Topics

Welp, it finally happened.  My computer got so buggy from all the weird junk I installed on it that it blue-screened and refused to come back up.  I finally gave up and just restored the entire hard drive back to factory default...fortunately I'd backed up most of my important stuff, but I don't even know how much I lost in the process, a lot of it my old Game Making files.

Blah...oh well.  At least my computer is finally running a bit more smoothly.

This is a neat concept...really limited what you can do with the movies you make, but still pretty good.  Check out my first vid, Ninja Candy!

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch?e=20090203091054972#

Hey all!  I didn't think this belonged in the tech forum since it's non-AGS...

I just started learning HTML a couple weeks ago, and am 75% through building a website for the Strange Visitor team.  I'm having a problem with my menu's mouse rollover images, though.  The buttons change color when the mouse moves over them, and changes back if you move away.  But if you click the button to change to another page, then hit your brower's Back button, the menu button is still color-changed when you return, until you wipe the mouse over it again.  Does anyone know how I can fix this?

Code: ags

<div id="wb_RollOver2" style="position:absolute;left:80px;top:240px;width:79px;height:78px;z-index:2" align="left">
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
RollOver2 = new Image();
RollOver2.src = "http://www.strange-visitor.com/images/GamesRoll.png";
//-->
</script>
<a href="http://www.strange-visitor.com/games">
<img src="http://www.strange-visitor.com/images/Games.png" id="RollOver2" width="79" height="78" alt="" title="" border="0" 
onMouseOver="this.src='http://www.strange-visitor.com/images/GamesRoll.png'" onMouseOut="this.src='http://www.strange-visitor.com/images/Games.png'">
</a>
</div>

Thanks in advance!

I just played this game all the way through yesterday, and it's so freaking fun and addictive.  After beating all the levels, I spent half an hour just setting up this one shot from the very first level: 



(The five red circles at the bottom are the apples from the tree.)

I also found out that if you overlap many shapes on one hinge, they go crazy and start spinning all over the place.  Makes for some unusual puzzle solutions.

Hey all!  I'm learning to use Illustrator CS2, and to practice I tried making a cityscape in the style of a Powerpuff Girls "City of Townsville!" background.   I'm curious what you all think of the style, colors and composition...I'm not really good at laying out backgrounds on my own, so any advice is welcome.  Thanks!



If anyone wants to mess with the original AI file:
http://files.filefront.com/CityScapeai/;11968889;/fileinfo.html

Damsel: Chapter One, by Strange Visitor Productions!

Poor Damsel...her life was so perfect back at the castle, riding her pony, brushing her hair and visiting the spa.  But now her royal princessliness has been kidnapped by the quasi-evil, fat little middle aged wizard Dorkus, and trapped high in a tower with no doors!  She's held out as long as she can, but if she doesn't escape tonight, Dorkus will force her to marry him!  What's a girl in distress to do?

Well, wait for rescue, obviously.  But when rescues go wrong, Damsels must do it for themselves!



Damsel is a short two-room comedy adventure game that took us about a month to make.  It comes in two versions, with voice and without.  The voice version (56 MB) can be downloaded from the main link, and without (13.6 MB) from the mirror link.  We recommend the voice version, as we had some really talented performers.   It also has a built-in hint system for the terminally perplexed, just look for the Question Mark on the in-game menu.

Download Damsel here!

Our Talented Team:

Strange Visitor - Writing, Programming, Minor Animations and Various Hooplas
Pijin Pastrana - Background and Character Art, Major Animations
TwinMoon - Beautiful Music and Beta Testing
Windpiper - Voice Acting and Beta Testing
ElaineMc - Voice Acting and Beta Testing
Jesse Cox - Voice Acting and Beta Testing
MashPotato - Beta Testing
Jared Banta - Beta Testing

Thank you so much to everyone who helped make this game happen, especially to our super-awesome voice actor and actresses, the helpful forum folks and our eagle-eyed beta testers without whom I would be quite embarrassed.   We'd love to hear from anybody, praise, critique, questions, anything.  Damsel will eventually be turned into a series of short chapter games, so keep an eye out for our erstwhile heroine!

Thanks for playing, and enjoy!

Is it possible to change the game's color depth from 32 bit to 16 bit during the game?  The 32 bit setting is making my music skip during room changes, but I've got a few antialiased sprites right at the beginning that get messed up if I set it to 16 beforehand.

Hey all...I've got a problem with the SayBackground command and using voice speech together.  There's a character in the background who says things at random times, and I want the game to go on while it's talking, but stop the background text and voice speech if the main character starts talking.

