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We are working so much about 3D area, and 1024x768 resolution is ok... but, 32-bit color feel me worried; there are any way to use about million of color for a better graphics quality?

Why? 32-(or, basically 24-)bit colours mean it is capable of displaying up to 2^24 ~= 16.7 million colours. How many more colours do you really need?

AVI and WMV are two kind of file-extension; what codec i really need to use for in-game videos? And, for example, if i want to use MPEG2 codec for video in avi file-extension what i need to do?

AVI and WMV are basically "container" file types, so whether a player can play your videos depends on whether he has the suitable codecs installed in his own system. So, to quote the manual entry of the function PlayVideo():

The second type of files that AGS can play is anything supported by Windows Media Player. This includes AVI, MPG and more. However, in order for these to work on the player's system, they will need to have the correct codecs installed. For example, if you create your video with the XVid codec, the player will need to have XVid installed to be able to view it. These types of video cannot be included into the game EXE, so you will have to place them separately in the Compiled folder for them to work.

In other words, if the player can play the clips with media player they most likely can view them in the games, otherwise they just cannot view the clips. So, to ensure the players can view your clips, either you:
(a) encode the clips with more "standard" codecs, such as MPEG2, etc., that most people would be able to view;
(b) use OGG Theora instead;
(c) include the necessary codecs with the download of your games or point to the locations for downloading the codecs somewhere (like, in the game manual, etc.); or
(d) don't use any FMVs.

Personally, for displaying fixed width fonts under low res. modes I'd recommend using an SCI pixel font set rather than TTF.

For example, this set I use contains almost only characters 8-pixel wide (with the exception of the space character, which is 4-pixel wide, but it could be easily changed with say Radiant's font editor).

I don't think it looks like Courier though. It's actually not hard even if you paint your own SCI font (just open an existing one and paint on it).

The only disadvantage in using SCI font compared to TTF in this case is that SCI font sets support only 128 characters, so the text strings in your game must contain only ASCII codes 0-127 (whereas if you use a TTF you can display ASCII 0-255).

*Edit: AGI --> SCI: My ignorance 

This thread is better for posting offers to help with games.

Dunno if the admins are aware of this. 
Also, I couldn't find any Larry Vales threads in Completed Games.   

That's just because they're classic (serious here) enough to not be released after we migrate to these new forums.

I'm not quite sure what you're after, but if you're say, talking about calling two different functions according to different conditions, you can always do something like:

Code: ags

function fun1(...){
  ...
}

function fun2(...){
  ...
}

function room_RepExec(){
  if (...) fun1(...);
  else fun2(...);
}

What? Trilby's Notes or the Special Edition? Thought the SE was released in 09?

From the error message posted in the first post, the game was using AGS V2.62, which is indeed an outdated and unsupported version (though this is the definitive version that I will use), so it's difficult for us to help anyway, unless Yahtzee recompiles his game with a newer version of AGS.

This?

You shouldn't need to do the checking constantly, just declare that boolean variable as global and check it in the GUIs buttons' script.

Well, according to the change log, win98 was discontinued since V3.1.1, so if he really was using V3.1, that platform was still supposed to be supported (though I think most people use XP or better when it came out, so it's actually unsure whether it really worked on win98 due to insufficient testing).

Unless the behaviour has been changed, the timers provided by the Timer functions in AGS should still be counting when the game is paused.

This actually caused a really hard to track bug in the beta versions of Pleurgburgh, as there were many timer puzzles in that game, so if you paused the game (say, bringing up the inventory screen, and this 'bringing up inventory screen' action was actually essential to solve some of these puzzles) during such puzzles and then the timer expires you'd be stuck and could not control the game thereafter.

That's why I personally avoid to use the timer functions and just use counter variables that are being decremented manually (in repeatedly_execute() or repeatedly_execute_always() depending on individual need) as they're under one's full control.

What's next?

Or, is this:

HeHe, you just.....

the next topic?

The images won't load unless you click the links first anyway, so my recommendation is to find a better image host (you may use this too).

When you import a font (be it a TTF or a SCI bitmap font) into your game via the editor, the font would be compiled into the game, so you don't need to provide the font files separately when you distribute your game. (A problem may arise if the TTF is copyrighted, but I think few people care about that.)

