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"I am once again asking you to turn this boat around."

Something Seeps is a psychological/body/monster horror game that will feature shocking, graphic death scenes and adult storytelling. It is based on the short story I wrote years back called Knee Deep: https://www.wattpad.com/40205418-knee-deep-short-story. As much as I love AGS and it treated me very well for The Knobbly Crook, I've decided to rework Something Seeps in Unity. It's an engine I want to learn, so I am going to use Something Seeps as my learning project.

A father and son must come to terms with their tumultuous history, devastating family loss, and a past that will not stay buried. Memories are slippery, violent things and lying to one's self can be deadly.



I don't have an estimate yet for the length of the game or the release plans, but I'll update as I progress. I do have a full story to tell, expanded significantly from the short story. I also have enough content in mind to do a full horror series, depending on how fast I can create.

I've got everything set up and looking how I want it, and it all seems to work beautifully until I try to use the verb coin on something *outside* the inventory box while it is loaded (then I get a Null Pointer error). Am I missing something obvious here? I have never had a brain that processes code very well, so I get a bit lost in there trying to figure out what's causing it to break.

Here's a video demonstrating the crash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XS5Tg-h_yY&feature=youtu.be

Here's the error: 

I can take pictures of any other section of code, I'm just not sure of what would be useful here.

It's a beginner question because I have not worked with text windows before and I have a little hiccup I can't solve. I've searched for an answer and found a couple that seemed close, but didn't address my problem. As you can see in the screenshot, the text is a little too close to the left side and slightly favoring the bottom. In theory, if the two vertical line borders are the same size (both square) and the corner pins are all the same size (square), what would be throwing it off? The only thing that seems to move the text for me is to add padding, but it's still off-center. The background image is 250x80, as mentioned in the AGS resources.

I've fixed a walkthrough break in the Knobbly Crook, which was as simple as re-enabling a UI once you've exited a room. Since Steam will push an autoupdate once I patch - is there any chance this will not work with people's current save games? I know a lot of people are playing it right now and it would be pretty nasty of me to wipe out all their progress.

A special thanks to the AGS community--you folks rekindled my drive to make indie games and were there to help me do it. I'm already thinking about my next AGS game. 

Download the Complete Knobbly Crook Game (Free!)

Description: Enter the surreal, disturbing, and ridiculous world of the Knobbly Crook in this old-school point and click adventure. O'Sirus the Snip is a simple paper farmer driven to epic adventure by a spooky face with a spookier voice. He will ultimately seek to become a Knobbcrookian royal guardâ€"a Guffaloon. Stories of their heroic battles against the fearsome Bogold empire echo throughout the Crook. Unfortunately, they're not currently recruiting simple paper farmers. He's going to have to use every dirty trick in his book to cheat his way to the top and that means YOU will need to understand the key elements of the Knobbly Crook - Rock, Paper, and Scissors. Creatures of stone crush the metallic Knobbcrookians. The Knobbcrookians herd and farm paper animals. Fearsome stone giants fear tiny paper animals.

Join O'Sirus as he's on trial for all the crimes the two of you have not yet committed. Retell his nonsensical story as his journey begins, finding himself a stowaway on a ship that is half horse, half boat, and half whale. Every moment that passes takes you further from your goal--the Knobbly Crook. It's up to you to torment the Drafthorse's unsuspecting crew in an attempt to alter their course. And then your real quest--to find a quest--begins on the shores of the Knobbly Crook.







The Knobbly Crook now contains the complete misadventure from start to finish.

I now have the full walkthrough done and all the puzzles playable right up until the last little section/ending that I'm currently crafting. Chapter 2 and beyond still need a music and sound pass as well, but I'm close to finishing this whole project. I'd love to have people from the AGS community helping me test this because you have an eye for things I may be doing incorrectly (or ideas on how things might look better). The download is around 500 megs (make sure you get the "Beta Test" file and not the Chapter I file. It's a zip that you'll need to extract. I will include anybody who tests for me in the credits and I'd love to get your general opinions on puzzle difficulty, confusion, etc. Feel free to post any bugs in the Knobbly Crook's Games In Progress thread, PM me, or contact me at gnarledscar@gmail.com .

