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In my games, just hit F1 and the main character will talk to their mentor about the quest (context sensitive). Keep hitting F1 and the hints become easier and easier. Hit F1 enough and the conversation gets to the level of "yes, I really should right click on X, walk over to Y and then right click on Z"

Does anyone know of a program that can apply Floyd Steinberg dithering when reducing from 24 bit to 16 bit images? (Apart from Image Alchemy by Handmade Software, but that costs a hundred dollars.)

Also, does anyone know of an image editor that uses the same 16 bit palettes at AGS? I assumed that all 16 bit palettes are the same, but have noticed that if a 16 bit image (saved in Alchemy of Paint Shop Pro) is used as a 16 bit background in AGS 2.72, the colors change slightly.

Did you try unchecking the Irfanview box that says "Use Floyd-Steinberg dithering" in the batch advanced options?

I was using an older version of Irfanview that didn't give that option. Nice to see it's now offered - thanks for pointing it out.

I didn't know that "meh" is a contraction: what does the apostrophe replace?

"My enthusiasm wanes"  ....Okay, not really.

According to languagehat.com it's probably a contraction of the Yiddish 'mnyeh' though there are other possibilities. Yiddish would certainly fit the Simpsons' humor.

-Wow, That is probably the most boring thing, I've ever seen!

-Watching this is almost as big a waste of time as discussing it.

-You don't see stuff like that around here every day. Oh wait, you do.

-Where? What? I can't see it. Okay, I lied, I can see it.

- Will you stop bringing people's attention to random props?

Those are good, thanks. I won't be able to use them as they are ("that" and "it" cause translation problems, and the character may not be able to see the thing they're thinking about) but I might be able to adapt the ideas.

Now, I would be much more likely to click on lots of objects if I got amusing responses like this.

Me too. Could you suggest any?

I didn't know that "meh" is a contraction: what does the apostrophe replace?

A pause. I don't know it it's a contraction for anyone else, but the kids I hear always put a short pause between the 'm' and the 'eh'

Here's some suggestions:

Thanks

"I don't have any opinion about this"

Would 'this' work for plurals? I'm thinking yes, as it means 'this topic' but what do others think?

[1. "M'eh"2. "Boring"3. "Interesting"4. "Sometimes words like [string] come into my mind, I don't know why."]

I'm trying to think of general purpose comments that can be used when looking at or thinking of something. But you can't use the object's name, or even the word "it." Here are my lame attempts so far:

1. "M'eh"

2. "Boring"

3. "Interesting"

4. "Sometimes words like [string] come into my mind, I don't know why."

Any other suggestions?



More details:

I have over 200 characters and 1000 objects. Any character can think about any other character or object, even if it's not in the same room. The user right clicks on character X, then right clicks on character  or object Y, then character X says something. Most characters and objects have default responses, but I also need generic responses.

A particular problem is children's responses. Most of my default responses assume the speaker is an adult. But those comments sound strange coming from the mouth of a child. On the other hand, it should be easier to find generic kids' responses, since most kids have general purpose phrases like "meh" and "boring."

I can't even use words like "it" and "those" because of issues with translation: many languages have different forms of "it" depending on the context (see this thread for details).

You can't say "looks like" or "I'm looking at" because the object may not be in the same room.

All characters are individuals, not groups, so saying 'I' is acceptable.

You can use the exact string of the object, if that's any use. It is also acceptable to specify a class of speaker (e.g. "if speaker is a child", "if speaker is male" etc.). But the only thing I can't specify is the looked at thing, since there are too many.

Use slang if you want. In fact, that may be the only way to solve the problem. It's probably impossible to find general purpose comments that work in every possible language or culture, so I'm asking translators to find their own general purpose responses, using whatever works for them.

Thanks for the suggestions. It all sounds like a lot of work. I think I'll just go through and reword the generic replies to avoid be even more generic than before. And I'll be a lot more careful with the design of future games, to avoid problems like this.

Regarding the number of languages, I let users translate the game into whatever language they like, and currently have seven languages promised. I'm adding a new game every six months, so I'm keen to make translation as simple as possible.

details: http://www.enterthestory.com/languages.html

Thanks for the reply. I agree that generic is the goal, but it's hard to be generic without using words like "it"

In my game I have about two hundred characters and over a thousand hotspots. To simplify responses I sometimes have general purpose responses, and just change the words "it" and "them" depending on if the hotspot is a plural. But this creates problems with translating the game into other languages.

Words like "it" and "them" and "you" don't translate well. My translator keeps asking for more detail about the kind of thing being looked at: in English it's just "that" or "it," but in Dutch (for example) the context matters.

