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[you must create two characters of opposite, conflicting or even incompatible temperament, and put them into a situation where they are stuck with each other]

Greetings Fortnightly Writing Competition participants,
     Your challenge for this round is character-based:  you must create two characters of opposite, conflicting or even incompatible temperament, and put them into a situation where they are stuck with each other.  Maybe they'll come to an understanding and appreciation of their mutual differences, maybe they'll discover that they are much stronger as a team when they combine their divergent skill set, or maybe they'll just end up hating and murdering each other: outcome doesn't matter as much to me as exploring the inevitable antagonism between vastly different characters.  Ideally your work would be in screen-play or stage-play format, but I'm not going to make it a requirement so long as your work is dialog driven (i.e. character is mostly revealed through verbal exchanges).
     As always, here are some ideas for the uninspired:

Genghis Khan and Stephen Hawking are stuck carpooling in a traffic jam

Joni Mitchell and Adolf Hitler have an awkward blind date

John Lennon and Cookie Monster are room mates quarrelling over the electricity bill

Ocean Spirit Dennis and James Bond are the sole survivors of a shipwreck on a deserted island

Ponch and Fran Drescher are in a hideous accident, but the doctors save them by fusing their bodies together

Really the possibilities are endless: have fun!  Deadline is midnight EDT February 28. 

[January 29, 2003:]

January 29, 2003: a day that will live in infamy in the annals of AGS history.  Or it would, if anyone ever wrote an AGS history -but that's another topic.  On this date I decided to stop lurking like some sort of creepy dude in the bushes and start participating in this community.  Can you believe I've been an AGSer for a decade!  My, the time flies when you're having fun.
     
But this is not going to be another gushing ode to the forum and its many temptations -I already exhausted that topic for my 1000th post last summer.  No, this rambling dissertation will attempt to account for the fruits of the vast amounts of time I have poured into AGS over an entire decade, with the aim of better understanding how I have evolved as an artist and where I am heading in the coming decade.  I'm also interested in your own AGS journey: where have you come from and where are you going?

So it all began for me back in the Silver Age of AGS: The universe had already cooled, Yahtzee had already left, and CJ only occasionally deigned to smite the odd mortal from his cloud-top perch.  And into this brave newish world I released the immensely silly AL-Quest 1:



I'm not going to delve into the game's obvious graphical failings.  I remember carefully overpainting all of the original Roger sprites that I had ripped from the Demo Game, only to discover that I created a character 1/6 proper scale ....and then changing the plot to involve a shrinking sequence so that I could make use of the work anyway!  Suffice it to say I learned a lot, which is apparent as the game progresses, but I'm still amazed to this day by the fact that I created an entire game of such length (40 rooms) without learning even a line of coding.  In fact, I never would have gotten into AGS at all if not for the no0b-friendly interaction editor.  I still think it was a mistake to let that lapse....  Anyway, AL-Quest 1 was never a huge hit, although player feedback was in general surprisingly positive.  Like most first projects, it was a fantastic learning experience and served as a good stepping stone for my future endeavours.

The next game I finished was The Winter Rose, released in 2005:



This project was a vast departure from AL-Quest.  Firstly, I made myself code everything -everything!.  Sure, I'd often use the interaction editor to see what code it would use to accomplish something, but it was 100% scripted by me.  I remember being so very proud of that fact, and of course the skills I learned in this process enabled me to undertake all manner of projects afterwards.  The game itself was graphically quite complex: hand-painted backgrounds with pixel work painstakingly made to fit in.  In terms of mood it was a much more sombre adventure than I had designed before, although as you can see from the screenshot of the heroine pulling a blade out of a yeti's butt I never did manage to tame the silly beast within....   The Winter Rose was very well received, but people were in general disappointed by the ending -I've tried to internalize that lesson in the endings of my subsequent games. 

Next I worked on my opus, Charlie Foxtrot and the Galaxy of Tomorrow, a parody of the sci-fi genre released in 2007:



At 80 rooms this is the biggest game I ever finished.  The backgrounds are occasionally cringe worthy, and the MIDI music was a bit of a bust (which taught me to seek out the aid of competent musicians in future), but the animation is masterful -masterful!   Even today I am amazed at the sheer amount of animation, and by the fact that it was entirely done with MS Paint.  What was I thinking!?!  I don't even know what I could accomplish if I still had that amount of time on my hands.... The game was incredibly and intentionally silly -for the first puzzle you have to flush yourself down an alien toilet to escape the guards (pictured).  At any rate, the game was a bit of a cult classic, very much appreciated by people who like my silly humour.  I learned a lot about animation, but most importantly I learned if I was going to pursue more ambitious projects I would need to depart from my old methods.

