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Unrelated question: is there any way to toggle between full screen and window mode during the game? I could only find the Windowed property in relation to this, which is read-only.

No.

Though someone (SSH?) wrote a plugin that allowed changing those options in the .cfg file and restarted the game with those settings.

Edit: Not a plugin, a VBScript, but here it is.

I'm guessing that GetPixel returns COLOR_TRANSPARENT (which is very likely defined as -1) for RGB(255,0,255) colored pixels no matter their position in the palette, so check whether the color value is COLOR_TRANSPARENT before using it as an array index.

Code: ags

int pal_index = Surface.GetPixel (i, j);
if (pal_index != COLOR_TRANSPARENT) {
  Surface.DrawingColor = _C8PaletteMap [pal_index];
  Surface.DrawPixel (i, j);
  }

What loop number did you put? The first loop in a View is 0.

Object.Animate(int loop, int delay, optional RepeatStyle, optional BlockingStyle, optional Direction)

You should indent the line if you want to run normal script commands from within a dialog script. Just put a couple of spaces or a tab at the start of the line and you should be fine.

For those too lazy to check wikipedia, this should clarify the basics:



(I can't help wonder if outrageously camp behavior is alright, I mean they can't discharge you for lip-syncing to Barbara Streisand and Gloria Gaynor, right?)

Object.SetView(int view, optional int loop, optional int frame)

Well, it is possible with background animation, but you'd have to do it manually (i.e. set up a timer, check for when it runs out in rep_exec(), switch background frames, set a new timer, repeat). With objects you can set the delay for each individual frames in the View editor.

I can't really tell if there's an overall lighting difference between the backgrounds or it's just the light above the door. If the latter, you could simply use an animated object for the door area. If it's the whole background, you just have to import a secondary background frame (click the "Background to display" drop down menu in the room editor and choose "Import new background"), then use the BackgroundAnimationDelay property under "Settings" to specify the timing.

For a thread that started out in full-blown Alex Jones mode (and which frankly I gave up on posting in yesterday), I'm happy to see how reasonable all the arguments turned out. Yay for the AGS community.

My own current beef with copyright isn't related to willful piracy but rather how the law limits creativity and makes for a poorer culture. If you haven't watched the documentary RIP: A Remix Manifesto, I urge you to do so.

Anyhow, I was watching this TED talk about YouTube and copyright a few weeks ago, and it really started me thinking about how Google (and by extension YouTube) potentially stand in a position to reinvent copyright and media licensing on a very practical level. I fully believe that Google, if they are indeed a force of good in the world, with their connections and massive user base, could - if they put their minds to it - reshape the way the industry views ownership and licensing. And best of all, it could happen totally independently of international law (which, let's face it, would take decades to change) - the only thing they'd have to do would prove to the media conglomerates that there's money to be made.

Recently I was looking into the cost and bureaucracy of clearing music rights. One of the games I have planned is set in part during the glam rock era, and it would of course be awesome to use a few Bowie or Bolan tracks, but with the current state of things that's just not gonna happen. Just finding out who owns the rights not only to the composition,  lyrics and arrangement, but also to the specific performance/recording and the mechanical reproduction rights is a full time job in itself, and of course there's fees to be paid every step of the way on top of the royalties. Add to that the fact that prices go way up the moment you want to use a song in an interactive context and the only viable option is that I'll pay some talented amateur musician to write a few songs "in "he style of..." instead of using the real thing.
Consequence: My audience gets a less authentic product and the artists I wanted to pay homage to won't see a dime. Of course my little game isn't gonna make a dent in the wallet of Sony et al, but imagine this happening on a larger scale. What if, instead of me having to pay thousands of dollars per song, Google made arrangements with the music distributors that allowed me to use the songs for, say, 50 cents or a dollar a piece per sold copy of the game? Possibly coupled with a web page with links to purchase the songs on iTunes that opens when the game exits (or better yet, treat the songs as having been purchased by the customer already and simply triggered from within the game - in much the same way that I, owning a copy of Dark Side of the Moon and a DVD of The Wizard of Oz am entitled to sync those two up in my living room without violating any copyrights).

Things have to change soon, not just because of piracy and failing economic models, but because our way of using media has changed monumentally during the last decade. Copyright isn't evil per se, but the current implementation is too cumbersome and costly for anyone not part of the industry. There is money to be made for the copyright owners, and changing the attitudes towards what constitutes infringement would not just let them focus on actual, destructive piracy, but also hugely improve the image of the big bad publishers - all it would take would be the right middle man, and Google/YouTube seems a likely candidate in my opinion.

How have you named the speech audio files? My thinking here, since you say it works fine with Ego, is that possibly you've used their full script names rather than only the first four characters of the name + number.

Oh yeah, the alien goes off on some rant at the end about how humanity is going to blow itself up with the Solaranite (sp?) bombs, is that where it's from?

It was a stupid idea anyway.  Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid...

Don't say that, I would have played it for sure. And in any case, "Glen or Glenda: Quest for the Angora Sweater" is still up for grabs

Really?  Well, that bodes well for one of my intended future projects, Plan 9 From Outer Space: The Adventure Game.

You realize that already exists, right?

Edit: And as for film noir - Kiss Me Deadly (1955). I don't recall seeing it referenced in any game (apart from my own  ), but it's noir at its finest. Also an excellent film to look at to compare the way Grim Fandango and Discworld Noir recycles noir-tropes and plots would be Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, one of the best noir paradies ever.

Instead of using enums (which I personally find annoying to work with because adding/changing one in a module header requires a full recompile), you could set up either parallel arrays of Strings and ints (combined in a struct or as two separate arrays), or simply an array of Strings that hold both the "name" and the int/float value separated by a special char. I used this approach for my own "emoticons" within dialog that are then parsed to change the character faces and of course removed before displaying the dialog String. Works great.

Coincidentally I just came across this article about actually "Finishing a game" - lots of good advice. I'd also recommend you to check out whatever postmortems of indie games you can find, Gamasutra has tons of them, but Dave's Blackwell Convergence write-up and the recently posted AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity postmortem are good starting points.

Also, and this is totally not related to games, one of my personal sources of motivation and a great inspiration in terms of how to approach a project, is Robert Rodriguez' book Rebel Without a Crew, about the making of the $7,000 indie film El Mariachi. Brilliant reading - for a small taste of Rodriguez' micro-budget creativity, check out his Ten Minute Film School. I think the main lesson to take away from it is to trust your instincts and use common sense to work with the resources and time you have available instead of trying to mimic how it's usually done in the industry.

I wish you the best of luck with your project. It's nice to see that I'm not the only person crazy enough to ditch the 9 to 5 world for an uncertain future in indie game development (and if that doesn't work out, I'll just be a mighty pirate instead).

I wouldn't anything that looks that much like a penis!

No, no, not the penises. You should go for the ones with the nipples, tits never hurt anyone (at least not in moderation).

Rick, you can be my wingman anytime!

Roger-fucking-Ebert! (Personally I have no beef with Ebert's stance on video games, I did however lose any kind of trust in his reviews after the unfair bashing of Kick-Ass)

I use my left hand to control the mouse during periods of carpal tunnel-like symptoms, always with inverted buttons. Fortunately that's a lot less often after I got a drawing tablet which also acts as an oversized touch-pad (good thing I did too - my current mouse is designed for right-hand use only).

Indiscreet question for the non-ambidextrous people: So, uh... online porn, how is that working out for you?