Knobbly Crook (Full Game - Chapters 1,2,3) Beta v2.0

Thanks!

I'm trying to add a steam pipe/smooshing puzzle that will cause the player to have to time their movement or start at the beginning of the obstacle course again. I haven't tried anything like this yet, so I wanted to get advice from the experts on the easiest way to do it. I've included a video (missing animations) to show the basic skeleton of it with no obstacles added yet. Basically, that little paper guy needs to reach the eye, but there will be moving things in his path. Am I best off using regions that are set on and off, timed with "steam spray" animation changes? If so, how would I set that up in "Repeatedly Execute" without the delays impacting the rest of the room script? Or is this a case of me using a hammer on a screw?

Youtube Goal Example

Thanks!

Yes I'm still posting in beginner because I still consider myself a duct-tape and staples dev when it comes to anything more complex than the basics.

The problem:

I go nuts with tiny details in my backgrounds which makes the text extremely hard to read in some cases. Because my spoken language is gibberish, text comprehension is critical. Changing font and color is not doing it for me because some rooms will contrast well, but others still cause problems. I love the old Lucas style of text above the head and I have set up speech animations on the actual characters instead of the portrait style. I'm wondering if anybody has run into this problem before and how they solved it. My perfect world solution would be having the code always render a 50% transparent black box beneath the text that would shape itself to always fit the shape of the dialog.

I'm considering trying a font with a black block background, but I can see that causing a lot of weird problems in the long run.

Any ideas? Talk to me like I'm a zoo chimp when it comes to coding.

[Project:]

Project:
The Knobbly Crook

Details:
Enter the surreal, disturbing, and ridiculous world of the Knobbly Crook. O'Sirus the Snip is a simple paper farmer driven to epic adventure by a spooky face with a spookier voice. He will ultimately seek to become a Knobbcrookian royal guardâ€"a Guffaloon. Stories of their heroic battles against the fearsome Bogold empire echo throughout the Crook. Unfortunately, they're not currently recruiting simple paper farmers. He's going to have to use every dirty trick in his book to cheat his way to the top and that means YOU will need to understand the key elements of the Knobbly Crook - Rock, Paper, and Scissors. Creatures of stone crush the metallic Knobbcrookians. The Knobbcrookians herd and farm paper animals. Fearsome stone giants fear tiny paper animals.

Steam review link of Chapter I with "very positive" overall score: http://store.steampowered.com/app/378300/
The Blog of the Knobbly Crook: http://knobblycrook.com

Positions Available:
While I have all of the narrative side covered, but I'm weak on the more advanced scripting side of things. I'd like to add at *least* 1 mechanical (not story related) puzzle to the game to change up the gameplay. Ideally it would be a new twist on a traditional one (I've seen a lot of dial/slide puzzles, etc). A rock, paper, scissors theme would be amazing, but not required. Note that the game rock, paper, scissors itself is not what I'm looking for because it's not a puzzle to solve, it's random chance.

The puzzle would go in the unfinished area at the top of this screenshot:



Ideally, you, 100% confident you can pull it off, would give me a pitch or a demo with placeholder art and we'd discuss how we can work it in. I'd eventually create all the art assets to replace the placeholders and incorporate it into the world. Getting it into the game itself would involve either you explaining to a very code-slow person how to get it set up with copy/pastes or finding a way to just let you work in the game code itself, but ideally you would put together a little self-contained demo of how it works.

Compensation:
Since the game is free, I'm mostly offering you exposure. The small donations I receive on Patreon per month are used to pay for domain costs and my monthly Coca-Cola fuel supply. I do have a lot of people playing the first chapter on Steam and I think a "full game" is going to increase those numbers exponentially. You'd get full credit for the design in the game credits and I'd be happy to make the puzzle-giving/explaining NPC a character of your design, as long as they fit within the Knobbly Crook world.

