Topics

Hi all. I am using a custom text window and this is the result:



For some reason, the text offset is further down and to the left than it should be. Both the top/bottom and left/right images have the same amount of black space so theoretically the text should be right in the middle? Is there a way to offset the Y position of the text so it displays a few pixels higher?

Any help is appreciated!

-Dave

I am not sure if this is the right place to post this. The old "offer your services" thread seems to be locked. Moderators, feel free to move it to the proper place.

So let's cut to the chase. As most of you know, we've produced 15 games and all of them have full voiceover. I've progressed from the method of "casting various friends of mine and recording on a cheap headset mic in my bedroom" to "using a casting director and recording in a swank audio booth studio in Midtown Manhattan."

Recently I was asked to help cast and record the voiceover for Kathy Rain - a game that neither me nor my company had any hand in producing. I enjoyed the process a *lot* and thought I could offer the services to others while I'm between projects. I'm not a pro audio director by any means, but I *have* been doing it for over ten years. We've improved the process in which we cast, direct and record the voiceover with every game we are involved with. At this point, I think we're pretty good at it.

Here are some of the benefits to working with us:

- We're in New York. No shortage of actors here.
- Since all the actors are local, they all will record from the same microphone. This will keep all the audio levels consistent across all your characters.
- A quick and efficient process for auditions and callbacks. You'll have your entire game cast and ready to go within weeks.
- 10+ years and 16 projects worth of experience directing voiceover for adventure games
- We've worked with a lot of actors and are well aware of who would work well for your project (or who wouldn't).
- Reasonable rates! We won't work for free, but we're less expensive than most alternatives.

So if you are looking to voice your game and are not sure where to begin, drop us a line: dave@wadjeteyegames.com

[Story]

Wadjet Eye Games is extraordinarily proud to announce our next upcoming project: Unavowed!



Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-MMqOakEIs

Story
For six months, you were possessed by a demon. For six months, you unwillingly tore a trail of bloodshed through New York City. Now, finally, you are rescued by the Unavowed - an ancient society dedicated to stopping evil.

You are free, but your world is in tatters. You have no home, no friends, and you are wanted by the police. You can not return to your old life, but perhaps you can start a new one. Join the Unavowed, and learn to fight against the oncoming darkness.

Written & Programmed by: Dave Gilbert
Backgrounds and sprites: Ben Chandler
Music: Thomas Regin
Portraits (not pictured yet): Ivan Ulyanov

Features:
   -Choose a male or female protagonist
   -Choose one of three playable origin stories
   -branching storyline
   -A total of four companion characters to choose from. Each with their own talents and abilities.
   -Double the resolution of a typical Wadjet Eye Game!
   -All the usual guff - voice acting, commentary, original music, etc

This is the first original game I have written in two years, and my first ORIGINAL IP since Blackwell Legacy in 2006. It's super exciting to be working on this. More news as it comes.

Screenshots:


Hanging out with a jinn, a fire mage, and a dark creature from across the void.


Exorcisms are not for the weak.


This guy is either conducting some horrible magic, or he's a video game developer.


Everything a modern day mage could want.


This probably isn't good.


A city street at night.

Since the last few questions I asked turned out to have butt easy solutions, I am delegating myself to the beginner's forum!

In a nutshell, I am making a high-res (640 x 360) game using AGS v3.4.0.6. And all the high-res fonts I import look horrible:



This is "DejaVu Sans" imported at 14 point size. I've experimented with antialiasing (makes it look 10x worse), different sizes, and dozens of different fonts and they all look like variations of this. I'd really like a smooth, high-res font to match my high-res game. Am I just choosing the wrong fonts? If so, can someone recommend a font/size configuration that will look nice?

Much appreciated!

-Dave

Hi all! It's been awhile since I used AGS for one of my own projects. A strange issue came up the other day and I can't seem to pinpoint the cause. If my character is in a position, and I click somewhere below him, the expected behavior would be for him to walk DOWN toward that position. However, my character is walking a tiny bit to the RIGHT, then moves his way to the desired position in a very awkward fashion. See the embedded video to see what I mean:

[embed=720,405]http://youtu.be/ai4RDvTuMvI[/embed]

Any ideas? Admitedly, it's been awhile since I've used AGS (a whole year and a half!) but I know I've never seen this issue before. Any help is appreciated!

