Topics

I'm trying to get my inventory window to scroll, but whenever I click a scroll button, the cursor mode is rendered unchangable and I have to quit the game. Oh, and it doesn't work. Here's a diagram:

Displayed area is between *'s
*1 2 3 4 5* 6

I'm trying to change it to...
1 *2 3 4 5 6*

I use...

Code: ags

  else if (button == 5) {
      // scroll down
      game.top_inv_item += 1;
    }
    else if (button == 4){
      // scroll up
      game.top_inv_item -= 1;
    }

in the inventory script, but this code causes the problem to occur. Help!

All my inventory graphics are 52x52 pixels. My game's resolution is 640x480. However, when I try to set the graphic size, none of the items show up! I'm not sure why this happens.

I'd like to make a save/restore GUI where the player can select from a bunch of save slots and the screenshot in their saved game would appear over the saved game name, similar to how Fatman did it. However, I have no idea how to do this. Can someone help me with this?

I've been thinking about making an RTS in AGS. I think it would be very possible, but a big challenge.

Since creating a big scrolling map might be challenging with a player character system, I thought about making a spin-off of the Primordial Soup game from The Time Warp of Dr. Brain, which takes place on a single screen. I think it could be made into a fully fledged game by adding evolution: every few generations of cells, you can choose a new thing to evolve. It could be adding small speed or power enhancements, adding organelles like mitochondria and vacuoles, enabling sexual reproduction which creates a litter of cells rather than one, and even multicellular organisms (which would have more health since they have more cells, and going across food would allow them to heal by performing mitosis, the same way all animals heal).

For those of you who never played Primordial Soup, I'll explain the basic concept. There are two types of cells, green and yellow. You control the green cells, and you must try to eliminate all the yellow cells. Cells eliminate each other by fighting in melee combat, and can get hit a few times before dying. Cells can heal by picking up vitamins, and can perform mitosis (divide) by picking up food.

What do you think of an idea like this?

I'd like my game to perform a different function if the Left and Right mouse buttons are clicked simaltaneously (sp?). I tried:

Code: ags

if ((button==LEFT) && (button == RIGHT)) {
//lrmb code
}

Which didn't work. It also failed when I tried putting it inside the Left mouse button code. Is there any way to do this successfully?

I've been using many conditionals in the interaction editor, but when I've put in a whole series of actions and realize I want them under a conditional, it's a pain to create them all again. A way to either add a parent conditional or move existing actions to a conditional would make game design much easier.

If I've posted this before, don't complain, because the horrible search function can't find it.

I'm sorry if this is in the manual, but if it is, I couldn't find it.

I'd like my game to do something different if you double click on an inventory item rather than single click. I know this has been done in AGS games before (No, I'm not talking about Alien Rape Escape! Okay, fine, I am.), and I'd like to know how.

Please don't tell me to RTFM, because TFM doesn't answer TFQ.

I'm going to be in England in late July, so I was wondering if I'd be able to make it.

I have a couple ideas that I'd like to know some people's opinions of...

My game takes place in the future, so therefore computer programs take place in virtual reality. There is once sequence where the player IMs another character in AIM (I called it NAIM to avoid copyright issues). Since it's in virtual reality, there isn't a white screen but rather the player's avatar speaks to the other character's avatar. I decided to keep the AIM atmosphere and play the appropriate dinging sounds that are sent before each IM while the two characters say their lines. Do you like this idea, or not?

Also, I have an idea for a puzzle. There are multiple solutions to each puzzle, and there are 7 different paths you can go down. The ending of the game depends on how you solve each puzzle. There is one path where you must solve each puzzle in the most difficult possible way. One puzzle can be solved by figuring out what year the game takes place in (I don't tell the player that it's 2019). There is a hint that you can use Moore's Law (Computer technology doubles every 18 months). The player character's computer has a 3.2 THz (terahertz) processor, top of the line at the time. So, the player can use Moore's Law by taking 3.2 THz and the current top of the line CPU speed (right now it's 3.2 GHz, but it will still work no matter what) and making some calculations (3200 GHz / 2 until you get about the current top of the line speed, multiply 18 times the number of times you divided to get the current speed, divide that by 12 and add it to the current year to get 2019) to get the answer. Of course, if they can't figure that out, they can do it another way, but this way brings them closer to seeing the hard ending.

Whatcha think?

I don't really find the Debug Mode console useful, as I cannot directly enter script commands into it. I think if you could do that, it would be a much more useful feature.