Has anyone else come up against this problem? How have you solved it? How do you create general purpose response code that translates easily?

[UPDATE:]

Are you actually using all the characters? ... do you mean translating the whole game to Chinese

Someone has offered to translate my Les Miserables game into Chinese. It has a huge amount of text (the translation source file is about 2 MB) so it probably uses a fair few. And if I got o the trouble of making it possible in one game, I'd like to make it a general purpose solution that can be adapted to other games and other large character sets.

And doesn't it use dynamic sprites and would thus be susceptible to the 2.72 bug in not always returning memory correctly?

Its quite easy to write dynamic sprite code badly. I'm not sure that there actually is a bug in AGS.

Your snow code was perfect. But it crashed under the exact same circumstances described in this thread: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=35654.msg467392#msg467392

can this one handle a font with 6500+ characters?

No, not yet, but it wouldn't be hard to adapt it.

Even by a relative novice like me?

UPDATE:

My Chinese friend is keen to go ahead, and I think I have all the tools I need. Except one: a program to take an AGS translation file, and change unicode characters into their unicode numbers. So this:

Code: ags

"English line
Chinese line
English line
Chinese line"

becomes this:

Code: ags

English line
12 345 6 78 901 2345 67
English line
890 12 345 67 8 901 23

I don't have the skills or tools to write that myself - would any kind person on the board be willing to do it?

my SpriteFonts module?

Your modules are always excellent, but can this one handle a font with 6500+ characters? Doesn't it rely on an input font in a form that AGS recognizes? And doesn't it use dynamic sprites and would thus be susceptible to the 2.72 bug in not always returning memory correctly?

it wouldn't be a good thing to have thousands of files scattered around in the game's folder.

You mean inside the AGS internal sprite manager? I already have 5000 sprites there, so another 6000 wouldn't make much difference.

use the dynamic sprite functions

I agree that would be a better plan, but I use 2.72. There's a known bug with releasing the memory for dynamic sprites in 2.72 (sorry, can't find the link). Dynamic sprites are fine for the occasional use, but for frequent use a crash is almost guaranteed (as I discovered the hard way - e.g. with repeated use of the Simple Snow module)

I've been thinking of how to display a Chinese font in my game. What do you think? It would be a big job and don't speak Chinese so I thought I'd run it past you guys first.

1. Create a sprite for each Chinese character (I gather that simplified Chinese has 6500 characters.)

2. write a non-AGS program to convert this:

Code: ags

"random string in unicode font"

to this:

Code: ags

"12 345 6 78 901 2345 67..."  // sprite numbers and spaces, in a normal TTF font

3. Write a non-AGS program to convert a translation source. So this

Code: ags

"English line
Chinese line
English line
Chinese line"

becomes this

Code: ags

English line
12 345 6 78 901 2345 67
English line
890 12 345 67 8 901 23

4. Create 5 GUIs to act as speech balloons, with 20 buttons each
(for 20 sprites - i.e. you allow up to 100 words per Chinese sentence)

5. Create an alternative 'say' function

Code: ags

function sayChinese(String chinese_as_numbers)
{	// split the string into numbers
	// change the sprites used on the GUIs
	// decide the best x,y positions for GUIs and buttons, make visible
	// decide the best delay, etc.
}

Do you think that would work?

Have you tried directdraw?

Is that available for 2.72? And would that allow a game to work on the Mac? Or maybe I misunderstand the question.

Oh well. Thanks for trying it. 

I take it that the "d3d" error would be common to all versions of AGS and all color depths? I vaguely remember hearing that 3.0 changed how it handled graphics. Clutching at straws here.

A helpful user just wrote this regarding my game:

I decided to try playing the game using WINE.  Turns out that it runs beautifully that way. (Must be that one of the WINE developers loves adventure games. )

For reference, the version of WINE that I used was 1.1.1 running on
Debian Linux 5.0 (also known as "Lenny").

For your Mac users I have found a page on WINE's site that links to
conveniently packaged pre-built binaries.
[ http://wiki.winehq.org/MacOSX/Installing ]
All they need to do is download and "unpack" the software.

Is it really as simple as that? So AGS games can now run on the Mac?

Thanks. Old Entish is out then, but New Entish might be possible

AGS lines have a 500 character limit (in 2.72 at least). But it appears that translated strings (used in translation source files) can be much longer. Which is very useful for languages like German.

What's the upper limit for the length of a translation String? (Could I, for example, translate a game into Old Entish?)