Opinions on this journal idea I had?

[Rave]

Hi all. I'm sure alot of you don't remeber be (I never did much) but I used to post in the forums a bit around here for a while and then vanished. Still am working on the preliminary sketches of a game, but thats not what this thread is about. I had this idea one day for a non-adventure program. But, seeing how I've never created a program in my life, I'm not sure how the best way to go about it. The idea is quite simple. I want to create a journal writing program (or a "Diary", if you insist on that term). I know there are a few program journals you can download and use, but they all look so shabby. :/ I havn't found any astheticly pleasing application yet and so I figured I might make one.

So, let me state again my programming ignorance. I relize that AGS is made from adventure games and ergo, it probobly wouldn't be best suited for this. I'd just like to know if it would be possible or...rather, rational or if it would make more sense to use another code. Anyway, comments? Ideas? complaints?

[DragonRose]

Well, AGS can only accept 200 characters in a string at a time. So if you were going to do this, you'd end up writing REALLY short entries.

I'd go with coding.

[Evil]

Well, if you want a journal, just use wordpad. Are you talking like online capibilities? If you just want a personal journal, why does it have to be fancy?

[LGM]

Why use AGS? Why not VB or C++ or Java or something?

Or just use www.xanga.com or www.blogger.com or www.livejournal.com and make all your entries private..

Or better yet, get a notebook and pencil and have at it It's what I do!

[Rave]

Okay, yay. I forgot I had this thread on here until today and the idea for this popped into my head again. Ã, I havn't been back to AGS in a while, busy with other things and such. Anyway, *cough* this is my offical ressurection of this thread *poof*.

Well, AGS can only accept 200 characters in a string at a time. So if you were going to do this, you'd end up writing REALLY short entries.

Yes, indeed. That sucks. I didn't know that because I havn't created any games yet.

Well, if you want a journal, just use wordpad. Are you talking like online capibilities? If you just want a personal journal, why does it have to be fancy?

Because...I just do. I know that is a bad answer, but...you don't really need a Porche, you could drive a saturn. You don't need a gigantic cake, expensive dress and flowers everywhere on your wedding, you could just go to Vegas. I know I could settle for stupid notepad but I just want somthing that looks way cooler. I invisioned a old looking book that opens up and you can flip forward or backward through that spot by clicking the pages. I would also use a fancy cursive font. I might draw a sketch and put a picture on here to show what I mean.

Why use AGS? Why not VB or C++ or Java or something?

Or just use www.xanga.com or www.blogger.com or www.livejournal.com and make all your entries private..

Or better yet, get a notebook and pencil and have at it Ã, It's what I do!

Online? Well, thats the thing. I want to keep it private and an online diary/blog is somthing that you shove into the whole world's face. It also lacks really the look I was going for {old book style/fancy fonts}. So online isn't really what I'm looking for.

Why use AGS? I dunno. Um...because I don't know any other languages. [actually, I don't know AGS either, but thats beside the point. ] How do you get started writing C++? What do you use to make a program with it? I took a VB course back in highschool so I know a little of that, but I don't have VB on my comp. How much does it cost to buy ya think?

Regular diary? Because.... I don't know. Its so low tech. I want somthing really cool that I can personalize and also allow me to gain some experience with making somthing using code.

[Evil]

Pssst, I have an idea. Make a game. It's what it was intended for.

[RickJ]

I think it's an interesting idea.  The 200 characeter string length shouldn't be a problem unless you wanted to have lines longer than that.  Take input from a textbox, one line at a time and dump it to a listbox.   Go for it!!

[Pelican]

Or make a game with journals in it, a la Myst.

[Rave]

Evil, I'm going to do this one way or another with or without AGS. I only said that if it could be done with AGS, it would probobly prepare me for making a game later on. I don't know how to go about making it with any other language.

Thanks RickJ, thats a good thought. I will have to do some research to find out how exactly that is to be done. Any other thoughts?

[Babar_off]

Why not make an animated non-interactive movie journal? You could have a little character sprite that looks like you, and everyday you make a new "game" (read entry) where you make the character do stuff that you did. You could even have it just sit there and say stuff for those days you didn't do much, but wanted to unload something. You could import some fancy cursive font, and save different entries as savegames.

[Rave]

 XD hehe, well....thats a really interesting idea. Somthing I've never thought before, thats for sure. But its not exactly what I wanted. Its a neat idea thought, but I'm pretty steadfast in wanting it to look like an old dusty tome someone might store spells in or somthing. I already have quite a few drawings of it already in my sketchbook, I'm just trying to find a good place to upload them and then show them on here. Is there a place just for placeing pics for these forums? I forget.

