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[Jess Morrissette]

Stair Quest

The realm of Castle's Wood is in despair.
As famine, war, disease, and natural disaster wreck havoc upon the land, good King Jonathan seeks the council of a wise old Soothsayer.
"Seek ye out the Orb of Stars," she tells King Jonathan.
Says the King, "The Orb of Stars is but a legend!"
The Soothsayer replies with a sly grin, "Even in legend may one find the truth, m'lord."
So, King Jonathan dispatches his bravest knight, Sir Devon, to quest for the legendary Orb of Stars. Little does he know his own daughter, Princess Ingrid, has also set out in search of the legendary relic...

Stair Quest is a retro adventure game that pays homage to the most enchanting, pulse-pounding moments from the early King's Quest games.

Features:

• Gorgeous EGA graphics inspired by classic Sierra On-Line adventure games like King's Quest and The Black Cauldron!
• An innovative text parser that recognizes literally thousands of commands!
• Multiple protagonists! Choose to play as either the brave Sir Devon or the daring Princess Ingrid.
• An original 8-bit soundtrack so good it could pass as a 9-bit soundtrack!
• An old-school instruction manual filled with Stair Quest lore and important tips for success! So authentic, it could have been written by Roberta Williams herself. (It wasn't.)

Download for free at Game Jolt
Mirror: http://www.nomorefortoday.com/stairquest

Made in two weeks for AdventureJam 2016 by:

• Jess Morrissette (@decafjedi) - Concept
• Chris Ushko (@chrisushko) - Graphics
• Kevin Wallace (@wilcoweb) - Graphics
• Frederik Olsen (@frederik_olsen) - Music
• P.C. Johnston (@pcjtulsa) - Programming
• Gareth Millward (@MillieQED) - Writing
• Troels Pleimert (@SQHistorian) - Writing

I'm on a team that's currently working on a project and we are looking for a good solution that will help us manage the extensive script and allow for quick iterations to keep what goes in the game with what the VO actors have, as well as any translations. AGS provides decent output in this regard but we would be looking to do this before putting it into AGS... Are there any tools that aid with large scripts and making sure changes are reflected across the board?

I've searched but come up short. Are there any such tools available?

Check out the discussion on Facebook.

It's shaping up to be an awesome time, with several Sierra alumni already planning to attend.

The Two Guys from Andromeda (creators of the original Space Quest series) are re-united and working on a new space adventure game!

See more info at http://guysfromandromeda.com/

After 10 long years, we're pleased to announce the release of the latest Space Quest fangame, Vohaul Strikes Back.

We hope you enjoy playing it.  Please let us know if you have any questions.

On a personal note, I'd like to thank all the VSB developers for sticking through to the end, and all the beta testers for helping us polish the game.

I'm kind of impatient to get this released so I'll stop typing and let you get playing.  Enjoy!

(In case you missed the link above, click here to proceed to our download page.)

Also, be sure to check out our release trailer.

We've been slowly working on VSB on and off for about 9 years now and it's finally entering beta stage.  It's gone through several different iterations but we've come up with something awesome.

If you don't know what VSB is, here's a brief plot intro:

Roger Wilco and Beatrice Wankmeister are in the middle of an important conversation when they are interrupted by an apeman sent by a reincarnation of Vohaul.  Roger soon discovers that he must once again stop Vohaul from destroying the galaxy.

We're looking for a few beta testers to help iron out any last few bugs before release.  We ask for serious testers only, we want to get all the bugs out of the way so everyone can enjoy a bug-free game.  Prior experience with beta testing is a plus.   Please send me a PM if you're interested.

A couple of screenshots:




Any comments/questions are also welcome.  Thank you.

EDIT: We are now full on beta testers but comments are still welcome.

I'm trying to restore the volume level the game was set at when the save file occurred (I wish it happened automatically but it doesn't seem to).  I'm using this code and even though the btnVolume slider returns the correct value it isn't being set to that volume:

Code: ags

function on_event(EventType event, int data) {
  // [...]
  else if (event == eEventRestoreGame) {
    System.Volume = btnVolume.Value;
    SetGameSpeed(btnSpeed.Value);
  }
}

It should work but doesn't... any way to work around?

