If I wanted a wizard character to make the player disappear in a ball of magic, what is the best way to do that? Do you script an animation or are there any 'visual effects' in the editor that can be applied to you player character?
Thanks.
There aren't any built in visual effects (except maybe the box room transition).
What you find in the empty game is pretty much all you get when it comes to prepackaged visual content.
AGS has become more and more of a programming IDE I find as opposed to other game creation packages like RPGMaker which only allow you heavy customization of what's essentially one type of game.
Thanks. Would it be useful if I created some animated sprites of my guy disappearing in magic spell?
Sure, it's trivial to animate characters using another view's loop.
Just draw the sprites, put them in a view and look up the Character.Animate command.
Not sure which resources you've checked out so far, you've only mentioned the FAQ; the manual that comes with AGS contains a pretty extensive tutorial and there's also Densming's video tutorials which I linked to at the end of the READ FIRST stickie here in this forum.
Thanks Khris.
I've been using the tutorials at this sight and watching some vids on Youtube. There's such a lot of information though. Sometimes I don't know where to start looking.
I'll check out that link you gave me. Thanks for the tip about the animation.
EDIT: I've managed to make my "disappearing" animation, but for some reason the transparency isn't working. For examlple, I've reduded the opacity of my figure by increments of 25%, but they all show up as 100% opacity when viewed as a VIEW2 animation loop. I've tried using GIFs and PNGs, but they figure remains solid. Any ideas why that has happened?
Where did you reduce the opacity? In Photoshop?
While it is possible to do it that way (and I guess the problem is what I addressed in your other thread), you can change a character's transparency manually.
The most basic way is to use a non-blocking animation like this:
player.Animate(......, eNoBlock,... );
Wait(4); // wait four frames
player.Transparency = 25;
Wait(4);
player.Transparency = 50;
Wait(4);
player.Transparency = 75;
...
Certainly not the most elegant way but much easier than fiddling with alpha channels.
Now that I've got that working, is there a way to run that animation at the beginning of the game, please?
Sure, look at the room events in the first room, there's "first time player enters" and "enters after fade-in".
No offense, but you should really do the tutorial and simply experiment; asking here should be kind of the last resort :)
Mate, I really appreciate your help. I AM looking through the tutorials. I'm google searching and reading the wiki's.
I was looking at the 'first time player enters script' already, but I as of yet, I have been unable to work out what bit of script I need to type to tell it to run the VIEW1 animation then make the player character visible after that has run.
After AGS generates the function, put something like this in between { and }:
player.Transparency = 0; // only needed if player is invisible at this point
player.LockView(VIEW1);
player.Animate(0, 5, eOnce);
player.UnlockView();
This will tell AGS to use VIEW1 for the animation, then animate the player character using the view's loop 0 and a delay of 5 frames, then switch the player's view back to their normal standing/walking view.
If this animation is supposed to make the player appear, also add the "before fadein" function (room_Load in the script) and put this in there:
player.Transparency = 100;
Thanks mate! I was close to what you kindly gave me, but I missed the UnlockView player command in my script. I'll let you know how I get on.
EDIT: Yes! It works brilliantly. Thank you!
Yeah...It takes some time to figure it all out..It took me about 3 months of solid reading and Practice from total Newbie to running my own show....Seriously If you want to make games dont think you can just sit down and do it without doing extensive reading and playing...I spend about 20 % of my research time looking at Examples of code or trying to replicate what others have done especially the Pros work...Its all basically the same stuff ...Its very rare to find a piece of code that IS'NT Simple in application...The difference is just that you either are familiar with it or you are not...
-function "Like this..."
-{
if "Global variable"(Creator_of_ Game_knows_how_to_read_ and_has_done_their_research) == true;
& "Global variable"(Has_read_ Manual/Tutorials_at_least_ 20_ times) == true;
{
then ("Global variable"(Chance_of_Game_Success_and_Happiness_ of_Creator = 100%) = True;)
&
}
Or at least Just grab cup of coffee and lock your door for 2 days while you read and DO the Tutorial game thingy from beginning to end...
its all you will need..the rest is just practice and the sound of Pennies dropping in that room behind your door...
followed by maniacal laughter when you realize you can now program your own version of the Matrix complete with nude mods if only u had time and proper Photo Texture References..
Peace and love...
Don't worry it takes a little while to empty out the pennies and fill the space in your head with awesome mind bending ideas f the uses of said knowledge ..eventually it will happen..and you may start your own Telecommunications industry if only you could figure out the Tax Departments article 37b.section 17
:)
after a while you will be coding in your sleep and waking up slapping your forehead at how simple it really is...
it all comes down to
if this event(predefined rules of your own) is happening
then make this(your new other rules) happen
See
haha
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
- Denis Diderot'