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I think Strings are definitely the way to go. Pixel data cannot be read back without SSH's very hackish ReadBMP Module which is pretty slow. And as you yourself noted in the other thread, declaring a large array will bloat the file size and take up memory space even when it's empty.

If it's for a public module, I don't recommend using list boxes. The chance of conflicts with existing GUIs is large, and as you say, there are limits for the number of GUI objects.

He did say "team", and not "company", if that's something.

Ahem...

Neocom is the concept I had for the name of a game development company for developing adventure games.

Yeah, that has puzzled me too - I have multiple databases in my game and just declaring the structs bloated the file size by several megs. Fortunately they compress very well, so it's not a problem when distributing the game.

This may look like spam, but I got forwarded this link from my editor and thought it might also be interesting to others here - especially to those in the community who are trying to earn a living from their games.

Videogame Marketing and PR: Vol. 1 - Playing to Win by Scott Steinberg is now shipping and available for order. The volume contains over 200 pages of insider commentary including a foreword by Electronic Arts, 3DO and Digital Chocolate founder Trip Hawkins and offers all the secrets needed to help both beginners and experts alike sell more games, increase review scores and make headlines around the world.

Go to http://www.sellmorevideogames.com/ to download a PDF version of the book for free. I'm not sure how long that offer lasts since they seem to be charging $6 for it normally. I'm sure that the book is somehow meant to pimp the guy's consultancy business, but at least parts of it look quite interesting - especially the final section with contributions from game industry people.

Well, pretty much anytime (with the internal score being an exception) you want to display the value of an int to the player, you need to convert it to a String first. Then you can assign that String as the text on a GUI label for instance.

Ah, sorry, I didn't notice that you were using AGS version 2.62. I don't think buttons had script-o-names back then. I don't have the older versions of AGS around, but the function you want to use is called SetGUIObjectEnabled in AGS 2.62. Look it up in the manual to see the correct parameters for it.

Having worked with localization professionally, I can only agree with Snarky that forcing identical translations for identical Strings is very risky. Is this only true for dialogs or for all Strings in the game? If the text-substitution for translations is done purely by String-comparing the original text with the translation source, I'd suggest that - somwhere down the line - the system be entirely rewritten with unique String IDs for every original String.

Well, you said you had a certain situation where you wanted it disabled, right? So that event must trigger the function. Without knowing what it is, I can't tell you exactly where to put the code.

I assume you're using the interaction editor, so when the player/game performs the interaction you want to trigger the code, you choose "Run script" from the interaction editor menu, then click "Edit script" and paste the code I gave you.

When you need to activate the button again, do the same except with the code:

Code: ags

btnIconInv.Enabled = true;

You just set:

Code: ags

btnIconInv.Enabled = false;

If the "When interface disabled" property in the game options screen is set to "GUIs grey out", which it is by default, the button should now be greyed out as well as unclickable.

I've also recently tried to contact Dimitris on adventure-eu.com email as well as his address at theexchangestudent.com but unfortunately received no reply to either. This was in the end of May .

What happened to the second GF entry (I can't remember who did it off the top of my head)? I liked it.

Perhaps the person in question realized that the anagram had already been used by one of the SomethingAwful entries which SpacePirateCaine linked to.

Rockstar Games presents their most disturbing title yet:

I think monkey wants to use it in a module for public distribution, not just his own game. Perhaps the end user doesn't feel like restructuring all his code just to use a single module.

I assume you mean the inventory gui in the default game template? If so:
The grey box is the background color of the GUI itself, not an image. You can change this to any other color, or put a background image using a sprite with the same size as the GUI. I don't know why this isn't working for you.
If you want transparent areas of the GUI (and have transparent areas in the background sprite), set the background color to 0. You can do the same to the border color. If you do this, labels and buttons on the GUI can't have antialiased text however.

Just use the buttons to change the SelectedIndex:

For the up arrow:

Code: ags

if (SavedGames.SelectedIndex > 0) SavedGames.SelectedIndex--; //make sure that we can't go higher than the newest save

For down arrow:

Code: ags

if (SavedGames.SelectedIndex < SavedGames.ItemCount - 1) SavedGames.SelectedIndex++; //make sure that we can't go beyond the last save

As for the second problem, FillSaveGameList() is always the correct way to update the list. Why do you need to turn the GUI off and on again while doing so?

It surely doesn't hurt to use eEventGUIMouseUp, but as there are situations that need you to reset the button position without the mouse button being released (such as moving the cursor away from the button while mouse key is still pressed), it does seem a bit redundant to have multiple instances of the reset code.

But wouldn't that move the entire Button one pixel (/screen unit) up and left?

Ah yes, my bad. My game doesn't use any graphics for buttons so it looked fine when I tested it.

Also surely you'll need a matching eEventGUIMouseUp condition to move the Button back down, so it doesn't just drift off the GUI after a couple of presses?

Well, as I said: "Of course you must then also store the *mybutton pointer globally and add some code to repeatedly_execute to reset it's position once it's either been clicked or the player has moved the cursor away from the button and let go of the mouse button."
I think that would be a better solution than just eEventGUIMouseUp, as the player could move the cursor over one button, hold the mouse button, then move it over another button with the mouse button still held.

It seems that it's offset by exactly one pixel, and due to the 320x200 grid used by AGS there's no way to counteract this in hi-res. If your game is in 320x200, you could do something like this in on_event:

Code: ags

if (event == eEventGUIMouseDown) {
    GUIControl *mycontrol = GUIControl.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y);
		Button *mybutton;
		if (mycontrol != null) mybutton = mycontrol.AsButton;
		if (mybutton != null) {
			if (mybutton.Text != "") {
				mybutton.X = mybutton.X - 1;
				mybutton.Y = mybutton.Y - 1;
				}
			}
		}

Of course you must then also store the *mybutton pointer globally and add some code to repeatedly_execute to reset it's position once it's either been clicked or the player has moved the cursor away from the button and let go of the mouse button.

Alternately, you could script your own system using labels instead of buttons (one way of identifying the labels that should work as buttons would be to use different fonts and check Label.Font), but labels can't have background graphics so it would be text only.

The font is called Adler. I added a little bit of noise in PhotoShop, but you can't really tell the difference from the original.

That's a very interesting idea, to move the text onto the artwork, MashPotato. But I think it would work slightly better if the black area on top was removed altogether and the sky extended all the way to the top getting gradually darker. Something like this:



I do prefer the original (and my own) version though, as it looked cleaner and didn't compromise the art. Also the red, white and blue (plus stars!) of the sky and text together is a bit too patriotic for my taste.