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There had better be a Karaoke bar near the campsite...

There better not be.  I'll drag everyone there every night!

In any case, I'm up for the longer stay.  It's hard to justify flying all the way to the UK just for a weekend in any case.

-Dave

Sprite animators are needed for "Bestowers of Eternity"!

Progress on this game is moving ahead slowly but surely, and we are in need of some more sprite animators to speed things along.  We currently have a system in place where one person designs the sprites and someone else animates them.  This has worked out well because we are able to keep the style consistent while having more than one animator work on the game. 

If anyone out there is willing or able to animate sprites in this style, please drop me a line. 



Keep in mind we are only looking for sprite ANIMATORS.  We are not looking for designers at this stage.  Thanks!

-Dave

A fun little snack-sized game.  Nice job! 

Woo-hoooo!

Didn't notice that the date was changed.  COUNT ME IN!  I'll celebrate American Independance day at Brittens.

Dude, that's pretty darn impressive.  It'll be interesting to see what people do with this.

Doctor Demento is pretty cool.  I was given a "Doctor Demento's Greatest Hits" album back in 1992 or so.  There was some WEIRD things on that, man.  "Guitarzan" was one of my personal favorites.

He's free as the breeze
He's always at ease
He lives in the jungle and hangs by his knees
As he swings through the trees
Without a trapeze
..
that's all I remember

HAH.  Thanks CJ!  I had a feeling I was doing something dumb.

["Type mismatch: cannot convert 'Object*' to 'int'"]

Ahoy CJ!  Wonderful work.  I am enjoying the new system muchly.  I only have one question about the object.visible property...

I thought I'd be able to use the object script name when turning objects on and off. like:

object[oClosedWindow].Visible=false;
object[oOpenWindow].Visible=true;

But it gives me the following error: "Type mismatch: cannot convert 'Object*' to 'int'"

I replaced the object script name with the object number and it compiled and worked fine, but it seems to defeat the purpose of having the object script names to begin with.  Is this a "feature" or am I doing something wrong?

Would that return to the room script once the it is complete?  If so, then it would be very very useful for me.

Well, I decided to break up long dialogs sequences by giving the player dialog OPTIONS at various points.  So there are already a bunch of DisplaySpeech commands (or should I use "Say" commands now?), but at various points I want the player to make a dialog choice, which I have to use the dialog editor and RunDialog for.  So now I have to go and move chunks of the code into the global script and divide it up into various Dialog_Request functions.  I'd really prefer to keep everything in the local room script.  I don't know if there's a neat and clever way to do that, but I'll do it the messy way if there are no other options.

From the manual:

NOTE: The conversation will not start immediately; instead, it will be run when the current script function finishes executing.

Is there any way around this issue?  My current script has a lot of "runDialogs", and splitting the script up into a dozen dialog_request functions is making it real messy.  Any advice appreciated!

Thanks,

-Dave

I've played a few of these RPG Maker games, and I remember having a bit of trouble sorting out where everything goes.  It ended up not being that complicated if I remember correctly, but I remember having to figure it all out myself.  What's annoying is there are no instructions on what to do or the extra files you need - and then it's hard to actually FIND the damn files you need.

Never heard of Ara Fell though.  One of the games that I DID like was "Blurred Line".  Despite all the ripped graphics, it had a such a great story that I was willing to overlook that stuff. 

Whens the latest I can sign up?  I MIGHT be able to go, but it depends on a few things. 

Feel free to include Two of a Kind:

http://www.davelgil.com/ags/toak.zip

I figure I have a pretty good chance of winning by default...
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/17694515/

There's some incentive for you to enter:
Do you really want THIS entry to win?

Hahahaha.  Certainly an improvement over the "You're Dead!" song.

Ah, the age old question.  How to make a team work over the internet.  Group projects CAN work, but they can oh-so-easily fail.  There are many reasons for this.

A strong, cohesive vision is very important when putting together a team.  Let's you have this great idea for a game, and get all psyched.  This is going to be the best game EVER.  So you start trolling around looking for people to help out.  You find an artist, an animator, maybe even a musician or a programmer.  They all LOVE this great idea and are eager to get started.  However… you don't really have anything planned aside from that initial cool idea.  Then you tell your eager team to wait while you actually design the game.  Interest wanes, and the project dies soon after.  A solid game plan is a must.

