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Then maybe you should take better care of your skin.

I'm not feeling very creative right now, so...
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard"

Inspired by the Invincible Island Remake, I've been hounding the Beginner's Tech forum recently, and mostly for this thing:

Single Button Tech Demo
(Incomplete and probably buggy)

Planning to use it for my game (art and music has been credited to bicilotti), but wanted to make this small thing first to have it complete. Haven't implemented Save and Load yet, or dialogs (which I haven't figured out properly). I'm getting more and more depressed by the seeming impossibility to make a portable modular version of this thing (without a ton of specialised GUIs and variables all over the place) that I can then use for other games as well, so I figured I'd show it off here and hopefully get motivated .

But if that is the case, what is the point of having the door there at all?

In all of them, the puzzles and their solutions are working contrary to what the narrative and atmosphere and all were building the game towards- the idea that the player, on whatever mission/goal/adventure/journey would be halted by an obstacle where the appropriate response would be to strategically whip a rodent to guide it to a certain direction, or rush around with a (sneakily nabbed and soaked towel) from one location to a far away other one, instead of getting water from somewhere else, carrying it something much more suitable, or that there would exist a place where someone is protecting their treasure in a safe/room with a code that has to be derived from a conveniently nearby placed poem (I think it was a Sherlock game, but I can't remember now), or an artificially created (through the mechanism of the GUI) puzzle of giving a name when most people would've thought of that already.

I'd say they're pretty silly even devoid of context, and the sort of silly that didn't really fit into their respective games (perhaps the Indy one maybe would've fit as an action as a whole, as something Indy might've done, if, as you say, not for the artificially lengthened puzzley aspect of it). At least for me, in most of those situations, the game would've been served better if the corresponding puzzle had been greatly reduced, or not existed at all.

Cat, I also agree that long bits of text and dialogue aren't the answer, but that is where the interactivity of games comes in. How to implement THAT as a "progresser" of the story, in a way that fits in the story and the characters and the world, rather than having what is essentially exposition-gameplay-story progression-more gameplay-story progression-gameplay-story conclusion. Although you brought to my mind an interesting thing...aside from being immersion breaking (at least in terms of narrative involvement), the examples I gave are mostly just obstacles in place to be solved to reach the next plot point, rather than methods by which the next plot point can be achieved.

Sorta stemming from the thread about adventure games that came up recently, I started thinking again (have I done this before? ) about the mechanics in adventure (and other sorts) of games, and how they're quite often at odds with the narrative, something that really shouldn't be happening. One of the incredible things about games as a medium is the inclusion of INTERACTION to all the other story-telling tools. The idea of having the participants involved in the story by actually acting it out is a great thing for immersing the player into the game's atmosphere, the characters, and make the plot feel more meaningful to them. But if that interaction actually takes away from the story, it is kind of broken, then, isn't it?

Just to make sure we're on the same page:
Trapping a cat to get its hair to make a disguise moustache to pass off as someone else breaks the immersion for me.
Chasing and repeatedly whipping a rodent to direct it into becoming bait to clear a forest path breaks the immersion for me.
Having to extract numbers from a vague poem found nearby to enter a passcode to get through a door breaks the immersion for me.
Getting into a "race against time" with a wet towel to sprinkle it on some clay to harden a mould to get through a door breaks the immersion for me.
Having to connect one name with a totally different unconnected name in your "memory inventory" just so you are able to realise that you can use it as a unisex name to get by someone...that breaks the immersion for me.
(and to give a non-adventure example) Acquiring 10 kraad rabbit skulls to give to a local sorceress so that she'll help you further in your quest to save the land breaks the immersion for me.

