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[real]

As for the technical side: it's pretty heavy to code a client that'll keep in sync and will display own actions and those by the other two players, all without any blocking code.

I may not take into account some things, anyway I have a thought that to a first approximation this could work using event handler that gets a message about other player(s) actions. Yes, actually I believe that only player-originated actions need to be shared (sent between machines), because all other game events either depend on those actions or are independent and, since each machine has same copy of the game (that is copy of game logic), these resulting events could be processed by each machine on its own without synchronising them beyond starting point.
(I hope my thoughts are explained well.)
Ofcourse, there shouldn't be any blocking processes, as was mentioned, unless all player-controlled characters are participating in the same cutscene, for instance. Not sure yet will this cause any real difficulties. I'm afraid my AGS-scripting experience is not big enough yet to see all possible troubles here.

Coding a dialog system alone would be hell.

As a simplified version it could be made so that only 1 real player could participate in conversation with non-player character(s). Not very realistic, ofcourse. And ofcourse it should be made real-time. Uh. Yep 

I have a suggestion, this interesting idea just came to my mind. Would it be possible to make a multiplayer (or a rather 2-player) simulation, simply to uncover any potentional problems, as a game where user(s) can control 2 characters for example one by mouse and another by keyboard?

In theory you can stop the problem by pressing TAB on its own after you return to the game.

Nope, unfortunately that does not work.

Actually I think it would be cool to have an multiplayer adventure made as a story with predefined begining and some amounts of possible endings, where each important character is controlled and role-played by different player.
In fact such game could be more role-playing than many exisitng RPGs.

I have a crazy idea of a detective story where one player choses a character who will be a criminal and tries to make a crime, and another player is a detective who has to detect who's the criminal, and, along with that, does not know what character is controlled by opponent (other characters could be controlled using AI), or something like that.

To save anyone jumping in and trying to defend my shoddy writing. The joke* is simply that people often fatuously compare unfair situations to Soviet Russia.

Hehe, weird, wasn't much aware of this.
Anyway, thanks for explanation

[click]

Okay an update
I found it rather non-obvious that you have to click on Sue's email to make Colin read it and understand what to do next.

The character was a hateful little bitch too, blaming his misfortunes on everyone but himself. <...> Well, excuuuuse me, but I've got little sympathy for the guy.

I'd like to comment that I personally do not mind playing a bitch or an idiot ... although sometimes I thought it would be nice if Colin had a shotgun. and enough guts to use it

This happens to me as long as I remember playing AGS games, that is I am really not sure which run-time version this referes to. Latest game I played and noticed this bug in was "Colin Simpson Leaves Employment".

Bug itself occurs as soon as I change to another window by hitting ALT+TAB, then return back to the game. All displayed text, speech and messages, begin to dissapear a moment after they are shown, as if game thinks that user constantly presses a key or something.
This happens both for Fullscreen and Window mode. Interesting thing is, that if igame was launched in windowed mode and I change window by clicking on "minimize" button or just clicking outside game window, then switch back, this bug does not occur. It occurs only if I use ALT+TAB combination.

Owww... office nightmare  :

Haven't finished game yet, but I already have couple of notices.

First of all, it is a bit annoying you cannot skip title cutscene and go straight to main menu and restore the game. I suggest you add an ability to skip it by pressing Esc or something.

Second thing I'd like to mention is that I could not locate the passage to last corridor section, the one with WC and Kitchen doors, until I saw how "Pierre" walked there during the cutscene. I mean, it was not quite obvious for me that there is any passage at all. Good thing is that it isn't needed for solving any puzzle before the cutscene with Pierre. Maybe it is because cupboard is standing so that it makes an impression that the way futher is unavailable.

What the suggestion you were quoting was actually referencing is that sometimes when you're trying to skip a line of speech that is being automatically removed by the timer, you may accidentally remove the next line of speech instead of the one you were intending to skip.

Yes, I did understand that.

There's really no practical need to have this setting in the setup configuration settings; rather, you should suggest that game authors provide methods (i.e., a GUI) to control these (aforementioned) settings.

Well, I assume that the chance that all authors will take this suggestion into account would be not very high
And I suppose it would be nice to have a 100% chance to have this option for any game you like to play. That is the reason I am asking what I am asking.

