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Well, then just go with the .mp3s. I find that midi music has to be very well written not to get on your nerves quickly. As long as the total download is less than 30-40 MB I don't see it as a problem to have 15 MB of music.

If it works fine in Windows, it's probably an incompability with the DOS mouse drivers used in DosBox. You could try disabling pre-loading of DosBox' mouse driver and load mouse.exe manually inside DosBox before running your game.

Licensing issues isn't with the content of the files, but with the file format itself. Frauenhofer who own the codec doesn't allow it to be used for commercial projects without a license fee. So creative commons or not, if you ever intend to sell a game, use .ogg instead.

Is it a USB mouse? Perhaps you could try getting a USB to PS/2 adapter?

It seemed to solve a different but similiar problem here

As someone who just scripted a wave effect function using Math.Sin, I can tell you that they're very useful indeed. I think about half the code in my game uses mathematical functions in one way or another. You can easily script a typical adventure game without them, but if you ever want to implement visual effects such as realistic shadows, surface deformation, draw non-standard geometrical shapes (ellipses etc.) or rotate graphics and re-calculate the offset to align them on-screen, it's a must have.

Also, more action-filled games can use Maths functions to calculate physics, for instance I just did a particle system which uses some of the trigonometry functions (not really necessary, but it's fun to integrate cool stuff).

Edit: Something as simple as a scroll or screen fade function can also use sine calculations as an alternative to a linear falloff.

how many free dummy characters can you use and make?

As of recent AGS versions, unlimited. Replicating the view, loop and frame settings to a dummy character doesn't seem like more work than retrieving the same information and applying their graphic to a button. What do you mean by "drawing surface cuts the animation"?

If you update to the the soon-to-be-final AGS 3.0.2 you could just use DynamicSprite.CreateFromDrawingSurface before releasing the background instead of using CreateFromBackground (or your new method of doing double the work). This should also be quicker as the surface is already in memory.

Edit: I should mention that I tested CreateFromBackground, and it seems to work as it should, at least in the latest beta. There were some problems in earlier versions with GetPixel returning incorrect values for drawn surfaces though, so perhaps your issue is related to that bug.

Overlays don't support variable transparency, so you can't fade them. You could use a text label on a GUI to display the text instead and then fade the GUI by gradually changing it's transparency in repeatedly_execute.

If Steve Bovis is the guy in the middle of this picture, which seems likely as he looks a lot like this guy who shares his names and also resides in Kent. Could they both be identical to THIS Steve Bovis give or take a few pounds? If so, I guess we know where the art budget went.

Oh my, isn't google-stalking fun?

Edit: Oh, and apparently he kicked ass at the Martial Arts Summer Camp. Maybe that's how he lost weight?

The part in Gabriel Knight III where Grace hears a baby crying in the attic of the vineyard mansion kind of creeped me out as well.

Ooh yeah - I guess I repressed that one. Very nasty...

Indeed. That whole sequence was shock full of suspense:

Spoiler

From finding something that could be a baby inside a trunk, but then hearing Montreux approach and having to hide quickly, to that creepy old hag in the wine cellar. "Pommes bleues! POMMES BLEUES!!!"

[close]

Another scene in GK3 that startled me was:

Spoiler

Investigating the crime scene where Prince James' men were murdered, and Gabe's flash of insight when realizing that the killers left no footprints.

[close]

Gotta love how he posted this at the Wintermute forums just over a week ago. Apparently they ran out of games to rip:

Hi, I am on the look out for a 2D/3D background artist for the sequel to LIMBO OF THE LOST. This is a % of royalty position for the right person. [...] if you can construct in 3D using an editor like Unreal 3 etc all the better.

Now people are actually joining the Wintermute forums just to poke fun at the guy. Quick, someone get themselves into an embarassing legal mess so AGS will not be forgotten!

DynamicSprite.CreateFromBackground just copies the rooms background image and not your drawings above it.

Are you sure? If so, this is changed behaviour, and several of the older modules (HyperText module, lake module, dropdown menu module etc.) that use the background as a buffer for RawDrawing onto DynamicSprites would be broken.

Did you Release() the DrawingSurface it in the same game loop as drawing the background? If so, try putting a Wait(1); in-between the functions and see if it changes anything. It could be that the background isn't updated until the screen refreshes.

Yes, that's indeed what will happen. But wouldn't it be easier just trying it out (like I just did) than writing the code and then post it on the forum?

Did you Release() the background's drawingsurface before creating the map sprite?

SSH beat me to it, but see below for elaboration:

Check the "General Settings" pane in the editor and scroll down to "Text output". Most likely the "Custom text-window GUI" is set to a value different than 0. What the error is telling you is that the GUI number you have set either doesn't exist, or it was created using the "New GUI" rather than "New Text Window GUI" option.

The "main event script" means the global and room scripts. What the tutorial is saying is that you can't use normal script language and call functions and whatnot from inside a dialog script but only use the dialog specific commands and use run-script for anything else.

I don't have much experience with the built-in dialog function, but you're missing a quote at the end of this line:

Code: ags

Jack: "I thought we'd get drunk and go for a joy ride!

Great idea! But I'm not sure I really see the point in using buttons. They offer the same proplem as DrawingSurface of not supporting walkbehinds and will always be drawn in front of the real characters and objects no matter their baseline. Creating a bunch of actual characters and storing their associations in a struct wouldn't be a huge amount of work for the end user and is much more flexible.
For instance, I use a lot of dummy characters to fake different light and shadow effects. I have one function called GetEffectCharacter, which runs through the struct looking for free dummy characters and return a pointer to them. This function can be accessed from any other script. Once I'm done with it, I ReleaseEffectCharacter and the dummy character is again available for use by other functions.

Where exactly is this control panel>speech setting accessed from to train voices?

He means Windows' own "Control Panel" (accessed from Start menu). There should be a "Speech" option available after installing SAPI 5.1. Potentially you could set up a unique profile for every voice actor if you just record them reading the text from the training wizard. I'm not sure, but I think it might also  be a good idea to deactivate the "Background adaptation" option for the default profile, or the speech detection could become confused over time when you sync different voices using the same profile.

Echoed voices may be possible if I add some cleaning stuff after the recognizion. I haven't test it yet and I'm not very optimistic about it.

For echoes, assuming they're digital effects and not due to poor voice recording, you could always run the sync on a clean version of the audio file and then substitute it with a filtered version before compiling the speech.vox.