Messages

This is brilliant.  I love it.  One thing though - the psuedo-archaic dialogue feels a little forced and distracting, especially at the beginning, when you are just getting to know the characters.  I'm sure this was to be atmospheric, but sometimes I think it's better to just admit that we don't speak Old English any more, and let characters speak more naturally, even if it is anachronistic, 'cause let's face it, if the average person can read it without getting a headache, it's probably anachronistic anyway.

That said, the art and scripting are incredible, the puzzles generally don't feel like the same thing over and over, and the plot is reasonably complex - more than I've seen in a lot of amateur games.  It really does feel kind of like playing an old Sierra game, especially with the somewhat open ended gameplay.

Spoiler

There's another flight of stairs right near your room, kind of in the corner of the screen.

[close]

Using the editor in 800x600 resolution doesn't seem to allow scrolling on large GUIs.

Also I keep getting an error whenever I try to run games.  If I use the Test Game option in the editor I get a message that reads: "The engine does not appear to have shut down properly.  If the problem persists, post the problem on the tech forum."  If I compile the game and then try to run it outside the editor, it exits while or immediately after loading (can't tell which), but doesn't display a message.  If I run the game windowed, I get an illegal operation error before it crashes.  I tried this on two separate test games imported from V2.72, with the same result.  The backups of both games still run just fine.  I tried making a quick one room "game" in V2.8 beta 3 and again had the same result.

I don't seem to have the same problem with beta 2.

Item #3: Has support for .PCX files been dropped?  I couldn't access them when loading background images for the afore mentioned "quick game".

And quick question: In the palette editor, the range of brightness on the RGB slots seems to have changed from 64 to 256.  Will this actually allow a broader range of color in 256 color games?  Also, I assume scripts using palette[SLOT].r etc. will need to be updated accordingly?

Thank you so much!  It works like a charm.  Though for the record, the way that code works , if a column y has more than two pixels (such as at the ends of the ellipse), it will only draw the top and bottom ones.  I found a couple ways to fix it, but the one I've settled on for now is

Code: ags

function RawDrawEllipse(int x, int y, int width, int height){
  float yscale=IntToFloat(height)/IntToFloat(width);
  int ii=width;
  int ytemp;
  int lastx=ii;
  int lasty=FloatToInt(Maths.Sqrt(IntToFloat((width*width)-(ii*ii)))*yscale,eRoundNearest);
  while (ii>=0){
    ytemp=FloatToInt(Maths.Sqrt(IntToFloat((width*width)-(ii*ii)))*yscale,eRoundNearest);
    RawDrawLine(x-lastx, y-lasty, x-ii, y-ytemp);
    RawDrawLine(x-lastx, y+lasty, x-ii, y+ytemp);
    RawDrawLine(x+lastx, y-lasty, x+ii, y-ytemp);
    RawDrawLine(x+lastx, y+lasty, x+ii, y+ytemp);
    lastx=ii;
    lasty=ytemp;
    ii--;
  }
}

which seems the cleanest, scriptingwise, and creates the smoothest ellipses I have been able to manage so far.

I was also able to use those yscale and ytemp codes to check if the character was at the edge of the circle and stop him if he was, but it is still very buggy, and crashes if he manages to step out of range by a pixel or two.  I should be able to clean it up from here, so consider this case solved.  Thanks again.  ^_^

Two (related) questions.  I am trying to confine a character inside of a circle on the ground.  The circle needs to be visible to the player and easily resizable and movable.  My first idea was to represent the "trap" using the RawDrawCircle function, but when I did, I realised two things = first, the circle is automatically filled, which looks strange, and second, a literal circle doesn't take perspective into account, since my rooms and character aren't drawn from a straight overhead viewpoint.  So question one: is it possible to RawDraw an ellipse without using an imported image of some sort?  And how?

Then there is the problem of keeping the character inside the "circle".  Since the size and location are not static, I can't use walkable areas.  My best idea so far is to anchor the character to the ellipse's foci, and somehow stop him or pull him back if he goes too far from them, but I can't figure out how to check the sum distance from the two foci.  Will I need to use floats?  (Bear in mind that my geometry is extremely sketchy at best.  Not bad at math so much as waay behind.)

If anyone could point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.

I do love a good debate.  This place looks to have a lot of potential.  Best of luck getting it off the ground.  I'll help if I can.  I hope you will not mind me lurking.

