SUGGESTION: @CURSORMODE@ marker

[Jammy Pants]

I've recently discovered AGS and love it to bits. However, as a relative newbie to programming, I've been having trouble getting my GUI to display a context sensitive Lucasarts-style status bar, which would display (for example) "Walk to Door" or "Look at Tree" etc.

What amazes me is how simple it is to display the latter part of this text -- i.e, the name of the hotspot/character/object the mouse is over -- by simply creating a text label with the @OVERHOTSPOT@ token, while displaying the "Walk to"/"Look at" part requires quite a bit of fiddling with the script (which I still haven't fully worked out ).

Why not, then, in the next version of AGS, add a new token called, say, @CURSORMODE@, which would display the name of the currently active cursor, so that all a user would need to do to create a Lucasarts-style status bar would be to create a label with "@CURSORMODE@ @OVERHOTSPOT@" on it?

Doing it via the script is fine for veterans, but it's quite a pain for new users. From what I've heard, it's quite a commonly asked question in the Beginner's forum, too, so I definitely think it would be helpful.

Just my two cents

[DoorKnobHandle]

Problem is, once that is implemented, people will want even more of those shortcuts - up to a point where it is easier to understand the scripting behind those labels.

Take this as an example: a user enters "@CURSORMODE@ @OVERHOTSPOT@" as label. Now, in the game, it says: "Open door" and "Use car". Great, but soon he is going to want to "Use sth. with sth." - there he would need to get into the scripting or ask here for yet another shortcut. Another example: people could also want "@OVERHOTSPOT@" to only appear when the player is NOT in a mode such as "Talk to", so that you can't talk to things, but only to characters (which is another element from the Lucas Arts SCUMM GUI), again, the same problem, they will need to get into the scripting.

EDIT: Also, "@CURSORMODE@ @OVERHOTSPOT@" would fail for the common action "Give to" - "Give to person" doesn't make any sense. It's just not as easy!

[Pumaman]

The problem with @CURSORMODE@ is, as dkh has pointed out, the inventory modes.

With just using "@CURSORMODE@ @OVERHOTSPOT@" as your status line, with the inventory mode you'd get "Use target" and you wouldn't get the name of the item.

Therefore, for this reason it's not implemented. It's not too hard to do in the script, I believe the template Default Game includes an implementation.

[Joe]

When I was a beginner, I also thought about that, but now I've realised it's not very useful, I think this thread could help you Help with "Use...with", "Give...to" etc.:
Click here

[SSH]

Or use the Description module...