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The winner of April's MAGS competition (theme: distorted senses) has finally been optimized for general release!  It is a short game (about 10 minutes) in the survivor horror genre.

STORY: A top secret experimental military facility has a primary power failure.  Marina, a plucky young soldier, wakes up in the middle of the crisis, injured and disoriented by the absolute darkness.  Recalling her training, she must make it to the Shelter before her commanders invoke protocol 13.  Along her way she uncovers clues about the fate of the facility as she grapples with her own evanescing sense of self.




Concept, writing and programming by Baron
Backgrounds, animations and GUIs by Kastchey
Superb music by Doc Savage
Beta Testing by Arjon, Tabata, Cleanic & Selmiak

DOWNLOAD

[Need:]

Need: Musician for short project.  Two spooky/compelling tracks required for a sci-fi/horror game.  Artistic control available for the ideal candidate.  Short deadlines, though (approximately two weeks for MAGS entry).  Details below, respond by PM or this thread.

Project Title: Wages of Darkness

Genre(s): Sci-fi, Horror, Thriller, MAGS (Monthly AGS competition)

Musical Requirements: Title Screen/Intro Cutscene theme (industrial sci-fi-ish?)
                                              In game music loop (suspenseful)
                                              Maybe something sad for outro credits, if you feel like it.

Deadline: The game will be released April 30: NO LONG TERM COMMITMENTS!

Further Details: Available via PM.

Thank you for considering our project.

Baron

[edit]

I'm always excited to take on new projects.  Here's the latest:



I assure you he was already asleep before he reached Mr. Kalata's book -who could sleep through that?!?

Wish us luck!

edit: Sorry about the bear-bum.  I hope nobody got fired over that....

[BYTE OF THE DRACULATOR II]

Just in time for Hallowe'en.....
BYTE OF THE DRACULATOR II

PLOT: You play as Merrick, the erstwhile corporal who became a vampire to try to impress a pair of sexy-vampire twins.  But then he is immediately kidnapped by the army and enrolled in a top-secret robotic implants experiment!  Now he is half-vampire, half-robot, and more than half-confused.  One thing he does know: he must escape the base or spend the rest of his days as the lap-poodle of the military's chief mad scientist!



BACKGROUND: This game is the fruit of the Swarm, an experimental collaborative project.  Have a look at the vast list of credits to see how many, many AGSers collaborated on this project, or see how many I can remember to mention in this Developer's Playthrough  Congratulations on finishing, team!

FEATURES: This short 10 minute game is jam-packed with goodies.....
-Full voice acting! (All by prominent AGSers!)
-Fully animated!
-Humorous cutscenes!
-Exciting climactic boss-fight!
-Puzzles that only a vampire could face!

EDIT: Spanish translation now available!

THE DOWNLOAD: 17 MB Here!

[BLUE LOBE INC.]

As part of the upcoming Bake Sale, I would like to announce my contribution:

                                                  BLUE LOBE INC.

The Plot: Three amateur enthusiasts band together to launch their own indie adventure game company.  Moving in together into a one bedroom apartment in one of their parent's basements, they set about to make their dream of creative entrepreneurship a reality.  Financial ruin, starvation and neighborly ridicule lurk around every corner in this comic-strip-esque adventure.  Will Blue Lobe Inc.'s first game launch despite the wolf at the door?  Will the mysterious flamer known only as "The Eviscerator" be stopped from panning their demo on a prominent game review site?  Will the boys survive contact with a human female IRL?  The answers to some of these questions might crop up in the actual game, so stay tuned!

The Cast: Using forum nicknames rather than their "pedestrian monikers", the three could not be more different.
Lazarus: The big picture guy.  He is the main writer and musician, prone to frequent bouts of distraction and laziness.
Mothra: Your classic nerd.  He is the programmer and the organizer, but obsesses over tangential details.
Cuddles: The overly-sensitive artist.  When he's not binge-eating to sooth his wounded pride, he's creating pixelated masterpieces.

