Messages

[Meowster]

Why? You don't know how old I am.

It can easely be guessed. Telling you how old I think you are won't change anything.  You're just the one who doesn't want to admit you may be too young, inexperienced and immature to participate. You changed twice your age in your profile since the begining of this thread, probably because you don't want us to have prejudice when reading your posts. Because I don't like to make statements without something to support my thoughts, I did a little investigation over the net, and found an interesting post made by you which confirmed what I thought.

I tell you, your behavior has already betrayed you.

Now, please accept the fact that you may not have the required experience, knowledge and maturity to keep posting in this topic.


Meowster, I mostly agree with what you say. I think your posts are usually interesting and relevant. However, I'm a little worried by the amount of energy you probably put in your posts, trying to convince someone who doesn't show any opening. In a way, by showing so much attention to him, you're feeding his ego, and what you gain in return probably are frustration and irritation, and he will keep posting absurdities. I'm not sure it's worth losing so much energy that way, by feeding a troll.

[edit]

I love how christian people have a hard time accepting that atheists lead happy lives. My absolute favourite though was being accused of 'not being fun' because I don't believe in gods.

Heh. Not easy to admit that there could be people in the outside world who are actually much happier than you, when you know they don't need to carry the burden which has been inflicted to you (or you inflicted yourself), a burden made of guilt, fears, misplaced feeling of responsibility, imposed rituals, forced abstinence, frustrations, masochism (heroism...),  a burden you want to believe is absolutely essential for your future happiness in this world (and for everyone else too)

It is more reassuring and resting for the mind to see those people as poor beings trying so hard to seem happy when they obviously are not, looking for happiness in all the wrong and easy ways (of pleasures essentially)... And to think your burden simply is a test which will prove your loyalty to God.

I mean, look at Job.

God didn't plan those people to be the way they are. [...] Even if you don't follow the Bible, it doesn't seem natural- I mean, two men sleeping together?

Yeah, he had certainly not envisaged it. What a surprise it must have been for him.

If Christianity is true, and Jesus really is the only way, then when I die, I'll be up in the clouds mocking you all.
Big up de positive vibrations, yo.

Certainly Jesus would approve and mock us all, while standing at your side.



edit : just wanted to point out the story Meowster used to illustrate one of her previous post in this topic, here, which illustrate what we could call "the job syndrom". Depressing story, as she said.

[know]

Deacon, Teacher, Priest, Elder. Yeah. Close enough.

translation mistake.

I don't just blindly follow what I'm told I should do. It's true that I was baptized when I was 8 years old. But you're sorely mistaken if you think that I've just taken what I've been taught since I was a child for granted.

I acknowledge that it wouldn't be something easy to admit for anyone. Nobody wants to believe they could have been "a sheep" all these years.  If you say it wasn't your case, that's fine, as long you're not trying to convince yourself.

But the point is that I have looked into it. I have sought after truth. And maybe I don't know everything about "my church"...I wouldn't even say that I know a lot.

Seems like me saying "your church" disturbed you, as you pointed it out several times with quotation marks. I appologize, maybe it hasn't the same meaning as "your religion". In french we often say "your church" or "my church" when we talk about religion.

But what's the worst that could come of it if I'm wrong? I would rather be wrong and have lived a good life than to stray from the things that I do believe (because of that which I don't know) and in the end learn that the church was right.

I see many things. You could for exemple make your children believe it's good, when it's not. 
You say you would have lived a "good life". It depends on what you call "good life". I know that me living in a mormon community was insane for me. But I wouldn't admit. How could the only true church be bad for me ? When I started to know a little more about psyche, and not only about spirituality, lot of things suddenly appeared obvious to me. As me beeing masochist, me believing in sacrifice, me believing I was responsible for anyobody, me never beeing "real" when I was in a community, always wearing the mask of someone "pure"...

I ask you, have you for exemple ever tried to talk about your pornography addiction to anybody who was close to you in your community ? Telling it to your bishop doesn't count, as it is more like telling a doctor your sex problems, and you're somewhat forced to, anyway. It's not the same thing. What I know, is that except from the "spiritual intimacy" you can get, it is quite uneasy to have a real intimacy with friends from this kind of community, and feeling enough comfortable with them for telling them everything. The fear to disappoint and make something wrong is most of the time present.

I want to find out for myself if this thing which I say I believe in is the truth or not.

This is good, really, but :

I believe that I'll find that these things are true.

I have every intention of not only reading the Book of Mormon, but also the Bible before then. And I have every intention of gaining a testimony of the truth of both.

