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Most likely the only cross stitched adventure game in existence.

Cross Stitch Casper is a game that focuses on story and characters.
The homely embroidered graphics are in contrast to the bleak home of main protagonist.

As player you control little Casper. But you're not him. You're just observing the world he's living in and the struggles he has to endure.
How will he manage to get through his daily live's struggles? Will he at all?

The only person sympathizing with him seems to be his grandmother. Then again, how much can an old woman do?



AGS Game Page
Game Site

Game resolution. I guess it's always a current topic, especially when using AGS and it's dedication to retro graphical style.

But how low can we go? Are tiny screens like 320x200 still valid or is it a sign of clinging to something that shouldn't exist anymore?

The cheapest possible screen nowadays has way too many pixels to display 320x200 in a reasonable size. After a few minutes I get sore muscles around my eyes from all the squinting.

Making it fullscreen brings up other issues. Like text being so big, that all the head turning makes it feel like watching a tennis match.

I notice that I give up on those games after a few minutes. the small resolutions just takes too much of my energy to concentrate on the game.
An option like "Zoom 2x" in the winsetup.exe might do wonders (or changing the screen resolution itself).

What do you think about this? Is there still a place for those tiny resolutions? Where is your limit? Is it only used as a statement like "There! I'm using 320x200 to show you all how cool and retro I am!" or do you see good reasons for it?

the reason I post this is that I just gave up Annie Android because of the resolution … and it seemed such a wonderful game!

that said: i love to play those tiny resolution AGS games on my psp (thanks JJS for giving that device new purpose in my home). So Annie … here I come!

[if ShowPlayerCharacter is set to 'false' in the room properties, the mouse cursor animation doesn't work!]

i don't know if this fits here or if there's a good reason for AGS to behave like this.  The Editor developement forum might be a better place, I decided to post here so it might help others in the future (as it drove me crazy for hours before finding the solution).

if ShowPlayerCharacter is set to 'false' in the room properties, the mouse cursor animation doesn't work!
(correct me if I'm wrong about this, but the problem is easily recreateable)

I'm surprised I couldn't find several topics about this, as I'm pretty sure many stumble over this issue (mostly on Start Screens / Settings / etc). Placing the character outside the visible area of the room is an easy workaround, but it seems a workaround for a problem that shouldn't exist in the 1st place.

p.s. is ShowPlayerCharacter - or any other room properties â€" missing in the manual?

We all know the problem of players accidently skipping dialog lines by clicking at the wrong time.

as the font in my game needs some time to get used to and can be hard to read, I decided to never let it time out itself. every text needs a click/key to disappear.
I use a lot of small pauses inbetween text lines for dramaturgical reasons. When watching others play the game I noticed that during those pauses they sometimes assume the cutscene/dialog is done and start clicking (who can blame them). So it happens that they skip the following line by accident.

While there exists the property IgnoreUserInputAfterTextTimeoutMs; to avoid similar issues, I would like it to be the other way around.
Something like IgnoreUserInputWhenTextAppearsMs;

I tried adding a Wait(); into my custom speech function (see below). It kinda works. The text lines don't dissapear, but the characters' speech view stops. I could live with that, but it's still not an optimal solution. Is there any other way I could go about the issue?

Code: AGS

	void Saa(this Character*, String Aussage) {
  lblText.Text = Aussage;
	InvOff();
  gDialog.Visible = true;
  this.Say(Aussage);
	Wait(20); //click during that time stops the speechcycle.
	InvOn();
  gDialog.Visible = false;	
 }

I don't need any help, as I managed to make it work exactly how I want, but I'm a little confused.

The problem in a nutshell (slightly simplified)
I have only one hotspot in a room, called hLoad. Now I want to change the mousecursor when over that hotspot.

now this doesn't have any effect (in the room's rep_exec)

Code: AGS

	if (Hotspot.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y) != null) mouse.UseModeGraphic(eModeUsermode1);
	else mouse.UseDefaultGraphic();

while this works just fine:

Code: AGS

	if (Hotspot.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y) == hLoad) mouse.UseModeGraphic(eModeUsermode1);
	else mouse.UseDefaultGraphic();

I just can't find out what's going on and that bothers me. Why does != null not cover hLoad?
… what annoys me most is that this is probably a ridiculous basic thing and I'm making a fool out of myself by asking.
I tried some crazy theories like "maybe 'null' can only only be used with pointers" without getting any results.