I downloaded this and played around with it yesterday. One thing I noticed... the F1 help files seem to be missing? The table of contents are all there, but the actual information is all blank.

[Buy it now $14.99!]

Buy it now $14.99!

The story
A dead man's soul cries out against the force of a ferocious blizzard. He cries for help. He cries for answers. Then he screams as he is torn apart like damp tissue paper.

This wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last.

The police are powerless to stop it, so the duty falls to the only who can. What force could be so powerful - and so malevolent - that it would destroy the very core of a life in order to get what it wants?

Rosa Blackwell and Joey Mallone mean to find out, even if it means risking themselves in the process.

Screenshots

Rosa fortifies herself with coffee. The dead don't sleep and neither can she.


Joey talks to a ghost in an abandoned building, who makes the usual amount of sense.


The Blackwell homestead - now seen from a different angle!


Sam Durkin returns.


The void between worlds.

Team
Written and programmed by: Dave Gilbert
Background and Character sprites by: Ben Chandler (ben304)
Character portraits by: Ian Schlaepfer
Music by: Thomas Regin
Abe Goldfarb and Rebecca Whittaker as Joey and Rosa

FREE DEMO HERE!

For more details, check out the Wadjet Eye Games website!

----
And on a personal note, Blackwell Epiphany is a game that has taken me two years of full time work to make, and is the final installment of a series that I began almost a decade ago. This series kickstarted my career, and everything good in my life resulted from that. I don't post as often as I used to, but it means so much that everyone in this community has supported my work from day one. It has been an absolute pleasure making these games, and Blackwell Epiphany in particular. I hope you enjoy it.

-Dave

A number of testers are reporting this error:

"Out of memory: failed to allocate -3120 bytes (at PP=155)"

In doing some research on this forum, it appears that the PP number refers to a specific action that the game is performing (load room, drawsprite, etc). Does anyone know what the number 155 is referring to? It doesn't appear to be in the manual anywhere. That would help me narrow down what the problem could be.

Thanks!

-Dave

[Now available for pre-order! Nab it for 20% off until Novemeber 21st!]

[embed=640,360] <iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mtE4o1WdOyw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> [/embed]

Now available for pre-order! Nab it for 20% off until Novemeber 21st!

So earlier this year we ported Gemini Rue to iOS, and it was reasonably successful. It was, however, a colossal undertaking. Eight months of fulltime work for Janet (who actually went to school for programming and is much smarter than I am). Since we just had a baby, we decided our next port would be The Shivah – the very first game we ever made. It's short, and reasonably straightforward. So we figured it would be a quick and easy port.

Sadly – NO! The Shivah was made seven years ago. This was before games on iOS phones was a thing. Before even iOS phones! The game was made with very tiny sprites – sprites that were impossible to see on a phone.

So what to do?

WE REMAKE THE WHOLE DARN THING.

Original:


New!


Original:


New!


Original:


New!


The entire game has been remastered with brand new graphics (by Mr. Ben304), new music (by Peter Gresser) and new character portraits (by Ilyich). It even has achievements now, since that is what all the cool games have these days. It will be available on November 21st for Windows, Steam and iOS!

The game will cost $4.99 on windows and $1.99 on iOS. If you pre-order the PC version now, you can nab it for 20% off. PC versions will, as always, come with Steam keys.

For more details, check out the Wadjet Eye website.

Thanks!

-Dave

So yesterday we had a giveaway that went horribly horribly wrong. I cannot express how much everyone's support and well-wishes during that time meant to me. So instead, I'll just leave this here:



(Image by Ben304)

[1 - Avoid DirectDraw like the plague.]

Hi all. Over the last few years I have received a number of emails from AGSers inquiring about us publishing their game. I am taking a break from publishing this year (our new baby has a way of sucking up a lot of our time and energy), but I have noticed a number of common issues in the games that are sent our way. These issues aren't mistakes exactly, but rather things you have to consider when you want to bring a game to a commercial standard. When I give feedback to the developers, I've found myself often giving the same bits of advice. So I thought I'd share the most common of these issues with the community. If you're thinking of going commercial, it might be of some use.

Quick disclaimer: I learned these common mistakes the hard way - by making them myself! You'll see examples of these mistakes littered throughout our entire catalog.