[Rave]

Scratch that, I just uploaded a pic onto an old site I havn't used in ages and abandoned. Surpised it still exsists, actually. This is a first draft compilation of what the second screen would look like. (The first screen would be an image of the book closed with a Name: and Password: field.) Each page is numbered as it is created and when a user logs on, it automatically takes them to their last entry. The left and right arrows obviously turns the pages. I don't know if there is some sort of search feature that could be made to find an entry made on a specific date. Such as if I wanted to know what I got as presents last christmas I could type in 12/25/04 and zoom right there without having to manually click the right or left arrow a million times to get to it.

Umm...so. Let me know what you all think. Keep in mind I just made this in a day so it might not be the image I actually use for the program. (I didn't even draw the book myself, so there might be a copyright issue there anyway)

[Rave]

[Not exactly sure why the image doesn't display, but if you right click on it, go to properties you can see the page its linked from and type that into a new browser window to see the picture]

[Peter Thomas]

there's no image there at all, at least not as far as my right mouse button will find. Right clicking will achieve nothing. You can, however, check out the source code. The image is at:

http://www.freewebs.com/landofatlantica/backgroundbook.jpg

I'd put it on 2dadventre, but I'm lazy...

The image itself I quite like. Reminds me of flipping through Atrus' journal in Myst III. But I'm not sure about this 'cursive' font you wish to use. Things like Lucidia Handwrite (or whatever it's called) really frustrate me - I refuse to read anything if it's written in that font, unless it is absolutely vital (ie - Atrus' journal - it was the only way to solve some puzzles). If - for some odd reason - you really do love it, at least include an option to switch to something standard like Times New Roman. It might look odd against such an antique book background, but I'd prefer it a million times over to some fake font that looks nothing like my handwriting at all.

Anyway, ranting about the font is done. The concept is nice. Obviously if you were to redraw the book yourself, it'd be nice to have a less photoshopped feel around the "save" buttons and whatnot. And I'd also increase the book size. If I'm writing a diary entry, I really have no need for all that black space around the edge.

Good luck with your project, though. It seems like a novel use for AGS, and I'm mightily interested to see how it would turn out.

[Ashen]

Rave:
Hope you don't mind, but I've been doing some tinkering with this. I got to thinking, "How would I do that? Oh, I could use... But then, how would I ... Well that might work...But what about..."
Then I couldn't sleep to well a couple of nights, and decided to do some scripting. Now I have a 80-something% complete (I think) journal program, made in AGS.
But, I'm sleeping a little better, and I'm not sure if I have the momentum to finish it, without encouragement.

So, if people could let me know what they think - is it worth finishing? Would anyone be interested in the code? (Which is probably pointlessy over-complicated but, hey, it works.)

AGS JOURNAL - 0.5 BETA by Ashen
Known Bugs:
- Random Text
     Sometimes, after a line change, it inserts random characters instead of your text. I don't know why, unless it 'combines' the keycodes of the last 2/3 characters, and displays that?
- ?
     I'm sure there's more. I've been very lazy in my testing.


To Be Completed:
- Infinite Password Loop
     There's a password system, and it works OK. But, entering the wrong password brings up a 'Re-type Password' prompt. Entering the wrong password there brings up another, then another, then another, etc, 'till you enter the right password or alt-x. I just need an int to limit the number of times this happens, before you get booted back to menu screen.
- Game Stuff
     Most of the game-specific stuff (change mode on right click, on_key_press shortcuts, etc) needs to be changed or removed.
- Cancel Option on 'Select/Add User' GUI
     Pretty self-explanatory, especially after you've tried the thing.
- 'Edit Entry' Function.
     Not so much for completed entries (e.g. to remove embarassing, drunken rambling), just to correct more than the current line of the entry being written. I've an idea how to do this, but so far it's not working and - as I said - I'm kind of running out of steam on the project.
- Different Fonts
     I agree with Peter about cursive fonts being a bit pants, but the default AGS font isn't very nice either. An option to choose between 2 or 3 fonts would be nice, and shouldn't be too hard.
- Make Less Sucky
     I've been working on the "just get the bloody thing working" principle, so some of the GUI layouts and prompts could be better done. Likewise, there're some graphics in there, but there's still a lot of default buttons,  Display boxes, and InputBox-es that could stand sprucing up.
- ?
     There's probably more I haven't thought of. This is, after all, an early Beta release - more of a tech demo, in fact.

[Rave]

Hope you don't mind, but I've been doing some tinkering with this.

Er....*cough* maybe. :/ Sort of kinda feels like you took my idea before I had a chance to produce it. Maybe I should have struggeled through creating somthing first before asking for help, but I dind't think someone would start another project from it. No worries though, I mean, I guess I can't force you to stop and I probobly don't have a right to. I probobly couldn't have done it anyway without a lot of learning anyway. If you ever fix the problems in it, let me know if you ever get it 100% done so I can see it.