Screenies -note the primitive comic-book style is intentional and not just a cop out 




Features
-three playable characters!
-adventure game meta-humour!
-speech bubbles!
-veiled references to various prominent AGSers!
-voice acting!  Well, maybe....

Progress
Writing 10%
Graphics 20%
Programming 20%
Music -if anyone's interested post here or PM me.

Release Date: Basically I'll just be wrapping up what I've got done when Ponch tells me to  .

[EDIT THE NEXT DAY:]

I wasn't doing anything crazy this evening, just some new room objects (room 56) and some scripting in the interactions.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  I F5ed and all the room scripts resaved because they had changed, which was weird (like for a compile or a script header change, but I hadn't done any of that), and then the game crashed with a simple error report:
 

Error: LoadRoom: unknown block type 0 encountered in 'room199.crm'

I thought I'd investigate Room 199 and sure enough there were only two things in room_load: SetBackgroundFrame (0); and gMain.Visible =true; (I hadn't edited this room for ages and have run the game just fine hundreds of time since then).  Well, silly me, I thought I'd try changing the offending "0" to "1" and F5ed again -AGS reeeeeally didn't like that.  I got a massive error this time:

Error: LoadRoom: unknown block type 0 encountered in 'room199.crm'
Version: AGS 3.2.1.111

AGS.Types.AGSEditorException: LoadRoom: unknown block type 0 encountered in 'room199.crm'
  at ThrowManagedException(SByte* message)
  at load_room_file(SByte* )
  at load_crm_file(UnloadedRoom roomToLoad)
  at AGS.Native.NativeMethods.LoadRoomFile(UnloadedRoom roomToLoad)
  at AGS.Editor.Components.RoomsComponent.LoadNewRoomIntoMemory(UnloadedRoom newRoom, CompileMessages errors)
  at AGS.Editor.Components.RoomsComponent.RecompileAnyRoomsWhereTheScriptHasChanged(CompileMessages errors, Boolean rebuildAll)
  at AGS.Editor.Components.RoomsComponent.AGSEditor_PreCompileGame(PreCompileGameEventArgs evArgs)
  at AGS.Editor.AGSEditor.PreCompileGameHandler.Invoke(PreCompileGameEventArgs evArgs)
  at AGS.Editor.AGSEditor.CompileGame(Boolean forceRebuild, Boolean createMiniExeForDebug)
  at AGS.Editor.Components.BuildCommandsComponent.TestGame(Boolean withDebugger)
  at AGS.Editor.Components.BuildCommandsComponent.CommandClick(String controlID)
  at AGS.Editor.ToolBarManager.ToolbarEventHandler(Object sender, EventArgs e)
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.RaiseEvent(Object key, EventArgs e)
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripButton.OnClick(EventArgs e)
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleClick(EventArgs e)
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.HandleMouseUp(MouseEventArgs e)
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEventInteractive(EventArgs e, ToolStripItemEventType met)
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripItem.FireEvent(EventArgs e, ToolStripItemEventType met)
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs mea)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
  at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
  at System.Windows.Forms.ToolStrip.WndProc(Message& m)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
  at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
  at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

 Apparently I am strongly recommended to back-up without saving as AGS is unstable and might blow up at anytime (...or my game files are corrupt, something like that).  I restarted the editor and tried to open room 199 and got the same message without even being able to see the contents of the script this time.  Clearly something is rotten in Denmark....
 The good news is I have a backup from last night, and I would only be out four hours of work if my files were corrupt.  The bad news is that I am reluctant to continue my project until I figure out exactly what has gone wrong and whether or not any of my recent work can be salvaged.  I have done nothing non-routine this evening.  Yesterday (before back-up) the game ran fine.  I think I did some work on a dialog without testing afterwards, since today I got errors when I tried to save (but before I F5ed).  I think I had called a function without a critical parameter and I had some code outside the final return/stop -just a comment because I was interrupted.  That's all of the circumstances I can think of that might somehow be relevant.
  Does anyone know what's going on here?  Thanks!

