Are First Person scenes with 5+ frame animations possible?

[Jasper]

Hello to all.

I'm fairly new to this, but I'd like to produce a segment of my game in the vein of this;

Gabriel Knight 2 Wolf Chase

Or something akin to the movement and gameplay style of Titanic: Adventure out of TimeTitanic: Adventure out of Time.

Would such a thing be possible with AGS? I have searched various threads but I see general Myst-style first person threads which seem quite possible in AGS, but lack the movement animations I'd be aiming for.

Basically, I would be looking to create a section of my adventure game which is similar to what you see above, with a real-time "first person" segment allowing the player to click forward, left or right to move forward, rotate left or rotate right, with pre-rendered frames (around 10 or so per animation). There would be a timer that is counting down from 60 seconds to allow the player to escape from a maze.

I have experimented with this using animated backgrounds, whether it's the way to go or not, but noticed it appears to only support 4 background frames, so unless there's a way to add more, I might have to exclude this method. I also ran into issues with the "Error: Too many events posted" error, but it's likely I was doing it wrong.

If so, could anyone kindly advise where I should direct my attention in particular (as I'm not sure whether it would be a case of animating the scenes as an object or something else).

Your help is most appreciated.

[Cassiebsg]

You can create avi movies for the "cut scenes" if you like. You can also add the BGs as sprites and create a view with them...
And theres probably other solutions for dealing with it.

The BG animation is intended for... ahmmm... BG animation... To add a bit of movement to the BG, not for creating scenes like you wish.

[Crimson Wizard]

Use animated Room Object, or GUI with animated button.

[Jasper]

You can create avi movies for the "cut scenes" if you like. You can also add the BGs as sprites and create a view with them...
And theres probably other solutions for dealing with it.

The BG animation is intended for... ahmmm... BG animation... To add a bit of movement to the BG, not for creating scenes like you wish.

Ah right, so it'd be more for things like a simple fire crackling away or something like that?

Thanks for the suggestion, will see how it goes.

Use animated Room Object, or GUI with animated button.

Thanks for the advice, will check these out now.

[Adeel]

You can create avi movies for the "cut scenes" if you like. You can also add the BGs as sprites and create a view with them...
And theres probably other solutions for dealing with it.

The BG animation is intended for... ahmmm... BG animation... To add a bit of movement to the BG, not for creating scenes like you wish.

Ah right, so it'd be more for things like a simple fire crackling away or something like that?

Thanks for the suggestion, will see how it goes.

Yes, you're right about that. Although the 'simple fire crackling away' can also be utilized with an animated objected to get more control. One case where I think the animated backgrounds fit is that of raining.

[Jasper]

EDIT: Have come up with a solution, thanks to all those who posted!


I've decided to go with Crimson Wizards suggestion for using animtaed Room Object. Link here

With that being said however, I've been eyeing the scripting tutorials for a bit, but I'm not quite sure I know where to start.

I followed the scripting tutorial 1 which explained how to use a hotspot to display a message on the screen. In my instance, I want hotspot 0, when interacted with, to set object 0 (which I have named Upanim) to animate once using loop 1. (Apparently I'm to use eOnce, but I'll toy with the additional parameters once I've gotten it working. Even if it loops for now it's fine).

Code: ags

// room script file

#sectionstart hotspot1_a  // DO NOT EDIT OR REMOVE THIS LINE
function hotspot1_a() {
  // script for hotspot1: Interact hotspot
 Display("This should animate something.");
 
 object[0].SetView(1);
 object[0].Animate(1, 5);

}
#sectionend hotspot1_a  // DO NOT EDIT OR REMOVE THIS LINE

Here's how I have the object set up, hopefully this is on the right track to using an animated object as a "Cutscene" or "animated sequence" of sorts.

Object 0 in my scene is of a 640x480 pre-rendered scene, view 2 (loop 0 is idle, loops 1-2 are animated for moving forward or turning left). The above code returns "Error Line 8: Unidentified Token "object". I've taken a look at the scripting tutorials 1 and 2 however I'm not quite sure they cover what I need as I've searched for defining tokens and the likes, no luck.

There is quite a few more entries in the scripting manual, would anyone be able to point me in the right direction as to which one to start for using animated Room Object in my scene? There's a lot of reading there, and I'd like to get right into the correct code tutorials. The way I see it, I'd rather just learn what is absolutely necessary for my animated scene section, rather than the entire scripting language at this point, as there is nothing else I wish to achieve with my test project.

EDIT: Have also toyed around with just using interact hotspot to equal "start object animating", but I'm not sure how I can assign a view to an object, I can only pick an image to represent them.

I guess turning to AGS to avoid C/C++ style coding was a bit of a folly, but I need to learn a bit of either language at some point, or general programming/scripting.