When you say that, it looks like you can't even imagine them being wrong. Which implies that what you're looking after is to reinforce your convictions, not to find out if it is true or false. It's quite a different approach.

[...]this church is either true, or it's not. And I don't dare turn my back unless I know. Unless I really know.

But if I never gain a testimony of that, then I will have to, by my own convictions, accept that I was wrong.

This is something somewhat easy to say. "Never" could be the end of your life. It's a way to convince yourself you're more open to that possibility than you really are, I think, and it certainly makes you "comfortable" with yourself saying this. I'm not sure you can imagine that case happening for the moment.

But I don't want to serve a mission simply because of my beliefs in the church. I want to serve a mission because of my belief in God. I want to share this joyous message that there is a God. That He loves each and every one of us. "My church" has provided me an opportunity to spread this message.

I understand.

Because I know...I know...that I wouldn't be the person I am today if there weren't a true God.

How do you know ? I'm not sure to understand how you did conclude to this. Have you seen in a vision how the world would be if there wasn't a god ? I hope you don't base your faith on this.

I will find an answer before I go...have no doubt about this.

This is something extrem to say. You pretend to know for sure the date limit where you'll get the answer from God. How can you have no doubt about it ? You prayed, and in your heart you felt that : "God will answer to you in some months, just before you go to mission, don't worry about it." ? I hope that's the case, I don't know how you would know otherwise... but if it was the case, that would mean you actually got a pre-answer. Why would you need another answer then?

The reason I have tried to avoid religious debate here on the forums is that I was honestly afraid that differences of opinion on such matters might affect people's overall opinion of me as a member of the community. Since I joined these forums, I have tried to be a productive, active member in this community. I have tried to help maintain and uphold what the community has grown to be. And I have tried to give back when I can. These forums are like a virtual online home to me. I just didn't want to be rejected here because of my beliefs. If in the mission field people reject me, then that's one thing. I was really just afraid that people might judge me as a competent coder...as a member of this community...or whatever...based on any prejudices they might hold against the Mormons. Maybe I'm wrong for trying to hide my faith for such selfish reasons. Maybe I'm just wrong.

Hey it's not like that. You're wrong in thinking that because this community "discovered" that you're mormon it would change anything. We're having a discussion here, a really interesting one, don't make the mistake of believing we're "bashing the mormons", that we would not consider you as a person anymore... This may be part of the fears you have to handle everyday.

Anyway, you've been quite helpful in this community, no doubt about it. And I respect you. You're not a victim here.

edit : changed some words.

Thief : Deadly Shadows, Vampire Savior, Radiant Silvergun, Guardian heroes

Hello monkey.

Been a while since I posted in this forum, but reading your posts made me want to say something. I agree with what said Helm so I'll try no to repeat what he wrote. Anyway, I don't know you personally, I probably made a lot of assumptions in the following post and I hope you won't take it bad, I just would like to understand. Oh, it's mainly about religion.


So, from what you said, it seems to me somewhat obvious that you're not the one who chose to become member of your church. Your parents certainly did choose for you. The fact that you probably were babtized at the age of 8, when you where "in age to understand the good and the bad" as they say, certainly didn't help you to make your own decisions, as this was the first step in what would become a well planned religious life. So I guess that at the age of 12 you took your first responsability in the community as a beacon, at 14 you were an instructor, at 16 you became priest, and soon you'll become an Elder and you will serve a mission, as so many do. Also, you were told that you were the one who has chosen to be babtized, the one who made this decision.  As this assumption is completely absurd, how can you differentiate your own decisions and those the church made you take?

Seeing as you weren't quite serious in the studies of your own religion from what you said, I can only conclude that until now, you simply followed the path you have been assigned to. This means, you don't have what you call "faith". This means you simply do what you are told to do, what you think is true,  (in your church I mean, even if it can greatly influence the way you live everyday) without allowing you to think that there could be a tiny chance that all of this is wrong, without giving you the possibility to investigate on your situation. You've grown up with the conviction that your church is the only one true, that God himself spoke in 1820 to a teenager and told him that he was the chosen one, the one who would later become the first prophet of the new era. That is what you believe, because you were told so since you were in age to believe all what your parents say, since you were in age to believe in Santa Claus.

I think you are somewhat aware of this. Maybe you believe you don't have a good enough testimony, so you really hope that going on this 2 years mission will help you aquire a better understanding of your religion, make you unbreakable in your faith, make you stronger against the devil's attacks, and wiser in your decisions. Or maybe, you're just going because it was planned from the begining, since you repeatedly sang as a kid this little song : "I hope they call me on a mission, when I have grown a foot or two....I hope by then I will be ready to teach and preach and work as missionaries do!". We all know what this kind of song implies, don't we ?

