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After doing a bit of research on overlays, I started to wonder if they could be the solution I'm looking for. The problem, which I probably should have explained first, is that I'm looking for a way to place a transparent texture over most of the rooms in my test game.

Essentially I'd like every room to look as if it were drawn on a piece of blue-lined notebook paper. It's not a terribly new idea, but it's appropriate for the art direction I've started. I was just pasting the texture directly onto the backgrounds in my graphics editor but the problems of doing this became apparent the moment a large object or sprite appeared on the screen--they'd all overlap the blue lines. This was fine with the playable character, but when it happens with puzzle objects it kind of kills the challenge.

Despite the actual game world being black and white, making the sprites transparent won't work because I'll end up with a mess of lines and possibly losing the character on certain backgrounds. So I thought about turning a piece of notebook paper into a massive object, say the size of the room, and placing it over the room with a transparency set for white. There doesn't appear to be a limit on the size of the object, and it won't be animated, but I fear it its girth might break my already fragile little game.

Overlay seems interesting, though I'm a little confused as to whether or not I have to turn it on and off with every room. I suppose if I use a handful of overlays throughout the game (ideally), I would. Overlays actually sound the most promising, as they, if I'm understanding this correctly, are positioned above everything the room but below the GUI.

Naturally, I'm thinking about all of this while I'm at work (shhhh) so I can't try any of it out. I've written down some script for both the object and overlay method to try when I get home, but I'm curious to know if the effect is even possible or if I should just figure out how to pull it off with my graphics editor (lining up objects just right...I've done it, but wow, what a pain).

I'm not looking for script, necessarily, but any constructive input anyone's willing to offer would be great. So...any thoughts?

Hi there, I'm currently training myself via the AGS tutorial. My sandbox is a simple little point and click adventure game that works fairly well until I start thinking along the lines of "I wonder if I can..." At this point things start to break and the editor yells at me.

For the most part I can find my solutions within the tutorial and function glossary, however there are a couple of items I'm not clear on and I hope that someone here might be able to point me in the right direction.

1) Is it possible to have a secondary character talk or display a message after your character interacts with a hotspot. I'm not talking about a conversation, just a simple display. For example, let's say cEgo (love the tutorial) looks at a picture on the wall. "That's a lovely picture," he says, to which an onlooker responds, "You obviously have no taste."

function hPicture_Look()
{
Display("That's a lovely picture.");
???????("You obviously have no taste.");
}

Maybe it's because it was late, but for the life of me I couldn't fathom or find just how to get the secondary character to display a message. I figure if I do, I can pretty much make the secondary characters do anything based upon the player's interactions once this is solved. Why is it always the simple puzzles that give me the most trouble?

2) This isn't so much of a problem that it is seeking a bit of advice. Since I've added permanent characters into my rooms, I tend to place them in the previous rooms script. For example, if I want cBob to be in Room 2, I place a line of code stating this beneath the change room code in Room 1's script.

Is this necessary or should I just stick to listing the character's starting position in their control panel? Is there any advantage or disadvantage to my method?

Thanks for your patience and advice. I look forward to working with the community more as my little game comes into fruition.