Topics

[Planned:]

A game for this month's mags competition.





* Play as the Experimental Synthetic Warfare Neohuman AI!
* Run internal functions! Yay!
* Defend the science vessel Von Grun!
* Comes with its own list of colors used! (Black, Light/Dark Green, Light/Dark Blue, Light/Dark Red)
* Thrilling plot. Wheee!

Progress:

Planned:
Thrilling plot - 100%
Graphics - ~75% (There aren't too much)
Puzzles - 100%
Masses of references and interesting acronymes: Yes. (For example: X.S.W.N. can also be read as Xerxes Shodan Wintermute Neuromancer)

Actually done:
Thrilling plot: ~30%
Graphics: ~50%
Puzzles: ~20%
Masses of references and interesting acronymes: Yup.

Finishing date:
ETA is April 26th 

It may seem like a very short game now - regarding how much I've done in such a short period of time - but trust me: It won't will be one. (sorry)

-7th of April-
Yay, update! Two new screenshots available... well, okay, one is an updated version of an old one. Also, I've finished the plot outline.

-14th of April-
Another update for today. The game will be quite a bit shorter than originally planned, sorry. But to not make you too angry, there's a new screenshot in the post down there. Okay, it is that room again, but from a different scene this time.

-22nd of April-
I managed to miss most of my deadlines - hooray - so only an incomplete version will be ready for the mAGS competition. Sorry. But anyway, that incomplete version shall be fun! (I hope)

Exactly that. Can I create a new character/object/whatever while the game is already running? cNew = new TCharacter(); doesn't work (surprise!)... is there any way at all to do it?

So, folks, there is is. _Access is finally finished and released. Still, this is only a (nearly bug-free) beta version, so you know what to expect



AGS Games Database: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=862

/EDIT: Yee haw, 1.2!

Yes, I know, there is a thread about it and it has an author. But the thread was inactive since nearly a year now and the author didn't log in for about that period of time. So I think starting a new thread is justified. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

So, yeah. The TCP/IP plugin is kind of, well, broken and incompatible with the current AGS version. I did a (brief) research, but I was completly unable of finding a version except the broken one... but I'd really like to try my coding skills on a simple and fun Multiplayer game for which the idea has been brewing in my mind for AGES. So, any idea how to solve my problem? Is there a running version for that plugin available? Or any idea how to work around it?

[over and over and over AND OVER]

Whiny the Baby Yeti says...

It makes me sad if all threads turn into discussions about the same theme after a certain amount of time *sniff*

And that's exactly what's happening here right now, e.g. here, here or here, to just give three examples. Also the same things are said over and over and over AND OVER again, which is starting to make my stomach hurt. So if you feel the need to say something about TheVintageDemon, please, for heaven's sake, do it here. And TheVintageDemon, please read this thread. And listen, just listen ONCE to what people say. Y'know, I used to like you, but my sympathy is fading. And people, no insults or flame war, please. That won't help anyone.

[Game download]

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?category=0&action=detail&id=857&refresh1172344569

Or, for short: "A MAGS entry made in roughly seven hours  8)"



Game download http://www.rogepost.com/n/7467943764

Mirror of 1.0
You shouldn't download version 1.0, it's buggy

http://www.sonsofgaia.net/AGS/PMUVCHVT.zip
Thank you, Peder!

Music.vox http://www.evilshare.com/36a8164c-1589-102a-847b-00a0c993e9d6
(might be incompatible)

I did it. I made a working eleven-roomer in 7 hours. Psheeew.

Pretty descriptive title, huh? 

Not much more to be said about it, I guess... GUI controls already have these properties, but I'd like to have them for characters and especially objects, too.

I'm not sure if I should be amused or freaking out. This actually happened to me and is a screenshot - I've just removed the host name, regarding how some companies are really sensible about this.

This character is supposed to be always in the same room as cEgo and at the co-ordinates (160, 100). I've already tried letting him follow cEgo with DISTANCE and EAGERNESS = 1 and putting

Code: ags

cCracker.x=160; cCracker.y=100; 

in repeatedly_execute. It worked quite well... except that cCracker only enters cEgo's room after about 5 seconds pass, which is 5 second too much for what I'm wanting to use this character.

Also, I tried to manipulate the cCracker.Room directly, but unfortunately, it's read-only... so that doesn't work.

If I can't have this character changing the room the second cEgo changes it, I could work around this with a command like character.SayAtBackground, which unfortunately doesn't exist.

And ideas what I should be doing?

/EDIT: No, I can't use any RawDraw functions.

[the]

Hallo,
soeben hat ein User bei unserem ValentinsgruàŸ Service einen GruàŸ für dich abgesendet.
Sein/Ihr Name lautet Jasmin.
Die GrüàŸe kannst du dir unter http://valentin.fee13.de/ anschauen und von dort aus ebenfalls ValentinsgrüàŸe an deine Liebsten versenden.

Viele GrüàŸe und einen angenehmen Valentinstag,
http://valentin.fee13.de

German, of course. In English, it means something like "Please visit our page, somebody named Jasmin left a Valentine's Day card for you!".