I already found out that voice speech files won't play for SayBackground, and so I tried to compensate by just converting them to sound files instead, and using PlaySound right before the SB command.

The problem now is, that while my main character Say-ing anything does remove SayBackground text, the sound file of the bg character talking will keep playing anyways.

Also, sometimes the text hangs around a lot longer than the voice.  I tried setting it so that when the sound finished playing, it changes game.text_speed to a superhigh number to make the text instantly disappear, and then changing it immediately back to the game's regular text speed.  But apparently SayBackground ignores game text speed too?

Can anyone think of a good workaround for this, or tell me what I'm doing wrong?  Thanks!

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but here goes anyway!

Yesterday I recorded 240 lines of speech with the main voice actress for my game, Damsel.  I use a $20 mike from Walmart that has pretty good clarity, Audacity to record it, and exported all the files as OGGs.

They came out really soft volume-wise, so as a test I used Audacity to give a few of them a +27 decibel gain, so they can be heard clearly over the background music.  And I trimmed off the unnecessary silences at each end.

I plugged in those few files, and in-game they all tend to make a slight popping noise at the start and finish, and the background music goes more quiet.  It's like they're forcing themselves in over the music.  Whereas when I listen to other AGS games with speech (Jessica Plunkenstein, for instance), the voices just lay smoothly over the music, with no pops at either end.

For instance, this is the original recording:
http://www.box.net/shared/re4kp3my8s

And then with the volume up and the ends trimmed:
http://www.box.net/shared/c16m9fqqil

Is there any way to edit these to make them lay smoothly?  Or is it already too late, thanks to my cheap mike or recording too softly?  Any help is appreciated, I'm a sound editing newbie!   Thanks!

Damsel: Chapter One, by Strange Visitor Productions!

RELEASED!  http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=1083

Poor Damsel...her life was so perfect back at the castle, riding her pony, brushing her hair and visiting the spa.  But now her royal princessliness has been kidnapped by the quasi-evil, fat little middle aged wizard Dorkus, and trapped high in a tower with no doors!  She's held out as long as she can, but if she doesn't escape tonight, Dorkus will force her to marry him!  What's a girl in distress to do?

Well, wait for rescue, obviously.  But when rescues go wrong, Damsels must do it for themselves!

Damsel and Dorkus


Prince Farthing the Overzealous


Damsel is a short two-ish room game we're making as a momentary break from working exhaustively on Q2EAQ.  And joy, this one will be done in about 2-3 weeks!  :o  The scripting and main game will be completely done this week, we just want to add a lot more animation to it to make it funnier and all snazzy.  We're also eventually planning to turn this into a series of short games!

(Now forming the unified banner of Strange Visitor Productions:)
Strange Visitor - Writing, Scripting, Animation
Pijin - Background and Character Art, Animation
TwinMoon - Music!
(Oh, uh, TwinMoon isn't officially "bannered" with us, but is always welcome )

Story - 100%
Characters - 100%
Scripting - 100%
Animation - 100%
Music - 100%
Voice Recording - 100%

Hey y'all...I'm working on a custom Iconbar/Inventory popdown GUI, where the inventory is displayed as part of the iconbar menu.  It shows three items at a time, scrollable up and down to see more.  The problem is:

- When an item in the very bottom slot disappears from a LoseInventory command, it leaves an empty slot in its place when you come back to the inventory. 
- If you click upwards, the empty slot disappears and the inventory goes back to normal. 
- It happens again the next time you LoseInventory on the bottom slot. 
- This doesn't happen with any other slots.  Any idea what's going on and how to fix it?

If it helps at all, here's a previous thread where I asked for help with coding the GUI in the first place: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=34559.msg451738#msg451738

Thanks!

I just started playing Broken Sword 1 for the first time.  I'm totally in awe of the graphics and animations, I mean, fantastic!  But the plot and the gameplay...ugh!  I've gotten as far as the reporter girl's apartment after finding the nose and the tailor's number, and I am getting so freaking bored from standing and talking to every character for ten minutes.  None of the thumbs up/down choices seem to really affect anything in the long run, I restored and went back and tried different choices, nothing.  And it's not like you even need to participate in the dialogues...if you just exhaust the possibilities all the way through, you end up where you need to be anyways.

Not to mention how unrealistic it all is...everybody's all like, oh, the cafe blew up?  How terrible.  Welp, on with my day.  The police especially, who don't care about potential clues, who let people wander in and out of the crime scene, no crowd has gathered outside the cafe, it's just really, really farfetched even for an adventure game.

