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Read about this, then check this out.  Totally awesome.

Check it out.  There's a feedback thread link at the end of the article.

Update: the first two rounds of E3 preview are up, hooray!  A hardware round-up and our first batch of game previews are now available for your perusal...

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Sorry for the shameless plug, but several guys from various internety areas with which you may be familiar launched a new general gaming site called Idle Thumbs.Ã,  It's more editorial and opinion-based than sites like Gamespot, and our reviews carry no numerical or symbolic ratings--essentially, we're all about subjectivity.Ã,  We don't have TONS of content at the moment, but we really wanted to launch by E3, so bear with us.Ã,  Our E3 content is going to be a little more off the wall than most sites', as we figure any super crazy exclusives are already going to be on Gamespot, IGN, etc.Ã, 

Anyway, go visit Idle Thumbs - We're probably all about video games!!

Also, post on the forums.Ã,  Make yourself at home.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=568&ncid=749&e=1&u=/nm/20040419/bs_nm/leisure_mcdonalds_dc

Cruel twist of fate or cosmic justice?  You decide.

You'll likely have seen this if you keep up with the Double Fine Action News, but if you haven't I wouldn't want to be deprived of a bit of gloating...



The guy on the left is Marek from Adventure Gamers, the guy in the middle is me, and the guy on the right is of course Tim Schafer.

This pic is from Double Fine's March 28 news post, which is awesome due to Tim complimenting my shirt and referring to me as a "handsome devil."

Tim took the picture with his cell phone camera in the middle of the night, which may help to explain our zombie-like skin.

Man, that image on the front page of the Fountain of Youth page freaked the fuck out me for a moment.

Well, Revolution is planning on releasing Beneath a Steel Sky 2 late this year.  If they can refine their BS3 engine a bit and nail down some solid narrative, it should turn our really well.  I have a lot of faith in this company, more than in any other current commercial adventure developer (not that there are really that many).  For me, this is going towards filling the Sam and Max-less void.

EDIT: link - http://www.adventuregamers.com/newsitem.php?id=480

You should all totally go vote for GF in GameSpy's title fight.  Round 2 started about 40 minutes ago.

http://www.gamespy.com/titlefight/matches/0210.shtml

I hope this hasn't been posted here before.  At risk of ridicule, here.  Play this now:

http://www.lanceandeskimo.com/flash/quest.html

I can't imagine why I'm having so many problems with this, but I can't get KQ6 to run in Windows 2000.  I played this game when it came out but never managed to beat it, and now that I've come my original CD, I really wanted to play it.  I know I've successfully run the game since I first played it in 92, but I don't recall how I got it working.  I'm using VDMS (and I've tried it without, just in case), and I've tried running it directly from the CD, using the DOS installer, using the Win3.1 installer, and it either just doesn't run at all (as in, no window or anything even comes up),  or I get a message saying something like "cannot initialize video driver."  Following that I tried running Windows in 256 colors at the lowest resolution my video card supports, but no luck.  What's the deal!?  Has anyone else gotten this game working in Win2000, and how?

The September issue of Computer Games Magazine apparently has a two-page spread about Tierra Entertainment and their games.
http://www.cgonline.com/cgm/200310-m1.html
Second item down in "Featured"
They also have a preview of Syberia II, although I'm sure it's nothing a site like Gamespot hasn't shown.

Is there anyone here who gets this magazine who can scan the Tierra article for us?  I'd be interested to see what it's all about.  The article is titled "A Fascinating Re-Quest"

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/remixor1.mid

Hi all.  I posted this in the tune contest as well, so if this sort of double-posting isn't allowed, just say so.  The reason I posted it twice is because this post is expressly for C+C.

So anyway, as the title implies, this it the first song I have made with MIDI, and it was pretty difficult for me.  I used Sibelius.  Can anyone who uses that software tell me how to do things like dynamic volume and tempo changes?  That sounds stupid, but I really couldn't figure it out from the manual.  And how does that tempo slider thing work?  It doesn't set an absolute tempo, that's for sure.

So yeah, comments on this tune and general MIDI tips are welcome.  And what exactly are "sound fonts"?

Preface: I really wasn't sure where this topic should go.  It's quite possible this is the wrong forum, so I apologize in advance if that's the case.  I know this forum is labeled "non-technical" but I am acting under the assumption that means "non-AGS-technical."  I can't think of any other forum that would work.  Again, sorry if this is the wrong place.


Warning: possibly minor (REALLY minor) spoilers.  I'm talking miniscule.


