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Ben, you just never cease to amaze me. This is pure beauty. The color palette makes it look a bit like watercolor paintings. And the story sounds very interesting, too, should make for a very interesting gameplay!

Ascovel: Thanks Things are moving forward in phases - intense work every day for as long as I can handle, then some time off for as long as my conscience lets me - but it's progressing

Gudforby: I'll do my best not to keep you waiting forever for that to happen. Can't say when I'll finish it, but I hope it's not going to take another year. I'd say late winter. But of course quality comes first, so I don't wanna rush it, either.

NickyNyce: Yeah, isn't he cute and cuddly? But that's just appearances As far as the progress in the graphics departmens is concerned, backgrounds didn't take that much time to make. It's more about animations and cutscenes. But I'd like to think I'm far more than halfway through and done with the most challenging parts.

Mods: So it looks like I was ahead of my times, because I started working on the game last fall

And so another 5 months have passed since I last posted an update... But the game's still alive and developing nicely, if a little slowly. Here are two little screens from the game's intro:

Gray eyeing Earth with a sinister spark in his eyes...


Klaatu barada nikto!


Btw, anyone heard from Sephiroth lately? Can't get in touch with him since... June? I just hope he's ok...

Hedgefield: Bingo! ! was definitely an inspiration here in terms of wild color themes and limited color palettes. And It was actually through Ben's games that I found AGS.

Slightly: Thanks! Can't say when it'll be out, but we're all working on it I'll try to keep everyone posted on the progress of the game

Tabata: Don't worry, it's going to be a regular adventure game, not a platformer/arcade game. What I meant by "side-scroller" is just the fact that the character only walks left and right along a flat landscape (because I was too lazy to draw the walkables for "up" and "down" - but then I had to draw them anyway! Haha!). Otherwise, he'll do everything an adventure game character does: talk to people (and not only people!), pick up objects, look and comment on things around him, have an inventory, use stuff on other stuff, give stuff to people, etc Just an ordinary game, you see. OK, maybe not THAT ordinary - or at least I hope so

Ben304: Those were so much fun to make, especially the farmer's idle animations (there's half a dozen of them already and there'll be more!).

Matti: He LOOKS cute. But trust me, he ISN'T And huge thanks to you and Khris, as well, for really helping me out a bunch of times.

Sephiroth: It's the awesome help and encouragement that I get from all you guys that inspires me and makes me want to give something back by making Gray as enjoyable for the players as I can And even in spite of some obstacles here and there, it's tons of fun to make

Yes, it's been 6 months since the last update - but the game's still alive! Check the original post for news and two new screenshots

I did a little test - I removed almost ALL scripts that resulted in any activity in the room, so there was absolutely nothing else moving or happening. Still, the character didn't face the bee. However, in a similarly empty environment in the other room, he faced the passing character every time.

It displays it right away. Except it blocks every other animation on the screen.

And while I did that, I forgot to paste the original code that was there into any text processor for keeping - and now if went heidi. I knew if I stayed up and keep trying to do something, I would end up messing something up. The good thing is I have the last big scripting session backed up.

I tried another thing: I put your script into a new room, with no scripts in it yet, with a different character there. Gray faces that one alright wherever it goes. But it does nothing aside from that. Just walks to and fro. Could it be that the size here matters? The bee is just 4x4 pixels, the other character is much bigger.

I did. Nothing changed. First time I tried, Bee #2 froze after passing by Gray. The second time, everything went back to the original state. I removed Bee1 random movement. That didn't work, either. The only other things animating constantly are a beehive and a cig - but both are on eRepeat, eNoBlock, in AfterFadeIn/BefoteFadeIn

Edit: deleted in order to avoid eternal shame

I *think* I followed all your instructions - and still nothing. I can tell when the hotspot is activated, because if he stands on it, the bee goes into FollowCharacter mode. But other than that, nothing happens. He just stands there, staring in one direction, the bee flies around him to and fro.

That's it for today, though, I need sleep. I'll try something tomorrow - but if I can't get that damn FaceCharacter command to work right, I'll have to figure something else out. And as I mentioned, this isn't the first time it does the exact opposite of what it's expcted to. Could it be that I'm experiencing some sort of a glitch here?

That's the thing - he doesn't. I checked and there's no other conflicting FaceCharacter command in use in Room script or elsewhere. I thought it was about the FollowCharacter command, but when I changed it to Move (with added waypoints, just to have the bee move from one end of the screen to another), there was absolutely no reaction from the main character. I even tried to work around it with

Code: ags

if (cBee.x > cGray.x + 5) {
  cGray.FaceLocation(320, 215) //the farthest point right in the room

and the opposite for him to look left, but that didn't work, either. I might've messed something up in that one, I'm pretty brain dead right now - but the whole FaceCharacter command not working/working weird is bugging the hell out of me.

Strange: when I copied the three lines into the room script, the game ran fine - but NOTHING happened. The character didn't face the bee but once, even. So I put the whole script again in the room's Repeatedly_Execute again - and still, nada.

I'm thinking this... If I set the bee's baseline to the same as the character's (his feet are at 215) and make cBee.Solid = false, it won't bump into the character. But when the timer expires, I could set to switch it to true, and voila, bumps into him right where I want it to, can't go any further. Then I use IsCollidingWithCharacter and ignite the function.