Lens Flare support and reintegration of the bluecup glitch.

I will give this a try.  Haven't played anything Monkey Island in a while, though, and even then the last I touched was EFMI.

* Leaving a certain area is impossible until all items are acquired. This solution is illogical. Why pick up items that are seemingly useless at the moment? And how do I justify the inability to leave the area?

This one is probably best avoided, for the most part, but it could make sense in a situation wherein the player character -knows- s/he is about to leave for somewhere where the required items would be useful.  Sort of, "I'd better make sure I'm prepared for my journey."  Then just make sure the items aren't too off-the-wall.  (It might make sense if the character wouldn't leave without food, a change of clothes, writing utensils, rope, maps, etc. depending on where s/he is headed, or maybe s/he never leaved home without his/her favorite stuffed animal, but you'd have a harder time logically justifying refusal to leave with out the aforementioned Rubber Chicken with a Pulley in the Middle, a rotten tuna, a computer print-out of the Mona Lisa, a urine sample from your neighbor's cat, and a handful of pencil shavings.)

I would imagine, though, you probably wouldn't want to use the supply hunt more than once or twice, even if you could justify it.  It'd get repetitive, and would hurt the pacing in a more suspenseful, action driven story.

Roger's size is 18x40.  Or at least that's the standard frontview, according to a quick check to the editor.

To foreignize the game's "native" language, you might try using a cryptogram of some sort.  This would A) make it easy to believe the player character can't understand, B) allow you to keep the language's basic structure (and even allow for well written lines for the garbled characters) and C) prevent the player from understanding too easily, while allowing dedicated players to decypher the code and gain some non-essential meta-knowledge.

(This seemed to work okay for Final Fantasy X.  Though I suppose in that case probably neither language was literally meant to be one of ours.)

Just be careful what you write in the cryptogram, because some people will see it, and others won't.  You won't want to hide a major plot twist behind the language barrier, for instance.

If you want to discourage (but still kind of allow) translation, you might try also to speed up the text for the foreign speakers, so that it disappears quickly.  Have you ever noticed how fast people sound when they're speaking a language you don't understand fluently?  It might be a good way to help convey/exaggerate that feeling.  I imagine that wouldn't be any more or less difficult than changing the fonts.

If you're serious about not giving people time to read it, though, you'll want to watch out for the GUI.  I know that the built in Seirra style GUI, at least, can be used to pause the game while characters are talking.  (I do that all the time when I can't read fast enough.)

If you want the player to invariably know what is being said, that font thing sounds like a pretty good idea.  However, I think it would be a little disconcerting.  For me, at least, it is a lot easier to imagine fonts as accents than whole languages.  I suppose one would get used to it before too long, though.

Neat game.

Small bug:

Spoiler

In the scene with the magical water, if you walk up as far as you can on the left side of the pool, you can get stuck.  I'm guessing it's to do with the walkable area, there.

[close]

Rosie:

Spoiler

Nah, you got the right idea with the seeds.  Just click around a bit and he'll water them.  It isn't very clear where you're supposed to click.

[close]

lynn:

Spoiler

You can't bring the baby into the tower.  You'll have to leave him with his mom.

[close]

lynn:

Spoiler

Just the two ropes are long enough.  All that's left is to tie 'em.

[close]

Alright, been playing Sky Adventure, and...

Spoiler

...I've got the anker/grapplehook, the baby angel, the shovel, and the saw.  I've buried the fruit seeds and talked to the tree-god, but I can't figure out where to go from here.  My only ideas are that I need to somehow get higher into the angel-tower, to find the guy from the beginning, or I need to find something to carry the magic water in.

[close]

Any pointers?

Hmm...  Midis usually play fine for me.  I tried cranking up the volume, but all that got me were a few deafening text messages.  Just to be sure, though, how do I get at the midi driver?

I thoroughly enjoyed Spooks, and will be sure to keep my eye out for any further games from you in the future   My only gripe, I think, was a problem with my own machine.  What format did you use for the music?  It refused to play for me, so aside from the sound effects, I was forced to play the game in silence.  (I believe this has happened to me with a few other AGS games, as well.)

If anyone knows a way I might be able to remedy this, I would be most appreciative.

~Lyaer (a.k.a. Mr. McMooo, for those who may have noticed my lurking back in the EZBoard days)