EDIT THE NEXT DAY:  Well, I've examined Room 199 in my backup files and noticed that it was about twice the size of the "corrupt" Room199 file in my working version.  So I replaced that one room file in my working version folder from my backup and ran the game smoothly with all my latest work intact.  So.... I know if it ain't broke I'm not supposed to want to mess around further, but I'm wondering how a room file I haven't worked on in a month suddenly became corrupt.  I guess this isn't a critical issue anymore, but if someone has any helpful advice about avoiding this in future please feel free to communicate it.

Greetings Technocrats,
     I'm working with version 3.2.1, the one containing some of those marvelous open-source updates.  In general I offer praise and adulation to all involved.
     In some small matters, however, I'm having a bit of difficulty.  Consider the following:



I have a perfectly normal object (oHorn) with a perfectly normal interaction initiated in the properties window (in this case interact object).  This results in an oHorn_interact () function you see above.  I type some code and fiddle with a bunch of other things, then try to run the game.  BAM!  Error message (above).  For the longest time I couldn't figure out why the script wasn't working.  Finally I realized that oHorn_interact () no longer appears next to interact object in the oHorn property window -my best guess is that the script has somehow become uncoupled from the (now missing) link?  The code is sound, since I've just created a new object and pasted it directly into the new object's_interact () function.  I have no recollection of having anything to do with this part of the script before the error message, so I tentatively conclude that this was not a user initiated error.  This is not a high priority since I've worked around the problem and the few bytes of memory eaten up by the now phantom oHorn will (hopefully) not impede installations by future players, but it is messy and I live in dread of such a problem cropping up on a larger scale.  Is this a bug?  And if so, is there a remedy?  Or have I done something.... goofy :?  In which case, I implore you to teach me better.

   Also, but unrelated..... In building Draculator II with the default template in 3.2.1 I have a pre-existing repeatedly_execute_always function in my global script.  However, in my Curses & Castles project (started in 3.1.2 SP1 and upgraded to 3.2.1) I don't (this game used the "blank" template).  I notice when creating a game in 3.1.2 SP1 there is no rep_ex_always function, but it would be rather handy to have one now.  Is there a way to upgrade into rep_ex_always, can I just manually insert it, or am I S.O.L. in this regard?

Thank you for your collective assistance.

After reading about Wolfram Tones in the Economist (I read it mostly for the subtitle puns), I got all excited about this program that can "create a 2 minute tune in any of 15 genres" by mimicking human creativity.  However, after multiple Quick-Time upgrades I still can't get the damn thing to work.  Has anyone else tried/heard of this?  If you've got a free two minutes I'd appreciate someone giving it a try and reporting back whether it is worth while pursuing.

[The Plot (So Far):]

The Swarm proudly presents: Draculator II

The Plot (So Far): Corporal Merrick awoke with a wicked headache and a bionic limb.  What the....?!?  He vaguely recalled becoming a vampire while on shore leave in order to hook up with two foxy vampire twins, but after that his memory failed him.  Fortunately an evil military scientist is around to fill in the blanks: he has been recaptured by the military and has been surgically forged into a vampire cyborg, a new super weapon.  One of the the qualities of vampires is that they assume the characteristics of the beings whose blood they drink, so Merrick will be made obedient with an IV of poodle blood.  Alarms sound, drawing the mad scientist away.  Now is Merrick's only chance to.... ingratiate myself to master -no, escape!

Can you guide Merrick out of the high security military compound?  Play our game!

Screenshots


The Method: This is an experimental game created by dozens of AGSers swarming the project.  Initially the idea was that approximately 60 AGSers would each spend only an hour each on the project.  We've since modified the rule to "one hour minimum commitment, more if you want" to accommodate folks who wanted to invest more time in the project.  The premise is that many people can collaboratively create something that no one person could ever have conceived: thus all aspects of the project have been collaborative, from art to plot writing and anything in between.  We are currently looking for background artists, object artists, coders and animators: check out the Swarm Thread if you are interested in joining the swarm or just learning more about how the project has unfolded.

Updated Progress:  We are roughly 90% done and are currently entering a beta-testing phase.