1 - Avoid DirectDraw like the plague. Always use Direct3D. DirectDraw isn't supported anymore, and the results are mega unpredictable. On a good chunk of computers (usually modern laptops), the game will freeze at startup. There are various ways of fixing the problem, but the solutions vary from computer to computer and it's impossible to troubleshoot them all. Release a commercial game that uses DirectDraw by default and be prepared for a ton of tech support emails you won't be able to answer. You can tell your players to "Switch to Direct3D" but the steps for doing that are not intuitive. And if your game is on Steam, it's REALLY a pain. So it's best to avoid it altogether. Make sure your game runs smoothly in Direct3D and release it in that mode.

2 - Avoid the 3:4 aspect ratio (320x240, 640x480, 800x600). If it's not too late, go widescreen (320x200, 640x400, etc). I've noticed a LOT of AGS games sent my way are in the 3:4 ratio. It might be a nostalgia thing, or it might be because AGS starts that way by default, but it causes many problems. On many monitors, the image will stretch across the screen and look ugly. And as with DirectDraw, the solutions vary from computer to computer (and monitor to monitor). Even if the game plays fine, your players will still think you are crazy for releasing a game in 2013 using 3:4 aspect ratio, and get annoyed that they have to play with big black bars on the side of their monitor. I know this because Resonance and the earlier Blackwell games were made this way. It's not a major deal-breaker like DirectDraw is, but it's something to consider.

3 - The oldschool Sierra interface, with different icons for walking, looking, talking and interacting. We all know it. We all love it. Sadly, nobody outside of the narrow niche of old-school Sierra players understands this interface. For everybody else, it's not intuitive at all. It's frustrating, fiddly, and very hard to tutorialize. Plus from a purely practical standpoint, it will be very difficult to port the game to other platforms that don't have a right-click button! So do try and avoid it.

4 - Avoid long intros. This is subjective, but it's an issue that I see cropping up many times (and in my earlier games). Let your players discover your world by exploring it. You don't need to tell them everything right at the beginning. The player wants to PLAY. They aren't going to process a major infodump during the first five minutes of the game. Count the pieces of information you are giving the player in the opening cutscene. If it's more than 5, EDIT IT DOWN (my personal rule - your mileage may vary). This isn't dumbing down your game. It's allowing the player to discover these things on their own. Have faith in your world and the player's desire to explore it.

5 - Are you planning an episodic series? Please reconsider. Unless your name is Telltale, the customer faith in episodic games just is not there yet. Nobody wants to get invested in a story that they don't think will be finished. And let's face it, 9 out of 10 times that is exactly what happens. If your game title ends with "chapter 1", "part 1", or (worst of all) "episode 1"; it sends the message: "this is a short game with a cliffhanger ending that will only continue if the first part sells well enough." There are definitely exceptions to this - Cognition being the most recent one - but it's already hard enough to get people to buy an indie adventure game. Why make it harder for yourself?  A stand-alone game with sequels is better, but still difficult (see: Blackwell).

Anyway, that's it! Keep in mind that this is all subjective, based off my own experience in making and selling commercial AGS games. I might change my mind about any of this stuff a year from now!

So in my game I have a GUI that contains a listbox. This GUI acts as a notebook interface, which is used to ask characters about various topics.

Sometimes - not always - when turning on the GUI the game crashes with this error:



Line 473 is the following:

      int noteitem = note_list.GetItemAtLocation(mouse.x, mouse.y);

note_list is the name of the listbox. The command is telling the game to get the index of whatever listbox item you are hovering over, and assigning it to int "noteitem."

This line of code is located within the repeatedly_execute_always() function of the global script. This command is within the IF statement "if (gNotes.Visible==true)" - e.g., it only gets activated if the notes GUI is on the screen.

