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Hello everyone!

Was playing through Maniac Mansion and noticed a really neat and simple effect they used for their flashlights in dark rooms. Basically the room is pitch black and after using the flashlight, your cursor becomes a little circular “cut out” that reveals the room from the darkness as you move it across the screen. Figured this could not only be a fun mechanic within that same context for a game, but perhaps even a cool way to have a night vision sniping mini game of some sort.

Anyways, how might you go about creating that mechanic in AGS?

Thank you!

Been in a deep dive on Emergent Gameplay/Narrative in games - via the creation of tools/systems which allow players to author their own solutions to problems and navigate the world the way they want. Also for the world itself to interact and react to itself - the creation of an immersive simulation. Has anyone ever tried this on any level in AGS? Typically the rules set in emergent games are actually pretty simple - like John Conway’s “Life” simulation, which in code is merely

for x …
for y …
    If count = 2 no change
    Else if count = 3 alive
    Else dead

Look it up and you’ll be amazed by the complexity that arises from such simple coding.  All that to say, given how simple that is, I’m sure AGS could house something right?

 

For changing the character looks (any character) you may use Character.ChangeView. That assumes that the sprites are prepared beforehand and arranged into several Views. For example, you may have one View per shadow type (angle).

In regards to general question of creating character's looks by combining several elements, there has been a short discussion on this recently:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=59912.0

You’re awesome! Thank you so much!

Hello again!

So I tried to put it in the title as much as possible, but I’ll iterate on it here too…

Basically, in my game â€" dependent on the area the character occupies at a certain time â€" the position of the sun will be different, meaning shadows will be cast at different angles.  Sometimes it will be to the right, others to the left, and so on.

My thought was to just create multiple versions of the main character, baking in the correct shadow angle so that it “casts” correctly.  But that brings the question â€" is it possible to switch the player-character’s sprite at a certain time?  Going from one series of rooms to the next?  AND ensuring one’s inventory stays the same? For example, the  first 10 would be a shadow cast left, but then a different angle the next, and so on.

Hopefully that’s clear… thank you!!

So something I’ve been interested in implementing into a point n click adventure game is some sort of combat system - perhaps turn based in some way? Or maybe even timing based - like a duel in a western… gotta click a button at a certain point or fast enough to kill your opponent.

I don’t think I’d necessarily want it to be real time - though it could be cool to have a system where you hold shift or something to draw your weapon, stop moving, and toggle the cursor to be a cross hair. Clicking on enemies fire. Similar to old Resident Evil combat. But something about real time takes me out of the point and click mindset and tempo.

Has anyone had experience in this? If so, are there examples and scripting you could point me to? It’s an idea I like but I’m having trouble expanding my mind and thinking outside the box enough to know how to begin doing that in AGS.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Is it possible to create a parallax effect in AGS? If so, how many layers? And even more interesting, is it possible to have foreground and background parallax - similar to some screens in Thimbleweed Park?

Thank you guys!

Hey everyone! Had a quick question -

I was wondering if it was possible to have “idle” animations for a player-character. Either an animation which runs after a certain amount of idleness, or even one that constantly plays. A guy looking around after 5 seconds of stillness, or a bird continually flapping his wings even when not moving.

Is this something that is possible? The only way i know how to do character animations in-game is during movement.

Thank you!!

You guys are all awesome!! Thank you so much!! 

Hey everyone!!

So one of the games I’m working on involves utilizing an artist with a specific style…

Long story short, I will be experimenting with NPC’s being characters which are drawn-in to backgrounds he would create for the game and was wondering if there’s a way to still create and run dialogue for these “characters”, even though they won’t be sprites in the game.

First and foremost, can you rig a conversation when there isn’t another sprite?
If so, can you then change the position of that sprite-less text so that it appears over the spot the character takes up in the background?

The only thing I could think would be to load a sprite that is just completely pink visually, making it technically invisible, and then positioning it over the spot in the background the character takes up…

What do you guys think?? Sorry if this makes no sense.

Thank you!!

