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Lucas arts speech style and the text options on a GUI (it happens with normal dialog options style, too). I could still call a popup modal GUI by holding down a key while selecting an option, even though it was locked with IsInterfaceEnabled. Same for my status bar label, it would update, too.

I can't reproduce this in a clean game, but it's still present in the game I'm currently working on. Weird problem.

Clueless3 - Thanks for the comment! The problem with clickteams' game makers is that the inbuilt movement stuff is very limiting and buggy. If you don't make your own movement, you won't get satisfying results. Other than that, MMF is powerful enough to make a 1:1 clone of Super Mario World for the SNES.

fovmester - Hehe, thanks!

Here's another concept pic, this time it's the second main character:


A small progress update:
I've pretty much finished the enemy AI. They react to sounds now, too - when you're not sneaking they might hear your footsteps and look for you for a while. You can make sounds to distract enemies, as well - to lure a guard away from his post, and so on.

Oi, thanks! You know, your name sounds familiar, I think I heard it before... maybe at www.create-games.com ? I'm pretty sure I saw you there.

Thanks for the comments!

Blackthorne519 - Thanks! I need all the luck I can get, I'm really bad at finishing games. In theory, it shouldn't take too long to complete, it's aimed at medium length.

lightman - Thanks for your suggestion, but I'd prefer a lighter color than the button itself. As for white, it hurts the eyes quite a bit - already tried it.

Pixelcat - Thanks, I like it much better, too!

ProgZmax - Thanks. As for the picture thing - I meant just the ratio, as in the value you get when you divide 320 by 200. I draw everything for the game on a bigger resolution with a similar ratio to get it to look right. Drawing for 320x200 is kinda hard with a square pixel ratio, couldn't do it very well.

Additionally, I've decided to add an immediate action GUI, so you can do stuff like hitting and throwing with just a click instead of going through the menu, or with a hotkey. Should make things easier.

Oi, just wanted to mention that the shutdown window with the timer can be canceled by typing 'shutdown -a' into the execute bar. This only lasts until you restart your computer, but it's still useful, especially when you're working on something.

Good point. I've already thought up a few interesting things for that. I plan to add a puzzle that requires you to get thrown in prison, and more.

Here's some concept art (may look a bit squashed because I drew it at a 320x 200 ratio):

I really like your second suggestion. I'll be doing that, it pretty much solves my problem. Thanks! I already have a few ideas for throwable objects.

I've also decided to keep game overs'when caught at a minimum, in most cases you'd either be thrown into jail or thrown out of places. (Which you can re-enter if they're important to the main quest.)

That's a good suggestion, I'll do that, thanks!

EDIT:

Thanks for the comments!

pixelcat - do you have a suggestion for a better button text color? I'm always open to suggestions. It's never good when a bad color mix hurts someones eyes, gotta mend that!

And since we're talking about colors already, do any of the screenshots look too dark or too bright? My monitor doesn't have a standard setting, so I'm having a hard time getting the brightness right. Thanks


Well, I'd like to use this opportunity to also discuss a game design issue I'm not sure about. I realized today that there's this one bit that might turn off some gamers:

In the game, when you're caught by someone, the game would be over. However, an immediate game over like that might be quite frustrating (you'd start out at the beginning of the current room again), so I was thinking to give the player a chance to fight the pursuing character when caught, with a simple energy bar and such, using either hotkeys or a button.
This is might go a bit too far and make the game too actiony and will scare off some adventure gamers, so I'm not really sure about this one. (Also, note that the main character should never be able to kill anyone, that's really important to me, and required by the story. This makes all this even harder, though.)
I can still implement this fighting thing easily, but I'd like to hear a few opinions of other adventure gamers first. Any other ideas to prevent an immediate game over would be welcome, too. Something that isn't too easy to do, to give you some more time to run for it.... hmm.

Another solution could be getting locked up in jail and having to escape, or just being kicked out of the current place, depending on where you're doing your sneaky thievin' business.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Darth - How convenient, I like strawberries!

Regarding the Sneaking Ability: You can change modes by hitting space or by clicking on a GUI button. This works on the fly, too. There's also a 'HIT'-hotkey, so you don't have to do it through the menu. (You can hit and knock out people if you manage to sneak up to them. Works only on bad ones though, heh.)

I made the characters smaller for this game as I don't like working with big sprites - easier to animate, and I can draw them at a reasonable speed, too. Glad to hear you like them, anyway!