Is it just me?  Does anybody else not like it?  Will it get better and adventurous later in the game?  Please give me hope!

Hey all!  We're making a big GUI that includes the inventory displayed as part of the Iconbar GUI.  It's set to pop up on mouse position like most iconbar GUIs, has the walk/look/etc buttons across the top, then has three inventory items displayed at a time, with the usual inventory arrows to scroll through your other items.

The problem is, when set to Mouse Ypos popup, it makes the whole GUI disappear if you click the arrows or items.  If I set it to Popup Modal, it stays, but you'd have to click an extra button just to close the GUI, I think, after you select an item or cursor.

So is there any way to make it pop up on Mouse Ypos, then stay on screen while you do inventory stuff, but disappear again once you move the mouse back down, so you don't have to click something extra to close it?

If it's cool with everyone, since Blue said he'd pass it on if anybody came up with an idea, I thought I'd try to start a new one?

Rules:

A sprite is supplied, with a theme.
Participants must use the given sprite for their animation
Each competition will last 11 days
The starter of each competition will decide on the winner.
The winner, who will decide on the next competition's theme, must also supply a sprite.

Theme: Kill the Bunny



Awwww...isn't the bunny cute?  Too bad it's his time to die.  Kill the bunny any way you like, any size, colors, backgrounds are permissible.  Bonus points if you can make him die in a particularly heartrendingly cute way.

The competition ends on April 17th!  There will be trophies!

[Circe, Semi-Retired Witch]

UPDATE 10/07/08:  Hey everybody!  We're back in full swing on Q2EAQ after the successful release of Damsel, and we've got a couple new little tidbits to titillate you, plus an update on our overall progress and a request for assistance!

We're at just about 60% completely finished backgrounds, with the rest medium-drafted...I know it seems lower than our previous progress, but after the positive response before, we expanded the game with a few more rooms, characters and puzzles that add to the plot and make it even more fun.   The scripting's progressed pretty far too, all the many, many room responses are completely done, and we're at about 60% with the dialogues and in-game events.  We're looking at probably another...6?  Months?  Maybe?  We hope?  Before release.

Our composer Jaroban is coming up with a *spectacular* musical score for the game, here's a short sample:
Tell me this doesn't make you want to grab a sword and run over plains in slow motion!

We're also looking for a character animator to help us handle the large quantity of animations in our game...if you're handy with pixellated (and very detailed) art, and want to learn more, you can get all the info here: Search for an Animator!

Here's a couple more finished screens:

Circe, Semi-Retired Witch


Pinky the Elephant in her natural habitat:


And it's official, we're definitely going to be casting voice actors for the game a few months before release, so keep your throats warmed up!

Thanks for taking a look, we'll keep you posted!



Original Thread:

Strange Visitor Productions and PPA Entertainment are proud to present...

Quest to End All Quests!

Balder!  Hero of a thousand adventures!  Well, actually seventy-two adventures, but still!  Balder has spent his whole life as a barbarian hero, going on one Quest after another, rescuing lost treasures, saving scantily clad princesses and defeating evil monsters and wizards.  And what does he have to show for it?

Arthritis, a bald head and a lot of scars.  Who wouldn't be tired of solving other peoples' problems all the time?  And now that he's old and wants to put his feet up and enjoy his elderly years, dang if people aren't *still* pounding his door down day and night with more quests!

Well, enough is enough.  Balder is going on one last Quest to find out what higher power is dragging him into these messes over and over, and put a stop to it.  What happens when heroes get old?  What happens when monsters lose their teeth and the villains sell out?  Find out, in a Quest of existential enlightenment, a Quest of naked leather-clad muscle power...

...a Quest to End All Quests!







Conceived in the Shower, Written, and Scripted by: Strange Visitor
Magnificently Arted, Charactered and Animated by: Pijin
Melodically Composed by: Jaroban
Fancily Special Art Moments by: MashPotato

Backgrounds: 60%  (All medium drafted, and 50% final drafted!)
Story, Puzzles and Hoopla: 100%  (No making it up at the last moment for *us*!)
Characters: 50%  (Balder seems to only be wearing 10%.  Barbarians.)
Scripting and Writing: 70%  (There's always room for more jokes!)
Music: 40%

Estimated Release Date: Early 2009-ish

This project has been tons of fun to work on so far, and we really can't wait to get it out there.  It's been in production since November 2007.  Once everything's 100% complete we'll be looking into voice actors for it as well.  We'll keep you posted!

