Messages

from the screens you posted the other day; i thought your character needed alpha more than it needed to be in 800x600

True , but I don't like the way that alpha channel sprites scale. Plus it nearly doubles my file size. I suppose you could cheat and import all backgrounds and non-alpha with color set to 16 bit, then change to 32 bit and import the alpha channeled sprites. I don't know if that could cause problems.

I'm heading into the implemention stage of development on Shadowplay, but before importing all the art in a specific format, I thought I'd ask you guys. I planned to use 640x480 resolution with 32 bit color, but a while back I realized that I really don't have any need for the alpha channel, at least not enough to warrant the extra file size.

However, reducing the colors to 16 bit give me a bit of slack, size- as well as performance-wise. So I've been considering using 800x600 mode instead. It does mean that all my GUIs will have to be re-done, and some functions rewritten. But character sprites have been drawn so big that they can probably be used without any problems. Backgrounds are resized from 300dpi originals anyway, and few finished backgrounds have been imported so far.

So what do you think?  Does the higher resolution make enough of a difference to be worth the trouble and the additional download size?

I'm pretty sure you can check one of the Game variables to see which OS the game is running on, so you wouldn't have to delete the avi to make it work on Linux (but you COULD make a Linux installer which just didn't install it, to save space).

They're not all that in-accurate, actually. I wrote a small function at the beginning of my script which stores the scaling at (player.x, player.y) in an int. If the coordinates are within a valid Walkable Area, it updates the value. If not, it just keeps the old one. I'm using that for a multitude of functions and haven't had a single problem with it so far.

Edit: As for the issue at hand, I'm having trouble picturing in my mind what you're trying to achieve. I imagine that you can't go directly between the two areas anyway (as they turn eachother off), so wouldn't it be easier to just handle the on/off on two different regions INBETWEEN area 1 and 5? Otherwise, could you post a screenshot to illustrate the problem?

GarageGothic: The whole Ben sprite is new, not just the up/down views. You'll notice he doesn't have that short disporoportionate cartooniness to him anymore.

Ah yes, I see that now. It's just that the up/down walks looked so much better than the old ones, almost like they were rotoscoped or something.

There will probably be tiny pauses between each FLC, but if you have a number of straight cuts in your movie to use as breaks, it shouldn't be noticeable.
If it's just an intro, perhaps you could write a startup program to run a movie outside AGS and THEN start the game? Without knowing Linux, I assume there are avi codecs and players for it.

If the screenshots are on your site, maybe you should offer a link

Edit: Thank you I'll go play part one now.

What exactly is the problem? Do you intend to publish your game on CD (as "run intro from CD" would indicate)? If the intro is 250MB and larger than your game, there should be plenty of space for both on a CD-ROM. Remember that most modern game installations are several GBs, 500MB are nothing.

Edit: The only thing you should be careful with is bundling multiple versions of the cutscene with the game and forcing the player to install them all. I remember that Eye of the Kraken had 3 huge, identical movies with a bit of localized text in each of them being the only difference.

Edit2: If you want online-distribution you could have the player download a separate movie files for each version and place in the game directory. Then you'd let the game check for the OS and for the presence of the file at startup. Perhaps you could make a still frame version of the movie for the Linux release, like in the disk version of GK1, for a smaller file size.

Edit3: What about the Mac version?Ã, 

The toggle box for date/time doesn't affect the auto generated names. It's for custom names only, and it allows you to input longer savegame namesÃ,  (I think its 18 more characters, when time/date isn't used).

There's not enough space to add a remark to the generated names, but as you can see the location in the thumbnail, it should be enough for most people to write names like "DAY 1 - after talking to police dude" or similar. My main reason for including auto generated names was that I've become too lazy to name savegames myself. Especially when playing AGS games I end up calling my savegames "1", "2" and so on. So I thought this was a good solution.

Thanks, yes that was what I was trying to say. It's not that it's a problem, but it should probably be documented. I struggled with my script for a long while until I discovered the cause for the wrong color.

It's so short it won't spoil anything I think. But it is a VERY nice demo. The most GK-like of the BJ-games so far it seems (the newspaper reading and the police station in particular). The animation was really nice. Are those new up/down walking views? They seem different somehow, but I may be imagining things. Anyway, they look great.
I also liked the way the door opened/closed on room changes, but it might get a bit repetitive if you have to go back and forth a lot. The map was sort-of difficult to read, I almost had to pixel hunt for the first couple of locations. Perhaps some more color on the icons, or desaturating the background map would help. Or even using a simpler map of Osaka.