Hi all.  I started playing TLJ some time ago, and due to limiting events far too numerous to mention, I am still only in Chapter 3.  One of the biggest problems I've faced is a veritable onslaught of technical problems that seem determined not to let me enjoy this game.  I am running Windows 2000 (and, yes, I'm fully aware that the game was designed for 95/98--the installer tells me so every time I've installed.  And before you ask, yes, I have reinstalled many, many times.).  Sometimes the game just crashes in completely random spots.  But not only does the game crash, it takes my whole PC down with it, and the whole thing just instantly reboots.  When I get everything up and running again and load my save file (which hopefully isn't too far back), the game won't necessarily crash in the same spot, but rather somewhere completely different.  There are no patterns whatsoever.  Furthermore, sometimes when I attempt to start the game, I get errors that some memory is missing.  It recommended in the readme (I think, or maybe the FAQ) that if something like this happens to just reinstall.  Well, I've done that probably almost a dozen times now.  Sometimes I have to reinstall multiple times before the game will let me start.  Again, there is no patter that I can see.  Totally random.  In fact, as I write this, I am reinstalling the game for the third time this evening.  I have snuck my way into the police stations more times than I care to count at this point.  On to the next problem!  Sometimes unchecking "use 3d acceleration" from the preliminary game menu will allow me to start the game and will result in me not getting an error message.  However, doing it this way generally results in the game loading up in a tiny little pseudo-window in the upper-left of my screen (though it's not actually a window, it's just the game running really small).  After the Funcom logo thing ends, the game returns fully to Windows and when I try to restore it, it just minimizes itself again and I have no choice but to ctrl-alt-delete and end the task.

This is driving me crazy, as I'm sure you can imagine.  I bought this game quite literally four months ago and in that amount of time, where am I?  I'm at the bloody police station.  I could have played this much in a day or two if I hadn't had any of these problems.  Has anyone else experienced anything similar?  Funcom's website isn't very helpful and their one patch doesn't apply to my situation at all.

Please help!

Hi, all.  I ran into an error while testing my game, and the error message said to contact Chris Jones, so here's what happened.  I created a region that my character can walk over.  In the interaction editor, I set the "Player walks onto region" interaction to "Game - Display a message", and it then displays several messages.  However, when play the game, as soon as the character touches the hotspot, it crashes and I get an error saying "Internal error: Too many events posted"  The only other thing I have in the room right now is an interaction for "Player first enters screen" which also displays some messages.  Any ideas?


EDIT: on second thought, maybe this should have gone in the beginner's tech forum...

Hey there everyone.  I'm finally announcing the project that's been sitting in my signature for ages now:  Chapter 9 Studio's first production, Mr. Carlson in: "Give Us the Box!"

The game, intended as a humourous amalgamation of action movie plot cliches in an adventure medium (no actual action in this game, trust me), follows the adventures of a rather reluctant Mr. Carlson.  Our hero is a mild-mannered but sarcastic employee of ParagonCorp, Inc., a large and faceless corporation.  As the game opens, he is desperate to get out of the office and the player must devise a way to escape without his boss detaining him.  When he returns from his illicit break, he is somewhat surprised to find that the entire ParagonCorp office building has exploded.  Police are stationed around the scene but refuse to volunteer Mr. Carlson any information regarding the incident, regardless of his status as a ParagonCorp employee.  Shaken, Mr. Carlson returns home.  Upon attempting to contact his coworkers by telephone, he discovers that their home phone lines have all been disconnected.  He finally hangs up the phone and the phone immediately rings.  Mr. Carlson is startled and cannot help feeling a bit nervous about who might be on the other end of the line, but he tentatively picks up the receiver.  As soon as it reaches his ear, he hears an ominous voice command...

"Give us the box!"

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That's the scope of the demo, which will hopefully be released in the next few months.  Here are a couple screenshots, one of which you may have seen if you frequent the Critic's Lounge.  These may not be complete, but they should give you an idea of the game's overall graphic style.





The game will feature the following:
- High-color 640x400 resolution
- Loads and loads of item and hotspot descriptions
- Simple one-cursor system: left-click to interact and walk, right-click to look
- Totally ridiculous conspiracy-theory plot
- Humourous dialogue
- A blue cup
- Sprites and backgrounds of rather questionable quality
- Original soundtrack by Chapter 9


Chapter 9 Studios, the amateur adventure game development studio, is Chris Remo (me) and Tyler Ward (not me), both members of Chapter 9, the rock band.
At this point we are planning on doing everything ourselves, but I have some doubts as to my sprite-drawign and animating skills, so I may rethink that plan.

As I mentioned earler, we'll have a playable demo out as soon as we can, which will feature the plot outlined above, at least three non-player characters and three locations, each with multiple rooms.

