Indiana Jones and the Seven Cities of Gold - Christmas Demo Released!

[Blondbraid]

Who doesn't love Indiana Jones? This game looks fun!

[CaptainD]

Glad to hear you're still making progress Monsieur!

[Monsieur OUXX]

EDIT

[selmiak]

Glad to hear you're still making progress Monsieur!

We're always making progress but if you post an update for every little thing the project gets done there is nothing left to discover for the player.
Not that we post a newspost about every progress we make, do we?

[CaptainD]

Glad to hear you're still making progress Monsieur!

We're always making progress but if you post an update for every little thing the project gets done there is nothing left to discover for the player.
Not that we post a newspost about every progress we make, do we?

Sheesh way to make a big deal out of a simple encouraging comment Selmiak!!

[luisdementia]

Looking great. Fate of Atlantis was the first adventure game that I played, and one of my favourites, so now I'm excited to play this! #hype

[Monsieur OUXX]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!
Believe it or not, the project is moving forward. What is it you say? You want evidence? Oh, but certainly! Look below.




At the moment we're a team of not 3, not 4, but 9 on-and-off people, each working in their own field! CassieBg and Frikker (3D black magic), doctorFargo (some admin), Selmiak (AfterEffects and stuff black magic), myself, Tremulas and GromDessoun (programming), RetroGuy, WRK and FredFive (sweet, sweet pixel art).

And yet, we still need more!

That's why we're launching 4 NEW PROGRAMMING CHALLENGES. I think each of them could be quite fun for people who like to create cool effects from the sheer power of their intellect (and by that I mean: scripting nerds! ).




Note: ALL the challenges below must be natively 32-bits!

Challenge 0: state-of-the-art Intersect sprites (medium?)

Spoiler

GOAL: Drawing a sprite onto another sprite only if their alpha channels intersect. Or, if you will, use a sprite as a mask to draw onto another sprite. and to make it reasonably fast even supremely slow. We'll use it for some pre-rendering.

HINT: Use function CopyTransparencyMask? Since recently, it does not fully overwrite the target sprite. the issue is with the resizing of the sprites to make them match in size. Cna you wrap your head around this?


REQUIREMENTS:
1. A function that works with two DynamicSprites (and generates a new one as output if needed)
2. If it's not possible to work with real intermediate transparency levels (not fully transparent, not fully opaque) then we'll be happy to have a function that works only with the transparent Pink color, AS LONG as it works with a 32-bits game.

[close]

Challenge 1: Dynamically generated GUI (difficult)  abstauber did it!

Spoiler

GOAL: to be able to generate the Legendary Lucasarts 9-verb GUI, BUT some graphical details can be set up arbitrarily, such as the backgorund image, the depth and colors of the gradients, or the text. See this image.

REQUIREMENTS:
1. You cannot predict the number, size, name, position of the buttons. For now we'll consider that all buttns are rectangular.
2. For now, simply work as if you should apply the processing onto every button of a given GUI, by irerating on them. Call the buttons by their individual names as little as possible!
2. At game_start, each (rectangular) button will check out the piece of graphic that occupies the space immediately below it (in the GUI graphic), and duplicate it (to make it its very own NormalGraphic). Then...
3. ...each button will apply some additional decorators onto their "NormalGraphic", "MouseOverGraphic" and "PushGraphic". These additional processings will be generated by functions that apply graphical effects onto DynamicSprites. These could be (non-exhaustive list) : 1) A gradient, 2) An outline. etc. Don't focus on implementing them for now, but leave some room for them.

Spoiler

3a. Gradient: You must produce a simple function that generates a horizontal gradient, from a solid color (black, white...) to fully transparent. By "horizontal", I mean that the gradient is fully colored at the TOP and fully transparent at the BOTTOM (or reversed). The width can be passed as parameter and only decides how cropped it is on the sides (1-pixel wide, 2-pixels wide...). The height, however, decides how progressive the gradient is (obviously if the height is just 3 pixels, then the gradient will be much less smooth than if it was 50 pixels high). The gradient is generated into a DynamicSprite that can then be pasted onto any graphic we want (i.e. : onto the buttons Graphics)
3b. Outline : This simply draws an empty rectangle onto a DynamicSprite. We can decide the size, color and transparency of the rectangle as function parameters.

[close]

4. the button's text will also be dynamically written onto the button, depending on the language.4.

Spoiler

Bonus : Apply those effects using the "Intersect sprites" function from challenge 0 above.

[close]

5. (optional) The clicks on the buttons should not be detected using AGS events, but instead using the Standalone Click module. If you're too lazy, don't implement that, we'll do it ourselves. But that would be a big plus because all the processing would be applied onto all the buttons in one function rather than many.


Conclusion: Focus on a flexible way to apply graphical effects onto the several states of a GUIButton, to render it dynamically.

[close]

Challenge 2: Fog of war (medium) scavenger did it!

