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Yeah, planning dialogs is quite a bitch. That's why, a couple of years ago, I created Dialog Designer. Lately I've begun to feel restricted by the dialog tree, so later this year I might release a new Dialog Designer in which you can organize the dialogs into a network of dialog options and pieces of script.

For example, it would allow you to turn...

Code: ags

[option 1:] ego: How are you?
dude: Fine, thanks.
ego: I was wondering if you were the right guy to talk to about puppies.
dude: Yup.
return

[option 2:] ego: How's it hanging?
dude: Low and free.
ego: I was wondering if you were the right guy to talk to about puppies.
dude: Yup.
return

...into --->

Code: ags

[option 1:] ego: How are you?
dude: Fine, thanks.
goto seg1

[option 2:] ego: How's it hanging?
dude: Low and free.
goto seg1

[seg1:] ego: I was wondering if you were the right guy to talk to about puppies.
dude: Yup.
show options

And so on... The flow of the dialog would of course be defined visually instead of commands like goto such and such. But so far I only have a flowchart type diagram drawing program finished. Don't hold your breath.

A couple of years ago I started making an adventure game engine in XNA using Lua (LuaInterface) for scripting. Then I noticed XNA's sound system sucked and that project died. So, my advice would be to check if XNA's sound system meets your requirements before spending lots of time with graphical and gameplay stuff. The sound system may have been improved for XNA 4.0 but I don't really care enough to check. Instead, later this year I'll try to commit suicide by making the engine in C++.

Just in case you think maybe you should try out C/C++, I'll just say one thing: DON'T. Moving from AGS to C++ is like moving from a four star hotel to the bottom of a swamp. The C# language, for example, is much safer, easier and faster (in terms of productivity).

So yeah, try XNA first.

Just lost a week of time on my game due to pneumonia that got me hopspitalized for a week. Will start working again in a day or two, as I start to get back to my senses. Might not be able to finish in time.

Bummer. Glad to hear you're feeling better!

As for my status... Unfortunately, untangling the story has been even harder than anticipated, so I'm going to let it mature a bit. Therefore, my MAGS debut will have to wait for now, sorry.

Time for a bump.

As I've said many times before, great stuff! I'm listening to no. 3 for the 100th time. Reminds me a bit of the AGS awards... clap clappety clap. Except this one didn't give me gonorrhea.

Oh man. Just a while ago I was planning on making this one game idea I have for a MAGS competition and apparently this month's theme is the perfect fit. Let's see if I'll manage to whip up something playable in a month. I'll probably have forgotten about this by tomorrow.

[this]

Thanks! And thanks to everyone for nominating By the Numbers for the awards!

Sadly, I haven't had time or energy to start a new project featuring this technology but it's just a matter of time. What I'm hoping for is to make it a bit more 3D-ish, allowing the head to turn and so on. Actually, I did some tests shortly after finishing this game and the head movement looks pretty good. I also found out that there's no way I'll be able to reduce the number of facial tracking points without sacrificing the overall realism of the animation. So, no way to reduce the workload. Plus, to make things a bit more complex, I would have to render a 3D face instead of a 2D one in AGS. Such fun.

Well, we'll see what happens once I'm finished with this.

What an absolutely crazy idea. I'm in!

[Download v1.2!]

Done. Automatic option-off can be turned off in the export settings window. Give it a go and do tell if something's not working as it's supposed to.

Download v1.2!

[character: woot!]

Thanks!

I haven't worked on this for a while since it already did all I needed it to do and was stable enough. And also because not many people seemed to be very interested in it.

- Add settings so that the defaul option-off after every line can be turned off (I want to turn off options quite rarely, so it kinda sucks)

Sure.

- Add an option to include the dialog option texts on to the script side. For example I want the character to say the options, but as I'm using a custom Say() function, I have to copy-paste these by hand.

This functionality actually exists already but it's quite limited. You can set the option text to be the first line of dialogue (in format character: woot!) by right clicking the script and selecting "Replace title with first line". I'll change it so that the first line can be either anything-here: line or whatever..."line"...and no more quotes after this. Then it should work in most cases.