I am working on a game where there is currently about 100 sound effects (not including music).  We are using the OGG format for audio (and video).  We are currently running into a problem where certain SFX do not play in-game, even though they play fine in the preview window in AGS as well as in other audio players.  Other SFX and all of the background music plays fine.

With some, the SFX are being played through the loop editor (the SFX occurs on a specific frame in the loop) and with others it is being played through script - it seems to make no difference.

The volume on these files is set to 100 (inherited from the SFX type setting) and priority setting is normal (though I've tried high priority) - and there should be nothing else playing.  The AudioClip.Play function returns a non-null value.

Any ideas?

I'm trying to do voices with SayBackground, and I was wondering if maybe I had a setting wrong or something, but is there any way to have voices with SayBackground (besides PlaySound)?

My game is divided into sections, each of which is numbered in the 100's.  So, for example, the Intro is rooms 100-108, the next section is rooms 201-214, and so on.  The idea behind this is we can add rooms to a particular section without having to renumber all following sections.

To be able to keep track of which room is which in AGS, I've simply numbered the rooms as indicated above.  The sections obviously number above 3, and while I don't really have 300 rooms, on sections 3 and above, it shows that it will be non-state-saving.

Is this going to be a problem?  Should I find some other way to number my rooms in AGS?

I'm trying to position a character next to an object correctly, and walk him in from outside the screen with:

Code: ags

cSp1.Walk(110, 145, eNoBlock, eAnywhere);

Which gives me something like this.

So I modify the code, gradually subtracting from the X-coordinate one point at a time, with nothing changing, until I make it

Code: ags

cSp1.Walk(105, 145, eNoBlock, eAnywhere);

Making him jump to this.

Am I missing something?

_{edit by scorpiorus to specialize topic name since the problem has been tracked down}

I didn't see anything about this in the forums or even a mention of it in the System limits section of the manual, but the length of the Game name field seems to be a pretty arbitrary limit (one which I need to be a bit longer), so I was wondering if there were a way to make it longer, i.e., in the global script, or if I should just wait for 2.8.

Thanks.

I've been trying to get http://www.sqvsb.com/upload/mallardconsole.v3.jpg to work in AGS.  I need to use that room background with a moving space scene where the "green screen" is.  I've been told to make the picture a sprite and play it over the video, but that doesn't work because PlayVideo pauses the game (and of course, I need movement in the foreground, as well).  Naturally, using a simple animated background won't work either, because that'd be 5 frames max.

Is there any way, short of getting http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=411 implemented, to do this?

I received the following exception:

---------------------------
Illegal exception
---------------------------
An exception 0xC0000005 occured in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x0044D1FE ; program pointer is -42, ACI version 2.61.747, gtags (2039,36)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and notify CJ on the Tech forum.

(Global script line 108)

Line 108 is the last line of this function:

Code: ags

function Now(int type){ // Returns the current time/day/date/year by the computer clock.
if (type == 1) { // Current year
int Raw_Seconds = GetRawTime(); 
int Raw_Minutes = Raw_Seconds / 60;
int Raw_Hours = Raw_Minutes / 60;
int Raw_Days = Raw_Hours / 24;
int Raw_Years = Raw_Days / (365 + (1/4));
int Year = Raw_Years + 1970;
return Year;
}
else if (type == 2) { // Current time
string TimeNow;
string TimeNow2;
string TimeNow3;
int hour = GetTime(1);
int minute = GetTime(2);
string AMPM;
if (hour > 12) {
hour-=12;
StrCopy(AMPM, "pm");
}
else if (hour == 0) {
hour=12;
StrCopy(AMPM, "am");
}
else { StrCopy(AMPM, "pm"); }
if (minute < 10) StrFormat(TimeNow2, "0%d", minute);
else StrFormat(TimeNow2, "%d", minute);
StrFormat(TimeNow, "%d", hour);
StrCat(TimeNow, ":");
StrCat(TimeNow, TimeNow2);
StrFormat(TimeNow3, " %s", AMPM);
StrCat(TimeNow, TimeNow3);
SetGlobalString(49,TimeNow);
}
else if (type == 3) { // Current date
int month = GetTime(5);
int day = GetTime(4);
string date1;
string date2;
string date3;
StrFormat(date1, "%d-", month);
StrFormat(date2, "%d-", day);
StrFormat(date3, "%d", Now(1));
StrCat(date1, date2);
StrCat(date1, date3);
SetGlobalString(49,date1);
}
else if (type == 4) { // Current day (e.g., Monday, Tuesday)
int Year = Now(1) - 2000;
Year += (Year / 4);
int MonthNum;
if (GetTime(5) == 1) MonthNum = 6;
else if (GetTime(5) == 2) MonthNum = 2;
else if (GetTime(5) == 3) MonthNum = 2;
else if (GetTime(5) == 4) MonthNum = 5;
else if (GetTime(5) == 5) MonthNum = 0;
else if (GetTime(5) == 6) MonthNum = 3;
else if (GetTime(5) == 7) MonthNum = 5;
else if (GetTime(5) == 8) MonthNum = 1;
else if (GetTime(5) == 9) MonthNum = 4;
else if (GetTime(5) == 10) MonthNum = 6;
else if (GetTime(5) == 11) MonthNum = 2;
else if (GetTime(5) == 12) MonthNum = 4;
int DayCode = Year + MonthNum + GetTime(4);
if ((Now(1) == 2004 || Now(1) == 2008 || Now(1) == 2012 || Now(1) == 2016 || Now(1) == 2020 || Now(1) == 2024 || Now(1) == 2028 || Now(1) == 2032 || Now(1) == 2036 || Now(1) == 2040 || Now(1) == 2044 || Now(1) == 2048) && (GetTime(5) == 1 || GetTime(5) == 2)) DayCode--;
while (DayCode > 7) {
Ã,  DayCode -= 7;
}
while (DayCode < 1) {
Ã,  DayCode += 7;
Ã,  }
string Day;
if (DayCode == 1) StrCopy(Day, "Monday");
else if (DayCode == 2) StrCopy(Day, "Tuesday");
else if (DayCode == 3) StrCopy(Day, "Wednesday");
else if (DayCode == 4) StrCopy(Day, "Thursday");
else if (DayCode == 5) StrCopy(Day, "Friday");
else if (DayCode == 6) StrCopy(Day, "Saturday");
else if (DayCode == 7) StrCopy(Day, "Sunday");
else StrFormat(Day, "%d", DayCode);
SetGlobalString(49,Day);
}
}

It used to work, and I haven't changed it (besides having to change the return strings to global strings after upgrading to 2.61, which might be the cause).

How do I fix this?Ã,  Thanks in advance.

We've been working on VSB for some time now, getting through creation of background images, sprites, GUIs, sounds, music, cutscenes, dialog, plot, etc., and I'm about to start actual coding (I've been tinkering around with it the whole time, but have been waiting for the plot, dialogues, and everything else to be nearing their finish before really getting into it).

So, here's the basic specs...
32-bit color; 800x600
Sierra-like GUI
MIDI and/or digital (OGG/MP3) music
Speech & text

Our website is at http://www.vohaulstrikesback.com
If you have any questions, feel free to visit our forum, or reply here.

EDIT: Also, here're the two in-game screenshots (which suck and are rather old - they even have the old 3D characters and a lame GUI-but I suppose still count  ):

The first was part of an example for a recommendation to make the sprites smaller to begin with:
http://www.vohaulstrikesback.com/upload/Miscellaneous/pcj/exhibita.png

And the second was to show that there was still a white border around the characters, no longer a problem since AGS now supports alpha transparency (which again shows how old these are):
http://www.vohaulstrikesback.com/upload/Miscellaneous/pcj/exhibitb.png

If other screencaps are needed, I suppose I could get some others going, but I don't want to give the new GUI away too soon otherwise.

Is there any way to add the double data type so we can use decimals in our calculations?

By the way, when a decimal value is left over in a calculation in AGS, does it round up or down?

Thanks.

I'm wanting to combine all my video cutscenes into one simple file (like the VOX files for speech and music).  But I haven't found a way to do this in a format that AGS can read.

I would appreciate any ideas on how to do this.

Oh, and I'm using the PlayVideo function, not FLCs.

Thanks.