Now in and of themselves, these little situations might be funny to me, or I might be happy that I was able to solve them in such a "neat" manner, but how do they work overall towards the narrative the game is trying to weave?
These sort of absurd situations might work in an absurd game, like Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island. They were full of absurd situations, and it fit right in to find absurd solutions to those problems. But then what about more serious (or at least non-solely-comedic) games? Do such mechanics make sense in games involving shadowy conspiracies, Freemasons, Templars, the occult, etc.? One would imagine that maybe once or twice you may come across a situation that would benefit the story and game from an absurd solution, and the story may be better off for that, but the examples I gave aren't unique or one-off situations. Those entire games are set up like that.
Or is such stuff simple accepted as part of the genre and ignored as such (like I wouldn't complain that no one approaches me from and I can't fire towards the side in a 2D platforming game)? I'll admit, I had less problems with such games when I played them originally..I don't know if that has changed because I'm older now, or maybe because the potential for story-telling has increased or what.

Any suggestions of some non-solely-comedic games that bucked this trend? I suppose some of the more dialogue-focused games would count among them...

Or more importantly, any suggestions on how to overcome this problem?
I realise "design better stories" would be the overall answer, but it is a bit vague to be helpful . My general method of creating puzzles is as explained by Rodekill's tutorial (incorporated here). I write out the story as a series of obstacles, and then fill in the plot as the solution to those obstacles (as well as the gameplay in terms of solving puzzles). If the obstacle or the solution is too simple, that puzzle becomes less meaningful as a form of gameplay, but if the solution is too convoluted, then you get into the possibility of the silliness of it all breaking the immersion for the player.

So how should it work?

But that is the thing, see. I don't take "puzzle solving" as a defining ingredient of "Adventure games" at all. What you're thinking of are "Puzzle games"- stuff like Gobliiins and Myst and Hodj and Podj (and at the far end without story stuff like Bejewled).

And Planescape: Torment was an AWESOME adventure game (but had pretty mediocre gameplay as well).

I'm not sure The Cave qualifies as an adventure game, but I agree mostly with your premise. For me, personally, the puzzle solving aspect wasn't ever really the main draw of adventure games, and if you ask me, a lot of puzzles (even in famous commercial adventure games) were pretty absurd and unfitting. I wouldn't mind if the gameplay mechanic for adventure games was switched with something else (which is probably why I still consider games like Another World or Flashback) to be adventure games.

I suppose, for me, it is the exploration aspect (solving some obstacle to be rewarded with some previously inaccessible area, exploring each thing in a new area, checking everything out, etc). A couple adventure games I enjoyed because of the excellent dialogue and humour, but I'm not sure that is restricted to adventure games, because you can get that from books and movies and tv shows as well, and the fact that it is a video game, or an adventure game doesn't improve on that.

PS: I love Grim Fandango, but I'd probably rate its puzzles and gameplay to be its weakest feature..

As I said, I'd rather not do it if I have a way not to.
I set "Run game loops while dialog options are displayed" to true, but it doesn't seem to have changed anything. It still doesn't pick up "if (gDialogs.Visible) ...;".

So basically, to be the Citizen Kane of something, the people in the know still have to be talking about it long after it is made?
In that case, for adventure games, I guess..
Zork? Monkey Island?

I was never quite sure how Citizen Kane was the Citizen Kane of movies. Was it thematic depth and tone (is Citizen Kane unusually deep and toneful)? Popularity (is Citizen Kane all that popular among non-film students or film buffs)? From what I gather, I guess it has to do with filming techniques and camera angles and Mise en scene and other fancy words that the layman wouldn't consciously notice.

What would be the parallel to that in gaming? Programming? Interface? Atmosphere and aesthetic?

So...I dunno. Loom?

Hello hello!

In my never-ending quest to iterate through everything, I've reached dialogs now. The problem is, I can't seem to find a way to check if a dialog (any and every dialog) is running. I'm not using any custom dialog system, and I'd prefer not to. Still, I am displaying the dialog in a custom textwindow gui instead of the normal way.

Since I was doing that, I figured I'd simply check if gDialogs.Visible is true. However, I believe that no scripts are run and nothing is checked while dialogs are ongoing? For my check I tried using both the on_key_press function (by adding a "&& (!gDialogs.Visible)" condition to "if (IsGamePaused() keycode = 0", and then adding a check with a keypress to display a message or to move the mouse or SOMETHING to indicate that code is running), and with repeatedly_execute (again with a relevant condition) and even repeatedly_execute_always. None of these had any effect.
So...any ideas? Heck, is it even possible to run any sort of code at all while a dialog is active?