• I avoid using hotspots as much as possible and use objects with sprites that have alpha set to the lowest possible value so that they aren't visible but are picked by pixel perfect click detection, this is because I can move them around easily and this helps me think
• I draw walkable areas in Aseprite and import in AGS and avoid using the mask editor in AGS as much as possible

Super helpful answer for a beginner like me! I especially like these two  insights. [/list]

The basic idea is to check for  IsKeyPressed(403) || IsKeyPressed(404)  when you process a left click in walk mode. Depending on true or not, change the player's view / movement speed accordingly before sending them off with player.Walk().

You will also have to reset to normal walk speed after they stop, if walking somewhere triggers a cutscene where the player also walks (since they'd still run otherwise)

This is awesome! Thank you so much!

Didn’t see anything about this when I searched so apologies if I didn’t dig deep enough and it’s already out there!

What would the technical workflow look like to create a classic, text-based adventure game - in the vein of Zork or Colossal Cave Adventure - using AGS? I’m sure it’s pretty lengthy, so even just pointing in the right direction would be super helpful.  Obviously it seems a lot easier than a graphic adventure game, and I might be new here, but I know things are always harder than they seem.

Anyone have any guidance on this?

Thank you so much! 

Hey everyone!  Studying AGS and wanted to ask others how they like to approach rigging rooms and scripting… specifically, what order do you guys like to go in to be most affective and, more importantly, keep your script nice and organized and unified in form across the whole game? 

Edges, Walkable areas, hotspots, timers - everything you’d do to rig your rooms. There’s so much to do that as a beginner it’s hard to keep everything straight! 

Thanks so much!

I had a thought about a running mechanic for my game. Rather than having the character in a constant sprint, or using the Thimbleweed Park double-click-to-run feature, what if you could toggle a running mode just by holding a key on the keyboard? Clicking without walks, but holding shift and clicking runs.

Is there a way to do that? If it also changed the cursor icon to reflect the toggle that would be even better!

Thank you guys so much!! 

Characters have views directly and sprites only indirectly â€" in so far as the views are made of sprites.

All the character views can be assigned to at runtime, using either attributes or functions: Look up Character::ChangeView(), Character::SetIdleView(), Character::SpeechView in the manual.

So one of the ways of doing this would be:

• Each character would have a set of "small" views and a set of "normal" views. Use a consistent naming scheme here. For instance, call them vwWarriorMainSmall, vwWarriorMainNormal, vwWarriorSpeechSmall, vwWarriorSpeechNormal, ... vwWarriorIdleSmall ... or some such. These views are prepared beforehand and installed within the Editor. Note that you can create subfolders in the Explore Project pane to help keep the views well-arranged.
• Each room gets a room_Load() (Enters room before fade-in) event. That's where the respective character views are usually set, using the respective functions or attributes shown above.
• However, whenever characters are summoned into the current room with the Character::ChangeRoom() function, then code must follow immediately that configures their views. too.
• Don't assign views by number. Use their symbolic names VWWARRIORMAINSMALL etc.

That's at least how I would try to do this.

This is awesome stuff! I'll be pouring over it.  Anything to get me more into the scripting end of things I'll welcome. 

Thank you!!

I use scaling; I'd say continuous scaling can be used and then put the MIN and MAX as the same, like for example 5 (very little) on the walkable area you created.

Sounds good! I didn't even think to just set min/max the same!

Thank you so much!

Good morning!

In the game I'm designing, I want to have shots of various distances away from my character.  Some shots will be the usual wides, calling for a typically-sized/detailed sprite, while others will be extremely long and calling for a sprite only a few pixels in size. 

My plan was to create three sprites for the character - a medium sized, a small sized, and an extra small.  Is it possible to incorporate all of these into different screens of the game, such that moving from one area to the next it will be a different sprite, or do you have to use one sprite the whole time and use the character scaling function?

Thank you! 

I absolutely love everything about this!!

Question - how did you achieve the 9-verb GUI? I love how you matched it to the style of The Simpsons as well

This looks beautiful! Can’t wait to give it a run