Messages

As for Dragonroses' "2 cents", I'd like to thank him for having obviously done such an amount of thought on this (I never thought this topic would grow so much!) and tell him - absolutely right, very well thought-out, that variable thing.

Thank him? Tell HIM? I'm a girl!  Oh well.  

My 2 cents.

I'm not sure if I'm going to explain this too well, (I'm a writer, not a programmer) but here goes.

As an example from the demo game

What you really do:
Walk through door,
return to street
return to AGS factory main room
Buy blue cup
return to street
talk to man

What comes out in your TXT file:
Ego walked through the door, not knowing what to expect.  The room he found himself standing in was very different from the street outside.  Clear pipes transported some sort of lime green liquid around the room.  On the back wall, a bright neon sign proclaiming "AGS FACTORY!" flashed on and off.  In the centre of the room was a sales counter, manned by a rather badly drawn short man wearing a gray jumpsuit.

Ego rumaged through his pocket, and pulled out a few coins.
"Can I buy one of those blue cups?" he asked.
"Of course," replied Roger.  A few coins changed hands, and Ego became the proud owner of a blue ceramic cup.

Ego left the AGS factory main room and went to the street.

Ego turned to the man standing beside the door.
"I've been to the other side of the door," he said.

And so on and so forth.

You would need to make variables for a few things:

Entering a room for the first time.
Where certain actions take place (all things in the AGS factory are 1, all things in the street are 2)
The most recent room description printed.

Whenever you do an important action for the first time, like entering a room, talking to someone, getting piece of inventory or whatever, it prints out a bit of text.  When you do something that doesn't affect the story (like the first time Ego leaves the AGS factory) it doesn't print anything.

Now, when you talk to the man by the door, the description in the text doesn't match where you really are.  So the computer keeps track of that.  It knows that the most recent "description" variable it printed wasn't for the same room that you can run the "conversation with man" variable.  So it pulls up little fill in the blank thing, "Ego left (where you were) and went to (where you are now).", prints where the last description was for, prints where you are now, and then continues to print important actions.

I hope that made some sort of sense.  It would cut down on a lot of the "He entered the store, he left the store" stuff, and any useless stuff that happened between one important action and another.

And DON'T put in the "player save" stuff.  That would sort of ruin the idea of reading it as a story, wouldn't it?

There we go! I knew there was a reason!  YAAAAAY FOR ALIEN LANDING PAD!

Severily off-topic:

...all-around sweeping esoterica, that ranges from Dragon Rouge/Rose Cross...

Weee..... I am almost all-around sweeping esoterica!

Also, Canada is home to the only city in the world whose "Welcome to our city!" sign is written in both English and Klingon!  Welcome to Vulcan, Live Long and Prosper!  

Remind me why I'm so proud to live here? :

That is so weird... I thought you were older than me, but you aren't.  Anyway, happy birthday you magnetic person you!

You're a bit behind, evil.  There have been 16 deaths in Toronto alone. There were about 83 deaths in Hong Kong as of the 21st.  

In Toronto, people are going pretty nuts.  People are given those house arrest ankle bracelets if they are suspected of having contact with someone who has SARS.  There are people who've had contact and no one knows who they are.  My Improv coach has an infected galbladder. He desperatly needs surgery, and he can't even stay in the hospital because of all the SARS quarantines and regulations, let alone be operated on.

The Taiwanese and Chinese communities are being ostricized, however you spell it. Their stores and restaurants are being avoided as if they had the plague.

A rather appropriate cliche, no?

People are scared to take public transportation, because there was a nurse who died of SARS that might have spread it to passengers on a commuter train.  People don't want to go out to public places- a food drive at a chain of grocery stores barely brought in anything, because no one was going shopping.  

We aren't at the state where people are wearing surgical masks, but it's close.

Bah.  That about sums it all up. Bah.

STR: 2 (I can't do so much as a pushup now, why should I be able to do it when I'm old and feeble?)
INT: 16(I read too much)
WIS: 4 (Ooo look! A bird!)
DEX: 1 (Looking at how my parents and grandparent are shaping up, I will be one of those scary old ladies motoring around in an electric wheel chair)
MANA: 7 (I definitly believe in magic/magik/ however you want to spell it)

Amount of children: 1
Married: Have to find a date first...
Time spent defending country: In any sort of life-threatening capacity, 0 seconds.