I'm interested in using Virtual Theater (Lure of the Temptress, Beneath a Steel Sky) style AI for some characters in my game. However, I'm not quite sure how to script it. Here's an example: the main character has a dog, and I'd like it to behave like one. So, it should do the following:

Choose one of these actions at random:
Go to a region and lie down in it
Follow a character
Pick up a toy, run around with it, and put it down
Walk around aimlessly

I'd like the dog to do these actions for a random amount of time before switching to a different one. I know how I'd script some of the actions (in theory):

Lie down in region: Select one of many regions, walk to it, perform the lie down animation and stay in the final frame.
Follow a character: Self explanatory
Pick up a toy: Go to the location of one of several toy objects, remove it, change the view to the dog with the toy, and then go to one of many regions and put it down there.

However, I don't know how I'd program the dog to walk around aimlessly (it might be told to go to a non-walkable area) or how to make it do actions for a random amount of time. I'd also like it to stop what it's doing if the player tries to interact with it.

Another related question: how do I make some walkable areas and walk-behinds only availible to the dog character?

I've just had almost all data from one of my rooms deleted. The only things that were left were the room variables, the room messages, and the walkable areas. Everything else: hotspots, interactions, regions, background...gone. I don't know how it happened, but I'd like something to be done about it to prevent it.

I think that if it's not too intrusive, it can be done well. However, the early Sierra games did it horribly, which is why I've come to hate it. Not only can you easily die, but if you save after getting stuck, you have to redo the entire game. I was playing the original Police Quest the other day, and died when I got shot in the jail by the car theif. So I reloaded, tried to search him for weapons, and the game lovingly presented me with "You should have thought of that when you had him on his belly!" That's when I stopped playing the game, and I haven't gone back to it since. Some people can tell me "use multiple save slots!!!" I shouldn't be forced to do that in an adventure game. A well-designed adventure game should not allow me to get stuck and have to restart the game.

[EDIT: I fixed the second problem myself...I had the right mouse button, which is used for walking, set to MoveCharacter, not ProcessClick MODE_WALK. I left it there for your amusement.]

I have some room-related questions.

1. I've created a new room. How do I set the location where the player character appears when they enter the room? There are also multiple exits to the room, so I'd like to know how to set it so the player appears in the room at a specific location based on where they entered it.

EDIT: I fixed the second problem myself...I had the right mouse button, which is used for walking, set to MoveCharacter, not ProcessClick MODE_WALK. I left it there for your amusement.

2. I've got a problem with scrolling rooms (I think the creator of 5 Days a Stranger had something like this too, but I'm not sure). My game's resolution is 640x480 and I've imported a 1280x960 room. However, the character doesn't move onto where I click...I have to click somewhere far off to the side of where I want to go to get there. I've used control A and I am clicking on a walkable area, but I don't know why it won't work!

I really can't figure out what to do in this game!!!!

I've noticed the Or (||) operator will trigger an action in an if statement if one or both are true. I think an XOR operator, which would trigger the if statement if one but not both are true, would be very useful in scripting.

I'm completely clueless as to how I should make one. Does anyone know?

FRAPS can't capture movies from AGS, so I was wondering if anyone knew another method. Which program should I use?

I'd like to set my GUIs to grey out when the game is paused. However, I'd like an animation on a GUI to show for a certain amount of time, and the only way I can think of that happening is the Wait command. So I've used...

GUIOn(PORTRAIT);
AnimateButton(PORTRAIT, 0, 7, 0, 0, 0);
WaitMouseKey(80);
GUIOff(PORTRAIT);

The only problem is that WaitMouseKey pauses the game, therefore greying the GUI where the animation is taking place. In the meantime, I've set GUIs to be unchanged when the game is paused, but I'd like them to grey out instead. Is there a way to keep the GUI on for a while without pausing the game?

The game is played from a top-down perspective. This shot is during a conversation with yourself, and includes the main character portrait.

You may notice that Keith (that's the main character's name) has a white border around him. This is an issue with the transparency detection, and I saw it after completing several frames. I'm too lazy to fix it, so I decided I'd center some of the writing around Keith having a white border around him and everyone making fun of him for it. But in your opinion, is the graphical degradation worth the laughs?

Also, since the game has you playing a teenage hardcore gamer who uses a lot of l33tspe4k, do you think that the message on the quit box "Ar3 j00 n0t l33t hax0r en0ugh t0 pl4y?" appropriate?