Bear Story (Updated to v1.3)

[IceMan]

OMG1!!!! First game out!!!LOL!! !

Heh, just kidding.

This is Bear Story, a kind of take on the old Dizzy adventures all those years ago.Ã,  (You DO remember Dizzy, don't you?!?)

Actually, this was a little birthday present I made for my lil' brother, but I've only just got round to uploading it.Ã,  It was kinda cool to see whether or not I could code this type of game in AGS.Ã,  Who says it's a point-and-click only engine?

Features... features... erm:
Ã,  Ã, -It's a dizzy-style game, in AGS!
Ã,  Ã, -8 playable rooms
Ã,  Ã, -5 characters
Ã,  Ã, -Laser targeting system

One of those was made up.Ã,  Now the story:

(Are you sitting down?)
Bear is the manager of Bear Airways, a succesfull airline company, and today is the day of the annual shareholder's conference.Ã,  But Bully Bear has locked Bear in the bedroom!Ã,  Bear needs to escape and get to the conference in time.

Come on, it was for my brother!

Screenshots!





So download version 1.3 here:
http://12.22.230.41/MicroTech/Host/Games/BearStory.zip

Or go to the (shoddy) website here:
http://iceboxgames.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/

Changes to v1.3:
-Improved jumping code
-Fixed setup crash (d'oh!)
-Recoded inventory interface
-Minor bug fixes

Enjoy!
-IceMan

UPDATE: Due to downtime for MicroTech, use the mirror link on either the website or the game's entry in the database.

[DoorKnobHandle]

Looks pretty good and was fun to play.

I had troubles with picking up inventory items at first before I found out that you had to use the fourth option after pressing "ENTER".

Also I managed to break out of the room in the dark room after the locked freezer door. I jumped out of it on the right-upper side.

[IceMan]

Heh, thanks.Ã,  Didn't notice that bug - let's just say it's an "easter egg", huh?

The inventory is actually just an ordinary dialog.  I tried to use a GUI, but I couldn't get the arrow keys to scroll up and down.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I say, can anyone mirror this? Somewhere less picky about what we use to download? And somewhere that doesn't see whether we already are trying to download and saying we are and therefore we can't, even though we're not? I can provide an alternative if anyone is up to it:

http://12.22.230.41/MicroTech/Hosting/FileHostingHome.html

[IceMan]

Put the mirror up myself.  Much better now.  Here's a smiley: 

[Kinoko]

Man, I have to love you for doing a Dizzy style game. I LOVED those games, and there always needed to be other games in the same style. The bear is adorable, by the way ^_^ Very cute, I hope your brother liked it.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Yay! Downloading as we speak, review when I'm done with it...

[IceMan]

Review? Jeez, this is sounding interesting... :

Thanks for the comments, guys!  And yes, Kinoko, he did like it, although he did get stuck in the clouds. Heh, that was added as a little dig at the original Dizzy games (you always had to do some excessive cloud-jumping!)

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Heh. Review is really too big a word, it's just methoughts.

First off - I tried to run WinSetup and it told me it could't find the "Bear - net.exe" file, so I renamed the original exe. : Common mistake, but worth setting straight - to rename your file, recompile it, don't just rename the exe.

First impression: very positive. I was quite surprised to see the Dizzy interface so well ported, kudos to you! The original Dizzy gameplay is also here, in just about it's entirety. Anyone who ever loved Dizzy should check it out.

One thing that I must say put me off, but that's because I'm a "Save Early, Save Often" guy (who uses his Spectrum emulator and general Sega emulators to save his state just before, say, making a series of hard jumps), is the lack of a save system. Anyone who, like me, will be put off by that as well, but if the game is short enough to finish in one sitting (which I don't know) and the player is willing to try his hand in at least one tricky sequence (the tree and the clouds, which made me quit after many attempts because I just couldn't do it), then it's a quite enjoyable experience.

"Cute" is the best word to define it. In a very positive way. The graphics are cute. The music, which is the original Dizzy music, is cute. The character interactions, what few I've seen, are quite cute. The gameplay is super-cute. The animations are very well made, very smooth.

There are only two things which don't really satisfy me as a gamer. The "jump up" bit works well enough, but sometimes just standing still and immediaty jumping to any direction made me jump up instead - or walk THEN jump, if that bit of walking didn't make me fall down, that is. I appreciate this was not easy to code into AGS in the first place, but if it were possible to fix this, it would be an added "bonus". Maybe a very short delay between pressing "up" and a direction, in order to see whether the player is really hitting just "up" or, a bit later, pressed a direction?
The second this is really preference. I'd rather have used ENTER instead of 4 to exit the interface screen. It's just more intuitive.