BACKGROUNDS: 100%
OBJECTS: 100%
CHARACTERS: 100%
ANIMATION: 90%
WRITING: 95%
CODING: 95%
MUSIC: 30%

    Wish us luck or cheer us on!  Any one interested in collaboration or critically discussing art/writing, etc. should do so in the Swarm Thread

[April 30 Edit:]

April 30 Edit:

For those of you just joining the discussion a quick summary is appropriate.  The thread started out theoretically discussing how many AGSers could each make very small contributions to quickly create a finished adventure game, kind of like how a hive of bees will each pitch in their small part to create a hive (page 1).  Then we decided to run a small experiment to test the feasibility of breaking the game development process into one-hour increments of relatively self-directed development time (page 2).  We then spent a while brainstorming lead-sprites (roughly page 3-5) before settling on a composite sprite that fit well with our background styles (page 6).  From there we began divvying up work (originally page 6, now later in this post for organizational purposes), and the rest of the thread is people claiming that work, executing it and discussing it.  
   Project Crowd-venture (our working title, appropriately created in less than an hour by a self-directed volunteer), will be a short game that will hopefully take about 60 hours to develop.  We are therefore currently looking for approximately 60 volunteers to offer one hour each.  Volunteers will be provided with loose guidelines from previous contributors and then encouraged to finish their task using their best judgement or creative whimsy.  The result will be an organic game that will be nothing like what any individual could have come up with on their own.  Read on if you are intrigued, look below in this post for our current requirements or see our Recruit a Team advertisement if you are interested in participating in the project.  

------------------------------------------------------
May 15 Edit:  The following is an updated version of post #104 that details finalized guidelines and work in progress.  For organizational purposes it has been moved to the first post.

So moving on -let's SWARM! Please refer back to the Plot Document Post for background requirements and the Stylistic Guidelines Post for style guidance when drawing background art/objects.  Recall that our Merrick sprite is roughly 50px in height (see below for finalized version) -please use it for scaling purposes (doorways, furniture, other characters, etc.).  I'm going to list all available jobs and people can choose what to spend their hour (ish) working on.  Please claim the job by posting so that we minimize people working on the same thing, and then edit that post to show off your work (and remember to look through to see if anyone is already working on something you're interested in!).

Available jobs:

BACKGROUNDS -background art is priority, do "extras" (colouring, textures, objects...) only if time:
1) LAB BACKGROUND (completed by Grim)
2) HALLWAY BACKGROUND (completed by Scarab)
3) ROBOT LAB BACKGROUND (completed by Corby)
4) EXERCISE YARD (completed by Yarooze)
5) GUARDROOM (completed by Crimson Wizard)
6) Intro Cutscene (completed by Selmiak)
7)Exit Cutscene (completed by Secret Fawful)
8 ) Exit Cutscene 2 (robot monster interior behind talking vampire twins)
9) TITLE SCREEN
10) Crash screen (completed by Secret Fawful)
11) Blast screen (completed by Buckethead)


OBJECTS
1) Objects for Lab (restraining chair, mirror, fridge, magnets, crucifix)(completed by anian)
2) Laser control console (please play rough build to get a feeling for what we need)
3) Fridge Magnets (completed by Ghost)

CHARACTER DESIGN -use Merrick style/size for style
1) Military Doctor (completed by abstauber)
2) Scientists (2) in robot lab (one completed by Yarooze, other completed by Tabata)
3) Preoccupied guard on exercise yard catwalk (completed by Ali)
4) Guards dying in firefight in guardroom (3-4) more or less copies of each other (one completed by Jared)
5) Giant (100-150px) Robo Monster  (completed by Pinback)
6) Vampire twins (completed by JackPumpkinHead)
7) We need a convincing "back" view of Merrick.(completed by Baron)
8 ) Robot Probe (completed by Studio 3)
9) Vampire twin close-ups for final cutscene(completed by Secret Fawful)
10) Scientist closeups for final cutscene (to be based on Yarooze & Tabata's in-game sprites)
11) Cockroaches (completed by Tabata)