So I decided to try collaboration.  The first attempt was with Yarooze with Besieged, released in 2008.



Graphically it is the best pixel art I've ever done (character art & animations -Yarooze did the backgrounds).  Funkmast's music was phenomenal.  The plot was about a lowly dung-shoveller who had to save the castle from a siege before the king catapulted him to death.  Perhaps there was a bit too much toilet humour (you literally had to sit on "the throne" a couple times to solve a puzzle), perhaps it was the authentic Olde English font that was slightly hard to read, or maybe it was just that I put it into the "short" category in the database, but for whatever reason the game never seemed to gain any traction with the players.  Considering all the work I put into the art, this made me reflect that if I was going to keep making games with my shrinking free time (ah, the perils of parenthood...), I would really have to streamline my work process.

So I collaborated again, this time with Ascovel (Igor) on a MAGS game, later expanded to a proper game with extra scenes, named Snakes of Avalon, released in 2010: 



I expressly wanted to work on the animation using the vector power of Flash, but had a fantastic time bantering plot ideas back and forth with Igor.  While the animation was panned by the critics, the amount that I learned was well worth the effort, as I easily cut the amount of effort-per-frame by 3/4.  Suddenly the sky was the limit!  I was also very satisfied that the macabre plot and social commentary in the game were extremely well-received, but of course a large portion of the credit for this goes to Igor.

My secret plan for refining my skills with vector-animation was to undertake an epic fantasy project.  I haven't finished it, and have abandoned it twice already, but I feel Curses & Castles is an important part of my growth as an AGSer so I'll share it here:



The lazy and sarcastic uncle-king has been turned into a frog (and ever present side-kick), while his dutiful princess-niece has to save the realm from five curses of an arch-sorceress.  The idea was to make a commercial adventure of epic scope and length, and I think that's why it failed (at least, so far....).  In retrospect it was too big, too ambitious for one man to actualize in his occasional spare hours.  When I pushed myself to burn the candle at both ends my health began to fail me, and it's been an off-and-on relationship between me and the game ever since.  I still believe that if I could pull this off it would be a fantastic game, but....  Well, perhaps one day I'll cobble together the means to pull it off.

A little depressed by the failure of C&C, I kind of shot my mouth off about a crazy new way of making games where everyone would do a minimal amount of work but together could create a masterpiece of game art.  While this dream of effortless game creation never really panned out (it was actually a lot of work!), the resulting Draculator II, sometimes simply referred to as "The Swarm Project", renewed my interest in the AGS community.  It was released in 2011:



Despite the copious correspondence required to coordinate the efforts of 40 swarmers, I liked the challenge of trying to weave it altogether into a unique piece of art.  Yeah it was short, but I will always value the connections I made through the effort.  It's also been great to fall back on that network to find collaborators for other purposes, be it voice actors or people with technical abilities far beyond my own (ie coding, sound editing, music, etc. etc.).     You rock, Swarm.

After the swarm project I tried my hand at a shorter, hereto unannounced fantasy project tentatively called Flutterby Dawn about a secret agent pixie who has to combat the evil designs of the Order of Nefarious Organisms (ONO):



  The background world was to be a living organism, with all native "technology" really just repurposed organisms (such as the sparkle vision set, pictured), and the plot a kind of James Bond-esque tongue-in-cheek spy thriller.  This time I spent much less time on art (very little animation, minimal effort on backgrounds) in an attempt to finish the game first, and then polish it up later.  Various strains on my free time (new job, no sleep due to expanding family, etc.) have also caused this project to be shelved for the time being, but as equilibrium is slowly restored to my life I can see myself picking it back up.

And lastly, I finally did finish a vector-art adventure, although you won't be able to play it until March or April or whenever the next Bake Sale is finally going to be released.  This is Blue Lobe Inc., the story about a trio of hapless adventure game developers who start their own company to make commercial adventure games (ah... sound familiar?  ).