I just noticed this and it's a bit annoying in my situation. I don't know if I should put this down as a bug or if it is a feature and I don't know how to deal with it.

all the text in my game is on a grid. 3 lines maximum.
I managed to place it just fine using the .say and .display (I'm using a custom font and Calin Leafshade's SpriteFont Renderer).

When dialogue options are displayed, the line spacing seems to decrease by exactly 1 pixel. That might not sound much, but can have quite an effect. Doesn't make a difference if it's 1 option that has text going over 3 lines or 3 options with 1 line each. Also (de-)activating bullet point image or numbering the options doesn't make a difference.

Here's a screenshot. On the left a normal .say, on the right the dialog options.

[imgzoom]http://www.whalesplash.com/CrossStitchCasper/Examples/dialog_pixel.png[/imgzoom]
(don't worry about the horizontal pixels being off, that's because I added a random bullet point image when doing the screenshot).

I'm not really sure what my question is (or if I even have one). From what I understand line spacing can't be addressed inside the editor. So I'm happy to hear "yes, it's a bug" or some suggestion how to get around it.

I've gone through countless topics regarding game size but none quite suit my problem.
My game is around 120mb big. While that's not really problem, I consider that being a little too much for what the game itself has to offer.
I'm fairly sure that a major part comes from the room backgrounds.

Every room (total: 12 rooms) has basically the same background (see announcement thread), so I'm trying to find a way to reduce the size there.

(if this can be resolved using room templates: shame on me … I found that option too late into developement)
here's what I tried:
- have a blank background. insert an object in each room using a sprite. Result: works just fine, but no effect on size.
- create a view with the background image. then insert a blank object in each room and set that view to it in the room_load. Result: see above.

At this point I'm asking myself how the rooms/views are actually compiled? Let's say I'm using a 10-frame long door animation. 3 doors in every room and 100 rooms in the game. Does AGS actually see that as 3,000 single pictures instead of just the 10 from the animation? (and does my question make sense?).

I probably used wrong wording in the title, but here's what I'm looking for:

there are several things in my game that apply to every hotspot/object (actually, I guess that's the case in almost every game).

like using whatever inventory item on whatever object/hotspot.
I defined lots of them, but I wonder if there's a way to add something to the GlobalScript, that comes into action if I didn't specify anything else in the room script? the character would just say something like "nope" or "can't use that here".
(hope I made myself clear)

similar to the above: is there a way to make ALL objects unclickable? (I'm sure there is and it's a veeery basic thing to know. so the question should be: what's the code for it?) I only use hotspots for interactions and it's a little annoying to manually make each object unclickable.

[Initial announcement:]

Game was released on Juli 1st, 2013. Announcement thread.

Initial announcement:
Exactly one month ago I imported my first 2 sprites into AGS and made a character walk over the screen. Wow! Having no scripting or programming experience, I'm surprised, amazed, and proud about what I achieved in the last couple of weeks. Dedication helps. What started out as a simple test game, turned into a project I got completely lost in.

Update June 12th, 2013:
look at my post further down this page.

Cross Stitch Casper

Story in one sentence
You're playing little Casper (around 5 years old), who's confronted with a dilemma.



As I'm absolutely incapable to draw a single decent looking line, I tried to cheat using cross stitching as a basis. The story/atmosphere is build around what I consider to be cliché attributes when it comes to cross stitching (if any of you love the fine art of cross stitching, I hope you won't be offended ). So the graphic style actually determined the whole story/setup.

I tried to do something original, not going down the road of the usual topics used in Adventures. Don't expect jokes or any funny turns/twists, it's more of a sad/dismal environment.








Progress

Story/Puzzles: 100%
Graphics: 100%
Sound: 100%
Scripting: 99,9%

It took me forever to get into the whole string/label/GUI thing, but I figured most of it out.

I'm displaying everything spoken in a label on a custom GUI. Right now I'm editing all Dialogs to change the standard format into player.Saa("message");
As I understand there's no other (easy) way around this.

But what do I do with the Dialog options themselves?
When the player chooses one of them the character is still going through a player.Say("option1") (at least that's what it looks like), thus having the character in his speech cycle without anything showing (transparent font).
(I hope I managed to explain myself)

edit: Lucasarts speech style

It doesn't fit the critic's lounge 100%, but I give it a go.

I have several rooms that still need ambient sound. The rooms in question are inside a ranch/farmhouse. Here's what I did in some rooms:
- clock to the wall that's ticking
- open fire in the chimney
- boiling water in the kitchen (as that's part of a quest it's not the only sound there)
- snoring man in a bedroom
- purring cat

… but there's still rooms left that are creepingly quiet. I guess I can't just put a clock on the wall or a cat on the floor in every room
Any suggestions?

