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Before you start reading:

This presentation is a speech held before an imaginary audience, most likely formed of people like myself. It's probably verbose and I may have been crossing, now and then, some of the socializing boundaries you are familiar with. I hope that getting over such inconveniences will not seem difficult... My intention was to make everyone feel comfortable. If there will be comments to answer to, I will try to adapt to the style chosen by each of you. Thank you.

_/ _

Welcome to Sleeping Beauty's Chat Lounge! On your way to finding a good seat, please take a copy of this presentation to use as a cushion. Either to make your playing experience more comfortable, or to start a pillow fight - there are, perhaps, enough good and less-so points to Sleeping Beauty to expect any mood - the presentation proposes to be faithfully stuffed with notes on all the game aspects that you may want remembered. It had to be small also (if it feels long, just fold it, okay?), since the Lounge is, first of all, a place where I hope to enjoy your conversation. So do let likes and dislikes be known, and, maybe, if it inspires you in any way

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With a small game world, only 4 screens wide, Sleeping Beauty features both realistic and fantastical woods-related elements, which occasion a total of 20 challenges. It's up to you which of them you take the main character through, as you give shape to what might be called the development of the narrative.

Sleeping Beauty is the tale of a guy who takes his girlfriend to see a gorgeous mountain scenery that he remembers back from childhood. They traveled by night, as their plan was to be at the special place at sunrise. Their car was left at the base of a mountain trail and, as she was asleep, the main character decided to carry her in his arms to the destination. But his journey proved to be much longer than he expected, as the once familiar signs kept failing to lead him correctly. And the game starts from here. As in a dream, he encounters characters, and other local elements, which belong to the world of childhood fantasy and express the magical approach to life from back then. It is an ease of being he can't relate to anymore, and this is the cause of all the failures suffered throughout his wondering. That being said, you should know that you aren't supposed to succeed at the challenges I hope this won't be a cause for annoyance to anyone - in depth, the situation reflects the shortcomings of being human, at having to face the demands of life in the usual absence of (good) inspiration. In any case, you can look forward to the ending sweetening things a bit  

Some challenges take place at NPCs; I called them "static". The game is designed to end after you complete 5 of these; and there is only one ending, which can take place in any of the 4 playgrounds. I have chosen the encounter with the Old Man - the first character you meet in the game - for the first screenshots, meant to illustrate aspects of static challenges.






As you can see, the static challenges are based on (predefined) dialog, the course of which is, now and then, influenced by your choices; or that is attempted, in any case. You are offered each time 3 options, described through images; the options are, of course, based on what has been said until that point of the challenge, as well as on the main character's background and personality. You will find the main character's approach placing him into one of these situations: mentally detached, manipulative, unsuccessfully creative and playing along, while unprepared. Often, your character's words are accompanied by animations; at the Old Man, these depict smoke taking various shapes. One aspect you may have to get used to is seeing the character's speech and other pieces of text drawn right on the background.

Other challenges consist in passing through obstacles which you come across, as you follow the winding trail through the woods; I called these challenges "dynamic". They have no influence on the course (or, rather, the duration) of the game. I have chosen the encounter with the Stars' Rays for the next screenshots, meant to illustrate aspects of dynamic challenges; these may bring back some memories to those who witnessed the birth of Sleeping Beauty (It was the spring of 2015...)





The dynamic challenges represent action sequences where you are given, now and then, a short time to choose the foot your character will step with next (which sometimes gives his direction); as you try to avoid being touched/hit by the moving obstacles. After that short time, a choice is randomly made for you. As you can see, the interface here is described through an image of a mouse device - to the main buttons of which, the two feet of your character are associated. Collision may cause him to stop, or stumble and there is an echo in the lady's radiance.

You can tell which elements of the scenery you can interact with from the description you get when moving the cursor over them; your character has to be close enough to clearly see what you're pointing at, of course. The next screenshots illustrate this; again with reference to the Stars.




