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Come to think of it, Aleister Crowley's "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" would make an excellent tagline for a game creation tool.

Perhaps an easier - and non-Direct3D exclusive - implementation could be something similar to what I suggested for outlined fonts in this thread. In most cases it's wise to use outlines for Lucas-style dialog anyway, and at least this way it could look somewhat smoother.

Example image for those who can't be arsed to check my old post:


Above: Custom rendering of text as graphical overlay. Aliased outline with anti-aliased inner text.
Below: Text on regular GUI label. Note especially the 'a' and the 's' as less readable.

True, you can make the final sprite transparent by displaying it as a GUI, character or object, but all the elements you draw to it must be 100% opaque. My main interest in this would be for particle systems, and it's really, really difficult to make anything looking even similar to real smoke without layering transparent and/or alpha-channel sprites - trust me, I've tried and unless it can be drawn directly to the background, hence allowing those effects, it ends up very solid and flat, even when made transparent afterward. Even more or less solid particles like snowflakes can look quite rough when everything else in the game uses anti-aliased edges.

You don't really have to "implement" a limited palette, you just use a limited amount of colors when drawing your art and then import it as 8-bit sprites to cut down file size. AGS also has built-in text parser support (just look up "Text parser" in the manual), it's not very sophisticated so don't expect an Infocom level of interpretation without a lot of additional coding, but it's easily as good as the original AGI parser. You may also want to use scotch's AGI Graphics Emulation plugin that allows characters to move in a 160x200 grid to emulate AGI style pixel doubling.

Use String.Format, like this:

Code: ags

ShopGuiCashMonitor.Text = String.Format("Cash: %d", Cash);

Does it happen when you test the game without the debugger (Ctrl+F5)?

You use "==" for comparing values and "=" for setting them, so your code should be:

Code: ags

function oSafedoor_Interact() {
  if (oSafedoor.Graphic == 9) {
    oSafedoor.Graphic = 8;
    }
  }

Escape from Delirium

I'm glad you found it useful. I'll have to fix the coordinate issue when I get the time, thanks for letting me know about it. Unfortunately the module was written just a week or two before hi-res coordinate support was introduced in AGS, so I never really tested it for compatibility.

Actually some viruses cleverly use system restore to restore themselves after being deleted. You should try running a boot-time virus scan rather than scan from inside Windows, if you haven't done so already. You may find nasties that manage to hide themselves while Windows is running.

I don't know, looking up "steampunk parts" on ebay gave me a lot of items that weren't necessarily that expensive. Under 10$ (buy it now price) for an oz. of vintage watch parts doesn't seem all that unreasonable.

Other than that, I'd recommend finding a local flea market. Tons of things has interesting gears in them (engines, clocks, meccano sets, mechanical toys), and as you don't need them to be in working order it should be possible to find something cheap. I also recommend rummaging through the bulky trash at apartment complexes, it's amazing what you can find. Most of the stuff will be newer electronics (I find a lot of fully functional stereos and speakers), but once in a while you find interesting vintage stuff - once I came across an old cash register which would probably have been a treasure trove of steampunk parts.

A lightbulb hanging from the ceiling - your background doesn't have any visible light sources.

Not sure CJ will check this thread again. But actually, what would be great would be  if you could supply FillSaveGameList with an optional range parameter. That way you could for instance use FillSaveGameList(40) for your save game menu but FillSaveGameList(50) for your restore game menu so it would also display special savegames like autosave and quicksave (correctly ordered by save time) without risking the player overwriting them.

Can't really help you circumvent the greyed-out-when-disabled thing if you want to keep it like that (turning it off during dialog is not an option?). But perhaps you could use an overlay instead of a GUI  to display your text?

Sure, just pm me your email address.

What I did when I wrote my similar custom speech display function was to cheat and use Character.Say for the timings and for animating the character. I would display the spoken text on the GUI, then use Character.Say (which is blocking) with the same text and once that returned I removed the text on the GUI again. To avoid the Character.Say displaying anything I imported an empty font file, but I think it can also be done by setting text color to RGB(255,0,255).

"FillSaveListDir"? Do you mean FillSaveGameList? Anyway, what works for me is to simply use high numbers for those special savegame slots (I use 100+, but actually I thought anything above 50 should be safe which doesn't seem to be the case). These shouldn't show up when filling the list. I wouldn't recommend removing entries manually as I think this could mess up the SelectedIndex references.

I don't remember if String parameters are write protected, but just to make sure you could try creating a temp String, do the "tempString = GetTranslation(bigString)" and then use tempString as the source for the rest of the code.

Also make sure that the content of bigString didn't change since you created the translation source. How long is bigString, by the way? I seem to remember translations having trouble with too long Strings.

Edit: Wrote before I saw your edit. Good luck with the bug hunt!

Where did you try putting GetTranslation? It should work if you put:

Code: ags

bigString = GetTranslation(bigString);

as the first line of the function.

A bit of a hack, but if you don't have anything else going on in the background while the textbox is displayed (i.e. the game is paused), you could try to SetGameSpeed(int new_speed) to something lower than 40 (and revert this change once you close the textbox GUI). If this doesn't work, the only solution I see would be to code your own textbox replacement, using on_key_press and displaying the entered text on a label for instance.