EDIT -Ã,  I had one more screenshot, but forgot to upload it - anyway, here it is:

Some time last year, I announced a game called 'City of Fortune'. I spent loads of time making backgrounds and such, but didn't do enough planning, and the project went down the toilet.

I've been thinking wheter to announce this game or not, fearing that I might drop it again at some point, which would make this thread look pretty damn stupid and a waste of space.

(A note to the moderators... please delete my old COF thread. The game has changed a lot, so i didn't want to use that thread to announce this - Link: http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php?topic=8647.0 )

Well, anyway - as you can see, I've decided to announce this despite the fact that I suck at completing games. So let's get on with it, shall we?



Features:

- Lucas-Arts style gameplay - a GUI with cancelable actionsÃ,  and right-clicks for predefined actions
- Three main characters
- About 35+ playable rooms
- The ability to sneak and hide (For one character)
- Halfways decent NPC AI

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

Story & Character info removed due to rewrite.

It's not really as hard as you may think, you just need to get the logic worked out.

I'm not very experienced with AGS at all, but still managed to code a GUI with the following features which, I think, are the most important things about the Lucas Arts GUI:

-Cancelable commands (clicking somewhere else to abort)
-Rightclick triggering a certain action

For cancelable commands, you'll have to:

1. store the desired location (coulf be retrieved from properties)
2. store the 'clicked at' position using mouse.x and mouse.y
3. store the action that will be executed when the player reaches the destination
4. compare the position of the character to the stored destination in repeatedly execute
5. do a processclick using the stored 'clicked at' position

Additionally, you could use another property value to make the character face a certain direction upon arrival at the destination.

Also, remember to take the view offsets into account for scrolling rooms.

For rightclicks to trigger actions, you could just use properties. Compare to the property of each location in your script when rightclicking, and trigger the action depending on that property value.

That's what it boils down to, at least. Not sure if this helps you as I've been quite vague here.Ã,  Ã, 

I was wondering if you're working with the anti-glide mode on? From reading through this thread, it sounds like it is on, what with a character skipping nine pixels forward.

Anyway, I get a smooth, rpg-ish looking movement at 60 FPS with the following set-up...

anti-glide off
Movement Speed: 1
Animation Speed: 5

....and at 50 FPS with Speed 2 as well. The keypresses are very responsive, too. Just a tap is enough to move him.

Maybe you want anti glide on for the looks, or maybe I'm just not completely understanding your problem - if that's the case, enlighten me, please!

Ohh... sprite jam! Here's my take:



And one more, still fitting the topic, but not an entry:



(photoshopped pic, reduced to 32 colors)

Oi! A small question about the bubble gui, specifically the game.speech_bubble_width variable, if I may. The description in the manual says this: Maximum width of the thought bubble text window (default 100).

The bubble gui doesn't adjust its size depending on the text width, though. And since the description says 'maximum', I was thinking that it would be doing just that, but it seems to be a fixed size. If I set the value to 300, I get a 300 pixel broad window even if the text is only a single letter.

That leaves us with 2 possibilities:

-The description in the manual isn't correct
-It's... a bug!1

Now, my question would be... which of the two would it be?

Thanks, and keep up the great work!

Also, if you use GetLocationType(int x, int y), you can detect if the mouse is over an hotspot, a character or an object. If you use it combined with GetLocationName, you pretty much get the result you want:

if (GetLocationType(mouse.x,mouse.y) == 1) {GetLocationName(mouse.x,mouse.y, hotspotname);}
if (GetLocationType(mouse.x,mouse.y) == 2) {GetLocationName(mouse.x,mouse.y, charactername);}
if (GetLocationType(mouse.x,mouse.y) == 3) {GetLocationName(mouse.x,mouse.y, objectname);}

Alternatively, you could code something like this on your own with just a few lines.

Example:

if (IsKeyPressed(32)==1) {if (IsButtonDown(RIGHT)==1) {
character[GetPlayerCharacter()].x = mouse.x;
character[GetPlayerCharacter()].y = mouse.y;}}

This code would make your character appear at where you right-clicked while you hold space.

As for amiga games... go to www.back2roots.org
Those roms there are legal downloads, and they sure have bloody many of 'em. They ask the creators of the games if they can publish them.

There are even some Sierra games (QFG2). There's no Lucas Arts games for download though, which isn't surprising at all.

http://www.zophar.net/amiga.html

Get WinUAE, it's the best one.

Exactly. You'd specify the main loop for each view - for example 3 to 10. The frames before and after it would serve sort of as lead-in and lead-out animations.