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Don't get me wrong, it's not like I couldn't appreciate art and games in 3d (I started the AGS3d project after all - I also program in C++ with OpenGL a lot, which is pure 3d), but to me, I always thought: "well that model is good, but still it doesn't look nearly as good as a well-drawn sprite in 2d can look". Technology isn't far enough yet (atleast for non-commercial and non-professional products). The use of three dimensions doesn't open any new gameplay possibilities or anything either (The Silver Lining could be done just as well in 2d). So, as long as the player doesn't get any kind of positive feedback from that third dimension, it's pointless having it in the game, heavily adding to its complexity to program and to model rooms and people. But if you gave the player the possibilty to look around or have the camera follow the player, the third dimension would be justified, because there could be situations in which the player really says: "wow, this looking around gives me a whole new feeling - that's something I couldn't do in a 2d-game". Right now your camera works the same way it works in 2d-adventure games. It observes the locations from one fixed spot (you can change it due to that bug, but then heavy graphical errors occur) and when you come close to some kind of edge, it jumps. As long as this isn't changed, I will personally stick to my thought that you waste resources just to create something in 3d which could be faster, better looking and smaller in size in 2d.

I hope that explains where I am comming from. Don't be offended, I appreciate your efforts, I am just trying to help you guys to improve further. Also, note the other serious issues I mentioned in my first post, I really listed everything there which kept me away from having too much fun with your product.

The demo has potential and some nice technical features, but the massive amount of bus and nitpicks makes this game hardly playable. There were hard-to-find and hidden room exits, no justification why they used 3d over 2d for this game style, a pretty uncomfortable GUI, lots of bugs in the dialogs and the message box popping up, one time the camera got all winded up and the player disappeared, I had to close then and it froze with a black screen.

The idea with the credits in game was nice, but when the list of twenty-something 3d artists was displayed for 10 seconds, I could barely see anything anymore, they should've split those up. Also, I didn't like that you really had to know lots and lots of story information about the King's Quest series (which I don't have), thus I had no idea who I was or what was going on. Names were introduced that I was obviously supposed to know.

As I said, some nice ideas (the lighting, some scenes) can't make up a really effed up gameplay. I hope they fix lots of issues for the full game - maybe they should've spent a longer time to perfectionize what they present.

Oh, and also the walking animation is horribly too slowly playing for the movement speed. That's pretty awful to look at and really is quite a beginner's mistake - I wonder how this can happen with such a big team of people.

I need a girlfriend whose name doesn't end in '.jpg'.

jank:

Spoiler

There is a thrid book. You need to guess the order, I think. Just use them all once.

[close]

Ashen is right, this should work then. However I want to motivate you to write your code in a clear manner. You could for example format it like this:

Code: ags

function dialog_request ( int parameter )
{
	if ( parameter == 1 )
		Intro = 1;

	else if ( parameter == 2 )
		Fez = 1;
		
	else if ( parameter == 3 )
		SetDialogOption ( 9, 2, eOptionOn );
			
	else if ( parameter == 4 )
	{
		// the big script...
		Fez = 2;
		RunDialog ( 7 );
	}
	
	else if ( parameter == 5 )
		SetDialogOption ( 8, 3, eOptionOn );
					
	else
		player.ChangeRoom ( 15, 5, 5 );
}

Which is a million times easier to read!

It's not that simple, Alynn. Your method would require the exchange of a variable from one program instance to another, which is not possibly just like that. However, there are other ways to do that (although you can always start an application that usually doesn't allow instances and right-click on it to select "Run as user..." and then click "ok").

Why don't you create such an effect with Photoshop or any movie-production program and then import those frames as gui for example to put it over the whole screen and animate it? Would that not work?

KristjanMan: please use the hints-forum for those questions...

Spoiler

...and use the sheet from the bed on the flag

[close]

Anyways, I'm almost through, I think. Looks great so far! Fun game!

[creation of a PARTICLE-SYSTEM with AGS]

There is a new tutorial available on the FoY-page since today. I wrote it and it discusses the creation of a PARTICLE-SYSTEM with AGS - also it gives you lots of information about programming with AGS and coding in general. Check it out if you're interested!


I hope it's okay to post "non-art related" tutorials here, but there are other tutorials around in this thread that talk about creating installers etc., so I thought it couldn't hurt!

Once I went to a fight and a hockey-game broke out.



There, you can lock the thread now!

Problem is, once that is implemented, people will want even more of those shortcuts - up to a point where it is easier to understand the scripting behind those labels.

Take this as an example: a user enters "@CURSORMODE@ @OVERHOTSPOT@" as label. Now, in the game, it says: "Open door" and "Use car". Great, but soon he is going to want to "Use sth. with sth." - there he would need to get into the scripting or ask here for yet another shortcut. Another example: people could also want "@OVERHOTSPOT@" to only appear when the player is NOT in a mode such as "Talk to", so that you can't talk to things, but only to characters (which is another element from the Lucas Arts SCUMM GUI), again, the same problem, they will need to get into the scripting.

EDIT: Also, "@CURSORMODE@ @OVERHOTSPOT@" would fail for the common action "Give to" - "Give to person" doesn't make any sense. It's just not as easy!