The game takes place ca. 100 years ago. Think of it as a Wild West scenario. So no radio, traffic from outside, dishwashers, air condition fans, ...
I can not have more NPC's creating noises as they wouldn't fit the story. There's nothing in the story itself that could cause a noise coming from outside.
I like the idea of little wind and slightly rattling windows with a wooden squeak here and there, but when I try that it always gives the game a horror-like atmosphere which I really have to avoid!
damped animal sounds from outside could be nice (but it fells like that by itself is too little sound with a horse/pig/chicken shouting every 20 seconds).

Best would be to give the rooms a depressing/sad/lonesome feeling.

I have a pendulum clock on the wall. I assigned a ticking sound to each of the 2 frames in the clocks view. Now when the game is paused (i.e. opening save/load gui), the animation pauses while the sound keeps going. when i go out of the pause, the animation starts again and with it starts another frame-sound.

so if I open/close the save/load gui several times, at one point I have several ticking sounds overlapping each other.

I don't even know how to phrase this into a question. maybe: "what can I do?"
what I would like best is the animation going on in the background during game paused (not the sound stopping)



edit: solved it myself:
the sound wasn't actually overlapping. or it was kinda. the soundfile was way longer than a frame (didn't cut it down yet). so when the game gets paused, it keeps play. now unpause the game and the (same) sound from the other frame starts on top of the first.

now tell me how i can delete this post to spare me some embarassement

How can I set the view of an object at the end of a dialog? The simple workarounds I tried don't work.

Here's the situation. When the player opens a door a dialog starts right away. Once the dialog is done, the door should close again.
I set the view for the open door in the oDoor_Interact(). dMail1 starts. Now if I change the view back to the closed door inside the oDoor_Interact it won't wait for the dialog to be done, but changes right away (obvious). I was hoping Wait(1) would do the trick, but as you probably already know it didn't.

If I put the oDoor.Setview into the dialog it tells me it's an "Undefined token" (makes sense).

Is there a simple way to pause the interact function when a dialog starts? Or to address the object from inside a dialog?
One workaround I could think of is creating a global variable and use it in the RepExec of the room to set the view.

(while I have not much programming/scripting experience, I kinda don't like the idea to use RepExec if it's avoidable. Feels strange to have a piece of code basically flodding over the game all the time).

Without getting too much into details about the game I'm working on, I present you the font I developed for it. While in the game it's dozens of pixels high (due to the graphic style I'm using), it's basically a pixelfont working with a height of 4 units (and max. 4 units wide).

Would love to get some input and suggestions to improve it.
The characters I'm very unhappy with are '8' and the comma (hard to make a comma without going under the baseline), while I kinda accepted 'M' and 'W' weird look.

I'll post 2 pictures of it (actually 8 pixel high … I know it's kinda ridiculous to expect anyone to read it without ruining their eyes )

the 2nd picture shows punctuation and alternatives to some glyphs.

[imgzoom]http://www.debe.at/44pixelfont/show1.gif[/imgzoom]
[imgzoom]http://www.debe.at/44pixelfont/show2.gif[/imgzoom]

Being new to AGS I jumped right into it and am working on my first game for some weeks now (… and enjoying every second of it).
While I try to find out as much as possible myself (I know how annoying beginners questions can be and most answers can be found in manual/forum), I hit a dead end when it comes to this. I realize this is probably a ridiculous question, I'm missing one the most obvious basics and feel kinda ashamed of having to ask.

As most of my graphics only outline the objects (so lots of transparent areas), I'm working with hotspots to interact with objects. While that seemed like a good idea, I can't get around this problem:

I can only interact with the hotspot where the graphic of the object isn't overlapping it. Let's take a door as example. I have the outline of the door as graphic, the hotspot covers the whole door. Now I can not click on those pixels occupied by the graphic (i.e. the doorframe or knob).

object.Clickable = false didn't change anything. I tried to change the objects baseline, hoping it would move it behind the hotspot. Didn't help.
A solution that would work is to apply the same code to the hotspot and object seperately … but that seems a bit complicated to do on hundreds of objects.


p.s. a general question if anyone cares to answer: I'm working a lot with objects, even where I could simply make them part of the background (as 'look at' is the only possible interaction). Should I avoid doing that (one 'problem' I can see being the game size becoming unnecessary big)?