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1) Check out DrawingSurface.DrawImage in the manual.
2) Write your own function, you'll need it anyway if you use DrawImage for the shells so you may as well use the same code for tank-to-tank collisions too.

In his defense of the ownership of the copyright, he has cited ongoing game development projects, but the only materials he has are years old, and don't hold up in court.

Not to mention forged! I don't get how people think they can get away with photoshopping their own evidence in this day and age, the Muggles woman did the same thing to claim that a number of Harry Potter characters were plagiarized from her barely circulated kids books. One thing is making unsubstantiated claims, another to falsify evidence in a court case, which is straight out fraud and could lead to jail time. Idiots!

In-depth exposure of Mr. Langdell's trollish business practices on EuroGamer and coverage of the current court case courtesy of Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Edit: In brief - he's a dickhead who's trademarked the word "Edge" and threatens to sue anybody who uses it in a video game or comic book related context without licensing it from him. Several people have already been bullied into paying him instead of spending money taking him to court, but then he got greedy and sued Electronic Arts for using the title "Mirror's Edge"... Hilarity ensues.

Bookmarked! Thanks, wonkyth - only took a quick look on the front page, but just the attention to site structure make me feel this will be very useful.

Depends on how you set up the rest of the game (for instance does it have more than one room, do you use walkable areas etc.), but you can't really go wrong with characters, and they have the benefit of built-in support of multiple sprites for facing different directions, and can be reused in multiple rooms. I can't think of a single reason to choose objects over characters.

Personally I'd use DrawingSurface functions to render the bullets, but characters are fine too though you need to create a separate one for every bullet/shell on-screen at the same time.

Heh, I was just reading the ruling (linked to from Rock, Paper, Shotgun) - so happy that this troll finally gets what should have been coming to him for so long. It was great entertainment as long as it lasted though, especially that time the indie game makers renamed all their games to have the word Edge in the title. But much like the crazy Muggles woman suing J. K. Rowling - also with awesomely bad forgeries to prove her case - it does get old after a while. Let's hope the people who gave in to his scam get at least some compensation.

Now, what happened to that Limbo of Lost guy Steve Bovis? Did that epic piece of plagiarism ever go to court?

What kind of stores have you been checking? I doubt those ties are even produced anymore. A thrift shop would be your best bet, I think, and definitely cheapest - from my experience those places are the elephant graveyards of bad taste, and a great place to find kitschy shirts too. If there's any "retro fashion" secondhand clothes shops in your area, that's a likely but probably more expensive place to find it too.

Thanks for the answer, clarvalon. Mono is starting to look more and more attractive, though I'm beginning to feel that my grand plans for writing a cross-platform feature-extended (but editor-compatible) AGS runtime would be to reinvent the wheel now that you're so far into developing XAGE.

I really don't know where to go from here - there's so many creative AGS'ers writing ports, like you, or extending the engine's feature set with plugins, like Calin's been doing. It's awesome that this is happening, and I too want to take part in the community driven improvement and expansion of the engine, but it's slightly worrying that many of these advances are mutually exclusive. Doesn't help that CJ is so secretive about his vision for the future of the engine either, but I do understand he'd rather not appear to make any promises or keep being asked when a specific feature will be implemented. I digress, I know, but I just feel slightly anxious about the future of the game engine I intend to base my livelihood on for the next five years or so

Anyhow, many thanks for the explanation. It does suck a bit that you need a Mac OS X system to develop for Apple platforms, but I suppose I would need one to test Mac ports of my games on anyway

Maybe I'm just not very sharp in the legal department, but I really have tried my best to understand the licensing terms for Mono and yet I'm still uncertain what the deal is. From what I could gather, the Mono API is free and open source, yet in their on-line store there's the proprietary Visual Studio Mono tools and also the MonoTouch devkit that only seems to run on Mac OS X. Is the latter really a requirement for developing iPhone/iPad apps? I mean, I don't mind paying to license a useful product, but I'm not planning to buy a Mac within this lifetime.

