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Hey everyone,

Me and my brother (Rentorian on  these forums) are working on a side-project on the weekends so I'm trying my hand at backgrounds again.  These are two different lightings I'm debating using for a subway background.




What do you all think?
Edit:

Tried editing the lighting to make it more moody, and changed the angle of view of the track so that even though it still isn't in line with the vanishing point it's much less noticable.




Edit by ProgZ(combined posts): Please don't double post, especially so soon together.

[WHILE]

The following syntax error will crash AGS WHILE editing. (I've included all the information I have so some may be irrelevant.)

Code: ags

Character* characterpointer
characterpointer = cCharacter;

If you try to reference the pointer you made on the first line without having a semicolon there as it should be the editor will crash the moment you hit the period key after referencing it.

This happens in any local or global script.

Here is the error report that was generated:

Description:
 Stopped working

Files that help describe the problem:
 C:\Users\Ethan\AppData\Local\Temp\WER1271.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml
 C:\Users\Ethan\AppData\Local\Temp\WER5E31.tmp.mdmp

Read our privacy statement online:
 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0x0409

If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
 C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt

Edit:  My computer is running on Windows 7.

[I am happy to present:]

The Mega rich.

No doubt some and perhaps even many of them obtained their millions through intelligence, hard work, and brilliant ideas but when Walton Braddrick inherits his father's empire after a suspicious death, Nathan Carter is sure that this man is not one of them.  Join Nathan and his recent acquaintance Mary Baker as they dispense a unique form of justice to a corrupt businessman who is beyond the reach of the law.

I am happy to present:

The Cast:
Nathan Carter:
A con-artist who targets only those who have caused some great harm and then used their vast resources and power to escape the consequences.  This robin-hood complex that Nathan possesses often brings him into more trouble than it is worth.  Not only is Nathan attempting to relocate Walton Braddrick's millions but as well he is working to infiltrate and take down from the inside a dangerous criminal organization responsible for dozens of deaths.

Mary Baker:
Mary is a criminal who is in the game of conning mainly for the challenge and thrill of it. (This is not to say that she dis-likes the money.)  While helping Nathan con Walton, she is approached by a corrupt politician who leads her down a road that spirals out of control, leading her to question her beliefs and practices along the way.

Screen Shots:


Nathan convincing Mary to help him with Walton.


Mary and Nathan confirming the guilt of Walton.


A conversation by moonlight.... while breaking into a house.

The Team:
Written and programmed by: Ethan Damschroder
Backgrounds by: Igor Donevski
Character sprites by: Shane Stevens (ProgZmax)
Character portraits by: Ian Schlaepfer (big brother)
Music by: Tony Franklin (Something13)
Poster Art: Karen Petrasko
Voice acting:  I don't know yet... Suggestions?

Features
-Two playable characters. (3 technically, but one is only for a single scene.)
-Action puzzles (It's not about reacting quickly, it's about thinking quickly.)
-Inventory/item puzzles to allow you to manipulate your environment to solve problems.
-The ability to add any item or character in the room to a list of clues to work out connections and special
 actions like crying or playing piano. (Note: 'Ceiling fan' plus 'Chair' does not equal 'Create flying chair')
-Three story lines at the same time with connections between them.
-Dialog puzzles to gather information and gain the trust of others

Rough estimate on release date:
Winter 2011/2012.  This is my first commercial project so I don't have a good estimate for how long it will take.  Here's hoping I can release it sooner!  

I don't have a website but feel free to follow me on Twitter for more updates on development @edamschroder

Just a side note:
This story has no relation at all to my first game "A Night to Remember."  I don't much like the story or construction of that game nowadays but I loved the character of Nathan Carter despite how abysmally I portrayed him so I brought him back for this.

Hello everyone,

The code below is supposed to cycle through the different response options in a custom dialog system I'm working on and then remove the one that matches with the string 'whattoberemoved' which is passed in the RemoveFromDialogList function.  However, when it matches at least one thing on the list it removes everything, I'm not sure why considering that I checked and it only executes the if function one time

Code: ags

function RemoveFromDialogList(const string whattoberemoved)
{ 
  while (scandialog <= DialogList.ItemCount)
  {
    
    if (whattoberemoved == DialogList.Items[scandialog])
    {
      DialogList.SelectedIndex = scandialog;
      DialogList.RemoveItem(DialogList.SelectedIndex);
      scandialog = 0;
      return;
    }
    scandialog++;
  }
}

I'm almost certain that I'm missing something stupid.