ANIMATION -use my robot arm in military colour experiment (page 4, below) for mechanical arm ideas
 -use this basic sprite to work from: try to preserve frames (or frame size) for ease of importing

1) Merrick side walk cycle (complete by scarab)
2) Merrick front walk cycle ( ' ' )
3) Merrick side level take (reach out) (hopefully we can script it that only side views are necessary)
4) Merrick side high take (reach out)
5) Merrick side low take (bend & reach -NOT FOR FIRST TIMERS)
6) Talking animation (sides & front -just bobbing head with open mouth) (completed by Baron)
7) Biting animation (completed by Ghost)
8 ) Merrick back walkcycle (completed by Baron)
9) Scientists idle and being bitten (completed by Tabata)
10) guards being bitten (see page 20)
11) scientist climbing on cabinet and waving broom at vampire (extra characterization for now, to be done if time)

Writing
1) Doctor's intro cutscene rant (completed by Hudders)
2) Merrick exchange with Scientists as he bites them (so that Merrick understands fire resistant properties of pine cones and/or survival capacity of cockroaches)
3) Puzzle design -someone to examine the feasibility of creating an interesting probe repair puzzle for the robot lab.  This would also require writing dialog/messages that would flag the puzzle for the player appropriately cut for time being due to lack of time/interest
      ...more to come.

Interface Design
1) Quick mock up for GUI for the swarm to discuss. (one completed by Studio3).  (We're looking for a one-pane GUI that will pop up when a button or character is clicked (yet to be determined). GUI must have the following buttons: save, load, quit, about and OK (for inventory selection).  Must also have inventory window and character speed slider).
2) Cursor Design (completed by Cat/Tabata/Scarab)
3) Inventory Cursors (completed by Baron)


Music Director
1) Not really my strength, but I foresee the need for someone to direct other musicians to create short loops (MIDI?  OGG?) to suit the various scenes.  Remember the musicians should each only spend an hour, and will probably need some sort of theme/genre to guide them.

AGS Importing
1) Someone to import existing assets into AGS (two backgrounds, three partial characters) so that we can start a GIP thread. (in progress, by Baron)

That's all I can think of for now, but more will drip out over the coming days.  Good luck and have fun!

------------------------------------------------------
Original Post:

I figure it will take me another 1000 hours to finish my game.  Then I got to thinking, if I could only amass a swarm of 1000 fellow AGSers then we could knock the whole thing off in just 1 hour.  To summarize:

        Man-Hours for Project  |  Number of Men  |  Hours to Project Completion
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
               1000                      |              1           |               1000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
               1000                      |          1000         |                  1
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We all know that collaboration makes it possible to do vastly more than an individual ever could.   But I'm not interested in "typical" collaboration here.  What I'm interested in is the theoretical underpinnings of a new way to create an adventure game: not a collaboration as much as a swarming.  I envisage AGSers scurrying through the artistic and programmatical equivalents of bee-hives and ant tunnels in some sort of wondrously self-organized mass event. One hundred of our finest writers scripting for 500 of our finest artists to the tune of 50 of our finest composers and the code of 200 of our finest programmers (etc. for the smaller jobs).  Think about it!  A full-sized game created in an hour!  Consider the possibilities!

Obviously some thought would have to be put into co-ordination:  we just can't rely on our instincts and hormonal signals (..... or can we???  What might a "spontaneous" project look like with a little polish here and there?).  How might you co-ordinate tasks with mutual dependency on each other -tasks that could take days to play-out in the conventional game-development paradigm -so that they can take place all at once?  Does anyone know if this has ever been tried?  What obstacles do you foresee, and what thoughts do you have to overcome them?

Please bear in mind this is a theoretical discussion for the time being: I'm well aware of the logistical issues of focusing 1000 minds on a single task.  For now I just want to flesh out the idea some more.

 Time-travel and the alternate realities created by meddling in the past are hard to keep up with: logically there can be infinite alternative branches, and who has that kind of attention span these days?  