Deadline:
The game is due by the end of 2015. Well... crap. Ok, so I decided that instead of doing Chapter II, I'd do Chapters II and III together, mix them with the previously released Chapter I, and polish everything. So, this is for the full release. It will still all be completely free for everyone and on Steam. My new goal is "Winter," so there are several months still to work on this. Most of the background work is already done, so I'll be moving on to the actual game progression work very soon. 

Notes:
- Interested parties can reply to this thread or contact me via PM. If I get more than one person interested with multiple promising ideas, I will definitely look at adding more than one mechanical puzzle to the game.
- The game runs at 1024x768. I'm not sure if that has a lot of impact on your puzzle design, but worth mentioning.
- If you are interested, I'd encourage you to download Chapter I and play through - it only takes a couple of hours, but you will quickly understand the whimsical style.
- You gain an industry friend who will likely pester you for more help in future games.

[<<]

<<    Gnome Excuses!     >>

You had ONE JOB.

I don't care who your uncle is! Here at the Gnormal Gnome lawn decoration company, we've been making the same product the same way for fifty two years.
What were you thinking? Were you even paying attention to the assembly line machinery? And what in the name of ceramic serenity is THAT abomination? You'd better have a good excuse for this one.

         
RULES:
1. Pick one of the Gnome shapes to color.
2. Feel free to flip, rotate, or prod your Gnome.
3. You may color in the outlines.
4. Animation is fine, but how the heck did you get a ceramic lawn gnome to do THAT? Please explain.
4. Convince me not to fire you.

In the end, it's up to your coworkers to decide the fate of you and your ... experiment.
The holidays are coming up, so voting begins January 2nd.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go have a sit-down with your uncle.

TROPHIES!
      

Winners!

Congrats to the following for keeping their jobs and gaining promotions into the GSPD (Gnome Special Products Department). You took a risk on the company dime, but it paid off in the end.

Focus Test Results:

3rd: Tabata (6 votes) - For this welcoming, lovely little fellow:




2nd: Mokho (13 votes) - For bringing some much-needed style to our product line:




1st: Funkpanzer (14 votes) - For this nightmarish little experiment:




We'd like to thank both the factory workers and the focus testers for participating in this commercial experiment. Those employees who did not pass the focus test... good news! You'll keep your jobs at the plant. However, you've been transferred to the plastic flamingo department, under strict probation.

[LINKS:]

At the Fish Gates.


Or are they squids?


An invading rock Bogold warrior trapped in paper bindings.

The last time we joined O'Sirus, he was desperate to turn around the legendary Draft Horse and follow the spooky voice's call to the Knobbly Crook. Now we finally join him on the shores of the Crook and O'Sirus is going to have to convince the locals that he's worthy of visiting the upper city, where the spooky face attached to the spooky voice lives. Along the way, he will find out more about his people and earn himself a name, but there will be much trouble-making along the way. 

Update: DONE! Uploading the final build now.

LINKS:

The Knobbly Crook: Chapter I - The Horse You Sailed In On (STEAM) - http://store.steampowered.com/app/378300/
The Knobbly Crook Official Site (Coming soon - I'm switching hosts)
Chapter I Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01AHYg27DuQ

The Knobbly Crook
Chapter I: The Horse You Sailed In On
Website: Gamejolt Link



The title screen.


The Paincutioner's Court


The Draft Horse


A Royal Guffaloon



Summary:  The Knobbly Crook is a 1024x768 game, a talkie, and is set in a completely original fantasy world.

Story:  O'Sirus is a simple paper farmer who aspires to be a Knobbcrookian royal guardâ€"a Guffaloon. Stories of their heroic battles against the fearsome Bogold empire echo throughout the Crook. Unfortunately, they're not currently recruiting simple paper farmers. He's going to have to use every dirty trick in his book to cheat his way to the top.

Three key elements factor into the core physics of the Knobbly Crook and surrounding areas. They have a looping hierarchy, with each element proving superior to one of the others and inferior to the third. By understanding this science, the Knobbcrookians have begun to craft powerful machines and build weaponry specific to felling their foes.