To give some context, once I can check if there is a dialog ongoing, I'd give an ability to iterate through all the options if the player pressed a button.

Also, a second issue, there some way to make visible through script a GUI set with the "Mouse YPos" setting? According to the manual, .Visible doesn't work like that for Mouse YPos GUIs. If I Mouse.SetPosition to the top within its PopupYPos value, it shows, but if I Mouse.SetPosition immediately after that again (even if it is to on top of a button on that same GUI) it doesn't show. Perhaps some issue with it not having enough time to register that the mouse was there?

EDIT: Just after I've posted, I see the thread for Phemar/Zor's dialog module . Still, I'd prefer, if possible to just use the normal dialog system, and not have to rely on some other module. Is dialog truly and completely blocking?

* Babar  imagines a credit card receipt for "Nancy the Happy Whore"

Lets REALLY do some insult sword-fighting! (No idea how this would work or if it would go down in angry flames or fizzle out in boredom)

I've never seen swordplay so horribly bad!

(that took a really long time to come up with, and isn't all that good )

Science is not an instruction booklet?

There are some very odd discussions going on here.

What useful, "good" purposes exactly does a nuclear bomb serve?
Who or what achieved "science"?
What does it mean to achieve science?
What happens when you apply the same criteria ("you can't judge science on its results or the actions of its 'followers'" or "science has been used for good and bad things") to religion or theism?

I know Andail stringently removed all traces of "Is this a useful discussion?" from this thread, but I am curious. We've had a couple of religious threads over the years that ended up as some sort of debate, someone earlier here mentioned how their understandings of theism and faith and belief were "forged" by such discussions, how exactly does that happen? Were they forged, or just reinforced?

The closest thing I can even vaguely remember is some thread about homophobia where a particular (somewhat religious?) member made some comments and was called out on them, and then years later mentioned that thread when they came out, but I don't think there was forging taking place there...

That is useful. Thanks, Khris.

EDIT:I added it, but I it seems I had to add it BEFORE the function where I'm iterating through all the GUI buttons...I didn't realise that AGS only accepts functions in the order they're given (there's some technical term for that, which I've forgotten). If I put it afterwards, and then referenced it, I kept getting undefined token.

I am using the Controls[index] thing as it is now already, but I have no method to go from there to accessing the script of that control/button. I am already iterating through a loop of the buttons on the GUI, but each button has pretty varied functionality (it is sort of a settings menu with SAVE, LOAD, VOLUME, SPEED, QUIT, etc.), so I wouldn't be able to have that all in a loop.

I don't see how that would help, Ghost ....
Having the code for the button pressing all together in one function in an if-block instead of just calling the functions for the button presses in the if-block is essentially the same amount of hard-codedness, and wouldn't work because I still want those buttons to be normally clickable.

That is very disappointing ...
And not a switch (AGS doesn't have switch yet, does it?), it'll just be a big block of if-elses.

Gah.

Hello BTF! Long time no see!

I've got this GUI that I want to be able to iterate through the buttons of, and then interact with the buttons.
I've got the first part down, which means I can access all the properties of whichever button I'm currently on (X position, width, ID, etc.).

But now I can't find any way to get the script associated with the button to run.
I had been using this:

Code: AGS

ProcessClick(gOptions.X + gOptions.Controls[smb[1]].X + gOptions.Controls[smb[1]].Width/2, gOptions.Y + gOptions.Controls[smb[1]].Y + gOptions.Controls[smb[1]].Height/2, eModePointer);

But then I saw that ProcessClick ignores GUIs. GUIs or GUIControls don't seem to have a RunInteraction or a RunScript or any such thing either.

So is there a way to access any button's script at run-time? Or some way to accomplish what I'm trying without having to hardcode the different buttons' function names into an if-block in this code?