For example in Terminator 2 Sarah Connor & Co. were able to avert the August 29, 1997 Judgement day by destroying technology from the future back in 1995, but obviously in one alternate reality Judgement Day did happen on that date, since multiple entities (human and machine) representing themselves as from the future seemed to corroborate that exact date as the beginning of the armageddon.

However (keep with me here), the destruction of material and data could only be a setback (serious though it was).  Just as several AGS projects have been resurrected from (hopefully less murderous and explosive) data failures, it is perfectly plausible that research towards developing an all powerful global digitized defense network (i.e. Skynet) continued.  Now back in 1997 if such a creation went rogue we'd probably be alright -maybe a robotic factory in Japan might run amok and start ratcheting people, but nothing on the scale of the apocalypse.  But now it's a well-known fact that the American army has unmanned drones armed and in flight at all times: think about what we don't know!

Now, consider THIS.  In one alternate reality Skynet went online about an hour and a half ago.  In most realities it seems to take a day or two before it goes completely crazy and starts killing us all.  So, over the next couple of days I want you, my global eyes and ears, to keep a look out for strange mechanical occurrences and report back to this thread.  I figure if we make it to Friday without a major incident we're probably in the clear, and hopefully some sort of cinematic explanation will not be far in future.

We're all in this together.....

Baron  

[Curses & Castles]

I've been at this for while now, but I think it's finally time to put some cards on the table.  Announcing...

Curses & Castles

STORY:  A powerful enchantress has cursed the land of Saefonley with five evil shrouds that corrupt and enslave the minds of those who bear them.  These shrouds each represent a separate curse that manifests itself in the five corners of the realm, bringing Saefonley close to ruin.  A hero must unlock the secrets of the shrouds and destroy each in turn.

    Princess Porphyra is a victim of one of these curses, imprisoned in the ruins of her family castle by a fiercesome dragon.  Despite the failure (and death) of everyone who has attempted to free her, she seizes on the idea that she herself can be the hero and save her country.  With her somewhat unenthusiastic uncle for a companion (once the lazy and foolish king but now transformed into a frog), she sets about to escape the castle and destroy the shrouds.


SCREEN SHOTS:





DEVELOPMENT:  I should say outright that this is conceived of as a commercial project, otherwise I could not justify the time required.  I feel almost apologetic having to mention that, since I've enjoyed so many freeware creations from my fellow game authors here.  Nevertheless that's the plan so.... plan on buying my game!

    The idea of this game has been in my head for a while (ever since I was working on The Winter Rose, actually), but it always seemed technically infeasible to undertake.  Experiments last spring and summer with new drawing programs and animation techniques (the concrete result of which was the animation for Snakes of Avalon) showed that it was possible to vastly increase my productivity to the point where the game just might be possible despite the limited time I had to devote to it.  So I've taken the plunge and started it.  Will our reluctant hero be able to complete the epic quest he has set himself?  According to a tentative development schedule you should know the answer by autumn 2012.

PROGRESS:           Story 95%
                               Backgrounds 22%
                               Animation ~20%
                               Programming 25%
                               Writing 15%
                               Music & Sounds 0%

   I'll be looking for a musician with a compatible vision once I have a working beta, hopefully someone who is willing to work on a contingency basis but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

   Comments and encouragement appreciated.  Wish me luck!
--------------------
EDIT MARCH 30, 2011:  I've started keeping a web log of my work on this project here.  There will be weekly updates, teasers & treats, and lots of insight into [my] game-making process.  Enjoy!
     

Hey all,
     I'm struggling a bit with my forest here.  I thought the foliage would be my biggest problem, but I'm fairly happy with the shrubs and trees, and the grass tufts are consistent with other backgrounds.  The water and waterfalls will animate, so no worries there.  But the rocks!  Oh, those rocks are painful to look at.  And I'm not at all happy with the background behind the scene.  It looks too busy, but not busy enough at the same time (if you catch my meaning).  So I'm looking for some constructive criticism:



    Limitations: We've got to stick with the line art, which means no blending/rubbing.  And I'm really only interested in a couple hues of shading MAX -I've got no patience for it beyond that.  After that any suggestions are welcome.  This is probably going to require a pretty major redraw for gameplay reasons, so no suggestion is too radical.  Thanks in advance.