Note that the SCI font formats supports only 128 symbols (i.e. only characters with ASCII value < 128 could be displayed) and currently AGS supports only the symbols in the 0-255 ASCII range of a TTF, i.e. if the TTF has extended symbols not in this range (like CJK languages in particular) these cannot be displayed. I'm not sure about the codes of the latin accented letters. If they're within the 0-255 range you can just import a TTF and display them without any problems, but if some of them are out of that range you need to work around it by say, replacing some symbols that are within the range but you won't use with those accented characters.

Hardware upgrade more likely, unfortunately, as 256MB main memory and onboard 64MB graphics are really low-spec. now. (And for a laptop you may not able to change the graphics part anyway, so here 'upgrade' possibly means 'buy a new system', double unfortunately.)

If it's Windows upgrade, even more likely, is that things would run even worse considering the spec. of your system. It's probably the same if you update your Windows, as it's possible that new updates cannot help much (if not worse) on performance of low spec. systems now.

Well, that actually depends on one's own taste (as the topic of this thread suggests, 'your favourite' sort of things). Everyone can agree or disagree with whether one interface is good or not, as long as it's mainly one's own preference, so I was just saying that I like the parser, not necessarily implying that everyone will find it good. In fact, as I mentioned I was actually not good at playing parser games but I still like it as it provides a form of immersion that hardly many p&c games would provide.
IMO there's nothing wrong with 'totally false sense of freedom', and we all know that whatever you can do are supposed to be programmed into the game (so, it's not AI or free roaming games or whatever which I don't like in general), but it does feel more like the player is involved. With choosable options there're still many occasions that made me feel 'Why option x isn't here? Why can't I do this?'. There's nothing wrong with either form of interfaces themselves. Often times it's just a choice in presentation so hopefully it will give the player an intended feeling on the gameplay.
For the 'wasting 10 minutes typing to get something" thingie I think we have mentioned about it already when we talked about the 'guess-the-word' problem.

Well, it's the same with point and click interfaces. There are a lot of p&c games with only very limited generic responses. The problem with p&c is, most of the games could be completed just by trial-and-error clicking and in order to lengthen the games or make them harder they just threw in terrible pixel hunting or mind-teasing puzzles that had no connection to the story (not that pixel hunting and puzzles aren't always good, but they're good only if they're not overdone).

The main issue here is, as you mentioned already, the implementation, which is up to the designers. It's extremely difficult to develop parser games, as it's quite hard to make balanced and reasonably smart responses due to the complexity of the possible input (maybe due to limited computing power and memory at that time too), but that doesn't mean it cannot be done properly, provided the designers have the patient and talent. On the other hand, while it's easier to design definitive responses in p&c games many designers still fail to implement the system well, like even in many commercial games, there are only one or two hotspot in some rooms making them empty and boring (mainly due to laziness IMO). AQ was a bit overdone in its extremely comprehensive responses though (sorry Mills ).

So, games made with either form of interface could be both good, provided the designers have put enough effort in them.

I know I've not been around for a little while, but I'm pretty sure this is new news.

Not so new, actually.

Yes, me too actually (I know, it's again about parsers, but in most AGI games you could at least move the characters with the mouse and navigate through the pull down menus, so it's not completely OT ).

A good example was LSL1. In the VGA SCI remade version, the way they treated the "password to get through a certain door" puzzle was completely rubbish (well, the remade version was inferior to the original in EVERY aspect anyway, even in the graphics department).

However, as mentioned, there are a lot of difficulties in designing parser games (that's why few people made them anymore). The "guess-the-word" is truly a problem, especially when the player is not a native speaker or have limited knowledge in words, like a younger child (say, how on earth could I know the word "hitchhike" when I played "Search for the King"? ). This makes the games more difficult to be translated to other languages too.

Also, as parsers are quite complex for them to interpret the input of the player accurately it is easier to have more hard-to-discover bugs. One classic example is the bug in LSL2 that affected only the very last command in the game. That bug alone made me unable to complete the game for a whole 10-year-period (not kidding)...

This applies to IF games also and I know that a number of IF require the player to do some obscure actions or enter some obscure words, making the games impossible to complete without knowing some in-jokes say, for example.

Princess Marian I - XI!

Princess Marian I - XI scored more than 10 cups in total!

[DynamicSprite.LoadFromFile()]

PCX is unsupported for the editor only.

Since it was not mentioned that similar change was made to the engine, it's still supposed to be supported, and PNG is probably not supported yet for the engine side.

At least, that DynamicSprite.LoadFromFile(), DynamicSprite.SaveToFile() and SaveScreenShot() support BMP and PCX only at the moment (unless the manual is not updated).