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Hopefully this is a simple question and I'm being a bit silly... but I can't find any particular reason for it...



See this picture, a hotspot area has been highlighted in blue.
It seems a bit odd that it is fractured and not continuous, but it's my lazy way of coding a simple chess move and attaching dialogue to it.
Unfortunately the upper square seems to work fine as a hotspot, with all the expected responses, but the lower square does not respond at all to anything.

The weirdest thing is that the two squares just next to them (where the bishop and rook are stood, above and below the horizontal band) are blocked in the exact same fashion and yet both squares work perfectly fine (i.e. they give the same expected response).

Please explain this to me, this game has taken much longer than it ought to have... (and if you do help, I will have something playable all the way through by the end of the bank holiday, and if you're really nice, I'll let you play it too!)

[Transatlantic!]

Okay... here's my first go at this...

The theme of the writing competition is Transatlantic!

Recently (i.e. yesterday), I travelled over the Atlantic to live in the USA for the next six months, which as you might expect is a pretty big deal for me. So as a kind of trigger for what the topic could entail, here's some bullets:

Maybe you could write about:

• A transatlantic crossing? By some form of new dirigible? plane? submarine? ship?
• A goodbye between two intimately related characters? Someone leaving on the Titanic
• A Valentine's sub theme perhaps, with a letter sent across the water?
• Two fictional warring factions separated by a large watery mass that happens to be called the Atlantic?

There are no limits to the type of prose, story, poem or song (the one by Death Cab for Cutie comes to mind) you want to write... so go wild!

I will make trophies a little later.. entries in by sometime on the 24th February

(Lemme know if I've missed something)

WINNER IS ANIAN!

[black space]

I'm usually very stubborn about asking for feedback, but I'm so stumped about how to take this background further that I'm posting it here, cos you guys are usually awesome.



My issue is I don't know how to deal with all that black space.
It's going to be a fairly simple one room 'fix the contraption' game, but the black back just irks me. So help guys! Because once I'm past that stumbling block, you could have a game in about a month!

[A Hard Day's Knight]

While making sync::routine, I wanted to make something a bit light hearted as I realised I was lot more comfortable writing in that sort of environment. A Hard Day's Knight follows a young knight as he attempts to join the battlefield, deal with the horrors of war, and try and end the conflict for good (trust me, it's still light-hearted).

Expect lots of entertaining characters, chess puzzles (!), love and peace and war and several costume changes...

Progress - Last updated 27-05-13
Design: 95%
Coding: 85%
Backgrounds: 95%
Sprites: 85%
Sound: 5%
Music: 50%

Release 2013?...

Alpha build right here (see latest post for details)

[sync::routine]

sync::routine
A short adventure game by James Riley

A short adventure game developed for me to get to grips with the AGS system, which I hope will still provide some entertainment, some head scratching and some interest towards future adventures...

The game follows Roman, a hacker trying to gain some information regarding the whereabouts of his former partner, Laura Gibson. The only lead he has is an old company, Solomon Associates, which he's conned his way in to try and access their systems...

Download here (22mb)

Some short post-mortem comments:

I'm fairly happy with this as my first AGS release but I know there is a lot to be improved, mainly due to inexperience at writing in general and using scripting. That said, I feel that I nailed quite a few different puzzle interactions and tried to make it slightly different with the inventory examination and computer interfaces. The final dialogue is a bit bolted on, partly because in designing the game, the room and puzzles came first and then I just started writing in whatever came in to my head that would make it in some way cohesive. Another part is that I haven't written much before, and it took a lot more effort than I bargained for. Hopefully that won't put too many people off, and my next project, which I'm about to post some info on soon, should be a major step forward and a completely different experience...

But we'll see... for now, enjoy!

[sync::routine]

sync::routine

Good evening. It's about time I posted my first delve into the world of AGS development.

In sync::routine you play Roman, a character who we meet in the process of conning his way into an office building trying to reverse engineer a connection into a company's network, and on the way find some information about the his former female partner who left without a trace...