Eensy Update:  In response to the posts on here and a bunch of messages I've gotten, I wanted to tell you...believe it or not, Pijin did all that artwork on *Microsoft Paint*, using only his mouse.  *gasp!*    I originally did the art to look like KQ1-3-ish, and the original 16-color blocky bg's and chars will be released as an extra.  But Pijin's work was so freaking impressive that the game grew larger and got more characters and puzzles just to keep up!  He's busting himself hours every night doing all those amazing details.

A quick example of just how far he's improved over my old artwork:   :o



Also, yes, I'm a huge Pratchett fan, although I swear I wasn't trying to rip off Cohen.  He started as a really old looking parody of King Graham.  It wasn't until I'd changed his original character and went, "Hey!  It's so much easier to make him a little old man in a posing pouch!"  that I realized he looked like Cohen.  Plus, there are going to  be moments in the game when you'll hear a "glingleglingleglingle", which started as a coincidence, but is now an homage.

And yes, the shortened nickname for the game is Q2EAQ, which we pronounce "Q-tweak".

Weensy Update:  Really, I swear, other than his accidental resemblance (how many ways can you draw an elderly barbarian?) and the old-hero theme, this game will be nothing at all like The Last Hero.   For all those who asked:   



And yes, we will probably release a demo a couple months before the finished product.

Hi all...I'm in a pickle over this, it's for a project due tomorrow.   I need to have five textboxes on the screen at once, and the cursor to start in the first one.  When the player types in their first word and hits enter, it'll advance to the next box and let them type in their next answer, and so on down.  Each answer has to stay visible in the box in the meantime.

I already hid the real text boxes off screen, and used the Repeatedly Execute so they would update corresponding labels on the screen.  I tried using the Visible command to make each text box turn off and turn on the next one when an answer was keyed in, but it doesn't do anything.  The first box just sits there.  Am I using the wrong command?  Thanks!

Hey all...I've read the manual and searched the threads and experimented, and I'm still lost.    I'm trying to display two GUIs, to continuously show two player scores on the screen, for a game show.  For example, I've tried using this:

    int scorered = (scorered + 18);
    rscore.Text = String.Format("%d", scorered);

To add 18 points to the Red Team's score.  The GUI text does change to 18.  But then if I repeat the command to add another say, 44 points, it just changes it to 44, instead of adding them together to make 62.  Is the String.Format command just resetting it to the new value every time?

How can I make both scores show continuously in their GUI windows, and then be able to add points to either depending on who answers the question correctly?  Please help, I've been tearing my hair out over this for five hours now.

Hey all...I just read Ashen's posts about making a GUI with a transparent area on it, and causing a second GUI to pop up simultaneously behind it, which allows you to display smooth, alpha-channeled inventory sprites in the current inventory item window on the Iconbar:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=26847.0

I just tried this myself, since my game is 32 bit with alpha channels on almost everything...I got it to *pretty* much work, so when the Iconbar menu pops down, it shows smoothly alpha-channelled sprites in the current inventory item window. 

However, since the two GUIs are set to pop up depending on mouse position (y-position of 8 in my game), the background one will disappear once I move the mouse down, even though the main one is still there.  Then they'll flip back and forth between each other if you keep moving the mouse back up to the top of the screen.

Is there any way to make both these GUIS move together as a team, appearing and disappearing only at the same time?  And still do it as a mouse-position popup?  I just tried it again, setting it as Popup Modal, and it works perfectly that way, but I'd really like it as mouse position.  Thanks!

Here's my main GUI window:



And here's the background one that goes behind it, filling the window in the middle:



I suppose the second one could be smaller, but I didn't feel like lining up just the window with the hole.

Hello all!  I'm stumped...I'm trying to rework my Iconbar GUI so that when the mouse moves over the buttons for Walk, Look, Save, etc., a box in the middle of the GUI displays the name of that button.  (Although I want the display box to say things like STRIDE, MEDDLE, OGLE and so on instead of Walk, Touch, Look.)  How can I go about this?  Thanks!

Hey all!  I've been tweaking and tweaking this walk cycle, and it just looks so screwed up to me.  It looks like the legs are jerking and the feet just aren't moving right, but every time I try to improve it, it just seems to make things worse.  :o

And please forgive the horrid GIF animation...I can't figure out how to export it from Jasc Animation Shop, Flash 8, Moho or any other animation program that doesn't screw up the clarity and alpha channel.  It's crystal-clear in-game.  I included a zip file with the original Paint Shop Pro 7 vectors and transparent PNGs for each file in case anyone wants to try to improve it, which I would greatly appreciate.

Any thoughts/ideas/help?  Please??

Original Art Files Here