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I agree with Darth, the 8-bit hi-res version is crisp and nice. Reminds me of the characters in Torin's Passage or Toonstruck.

I think this style of character will look absolutely wonderful on a painted background. I would up the saturation and contrast on the backgrounds after scanning though, since the concept artwork looks a bit washed out.

Edit: Badly photoshopped, but you get the point. I think a saturated background with a hint of outline (not pure black like on the characters) would fit well. To make the background less dominating you can experiment with color coding areas so that every primary color doesn't appear in the same scene, but for instance red and yellow dominate one while another is set in blue and greenish tones (Torin's Passage is a good example of this approach, Toonstruck an eye-hurting example of the opposite - even if it does work for them).

Um... scripting? Does that belong under "other"? So far that's taken up 75% of the time I spent on my game.

It now works in the new Direct3D-mode, in DirectX-mode you still have to choose between either or.

Thanks for mirroring it, SSH. I didn't have any problems either, but downloading from the free host IS quite cumbersome, I agree. Does anyone have a better suggestion for a host? I know there's a whole thread for this, but that's where I found the current host, which sounded like one of the better ones.

I've been using CD Burner XP since my last reinstall of Windows. It's a very simple program compared to bloatware like Nero, but so far it has met my basic CD/DVD-burning needs.

Glad to see that someone is giving it a try. Criticism or feature requests are more than welcome. I'd especially like to hear from someone using it with 320x240 graphics - I'm bound to have missed a hi-res check somewhere in the debug code but didn't have time to create lo-res puzzle pieces to try it out.

Labyrinth!!! [...] Did they ever bring out a game of it? If not, a fan game may be quite the hit!

They did indeed. It's one of the lesser known LucasFilm games featuring a precursor to the SCUMM system. Controls are a bit cumbersome, especially if you select parser words by using the joystick. The concept of starting the game as a text adventure and then - Wizard of Oz style - switch to graphic and joystick control once you enter the fantasy world was quite brilliant. I think Douglas Adams (yes, THE Douglas Adams) was responsible for that idea.

Wikipedia article
MobyGames entry

Very nice, though I only had time to play the first two levels. Had a bit of trouble determining what I could stand on (such as falling through curved pipes floors and not being able to jump on the machine in the second level). But it seems great fun. Are there enemies on later levels?

So I take it this is your contribution to this months MAGS? If so, the best of luck. The GameBoy kind of retro style works great.

- Ability to write: surface.DrawingColor=RGB(12,33,234);(if this is possible?) instead of using the colours tab and searching for a color number.

You could try:

Code: ags

surface.DrawingColor = Game.GetColorFromRGB(12,33,234);

* Added option to continue running game loops while dialog options are displayed
* Added "Go to sprite" context menu option to script editor when right-clicking on a number
* Added Game.ChangeTranslation and Character.Move script functions.

All excellent features. ChangeTranslation should be particularly helpful so user don't have to mess with winsetup.exe.

* Added support for calltip help text if you put a comment starting with /// on the line before the import declaration. I've added this text for the String, DrawingSurface, Character and Game methods, and would appreciate your feedback as to whether it's useful enough to bother going through and doing it for the rest of the script commands.

Have to try it in action before I can comment, but it sounds like a useful feature.

* Removed 30 character limit on hotspot descriptions

Awesome, I ran into that limit recently.

* Renamed String.Contains to String.IndexOf to reduce confusion with other languages such as Java and C#. String.Contains will continue to work as well for the foreseeable future

I understand your reasoning, but I must admit that I will continue to use String.Contains. It seems a much more natural name for the function and is instantly recognizable.

* Fixed object image not being refreshed properly if it had a dynamic sprite which you deleted at the same time as making the object invisible

Thanks! That must be the quickest fix ever! 

I think I found a bug. It seems that if you make an object invisible before or right after changing its graphic, its sprite will not actually update. It's difficult to explain, but here's an example:

Code: ags

if (jigsaw_shadowobject != null) {
  jigsaw_shadowobject.Graphic = 0;
  if (jigsaw_shadowsprite != null) jigsaw_shadowsprite.Delete();  //uncommenting this will make the object's dynamicsprite not update for some reason 
  jigsaw_shadowobject.Visible = false;
  }

This code is supposed to change the graphic of an object (jigsaw_shadowobject) from a DynamicSprite (jigsaw_shadowsprite) to sprite 0 (other sprite numbers give same result, so it's not a 256 color issue), then delete the DynamicSprite and hide the object. However, the next time I create the DynamicSprite  from a different existing sprite, it shows the same graphic as the previously deleted sprite (if I don't delete the sprite, on the other hand, it updates properly). I'm guessing that the object somehow still "owns" the sprite, so it doesn't get deleted, but shouldn't that give an error message?