And/Or, most probably, you're going because of the pressure: How could you finally chose not to go ? You likely would disappoint everybody, your familly, your church friends, your community, and even worse, you certainly would lose forever the love of this girl... Because yes, that's right, in mormon community, you gain a particular social status when you're back from your mission, everybody is proud of you and respect you, and most of the girls only want to marry a man who went on a mission, which seems to be the case of your girl. And as you can't even imagine going out with a someone from the outside world, which would be really bad for many reasons, you're somewhat... yes, stuck. Seems like spending 2 years in a mission at the begining of your life is the only way to go... Gosh, thinking about all of this makes me a bit sad, as it seems a decision made by despair.

Do all of this seem right to you ? Do you really have the feeling you made the decision to go, freely ?
Sincerely, have you already tried to look at your situation as you were looking at somebody else ? Trying to change your point of view by allowing you to make simple hypothesis like this: In the case what I'm believing is wrong,  what I'm doing is wrong, what would it imply ?

edit: some typo

Your request was interesting. I made a quick animation, only 4 frames. I couldn't find a goat walkcycle, only satyre still images. So I just tried to think how I would walk if I had goat legs...
I think I'm going to finish this animation.

In the setup menu, you have the option called "Force Alternate Letterbox Resolution", which does what you need. Once checked, a new line is added in acsetup.cfg, forceletterbox=1, and the game runs in 640x480.

Well, strangely, I think your first 2 sketches were better than the last one you did. The poses were more natural back then, and the camera angle less strange. Seems like you forgot to plan the composition. Actually, I think you should make several sketches as rough as the first ones, until you're really happy with the composition.

Back to the pose, the last one is not very natural. I would advise you to look at a mirror or to take place in a car and look by yourself how you would react if you were at his place.

About the camera angle and composition. Well, it would be so much easier for me to explain my thoughts in french, so I will just say that the composition must reflect the mood of the scene. Your last sketch is somewhat static, and we don't feel that there is a pressure. A good way would be to choose an long horizontal format (as Ali said in his post), and have the principal element (in our case, the hero) overlapped, cut  by the edges, for example.

One last thing, when you're not sure about the composition, I advise you not to limit yourself by tracing the panel before you draw,  that way you're not encumbered by edges. Also you can try different way to crop your picture after that.

Some rough sketches to illustrate (well, I don't drive, so I'm not really sure about the pose):






I hope what I wrote is understandable

Good luck with your comic

me either

My vote goes to Loominous

Chicky: hehe unless it's specified in the rules, the background doesn't have to be a walkable one Mmh and I think loominous' entry would work without problems anyway: The character could walk on the platform area, and when the player wants the character to get down the stairs, he simply would have to click on it... Also this backgound could be used as a cutscene.

Well, in fact, I just wanted to say that I have the feeling that too much people simply don't vote for the background they logicaly would have, just because they would feel bad for the others, for "conscience's sake", because they don't want to vote as everybody else, or even because they don't want always the same guy to win.
I don't know, seem to be wrong reasons to me. I don't think it's unfair that someone very skilled wins once again, if his background simply deserves it. It is supposed to be a competition, right ? We simply vote for the background which seems the best as long as it fits the rules.

Loominous : I really love your background, but there is something that bugs me, I simply can't see where the ground and the windows are supposed to meet. For me it seems as if the ground had a big part missing on the right, and the windows would go way lower... It's a bit confusing.
But apart from that, and the fact it isn't totally finished, I find it simply and purely beautiful.

Dorcan, can you post your system specs, please, so we can see if there's a common theme?

Code: ags

------------------
System Information
------------------
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 
System Manufacturer: VIA Technologies, Inc.
System Model: VT8363
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Duron(tm) processor,  MMX,  3DNow, ~1.0GHz
Memory: 320MB RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Display Memory: 128.0 MB
Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.7184 (English)
DDraw Status: Enabled
D3D Status: Enabled
AGP Status: Enabled

Happened to me again as I was working on a room script and tested the game with ctrl+T. I closed the window, continued working on my game a few minutes, then I noticed that it was still written "[Running game]" on the agseditor title bar.

Edit: I have another problem. When launching an ags games in fullscreen, I can't move the mouse and the game runs quite slowly, for like 10 seconds. Then everything works fine. I think it's a problem with directDraw, because I have a similar problem when starting video files, where sometimes the movie wouldn't play before 10 seconds. Maybe the problem with the game not quitting normaly has something to do with directx, I don't know.

