Messages

@gaarias: Which part of it?  Do you mean the character?  I thought she looked way creepier in the second picture!

I was just coming by to say that the last few weeks have seen very minimal work, as I got very busy with other stuff right around the same time I ran out of brown paper.  (5 different kinds of construction paper packs and none of them had brown; the clerks looked at me odd when I asked them to order some in for me, but they did it...) Anyway, I've been eager to get going on this again and the paper just came in.  I'm done for tonight but here's some new stuff:



PS. I am expecting to have a bit of a demo out soon.  Hope it stands up to the high expectations I'm hearing!

Oooh, I'm really liking some of these ideas.

I do want to stick with one hand keyboard if possible, because one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse is a very popular playstyle for a lot of games - certainly I think the easiest way to play would be navigate with the mouse, but shortcuts with the other hand.

Re: the lighting... I... er... learned that the hard way..    I thought it would be enough to just have the blinds closed, but it wasn't, and now am stuck animating between 11:30 and 1:30 or else it looks different.  Appreciated, though.

Well, I'm still working on this.  Some days it feels like I'm making a ton of progress; others, not so much.  The characters have all been animated standing and walking in four directions (and re-animated, and re-animated... the current iteration is not perfect, but will not be updated again until the rest of the game is much further along and I know for sure that it needs it).  Each character has a different speech colour, font, colour of mouse cursor and colour of verbcoin.  (Inventory updates still to come).

So, changes to the previous estimates as of February 26th:

Character Art	99%
Menu Art	80%	(Unique inventories, possibly a save menu).
Fiddling/Learning	90%
Entrances/Hotspots	5%
Puzzle Coding	5%

Totals: Spent 77 hours so far, best guess 48 hours remaining; 62% complete

Spent far too long on animations, but still hoping to be done by March 2012.  Maybe April.  (Yes, you saw that coming, didn't you?)  But I have a lot of "new" things to start and potentially discover that I've underestimated.  

Here's a video demonstrating recent progress.  Warning: It's probably pretty boring if this stuff isn't inherently interesting to you.


On a different note... As a heavy keyboard user myself - Radiant, your suggestion sounds excellent.  Do you (or anyone else) have thoughts on which keys to use?  Is there a common way to do it?  I am thinking maybe keys 1-5, as "L" for look, "T" for talk, etc would be annoying for users who want just one hand on the keyboard.

Cheers!


EDIT: Oh, and I'd meant to include this... it really highlights the imperfections (for me, at least) but it's kind of fun to watch:

I'm not sure precisely where you're saying to use import, but I think I've already done that because I have imports all over my header files.  Anyway, what you said about the ordering is spot on, because all I needed to do was right-click on General under scripts and choose "Move down" until it was below SCUMM_Verbcoin_GUI.  That let me define the function again in General, which is an acceptable solution (although the career programmer in me winces a bit).  Strangely, I can't move GlobalScripts up, which makes it not all that Global.

So... sweet!  This forum is now 2 for 2 on solving my problems in a single response.  You guys are awesome.  Thank you.

Hi,

I wasn't able to find anything on this, but I may simply be searching the wrong terms.  Feel free to answer with just a link to another thread.  

I have a function in GlobalScript which calls several lines from another package (SCUMM_VERBCOIN_GUI).  This works fine, and that function is called SetVerbCoin.

I also have a package called General, and although it would probably work to just remove this package completely and put everything in GlobalScript, I'd rather not do this.  A function in General needs to call SetVerbCoin.  I can't seem to say anything like "GlobalScript.SetVerbCoin".  Nor can I move this function to General, because although GlobalScript can call functions from General, General does not seem to be able to call functions from SCUMM_VERBCOIN_GUI.


I'm a pretty visual person, so I thought this diagram might help to see what I mean:

http://agile-games.net/misc/images/functions.png

Ahhhh.

But I had already written my own IsInteractionAvailable function, which I had called  General.FunctionExists and which did take a string, because it was doing it a really crazy way.  (ie, comparing to a list of all the valid functions, which I had gotten by parsing the executable).

So that's why we weren't on the same page with that.

OK, I wouldn't be surprised if the answer exists elsewhere on this forum, but I couldn't find it, so what's the harm in adding one more thread that people might find depending what they try searching by?  (Also, it seems to me that this better belongs in the modules/plugins forum, but I can't seem to post there, so mods, feel free to move it without comment if you agree).


First, split up your Verbcoin images so that the background of gVerbcoin is the base only (ie, no hand, eye, etc).  HOWEVER, even if this base image will never change, you must still have multiple sprites for it, and set them in GlobalScript.asc, because the Verbcoin code uses the sprite number to identify which option the player has selected.  Now, edit interact_button/look_button/etc to have Image, MouseOverImage, and PushedImage set to your icons.

Now, In order to make these icons visible (and therefore selectable) only when they need to be, (ie when you've attached a function that does something when they choose it), you'll need to find the following in SCUMM Verbcoin GUI.asc:

Code: ags

          // ok, now activate the gui
          gui[verbc_id].SetPosition(guix, guiy);	// put the verbcompass on the right spot
          gui[verbc_id].BackgroundGraphic = verbgraphic_button0;  
          gui[verbc_id].Visible = true;						// activate

And add some lines immediately afterward, as necessary for your application (mine uses the custom interaction for a PickUp action, yours may not):

Code: ags

	interact_button.Visible = IsInteractionAvailable(mouse.x, mouse.y, eModeInteract);
	look_button.Visible = IsInteractionAvailable(mouse.x, mouse.y, eModeLookat);
	custom_button1.Visible = IsInteractionAvailable(mouse.x, mouse.y, eModeUsermode1);
	talk_button.Visible = IsInteractionAvailable(mouse.x, mouse.y, eModeTalkto);

That's it!  Enjoy.