I have some free time right now, so I'll see if I can fix these pronto.

[Best Animation]

Well, why not...

By the Numbers
(OROW Winner)



Best Animation
Vector graphics and motion-captured facial animation. If you've never witnessed this in an AGS game, take a look and prepare to have your jaws dropped! Yawn.

Best Voice Work
Lots of yada yada with more or less bearable English accents. If your ears are not bleeding after finishing the game, why not nominate it? (Well, it's not that bad. The combination of animation and voice acting does make it quite an interesting experience.)

And if someone still hasn't seen the making of video, here it is: Making of By the Numbers or MIRROR

[Download v1.1.4!]

Apparently I forgot. But it's fixed now!

Download v1.1.4!

Okay, new download links and mirrors are up! Check the first post! Let's hope they last the rest of the month.

Thanks for the mirror, Ryan Timothy!

Thanks! Thanks a lot! You broke my internets, you hooligans... After five years, 20 GB transfer limit suddenly isn't enough.

Seriously though, thanks for your interest! 12 GB of game downloads and 8 GB of making of downloads. Makes me feel all special. But that'll probably wear off in a minute or so.

I'll see if I can get the limit increased next week. In the meantime, if somebody is willing to put their websites at risk and host a mirror, I'd be very grateful. I should probably try out some of the free upload services too. In any case, a working download link should appear by tomorrow.

It's a conspiracy! :o

Thanks, guys! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Okay, let's see if I can avoid repeating what I already posted in the competition thread...

The atmosphere is very well crafted and really depressing. Great job with the sounds and music! Whenever you're just feeling too damn happy, you should play this game. It'll bring you right back down.

The graphics are good too, especially the living room background. It really sets you in the mood and has a lot of character. I also like the fragmentation thing you've got going on in there, like it's not quite correctly pieced together. It puts you visually into the mindset of a deeply troubled person.

The writing also supports the atmosphere well. One could always wish for a bit more length and gameplay but I think the overall experience is what counts here.

A very good OROW game, all in all! An enormous improvement over your previous entry.

Wow, thanks everyone! I guess I'll seriously have to think about how to make this thing feasible for a bigger game.

I am. That aspect of the game exceeded all my expectations. Some of the other stuff I'm a bit iffy about.

Really happy to hear that, Snake!

I really wish I had the patience but that 11-12 hours of almost non stop tracking for the animations really took a toll. Maybe one day when I've managed to fool some other people into doing the work.

Well, actually... This WAS sort of a test to see what this kind of animation would look like in a game, since I would really kill for some expressive close-up performances for an upcoming, much bigger project. But this is just too much work.

Awesome work! Haven't played the game beyond the first dialog, and skimmed through the video, but I'm extremely impressed with the mo-cap. I was actually considering using vector graphics for characters, Cruise for a Corpse style, but still haven't figured out the best way to go around it. So the data stored in the external files, is that purely the point data or the actual coordinates for drawing the triangles?

Thanks! The files are just a bunch of coordinates with an empty line marking the end of a single frame.

Code: ags

125,166
140,2
155,-16
238,-5
323,-9
.
.
.

The data is read into an array of frames. In this case a frame is a struct that contains an array of integers for each of the coordinates.

The coordinates are already scaled properly by the python script and the triangles are drawn between coordinates at a specific offset in AGS. Since the coordinates are in a specific order, the drawing goes something like this:

Code: ags

drawTriangle( drawingSurface, frameNumber, indexA, indexB, indexC );

where frameNumber indices the array of frames, and A, B & C are the indices to the coordinate array within that frame.

So, for example with the example file (see above) drawTriangle( ds, f, 0, 1, 2 ) would draw a triangle between the points (125 + offsetX, 166 + offsetY), (140 + offsetX, 2 + offsetY) and (155 + offsetX, -16 + offsetY).



I think something like this might work quite well for drawing regular characters with different animations and such. Just keep in mind that it helps a lot if all the animation data can be completely read into memory at the start of the game so there won't be any unnecessary pauses. And the animators' work would also be reduced to just moving some points around. Sounds like something a lazy person like myself would try in the future.