  It's supposed to be a web-comic/game/cartoon about adventure gaming.  You'll notice more than just a bit of commentary about the classics, including the occasional puzzle twist from the past!  The game mostly makes fun of my own failed ambitions, while ironically potentially being a successful fundraising vehicle for the AGS community.  Only time will tell on that front!

So, in conclusion, it's been a long journey, I'm still puttering away at stuff, maybe one day I'll make that perfect game, yada yada, yada.  So how did you become the master game-maker of the future?  What's your last decade been like in terms of AGS productivity?  Share! 

[scripting]

Announcing....

Blue Lobe Inc.
The story of three AGSers who decide to form their own commercial indie game company in their parents' basement!  It's meant to be a kind of web-comic/cartoon as well as an interactive adventure game.  Some people might remember the concept as my abortive Bake Sale game from two years ago.  Here's some screenies:




Also it's fully voiced by amazing AGSers!  And there's an AWESOME soundtrack by Problem: check out a sampling of his tracks on his website!  And there's a mini-game!  And I've got AGS A-lister voice cameos!  And it's silly fun!  You should definitely look forward to playing this game.  Of course, in order to get your hands on it you'll have to support a possible secret upcoming Bake Sale 2 thingy that might probably maybe be happening in February March definitely April!  More on that to be announced shortly by the powers that be, but suffice it to say that you are just days away from playing this masterpiece!

Progress (updated April 2014):
scripting 100%
writing 100%
music 100%
sounds 100%
voices 100%
animation 100%
backgrounds 100%

Basically I'm just tinkering with the old girl until the rest of the maybe-possible-entirely-hypothetical-at-this-point-bakers are ready to release the bundle (What?  What bundle?!?  Who said anything about a bundle??!!!!).  But, er.... otherwise it's pretty much all done!

So let's make lots of anticipatory noises!

[There it is, on the hill, the only house for miles:]

There it is, on the hill, the only house for miles:



Maybe your car is broken down.  Maybe you're seeking buried treasure.  Maybe you are a part of a small band of expendable companions.  What's important is that you're here, in front of the abandoned house, and that you decide to set better sense aside and enter.  This is your story now: the door creaks open and....

All entries need to be submitted by midnight Hawaii time, October 26, so that we can all enjoy the spooky stories in the lead up to Hallowe'en.  Submissions will be judged on the following criteria: character (depth/uniqueness), plot (interest), atmosphere (feeling), background world (setting/texture/context), word choice (written style) and scariness ( ).  More on voting at the deadline, but extra weight will be given to the final criterion!   

Good luck to all participants.  I look forward to reading your submissions!

Alright, I'm stumped.  I can't get my music volume to change midstream.  I did some manual research and some forum research and the best I could come up with is:

First I created an AudioChannel pointer in my global script, thusly:

Code: ags

AudioChannel* music_channel;

Then I exported it:

Code: ags

export music_channel;

Then in my global script header I imported it:

Code: ags

import AudioChannel* music_channel;

Then I call this in Room 12:

Code: ags

aKentyTheme.Play (eAudioPriorityHigh, eRepeat);
music_channel =aKentyTheme.Play(); 

And then later, mid-Room 13 I need the volume to change, so I write:

Code: ags

music_channel.Volume = 10;

...and it says I referenced a null pointer, crashing the game.  So I try this in Room 13:

Code: ags

music_channel = aKentyTheme.Play ();
music_channel.Volume = 10;

...and it STILL says I referenced a null pointer.  So....  it becomes obvious to me that I don't have the faintest clue how audio pointers are supposed to work and why, in this instance, it seems not to.  Any, er, pointers on where I went wrong?

Thanks.

[JAN 30 2014: Musician: I'm interested in someone who can compose/perform an AGS hip-hop song for a bridge sequence. I'd do the lyrics, or at least collaborate on them if you've got ideas. Approximate length of the sequence in the game would be 30 seconds, but we could do a full length song just for kicks and giggles if you're interested. Actual hip-hop skill is less important to me than enthusiasm for the endeavour. Post or PM me if interested/intrigued.]