Well, I feel silly and thank you for being so polite about this.  I really did look in the manual and google extensively for this - perhaps I should have given in and created a thread before I spent so much time trying to solve it on my own.

For some reason, GetLocationType is always returning eLocationNothing for me in this function, but that's not an issue because at this point, the Verbcoin functions have already determined that there's something of interest there.

I'm not sure what you're saying about htspt.Name - I didn't want the object, I wanted the name of it.  If it's not available, then it's not, but that is what I thought I was looking for.

Regardless of all of that, IsInteractionAvailable is working like a charm for my purposes.  Thank you very much.


EDIT: And for the sake of posterity, here is my full solution.  It's not very big, but may still be useful to somebody someday.

Addendum: I cannot always give script names guessable from description, because that breaks something I have elsewhere where I need a oStick01, oStick02, oStick03, and oStick04 in one room.

PS. If I am missing a simple function somewhere that just lets you find out whether an object has a given function attached to it, I guess I wouldn't mind knowing that... I'll rename the thread if that comes up.

[Can I get a hotspot's script name from the script?]

Hi,

I am trying to modify the verbcoin template for my game such that it only shows the verbs that are available (ie, have functions attached) for any given object.

I have the code that can grab the object into either a hotspot, object, or character variable.  (Let's assume hotspot for now; it's simpler).  I have some code which parses the executable for all the functions that exist (mostly).  However I have just now realized that htspt.Name does not use the script name, but the hotspot's description, which means I can only use this if I always give script names that are guessable from the description, but I'd like to not have to do that.  (Especially since I was planning on sharing this code).

I know this question was asked here, but it wasn't answered - the asker was given a different solution for his/her particular issue.

So: Can I get a hotspot's script name from the script?



If it helps to understand my question, here is the code I am currently using:

Code: ags

		String obj = "NONE";
		Hotspot*htspt=Hotspot.GetAtScreenXY(mx, my);
		Character*chr=Character.GetAtScreenXY(mx, my);
		Object*invobj=Object.GetAtScreenXY(mx, my);
		if (htspt != null) obj = htspt.Name;
		if (chr != null) obj = chr.Name;
		if (invobj != null) obj = invobj.Name;
		//Display(obj);
		if (obj == "NONE")
		{
			interact_button.Visible = false;
			look_button.Visible = false;
			custom_button1.Visible = false;
			talk_button.Visible = false;
		}
		else
		{
			interact_button.Visible = General.FunctionExists(obj, "Interact");
			look_button.Visible = General.FunctionExists(obj, "Look");
			custom_button1.Visible = General.FunctionExists(obj, "PickUp");
			talk_button.Visible = General.FunctionExists(obj, "Talk");
		}

I guess that wasn't clear, huh?  I used the mirror on that image only.  Once I like how it looks, it's going to be in the title screen, and you can see it's in the inventory menu as well.  It's because of the theme "reflection", ie the friends begin at a cabin called Reflection (I'm a little undecided on "Lake of Reflection" vs "Hills" vs whatever, though), they end up in a reflection of our world, and a mirror will be used to solve at least one puzzle.

I'd also like to note that although this isn't the Critic's Lounge, if you have something critical to say, don't hold back!  As my first AGS game, I will need as much feedback as I can get - and as it's not my first game in general, I can take it.     Once I get a playable version out, I'll start a proper thread there - right now, it'd probably be flagged as spamming.

EDIT: I just saw a mod tell another guy that criticism doesn't belong here.  Ah well.

Synopsis: Three friends go hiking in the woods, only to mistakenly enter the land of the fae, a shadowy reflection of our own world.  Before they can return, they must discover something new about themselves, find out what happened to a missing faerie, discover the truth of the past, and make a difficult choice.

• Puzzle adventure game.
• Short-to-medium in length. (It's my first AGS game, so I'm minimizing the number of screens (5-10) and animated characters (3ish) but I'm not sure how much exactly that will translate to shorter play-time).
• Verb coin interface  (Thanks to Electroshokker!)
• Two endings
• 1024x768 with a relatively unique style (I don't know yet whether that first part is good or bad).

-------------------------------------------

As of February 4th:

Puzzle design	62%	(I may make the game longer.)
Sketching	50%
Character Art	36%
Scene Art	24%
Menu Art	69%	Fonts, and possibly save menu?
Fiddling/Learning	15%
Dialog	0%
Entrances/Hotspots	0%
Puzzle Coding	0%

Totals: Spent 32 hours so far, best guess 87 hours remaining; 27% complete

Hoping to be done by February or March 2012, but I tend to be rather optimistic.

-------------------------------------------

And some bonus, in-progress images:

Discovering that the best way to make it look 3D is with folding.	My first attempts at making Lindsay's sweater - and a sketch of her in the background.
Setting up to create the forest background.  I wasn't making 20 different trees!	I'm probably going to update this later, but my first attempt at a tree with a mirror.

EDIT: Changing the name to match the screenshots.  May change again at some point...