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Exactly, I told DutchMarco to post here.

The FoY-demo doesn't do anything wierd code-wise there with the cursor - and even if it did, it shouldn't be possible to eliminate the mouse-cursor only if in windowed-mode, right? And since nobody else has ever encountered this problem while this single user is able to replicate it every time, it all smells like some specific hardware/software/driver/whatever special problem. The FoY-Demo was compiled with version 2.72.

I would like to know on what points you base your assumption here that a C&C game would be "just another SC clone"? It seems that you build that opinion up purely based on the universe the game is set it, not the actual game mechanics?

You're a SC fanatic. Either this or RTS fanatic.

Well, if in a strategy-game, caring about the actual game-mechanics makes me one, then I guess I am one. By my definition I sure ain't.

To me, it doesn't really matter if I can group infinite or twelve units, use peons to build a farm or have HQ put some crap into ground and let building pop up miles away, collect crystals or some gas too. The mechanics should enjoyable and make gaming comfortable, nothing else. To me, I mean. It's still all about destroying enemy, overpowering him with your wits and strategy.

And that is exactly the difference between our opinions - you don't care much about game-mechanics, you prefer the feeling, the universe maybe, the ability to overpower. I prefer a well-told story with dynamic characters (just compare C&C stereotypes like Tania, the Russian special agent with huge tits, with the dominant female character in SC, Kerrigan, who actually shows feelings and opinions, who changes sides from Terran to Zerg in the course of the story, all embedded into your missions), I prefer a game in which you can't just mass über-tanks and run over the enemy no matter what he has build up (read above posts).

All that now sounds like I'm not respecting your opinion, perhaps, but that's not true, just wanted to make that clear - I respect your opinion there and I'm sure there are many more gamers out there thinking exactly like you - as there are many out there thinking like me. In fact, I used to love C&C and still like it for what it's worth: a trashy (in the good sense here) and humorous, but rather nonstrategic game.

[...] starcraft-ey space mumbo-jumbo [...]

That's called science-fiction.

[...] even if this game doesn't look realistic anymore, just another StarCraft clone, I like it alot.

I would like to know on what points you base your assumption here that a C&C game would be "just another SC clone"? It seems that you build that opinion up purely based on the universe the game is set it, not the actual game mechanics? How the game works in any way? How well the story's written? How it's presented to the player?

Really, the C&C series and SC are pretty much the furthest away from each other they can get in the RTS-genre.

Ah, I see. Well, that means you're not using the right strategy. It's not a simple game, you'll need to carefully research which units are doing good against what kind of enemy units and then try to use those strengths - or just google for strategy guides for the singleplayer-missions if you're lazy.

And no offense taken for being called a fan-boy - I don't dislike the word, I just didn't like being called one because I'm not one.

I'm not a fan-boy, it's just my favorite RTS-game which is what the thread is about.

But, I just can't really get into it. It just really isn't all that easy for me to jump into.

That's a matter of taste then (or can you give more specific reasons as to why you can't get into it - gameplay-wise it plays pretty much as easy as it gets, the controls are standard and the first missions should be easy enough).

Still no love, not even a mention, for StarCraft?

It's my favorite and these are the reasons:

      - absolutely different approaches (Protoss have fewer but more powerful and expensive units, Zerg have much more but, individually, less powerful and cheaper units, Terrans are in between - Protoss are more air-based, Terrans are more ground-based, Zerg are in between - Terrans need to build buildings and temporarily sacrifice SCVs, build-vehicles, for the time it takes them to build, Protoss can warp and don't need to sacrifice their drones because the warp is automated and Zerg can not recruit or warp their units in barracks, factories or starports, they have to wait for little larvae to appear and then mutate, in order to get better units, they can mutate existing ones even further - Terrans can repair their units and buildings with SCVs for small amounts of money, Zerg units and buildings will heal slowly, Protoss units have shields that will rebuild in time but also life-energy that can not be restored ever, shields can be zapped up to full force with a special building)

      - all three races have been patched for ten years now up to perfect balancing despite their completely different designs (top e-sport matches really show that)