Except the FaceCharacter doesn't work properly. Darnation It actually failed me in another situation, too. I wanted the character to face the sun - and what he does is turn away from it, even though he's not even close to being in the same line vertically.

Edit: he actually turns to face the bee for half a second when it ventures as far as some 30-40 pixels away from him. But it seldom goes that far and turns around instantly, and he's turns away the second it does - long before it even get close to him, never mind pass him to reach the opposite end of its restricted area.

When I put the

Code: ags

under_attack = true;

in the Room events (Stand on hotspot, to be exact), it returns this error:

Failed to save room room2.crm; details below
room2.asc(141): Error (line 141): Undefined token 'under_attack'

Now the game started with no problem - except... nothing's happening Might be that I still have my original, room-specific scripts active (if he steps onto a hotspot, the bee goes into FollowCharacter mode, and I think something else, too) - and I don't feel up to tinkering with those at the moment, I'm half asleep right now. The whole sequence is also dependent on a bunch of other factors, like HasInventory and a global variable for what time of the day it is, so I'd rather have a script that I could use within Room events rather than Global Script (which I have used very little so far). And I did use Repeatedly_Execute inside rooms before and it worked just fine.

But as I said, the idea with the timer itself gave me a bunch of ideas - even to refine the whole sequence a bit. Now if only I manage to fix the thing with him facing the bee when idle and get the bee to sit on him, it'll be all good.

Where exactly do I put the

Code: ags

bool under_attack = false;
bool idle = false;
int sting = 0;

part? Because right now, wherever I put it (my guesses were first BeforeFadeIn and then GlobalScript), it says it doesn't recognize/understand the under_attack part in the script. Sorry, I'm still confused sometimes about where things go, plus now I'm really really tired.

But the idea with the timer is great, I'm kicking myself for not having thought of that!

Yeah, that's actually what I did, my mistake was that I copied only one line from that script into the code quote here (edited the post to include all of it - which looks pretty close to yours). Thanks for making me actually notice, though

I'm trying to script a following scene:

1. After the character has acquired a certain object, he's passing through a meadow - where he attracts the attention of an angry bee - which starts to follow him around.
2. Wherever he goes, it follows. And when he stops, it flies up to him and sits on his forearm - which he's too afraid to move.
3. After he's been idle for 5-7 seconds, it finally stings him.

So, first, I put this:

Code: ags

cBee.FollowCharacter(cGray, 10, 0);

and it does the following around part beautifully. But a problem arises. I wanted him to always face the bee when he's not moving - for obvious reasons, and also because I want it to land on his arm, and it's the closest point to the bee only when he's facing it. The thing is, though, even though I put this:

Code: ags

 if (cGray.Moving ==false){
  cGray.FaceCharacter(cStrayBee2);}

in Repeat_Exec, he doesn't always turn around. And even if he does, he turns away again even if it's still there.

Also, how do I have the bee land on a specific part of his body? I'm guessing it involves specifying the main character's x and y (meaing where his feet are) plus/minus the distance from that point to the point where the bee should land. Keeping in mind that the x value will differ depending on which direction the character is facing (x - something if he's facing left, and x + something if facing right).

Allllso, I should mention that the character should be able to move around freely if the player wants to - not to make it explicit that they have to wait (be idle) for several seconds, because getting stung is the point of the puzzle, not something to avoid (by the way, is there some sort of a "HasBeenIdle(int how long)" command, and if not, how can I set a required period of idleness before he gets stung?).

I did try to set the bee's baseline to the character's baseline while it's usual flight altitute is at his shoulders' height, so that I could use the IsColidingWithCharacter option - but that only worked nice with cBee.Move and not so much with cBee.FollowCharacter, because that way, it simply bumped into the character and stopped there.

Since this one is quite a toughie, please let me know which script goes where - just to avoid confusion.

Thanks, that fixed everything

A little additional question, though. I'd like to make him walk backwards, as if backing out rather than turning around (never let the enemy out of sight!) - but the regular cCharacter.Walk doesn't have the eBackwards option. Should I use cCharacter.Move combined with cCharacter.Animate or is there some simplier way to do it, like temporarily re-setting the Walk view to a different loop, which would be flipped horizontally to imitate walking backwards when in fact he'd be walking forwards?

So I'm trying to script the following situation: when the character enters a certain area of the screen, an NPC jumps out. The character goes EEEK!, trembles, turns around, goes away and changes his mind about fulfilling his mission - while the NPC still growls behind him. The problem is, each event plays out in sequence instead of several events occuring at the same time. The NPC jumps out, performs the "angry mode" animation, freezes, the character says eek, THEN trembles, then turns around goes away - leaving the perfectly still NPC behind him.

Is there a way to make it look better?

I'm doing this via "Stand on hotspot" - when the character walks onto it, it triggers off the event.

I need:
1. The NPC to jump out and act all scary for as long as I tell him to.
2. The character react with only a slight delay - say, 20 cycles - by trembling AND going EEK at the same time (I'm guessing SetView might work here?), turn around, walk away and rethink his life - with the NPC still going berserk behind him.
3. The NPC to calm down and retreat - going back to his usual mode of animation. Is there a "go back to previous state" command for that or do I do it via SetView, too?

Please note that I made one of the NPC's (a swarm of bees) an object instead of a character - reasoning that it's not a person, not really one entity, even. Does that make scripting the whole event more difficult/easier or is it all the same?