Here's the chunk of code:

Code: AGS

(from within repeatedly_execute_always() )

if (gNotes.Visible==true)
{

    int noteitem = note_list.GetItemAtLocation(mouse.x, mouse.y); //<-- the line that gives me the illegal exception
    if (noteitem >= 0) 
    {
        note_list.SelectedIndex = noteitem;
        GetNoteInfoText();
        note_info.Text=noteinfotext;
    }
    else
    {
        note_list.SelectedIndex = -1;
        note_info.Text="";
    }      
      Mouse.UseModeGraphic(eModeInteract);
      GUIControl *theControl = GUIControl.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y);  //get the control
      if (theControl==btn_notesup && btn_notesup.NormalGraphic != 441) 
        btn_notesup.NormalGraphic=441;
   
      if (theControl != btn_notesup && btn_notesup.NormalGraphic!=440)
        btn_notesup.NormalGraphic=440;

      if (theControl==btn_notesdown && btn_notesdown.NormalGraphic != 443) 
        btn_notesdown.NormalGraphic=443;
      
      if (theControl != btn_notesdown && btn_notesdown.NormalGraphic!=442)
        btn_notesdown.NormalGraphic=442;

    }

By happenstance, I had made a savegame right before I got the error message. But when I reloaded, the command executed just fine. Since this bug only happens very occasionally, it's very hard to track. And the error message doesn't give me any useful information.

So... help? Thanks in advance!

-Dave

edit: Oh, and here's the crashdump file.

[We will pay $50 a pop for creating images like these, and there will be around 15-20 of them.]

Hi all. As the subject heading says, I am in need of an artist to draw close-up photographs for the next game in the Blackwell series. Samples of the art style needed are as follows:







We will pay $50 a pop for creating images like these, and there will be around 15-20 of them. If you think you can match the style, and are interested in helping out, please PM me on the forum or email me at dave@wadjeteyegames.com. Please include links to samples of your art work.

Thanks!

-Dave

edit: The position has been filled. Thanks!

[MusicChannel]

This is one of those occasions I really hate the new AGS sound system. You used to just be able to play a new tune and it would automatically fadein and fadeout, but no longer.

Anyway, enough griping!

I discovered that Edmundo's lovely tweening module can tween the volume of audio channels, WITHOUT blocking. This is ideal, since I can fadein/fadeout between music and ambient sound without stopping the action.

I have three audio channels: MusicChannel, MusicChannelb and MusicChannelActive.

How it works is I start playing music on MusicChannel, then switch over to MusicChannelb (using the tween module to fade up the volume of one while fading down the volume of the other) and then setting MusicChannelActive to the new channel. I also have a silent music clip called aSilence that I use when I want to turn off the sound.

Here's the function declaration:

Code: AGS

import function MusicChange(AudioClip*thisclip, int vol=50, int time=500,  bool repeat=true);

And here's the juicy code:

Code: AGS

function MusicChange(AudioClip*thisClip, int vol, int time, bool repeat)
{
  float ftime=IntToFloat(time);
  ftime=ftime/1000.0;
  if (MusicChannelActive.PlayingClip != thisClip) //check to see if the active channel is already playing the requested clip
  {
      if (MusicChannelActive==MusicChannel) //switch to musicChannelB
      {
        if (repeat==true) 
          MusicChannelb = thisClip.Play(eAudioPriorityVeryHigh, eRepeat);
        else 
          MusicChannelb = thisClip.Play(eAudioPriorityVeryHigh, eOnce);
        MusicChannelb.Volume=0;
        MusicChannelb.TweenVolume(ftime, vol, eLinearTween, eNoBlockTween);
        MusicChannel.TweenVolume(ftime, 0, eLinearTween, eNoBlockTween);
        MusicChannelActive=MusicChannelb;
      }
      else if (MusicChannelActive==MusicChannelb) //switch to music channel A
      {
        if (repeat==true)
          MusicChannel = thisClip.Play(eAudioPriorityVeryHigh, eRepeat);
        else
          MusicChannel = thisClip.Play(eAudioPriorityVeryHigh, eOnce);
        MusicChannel.Volume=0;
        MusicChannel.TweenVolume(ftime, vol, eLinearTween, eNoBlockTween);
        MusicChannelb.TweenVolume(ftime, 0, eLinearTween, eNoBlockTween);
        MusicChannelActive=MusicChannel;
      }
  }
}

function repeatedly_execute_always()
{
  if (MusicChannelActive == MusicChannel && MusicChannelb.Volume==0) 
    MusicChannelb.Stop();
  if (MusicChannelActive == MusicChannelb && MusicChannel.Volume==0) 
    MusicChannel.Stop();
}

At game_start, everything is set to these values:

Code: AGS

  MusicChannel = aSilence.Play(eAudioPriorityNormal, eRepeat);
  MusicChannelb = aSilence.Play(eAudioPriorityNormal, eRepeat);
  MusicChannel.Volume=100;
  MusicChannelb.Volume=0;
  MusicChannelActive=MusicChannel;

The result of all this nonsense? It works... half the time. Half the time, the music doesn't change at all. Once in a while, the music doesn't even begin at the start of the game. It seems totally arbitrary and I have been spending ages trying to sort out why. So... help? What am I doing wrong? Or is there a much better way of doing this entirely?