Also, think of how many solo projects that get abandoned. Every time you start creating a game you run the risk of  eventually losing interest, real-life issues cropping up, or coming up with something better.  Now imagine that you have a team project.  You run the risk of each member of the team doing the same thing â€" they lose interest, real life stuff comes up, or they find a new and shiny project they can work on instead.  It's HARD to find a team that will stick together until the bitter end, because it's very easy to disappear.

However, you can take some precautions. 

1 â€" Ensure regular communication.  I'm talking at least 3-5 times a week.  This doesn't mean that your team members should be making progress every day, but they should at least be communicating with you to say “Hey, sorry but I've made no progress today.”  If they go missing for a week, drop them a friendly email to touch base.  If this continues for a long time, you might want to consider finding someone else. 

2 â€" Make deadlines.  You don't have to enforce them, but it gives your team something to shoot for.  Let your team members know that it's OK to be late, but they should contact you saying when they think it'll be ready. 

3 â€" Message boards are great!  They are really useful in building a little community within a project.  Encourage your team to use the board and to show off their work.  Enthusiasm is contagious.  I know that if I see other people working hard and producing great work, it encourages me to do the same. 

However, even with all these precautions things can STILL go wrong and usually will.  Be wary and trust your instincts.  You can usually spot the warning signs if a team member is losing interest â€" lack of communication being the key one.  Try and spot this EARLY, as it will save you major headaches later on.  There's nothing worse than sitting by your computer waiting desperately for that piece of artwork/animation/music.  Perhaps this is cynical of me, but if they can't be bothered to send you one lousy email every couple of days, then it's hard to trust them to do much else.

Being a team leader is like being a cheerleader.  You have to constantly keep everybody motivated and enthusiastic.  There will be some rough spots, but you have to stay positive and be a good role model.  It can be tough, but very rewarding if you pull it off.  Best of luck!

The organization of the RON site has changed since this thread was first posted.  Go to http://ron.the-underdogs.org and search for it there.

The main problem I had with 2M2K was that the system for entering in dialog sucks.  The dialog box was pre-defined for japanese characters, so you have to guestimate how many english letters to put in there before they go off the edge of the screen.  This usually means going back and forth between the game and the engine to make sure it looks right.  For someone like me who likes to write lots of dialog, it was very frustrating.

I once discovered a chipset dedicated to creating a 1930s Chicaco-like atmosphere.  Old timey cars, streets, buildings, detectives with fedoras, mobsters with tommy guns.  It was great.   The game made with it is all in Japanese, though.  It was a very impressive chipset.

An interesting thread, Kinoko.  I discovered the indie-RPG/RM2K scene a few months ago via gamingw.net.  After playing a bunch, I discovered a few things about the scene that really bothered me.

1- All the games look alike!
Seriously.  If we saw an ags game that used ripped sprites and backgrounds from old Sierra and LucasArts games, we look down on them.  Most, if not all, of indie-RPG games do this.  You'll find whole websites dedicated to ripped chipsets from various games like "Chrono Trigger" and "Dragon Warrior".  The scene seems to accept this as normal.  I once saw an indie-RPG review that read something like: "This game shows a good use of the 'Secrets of Mana' chipset."  A bit baffling that this type of this is prasied, but it seems to be quite normal. 

2 - Very few released games are actually finished.
I played "Blurred Line" and was blown away by the quality, but was very disappointed to see a big "TO BE CONTINUED" at the end.  I then tried a few more games that got high ratings on gamingw.net, and encountered the same!  I know I am guilty of doing the "continued" thing myself, but I wouldn't say it's typical in the AGS scene.  In the indie-RPG scene, this is almost par for the course.  There are very few actual COMPLETED games.  There are only demos, or chapters released piecemeal.

3 - There is no centalized community for the engine
Having a central community for AGS users makes things nicely streamlined.  You have a question about AGS or want to talk about AGS games, you go to the AGS website.  There's no central web community for RM2K, so they're all over the place.  As such, the individual forums are, as Kinoko so delicately puts it, quite lame.

RM2K, and the indie-RPG scene as a whole, has been around even longer than AGS has.  I'm really surprised at the state it's in.  I enjoy RPGs, and even toyed around with rm2k.  Never tried Verge though.