Spoiler

GOAL: Reproduce the catacombs scene in the Last Crusade Lucasarts game, except that every place visited stays somewhat visible (even though darker than the place where the player currently is). That's exactly the same as every classical RTS game such as Warcraft 2 or Starcraft.

REQUIREMENTS:
1. (essential!) Make it compatible with the Smooth Scrolling" module!!! your testing room should be larger than 320x200.
2. You may use the Flashlight module, or not at all. It's entirely up to you.

[close]

Challenge 3: spinning transition (easy) Khris did it!

Spoiler

GOAL: within one AGS room, invent a visual transition that goes from one fullscreen image to another. This transition should be like the second one seen in this video. In other words: it should be that "spinning" wipe, and the center of the spin should be the center of the screen.

REQUIREMENTS:
1. As said before, it's not a transition between two rooms. It's WITHIN a room, between two fullscreen sprites. You may decide to overwrite the first sprite with the second sprite along the way.
2. No need to add any fading like in the video. Just make it sharp.
3. You may (if you want) rely on a system of triangles being drawn additively at each game cycle. If you go that way, then you should be interested by the "flood fill" function from this module. That will help you paint the triangle after drawing it.

4. The speed should be configurable.
5. The transiiton should start from the top, along the vertical line that goes from the center of the image. and it should spin clockwise.

[close]

[Monsieur OUXX]

Amazing. Scavenger has already achieved chalenged 2! (fog of war).....

KEEP THEM COMING!

[[delete}]

Nice, Scavenger!

[Monsieur OUXX]

Khris has achieved chalenged 3! (spinning transition).....

KEEP THEM COMING!

[abstauber]

Challenge #1 partially accepted


I made a button generator - unfortunately my weekend is blocked, so I might continue on Monday.

[Monsieur OUXX]

Guys, I'm just baffled by how nice (and smart) you are.
Abstauber: if you manage to add a gradient INSIDE the font characters, then you'll have achieved a flawless result...
Also I hope it's possible to add yet another gradient on top of the final result? that'd be cool.

[abstauber]

Surprisingly I did find some time

Now this all needs to be commented.. oh and btw. do I still unlock the achievement, if I make this public or does it have to be exclusive?

[Monsieur OUXX]

do I still unlock the achievement, if I make this public or does it have to be exclusive?

"Achievement"? Crazy young people with their crazy achievements madness.
--> Strictly nothing needs to be exclusive. 100% of our script will be open-source, and we've already shared several modules from it. Make it public, by all means!

If you manage to write a (slow) function to intersect some sprites (I can't tell if there's a gradient inside the button's characters) then you've completed chalenge 0 at the same time!

[abstauber]

Here you go:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=53409
It's only been tested with AGS 3.4.0.6 so far, since I know that the alpha channel rendering is solid in this version.
That's also why I trusted "CopyTransparencyMask" when applying the gradient on the font - it simply works

As for Challenge #0: Are you sure you don't want to rely on a c++/lua plugin? Scanning the source and target image with GetPixel will take ages. Also I'm not sure if GetPixel respects the alpha channel correctly.

PS:
Once I can think of a few nice sample buttons, I'll open a thread in the module section.
Done

[Monsieur OUXX]

Laying me off with removing me from the credits and dev list. Just rude, Meansieur OUXXX. 

That is not what happened (the list above was the list of current active members) and you'll definitely be credited as you provided some art.

[Monsieur OUXX]

I trusted "CopyTransparencyMask" when applying the gradient on the font - it simply works
As for Challenge #0: Are you sure you don't want to rely on a c++/lua plugin?

to be honest I'm not sure that the CopyTransparency mask doesn't already do what I want to do. I need to check your code.

[Monsieur OUXX]

Some news of the project : We need some musicians!

A bit of background: We have several music tracks already (and actually some of them are really cool, I never cease to be amazed by the talent of our musician friends).
What's new : We have a better idea of what characters we want to put forward. we also have a better idea of what places will have a theme of their own, and what atmosphere they must reflect.

Long things short: we're now finally ready for actual music, with accurate directions fir the artists.

Do you listen to George Lucas John Williams (duh!) music all day and all night? Do you know by heart all the cues from E.T., Star Wars and of course indiana Jones? Do you master the art of heavy brass instruments and violins? Are you able to create some transitions between punchy bits and more relaxed pieces? Can you think of a nifty little set of notes to create the main melody for a character? Then you're who we need

[selmiak]

What happened to drew? I dig his arrangements!

And just to make you facepalm.... the composer is John Williams, not George Lucas himself

[Frikker]

Hey Monsieur OUXX , Glad to see you are still moving forward on this game. Can you PM me back about the stone cogs project please? Ive sent several messages over the past 4 months but heard nothing back. Im wondering wether there is an issue with the PM's so ill try contacting you here. Im not hassling you about the job, Im just confused about why contact suddenly stopped after I got back from my holiday in June. If you have changed the game and nolonger need me, then I wont be offended, I just want to know whats happening.
Hope game production is going well.