I'll try to keep this thread updated when we make notable progress.  Eventually I'm planning on getting a website up as well, but that's not incredibly high on my priority list at the moment.

Feedback is of course welcome (and encouraged)!  

-Chapter 9 Studios

Hi, another question from your resident AGS idiot.

I'm trying to get global messages to display as character speech, but I can't figure out how to to do that other than to check the "Always display as speech" option, which I don't want to check in case I need to display messages as text boxes.  I tried "DisplaySpeech" but that requires a string input, not an integer referring to a message.  How can I get around this?  I assume it's a simple solution I just can't figure out.

Hi (again), I've got another question.

I want to have a right click on a hotspot, character, or object perform a "look" on that object.  Can I use on_mouse_click for that?  Also, where do I put on_mouse_click?  I first tried putting it in the interactions editor for the hotspot, but that didn't work.  I read the manual section about Text Script Event References, which is where I found out about on_mouse_click, but it was somewhat confusing to me.  I basically want on_mouse_click(RIGHT) to look at an object, but I'm not sure where to put it so I can do that.  

Sorry for all the questions in this and my other thread...  I've done more AGS work today than I have been lately, so I've run into proportionally more problems  

I have a clock object in my room flashing 12:00.  On the object I have two interactions in the interaction editor: one that changes the cursor to interact mode when the mouse is over the hotspot, and the other that has the character say a message when the player interacts with it.  It works, but only on the non-animated part of the object for some reason.  The hotspot itself covers the whole image and a slight border just to be sure.  Strangely (at least to me), the cursor changes correctly no matter what part of the hotspot the mouse is over.  The message itself however will only display if I click outside of the center of the object, which is the animated part.  This seems strange because clicking on the edges of the object (or slightly outside of it) works totally correctly.  Is this normal, and if so, how do I work around it?  Thanks for your help.

Hi all.  I'm working on my Mr. Carlson sprite, and I keep trying to make a decent talking animation, just two or three frames, and no matter what I do it looks idiotic.  I hate to ask for people to do things for me, but could someone possibly try and make the other frame of animation?  I assume it wouldn't require modifying more than several pixels.  Or, if someone has a good idea for how to animate this particular sprite, that would be appreciated too.  Thanks!

Hi, I've a few questions about cursor usage.  I'm trying to make a cursor interface which only has two viewable modes: walk and interact.  The walk mode obviously moves the player, and the interact mode does everything else the player would need to do with an object, character, or hotspot.  To achieve this aim what I have done is created two cursor images, one for each mode.  I assigned the walk cursor image to mode 0 and the interact cursor image to mode 2.  I unchecked the "Standard cursor mode" box for all cursors except for mode 0--this way, the player cannot select any other cursors, only the game can.  Now, I'm planning on creating my own custom GUI, since obviously the supplied Sierra one is pointless since I don't have all those cursors.  I'm just getting this cursor stuff out of the way before I do that.  So here is my first question, and this just occurred to me, hopefully not too late (sorry for all that explanation): when I get rid of the default GUI to use my own, will I have to redo all this cursor stuff?  I guess I mean, is the cursor interface part of the GUI?

My next question has to do with the method I'm using for implementing this cursor system.  The only way I could think of doing it is as follows:
Each room has one big hotspot that covers everything except other hotspots.  When the mouse is over this big hotspot, the game changes the cursor to mode 0 (walk).
When the mouse is over another hotspot, the game changes the cursor to mode 2 (interact).  Then, on "Any click on hotspot" in the interaction editor, I just execute whatever I want the player to do with the hotspot.
Do you guys think this is a good method?  Are there any problems you think I will run into in the long run?  Here are the things that bother me about it:
I can't see anything underneath the big room hotspot, so in order to change hotspot areas around, I have to delete the big room hotspot and make it again every time.  This is just an inconvenience however.

This is the big problem though, and is my next question:
How do I get this system to work with objects, not just hotspots?  Maybe I'm not looking in the right place, but I can't figure out how to change the cursor mode when the mouse is over an object.  I hope this can be done, or my system is shot.  I also can't find any way to do this through scripting.  Any ideas?

Also, what is the default GUI 0 for?  It's that thin grey bar that's always near the top of the screen.  Can I safely delete it or it there for some reason?


I think I may have had another question or two.  If I remember it I'll edit this post.


EDIT:  Ok, I remembered my other question.  This is actually pretty crucial to my interface, I don't know why I forgot it.

I want the mode 2 interact cursor to do the interaction on the left click, as described above, and to look on a right click.  Is this possible?  I have played AGS games where the right-click is utilized, so I assume it's doable.  Would the process be different for hotspots and objects?

Thanks for any help!