Thanks in advance!

-Dave

After making over seven games which use talking portraits, I seem to be having a lot of trouble with them lately.

So, my game uses talking portraits. For the main character and almost every other character in the game, they display just fine:



However, for one specific character, the dialog is displayed in a very bizarre place:


(portrait is obviously placeholder)

The most obvious cause of this is a misuse of the SetSpeechStyle command, but I have checked and it is only used once at the very beginning of the game to set the speech style to eSpeechSierraWithBackground.

This does NOT happen to any other character in the game. Only this one.

So, yeah. Any light shedding is much appreciated!

Thanks,

-Dave

So my game takes place in the wintertime, and I have a snow animation the plays whenever the characters are outside:


(black layer added so you can see the thing!)

I also have interiors with windows:



What I would like to do is take a small piece of the snow...



and display it over the window and animate it:



I've looked in the manual, and while there seems to be a way to resize a whole image using rawdraw, there doesn't seem to be a way to just cut out a small piece. Is such a thing possible? Currently I've been importing the whole snow image as an animated object and using one huge walkbehind area, but I was wondering if there was a more elegant (not to mention memory efficient) way of doing it.

Thanks!

-Dave

[Blackwell Epiphany]

Wadjet Eye Games presents:
Blackwell Epiphany
(Blackwell #5)

Teaser Trailer

[embed=720,405]http://youtu.be/6ZLCmUiC7SQ[/embed]

Launch Trailer!

[embed=720,405]http://youtu.be/WAK_CcCDE84[/embed]

Release date:
April 24, 2014

PRE-ORDER IT NOW FOR $14.99!

The story
A dead man's soul cries out against the force of a ferocious blizzard. He cries for help. He cries for answers. Then he screams as he is torn apart like damp tissue paper.

This wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last.

The police are powerless to stop it, so the duty falls to the only who can. What force could be so powerful - and so malevolent - that it would destroy the very core of a life in order to get what it wants?

Rosa Blackwell and Joey Mallone mean to find out, even if it means risking themselves in the process.

Screenshots

Rosa fortifies herself with coffee. The dead don't sleep and neither can she.


Joey talks to a ghost in an abandoned building, who makes the usual amount of sense.


The Blackwell homestead - now seen from a different angle!


Sam Durkin returns.


The void between worlds.

Team
Written and programmed by: Dave Gilbert
Background and Character sprites by: Ben Chandler (ben304)
Music by: Thomas Regin

Also, Abe Goldfarb and Rebecca Whittaker both return as Joey and Rosa.

FREE DEMO HERE!

Estimated release
April 2014

[natively]

Janet and I have decided that this year will be the Year of Porting. An iOS port of our games is coming soon, as well as Linux. We really want to go for the hat trick and get Mac builds out as well.

From what we can see, there have been several attempts at a Mac port but none of them have been finished. What will it take to make this happen? Our short term goal is to get Mac and Linux builds of our games running natively (e.g., not through an emulator - you run the the EXE and go) and push them all to the Humble Bundle folks.

There's no official deadline, but we'd like to get this done before or around summer. Please contact us through PM or at the usual place.

Thanks!

-Dave

So, on all accounts I did everything right. I have a game with Sierra style character portraits, and I have a textwindow GUI (22) that I want to display behind the text to make it easier to read. I made sure to set the SpeechStyle setting to "SierraWithBackground", and I used the command SetTextWindowGUI(22) to activate it. But for some reason, it doesn't display. Am I missing a step, here? The GUI displays just fine when displaying text using the "Display" command.





Help?

Thanks!

-Dave

Edit: Don't know if this a factor or not, but this is a 640 x 400 game

Happy Holidays, everyone! It's been truly an astounding year. I've worked with so many great people, and had the opportunity to meet many of you in person. This lil site and community has been our foundation since the beginning, so thanks for everything. Hope your various New Years are happy ones!

-Dave

Edit: Here's the full size version of the image, in case you want it for wallpaper or somesuch!