I would be very grateful if somebody could please clarify what the terms for using Mono for a commercial product are, and what if any limitations in platform support the free version has. Thanks.

but I still give due credit to Burton for the role he played. Albeit vastly different than films such as Nightmare or Corpse Bride which he had near total creative control over

I'm calling bullshit on crediting Burton with "near total creative control" over Nightmare Before Christmas - yes, he did write the original outline and design some of the characters, but the real creative talents behind it are Danny Elfman and Henry Selick and his animation team. Not that I don't recognize Burton's influence, but credit where credit is due, and sadly most people never even heard of Henry Selick thanks to the film being marketed as "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas".

For the first question, you can use Game.DoOnceOnly(const string token):

Code: ags

function cMystMan_AnyClick() {
  if (Game.DoOnceOnly("TalkedMystMan") cMystMan.SayAt(20, 360, 600, "Blah Blah Blah.");
  else cMystMan.SayAt(20, 360, 600, "I already told you: Blah!");
  }

Or, if you want to use it throughout the game and possibly have more than two replies, you could check out the MultiResponse module.

For the colored text, it would probably be easiest to write a custom Say function that displays a GUI with two labels - one with red text, displaying the name of the speaking character, and one blue displaying the spoken String. Putting the name above the spoken line is less trouble than displaying it in front of the text with the dialog linebreaking around it, but that's possible too (could be done either with DrawingSurface functions, or stick to the above, but add a number of blank spaces equivalent to the width of the character name to the beginning of the dialog String).

Of course it should be possible to die, otherwise all sense of danger is lost the moment the player figures out the trick. I remember a scene in The Longest Journey at the witch's house that seemed very scary and had a great sense of urgence - that is, until you realized that even if you remained passive, the witch never got any closer to you. And yeah, that kinda ruined the terrifying atomosphere

What I was advocating though, wasn't zero danger or no challenge, but rather a way to make the game a bit more lenient in terms of quick reflexes and perfect handling without losing the more experienced players by coming off as too easy.

I agree, it started out with some interesting film suggestions that I went to look up on imdb/wikipedia - but lists happen. Would maybe have helped to title the thread "Suggest a great movie that we probably haven't heard about".

I suppose Limbo on the Xbox360 could be placed in this category as well. I like the term "cinematic platformer" - never came across it before, but it's very fitting.
Not sure I would call the first Prince of Persia "cinematic" though, since there's very little story development and the levels are more or less interchangeable, but for the second game it's certainly true.

Another genre description I've heard for this type of game was "acrobatic platformer" - perhaps more often used about their 3D successors like Assassin's Creed and Tomb Raider. But I think that label makes the very good point that the player character is more agile and mobile than in ordinary platformers - and this aspect could be a possibly way of avoiding the trial-and-error gameplay, and even more so when combined with the idea of "cinematic".

For instance, imagine a mechanic where if you fail a jump you may still survive by grabbing onto the ledge and drag yourself up, this is already considerably different from the binary make-it-or-die approach of, say, Super Mario. Now, add on to that the "cinematic" aspect - we want the action to feel choreographed, meaningful, not just dependent on pixel-perfect player control. Let's assume that the developer, in the role of "director" of the film the player is the main character in, not only designs the levels but is also allowed to subtly guide the action, much like the gamemaster in a tabletop roleplaying game - unless he's a total sadist - will try *not* to get the player characters killed just because they made a poor decision. We want the player to have a good experience and not get frustrated, this isn't a game with multiplayer or high scores, so player skill isn't a core element - of course he should feel challenged, but not at the cost of pacing and immersion.

