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I actually liked your old version (must have missed it first time you posted). I'm not too fond of the new, unlabeled buttons and generally find it difficult to understand what is clickable and what isn't. The link buttons at the top of the frame made it easy to quickly navigate the site, now they're located quite a bit down the page - perhaps scrolling isn't necessary, but they're definitely less accessible.

How about retaining the basic layout, with the underwater border. And use the wood and document textures for the frames inside it? I think it's a good idea not to waste too much space in the top of the screen, but the submarine DOES looks quite stretched in the new layout. Cropping the picture might be a better idea than squeezing it in like that.
The new yellow color for the text does make it stand out, put it clashes somewhat with the overall color scheme. How about using a slightly brighter gray (than the old version) for the text, and make the lower part of the font slightly bluish and adding a ripple effect to make it appear as if it's half submerged in the water?

I love your art style, but from a usability perspective the site could be optimized further.

Great little game. I foresee at least a couple of AGS Awards coming your way. I must admit I used hints at a couple of spots:

Spoiler

there's no way I'd figured using the acid on the outlet, and for some reason I never considered that there could be a hidden message on the postcard - though it did seem weird that it had no writing.

[close]

But overall the puzzles were excellent. If it wasn't a one-room (ok, two-room) game, I would probably criticize it for being too open, but it is actually great fun playing around with the different skills and elements of the environment. A couple of parts even reminded me of Bad Mojo, which is never a bad thing.

If you thing you might have to ask for scripting help on the forums, I'd really recommend upgrading to 3.0. Personally I barely remember anymore how the non-object-oriented code worked. If you're continuing work on an existing game, turning off "Enforce new style strings" and "Enforce object-based scripting" could help you keep your legacy code.

By "puzzle", do you mean a jigsaw/assemble-the-torn-up-letter puzzle? If so, I just wrote a module for Ghostlady which does exactly that. If she's ok with it, I'll make it publicly available. Currently it uses the 2x coordinates in hires mode, but I can easily add a parameter to make it pixel perfect since it uses DrawingSurface.

If not, you'll just have to create the sprites to fit the 320x200 res coordinates, as Gilbot said.

I think it looks good. But the flat coloring of the mountains and the foreground clashes somewhat with the painted quality of the sky. Depending on what you're aiming for, you could either add more texture (as in paint, not as in crazy photoshop effects) or try using a plain colored sky with a few stylized clouds. The mountains also seem a bit too crisp compared to everything else, and come off looking like a painted over photograph.

But the style is great. I'd like to see what kind of characters you'd use with this.

Did you change the name of the project folder? At least for me, the name of the compiled .exe will be the same name as that of the game's project folder (which also means that the warning when creating a new game that "You can't change this later on" is sort of bullshit, you just can't do it from within AGS).

Moving to Vancouver is one of my big dreams, and I plan on making it a reality - at least for a period - once the 2010 Winter Olympics are over. I absolutely adore the city for all the reasons Makeout Patrol mentions (I'm from Denmark - rainy weather doesn't deter me as long as the winters are mild). From a professional perspective I'm more interested in the city's video game industry than the movie business though. I already spent two summers working at EA's Black Box studios next to Canada Place, and while EA isn't my dream employer (Rockstar Vancouver on the other hand...), Black Box did seem a lot more relaxed than some of their other studios around the world.

Edit: Forgot to mention, another great thing about the city is its multiculturalism (as Makeout Patrol already mentioned) . As for the nightlife, I don't care too much, but I did have some great evenings at The Sonar and The Honey Lounge.

Edit 2: Oh, and how can you not mention Timbits! Another great reason to choose Canada.

Change the GUI's "clickable" property, like so:

Code: ags

gFlashlight.Clickable = 0; //assuming the GUI's script name is gFlashlight

Or just change the property directly from the GUI setup in the editor itself.

Very cool. This looks like it will solve a lot of problems for people working with FMV or prerendered cutscenes. I've seen several people in the tech forums having problems with black flashes when starting a video file using the internal video player, but rendering straight to background should solve that. I'm also quite impressed with the amount of animation you can store at that quality in a 6MB video file.

The best thing would of course be full integration with AGS, so it wouldn't need Windows to work. But I wonder, would it without further integration be possible to store all videos in a container format like speech.vox, so that players couldn't open the files outside the game? (On the other hand, I always did feel like a 1ee7 hax0r when I found ways to open external cutscene files from commercial games using smacker or deluxe paint).