Class: Electric wheelchair wizard!

An example of what NOT to do is the marriage subplots in Quest for Glory 5.  "If I give you flowers and trinkets, we will fall in love!"  Blaaaaaa....  It's possible to get all the girls to fall in love with you, but I'm not sure if you can give them all wedding rings. DO NOT DO THAT! The same thing happened in QG3, I think.  If you talk to the leopard girl whose name I can't remember about "Romance," she kisses you and it fades to black.

Oh.  The romanticness. :

I think that Romance CAN be done in a game, but you have to do it carefully.  In GK3, when Gabriel finally realizes that he has feelings for Grace, it makes sense.  There is chemistry there, they're equals, and it's all so lovey dovey.

But we have to remember it took three games to set it up.  They start off just working together, then they become partners, then they become more-than-partners.  Gradual evolution of feeling works well. But then again, by GK3 Grace and Gabe are both PC's, so that probably isn't the best example.

I guess what I'm saying is you have to be careful about making it a player choice for the character to fall in love or not.  If you can do it without having the it as a really simplistic choice: "Do you want to go out: yes/no?" or really mathematical like the presents thing in QG5, it could work really well.  I can't wait to see what you do, GG!

Arm problem- Eek! I thought I'd fixed that. Erm... she's an amputee?  

SSH: It's not drool, it's a piercing.  But I do have to fix the random black pixels.  I'll post a fixed up version soon.

This is going to be the desktop image for my main character's computer



Those three people are her best friends, and members in her band, (from left to right) the drummer, the bass player and the lead guitarist.

Toronto can be seen in the background.  

The main character's finger may be seen at the bottom right  (it's supposed to be a crappy snapshot)

I'm not too pleased with the shading, however.  Any help any one could give me would cause me to love them forever.



Not that way, you sicko!

Sorry about the double post.  Anyway, I did a little 20 second edit in paint.  You already had a nice hourglass shape, so I didn't need to change that.  I just erased the loopy breasts, and drew a line underneath where they would be, then I shaded it.  It doesn't look like she's going to fall over anymore.

I'm lazy and don't really feel like drawing, so here is Dragonrose's wonderful ASCII woman and man (both drawings only go to the hips)
 0
|\/|
|/\|

  0
|\   /|
| \/ |

Pretty crappy, eh? Anyway, the idea of having breasts can be shown pretty well if you do a good hourglass shape, then a line under the pectorals.  Men are more triangle shaped, though they can also be drawn with just straight lines.

I'm begging, don't use the loopy W shaped breasts. Ordinarily, there just isn't that much definition between one breast and the other when a woman is fully clothed.

I'm lazy and don't really feel like drawing, so here is Dragonrose's wonderful ASCII woman and man (both drawings only go to the hips)
 0
|\/|
|/\|

  0
|\   /|
| \/ |

Pretty crappy, eh? She's wearing a skirt.  Anyway, the idea of having breasts can be shown pretty well if you do a good hourglass shape, then a line under the pectorals.  Men are more triangle shaped, though they can also be drawn with just straight lines.

I'm begging, don't use the loopy W shaped breasts. Ordinarily, there just isn't that much definition between one breast and the other when a woman is fully clothed.

Hope that helps!

Yay! Got the picture working again!

Anyway, on to comments:

Vel: I can't show any screenshots because I don't even have completed characters yet.  That and it's a major hassle to get files from my computer in my room (that doesn't save png's and isn't connected to the internet) to the computer down here that DOES save png's and IS connected to the internet.  I have to take each picture on a seperate disk, and frankly, I'm extremely lazy.  I am not looking forward to trying to upload my game.

Mr. Panda: Bask in the pictury goodness.

Rabbit With Fangs: You could also cary the guitar with you, but that's a matter of personal preference.

A bit of an update.  I'm almost finished with fixing all of my previously done crappy background art, but characters are still just place holders.  