With a last screenshot, I take you back to the Old Man's to show the cursor having changed shape at [4] a point of exit from the screen/playfield. (The "hand" became "footprints".)



You shouldn't be looking for an inventory, because in Sleeping Beauty no items are used. Your character's arms are busy carrying his lady, throughout the game. There are no puzzles to speak of, either, not in the usual sense. One of the gameplay goals, from the beginning, was to make the player's involvement optional; the game as less demanding on the player as possible. And Sleeping Beauty grew in the direction of offering an experience of sitting with things, rather than of matching skills against. I often felt, while working at it, that I was building a music box, the melody of which was made of the different flavors of the interactions.

Throughout this presentation, as well as in the manual which comes with the game, I kept referring to the main character as to a he, separate from the lady carried in his arms. And they are separate, as far as the gameplay and the development of the narrative are concerned. But as mentioned in a reply to a compliment received back in the time of Sleeping Beauty's inception, they are, actually, one being; the human being, in general. I just threw this in as a hint for those who would like to reach for a deeper meaning to their experience with the game. And I will say no more on such lines at this time - not to sound mysterious, but because Sleeping Beauty was meant to be enjoyable (or acceptable) even without going into deep thinking

One thing about the main character everyone will probably have some difficulty with (I have to adapt to that each time...) is that he moves quite slowly; out-of-sync with the world around, often. This is one point where I was forced to put my priorities in order. And so I took my chances and let this bit of extra weight on the player's shoulders, so that the idea of the main character - and with it, his naturalness - would not get hurt; having him speed around just didn't seem to work... For more on this, please take some time to browse the game's short manual ("Stuff.txt"). You may also want to look in there for a few other references against which to check your impressions about the game

Here, at the end of the presentation, I call your attention to the audible side of the game. Other than one melody, played now and then, there is no other use of sound; and I believe the way text is used in the game will probably also make you think that (more) sound would have made following what goes on difficult ...Voices would have been nice though... About the melody: it was chosen to reflect the course of the main character's quest, and, with that, his inner state; it should make itself heard after the main character was idle for a while, outside of challenges.

I close by expressing the wish that you'll have a good time discovering Sleeping Beauty, and that it will succeed in becoming a pleasant memory.

st.

I'm trying to have an object animated continuously using a view with loops set to run one after the other.

After the animation runs through all the loops I get this:

An error has occurred. Please contact the game author for support, as this is likely to be a scripting error and not a bug in AGS. (ACI version 3.21.1115)

Error: Last loop in a view requested to move to next loop

The view contains 8 loops, each with 16 frames.
In the view editor all "Run the next loop after this to make a long animation" boxes (for the first 7 loops) are checked.

The animation is set to start in room_FirstLoad and room_Load; thus only once after the room is entered. The use of both room functions has to do with implementing different scenes using a single room. The error is not related to changing the room/scene; without any commands from the user, after the animation runs through all the loops - I get the error.

The code used to start the animation is this:

Code: ags

        objectName.SetPosition(object_x, object_y);
        objectName.SetView(object_view);
        objectName.Animate(0, 10, eRepeat, eNoBlock, eForwards);

where
object_x, object_y and object_view have been predefined using room constants and static variables; the animation runs as expected until reaching the end of the last loop.

Please advise

It's this new game I made. Here is the Database link.
There is no CGA page. I'm writting here instead, just to announce it and to Thank those among You who made v3.2 possible and who are involved in maintenance work for the Database and Forum pages that I have occupied.
To anyone who will play the game: I hope you will enjoy it!

The content of my AGS Tutorial was met with disapproval by an authority in the field. Since no second opinion of equal weight was available, I removed the Tutorial from the Internet.