Greetings AGSers,
       This board is deader than last week's roadkill, but I'll pitch the ball and see who's still batting.
       I've got this game, see.  It's kinda for this secret thing that I used to not be able to talk about, and now I'm just not sure, but anyway it's this upcoming thing that will be raising money for this AGS thing and my game will be part of this thing, and I want it to be the whole nine yards, with voice acting and music and sounds and no bugs -kind of like a cadillac, only you can play it and its resale value will be negligible.  So I'm interested in recruiting some talent or at least folks with a pulse and a vocal cord.
       But I'm getting ahead of myself.  The game in three sentences or less:
             1)Three AGSers form their own adventure game business called Blue Lobe Inc. in a parent's basement.
             2)They need to get the game demo out to raise funds from Kickstarter, or the fledgeling business will go bankrupt.
             3)Hilarity ensues.
       It's meant to be kind of an interactive web-comic, with (mostly) greyscale graphics and speech bubbles and jokes about AGS and adventure games.  Here's an in-progress screenie:



Actual Positions Required (with current status):

1) I need voice actors with, in addition to a decent mic, the following voice qualities:
    Jan 30, 2014: All voice work is completed!

2) I need beta testers with a proven record of discretion and the ability to communicate where and how they encountered a bug.  2-3 minimum.  Workload will probably run you 2ish hours to try everything twice, plus reporting time.
    Jan 30, 2014: All testing completed!

3) JAN 30 2014: Musician: I'm interested in someone who can compose/perform an AGS hip-hop song for a bridge sequence.  I'd do the lyrics, or at least collaborate on them if you've got ideas.  Approximate length of the sequence in the game would be 30 seconds, but we could do a full length song just for kicks and giggles if you're interested.  Actual hip-hop skill is less important to me than enthusiasm for the endeavour.  Post or PM me if interested/intrigued.  The rest of the soundtrack has already been completed!

4) Object donors.  I want to decorate the walls and coffee tables of my backgrounds with AGS-related paraphernalia.  If you have a logo that can be adapted to the greyscale environment I'd like to include it (from your band, your indie movie studio, your blog, your craft-beer brewery, your small business, your web-comic, whatever).  I will put a "look" and "use" interaction with your item, so send along any brief messages you want as a kind of advertisement.  Funny anecdotes would be best, but I can play it straight up if you want.

TIMELINES: As of January 30, 2014 this project is pretty much done: I'm just adding extra features at this point.  The last I heard the Bake Sale 2 will now be going public in early April.  Stay tuned!

Anyway, let me know in this thread if you are interested.  Or PM me if your shy.  Why not?
   

So, this happened while testing the latest build of my game:



I'm pretty sure what I did.  In the editor I had moved the main character's starting room to the current room I was working on, and then changed his view to something room-appropriate.  Then, from the room editor in character-mode, I switched the character back to his original room using the frame at the bottom right.  Still in the same room, still using the window at bottom right in character-mode, I changed his view back to normal.  But by that time he wasn't in that room -I think that confused AGS.
   
Anyway, current symptoms are whenever that room is run, random character frames keep popping up, two or three times at once, all over the place until the game crashes with the error posted above.  I have had no success fixing this by retracing my steps and expect I will have to rebuild the room or, sigh, start over again from my last backup (maybe 10 hours of work ago).  Unless... unless someone's got an idea of how to fix this?

[Robbie Burns' own words must be in the title of your story]

Pulitzer prize winning authors plagiarise their titles -it's a fact.  John Steinbeck stole Of Mice and Men from a line of Robbie Burns' poetry.  J.D. Salinger adapted Burn's Comin' Through the Rye to create Catcher in the Rye.  Now it's your turn.  Pick any line of Robbie (Robert) Burns' poetry and use it as inspiration for your story.  Robbie Burns' own words must be in the title of your story.  I don't care if it's in the original Scottish dialect or translated into modern standard English (or some hybrid, notably Auld Lang Syne).  There are no other restrictions: your story can be about anything at all.

Now if you're like me, you don't like to do a lot of research for your writing projects (except television tropes, of course ), so here are some resources for you, from simplest to complex:

Robbie Burns on WikiQuote: His most famous lines all on one site.

The complete works, in original Scottish!: For brave souls and Bravehearts only.

Good luck to all participants.  And here's a hand my trusty friend, now give us a hand of thine.... to write something with! I look forward to many a creative submission within the fortnight.  Have fun!