The game will be quite short, but it will involve a range of puzzles, including some close up inventory examination, and dabbling in computer interfaces...

Current Progress (29/07/10):
Story: 99%
Backgrounds: 95%
Sprites: 95%
Coding: 95%
Sound/Music: 100%

Minor Progress Update (31/01):
The last inventory object is in, with just two of the major puzzles left to code and no more backgrounds to draw. Need to finish animations for the intro, and decide on how to present the ending. I reckon it might take about half an hour to get through it by the end of it.
Update (02/02):
Almost there. The intro animations are done, but there may be some extra sprites in the ending... I'm not sure yet. It's now fully playable up to the last puzzle. And there will be some minor alterations to the ending depending on whether you solved the side puzzle. First round of testing started...
Update (04/02):
Okay, after an initial round of testing...it has been tweaked and now I've just gotta write/code the ending... I think someone is on-board for the music now as well. So ETA... 13th/14th Feb (goes and prepares his gallows for announcing a release data).
Update (07/02):
Still on track. Ending is now in. All SFX (pending interactions I may have accidently missed) are in. Lot of tweaks to animations, backgrounds, script and code have been implemented to make the game work a little better.
Update (12/02):
More little animation frames in and redrawn intro and outre scenes. Looking for a musician also! See latest post!
Update (14/02):
Found a musician,  but it'll be sometime in the week when the game is released... sorry peeps...
Update (14/03):
One month later, got music for the most part... just waiting for one more track.
Update (29/07):
Err... don't what happened. I kind of didn't like how it played anymore and then my life workload got ridiculous.
And now I'm rejigging the ending, adding a scene and then we're good! Maybe a week? Hah!
Update (4/08):
Can't be long now... maybe this weekend...

I have a GUI label that follows the cursor around when it is over hotspots, and that works fine.
When my cursor changes to an inventory icon, it obscures part of the text and I wondered whether it is possible to have the GUI draw over the cursor when this is the case.

I've tried altering the GUI Z-order for the label but I guess that only works in relation to other GUI objects. Is it possible a different way?

Otherwise I'll just have to move the label further out when an inventory item is 'in hand'.

Cheers.

[Smokescreen]

Here's an interesting game

Called Smokescreen, its a flash game where you basically do missions in an adventure stylee (well okay, just point-and-click) where you use a series of social networking sites to stalk people and other less interesting tasks... very 'young generation' based, but quite amusing all the same. With sites such as 'Fakebook' and 'Tweetr'... and stalking a potential date... not that I'd do such a thing...

Basically it's telling the kids not to be an idiot and post all your life online... not just because people don't care, but because people will most likely steal everything off you...

As other relevance, it's also an interesting way of representing computer systems in a computer game other than replicating an entire operating system. i.e. MSN conversations are done by clicking the edit box, entering your chosen response then clicking 'Send' rather than typing everything. And web pages can be navigated, and things happen in real time also... quite a cool little system behind it...

Hi, I've started a one-room adventure game as a means for getting into the AGS program, and I've been toying with a means to doing the art.

I enjoy pixelling, but I also enjoying playing around with the graphics tablet I have (a Wacom Bamboo A5) so I'm trying out a combination of the two.



Thing is, I've been going the traditional route of pixelling everything for the room layout and things on the right, but I've got a few closeups (of puzzles and computers) that I'm attempting to paint in doublesize, shrink and reduce the colour depth (from say 16-bit to 256) and then clean it up with a little bit more pixelling...

Do you think the two go together? Also, as it is my first attempt at rooms and the like I'm not sure if there's anything that stands out as 'odd' perspective wise. I've also kept the colour range low, dunno if that effects it or not. (NB. Not all the objects are in, and the shading is incomplete, but you can point out if you like which areas you think need it most)

And the character... he's supposed to be wearing a kinda fashionable face mask (y'know the smog beating kind) but it may just look like a blue beard

Cheers, anyway, once I get this sorted I can get the game started properly...