Scissors - Though scissors are the most focused of the blade elements (being two blades crossed), any blade or any forged metal will serve a similar role. Blades are the most important element of the Knobbcrookians because each one has elements of metal in their own bodies. This makes any Knobbcrookian a significant threat against creatures that are paper-based in nature and is why the they herd paper animals and harvest paper crop. This also makes them afraid of rock-based creatures such as Bogolds. Since rock is metal at a base form, it trumps any blade.

Rock - The Bogolds of the Gnarled Scar are almost entirely composed of rock, making them massive, intimidating enemies. Of course, rock is everywhere and entirely unavoidable, but inert rock does not frighten a Knobbcrookian as much as animated rock. The stone Bogolds are not invincible. They fear the bred paper animals of the Knobbly Crook as well as the feral paper-based races in the more savage, distant areas of the world. A Bogold will never near the paper sea as falling in would mean certain death. In this world, a rock cannot penetrate a wall of paper, not even a jagged shard.

Paper - The Knobbcrookians know that a paper net will quickly disable the largest bogold and they construct folded paper blades and fearsome whips to fight them. Paper-based races fear the metallic Knobbcrookians as well, but do not view the Bogolds as a real threat. Explorers have returned to the ‘Crook with reports of vast paper forests beyond the paper sea, inhabited entirely by intricate folded paper beings. This new world has sparked the Knobbcrookians to build massive ships and form exploration parties, headed for lands rich with exploitable paper. The Bogold religion, however, describes these lands as a sort of living Hell.


Various images:

Our Hero
Tarsus Twotalk
The Paincutioner's Court
A Sea Prophet

I have a *terrible* math and logic brain and failed basic programming in college, so bear with me. I've tried a couple of different angles on this one, but I have yet to get it working properly. I thought I was on the right track with a function and variables, but I'm having a hard time getting the script to wait for what I need. Here's the breakdown:

1. I have an engineer (not the player), who I would like to walk between three set "repair" spots and animate a "repairing" animation before moving on to the next, all done in the background and not interfering with the player. I'd like him to keep looping this cycle.
2. The player can interact with him, talk to him, etc., and afterwards, I'd like him to go back to that loop.

What I've tried:

1. I tried to repeatedly execute, but way points do not work because he doesn't care about the walk path and the walk function doesn't work because it keeps sending him the same command over and over.
2. I set up a variable for his patrol with 3 levels to the patrol.
3. I set up a function called "busywork" that I import into the room and then call - he goes to the first spot, but if I have him say "testing" when he reaches the coordinates, he says it before he walks. This would be solved by noEblock on the main character, but I don't want to halt the main script here. The idea was he'd get to the first point, I'd play the animation, then set the variable to the next and call "busywork" again, but I'm not sure how to make his own little loop wait for him to finish walking before executing the next part.

I'm guessing my approach is completely wrong, so feel free to scold me for bad scripting. I'm sure I'm guilty of much worse in my code so far, too

Any help would be tremendously appreciated. Thanks!

My searching through the forums came up with some answers on how to solve this technically, and I have some ideas, but my problem at even starting is a bit more basic. I'm trying to get a "bridge" type walkable area to pass over an underpass. Here's the sketch example:



The problem I have is when I create the "top" walkable area and then draw (in a different ID of course) the "bottom" walkable area - it seems to eat a gap out of the top one. Is there a way to have two paths drawn that don't eat each other where they cross?

I apologize once again for my foggy logic processors, but I seem to be misunderstanding how this function works. Basically, I want a nonplayer character to show up in a room and play his basic animation. Currently, the entire script for the room itself looks like this:

// GUMBOX room script file
function room_FirstLoad()
{
character[9].SetIdleView(17, 2);
}

Currently, it doesn't work - he just sits there frozen on one frame. However, if I go into the room loading script for the very first room in the game and cut and paste the exact same line, he'll be animating when I enter the room. Likewise, if I paste it into the room before this one as it changes rooms with player.ChangeRoom, that works too. I've even tried changing the above script to:

// GUMBOX room script file
function room_FirstLoad()
{
character[9].ChangeView(17);
}

..and that doesn't work either.