Thanks for any help!

Hey, everyone.

I've got a problem with putting the game in full screen mode. Whenever I do I get the following:


I can't change this by altering settings in after compiling or before it seems, and I have no idea what the problem actually is.  

Thanks for any help!

Edit: seems i left out some possibly important info.

Games resolution is 320x240.

It seems telling the location of the game to the player is good for atmosphere but imposes some troublesome requirements on the creator

For instance:
In the Blackwell games the sense of being in New york is great and very atmospheric but it imposes on Dave the responsibility of being accurate with areas, how people behave, even important historical facts.  (Obviously because he lives there its not really much of an issue.)

I'm working on a game that takes place in a city but it doesn't really matter at all to the story where as long as it is big, but two politicians are involved at one point and the date the game takes place is set during an election. One of these politicians wins and there is a great deal of illegality on the side of one of them, (I won't say which.  ) so obviously I can't use a real name as that would be an accusation... 

Does my problem make sense?

What do you all think? Does the player have to know the location?

The program I am working on involves the user seeing a set of random letters and numbers of random color for about a 10th of a second and then trying to remember what they saw.  The goal of the program is to improve visual memory by increasing the difficulty of the task progressively.

In order to do this I have to have a check for whether the user can actually remember what they saw and I'm at a loss for how to do this.

I want the user to be able to just type in order what they saw and then pick the order of the colors from a set of 8 colors.  For instance if they saw "8bDIJHpH7vw"  and all but the last was white the last being yellow they would just type in "8bDIJHpH7vw" and click a button that is just white for the first letters and the yellow button for the last one.

I really have no clue how to do this that doesn't take in the 10s of thousands of lines to set up a check for each of the possible values for each of the images and then string together the values so it can be checked.

Including all numbers and letters in each color there are 496 possible sprites for each image drawn on the screen with a maximum of 50 on the screen. 

Sorry for the long-winded description but I don't have much of a direction for solving this problem.

Thanks for any help in advance everybody!

Here is the code I'm using to determine the number of letters that should appear on the screen.

Code: ags

  int number;
  int iteration;

function room_RepExec()
{
  if (iteration < Difficulty)
  {
  number = Random (52);
  DrawingSurface *surface = Room.GetDrawingSurfaceForBackground();
  surface.DrawImage(Random (640), Random (480), number, 0, Game.SpriteHeight[number],     Game.SpriteWidth[number]);
  iteration ++;
  }
}

It chooses from 52 letters half of which are capital and half are lowercase.

My problems are:
(1) The images appear like this:



The actual sprites of the letters are white but when drawn on they appear like above.

(2) I'm not sure how to check if the drawn images are off the edge of the screen or overlapping.  I said in a previous topic i knew how to do this but I was thinking of how characters and objects are checked as overlapping or non-overlapping.  Ryan Timothy mentioned that I should use a struct array to store information about where each one of these are but I'm not sure how to do that.

(3) I'm not sure what the problem is in my code but the images are not being sized at the right size for each of the sprites.

Sorry for all the questions.

Any help is appreciated!

I'm wondering if anyone could tell me the best way to handle creating this program I'm working on.

I want to be able to have up to 50 individual random letters appear on the screen in random positioning so that they are not overlapping or going off the edge of the screen.

I haven't actually started yet because I'm pretty sure that if I have 50 objects in a room it will kill the processing speed of the game.  If I have 50 characters would it have the same effect?  If it would are there any ways that I could do what I want without slowing the computer down horribly?

Thanks everyone!  

I was responding to another topic and this somehow happened.

Sorry!

Hopefully this can be closed/gotten rid of.

You're asleep...

There's a bang on your bedroom door.



If they find you...



It's over.

=========================

Sorry, for the slight lack of information, more will come with updates.