Well, that's about it. That's what methinks. I say, could you make a wimpy version (or add an "Easy" option) for us non-platformers who enjoy saving the game?

Oh, one thing I forgot to say.

WONDERFUL work! Here's looking forward for more!

[IceMan]

Brisby - thanks for the comments, really inspring.

I've been working on v1.1, which should now be on the original post.Ã,  This adds quicksaving (F5/F7), improved jumping and one or two other small things (setup crashing for one!)

About the jumping: Yeah, I always knew there was something not quite right about it, but I wasn't able to place what it was.Ã,  Your description helped, though, and I've made a small alteration.Ã,  Now, you can press left/right just after jumping to jump sideways.Ã,  Let me know how it works out!

Couldn't do anything about replacing '4' with the enter key, though.Ã,  Having numbers control the inventory was more of a workaround than anything else.Ã,  I don't know if it's possible, but I couldn't get GUIs to respond to key pressing.

Anyway, the save/load function is in place.Ã,  I decided to use just one save slot to make things easier - hope it's enough!

Cheers for the interest, guys!

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I don't know if it's possible, but I couldn't get GUIs to respond to key pressing.

You probably overlooked something deceptively simple. If the keycodes you specify come after the "IsGamePaused" check, and a PopUp GUI is on, then the keycodes will not get processed. Just put them before the check, and make other checks to see if their action is valid at that point.

Other than that, I'm glad I could help!

[IceMan]

Oh, man, I'm such a noob! :o
Yeah, I tried that and things started to work.  Took a while, and after fuzzy logic combined with Dexter Math, I managed to get it right.  The inventory is now keyboard controlled - just like in the original dizzy games!

Well, almost.  I couldn't reserve 'Enter' for both pick up and drop, because AGS would open and close the inventory in the same cycle.  No biggie, only drop stuff is now done with the space bar.

New version up at the top -Phew!

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

AGS opened it and closed it in the same cycle?

You did use some sort of check? Like,

if (GUI is on) {
Ã,  Ã, Turn it off;
}
else {
Ã,  Ã, Turn it on;
}

Real curiosity here, because it shouldn't happen. Well, not with a check, anyway...

EDIT - Ignore, I think I'd misunderstood what you'd said. But I still find it funny that, whatever the problem is, a check or a variable won't fix it...

[IceMan]

Actually, it was because I WAY overcomplicated it all.
The script to call open the GUI is placed in the room script, while that to close it is in the global script (go figure )

Doesn't matter, too much, I hope.  My next game shall surely have a smoother release!!
(Well, it'd better - it comes out next week!)

[cittymom]

I am having problems unzipping the new version 1.3.   My WinZip pops up messages about bad files with compressed files not matching sizes of uncompressed size.    I did have the first version and deleted it to download v 1.3.    The game screen was running off at the edges and I could not view the top bar with lives and coin counter.  The WinSetup would not work for me to try playing in a window instead of full screen.    I really enjoyed the little bit of the game that I played and would love to re-download and continue.   

[IceMan]

Hang on, you say you can't unzip the game, but you're still able to play it?
Hmm, I probably missed something.  Try the download now, the update should be called "BearStory.zip".  I tried it myself and it all runs smoothly.  Is anyone else having trouble with the latest?

[cittymom]

Sorry, guess I was not too clear.   I downloaded the first version with no problems.   It is this newest version that I am getting bad file messages while unzipping it.     I will download and try again for the third time.

[cittymom]

As for a little more information,  I tried another download and still experienced errors while unzipping.   I have copied what my zip log had:                                                                      Dll: C:\Program Files\WinZip\WZ32.DLL - 10/17/98 7:00 AM
Extracting to "c:\unzipped\BearStory"
Use Path: yes   Overlay Files: yes
skipping: Readme.doc              unsupported compression method 40
skipping: winsetup.exe            unsupported compression method 40
Extracting acsetup.cfg
Extracting AGS_Collision_Detector.dll
Extracting alleg41.dll
bad CRC 820ebf0a  (should be e5d36c55)
Warning: the size of the extracted file (548854) does not match the uncompressed size (548864) recorded in the zip file
Extracting Bear.exe
bad CRC 72e9d711  (should be d53f11fc)
Warning: the size of the extracted file (3258654) does not match the uncompressed size (3258662) recorded in the zip file
Extracting music.vox
bad CRC 110e87e2  (should be a5739e64)
Warning: the size of the extracted file (1357940) does not match the uncompressed size (1357941) recorded in the zip file

[Gilbert]

What version of Winzip are you using? It's probably too old, upgrade or use other free programmes like 7ZIP.

[IceMan]

Ah, good point:
I used the zip program that comes with XP (not sure of it's name)
Not very knowledgable on file compression, but if your version of Winzip is old it could be having trouble unzipping newer files.