So to return to the jumping mechanic example, say we allow a fair bit of error margin to allow for a perfect jump and an even larger margin for failing but catching onto the ledge. Now there's a good chance for the player to feel success from a perfect jump and a feeling of first terror then relief if he falls short but saves himself at the last moment. You can add other director controlled factors to this to create more excitement. Since you know the speed and default jump distance of the player, you already know where he's going to land the moment he has pressed the jump button. But that works in reverse too - you can fudge the jump distance if it helps the drama, for instance having him land closer to the edge making him feel he "just barely made it" rather than "that was easy". By changing such a "simulated peril" setting you could even make different areas feel more or less threatening without *actually* putting the player in danger or changing the difficulty of the challenge.

Imagine a chase scene with the villain closing in from behind - let's try make it feel like a real action movie and have the player fail a jump and struggle to safety as the bad guy closes in. If we played this fair, the only way to achieve it would be to make a chasm almost as wide as the player's maximum jump distance, but that'll only mean a lot of players falling to their deaths first time around and starting the sequence over with some of the excitement already lost. Instead, force him to fail the jump - wherever he takes off from (within reason, not ten meters away) he'll always get across just far enough to catch on to the ledge. Yes, it's inconsistent game physics, but few players will analyze the scene enough not to think they themselves fumbled the leap, or that the gap was wider than they estimated.

Another archetypal scene that comes to mind is the opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy during his escape the Peruvian temple rolls under a closing stone door, loses his fedora, reaches under the door and grabs it a fraction of a second before the door slams shut. To achieve that in game form would be very difficult under normal circumstances - most players would either fail or make it out easily, never feeling threatened. Applying the director/choreographer logic, you could adjust the speed of the stone door very closely to the player's actions. Let's assume the door doesn't move at a smooth constant speed since it's thousands of years old, so the moment Indy starts rolling underneath the door (the game already knowing he'll make it and by what margin), we can accelerate the closing speed to leave just a wide enough gap by the time he's through. Same thing with reaching for the hat, however confident he feels, he'll always manage in the nick of time, and the moment he's retracted his arm... we slam the door down with a loud bang.

Now that's cinematic!

Sorry for rambling, I wrote a bit about this approach to game design (which is one I would personally employ for most types of single-player games) for a not yet posted blog entry, so these ideas have been running through my mind for a while. I realize I didn't really address any of your questions, but I think the main point I wanted to get across was to use scripted events vs. player control together to create more immersion while allowing players with a wider range of skill levels to enjoy the game.

Also, you should totally watch the Making of Another World video - I actually wanted to recommend you an article on Another World that I believe was printed in Edge Magazine. I read it online, but I can't seem to find it on their site now. Maybe they put it in the subscription only section.

Personally I'm hoping to see some of the original background art from GK1. In the "Making of" video from the cd-rom version you get a glimpse of the intricate brushwork that went into the paintings, but I have a feeling that most of that attention to detail got lost in translation to 320x200 res. All the hand drawn artwork for the (non-remake) VGA Sierra games was amazing. I recall spending hours admiring the production art used to illustrate the "Hero Magazine" booklet that came with QFG4 and rereading the 8 page "Shaping of Shadows of Darkness" making-of section in the hint book.

The only downside to this book is that I'll now have to buy a coffee table to keep it on.

I would like to see a simple lock objects position feature for the room editor. I'm always dragging my mouse a little when selecting them and can rarely get a stationary lock on the darn things!

I agree a lock feature would be convenient, but you don't actually need to click objects to select them, just use the object dropdown menu in the room editor like you would do for hotspots or regions.

Holy fuck how I look forward to this book!

"The Art of Sierra" (interview with author at The Artful Gamer).

Well, you could store all the room widths/heights in a struct or array that you refer to, but then you either have to enter those values manually or iterate through all rooms on startup to gather the data. If you explain what you're trying to do, perhaps we can suggest another workaround. (For instance, why do you need the height/width for a room that is not currently being displayed? What are you using the values for?)

Not without switching to that room, no.

There's no built-in function to do that, but you could use the Tween module to fade one object out and another in for a similar effect (if either frame is identical to the background it covers, you'd just need a single object).