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It might be illegal?  I mean, it is distributing copyrighted property without explicit consent.  I know other free things on the Internet sometimes have disclaimers stating who is allowed to distribute them.  See them on FAQs and license agreements from time to time.  But that's legality.

[EDIT: Ah.  Other people answered this better-^]

Ethically, there are probably reasons why a person might want to control distribution of a freely available game.  Maybe they want to make sure players have to visit their website, for instance.  For publicity reasons?  Some might see having to ask you to take their games down as an inconvenience that they shouldn't have had to go through to begin with.  Not saying it is a practical or enforceable stance, but there are people who think this way, and you would run the risk of disrupting their interests.

Personally, I would be grateful to have my games reach a wider audience, and free hosting is always a plus, too.  I would probably appreciate being asked first, as a courtesy, though I don't think I would feel slighted if I weren't asked.  MAYBE I would if I weren't credited, but I would make sure my name was all over my stuff anyway, so anyone who cared who made it would know.

I haven't been following this Nexus thing, so I don't know how it is supposed to work.  But if you don't want to step on toes, I would contact the authors of games before uploading them, and also provide links to their websites (if relevant) next to the downloads.  That way the worst thing you can be accused of is an unsolicited e-mail.

But of course that could get inconvenient for you or whoever has to send the e-mails, and a lot of people probably will never get back to you.  There is an argument to be made that the service you provide by hosting a comprehensive list of games outweighs whatever ruffled feathers might come from hosting someone's game without permission, and you are unlikely to get into actual legal trouble, I would think.  It just wouldn't be an ethically spotless argument.

I gotta say, if you are going for realism, a sane person is probably just going to buy, steal, or borrow a real stethoscope.  The shapes are specific enough that someone who works with them all the time will almost certainly notice a fake (if they are looking).  I mean, my guess is that having a fake looking stethoscope would be worse than having no stethoscope in this sort of situation, unless you can guarantee that no one will actually examine it.

That said, sometimes sacrificing realism makes for more interesting puzzles.

Here's a link for making a homemade stethoscope in the real world.  Might give ideas?

http://www.ehow.com/how_4809745_homemade-stethoscope.html

EDIT: Thin plastic tubes or electrical tape plus earbud headphones (if they existed) or wire might be your best bet for the visual.  Dunno what to suggest for the end piece.  Some round bobble.  Paperweight, magnet, etc.

Still will look fake on close examination, though, for sure.

The woman talks like the evil unicorns from Charlie the Unicorn.  If you read into that subtext you might have just beat my record for "Most Disturbing Sex Scene Starring Ocean Spirit Dennis."  Bravo.

This sounds like a game that could end up having a lot of objects on screen at one time.  AGS is limited to I think 50 "characters" active at a time, and 40 "objects" per room/scene.  I forget what the limitations are for the GUIs.  Anyway, depending on how you choose to represent the cards, units, buildings, terrain, et cetera, and how many you plan to represent at a time, you may have to script one form of workaround or another to get around the built in limits.  Shouldn't stop you from proceeding, though

This plug-in might be relevant to you, though it looks like the author hasn't been around for a while, so if it doesn't work "as is," you might be out of luck.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=34910.0

Anyway, I said earlier that I supported a move to high res.  However, I do not have a strong opinion, either way.  I love good low-res artwork, and this episode is absolutely lovely.  I think your art style would work splendidly at a higher resolution, but it has certainly proven itself in this resolution, too.

Bottom line: You are a good artist.  If you are happy with your artwork for the next episode, chances are the rest of us will be, too, whatever route you take.  Do what works.

Now THAT would be a beautiful plot twist.

This was amazing.  I did notice the issue with character scaling a little, but only for the first few minutes of playing.  After that it wasn't an issue.  Still, I think that these graphics would definitely look fine in high res, if you decide to go that route for the future.  That and a couple choppy animations that I would probably still count as a net improvement in a lesser game, a few missed capital letters, and maybe one or two other minor quibbles, are the only things I could really find to complain about in this game.

The art is beautiful, the music is atmospheric and cinematic, the characters have a ton of personality, and the puzzles fit the setting, even if some were a little straight forward.  I can't wait for the next Chapter, and given your attention to feedback in this thread, I expect it will be even better than this one.

This should be entirely doable, but you'll have to make your own text GUI.  How complicated of an image (backdrop and borders) are you wanting for your text GUI?  If it will look exactly like the one in your example, I would use the border color for two edges and use a couple super thin list boxes (they have their own borders and can be resized and moved with the script) to make that "3D" effect around the edges.  Also make a label that uses the appropriate font.