NOTE: All trophies will have kilts.

[TROPHIES! TROPHIES! TROPHIES! TROPHIES! TROPHIES! TROPHIES! TROPHIES! TROPHIES! TROPHIES! TROPHIES! TROPHIES! TROPHIES!]

Welcome to this fortnight's writing competition.  The theme this time around is...

Impossible Escape!

Your story must have a protagonist that is trying to escape from some sort of confinement, or maybe just a sticky situation.  It does not matter whether your protagonist succeeds or not.  Mr. Protagonist could be a person escaping a prison, or a chicken escaping an egg factory, or a kid escaping detention at school, or a sock escaping the odour of Ponch's left foot ( ) -as long as there's an escape attempt, it works for me.

This competition runs from now until midnight EDT on June 21.  I look forward to some thrilling entries!

TROPHIES!  TROPHIES!  TROPHIES!  TROPHIES!  TROPHIES!  TROPHIES!  TROPHIES!  TROPHIES!  TROPHIES!  TROPHIES!  TROPHIES!  TROPHIES!
Edit: Forgot to change topic title (I had something else in mind when I started out.....

[Duration:]

Write a story or poem about a robot becoming self-aware.  Johnny Five, Hal, Skynet, Agent Smith, Marvin:  They all had to have that "Whoa!" moment where they realized that they existed.  Your protagonist can be anything electrical from a disembodied internet virus to an Austin Powers Fem-Bot, from a mobile phone that calls itself to a middle school calculator that accidentally divides by zero, from a tracking chip in a dog's butt to an overly aware and severely paranoid Watson -if it's got circuitry, it counts.  Heck, I'll even allow Robocop-esque cyborgs with human brains, human-machine hybrids like Darth Vader, and blondes with wrist-watches, so long as you focus on the moment of their reawakening as their new selves.
     
The tone of your composition can be humorous, philosophical, technical, emotional, solipsistic, deranged, reflective, joyous, perverse or binary.  Basically try to think outside the box and come at it from a unique angle.  And have fun.  That's important.

Duration: Competition runs from now to 10pm EDT May 14, after which point we'll have a three day vote.

Prizes: Trophies Trophies Trophies Trophies Trophies!!!!!!

      Allow an old hand to recollect the good old days for a bit....  It used to be AGS tradition that you couldn't start threads of no particular use or purpose in the general forum EXCEPT when the original post was the original poster's 1000th post.  Of course that was in the days before the subtle art of useless threads was cheapened by the advent of a Rumpus Room specifically for useless threads....  Nevertheless, being long in the tooth and something of an old fart I hereby claim this traditional right.
      I suppose some reminiscing is in order.  Over the years I've come to think of the AGS forums as my internet home, a place where I can go knocking if I need to borrow a pixelated cup of sugar or find someone to e-mail food to my cat when I'm away for more than a couple of days.  I don't always post frequently and am not often deeply involved in community issues, but know that I value this virtual neighbourhood deeply.  I guess I'm less the muffin-baking community booster and more of the creepy guy who's always got his eye through the curtain, keeping tabs on when you come and go and what kind of stuff you leave out in your trash bin.  But despite my introverted tendencies this place has always been friendly enough to lure me out of my shell.  Thanks for that guys.  There've been so many fond memories: MAGS comps, animation comps, writing comps, that time Ponch got bovine spongiform encephalopathy and was just spinning around on the floor for hours (good times....); the swarm project, that Mittens I attended, the community role-playing adventures, the avatar lovechild reunion.... and so many more.  Many thanks to my generous collaborators, my incessant PM correspondents, and all the rest of the cheerful folk who make this place fun to hang out in.
      Finally, in honour of this occasion, I've made you all a little something.  A new smiley: .  It means something around the lines of villainous cackle -use it wisely!
      Yeah, so....  Reply, won't ya?  Otherwise my useless thread would seem extra useless and probably end up demoted to the (*gulp*) R-board  .  Looking forward to the next thousand folks,

Baron

Hi.  I'm trying to program an intreactive tutorial for my game.  So far I've been using an object that looks like a cursor to float over various parts of the screen as a colourful secondary character describes how to point and click, among other things, but now that it has come time to describe the GUI that won't work because GUIs are always drawn on top of objects.  So I've been thinking....