Ah, holidays, the opportunity to lure thousands of dumb users into visitng you page.

...or, in other words, a "paintover" of the Borland C++ Builder! This time, I didn't take the "Securipedia Approach", but tried to create something more... fitting to my general style from the beginning on.



Still, I'm not quite... satisfied with it  It's probably the white background, but I'd rather not change it to black...

So, yeah. I was running two operation systems on my laptop: Win XP SP2 and SuSE Linux. Then I tried to change something on the Linux partition and accidently killed the boot manager. Booting via the Win XP recovery console didn't work - it requested a password, but obviously not the one I set as that one didn't work. So I tried to re-install SuSE Linux, along with the boot manager. It worked fine...

...until about 30 minute ago. The installation hung. At "updating kernel dependencies", 53%. I'd rather not reboot right now, because I fear the consequences. Any idea what to do now? I wouldn't want to re-install Win XP right now, I fear the data loss. Okay, I have a quite recent backup, but still... blah. Just try SuSE Linux again, proceed to WinXP or just go mad? I could really need some help 

Hey: Many great games
were created in 06*
Make fun about'em!

The Subject and introduction Haiku pretty much say it. Where are all the "funny" parody games, people? AFAIK, there's just "Ben Jordan Paranormal Warrior Within Case I: The Wrath Of The Skunk Ape" or something like that.

Where's "The Trouble with Trilbies"? Where "Creeps"? WHY CAN'T WE HAVE A LAUGH AT THE COST OF THE CHARACTERS OF THE GAMES WE ALL ADORE AND THEIR CREATORS, DAMMIT?

We urgently need more parody games. Now!

*=("oh-six")

[System Security]

As everybody and their little sister seem to run a webcomic nowadays, I thought "Hey! Why not you?" and made something up. I posted it in the Critics Lounge because... well, I'm looking for C&C! (some of the graphics are based off Tron 2.0)

Featuring experimental Sierra-Style speech. Let's hope it isn't too difficult to read...

System Security
How it would be like if the programs freed themselves from the slavery, threw out the tyrannic users and formed a society!

Starring:

Several "serious" programs


FireWall.exe



Bytes of different colors



The mysterious and cruel KIA (Kernel Intelligence Agency) Agents



...and some more I haven't drawn yet...

Way, way more hippy freeware programs

A bot net controller


...and some more I haven't drawn yet...
--------------------------------------------------
And here are the actual comics!

First one:
Bad and tastless comic

http://www.the-underdogs.info/scratch.php

As recommended there, I'm spreading the word around. Also, I think this just perfectly fits to AGS - it's free, you (in general) have very low costs to develop an AGS game, you could run commerical with it (theoretically), it supports/encourages 2D graphics... so, what do you think about that "Scratchware" thing?

So, I've got that text file. And I've got that string array. And now, is there any easy way to get the text file's contents in the string array (line one in array[0], line two in array[1],...)?

If no, is there any way at all? If no, is there a plugin which makes this possible?

Thank you for your time.

No idea where else to post this. At the moment, it's just a game idea; I haven't started working on it yet. And I don't feel like making up two rooms just "for the hell of it" to be able to post it into GIP.

In many (most) adventures, you play as the generic "good guy", mainly against a generic evil genius. But what if you could play as the evil guy?

There was a game a friggin' lot of time ago with that topic, called "Dungeon Keeper". The idea was great, but unfortunately, they only used the fantasy setting and the resulting game was, to be honest, shit. Really, it was fun throwing the good and honest knight into your torture chamber, always healing him when he was near death, then throwing him into the prison and letting him nearly starve to death, then throwing him back into the torture thing... until you broke him. But the game itself was crap. Boring crap. And RTS. Kinda.

And now, I'd like to bring a game like this into the adventure genre. Here is some concept art: (sorry BaRoN for stealing your avatar, but it was just too perferct to resist)



So, now to the ideas.
* You create your own villain, picking nationality (German - Russian - Asian - N/A), the type (Genius - AI - General - Alien), gender (Male - Female - N/A  :o) and the name. Perhaps you'll also be able to adjust the portrait, but the walking-around character will, depending on type and nationality, always look the same (for example, the german general will always wear a Pickelhaube).

* Your task: Develop an evil plan to be able to REIGN OVER THE WORLD!!!1(one)

* You can choose the plan (Drugs in the water - Ion cannon in the orbit - Deadly virus - a.s.o.) quite freely, but, for example "take over the internet and threaten to fire the US nuclear weapons" is only available to AI.

* The plans need resources (money) and time. Expensive plans work faster, cheap ones take longer.

* The money is also needed to purchase defense for your fortress, bribe the hero agency, buy traps, employ disposable minions...

* Once you started your plan, your fortess will be under constant attack of heroes. If you somehow got your hands on the hero agency employment plans, you can somewhat predict which heroes will attack you and adjust your defense (for example, the Ninja pictured above is a superb melee fighter but helpless against Van Berg's V2 rocket).

