Messages

Simple version: You're making a high-resolution game (1280x720) using low-resolution graphics, or using some sort of filter or Photoshop process to give it a low-resolution "look". Instead, why not just make a low-resolution game? That way, your 2GB game would be more like 150 MB (assuming graphics are the bulk of the game size), among other benefits.

Looking good, but Snarky made a point there.

My suggestion would be to post thumbnails with links to original sized screenshots. That way we could see what the game "really" looks like. Not sure what your browser or the forum did with your large images, but it's quite unsatisfying to look at (arbitrarily) downscaled screenshots.

I'm not sure you're understanding me, or maybe it's vice versa.

My overall point is that the graphics seem (for the most part) to be in roughly 320x200 resolution, or even lower, even though you're making the game in 1280x720. So why not just make the game in 320x200? Or if what you're aiming for is a 1280x720 look, what the hell are you doing to the graphics to make them so blocky?

For example, here's your first screenshot scaled down to 320x180 (and then scaled up again to 640x360 using nearest-neighbor, just for the sake of displaying in the browser):

All of these inconsistencies and the weirdness makes it look IMO worse than the 320x180 version; it's like you're "faking" low resolution and getting it wrong.

I feel like we maybe discussed this for your other game, but I can't find any reference to it now... Is there some reason why you're downsampling and then upscaling the graphics for the game, instead of either using graphics in the game's 1280x720 resolution, or making the game in low-res if that's the look you want? It looks a little odd this way...

I would probably do it by setting up a bunch of hotspots that the mouse must traverse in the correct order while the left mouse button is being pressed (assuming the player must hold the button to draw). I would make the hotspots quite large to account for different people's drawing styles/skills (this would probably take some fiddling/group testing to get the size just right).

There are surely many other ways but this is how I would probably approach it as it requires the least hardcore coding

Thanks I kind of had an idea it could be done like that, it's the hardcore coding that stumps me I'm not that advanced at understanding it, so hoping maybe to find that someone has done something similar, and try to modify it.

There was a module or plugin for that! But I cannot remember how it was called, nor find it on forums.
I remember testing cat's game where you had to draw japanese letters with mouse.

EDIT: Here, something that MAY be it:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=26922.0
(not 100% sure)

Thanks I tried the EXE demo "child of the moon" and it's pretty close to what I'm thinking, but was unable to get the sample module and demo game to load in the latest version of AGS. It gives me a message saying it was saved with an earlier version and cannot be loaded using the current version.

I'm guessing I would have to install an earlier build of AGS to examine the code used to create the Mouse Gesture recognition. But if anyone knows of any other examples I could look at please let me know

[edit by Darth]

Sounds interesting. I wish you luck in finishing your project.
Although I also want to mention that there's a rather obscure platform game that's also called Moonchild.

Never heard of it but I'll check it out. Was looking at an old AGS game project called "child of the moon" earlier that was inspired by Loom, and had a mouse gesture feature to draw on screen that I wanted to see. But the occult meaning of a "moonchild" is an elemental being incarnated in human form, which is the central premise of the game.

That looks really great.

The text is a little bit difficult to read, though. Maybe the text should be a bit larger.

Maybe you should make a set of custom cursor images. The once that comes with the editor don't work that well with the art style in your game.


You can put a youtube video in a post with embed tags
(embed=800,600) http://www.youtube.com/..... (/embed)

( = [
) = ]

I actually reduced the screenshots to post them and I think I had the hard-edges filter on which sharpened everything. Thanks I haven't begun to design the cursors, fonts, or GUI yet there's lots of little elements I've yet to implement, I'm just using the defaults right now.

Still trying to embed the video so far the embed code you mentioned hasn't worked for me it just displays the URL in text.

probably needs a clarification; surely, the backgrounds are drawn in much lower resolution, but upscaled (judging by the visible pixelation/jaggedness).

I guess it is hi-res, because font is very small yet more detailed than it would be at lo-res.

PS. Great gfx, by the way .