      - there is at least one counter-unit or counter-strategy for every single unit in the game, even the top and most expensive ones (even a group of Terran Battlecruisers, extremely expensive, for example, can easily be defeated with units such as Goliaths, Dragoons or Hydralisks or strategies such as casting psi-storms or lock-downs)

      - it is actually crucial to scout your enemy in a stealthy fashion in order to know what he's going to do and react accordingly, especially in matches between better players, this is absolutely important - this also means that it's possible to fake tactics - build four starports so the Protoss enemy thinks you're going for large groups of Battlecruisers and starts pumping Dragoons to conter and then actually build up a large army of Marines and Medics that will quickly eliminate the Dragoons which are not good at all against masses of small units

      - there are two resources plus energy and the prices are not just "random": normal buildings only cost Minerals, the first resource, and the further advanced the unit or technology is that you want to build/develop, the more Vespene-Gas it'll cost, too - this effectively means that you don't need to harvest both resources right away, it'll depend on your tactic

      - units can cloak and the enemy will need special detectors in order to un-cloak them (races are different with this aspect as well, cloaked units will not work against Zerg players as their Overlord unit, which is basically a depot for giving them the energy-resource and a dropship, if upgraded that way, as well, is also a detector, they'll have lots of these flying around at all times and they'll easily manage to send one over and un-cloak you, Protoss have observers, which are the only units which are cloaked themselves but are also detectors - they can't fight, obviously, and Terrans can build cheap anti-air-towers which work as detectors and they have a satellite-station which can uncloak a certain area with enough energy)

      - there is a dedicated logic behind upgrades - there are three general vehicle-weapon, vehicle-armor, air-weapon, air-armor upgrades as well as range-upgrades, energy-upgrades, technologies that need to be developed first (siege mode for Terran tanks for example or StimPacks for Marines)

      - there are three unit types (small, medium, large) and three damage types (normal, concussive, explosive) which means that for example the siege-tanks with its explosive damage does 100% damage to large units/buildings, 75% to medium units and only 50% to small units - so, defeat them with Marines, Zerglings or Berserks and you'll stand a chance

      - there are no super-weapons - you can't just build a missile-silo and then launch a nuke somewhere just by clicking on a symbol and then pointing to where you want it - in fact, a nuclear missile does exist in-game, but it's balanced in a way that it's not a super-weapon at all and you'll have to manually aim it with a special unit, the ghost, which is vulnerable for 20 seconds as it aims and finding it (detecting it if it's cloaked) and eliminating it stops the nuke

      - it has the biggest e-sport scene (mainly located in Korea) not only for any RTS-game but for any game ever, I believe, all races are successful, there's a ton of very complicated strategies around, there are tons of match-replays with audio-comments just like watching a match of football on TV, there are stars, there is big price-money involved; all that speaks for a very well balanced game

These are the first things coming to my mind at the moment, if anybody cares to discuss one of these points some more, I'll gladly elaborate/compare/explain and add new points.

But Westwood has always stood out with best music and best gameplay in its RTS games.

Don't want to start a brawl here - C&C music was great, I wouldn't say best either, but very good, no doubt - but BEST GAMEPLAY in RTS games? C&C? Urgh. No upgrade-system? No technologies? One resource? Super-weapons? Very small e-sport scene? Units that were, by themselves, good against everything so you just had to mass them?

Try Blizzard.

Kinda offtopic, maybe we'd need a dedicated RTS thread somewhere!

You can use it in both scripts and headers, just not in functions (if I remember correctly) and definitely BEFORE you're going to use it. I would advise you to place all defines at the top of the script or header so it's easy to change some variables around.

It's good practice to use them heavily, by the way. Say you were making one of your characters partially transparent, you could do this without defines like this:

Code: ags

cEgo.Transparency = 56;

Or you could use a define like this:

Code: ags

// top of the script or header
#define EGO_TRANSPARENCY 56

// in a function
cEgo.Transparency = EGO_TRANSPARENCY;

With the second way, if you find out later in development that your character is not transparent enough for example, you don't have to scroll through your old code and find that line with that "random" number 56 in it, you could easily change it by changing the EGO_TRANSPARENCY define at the top of the file. Much easier for big projects.