1) If there were a way to control the real game cursor, I could use that.  I'm aware that I can use mouse.SetPosition, but it would be tedious that way to script the movement commands necessary to make it look like it was moving back and forth.  A mouse.Move command would be helpful, but then there's also the problem of disabling the player's control while the tutorial is running.  So this is probably not going to work (unless someone knows something I don't know about hijacking a mouse cursor?)

2) Alternatively I could create another GUI that looks like a mouse cursor.  I don't have to worry about hijacking the actual mouse cursor, but there's still the problem of programming realistic movement.  There is no GUI.Move command, only GUI.X and GUI.Y properties (again doable but tedious).

3) I thought about reconstituting the GUI as a series of objects and hotspots with an invisible GUI to handle labels.  Again tedious, but probably the path of least resistance unless a more elegant solution can be found.

So, I'm looking for input.  My question is: What would be the easiest way to create a tutorial cursor that can be scripted to behave like the normal game cursor (at least in terms of movement)?

Thanks for any help or advice,

Baron

I'm going to go ahead and start this because Ponch told me to.  Sure it's illegal according to the Forum Charter, which not only contains no mention of an authorized Fortnightly Writing Competition, but also expressly indicates that the Monthly Writing Project is unavailable and should not be reactivated without consulting a moderator; but, whatevs.  Ponch said so!  That's justification enough, IMO.  So without further legal preamble I give you....

DAS FORTNIGHTLY WRITING COMPETITION
Turning Over a New Leaf Edition

New Year, new beginning; clean slates and fresh starts.  Now is the time of year when the mind turns resolutely to breaking with the past: trying new things or old things in new ways.  This fortnight's writing competition revolves around this very theme.  Aspiring writers are required to write a short poem, story or fragment about a character attempting or struggling with change.  Maybe it's a college student leaving home for the first time. Maybe it's a con man leaving behind a life of crime and assuming a new identity. Maybe it's a battery powered lovebot and that just got a brand new recharger (maybe I've just given away Ponch's idea  ). Maybe it's a craven and cynical AGSer who decides to get involved more in the community through the medium of writing competitions. It could be anything, so long as it fits the New Year's appropriate theme of starting fresh.

Deadline: January 13th, unless sufficient pleading melts my iron cold heart.

Voting: Approximately four days -an absolute deadline will be given when voting begins.

Rules: No sabotage, low-blows, cheap-shots, blatant plagiarism or it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-nights.  Let's keep this clean, people.  GO!

[Cleveland 1968]

Cleveland 1968

Background:  My aunt & uncle tell a thrilling yarn about how they stole their parents' (my grandparents) car when they were teens.  I know, I know: with role-models like this, it's amazing I turned out to be the jovial and law-abiding Untersturmführer you have all come to know and love.  Anyway, the legend of my aunt & uncle's exploit has grown with the telling, and has become fused in my mind with various other family lore and what I understand life was like in the 1960s to create a kind of quasi-historic fictional episode that demands telling in adventure game format.  For Christmas 2012 it was decided that the extended family would share virtual gifts relating our hopes or hobbies, so motive met opportunity and I created the game.



The Game:  It's just a joke game made in about 2 weeks, but there is almost 10 minutes of game play involving 2-3 puzzles depending on how you count.  Voice actors are all in the family and attempt to mimic the mannerisms of the main protagonists.  This would be more funny if you knew the people involved, but since the dialog is almost incomprehensible due to the 60s lingo I assume others might find it somewhat amusing after all.  Anyway, right click is for looking, left click is for interacting or moving.  Here's the download link:

DOWNLOAD NOW

  As this isn't a real game I'm not going to add it to the database, so you'll have to give any feedback here.

  Also, I realise that lots of people can't be arsed to download a joke game so here's a playthrough on YouTube:

YOUTUBE PLAYTHROUGH

  The sound quality isn't the best after compression, but you get the gist.  Anyway, enjoy!

Ignore Pinback's sexy Canadian siren call -work on my Christmas project for free!!!!

