; it says version 1.1

.
I also was able to get it to compile in the latest 2.72 beta by changing a few variable names otherwise it seems to be exactly the same hehe.

/Ieremiou