I should point out too that his basic "normal" view is supposed to have animation and it doesn't work either, he just stays frozen. I've been setting idle view for other animating machines and whatnot in the background and it's been working so far. If I take out the set idle views, they don't animate at all when they just sit there (which I think is how it's supposed to be working, right?)

I may be doing it wrong, but the strange thing is I used the exact same method in the previous room with a different character and it works just fine. As far as I can tell, all the settings are identical. I can get it working using the methods I posted above, but it feels like my code is sloppy that way.

One thing that seems to work fine is to set all the idle views in the GlobalScript at game start. Is there any reason not to do it there? And now that gets me all paranoid and I'm wondering if setting up all these little animating background things as characters was the way to go. They have too many animations/different speeds to be part of a 5-frame animating background and each one works with all the interactions.

I've searched for the answer to this one and checked the tutorial, but somehow I've managed to completely overlook it somewhere... How do I prevent the music (ogg) from pausing when I play a speech file (also ogg)? I've seen the setting to reduce music volume when a sound plays, but it doesn't seem to have any effect because the music is turning off briefly. Any help would be greatly appreciated - thanks!

Updated: 8/30/2014

The Knobbly Crook
Chapter One: O'Sirus the Snip
Website: http://www.knobblycrook.com

Open image in new tab if you want to see the full resolution:


The title screen.


The Paincutioner's Court


The Draft Horse


A Royal Guffaloon

An older background that will be upgraded to higher resolution:



O'Sirus first draft walk cycle:



Summary:  The Knobbly Crook is an 1024x768 game, a talkie, and is set in a completely original fantasy world.

Story: There are some big plot elements I don't want to spoil here, as well as some gameplay dynamics, so I'll keep it simple. You play as O'Sirus the Snip, a simple paper farmer who realizes he is connected to something much bigger. He'll struggle to join the Royal Guffaloon, the Crookian warrior police, he'll end up in the massive stronghold of the Bogold Empire, and eventually he'll be on the front lines of a huge war. I can't hide the rock, paper, scissors theme with my screenshots, so I'll say it has a big part of the way things work in the Knobbly Crook. Magic takes many strange forms, and O'Sirus controls those three elements (Tic is his paper bird).

Demo: The demo only features WIP rooms, but it gives a good example of the art style and the humor that will be in the final game.  You can find the demo at:

Download the Demo

Various images:

Our Hero
Tarsus Twotalk
The Paincutioner's Court
A Sea Prophet
A Bogold (unfinished)

Hi, I'm making good progress with the engine - I almost have a demo ready and the second room is coming along nicely - but I hit a small snag. I should be able to announce something very soon, but first I need to get this resolved:

I got the speech files to work fine - they now play the length of the mp3 file and you can click to abort them, but I'm having a problem when a second character replies to the first one. I tried it using basic interaction and had the same results as how I have it now (as a dialog). The first line is perfect, but the second line plays the text, plays the full mp3, and then just hangs there on screen until you click. I tried to find a reason why in the help files, and did some forum searches for things like "dialog hangs," but couldn't find what I was looking for. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

Here's an example of what I have in the dialog:

// dialog script file
@S  // dialog startup entry point
OSIRUS: &7 Hey down there! That looks very painful!
GRILL: &1 It's not so bad, really... Once you get past the initial amputation.
stop

I've looked through the FAQs and Manuals but didn't find the answer I was looking for (was probably right in front of my face at one point). I'm trying to figure out how to make it so when I click the "look" icon on anything, the main character says something like "That's a ____. I remember one time..." with his talking animation. In other words, I don't want to text box, I would like the words above his head as he talks as if he's addressing the "audience."

One other quick question - is there a way to make it so the main character plays a constant looping animation when he is standing in place? I tried with the idle animations, but after some reading it seems as though I'm using them incorrectly. From my understanding his stance animation is just the first frame of the walk animation - any way to increase the number?

Loving this engine - I should have an announcement ready soon.