THE SKINNY: I've made this Christmas game for some weird extended family gift-exchange thingy where everyone has to give an IP gift to the whole family.  I think the idea was writing a nice thought or drawing a picture or something, but the preamble suggested that you might consider sharing your hobbies as source material and I instantly seized upon the possibility of making a point & click adventure based on a legendary family episode: my aunt & uncle's theft of my grandparents' car when they were teenagers!  The project has evolved somewhat into a parody of 1960s culture, and I thought a nice touch would be voice work.  This project will be released on December 21 (since that's when it's made public to the family), so the clock's a ticking!

REQUIREMENTS: I need someone to voice my aunt.  Ideally it would be someone with a midwestern American accent (think rust belt: Pennsylvania through to about Wisconsin, but Ohio would be ideal).  Barring that someone who could do a nice flower-child impersonation -lots of whimsy and caprice kinda thing - would be great.  The workload is about 40 lines (there are exactly 87 lines total and I'm assuming they're roughly split down the middle, after the parrot's lines have been subtracted from the equation....).  Ideally they would be voiced by next Monday Dec 17.  Any takers please post here or PM me.

STATUS OF THE PROJECT:  It's essentially done -as I say this has to be released on the 21st of December.  I need to do a title screen and credits, but all the game play is there already.  If you are a female aged 16-40 or can impersonate one and would like to play the game for inspiration, please PM me.  Here's a screen shot of what the game looks like:



Thanks for considering to help!

Baron

So what if AGS avatars started producing the random love-child?  I wonder what they might look like....



Granted, all such spawn would not necessarily turn out as salaciously sexy.  But that's no reason not to let little Günther out of his attic prison for a bit of a Hallowe'en romp.  C'mon -let's see them!

Hi.  I've been banging my head against the wall for a while now on this one without any progress, so maybe you guys can help me out.

I've written my own character.Talk extender function to replace character.Say in order to create speech bubbles.  I created a custom text window GUI, hijacked one of the Sierra speech-styles and relay the relevant string through a ghost character (called cGhost) who can be dynamically placed around the talking character's head.  So far so good.  But I can't wrap my head around how to adapt that function to incorporate variables.  I can't, for example, do something like this:

Code: ags

 cVillain.Talk ("I'm going to take all %d of your precious kittens.", kitten_count); 

because character.Talk only has two parameters (I hope I'm using that term correctly): function Talk (this Character*, String charsays).  So of course it doesn't understand the extra integer variable, because all I am giving it is a string.  Later on, after a lot of height, width, text length, character location variables, etc. etc., this line shows the speech in a nicely fitted bubble:

Code: ags

  cGhost.SayAt (this.x +sideoffset -GetViewportX (), charheight +bottomoffset -GetViewportY (), width, charsays); 

...but I can't put in dynamic variables like I could with character.Say.  My question is, how can I add an optional variable to a function, like in character.Says, so that I can build dynamic strings? 

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Seriously, AGSers, is this all the rumpus you got?!?  I used to hang out on this site for the entertainment value.  Now I just hang out on this site....

It's olympics time again, and I was fantasizing about being a sexy track star through the medium of QWOP when I discovered a new game by the same developer (Bennett Foddy) -CLOP.  Now you too can make unicorn pretzels instead of working on your game!  I got hung up on some ledge stuck horn down in the ground (I regret not taking a screen shot).  Can you save the princess?

[Ï€]

So I've started building this game around a pixie character. So far she's looked like this:

But I've found myself in need of a) a good idea of her final size for room layouts and b) in need of reassurance that the character will look compelling and believable.

So recently I've been trying to design her final form.  A lot rides on this: players will be staring at this character for the whole game, and her look and feel will be the primary factor in whether or not players find the world believable.  She is a secret agent with Pixie Intelligence, an organization usually just referred to as Ï€.  So she's got to look clever, and she's got to look tough.  But she's also a pixie, so she needs some unnatural beauty and a whimsical feel.  This is what I've got so far (I just added the back arm and leg for show, the rest will be her side standing posture):


I'm of course interested in any ideas and improvements, although I'm mostly satisfied with the drawing style and appearance.  What's really bugging me is her outfit -it just doesn't feel "right" yet.  It has to be relatively tight and revealing (it's like a pixie dress-code thing), and it has to be pretty simple for animation purposes, but outside of that I'm keen on some fresh ideas.  Here's a blank template if you find it easier to use for paintovers:



Many thanks in advance for your input!