Messages

Thanks, good to be back! And thanks for debugging the screenshot with me, both of ya! Sometimes I just hate technology. Well, most of the time.

Oh hi, Snarky!

Maybe now? Moved the screenshot elsewhere altogether.

Hey, eri0o! Happy to see some familiar people still hanging around!

Is the image loading for you now?

I don't have any plans for releasing this game on mobile. It's not really designed with that in mind, although I'll admit I've tested it on a phone and a tablet for funsies, so technically it would be doable.

As for the mobile games I've worked on, I did a couple of updates to the original Angry Birds game and a couple of completely new games like Angry Birds Stella (no longer available) and Small Town Murders which was the last one I worked on. It's a story-driven match-3 game; couldn't NOT do a story-driven game when I was finally offered one. 

[A Thread Through Reality]

Hello, everybody!

It's been a while since the last time I posted here. It's been almost exactly ten years since my last AGS game, Barely Floating, was released. Since then I've been mostly busy programming some free to play mobile games before jumping ship late last year. Naturally, I felt the need to make another short freeware point & click adventure after such a long break. (This one's made in Unity, so that's why I'm posting here and not in completed game announcements.)

Anyway, on to the game itself!

A Thread Through Reality

There's been a bit of a breach in the Fabric of Reality and we are in desperate need of a capable seamstress such as yourself to mend the Tear. The reality has already begun collapsing in on itself through the Tear, causing time periods to mix and corrupt each other. Let's get crackin' before we're all doomed!




Trailer

If you want to try it out,
Download it here for Windows!

I also have some experimental builds for Mac and Linux users here. These have been tested much less than the Windows one but at least it's something if you're not running Windows and want to try out the game. Note that Mac users may need to right click the app and choose "Open" from the context menu to get past Apple's unable-to-check-for-malware warning. There is, of course, no malware in the game. Sorry for the inconvenience!
- MacOS
- Linux

The expected play time is somewhere between 2-3 hours.

I hope you enjoy the game! I'd be happy to hear what you think about it!

(And if you're curious to see my older adventures, head on to http://www.serpentpictures.net/games/)

Sure, here's the source code. Do whatever you want with it. 

Ah, true, looks like the project file structure has changed enough to break that. I'd recommend using the plugin for exporting, if it works for you, since the old method is more of a hack.

Did you follow the instructions from the first post? Should work fine in 3.4.0 (I've tested it with 3.4.0.16), unless of course you've managed to discover a bug.

1. Copy AGS.Plugin.DialogDesigner.dll to your AGS directory.
2. Run AGS, open your project.
3. Double click Dialog Designer node in the project explorer tree.
4. Select Dialog Designer.exe.

Then you can start writing dialogs and exporting them directly to AGS:

5. Write your dialog.
6. File -> Export to AGS -> Settings -> Set the dialog name.
7. Make sure AGS is open and your project is loaded.
8. In Dialog Designer, select File -> Export to AGS -> AGS Plugin (or Ctrl+E)
9. Switch to AGS, there should be a pop-up saying the dialog was imported successfully. You should see the dialog in your tree view.
10. To edit a dialog that you've already imported, open the dialog in AGS and double click on Dialog Designer in the project explorer tree.

At least the source should be accessible here: https://bitbucket.org/AJA/dialogdesigner but no work has actually gone into cleaning it up for public consumption, so expect comments written in Finnish.

The editor plugin included in the 1.3 release is probably as close to AGS integration as I'll get. Unless someone else feels the need to do it.

Are you using the correct render stage?

Code: ags

video.renderStage = eD3D_StageBackground;

That should render it immediately after the game background finishes rendering and before anything else.

[Download 1.3.0!]

Did you try the version with editor plugin support, a couple of posts above?

Anyway, I found a couple of crashes from the plugin export when I tried it now. Should be working now, and since no one has mentioned any issues with the earlier plugin version (or no one tried it), I'm bravely assuming this is good enough for a release. So, without further ado:

Download 1.3.0!

Changes:
* Added an AGS Editor plugin that simplifies editing and exporting changes to your project.

It should be "Direct3D Plugin", at least that's what the plugin returns as its name, so either the method is broken or it's checking against some other string.

No problem. Let's hope it doesn't mysteriously unfix itself.

I ran the same code quickly in my test project (AGS 3.4.0.13) and didn't notice any issues enabling any menus after the video is skipped. Only thing I noticed was that if you have a line of dialogue (probably anything skippable with a key press), it would be skipped without an extra wait after the cutscene.

Code: ags

    StartCutscene(eSkipESCOnly);
    
    while (video.NextFrame() && !IsKeyPressed(eKeyEscape))
    {
      Wait(1);
    }
    
    EndCutscene();
    
    Wait(1); // Need to wait here so the key press doesn't skip the dialogue
    cEgo.Say("This is not shown without the extra wait");

Could your issue be something related to that or caused by some other part of your code?

At least in AGS 3.4.0.13 if I had the video file in the compiled folder and built the game, it got copied to the folder that has the exe.

But then again, does the video need to be in room_load?

You can of course load the videos whenever you need them, shouldn't make any difference.

Anyway, glad to hear you're mananing to wrestle this thing into submission!

Ah, so it gets copied there on compile, gotcha!

Cassiebsg, I uploaded a new version which should fix the file not found issue but also, and more importantly, implements screen scaling so it should look the same regardless of at what resolution you're running the game. Might not work perfectly but at least it's a start in case you decide to keep using the plugin.

Apparently if you run it from the editor it's looking for the video file in the Compiled folder but if you run the windows executable it looks for it in the Compiled\Windows folder. Maybe that's the issue you're running into? The error handling in this plugin appears to be quite lacking, sigh.

CW, can you confirm that GetPathToFileInCompiledFolder(const char*fileName, char *buffer) is no longer working as expected with the new platform specific folders or is there some other method I should be using to get the final compilation folder?

To my great surprise, I found the sources for this ancient turd, whee!

Should run in AGS 3.4.x now: http://www.serpentpictures.net/ags_d3d/ags_d3d.zip

Thanks, CW, for figuring out the fix beforehand. Saved me a lot of time, cheers!

Haha, thanks, Fitz! Really glad to hear it.

Thanks guys!

The horrible real life events that inspired the game were definitely worth making a game about.

I can't even finish my background in 6 days (sniff )

The key to making a game in one week is starting strong and then just constantly dropping your quality standards as the week progresses. Plus insanity, lots of it.

Selmiak,

Spoiler

There's one more exact time mentioned in the notes you've picked up.

[close]

Sorry about the scrolling issue. I'll have to keep that in mind for future projects.

But my name isn't Marie...

It will be once my lawyers are done with you!