Anyway, in case you haven't gathered from the screen shots you play as David Johnson, whose background will  remain a mystery until you play the game.  I originally developed the concept for this for an MAGS game which I entered ironically so that I would finish something.  (Needless to say, the project was abandoned for a while.)  I've been working on it quite a bit lately, and except for character art (see below.)  I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

Length for the game will most likely be somewhere on the short side of medium length games depending of course on your intelligence and general skill with adventure games.

I'll be posting updates every Friday at 11:00 P.M. my time. (Whatever that is in GMT I haven't the faintest idea.)

Progress:(As of (6/5/10)
Scripting: 10%
Art: 8%
Music/Sounds: 10%
Story/puzzles/design: 100%

Progress:(As of 6/11/10)
Scripting: 22%
Art: 14%
Music/Sounds: 16%

Progress: (As of 6/19/10)
Scripting: 30%
Art: 16%
Music/Sounds: 17%
---------------
6/5/10:  Character Artist desperately wanted:
  For a while now I've enjoyed working on background art but I can't get the hang of character art for some reason nor do I enjoy it at all.  Obviously, if no one helps me with this then I will still do the art myself, but it would be great if someone could help me.  I'm expecting 2-3 months to finish this if I have to do the character art.  Not to mention that the quality wouldn't be great.  Whereas, if someone can do the character art I could finish it in around one month. (And have better character art )
6/5/10: (Again)  Looking for voice actors!
 I really don't know how to go about this so if anyone happens to know how to go about it then I would love the advice.  Anyway, I thought I'd let you all know that I'm looking for voice actors even though it probably won't matter for a good few weeks anyway.
6/11/10:
Nothing's changed except a little progress on the game.  Still looking for a character Artist/Animator, and still hoping for some pointers on how to do voice acting in a game.
6/19/10:
This week I got out all of the horrible work of the Inventory, save/load, title screen, options, etc,. I'll be glad to be able to start making progress on the actual game this next week.
7/12/10:
Well, I've been missing deadlines for a few weeks now so I thought I'd let you all know that this project has been canceled for now.  Many reasons for this but the main is that I was hoping I could finish this project before I could move forward with my main project I've been planning and researching for this last year, but it's FINALLY moving and I don't have time to spend on this.  I'll be announcing details in a week or two about my main project.  Sorry to everyone who helped with this.  You've certainly provided me with more help in learning what I need to know.
-----------------------------

Thanks for reading!  

Alright, here's a question that I'm sure is stupidly easy but for some reason the answer has eluded me.

I would love to be able to simply edit a sprite that is within AGS already.  Not to say that I can't do this but I can't do it easily as whenever I double click on a sprite it opens up Adobe Fireworks. (a program that I'm unfamiliar with and that opens slowly.)  Since I have to close it again to get back to AGSing if I want to edit another one I have to wait for it to load up again.

So the question simply is:  "How do I change the program that I edit sprites with?"

Thanks!

I looked around and searched a little so forgive me if I overlooked it, but is there a way to change the sensitivity of the mouse from within a games script. 

I.E. Make it so that the player has to move the mouse further in order for the cursor to move the same distance.

I'm hoping there's a simple way to do it but I'm betting it won't be. 

Thanks in advance for all the great help! 

I know a lot of people on these forums aren't liking the adventure games which are coming out but me personally I loved playing And then there were none.  I played it on the Wii, so that may have helped some things and hurt others.

For instance I loved how when opening doors you had to press the button and turn the wii-mote as if you were actually turning a doorknob which felt cool.  On the other hand there's a bit in the game where you have to open a safe and the sensitivity of the Wii-mote turning made it almost impossible to get the numbers in right, which made it more of a game of skill than intelligence.

Then there's the issue of having to walk about 6 miles to get between the two farthest areas with no shortcuts, and the fact that at one point I'm sure that I had at least 50 inventory items with me, which makes things hopelessly confusing.... (Not to mention that a lot of the items had no use except to give things to certain people and they say something that doesn't help in the least.  Without a clue that your supposed to give the item to them.)