     So I've got this label on my persistent GUI that tells the player what the mouse is over: a plain and simple @hotspot@ command not only displays the names of hotspots, but also characters and objects as well.  Brilliant!
     I'm looking to take this a step further and tell the player what they're pointing at in the GUI on the same label, should the mouse coordinates indicate that that's where their interest lies.  But I can't find the code to do such a thing, or actually to set it back to @hotspot@ when the mouse leaves the GUI.  The best I could come up with was Label.Text, but short of determining precise co-ordinate boxes and constantly checking in Rep Ex if the mouse was over a button (roughly) I can't think of a mechanism for activating the label change (i.e. Label.Text = "Game Options", and as mentioned how to get it back (Label.Text = @hotspot@ throws an error due to the @ symbols).
     This isn't really a game breaker but it'd be nice to implement because my GUI only has room for picture buttons and not labels for what everything is.  Any and all ideas are appreciated.

Hey,
   [typical disclosure] I feel dumb for not being able to figure this out, but I've spent a couple hours searching the manual and forum now so I'm swallowing my pride and posting for help now. [/typical disclosure]

    I've created multiple Text Window GUIs which I would like to use for Display at various points in my game.  Except that I can't figure out for the life of me how to implement them except for the General Settings prompt where I can change the Custom Text Window GUI to anything I want, but only as a one-off thing (so I can't use the other ones).  So my question(s):

1. What is the script command for calling different Text Window GUIs during the game?

2. Barring a satisfactory answer to 1, is there a way to change the "official" Custom Text Window GUI with script during the game?  I notice in very old threads something called game.Speech_text_gui = GUINAME which is so old it doesn't even appear as obsolete in the manual.  Surely this is still possible?

------------------------------

EDIT: SetTextWindowGUI -the missing piece of the puzzle!   

Greetings tech savvy Forumites,

    I'm trying to script parabolic movement.  It seemed simple enough in my head, and I've come up with a forumula that suits my purposes on paper, but I just can't seem to get AGS to give me the two thumbs up.  The basis of my code:

Code: ags

while (cPrincess.x < 650){
    cPrincess.x ++;
    princessy = (0.004 * cPrincess.x * cPrincess.x) - (2.56 * cPrincess.x) + 650; //****
    cPrincess.y = FloatToInt (princessy, eRoundNearest);
    Wait (1);
  }

  In theory the princess moves one pixel to the right every game loop, and her y coordinates are calculated by the standard y= ax2 + bx + c formula.  Princessy is a float, since usually the formula won't return an integer.  I then attempt to  take that float and update the princess's y coordinate, and update the screen with Wait.  The problem is AGS throws me an error saying Cannot convert float to int for the asterisked line.  I've tried creating float variables for all of the contents (princess.x, a, b, c) but it still thinks there's an int involved somewhere and I'm just not getting what it's asking for.  Am I messing up my syntax or misunderstanding how the float data type works?  Any help would be appreciated.

Quick query -does anyone know how to extract a clean number from a pointer?  I'd like to be able to keep track of what inventory items a player has thought of using (i.e. player.ActiveInventory, but save the item number that was in use after ActiveInventory changes to a new item).  I'd like to save this as a char/short/int, but ActiveInventory is apparently a pointer and I can't easily grab the raw number with something like

int oldinv = player.ActiveInventory

because there is a data type mismatch, or something like that.  I fleetingly considered writing out a function that lists every item and converts it into an int, but there must be an easier way to convert or extract that information from a pointer.  Any ideas?

EDIT -Topic Title.

Basically I like to name technical threads after oldie songs to get them stuck in programmers' brains.

But my ulterior motive is to stop my NPC from vibrating.  The NPC is usually perched on the GUI, but when I have a scrolling room he vibrates when I update his coordinates using the room's repeatedly execute:

Code: ags

  if (cPlayer.Moving){
cFrog.y = GetViewportY () +488;
  }

Note -the room only scrolls vertically and the vibrations only occur vertically. 