The story seems very intriguing. I know very little about Japanese myths, but I hope you've researched the topics thoroughly so we'll learn something while having fun.

Is it just me, or did that police inspector look like Keanu Reeves?

Thanks for the comments guys. Funny thing is that I'm myself getting a bit fed up with the look of the gui (the windows, not the icons), so I actually intended to change it again for the finished game. We'll have to see...

Another thing that I should point out about the interface is that those "DAY 1 - EXT. CARBON ARC" plus the time/date, are default savegame names generated by the game if the player doesn't enter a savegame name of his own.

[Rotating 20x20 sprite 138 degrees (no problem at 137):]

The rotate sprite function is awesome, and not at all slow as I feared. However, it crashes whenever I use angles of 135 degrees and above. Problems start between 135 and 140, and this increment seems to depend on sprite size, although tiny sprites also crash the engine. On large sprites I get an Out of Memory message, on smaller ones just a generic error message.

I wrote the simplest possible script just to test it, so I doubt the problem is in there:

Code: ags

DynamicSprite* hest;
hest = DynamicSprite.CreateFromExistingSprite(289);
hest.Rotate(140);
hest.Delete();

And here's a couple of the error messages:

Rotating 20x20 sprite 138 degrees (no problem at 137):
An exception 0xC0000005 occured in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x004DF068 ; program pointer is +6, ACI version 2.71.869, gtags (289,16)
in Global script (line 5365)

Rotating Roger sprite (default sprite 2000) at 137 degrees:
Error: Out of memory: failed to allocate -76 bytes (at PP=6)

Rotating several MB large sprite at 135 degrees:
Error: Out of memory: failed to allocate -1364 bytes (at PP=6)

Edit: I should add that this was tested on 32-bit color 640x480 resolution. I haven't tried it with other settings.

A bit late, but I've uploaded some Shadowplay interface screenshots in the games' GiP-thread: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=8237.new#new

Or you could use the new beta (I know, it's for testing, not game development, yada yada yada) and use the DynamicSprite resize function.

Yeah, the conversation log is in screenplay format (except it should be "EXT. CINEMA - DAY", but this way works better in game terminology). The log interpreter even adds "(MORE)" and "(cont.)" if a piece of dialog is split across a page break.

Edit: By the way, seeing the features that CJ added in the new beta, I'm glad that I didn't rush the demo finished for today.

* Added DynamicSprite.Rotate function.

CJ, you're my hero!!!

I should probably go home and test this, but I'd might as well ask: It says in the help that the degree must be between 1 and 359. But the crop mode sounds like a very useful tool for other things as well. Would it be possible to either make it work for angle 0, OR add a specific crop mode for dynamic sprites? Thanks.

Frankly I hated the ending of Still Life and those responsible should be eviscerated with a rusty blade. But on to the Shadowplay related stuff...Ã, 

I didn't manage to wrap up the tech demo for today, but on the other hand I thought it was lame just to apologize for the 100th time. So I decided to post some screenshots instead, showing the interface. Click the links below the thumbnails to view full-size shots. I also threw in a dialog picture of Lucas, player character in the demo, sidekick in the game. If I cancel the demo, this picture will probably not be used as his asymmetrical hairstyle prevents it from just being flipped.
Oh yeah, please disregard the spelling errors in the conversation log. It was just some text I wrote for an interface demo I showed Modgeulator.

The icon bar

The conversation log

The save interface

And this is Lucas, the sidekick character
in the full game, and supposedly the player
character of the demo.

Edit:Ã,  All right, the pics and links should be working now. It turned out that only file in the first of the three selection boxes on Neole's upload page works properly. Strange...

Edit 2: I should note that these are interface screenshots only. Background is unfinished, hence the off-perspective bench.

You could put in a text in the beginning: "Steven Spielberg's 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade' shall henceforth be known as 'Indiana Jones and the Penultimate Crusade'"

Seriously though, I think that "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Solomon" is a bit too similar to "Temple of Doom". "Tomb of Solomon" or "Crown of Solomon" would perhaps be better.

It seems that numbers (at least) up to 31 in the palette window are displayed differently in-game. Obviously 1-16 are pre-set, but when I tried to RawDraw color 31, which should be a really bright blue, it came out as a light grey. It would seem that there is no way of selecting clean blue (except base color 9), and you'd always have to add 1 red or 1 green to any amount of blue. Is this correct?