Messages

*gulp*

Well, I'm sorry I didn't post this in Beginner's now...   :

Hello

I have a puzzle that goes something like this:

1. Interact with some object
2. Timer starts
3. After timer ends, function which concerns Objects in the current room is executed. Checks whether player did something (which sets a flag)  during that time.

As you can't run a rep_ex function in the room script, I made a script to increment and check the value of a counter in rep_ex so that it acted as a timer. That meant that when the counter had reached the correct value, the function I'd have to call would also need to be in the same script, and obviously not a room script because they can't be referenced that way. To initiate the timer I just used a global flag that the room script sets, and the rep_ex script checks for every cycle before deciding whether to run the timer or not.
The trouble I have is: I want to deal with Objects, and I can't seem to do that from a script other than the room in which the Object resides.

This doesn't seem like a particularly huge thing to expect AGS to do, so I'm fairly sure I'm just going about the whole thing wrong. How would one go about achieving this kind of timer-based puzzle using objects?

PS: I guess "make the object an actor instead" might be the most obvious solution, but it seems odd that there'd be no other workarounds to reference objects from another script.

Thanks!

Looks great, and a nice trailer too.  The mood along with the 6th-gen-looking graphics of the trailer reminds me a lot of the Silent Hill series.
One thing though - did you mean to say "Awakened" in your title?
"Awaken" is a verb ("i awaken the body" as opposed to "an awakened body") so "Awakened" would be the adjective for it.  I can understand how that might confuse a non-native English speaker, though, since other words with '-en' are adjectives (forsaken, barren, taken, fallen)

The main focus of an adventure game shouldn't be the puzzles, and when the puzzles basically become the story, it's all lost

I'm only half in agreement here, but I might just be misunderstanding you. I think in an ideal adventure game, the story would be told through the puzzles, rather than puzzles being obstacles for story progression.  In fact, calling them 'puzzles' makes them feel separate from the rest of the game. It's an awfully difficult thing to design and keep consistent, but ideally puzzles need to be almost as important to the storyline as cutscenes and dialogue. It's my view that for good storytelling in games, the actions of the player (not the player's character) should be what directly relates to the story. That's not to say you don't need cutscenes / 'story progression'  but they should give a clear link between what the player did and what resulted. I'd rather think of story progression as an ongoing thing that's inclusive of puzzles, since theyre pretty much the most 'complex' way that the player can interact.

EDIT: As a response to a point Ascovel brought up that I hadn't responded to, I also enjoy the exploration aspect of many adventure games, and it most certainly can be counted as a form of gameplay for me. And the feeling I get when I find something new in my explorations is almost as rewarding as solving a puzzle to advance the story.

Agreed. I get the feeling that exploration is an overlooked element of adventure games.  Monkey Island has always had explorable islands that are avaliable from the onset of the game, which works great, but I'd love to see that taken a step further and have an even bigger explorable world,  almost like in an RPG.


I think the inherent 'flaw' in adventure games that Blow talks about is actually more of a 'hurdle.' The kinds of actions your player performs in adventure games are so much more detailed than in other genres. Most people know what a gun does, and most shooters will make it clear that there's a button which will fire your gun.  I'm sure a gun could be used for a few other nifty things that don't involve firing it, in the same way that Gordon Freeman's crowbar wasn't built for swinging at headcrabs, but you likely won't come across it over the course of a shooter (barring a QTE.)

Since there are potentially a limitless amount of actions that a character can do in an adventure game, both the functional uses and the unofficial uses of an item are valid. Then it becomes incredibly easy to start to enter the realm of subjection in regards to what the purpose of an item or some element of the world is.  In many adventure games, the lack of detail on objects (not so much on a visual level, but thats certainly a part of it) and the lack of explanation as to what the object might be used for (not just the functional use) leads to players falling back on their own ideas based on things that they know of in real life.  This is bad, because not everyone has the same experiences, knows the same things, and you have to design the game to only work in one way...most of the time.

I think the general problem is that making good adventure game puzzles is actually really freaking hard. You need to strike the balance between giving the player everything he needs to know (apart from logical deductions) but not holding his hand, not letting it become too nonsensical, but then still making it challenging enough that the player feels at least a little bit smart.

Another thing I think isn't done enough with adventure games is non-linearity. I imagine mostly because it'd be *insanely* difficult to do it well.  I would love to see adventure games where the manner in which you solve a puzzle has a consequence on the story, where dialogue isn't just a way to get hints and establish characters, but it can change elements of the story. Or perhaps the order in which you visit locations can impact the story as well.  Too often an adventure game is boiled down to this puzzles + story idea, but if most people identify an adventure game by its control scheme and interface, then it seems to me that there is a lot of unused potential in the genre.

The graphics look great! Any chance of some higher-res screenies?

[sfz197.exe]

There's a great little (or rather, pretty damn big) soundfont called RegressionFM. It's designed to be able to play back MIDI files from old DOS games, and as a result the default names of the instruments aren't always massively helpful as they presumably weren't  designed with a musician in mind, but having said that, it's still entirely usable as a bank of sounds for music-making if you use a Soundfont player VSTi such as SFZ.

RegressionFM can be found here: http://www.fileplanet.com/218035/210000/fileinfo/RegressionFM-1.5c-Soundfont

SFZ can be found here:  http://web.archive.org/web/20061206040259/http://www.rgcaudio.com/downloads/freeware/

Important: sfz197.exe is the installer for the latest version, however if you have a multi-threaded CPU and you're getting horrible noises when you try to run multiple instances of the plugin, then in sfz.zip there's a multi-thread version of the plugin so you can just go and replace the .dll file and it should be no problem.

