Retrieving objects from inside of a GUI?

[MistyShires]

With everything that I have been reading regarding GUIs, this dilemma is really making me scratch my head.

I have been thinking about the potential of using a GUI as a close-up for investigating an item closer and something that I always saw in other Point and Click-games (especially room escape-games) was hiding items for puzzles inside these kinds of closeups (like hiding a small item inside of a book that you have to flip through).

Is that possible in AGS? Or will I potentially have to use an extra room for that (which I would ideally want to avoid given you can only have so many rooms in one game)?

[Slasher]

Yes it can be done using a gui with buttons..

You can have over 100 rooms...

[Crimson Wizard]

Yes, traditionally in AGS you do this with GUI and buttons, as buttons may have sprites on them, you can interact with them on click. And even code to move them with the mouse if you need to have some container with the big pile of items which player has to drag around (btw there's a script module for that : https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=53332.0)

Alternative is to use regular room objects that cover everything else in room (by setting manual Baseline). That only works well if player supposed to see closeup in particular room, as room objects cannot leave their room.

With AGS 3.5.0 you can also use custom viewport/camera to display "hidden" parts of the room and use that as a closeup too. This as well is useful only if player supposed to see this in exact room. The example of things you may do with cameras is demonstrated in this little demo game: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=58285.0


PS.
Regarding rooms, AGS supports up to 999 rooms, ones between 1 and 301 are state-saving rooms, and the rest are non-statesaving rooms (they reset their states as soon as player leaves them). Ofcourse if you are doing some scenes in separate rooms and want to lower down their count you may also make number of scenes in one huge room, then script camera to fixed position so that player sees only one cutscene at a time.
Another issue with rooms to mention is that loading rooms takes time, so it is not very convenient when you for example need to switch between scenes quickly. For that it's best to have several scenes in one room and move camera or using custom viewport/camera pairs.