I think it's a bit silly to spend time implementing something into the engine that could be done as a module in about half an hour. But by all means, if it's trivial to implement a filter-by-property function for inventory windows, I'm sure a lot of people - especially those making RPGs - would find it useful.

#define doesn't actually set the value (as "int c = -5" does) but rather tells the script to replace any instance of MY_CONSTANT with "-5". So your code would, on compile, read "a=b*-5". AGS doesn't accept those two operators following eachother, so instead do "a=b*(MY_CONSTANT)" and it should work.

Yes, Other Worlds is another excellent example. Simplistic, yet charming characters on top of photographic backgrounds found on the internet. And still it's one of the most immersive AGS games I've ever played.

The easiest method (in that you wouldn't have to create as many characters as the number of jigsaw pieces and the maximum number could always be changed) would be to store all the pieces, their current coordinates, their target coordinates and their graphics in a struct. They would be purely virtual items, and you'd write a simple rectangular mouseover check function. You'd use DrawingSurface.DrawImage to update the board, and to avoid a framerate drop while dragging a piece you could turn that piece into an Overlay while dragging it.

If you use a grid based structure (all pieces are imagined to be the same height/width), you would not even have to use true coordinates for their target location, because that could be a pain to set up. Instead you could just initialize each piece with a function like InitJigsawPiece(int targetgridx, int targetgridy, int sprite, int startx, int starty) where (startx, starty) would be true screen coordinates which could be assigned Random() values, and (targetgridx,targetgridy) would be grid coordinates (for instance top left field would be 0,0 while the seventh piece from the left and one piece down would be (7,1).

This may seem overly complicated, but in reality it would be a much more generalized function which could be reused for any jigsaw puzzle in the game. To make things super easy to set up, requiring little manual initialization, you could even assign all jigsaw pieces to a View, where loops would signify rows in the puzzle grid while frames would signify each individual piece. Views, Loops and Frames are all unlimited as of the latest couple of AGS versions. Your init function would then be something like InitJigsaw(int view, int x, int y, int width, int height) where the latter four parameters is the "playing field" and also act as the bounds for the area which the initial location of each piece can be randomized within.

Since the size of the grid is independent of the sprite sizes, they could be offset by (spritewidth-gridunitwidth)/2, (spriteheight-gridunitheight)/2. This would allow you to draw every sprite with a transparent border area and allow "notches" that fit into other pieces. A snap-to-grid functionality when releasing a piece close enough to a grid coordinate shouldn't be hard to do and would make things easier for the player.

In fact, this whole thing might be a good idea for a module. SSH, where are you?

Edit: I should say that I would never suggest this method in the beginner's forum if I wasn't aware that you've already made a couple of games with pretty advanced non-standard puzzles.

Edit 2: Also, check out the responses to this thread, though some of the code is a bit obsolete.

One word for you, Domithan: Pleurghburg. The simplest graphical style possible, yet one of the all-time AGS greats.

I must say I still prefer your original version with the re-colored coat. The re-proportioned paintovers in my opinion makes him look way too cute, not like a cool, sarcastic detective. There's something almost art-deco about the original's simplistic, angular style. And personally I find the attempts to shade of the coat unnecessary and visually a bit distracting since you already nailed the iconography.

Code: ags

if (keycode==32) {
 if (cBob.View == 3) cBob.ChangeView(8);
 else if (cBob.View == 8) cBob.ChangeView(3)
}

Hehe, yeah I originally wrote "last building", but when I saw your edit I changed it. And yes, it's supposed to look like a sail (like the opera in Sidney). I think I saw a documentary about the construction of that building on Discovery. If I remember correctly they even made a fake island to build it on.

That second to last building looks like it's going to turn into a Transformer any minute. . I was actually admiring Dubai's skyscrapers the other day in this photo. The city just looks unreal somehow.

This seems to be a problem in Firefox 3, probably related to the new zoom feature. I didn't know what you were talking about, then discovered I had Firefox two-point-something. After updating, I get the exact same thing. The program just came out, and the issue seems to also affect several Google sites (Google Docs has been reported on the Mozilla forums), so it can only be a matter of days before they release a patch.

Won't that shading be a pain to animate? As I said, I love the simplicity of the original sprite. I think the shading ruins that a bit. And while his arms may have been a tad short, I think it really gave a feeling of him being tall and slender. The re-proportioned sprite has that squat LucasArts stature where everyone look like hobbits. I much prefer the original's Trilby feel. You may want to work a bit on the cat, even without that extra white pixel it still makes be think he's blowing a puff of smoke or something. But perhaps animating the cat will help on that.