You'll have to make your own "Say" function, or I guess edit the one in SSH's module.  Basically what you need to do is turn on your custom GUI, set the label to the string in your function, and then resize and position of the GUI and its elements.

Look up the GetTextHeight and GetTextWidth functions in the manual.  Also the GUI and GUI control functions and properties.

Getting it to look just right might be a little complicated, and I haven't figured it out in my head, just yet.  Also with custom talking functions you will need to figure out how you will implement pausing and resuming play when the text GUI is up.

It CAN be done, though.  Just takes some persistence and a little scripting know-how.  How are you with scripting?

1. No, this was something I just threw together to see if I could build a context GUI.  Started work on it maybe a week ago, so no need to upgrade.

2.  I don't remember seeing any of those section markers to begin with.  Weren't they removed from the last couple versions?  If they were still there and I didn't notice, then it is possible I deleted one or more, because I think I deleted some of the default functions at one point.  Certainly when I greened everything out while looking for the problem.  But I do know not to tamper with those, so I think if they had been there I would have left them alone.

I was using the default game template, for what it's worth.  To avoid having to import sprites and such for testing purposes.

Incoming - done
Outnumbered! - done
Barrage - done
Barricade - done

This is somehow profoundly unsurprising.  Now here's some thesaurus action.

Main Entry:    attack
Part of Speech:    noun
Definition:    physical assault
Synonyms:    advance, aggression, assailing, assailment, barrage, blitz, blitzkrieg, charge, defilement, dirty deed, drive, encounter, encroachment, foray, incursion, initiative, inroad, intervention, intrusion, invasion, irruption, mugging, offense, offensive, onrush, onset, onslaught, outbreak, push, raid, rape, rush, skirmish, storming, strike, thrust, violation, volley

I assume that every single one of these that does not either sound completely innocuous or refer to sexual assault is already taken, but you never know!

EDIT: Assailment is probably your best bet from that list.  Or encroachment.  But encroachment sounds a bit slow and gradual, so depending on the pace it may not be appropriate, and assailment sounds like you were running out of good one word names and had to use a thesaurus.

Here They Come

Urban Invaders

Modern (and Sci Fi) Warfare

There Will Be Jeeps

Orange Alert
(Just a little more laid back than Red Alert)

Grey Alert
(That almost sounds cool)

I was gonna suggest "Black Alert" as an extension of the whole color thing, but on second glance, it just looks racist.  Hooray Gestalt switch.  Don't do this.

Incoming
(This has to have been done, though, right?)

Tank That

Firefight

Steel Apocalypse

Tower Offense: the Tower Strikes Back

Hey, Don't Get So Defensive

Barrage

Outnumbered

Barricade

That's all I got.

Oh oh.  You could look up quotes from like modern generals or Winston Churchill or someone.  Pick out a few unique words in order and then use them as a title.  You'll look sophisticated.

Ah, right.  Sorry.

Code: ags

function room_AfterFadeIn() {
  Wait(1);
}

Like I said, I've tried calling blocking functions from various places in the script with the same result.

I just tried disabling all of the script but that line, one script at a time.  (Global, and two modules, + everything else in that room, which is the only room.)  The problem persists.

Deleting both of the modules also didn't help.

Tried removing the room file altogether.  No difference.

Ahhh.  And started deleting GUIs.  I had turned the iconbar into a black, full screen GUI.  Set it to initially on and invisible and unclickable.  Deleting it or setting it to "Initially Off" fixes the problem, but I still have no idea what caused it.  Only causes the problem if it exists and is visible.

Other GUIs can be visible without problems.

I deleted every button.  Kept crashing until i deleted the last button, which happened to be, I think, the control GUI button.  After deleting that button, it worked again.  I made a new button.  It still works.

At this point my test game, which isn't terribly important to begin with, is salvaged.  I still don't know what was wrong but it only matters for curiosity's sake.  I'm going to mark this as solved, but if anyone has any insight, I would love to hear it.

Moral: When in doubt, systematically kill everything in sight until your problems solve themselves.  That's the scientific method.

Been working on a test game in 3.1.2 SP1, and for some reason every time I try to use the Wait() command I get the following error message.

Also Character.Walk on blocking mode (non blocking walking works fine), so I'm assuming it has something to do with blocking scripts, but Display works fine, too.

Code: ags

---------------------------
Illegal exception
---------------------------
An exception 0xC0000005 occurred in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x00443870 ; program pointer is +379, ACI version 3.12.1074, gtags (1,5)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and post the details on the AGS Technical Forum.

in "room1.asc", line 336


Most versions of Windows allow you to press Ctrl+C now to copy this entire message to the clipboard for easy reporting.