I saw that the subject was previously discussed and how the
issue was addressed in other AGS games. Everyone seems to have a
personal version of addressing the matter. To me it makes sense
that there should be only one way of licensing the game, to avoid
confusion. After all, AGS is about making it easy to create a game.
I will write here what I could think of, so that even yes-or-no
answers would be sufficient; of course, a no without a short
explanation would just send me back in the dark.

1) The game EXE already contains the AGS Copyright information in
   the Properties, Version tab.

2) Concerning the fact that the game is freeware, I would include 
   in the Main Menu GUI( or in the Credits ? )the following line:
   
   PUBLISHED UNDER THE GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

3) There will be a folder called Licenses containing the following
   files:

   - a part of the GNU General Public License according to what
     applies to my game
   - a similar part of the AGS License
   - others, according to what 3rd party software I used for the game
   
My game will probably never reach a great audience but the idea,
as I understood, is to protect anyone who might be tricked into
paying for it.

I apologize in advance in case the post is misplaced.

At the time when the game was released, I did not anticipate that going through the game would prove to be problematic for the player. One of the brave souls that was first to pass the unappealing screenshots and game description pointed out certain aspects that could reduce the enjoyment of the player. Our dialog, that can be found in another post, shows a rather hot-headed approach in defending the quality of my game. Well, it was the first time I showed something I did to a complete stranger, and my first game - no less. Given the nature of the situation, you can see that I used more words than necessary and often went outside the track. In the cool off following this first contact I have decided that it wasn't fair to try a player's patience and well intentions to any great extent. And as I may not always be here to welcome other adventurers in a more composed manner, I will leave instead this short play-companion that you may refere to whenever you get "stuck in the can".

- what was previously published below the last line above is currently written in the Readme.txt file found in the game archive -

[DOWNLOAD]

The Can

DOWNLOAD:
The AGS database page of the game is
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1689/

SIZE:
The size of the archive is 23.5 Mb.
The size of the game folder is 69 Mb, without any saved games.
During play, with saved games, the size may rise to ~100 Mb.

GENRE:
An interactive story told in Adventure Game style.
It may not develop in the way you expect an Adventure Game to develop.
If this takes it out of the AG category or not I couldn't say.

IDEA:

The game tells the story of a robot that is abandoned by his
human owner and is taken in custody by the workers at an
abandoned-machines-processing-facility - the Bot Pound.

This is not SF. It is a work of Realism in which some elements
of fantasy - like the robot character - are used as metaphors
for human experiences.

The central idea of the game is the psychological evolution of
the main character. Thus, rather than making him participate to a
series of comical or tense happenings designed to keep you, the
player, entertained, the game is designed to allow you to
participate to the main character's transformation.

However, this is not pretentious stuff. I tried to keep the story simple,
approachable. Also, about half of the game or more involves usual
Adventure-Games-action. The focus during that part is on doing and
the talking and thinking are accordingly reduced.

SCREENSHOTS:



The use of grey and the generally dark scenes are according to the story.

[THE GAME IS RELEASED]

THE GAME IS RELEASED
(Click the link above to visit the Completed Games Thread)

PLOT:

The game tells the story of a robot that is abandoned by his
human owner and is taken in custody by the workers at an
abandoned-machines-processing-facility - the Bot Pound.

This is not SF. It is a work of Realism in which some elements
of fantasy - like the robot character - are used as metaphors
for human experiences.

The central idea of the game is the psychological evolution of
the main character. Thus, rather than making him participate to a
series of comical or tense happenings designed to keep you, the
player, entertained, the game is designed to allow you to
participate to the main character's transformation.

However, this is not pretentious stuff. I tried to keep the story simple,
approachable. Also, about half of the game or more involves usual
Adventure-Games-action. The focus during that part is on doing and
the talking and thinking are accordingly reduced.

SCREENSHOTS:



The use of grey and the generally dark scenes are according to the story.



STATUS:

I am writing the ending for the game.
Then comes the "finishing touches" phase, including
testing.
I anticipate that the game will be released until the
end of May, this year.