I felt like the immersion was great but only so long as I wasn't doing some sort of puzzle that didn't make sense.  For instance pouring milk on a bunch of thorny vines and having a goat miraculously eat all of them. (about 4 feet high of thorns.....)  If however, I was doing a puzzle that to me made some sense in the context of the game then immersion was great.

Anyway, I was wondering what all of your opinions are on the game.
What worked, what didn't, if you even could finish it. 

Well, this was initially going to be for an MAGS game but there are about 8 backgrounds that i would have needed and I lost focus on this project and soon enough it was a week until deadline. (March 25th)  I still want to make this game however, and now that I have more than a month I want to make sure the art is better.

It is in 640x400 mainly because I've started drawing in pencil and the further I shrink it down the harder it is to clean up the lines cause everything gets blurred.

Here it is:


A few things I want to say before people tell me that the lines are not all straight and the door frames are slightly uneven.

The house is supposed to look like a run down cheap house that was not built by that great of architects. thus some things come out badly. (although, some things look worse than I intended them to)

At this point I'm mainly concerned with lighting.  I like the way it looks but it almost feels unrealistic to me.

I'd love to know what you all think!

As always, thanks for your time and help!  

Hey, it's been a while since I made a background and I've been working on my art. (hopefully there's improvement)   This is a grand foyer of a mansion.

1x


2x


A few things that I think may be wrong with it but am not sure about:
Too much open space.
railing looks a little bit off
No ceiling

Let me know what you all think!

Thanks in advance for any comments!  

So, today I was going through all the comments and the.. three I think?... reviews that I have found for my game and since I'm working on a remake I am trying to solve all of the problems that people have mentioned. 

First off, I have figured out everything that I'm going to do to change things as far as art/interaction/puzzles/general design, etc,. 

The only critique that I am having trouble understanding is the various "Stale writing"/"Unrealistic dialog"/"Badly Written"/"Awkwardly told story" etc,.

Not to say I disagree with what has been said about my writing but I'm not sure what to change about it, if anyone has suggestions I would love to hear them.

I do think that I have improved my writing but if there is anything specific anyone has noticed about my writing then it would be GREATLY helpful.

I always appreciate all of your help!

-Thanks!

Alright,  I'm trying to figure out how to create a certain effect.  The effect is that a character is slowly losing conciousness.  I know that I could do a fade out and have it be slow but I would rather have it fade out a little bit then reverse then fade out more then reverse a little then finally fade to black.  I don't think there are any commands that can do anything like this though.  Any ideas?

Edit: I'm sure this would be possible if I could somehow make fadein and fadeout nonblocking scripts.....

*Sigh* I had hoped I wouldn't have to post in this forum again, oh well.

In the AGS help it says that Dialog.Start() will run the dialog not where it is called but after the currently running script finishes.  I am using dialogs to add decisions into the game so the dialog has to run where it is called.  

I can think of one way to solve this which would be to have a variable within the dialog that when it is changed calls the next part of the script that it is interrupting.  While this would work, I do want to know if there is a way to get a dialog to run in the middle of script without having to add variables left and right.

-Thanks!

[The Philanthropist]

My name is Nathan Carter, I was a con-man, and after eight years of retirement,
I'm bored to death.



That's right, Nathan Carter is officially back.  After attempting to relax for eight years on the coastline he has come to the conclusion that he needs excitement.  This time instead of only looking for a target that he believes is up to something illegal he now wants a challenge.  His goal is to quench his need for excitement and hopefully go on retirement for longer than eight years.

Nathan's first day back on the job:

I, Snake, have edited this post today - May 23, 2011 - to fix this screenshot (it was not showing up). I figured I'd fix it since Arj0n had linked to this in Ethan's new game's thread, The Philanthropist.
The last edit before this was made by Ethan on: October 14, 2009, 01:36:24 pm

I will be adding more screen shots and information as production continues.

Credits:
Art: Snake
Music: Something13


Development:
Story: 100%
Scripting: 30%
Art: 6%
Music and Sounds: 0%

As you can probably tell if you played "A Night to Remember" the artist has changed between games. As was mentioned several lines above,  the new Sprite/Background artist is Snake, and something13 will be doing the music for this game as well.