An error file CrashInfo.dmp has been created. You may be asked to upload this file when reporting this problem on the AGS Forums. (code 0)
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

At one point the blocking scripts seemed to be working.  I couldn't say exactly when they stopped, though I recall getting some sort of error yesterday when I was saving.  Things seemed to be working, and it's just a test game so I didn't take much note of it at the time, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's when it started.

Any idea what's wrong?

The main thing I'm doing with this game is module scripting, so even if it isn't salvageable I should be able to lift out the important stuff, even if I can't salvage the "game."  Unless this is a problem with one of my scripts,  Is that possible?  It seems like it is happening on a deeper level than the script, but maybe I did something really weird?

Tested it with "Room load after fade in" and room RepExec, as well as repeatedly_execute in my module.

It's unfortunate.  Couldn't help nitpicking it to death when I played it, but I was really impressed with the cinematics, given that it was produced by a team of amateurs.  I think it was a bad move releasing this as a stand alone episode.  Makes a bad first impression, given the shortness, emptiness, and the fact that most of the content was already released years ago in the demo.  There were also a few moments that were just awkward or illogical, like

Spoiler

the fact that you couldn't interact with the obviously suspicious doomsayer, or that bit of foreshadowing when they Wing Queen jokes about the implausibility of a magical artifact that allows people to fly nudge wink boy yeah I'm sure there's nothing like THAT.

[close]

I kind of get the feeling that this game is one that has a story to tell (which is good--the main selling point, even) but that it is going to do everything in its power, no matter how contrived or illogical, to railroad the player through the intended narrative (which is less good).  Still, it obviously has a lot of work and thought put into it (probably more thought than most of the canon installments) and I can still see it being at the very least a moderately satisfying conclusion to the series, if they do end up telling the whole story.  This episode just got off on the wrong foot.

What is your general opinion of such a site?
* Good idea.

Would such a site be appealing to you personally?  Would you join up?
* I think I would.  Anything to get my name out there, and depending on the features, etc, I could see something like this being fun/useful.

What other features would you want to see added if you did join up?
* I'd like to see some features implemented geared specifically for networking between developers.  System for recruiting team members and offering services, for instance.  Though such features should be optional, so people who don't need new members or don't want people from a social networking site don't get bogged in offers from hordes of well meaning, but unskilled fans.  Still I think some sort of built in auditioning system could be useful for some.

* I would fudge the line between fans and developers, so that individuals and teams of amateurs can post up details for works in progress, regardless of finished game credits (though developers with one or more finished products should still have primacy, so they don't drown in the sea of lazy optimists).  One of the joys of social networking sites is that anyone can "express their creativity" if they want to.  Posting up drawings and writings (in any stage of completion) is pretty easy on most sites, and I think games should be similarly easy on one like this.  A notable subset of fans are going to harbor ambitions toward game design, and even though most of these ambitions probably won't pan out, I think it would be good to encourage them.

If you are a developer (or say you were one), would such a site be a useful tool for you to utilize, given there were a large number of members on board?
Ah.  See above.

Do you feel that such a site would be able to fulfill the above two goals to both side's satisfaction?
I don't see why not, so long as you can get a decent member base.

I've been using The Gimp for everything, and it works pretty well,  but just checked out aseprite 'cause Calin and damn is it cool.  I miss some of the features I'm used to in the older, more powerful program, but for sprite animating it seems pretty near perfect, or like it will be once I figure out how to move frames around, etc.

Ah.  Couldn't resist.


Mostly meant as a joke, but something like that would solve all of your copyright problems.

And of course you may consider pengaboes and moobles to be securely within the public domain.

Sooo.  They released the demo again today.  Thoughts and opinions?

"Gil" is the name of the currency used in the Final Fantasy series of JRPGs.  I'm assuming Icey referenced it so people familiar with that series would know what sort of system he was aiming for.

Games used to generate a text file if there was a memory leak with the dynamic sprites.  I think that's what you're talking about.  There was some talk of altering the circumstances under which such a file was generated, but I don't know if anything came of that.  To my knowledge, it didn't say where in the script excess sprite were being generated, but I could be wrong.  In any case, what was said was that Windows should delete them automatically when you close AGS, so it is only a real problem if you are generating a lot of them and not deleting them.  In this case you have to worry about crashes and slowdown etc.?  I haven't messed with these features in a while, so I don't recall if it is possible to generate an indefinite number of dynamic sprites without deleting/overriding them, but if that's happening, obviously it's bad.

More tech savvy people will probably have more to say.