Messages

Gilbot, I think you're right - that makes sense (I'm pretty sure it is bitmap since it really is pixel perfect - I've zoomed in on a screenshot in PhotoShop. If it was just resolution, there wouldn't be any difference except the drawn size, would there?).

I suspect there's no other way to extract the bitmap font other than copy-pasting it char by char into an SCI font then?

Shows how much I know I could have sworn that AA'd fonts were also in the setup program.
If there's no fix for it, perhaps I should just force it on by default, even though it's slower (it looks terrible without it anyway).

I was curious about another thing in the ttf rendering library as well: Times New Roman shows up really crisp at 12pt in Internet Explorer and Word, without any kind of anitaliasing. But if I import it into AGS at 12pt and doesn't AA it, it's drawn very crudely. Especially the 'W's look bad. Is there any other way to improve on this than dumping a screenshot of the full character set as it looks in IE and then creating a SCI font of it?

Ok, thanks for the info.

In Denmark the copyright is for 50 years after the recording (if the composer has been dead for more than 70 years). But of course I'd want it to be released in the US as well. I think the original copyright owners were German - I don't know if that would add even more confusion to the situation. I hope that the game will gain a huge audience, so I want any legal questions to be out of the way. Perhaps I should try to find an even older recording...

I've been trying to find some public domain recordings of Mozart operas for a game I'm planning (whether I get them or not can affect whether the game is even made, so this is kinda important). I haven't been succesful in finding anything online, but I found a cd at my local library of an opera performed back in 1937. So I'm wondering, would this make it public domain, or does the people who reissued it own the rights to the cd recording?

And what about public domain films? I have a list of films that ARE in the public domain, but my only copies of them are recorded from TV or purchased on VHS/DVD. Do I need to own an actual cellluloid print of the movie to be able to use it in a game, or would it be legal to scan it from the tapes?

I'm having a problem with antialiased ttf fonts. Whenever antialiasing is turned on, antialiased label or button texts will move down a couple of pixels (I'm not sure whether this is the case for RawDrawing of antialiased fonts as well). The height of the shift seems to vary depending on the size of the font, but I've experienced texts that jump 4 or 5 pixels whenever antialasing is turned on/off. This makes it impossible to  align certain texts precisely.

Also, the shift isn't an exact number of screen units, so it isn't possible to take precautions such as just moving the text 1 or 2 units upwards if the text is antialiased.

(The problem is very obvious in my game, as it has an option to toggle anitaliasing in-game, and the whole options menu jumps down whenever it's activated. But unless you force antialiasing always on or off at game start, anybody could experience it by using the setup program)

Winter 2005/2006

Isn't Maniac Mansion Mania originally a German project? Keep in mind that swastikas and other nazi symbols can't be used in the game if you want to distribute it to people in Germany.

I think there are plenty of AGS reference and resource sites out there, but reading this suggestion gave me a slightly different idea: Actually I think it would be quite interesting to put together a pdf book with essays and interviews with members from the AGS community. Perhaps a bit like the GTDs but less fragmented, and of course edited and layouted. Instead of the usual "pimp my upcoming game" interviews we see on most sites and zines, it would feature people who HAVE released games talking about their experience and the ideas behind them.

Nope, no website.  And there won't be one until just before the release of the full game. It would probably never be updated anyway

AGS does the clipping for you, so if you just call RawDrawTriangle it'll automatically clip. [...] You may have a problem with sorting however - drawing the close triangles on top of the far triangles. Is that what you mean by "limiting" the drawing action? There are several ways to approach this.

Hmm, yeah, sorry. Actually I meant sorting when I said clipping/limiting. I must admit that I'm still learning the 3D graphics lingo I'm working off a book that I picked up at the library about OpenGL programming, and although it's a bit different from AGS script, much of the theory and calculation stuff actually works in AGS.

I was toying around with some wireframe 3D using RawDrawLine. But since you can't fill areas with color, it didn't seem worth the effort to finish. If I should start again from scratch, I wonder if triangles wouldn't be the best approach? My main concern would be with clipping - I have no idea how to perform those calculations in AGS nor how to "limit" the drawing action itself.

Yeah, the translation source does dump all strings. What I meant was that the checkboxes in the regular text dump function didn't help me a lot since I had to dump the whole script anyway.

Um, yeah, I think my problem is the same as Ishmael links to. I must admit that it was a while since I tried it (seeing this message just reminded me of the problem), so I don't quite remember what boxes there are to tick. Probably the issue was that all my dialog is written as DialogRequests, so I had to dump script strings too.

Using the translation source to proofread is ok, but as it can't be reimported you have to implement all the changes manually afterwards. I was just wondering why the translation source was so much cleaner, although it too must have some kind of formatting system (or does it just replace according to string content? I don't think so, but I may be wrong)

Um, related to this, I was thinking: Whenever I dump my text to file  for proofreading, I get huge chunks of code in there as well (pretty much my whole global script). How come the regular text dump is so much messier than the translation source dump?

No, if the baselines are set up properly (at the character object's feet), it should work fine.

This looks absolutely wonderful. I love how you've somehow managed to create a non-rendered look. Usually I hate pre-rendered 3D, but with that texturing it almost looks hand painted. Reminds me of the Hildebrandt-brothers' style.

Rock on!

I'm also rellay looking forward to releasing the demo

The first demo (which was supposed be out in late April) is a pure interface/technology demo without any actual puzzles or gameplay, and I'm only releasing it because the full demo - an actual stand-alone game - may take a while longer.
I had promised to release the full demo in April, but due to work and my long overdue thesis, I ended up postponing it and calling off a planned interview with The Inventory. Then, I thought I'd better release the interface demo instead, to follow up on my promises. However, I started coding a really cool game feature and decided that it would be nice to show that off as well in the demo. So... it'll be a while more, unfortunately. I do hope something can be released within this month though.

Sorry about the empty promises.

(and its sequels)

I suggest you get the first one done before thinking about that!

Heh, good point - better not get too much ahead of myself. But I DO enjoy working on several game designs at a time. That way, if a certain puzzle concept is awesome but  just doesn't fit into the story of one game, it might work in one of the others. That makes it easier to "kill you're babies", because you're not actually killing them, just adopting them to another game

Good idea. Thanks!

I can't see any GetMusicVolume command, so try this:

int vol = 100 (or whatever the music volume was);
while  vol > 0 {
  SetMusicVolume (vol);
  vol--;
  wait(1);
  }