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*waves*

Fifth avenue actually merges with Broadway at one point, so I suppose technically fifth avenue is partially correct...

The only way to really handle this is to avoid the SetIdleView function altogether and run the animation manually using a timer.  This has lots of other unforeseen complications (like if you make the character walk while the animation is playing, the character could get stuck in the idle animation while it is moving), but it's the only way I've managed to get it right.

I just wrote a blog entry about this last week!

Converting my stuff to the iPhone or iPad would be a huge boon, although the amount of time and/or money I'd have to invest in order to do the conversion is too high for me right now.  If someone created a iPhone/iPad equivilent of AGS, I'd be all over it. 

What happened to your version of the characters, Dave?  I can remember a very rough Joey sprite you made 

Oh, you mean this?

It soon became obvious that this was an impossible dream.

Why did this turn out to be impossible? Too much work?

That, and too much money and it would take too long.  We'd still be making the first game, if we went with that style!

When we first made the Blackwell series, it was going to be in high resolution.  It soon became obvious that this was an impossible dream.  Since then, Rosa and Joey have had a number of low-res incarnations:



Rosas done by: (from left to right) Big Brother, Big Brother,  ProgZmax, and Ben304

Joeys done by: (from left to right) Big Brother, Big Brother, TheIvy, ProgZmax, and Ben304

The site used to be quality, but man it got insanely cluttered over the last few years.  Their forums are pretty active though.

That's pretty awesome, Cailin.  Can you update this thread when you update the other one?

Right, duh. Nevermind.  Apparently the artist created that highlight layer as an "overlay", which wouldn't export the same the way it appears within Photoshop. So... go ahead and lock this.

Hello!  I am having a problem importing an image with an alpha channel.  I could swear that I was able to once do this, but for some reason it's beyond me now.

Here is how the background looks in Photoshop:



The light coming from the window is on a separate layer.  I exported the light source as a PNG (which is here for reference) which I imported into AGS with an alpha channel included.  The result?



Holy blindness, Batman! The alpha channel/transparency is definitely there, as my character is able to stand behind the light.  But obviously the light itself is waaay too bright.  Is this a problem with the current version of AGS?  I used to be able to import light sources this way without any problems.  I'm a bit confuzzled!  Any tips are appreciated!

Thanks,

-Dave

Swank!  I love it when a new project coincides with a new official version of AGS.  Downloading...

I'm with Ben!  Every time I finish a project I think I worked on it very stupidly and inefficiently, but I'll TOTALLY get it right next time!

Usually I start with a design - compile everything from start to finish into a design document.   It's much easier to break the production down into manageable tasks if you actually know what those tasks are going to be.  Of course, things are bound to change as you move forward, but it's a place to start.  It's much less overwhelming to work knowing your task for the day is "implement character switching function" instead of "MAKE THE GAME!"

"Back then" meaning two years ago? 

Puzzlebots wound up having a number of invisible blocking characters in one scene that had a very complicated walkable-area-intense puzzle (before the puzzle was later redesigned to be way easier ).  Fun times.

Hah.  Is that why it was programmed that way?  I have to admit feeling bad about deleting all of that code when we redesigned the puzzle!

I have to admit, I was pretty impressed with the game when I first booted it up.  Wandering around the lovingly rendered Green Isles of KQ6 (my personal fav of the bunch) was a wonderful nostalgic trip.  But once I got off the first isle, the gameplay took a backseat to 20 minutes of cutscenes and then it ended.  If that wasn't disappointing enough, it ended just when things started to get really interesting.  As for the voiceovers, Graham I liked a lot.  His gravelly voice really made be believe he was a middle-aged king who has lived a very full life.  The rest of the cast was okay, ranging from "meh" to "competent."  The narrator wasn't as bad as people say, but her corny jokes seemed very out of place in such a serious story.  

It's an easy game to criticize but it's hard to dislike.  The love that the team put into this game really shines.  I *did* enjoy the story a lot, and I'm eager to see where it goes.  As a game though, it's barely passable.  If this was just released as a stand-alone movie instead of a game, I would probably be much happier.  

Here's a relevant video you might find interesting: http://vimeo.com/10853366 (I've only glanced at the article and this discussion - will read it properly tomorrow - so apologies if it's already been mentioned.)

Bit late to this thread, but holy crap.  I had no idea that panel was recorded.  Although I did look directly down at the camera at one point, so I must have known on some level.

Anyway, there's not much I can add to this discussion that hasn't been said already.  In regards to ECC, it's a mixed bag.  It started off as a game for the adventure audience, but PlayFirst doesn't have any experience with that market so it was tested with the casual audience instead.  And when that audience didn't "get it" everyone went into panic mode and threw in all sorts of casual tropes that (I feel) did more harm than good.  One day I'll write a more detailed post-mortem of the experience, but in a nutshell what we ended up with was a game that was too easy and condescending for the "mainstream" adventure players, but still too different and "out there" for the casual players.   The casual industry did learn a lot from it, though.  Avenue Flo was a point-and-clicker that was made specifically with the casual audience in mind, and fared much better in the casual space.  

It's a shame that my game became a guinea pig of sorts and didn't fare as well as it could have, but it was the first game of its kind and it was cool to be a part of that.

Adrian: Yes, it is definitely set to 0.

Hi all.  Bit of an old thread, but I've been tinkering around with this module and I am having some issues.  I am using AGS 3.2v5, so I *think* it is probably related to the alpha channel/GUI problem that was brought up in this thread, but I wanted to confirm it before I took it further.

In a nutshell, here's my room with the flashlight off:



And with it on:



Displaying it in overlay mode works perfectly.

Nothing to really add, except that this thread got me thinking seriously about the dialog in some of my previous work.  It inspired me to write a blog entry on the subject of dialogs in games, as well as do a bit of practice surgery on some of my old dialog exchanges.

Yeah, it's a shame that went away.  It's also the reason why Dave Gilbert hasn't (and probably won't) upgrade to a new version.  I'm not sure exactly why it should be viewed as broken behavior rather than a bonus (and quite useful) feature that could just be toggled on/off in the editor (via a font property so you could potentially have low and hi res fonts), but oh well.

I actually have upgraded!  I'm still using 320 x 240 sized graphics, but I'm blowing them up to 640 x 480 before importing them into AGS.  It's a bit overkill, true, but I like having a low-res game with high-res fonts.  I didn't bother upgrading while making Blackwell Convergence because it would have involved a ton of reprogramming.  But for a totally new game?  Call me a convert.