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Hey all. Stylistic question. I did some searching and found a couple threads for old plugins that did automatic shadows as follow objects. It also seems like it'd be pretty easy to just drop a translucent black oval at the bottom of all my sprites. However it seems like most games on here don't have shadows at all.

But of course most of the old sierra and lucas games didn't bother with shadows at all. It could be argued that ignoring them is sort of part of the look, if that's what you're going for.

What are your thoughts on shadows? Your expectations when you see a new game announced?

the idle animation is set up so your char will get bored, then scratch their butt for 2 seconds, then go back to their normal stance. It doesn't really want to do something like your char falling asleep on their feet and just standing there like that til the player clicks.

I had a similar issue with the think view where I wanted it to do a setup and then repeat just the 2nd part and it won't do it. It'd be trivial if we could modify the core think or idle functions but we can't.

Options would be:
make your own idle function and call that from execute always using a global int-tracked timer that is reset whenever the player clicks.

or just make the idle animation loop really long so that players will almost always move on and stop being idle before the animation can end.

This is explained in this article in the manual:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/ImportingFunctionsAndVariables.html

Normally you should have in the global header:

Code: ags

import bool is_toast(int itemnumber);

Thanks, I did find it eventually. Problem with the manual is that it's really only helpful if you already know what the things are called. My old C using ass was looking for extern.

So if I put import in global header I don't have to do it in each room script? That's what I have been doing.

Maybe I'm just dumb but I can't figure out how to declare functions that are defined in global such that room scripts can call them.

IE if I have a bool function is_toast(int itemnumber) what do I need to do to be able to use it in room scripts without the room script throwing up an error because it doesnt know what is_toast is?

Hey.

Been poking around here for ages. Used to program adventure games with my friend in basic on our c64s back in the day. They weren't good or anything, but we made them. Then I was staff on one of the larger muds for a long time. But I haven't had a game-related creative outlet in some time.

The game that was brewing in my head forever was a quest for glory-alike which was way too complicated and probably a stretch for my artistic abilities, so I just sort of did nothing for years and years. Recently I finally had an idea for something I might actually be able to complete, so now I've DLed AGS and am off and running.

I've noticed the majority of the games in the announcement thread are 320x200. Is there some reason for that I'm missing beyond the nostalgia factor or affection for pixel art? There's not some technical reason? I was planning to go 1280x800 since my art will be cell style and that looks better with a few extra pixels imo.

When I was first poking around here, alot of the more prominent games were follow-ups or midquels or whathaveyou for old sierra and lucas titles, but that seems to have died down. People scared of getting takedowns, or is that just not viewed as an interesting thing any more?

case of the golden idol. Normally I'm a graphics first guy, and it really doesn't impress based on the steam previews, but the logic puzzles were presented in a really interesting and unique way

Thanks for the reply.

For the first item, it was more a stylistic question as to whether it's normal to have a whole pile of bools and ints in global for trackers and stuff. My char has to learn 3 things before she can ask a char about the plot. Since those things are all in different room the only way to track them was global bools. I couldn't find any other way to do it.

Thanks, I'll try to track down that function.

>You may do this using non-clickable buttons (a button which has Clickable property set to false) with a NormalGraphic set and empty Text.

I had thought of that, but couldn't figure out how to check score to potentially alter the graphic each time the gui was called.

Thanks for the other answers, very helpful!

Hi, I've been using AGS for maybe a week and had some questions:

1. I was surprised to find if I declare a variable in room script that it doesn't reset upon leaving and re-entering the room. I'm aware I could reset it with a region easily enough, but that's not really my question. How do variables declared this way differ from globals? Do I just need to make peace with using globals for every little counter and boolean? The use in this case is player repeatedly looking at a bookshelf and being shown a different book each time in a specific sequence.

2. I wanted to create a generic function for invalid inputs. Like if the player clicks talk on hotspots that are just bits of scenery, rather than creating a talk function for each of them, I thought I could put a generic_invalid_talk() function in global and then have every hotspot or object call that. Compiles fine, but crashes on use. Did I need to declare the function somewhere, or is this approach just a non-starter? Is there another way to come at this I'm not seeing?

3. Is there a way to make think animation automatically loop like talk animation does? I have done a work around with just making the think loop quite long but feels suboptimal.

4. Is there a way to show specific graphics/sprites on the gui, on top of the background graphic? I remember seeing this a lot in old sierra games and would like to have a shot of the character on either the options menu or inventory window which will change through the game.

5. Is there a way to adjust walk speed for specific directions? My character moves up and down too fast. Maybe bc her L/R loop is 8 frames and her Up/Down is only 6? I'm away the char struct has a x and y movement speed values. How often/where would I need to set that to have it be permanent?

Thanks!