* A timer runs out in the background. If it reaches 0, your evil plan succeeds and you win.

* Mainly, you can just watch how your defenses are destroyed by the attackers/ how they tear the hero apart, but you *can* actively control some defense systems such as the V2 and some minions such as the "disposable assassin".

* After one hero is dead, the next will be send. All destroyed traps remain destroyed, and all dead minions remain dead.

* If a hero makes it to your base, you get a last chance to fight him in direct combat. Note you're a quite weak fighter, this is only good for winning some time.

* If you are killed before the victory timer reaches 0, you loose.

---

Additionally, many things will be randomized whenever you start a new game, such as the availability of some traps (e.g. the Tfosorcim Troop Teleporter) or the heroes. There will always be different ways to get your hands on the hero list, defend your base... also, every villain type/nationality has a "special ability"; for example, the Russian general can use the "Overkill Rocket Strike" ONCE, which will immediatly kill the hero.

So, not really an adventure, coming to think of it... anyway, what do you think? Any graphics / sound artist willing to help me with this?

/NOTE: Sorry for my English. Guess I just got too excited  .

Descriptive Subject, huh? Okay, the problem is: In _Access, you will sometimes be hunted by tracers. I want the game to play a "beep" sound every x game cycles, where x depends on the distance between the player and the tracer. I use this code to determine the distance:

Code: ags

  int distancey=player.y-cTrac.y;
float dy=IntToFloat(distancey*distancey);
distancey=FloatToInt(Maths.Sqrt(dy));
  
int distancex=player.x-cTrac.x;
float dx=IntToFloat(distancex*distancex);
distancex=FloatToInt(Maths.Sqrt(dx));

int distance=distancex-distancey;
float d=IntToFloat(distance*distance);
distance=FloatToInt(Maths.Sqrt(d));

The sqrt thing is to ensure the result is always positive. Now, the code for playing the sound:

Code: ags

if (IsTimerExpired(1)){
PlaySound(0);
//determine distance
SetTimer(1, distance/2);

But this code somehow screws up pretty fast. It works, yes, but not perfect. Any suggestions how to make this a little more error-resistant?

Admit it. We all are crazy teenagers/young adults/older adults who call themselves a "company". And this is THE thread to proll around about it a little bit! For example, it's history and maybe how you got to name it like that. I'll start:

My "company" actually started off as "DraZcomp" some years ago. I didn't even have a logo, the only remains of it are a folder with some crappy "Hello World" programs I wrote back then.

Then I re-named it to "Super PixxelZ". Uber-lame. Laaaaame.

And today, it's the glorious Knollware Entertainment! Yay! 

[Harmless Section - things found in Wikipedia]

Just your average conspiration theory thread.

Harmless Section - things found in Wikipedia
Magic Works
You have more than two intelligence services
ECHELON

Think about this...
* George Bush owned an oil company.
* Big companies pay both the Republicans and the Democrats money.
* The Skipjack Encryption Algorithm was designed by an American Intelligence Service.
-> They earn their money via cracking codes.

Stop using Google.
* Nearly all searches today are routed over Google.

Information Control
* Normally people don't bother with any results after page 2.
* The Google company decides in which order the results are displayed.
* In fact, they can even decide whether a site is skipped by the search.

This should ring a bell.

Total observation
* Your search submission does not get encrypted.
* Your IP gets logged.
* Looking up the location of an IP is as easy as eating pie.
* Nearly all Intelligence Services employ Hackers.
* Why should Google bother with making a simple search server a digital fortress?
AND
* The Google bosses are humans.
* Humans like money.
* Intelligence Services have money.

Microsoft is evil - even more so than usual.
* 95% of computer users use windows.
* I guess 98% have it at least installed.
* No-one ever saw Window's source code.
* Microsoft is an American company.
* New windows versions are never ever started from scratch.

And now, how easy would it have been to sneak a little backdoor in, let's say, DOS 1.0? Or even QDOS? They can view YOUR data, and if they didn't throw you in jail by now, then only because they weren't interested in you.

Conspiration Theoretics? LUNATICS!
This is very, very, very serious. Read this carefully, one by one.
* There are extremly few BIG media corporations, and even fewer IMPORTANT ones.
* So if they don't like a certain person, what would hinder the corporation's bosses to start a campaign against that person? This actually happened.
* More than once - that was just an example.

There are actually some novels mentioning this. Even the propaganda scum, pardon, thriller "Digital Fortress" by "Dan Brown" mentions this (as a good thing, though. Propaganda trash, pardon, great thriller.)

Keep this in mind.

Everybody likes a fool, but no-one lends him money.

* Or: Who would believe a comedian on a serious topic?

Now combine it with the media thing. Make a fool of someone and no-one will ever believe something he says.

Have you ever seen a single serious attempt on talking about conspiration theories?

The overkill are, anyway, these "studies" by "independent experts" that conspiration theoretics are just paranoid. You often hear said counter-arguments, but you never believe them. Why?

]- This thread is neither serious nor does it have a point. -[