Also, the GUI is almost finished, I just need to design a three more icons and fix up a fourth that looks like poo,  and I need to do some scripting.  But other than that it's good.

I've come to a bit of a standstill on the story, with two important sub plots not fitting together like I hoped they would, so that will require major tweaking.

Mostly I'm updating just to remind everyone that I am still working on this, though.

Nose: itches and runs
Eyes water and joints all ache
God, I hate the flu.

I am sick and tired
Of this being sick and tired
I fear I must sneeze.

Quikstrike89: The game in general will be pretty serious, but there will be jokes thrown in.  I honestly don't think I could be serious long enough to do a whole game without any jokes.

Mr. Panda: The drummer dies because, when something bad happens, he will A) be sitting down, whereas the rest of the band will be standing, and B) he has to get around the entire drum kit before fleeing, and the rest of the band can just drop their guitars/microphones/marraccas/etc. and flee. It's also part of a big important puzzle.

Czar: No.  Helm will live a long and fruitful life.

IIIiiiiiiiiiintroducing my first real game (Wanderer does NOT count)!

The game is entitled "Candace Grace: Bard's Blood."  You play Candace Grace (in case you couldn't guess by the title), a high school student and the lead singer in a small rock band called "The Imposters."

While preforming at a local Battle of the Bands, where she sings original songs in public for the first time, an apparently freak accident causes the furnace to explode.  She and two of her band mates- the guitarist and the bassist- get out of the building safely, but the drummer, Patrick, is not as lucky.  A burning portion of the ceiling falls on him.  He makes it to the hospital, but doesn't survive the night.

Candace begins having horrible nightmares, in which the fire and Patrick's death were all her fault. She tries to convince herself that the accident was just that- an accident... but what if it wasn't?

A combination of Celtic myth and Rock and Roll, and inspired by the Gabriel Knight games, P:DA and Mercedes Lackey's "Urban Fantasy" novels, I'm certainly hoping that Bard's Blood will be a thoroughly enjoyable game.

The image above will not be appearing in the game anywhere, but I felt like making some sort of promotional material.

Will include:
-GUI specifically developed for this game (not just different pictures on the template)
-Three completly original songs written and vocally preformed by me!
-74,839,215,743,801,334 monsters and bosses! (whoops! wrong game!)

Status: 12 rooms basically programmed, story 100% done (again), art 7% done, music 0% done

Update June 22, 2003: Updated the status line, made a disclaimer post. Enjoy!

Update August 3, 2003: Added some pretty screen shots.  Enjoy them as well!

Update October 18, 2003: After reading post by Garage Gothic, I've begun to rethink the way that the game is set up, so the amount of story done has gone down. Sigh.

Update March 2, 2004: The story's all rewritten- 100%, no going back on it this time. It's the way it is and I'm NOT TOUCHING IT ANYMORE!

However, I realized that it took me a month of solid work for me to do one measly walk animation.  In one direction.  Drawing over a template. Then I tested it in the game and realized it didn't fit the graphics I'd drawn.  I was about ready to kill something.

So I'm trying a graphic style I haven't seen in an AGS game.  Each room is a still image, complete with characters and everything drawn in. No animations. I lose some sense of interactivity (and the chance of winning the "Best Animation" AGS award :'(), but I gain some story telling power.  I can make a scene look like anything I want.  I can put the lighting and the camera angle anywhere.  I can change the character's clothes with a heck of a lot more ease.

I also can do the backgrounds a lot faster, because I don't have to worry about angles or walkable areas.  A couple of vanishing points and I'm golden.  

Yes, Hosamov, it is all true.  I really am everybody here except for you.  I, MillsJRoss, am EVERYONE!

Wait, logged in on the wrong name... CRAP!

Thread not about rhyme
Thread is about the RHYTHM
Non-haiku is bad

Do not block the flow
Using rhymes with no metre
Always is haiku

I just read a book
Of comics called "Get Fuzzy"
A cat did haiku

"I like catnip mice
That's why I bite their heads off
They're good for breakfast"

Haiku equals fun
Five seven five forever
Long live the haiku