     It appears as if the NPC's coordinates are not updated every game cycle, since he vibrates in the opposite direction of the players movement.  Thus, when the player walks down, the NPC appears to bounce upwards (anywhere from 1 to 5 pixels), then snap back into position, then immediately start moving again (technically it's the viewport moving and he is stationary, then snapping back into relative position).  When the player moves up he bounces down.  I've slowed the game speed down massively to observe this.  It's not the player.Moving condition because when I remove that the effect is unchanged.  Can it be that GetViewport is not updated every game cycle?  I suppose the viewport must be dependent on character.y, so delayed frames in the walkcycle might make it look choppy, but setting all delays to 0 makes no difference either.  Really, if the viewport is moving and the NPC is stationary momentarily, then it's repeatedly execute that might not be repeatedly executing, but that seems very unlikely.  So I'm stuck on this -anyone got any ideas?

I'm ba-a-a-a-ck!
        I'm having a hard time with my speech setup.  I've tried various options out and I think the Sierra style with background will work the best with my game.  What I'd really like to implement is a speech bubble-esque arrow coming from one of the corners of a text window GUI to show the character talking, but I'm having problems actualizing this desire.  It seems like the Sierra-style portrait is "locked" to the top of the text-box, presenting a continuity problem in placing the speech bubble arrow.  If I put the arrow in the upper left corner then it looks like speech is coming from my character's head and not their mouth.  If I put the arrow at the lower left corner then the arrow can easily miss the mouth depending on the length of text displayed.  I've experimented with SayAt, trying to set the text location dynamically using GetTextHeight so that the bottom arrow will always point to the mouth, but instead SayAt moves the text AND the portrait -they seem to be locked together.   Is there a way to set the location of each element (the portrait, the text window) separately?  It doesn't have to be dynamic -I can use the top corner permanently if I could nudge the text lower relative to the portrait.

       Also, when using the "Alternate" option (so portraits appear on different ends of the screen when conversing), is there a way to change the text window gui on the fly so that the corner graphics can be switched around (or at least entire GUIs switched)?

       Thanks for all the help and ideas.

Hi Again,
      I've upgraded to AGS 3.2 and I'm having a hard time making a function work.  It's my only function so far, and I'm a little rusty at this sort of thing, but still.... I used to be able to do this stuff.  I get the error mentioned in the subject line when my function is introduced.  Research gives me only this thread , which doesn't really seem to resolve anything.
      What I am trying to do: I have a "phantom inventory" that I'm using for the sake of it's built in index, while my function sorts inventory graphics according to their order in the index elsewhere.  But the error seems to occur right at the beginning of the function, so maybe I'm doing this in an outdated fashion.  Here's the error line:

Code: ags

function increaseInv (String item){

      I'm sure it's simple, but what am I doing wrong here?

--------------
Edit: Alright, apparently my "import function" statement in the header script was being interpreted as a declaration.  I'm off to figure out how the heck to use that header properly, but I've got a new error to work with:

GlobalScript.asc(17): Error (line 17): Type mismatch: cannot convert 'String*' to 'InventoryItem*'

In this line I am trying to dump the name of the inventory item just interacted with into an AddInventory command:

Code: ags

function increaseInv (String item){
  cplayer.AddInventory(item);

The error message clearly states that this is not possible, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how I can construct something similar (i.e. a variable that can save the inventory item I'm working with).  Must I resort to working with inventory items by number the old fashioned way?  Or is this InventoryItem* some sort of new syntax that I haven't figured out?
--------------------
Edit Again: Well, I can get it to work using (int item) instead of (String item) and some new syntax:

Code: ags

function increaseInv (int item){
  player.AddInventory(inventory[item]);

But I'm still not happy about having to use ints instead of Strings.  So one specific question:

1) How can I set a String variable to (or Pointer to?) an inventory item's name so that I can reference it in a function elsewhere?