Thanks, the video gives a better representation of the screenshots during gameplay but the embed codes I've tried don't work on the forum here, so I must be doing something wrong. I'll figure it out eventually. Mostly been focusing on the visuals and scripting before I polish the fine details with the fonts and GUI.

edit by Darth - combined triple-post... please keep replies in single topic!

Took the preview down will re-post later on in development.

Hoping someone more experienced with scripting might be able to give me some suggestions or pointers here...

Was looking into making a puzzle which would require the player to draw something on screen [with a magic wand selected from inventory, for example], like a simple runic glyph.

The drawing would be over some kind of object or hotspot on screen. If you remember the part in the Hobbit where Gandalf draws the rune on Bilbo's front door, and then the Dwarves show up, that's along the lines of what I'm thinking.

For example, if the player selects a magic wand from their inventory, then draws a runic glyph somewhere on screen - then the game checks to see if the rune was the correct configuration, and triggers an event if it matches.

I don't know if it's possible that AGS could be manipulated to understand if you drew the correct runic shape or not.

Admittedly this is something that's way over my head, but am posting in case someone knows of something similar that's been done here that I could look at or attempt to modify.

Thanks for any help or suggestions!:)

Thanks this works great for what I wanted, and looks like it will be pretty easy to randomize and scale up.

Hoping someone can give me some guidance or point me in the right direction.

Wanted to do what I thought was a relatively simple event, to have a random event which spawns an NPC to walk across the screen in the background/foreground as random passerbys. Saw this in some of Shardlight's crowd scenes.

I figured it would go something like this:

Code: ags

function room_RepExec()
{

int ran=Random(1);

if (ran ==0 ) {
cFemale01.ChangeRoom(230, 960, 335, eDirectionLeft);
cFemale01.Walk (20, 590, eNoBlock, eWalkableAreas);
cFemale01.ChangeRoom (200);
}
else if (ran==1) {
  cFemale01.ChangeRoom(230, 20, 590);
cFemale01.Walk (960, 335, eNoBlock, eWalkableAreas);
cFemale01.ChangeRoom (200);
}
else {
  //DO NOTHING FOR NOW...;
}
}

This was a rushed test to see if it worked, but nothing happens, but I don't understand it exactly.

I thought that this would make a NPC appear and walk across screen spawning at different location depending on if the random number was 0 or 1, then move them out of the room again.

Does anyone have an idea how I can fix this to work? Thanks in advance for any help or replies.

Since I was working on a similar issue, I took the liberty to add these features:
- characters: added tints
- objects: added tints, viewframe animation, scaling and visibility

Thanks I'll try this out:)

Does anyone who has used the Lake module know how to get the characters tint color to show up in the water reflection? I have the latest updated version, and saw this issue mentioned in the thread but cannot find an example of how to do it?

Right at the top you're defining UpdateMouseMouse *inside* game_start.

Thank you Khris I had no idea what to do.

I broke my game after trying to implement a new module in the following section of the Global Script, went back and tried to erase the changes, and now it won't run or compile.

I get this error message, but cannot see where I have left out a brace or bracket.....

GlobalScript.asc(126): Error (line 126): Nested functions not supported (you may have forgotten a closing brace)

Can anyone see what I'm missing here?

Code: ags

// Called when the game starts, before the first room is loaded
function game_start() {   
  // Put the code all in a function and then just call the function.
 

// GAME START UP ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

// this function somewhere above the repeatedly_execute function

void UpdateMouseMode() {
  if (mouse.Mode == eModeUseinv) return; // do nothing
  int newMode = eModeWalkto;  // no location / walking (default)
  int lt = GetLocationType(mouse.x, mouse.y);
  if (lt == eLocationHotspot || lt == eLocationObject) newMode = eModeInteract;  // interact
  else if (lt == eLocationCharacter) newMode = eModeTalk;  // talk
  // change? (only change when required, so cursor animations aren't killed)
  if (newMode != mouse.mode) mouse.Mode = newMode;
}

}

/// GLOBAL REPEATEDLY_EXEC /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

function repeatedly_execute() {
  
  // Put here anything you want to happen every game cycle, even when
  // the game is paused. This will not run when the game is blocked
  // inside a command like a blocking Walk()
  
  if (IsGamePaused() == 1) return;
  
  cWitch.SetIdleView(2, 150);
  