[fast enough]

On another thread I found this piece of discussion

Basically, I'm asking for a way to disable the text skip button(s) for a short moment right after a line change, but only if the previous line timed out. Thereby ensuring that if the line you want to skip times out just as you're clicking, you don't miss the next line. Personally, this is a feature I wish all games had. (If I finish reading a line a bit early, I'm often afraid to click to skip it, because this might happen and I'll miss the next one.)

That is a very good idea actually, I have the same problem when playing games. I'll look into it.

I had something similar in my mind as well for quite some time, but now I have different proposal. What if a new option will be added to game setup, that will allow player to customize the text skipping method which matches his/her own preference? It could also include "Game Default" selection.

I ask this because along with problem mentioned in an excerpt above, I sometimes could not read speech fast enough (I am not native english speaker, and most games are in english). There were times when I had to re-read same lines to make sure I understood them properly and - blam - speech is gone. I remember I had reload few times because of that.

I finished the game some time ago and I wanted to ask this question, but was continiously forgetting to do this So, sorry for bringing this thread up again... but can anyone explain me the meaning of the joke (or maybe it isn't a joke?) about "Soviet Russia" and "vodka"? I cannot understand a sense of those lines Nelly sais in the context when Bartender tells her she should pay for entering a pirate museum.

I created the GUI Portrait module to let you do speech with the portrait on a GUI so you could control its Z order...

Hmm, okay, if this won't be fixed until I (hopefully) finish my game, I will use your module

What about a head-to-head where each player has a limited number of time per turn; then see who solve the puzzle first?

Here goes another bug. If game uses Sierra-style dialogs and character says something when GUI is open (I guess any gui, that pauses the game; I had this with inventory window), then speech text will be drawn over the gui, but character portrait stays behind.

This could be easily seen if window is placed where character portrait usually appears. At first I thought that portrait is simply not displayed, but then I made GUI 50% transparent and saw there IS a portrait, but beyond GUI.

Dualnames reported a similar bug in the parallax scroll module thread.

Yeah, I have seen 100% same effect as on that screenshot.
It looks like character portrait uses screen-relative coordinates, while speech text uses absolute coordinates of a room.

As a result of some mistake in script I occasionally found that:

1. If you use Sierra-style dialogs, and...
2. (perhaps) 'Run game loops while dialog options are displayed' general setting is ON, and...
3. Your player character stands in large scrollable room, and...
4. Some character speech displayed, and...
5. Player character continues to move, causing room background to scroll,

then following occurs - speaking character portrait stays on same place relative to screen coordinates, but speech text flows away with the scrolling background.

Ah, yes, and "Watch" feature for runtime debugger, if possible!

I am sorry for being such a bore  , nevertheless here's another small and pesky bug I noticed.

If you have a number of folders and subfolders in the 'Views' tree branch then when you change a name of the View (any View) in the properties table all 'Views' tree branch collapses; that is - all folders close.

Its hard to tell if this refers only to 'Views' node or any other nodes in objects viewer because only 'Views' branch can have subfolders.

Sorry if this was mentioned sometime ago (don't have a patience to read all this thread through  : )
I have couple of humble ideas, simply something that comes in mind when I trying to create my first game...

First of all, what about allowing user to define sprite metrics (width & height) manually when importing one from a bitmap. Sometimes that could be easier than to drag a selection box. Also maybe the input fields for these metrics could display currently selected width and height if user decided to drag the box anyway.

Secondly, a way to copy/paste GUI elements when editing GUI control - this would make it faster to create several buttons of same size.

Ooops, sorry CW. I probably sounded a bit conceited before....

~Trent

No problem

Although you probably do have a point that the dialog editor should have a better way of handling this (interpreting which lines are dialog script and ignoring all syntactical candy and which lines are script script (spaces first!) and detecting the appropriate information...).

Well, that's exactly what I meant.

[type]

Quite a small bug, but could be annoying sometimes.
In dialog scripts when there is a " ' " (apostrophe) symbol somewhere between "(" and ")" in character speech, as soon as I print ")", editor marks the ")" with a red colour as if there is some syntax mistake.

Example, that can cause this:

Code: ags

Ego: Okay, I will do this (actually I won't).

NOTE: you have to type ")", copy/paste doesn't reproduce the bug.


Also, just a remark: I found it a bit excessive that editor marks "(" / ")" pairs by yellow colour in character speech lines... only my opinion.