If you want to hear how some of it sounds, I messed around a while ago and made a couple of very sketchy bits of music with it.
http://www.box.net/shared/az91ko9v0o

Hope this helps!

You've also been Dtoided!

http://www.destructoid.com/have-a-look-at-gemini-rue-coming-next-month-191438.phtml

Thank you everyone!

Is this on the dark side? Is it a black comedy? Cause it seems to me like one of those.

Perhaps a little on the dark side yes, given that we're okay with including Hitler's likeness in the second room (but only his likeness, might I add.) There won't be blood and gore or anything that adult though. I think you might call the humour dry/ironic (and a little bit silly too) rather than 'dark' - based on what we find funny at least. Once we get to realise some more of the odd characters floating about in our heads then I'll have a better idea what the humour style is.

[Byrne In Hell]

Byrne In Hell is my very first proper AGS game, which I am working on with fellow forum newbie and pal GWSampy, who's responsible for all the artwork. We are aiming for somewhere between short and medium length.

Most of the game is in fact utterly not done, but I'll go and do a fancy write-up here so you can skim it and look at the screen shots  

Story:
In a horrific underground mining disaster, Geoffrey Byrne, our meek, yet bitter hero, finds himself in a place that feels like Hell, sounds like Hell, and looks like a decrepit office complex. Whether he's really dead, or he's just accidentally stumbled upon one of the world's dark secrets, Byrne is determined to get out as soon as humanly possible. But it will take all of his tact, will, and cunning to beat the bureaucrats behind the corrupt hierarchy of the underworld into releasing him.

Oh, and you get to control him. By clicking stuff.

Features:
-Quirky characters
-At least mildly amusing dialogue.
-Glorious 320x200 resolution
-A custom 4-verb SCUMM-style interface.
-Music (hardly a feature)

Screens:

There are only a measly three rooms to show at the moment. Will update this thread when we have more to show.









UPDATE: Music:
I've decided I'd show a piece of music I just finished, since I think it's representative of the sort of style I'm aiming for. Despite listing music as "hardly a feature" because it's generally expected of a game, music's actually one of the few things I think I'm sort of good at.
The Humble Doctor
This is meant to be a 'motif' for a certain character you meet early in the game.  I might drastically decide to go with DOS-style sounds instead of the more realistic samples I used, to try and keep it retro, but I'm really not sure right now.

You could be right, but that's really not the most helpful of answers...
Maybe I should post this is in Technical Forum?

Edit: Fixed this issue by myself.


---
This could be a stupid question, but I'm a little stuck here...

I'm making a stripped-down version of the SCUMM verb system, and everything is working except for the mouse clicking for eModeUseinv.  I have Handle Inv Clicks enabled, so ProcessClick isn't going to work.  

I'm trying to make it so that once the player decides to use an inventory item with another inventory item, it runs the Useinv interaction for that object, THEN sets ActiveInventory back to null.
So, instead of ProcessClick I'm using RunInteraction.   The problem I have is that instead of recursively running RunInteraction first and carrying on with on_mouse_click as normal, the rest of on_mouse_click gets finished off first and then RunInteraction.  This means that I end up resetting ActiveInventory back to null BEFORE I run the interaction.  So, is this just an inherent behaviour of item.RunInteraction, and are there any workarounds?

Thanks.

Thanks monkey, that wasn't confusing and it's helpful to know about how the GUIs react to mouse clicks - because removing code from the default was too tedious I actually decided to start from an empty template, and while it makes it far easier to script it does mean I have to build the GUI from scratch too.

I'm really not sure what your problem with the display is, I upped the resolution and replaced the background and it ran just fine for me... :/

As for being able to right click on the inventory window, it simply isn't possible without checking for mouse clicks every frame (which in my eyes is just too complicated to warrant bothering).

Don't understand your comment about the display... I can't see how what I said could be misconstrued like that, but nevermind =P
Also, checking for right clicks on the inventory is possible - unless you mean the whole "inventory list" part of the GUI, which doesn't have a click event, but I actually meant an inventory *item* which is achieved just using eModeRightinv.

Don't know why I'm still dragging this thread out, the issue was fixed and cleared up!
Cheers again guys.

Aah thanks! 
I had a feeling it was to do with RunInteraction but I wasn't quite sure how it worked. I was already familiar with eModeRightInv from the inventory item selection with RMB

This is a fairly simple question. I am developing a minimalistic system almost exactly the same as Beneath A Steel Sky - ie:

LMB = examine, walk, and use selected inv. item
RMB = interact, select item from inventory, and cancel selected inventory item.

I've got nearly all of that working (albeit with messy noobish code) but I want to be able to use LMB to look at inventory items, however I can't seem to use the prebuilt inventory item events because I've set it to handle inventory clicks in the script.  I was using ProcessClick to simulate a Lookat mode click on the item, but it doesnt trigger the event. Is there another way to trigger the Look event of an inventory item just through script?  That is, without playing around with strings and having to add "_Look" or something onto a function call.

Thanks.

Hey, first post here but I've been lurking around for a fair while  
I realised that  fancy sounds = unproductivity, so I've made a MIDI tune that I may use in a game which I'm currently just writing the script for.  It would be heard in a scene where the player character returns to a familiar environment only to find that something is quite wrong.  C&C is of course appreciated

link:

http://www.box.net/shared/itifflfrss

Thanks