* The "dynamic sprite was not deleted" messages are no longer displayed if you close the game using the Windows Close button or Alt+F4.
* Fixed IsKeyPressed not working with backspace (ASCII code 8).

Thank you a lot

I've been finding that sometimes when using CTRL_T test game, when I close the game down control returns to the editor, but the game is still running and I have to kill it with the Task Manager

Same problem for me, I think it came with the RC1 version. I'm not sure, but it seems to me that it only happened after closing the game by pressing the x button, when a warning message was supposed to appear, but for a reason or another simply didn't.

[Edit]

Mmm seems that I can't check if the backspace button is pressed with IsKeyPressed. When I look at the console, it says:
"IsKeyPressed:  unsupported keycode 8".
I'm not sure, but wasn't it supported before the 2.7 version ?

I'm making my own textbox, and I need to check if this button was pressed, as you can guess. Using the on_key_press function wouldn't be practical at all.

Any chance to support this keycode (and maybe other useful ones) for a next beta... ?

Edit: Oh, one more thing. There is no way to get rid of dynamic sprites when you close the game with ALT+F4 or by pressing the red cross. I allways get the message "Dynamic sprite # was never deleted".

Having an event eEventQuitGame would be quite useful IMO.

I vote for Misj'

[InitPostContent]

Mmh I made an "internet" plugin for a test game (an online chess game...). The plugin is not yet finished, but 5 functions are operational:

void InitPostContent();
void AddPostContent(string variable, string content);
string SendWebPostMethod(string url, string action);
string ReadWebContent(string url, string action);
string SaveWebImage(string url, string action, string destFile);

The first three functions work the way an html form works, with the POST method:

- InitPostContent will initialize variables and values.

- AddPostContent will add a variable containing a value.
Example:
AddPostContent("test", "a value"); would work the same way as a form object in a web page :
<input type="hidden" name="test" value="a value">


- SendWebPostMethod simply submit variables and values to an url, the same way a form works, and then returns the page content as a string.
Example:
SendWebPostMethod("http://www.test.com/score.php", "?action=newscore"); would work the same way as if you submited a form with these parameters:
<form action="http://www.test.com/score.php?action=newscore" method="POST">


- ReadWebContent returns the content of a web page.
Example:
   String buffer;
   StrCopy(buffer, ReadWebContent("http://www.test.com/ags/agssave.001", "") );
   File *output = File.Open("agssave.001", eFileWrite);
   output.WriteRawLine(buffer);
   output.Close();

This will copy the agssave from a website into the game folder.
Note: You could do the same thing with SendWebPostMethod as it also returns the url content.


- SaveWebImage will copy an image from an url into your game folder :
Example:
   DynamicSprite * avatar;

   SaveWebImage("http://www.test.com/images/avatar.bmp", "", "data/avatars/avatar.bmp");
   avatar = DynamicSprite.CreateFromFile("data/avatars/avatar.bmp");
   if (avatar != null) {
      RawDrawImage(150, 100, avatar.Graphic);
      avatar.Delete();
   }


You'll find more info in the zip file.

ags_filenet.zip, 145ko
Download

Wow. I really like this background, especially the water effect, well done

I would say that transitions to dark parts need a light blue tint. Also I think that the last version is a little bit too dark, not being able to see the end of the path is a bit... "disturbing". One last thing, the dark line at the edge of the path stands out too much. Maybe you should get rid of it and put instead a luminous border, because of the light on the other side.

In french, the word for exit is "Sortie".

Again, well done 

Yes, definately, for the game folder AND its subfolders. In fact, it would be quite useful to have all the file functions working in subfolders as well (I'm thinking about the eFileWrite mode I would have used in this case, but had to create a plugin which allowed me to create/move a file into the "/profile" folder)

Hum, I started working on a palette editor program to help me handle the AGS palette, before I had to work for my exams. I totally forgot that this little project was on hold and your post reminded me about it. I certainly will restart working on it soon or later. In any case I'll just post a screenshot to give an idea about the way my program works.

There it is :


(yup, it is clearly inspired by photoshop, with layers blending and all)

Awesome

One thing though... I think It would be nice if we could credit people who aren't part of this community. 

Something like a adding a star (*) at the end of the nickname, would prevent the username verification in the forum database, and the name shown in the game's page wouldn't be linked, just an idea.


Thanks for this nice feature !

CHARID is a reserved variable I think.

this one works :

function DisplaySubtitle(int charID, string buffer){
   DisplaySpeechAt(160, 235, 320, charID, buffer);
}