Is...

Code: ags

#define NUM_BIRTHDAY_SCENE 278
#define NUM_FUNERAL_SCENE  279

runCutscene ( NUM_BIRTHDAY_SCENE );
runCutscene ( NUM_FUNERAL_SCENE );

...what you're looking for?

How about a struct:

Code: ags

struct str_puzzle {
  int State;            // 0 = unknown, 1 = known, 2 = solved
  String Name = "";
  int link[10];
}

This is what I'd do, but please, please replace that int with an enumeration...

Like this:

Code: ags

enum PuzzleState
{
      Unknown,
      Known,
      Solved
};

struct Puzzle
{
      String Name;
      PuzzleState State;
      [...]
};

Essentially the same, but enumerations are so much easier to read. Now you could access the property like this:

Code: ags

Puzzle main_quest;

[...]

if ( main_quest.State == SOLVED )
      QuitGame ( false );

But why did the notes approach in an exponential way and not linear? Like, they are coming closer faster the further they are away from the playing-line and when actually come closer, they slow down? That's inverse perspective and it got to be extremely counter-intuitive when playing. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

[/AVGN]

StarCraft.

And anything by Jesper Kyd - but he's been posted before.

Try this:

http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=922.0

Technically, palettes can't be copyrigthed, I think (in fact, I am sure), but it's bad practice. Learn some color theory and it'll come to you by yourself and then you're really gonna know what you're doing and you're going to be able to do stuff with a lot less trial-and-error or luck, but with reason. It will improve your art.

Okay, on re-watching the credits-part of the trailer, you do give credit to the authors. Since that part is very long, I skipped there and just saw the "new backgrounds/characters: Rubacant". Don't want to play moderator, but please be a little bit more relaxed the next time somebody overlooks a detail, no need to be that defensive (to the others: I also received abuse via PM). And to answer the question in your message directly, FoY and my Pong clone don't rip off graphics. It's fan-art. That's not taking sprites from FoA for example.

Your scripting seems fine, but I can only emphasize what the previous poster said about the writing.

You're ripping the graphics off the Maniac Mansion Series, not mentioning this here and then, in the video, you even credit yourself for characters and backgrounds...

I too would like to voice support for the ability to access walkableareas/regions/walkbehinds/etc. from the script.

If DrawingSurface controlled areas/regions, would we be able to create them from a predrawn sprite (similar to how masks work in the editor)?

(3) Programmers could also add new walkable areas, but they wouldn't have to use raw geometry functions (DrawLine, DrawRect or similar), they could load an image from the hard-drive or from the AGS sprite manager (via the sprite-slot) and use that one as a new area...

Huh? What I'm saying is...

(1) Walkable areas (say, up to 32) can still be implemented the same way they are now...
(2) Programmers can access these areas in script (via accessing a DynamicSprite/DrawingSurface) and use that to change them in all ways...
(3) Programmers could also add new walkable areas, but they wouldn't have to use raw geometry functions (DrawLine, DrawRect or similar), they could load an image from the hard-drive or from the AGS sprite manager (via the sprite-slot) and use that one as a new area...

That's what I was thinking... Anyways, I wouldn't need this stuff, three walkable-areas were always enough for everything I did.

Mouse.X/Y (or try mouse.x/y, depending on the version of AGS you're using).

[SUGGESTION:]

SUGGESTION: I think an 'Add Walkable Area/Region' function coupled with a color picker would be ideal for those of us who require a little more than 16 seperate areas. This of course would still be restrained by a hard coded limit but not that of 16.

I totally second that- I had quite a hard time of hit-and-miss sifting through colours now that pcx is no longer supported. A colour picker would greatly add to the comfort.

If walkable areas could be created from DrawingSurfaces/DynamicSprites by code, then the color-picker would already be implemented. That's what I think is the best way to do this, although it's not high-priority to me.