If I comment out "jigsaw_shadowobject.Visible = false;", everything works as intended, except for jigsaw_shadowobject being visible of course. Can easily be fixed by moving it off-screen, but still the behaviour seems weird.

Edit: The new DynamicSprite IS created properly - I've verified this by drawing it to the background. It's only the Object.Graphic that doesn't actually update to the new version of the sprite when setting "jigsaw_shadowobject.Graphic = jigsaw_shadowsprite.Graphic;". Could this be related to the bug where GUIs using DynamicSprites as graphics didn't update properly?

Edit 2: Inserting a "Wait(1);" before turning the sprite invisible prevents the problem, so it seems only to happen if the sprite is deleted and the object turned invisible during the same loop.

Found a bug in the Jigsaw.RemovePuzzle() script. Please change:

Code: ags

if (jigsaw_draggedoverlay != null) jigsaw_draggedoverlay.Remove();

to:

Code: ags

if (jigsaw_draggedoverlay.Valid == true) jigsaw_draggedoverlay.Remove();

This will of course be fixed in the next version.

ManicMatt, I think you forgot "The Spooks: Sim-Afterlife".

As long as a DVD collection doesn't mean less bonus features in the downloadable episodes, I'm all for it. The DVD could also include your webcasts.

Want to add a puzzle where the player has to assemble a torn up photo, a shredded document or a jigsaw puzzle? Then this could be the module for you!

After Ghostlady posted in the beginner's tech forum asking how to make a jigsaw puzzle in AGS without running into object limits, I came up with a concept for how to do it using a struct and DrawingSurface routines. Originally this module was developed exclusively for Ghostlady's game, but we figured that others could also find it useful, so we decided to add some more functionality and make it public.
The module allows you to create a puzzle either from similarly sized sprites in a View or from individual sprites, which can be any size and have any final coordinates but need to be set up one by one. To help you do this, the game features a debug mode where you can position each sprite pixel perfect and then output their setup script to an external text file for cut-n-paste.

Ghostlady has been testing earlier versions, but this is the first public beta. I'd love to hear any feedback on bugs, usability and feature requests. Thanks for trying it out! See module documentation for description of functions and their proper usage.



10 May 2009 Update: Problems have been reported when setting "Use low-res co-ordinates in script" to false (AGS 3.1 and later). I will look into this as soon as possible.

11 Jul 2008 Update: No bugs (except the one I found myself) or feature requests were reported for the BETA, so I'm declaring this slightly updated version the official 1.0. The download link should work directly. Many thanks to Joe Carl for suggesting googlepages.

JigsawModule 1.0 including demo game.

The demo game was developed in AGS 3.02 SP1. The module itself should be backwards compatible down to 3.0 (which introduced Dynamic Arrays), but you will have to turn on "Left-to-right Precedence" in the game settings because of a bug in 3.0.1 and earlier.

(The author of this module does not condone the excessive use of gratuitous logic puzzles in adventure games. For everybody's sanity, please limit the use of this module to one or two puzzles per game )

Unsung heroes of AGS?  But there are so many (myself included!). 

And a link to prove it!

I think SSH made a good selection, and I'm not just saying that because I'm on the list myself. But I don't consider most of the people on his list underrated (ProgZ and Radiant have surely received a lot of a attention for their games), nor unsung (AGA had an AGS opera about him written by Grundislav!).

Personally, I don't think KhrisMUC gets enough credit for all the help he offers in the beginner's tech forum, though he was a bit of a dick towards Mirek the other day.

Congrats, Ivy!!! I was actually going to post about this in the Nanobots thread after seeing the news on the WadjetEye site, but then I found your own announcement.

Ah, sorry. I thought you were asking for easier solutions than replicating the character portrait as a GUI.

Is the GUI interactive while the dialog portraits are shown? I don't think that's even possible with the default Sierra talking portrait mode, so what you could do is to replicate the GUI as a DynamicSprite using DrawingSurface functions (depending on how complicated it is, perhaps you just use a premade GUI sprite grabbed from a screenshot). This could then be displayed using a dummy character or possibly an overlay (I think overlays created before the speech runs will be displayed behind the portraits). Then remove it after the speech finishes. You would in effect use a custom speech function to 1) duplicate the GUI, 2) remove the GUI and display the replicated sprite 3) trigger the Say command 4) Remove fake GUI and make the real one visible.

(you could use DynamicSprite.CreateFromScreenshot to grab the GUI, but its a rather slow function, especially in Direct3D mode. Drawing the GUI background and then its button graphics onto a DynamicSprite would be quicker - of course this is made more difficult if you have ListBoxes and other non-graphical GUI elements)

Looks great, Dave. That restaurant has an almost Gabriel Knight feel to it. But didn't you say in your video that you wouldn't be releasing screenshots for this game, or were you just talking about work in progress?