  //UpdateMouseMode();
  
 
  
  ///////////////////////////////////////////////LEARN SIGIL SPELLS AND ACTIVATE THEM HERE////////////////////////////////////////////



if (SIGIL_MOON == 1)
bSigilMoon.Enabled = true;

if (SIGIL_FIRE == 1)
bSigilFire.Enabled = true;

if (SIGIL_SPIRAL == 1)
bSigilSpiral.Enabled = true;

if (SIGIL_AIR == 1)
bSigilAir.Enabled = true;

if (SIGIL_DEATH == 1)
bSigilDeath.Enabled = true;

if (SIGIL_WATER == 1)
bSigilWater.Enabled = true;

if (SIGIL_STAR == 1)
bSigilStar.Enabled = true;

if (SIGIL_EARTH == 1)
bSigilEarth.Enabled = true;

if (SIGIL_SUN == 1)
bSigilSun.Enabled = true;

//


  
    // in repeatedly_execute
     UpdateMouseMode();


   

  // Put here anything you want to happen every game cycle, but not
  // when the game is paused.
  
  /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////SET VISIBILITY OF THE SPELL BOOK

@strangeDetective:
I do have v1.2, which was released in 2010.
Not sure if it's updated enough compared to the v1.3 (although v1.2 should work for ags 3.0+ I believe) but you can grab it here if you like.

Thanks a lot, I'll try it out and see.

I downloaded the Lake module from this site: http://americangirlscouts.org/agsresources/

And got everything working, except the cursor also reflects in the water. I saw that the module was modified to include a baseline for the Lake, to get around this issue. However the version I have does not have anything about setting a baseline in it so it must be an older version. 

The link in the module's forum entry looks like a dead link. Does anyone have an updated version of this module, or know how I can add the code so the lake will have a baseline and not mirror the cursor?

Thanks for any help.

[bool]

ChantIncantation() returns a bool, so the line in the header should go "import static bool ChantIncantation();"

Thanks Snarky I think everything's working with the game's spell casting system now. I'll see if I can break it later during more testing.

Cassie's region approach is probably the best solution, but it depends a little on exactly how you want it to work, i.e. what the rules are for "breaking" the cycle. Like, if you stop for a while, is that OK? If you do another interaction halfway through that doesn't move you out of the circle (like look at an object)? Or if you stop, walk the other way a little bit, and then turn around again and continue circling? The stricter you are, the more you'll ensure that the actions will really correspond to "run around the circle three times" as you imagine it, but the harder it will be for players to carry it out without a slip-up.

I like the idea, BTW. It's the sort of non-standard puzzle that adventure games should have more of.

Yeah, according to the kind of medieval folklore I'm basing the puzzle on, the idea was lets say you have a grassy mound (or fairy hill encircled by a ring of toadstools) if you walked around it counter-clockwise 3x's without stopping, a magical doorway to Elfland would open up in the side of the hill and you would be able to enter.

Like Cassie's approach (thanks Cassie), I was experimenting a little bit by setting up regions around the hill, kind of like a baseball field diamond with four regions, and once the game has counted that you have gone around the hill 3 x in the right direction, hitting all the regions in the correct sequence, a doorway opens up on the hillside like Slashers example. That would just be a hotspot enabled/disabled, wen  variable is triggered.

If you break the cycle before completing the circuit 3x (as in do anything else) then technically the magical door should not open.

I would probably like to add a clue to the player that let's them know they're on the right track, when they complete a full circle the player could say something like "okay, that's one time around the circle..." and if they break the cycle, the game could prompt them and let them know they have to start all over again.

I haven't had a lot of time yet to fully experiment with the idea but am going to try to do a little today and see where I can get.

You Tube states it's Public..

or go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLtBrkhgHgk

Hey thanks I got it to play, not sure why it said the video was private before. That's pretty much what I want it to do, any chance I could see the code you used to do that - would probably save me hours of trying to implement it with trial and error?