Bspeers for the obvious irony!

There is no such things as the switch, case, break and default keywords in AGS as they are in C++. However, if you show us your code, there might be quite a few ways to work around this. I never tried having over 50 if-else-statements in any script myself though...

Good idea, GG, but what if you want the character to float in the air for example? Or if the character is lit from one side, so that a long shadow in one direction is created and he stands in front of a wall, the shadow should wrap around the wall? And what if the character stands on a ramp?

You could use this "hack" and just make sure that the light is always on top of every character so that the shadow always is really small underneath it and then pretend that you know that the character always stands on an even ground.

Another, way better possibility would be to combine the AGS3D-module (which is great for the levels) and this Character3d-module (which is great for characters) and allow them to communicate together for things like this!

Ah, in that case you might simple draw a black dot (circle or ellipsoid) shape as sprite and then try to always position it underneath the player. You could have it as object and make it transparent as well. However, I don't know if objects will be infront or behind characters from the module and it won't look good from all perspectives.

Hehe, as far as I know, it's really not as simple. There are various approaches to real-time shadows in 3d-environments such as "Shadow Mapping" or "Shadow Volumes". But all that is not implementable in AGS at the moment, maybe the developer of the Character 3d-module could do this in C++, but he would need to know what kind of level-file you're using as well, because when calculating a 3d-shadow, you need to know where to project it.

Or, aren't you even using the character3d-module? Give us more information, please.

Oh, jesus. You are right, KhrisMUC. Yurina, change this line to:

Code: ags

bar_length = FloatToInt ( ( 1.0 / IntToFloat ( max_health ) ) * IntToFloat ( current_health * bar_size ) );

All you need to do is add some Int->Float and Float->Int conversions in order for it to return the expected results. This is what I mentioned in my above posts - if I did this myself in AGS, I'd tried it out the wrong way, noticed it and changed it until it works.

Then, don't use RawDrawRectangle, but clip the button if you want to use an image as bar!

A simple way would be to use rawdraw-functions to draw a colored rectangle as bar.
Let's say x1 and y1 are the coordinates of the upper-left corner of the bar and x2 and y2 are the coordinates of the lower-right corner. x1 and x2 are always the same, because the bar faces upwards as you showed us in your images, y2 is also constant, because the end of the bar should always be at the bottom. We only need to calculate a value for y1, which is how high the health bar should be filled.
In your example, you would use the following formula to calculate the length or height of the bar:

Code: ags

bar_length = ( 1 / max_health ) * current_health * bar_size;

bar_length is the result of the formula - the length of the bar that we want to calculate. max_health and current_health should be self-explanatory. bar_size is how long you want your bar be at most. You could choose 100 as value for example.

If you want your bar to sit in the lower-left corner of the screen, those would be the coordinates:

Code: ags

x1 = 0;
y1 = SCREEN_HEIGHT - bar_length;
x2 = bar_width;
y2 = SCREEN_HEIGHT;

Then you can pass those coordinates into the RawDrawRectangle-function to draw it!

To color it according to the health value, you can use the RawSetColor-function, like this for example:

Code: ags

if ( ( 1 / max_health ) * current_health < ( 1 / 3 ) )
// if the health value is less than 1/3 of the maximum
   // color the bar red
   RawSetColor ( 40 );

else if ( ( 1 / max_health ) * current_health < ( 2 / 3 ) )
// if the health value is less than 2/3 of the maximum
   // color the bar yellow
   RawSetColor ( 14 );

else
// if the health value is more than 2/3 of the maximum
   // color the bar green
   RawSetColor ( 2 );

That's it. Ask if you have more questions, I hope that I didn't give any wrong information or typos or anything. This is all from the top of my head and completly untested!

EDIT: Akumayo was faster, but my approach is different!

Glad to see that my criticism was taken well.

With the GUI, I have now played a little more and it gets better, really. I'd say it is okay, but I still would like a label, I can barely play without those. But I've never been a Sierra-fan when it comes to playability-issues, so maybe it's just a taste-question.

I saw influences from 7das with the whole setting (obviously), the genre (horror), the way the game is introduced (the intro with the ship flying by, problems with the engines), how the people spoke with each other (especially that captain), how the tension is introduced (leaving your room and - BANG! - dead people everywhere - that was a "yahtzee-moment") and also how that one guy in the floor looked like after you left your room (sitting with his back to the backwall and blood coming out of his eyes). However, I never was a fan of Star Trek and didn't watch more than a few minutes of the movies, thus I can't say how much in 7das was influenced by Star Trek etc.

Anyways, good luck, I can't wait for the full game one day!

The demo is great. I love the atmosphere. The background art is great, too, as are the character close-ups, but you should spent more time on animation, especially the walkcycle. What I also hated was the GUI, this type of interface keeps me away from progressing further, it would be better if there was a label that told you over what hotspot/object/character you are at the moment. And maybe an easier way to access the inventory, but that's not as bad.

But I did like it, there where a lot of 7-days-a-skeptic-influences, but that isn't a bad thing. One more thing that striked me as strange was the way the credits flew by in the intro, I mean, either you should fix the position or have them fly by correctly, starting left all the way and flying to the right. The rest of the intro was great, very atmospheric!