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Hey, that's real interesting! Where can I learn more about this batch "language"? I see potential

Hey, there is hope for me! I was a bit reluctant about Microsoft publishing it, especcially cause I don't have an Xbox, but if they will have a new publisher, maybe they'll release it on the computer? Then again, if a lot of scripting and work has been done already (probably), then it's still gonna be on the Xbox.

Hmm, I better start researching these "port" thingies..

Well, there is a plugin for a character control system that should just that, but I think it might be nice to be able to do this by scripting, since it's more interesting that way, and there's more freedom.
Now if on room enter after fadein I put some sort of routine for a character, that works in the background (i.e. only non-blocking commands that don't interrupt the gameplay), with "points" to stop, like for example you could have the character walking near a shop window, put a randomize function there, and an if statement to see what came up, say 0, 1, or 2, and in each case the character "chooses" to do something different. I could also make a seperate function to do the whole randomization thing, asking just at which point and which character needs to be handled (or maybe a few otehr things, it depends).
Now this, if it works, would cover the "AI" in the room, but one thing that would be nice is to control characters in other rooms at the same time, for example if I want to build up a day/night timed world, where eachcharacter has a routine which is subject to changes, surprises, etc, and characters do things in other rooms while we are not present. This could be handled somehow in the global script perhaps?

This is quite a complicated idea, though, so if I look at just continuing the random sequence of events, then if NPC1 decides to walk into the store, and you have another room for the store interior, and you want, for example, for him to buy new shoes and throw out the old ones when he gets home, then scripting this part in the global script is best (for the variable of the shoes object appearing in the trash for example), but what happens if, a few seconds later, the main character follows the NPC into the store? depending on how much time has passed, the NPC could be just picking up the shoes, or trying them on, or standing in line, or already buying them, going out, etc.. Then the character must continue to his house, or keep wandering, and have the shoes in his inventory, so if he comes across the same shop or another shop, he doesn't buy the shoes again...
So, are timers room-based or can they be global, to do this?
It would be great if we could control characters (NPCs) in different rooms, through the global script, simply by giving coordinates and such to walk in the other room, but actions with objects and even walking in other rooms isn't possible yet as far as I know, so maybe just setting the state of all objects and characters on room enter before fadein, according to a global timer and I feel so tired all of a sudden, too much writing.......
Gawd, so many questions...

P.s. I don't quite remember, is there a function for a timer, like Timer (number, count, whatever), or is it just the while loop:
while (count!=0) {
//do this and that
}

Whoa, many thanks! I especcially find that one before last useful .
They're all great, and I've only seen one or two before.

I just unwrapped my copy of "On-line", a computer magazine, and was surprised to see an amateur adventure game mentioned there (not one made with AGS though..)  - Out of Order. Basically, there was a very warm recomendation there to play it, which is surprising every time as these games aren't much noticed by the press. This magazine has mentioned adventure games quite often, though.
It's in hebrew, but I could scan it if anyone's interested, there seem to be many israelis here. There's also a review of the new Prince of Persia game in the same issue.

Whoa, nice, do they ship everywhere?
If they do, this site would be quite the find for me!
edit: Not too many AGs though.. Oh well, Imay get CMI from there.

Great MAGS game! who did the voice acting? It's quite interesting, and by that I mean unique and un-repetetive, though the accent is a bit muffed sometimes. Very high quality, and great second puzzle:

Spoiler

repeating action puzzle is very good. really solvable in terms of actually thinking about it rather than clicking about. Only too bad there wasn't any notice that informed us that he went away and why (I mean, him saying he has to go to the bathroom, or alternatively him going to a doctor cause of vitamin overdose. Heh

[close]

I havn't finished yet, only been playing for a few minutes.

P.s. Oh, and I forgot to say that there was a glitch when running the game, and it doesn't play full screen, so I had to make it 640X400 resolution to at least see it. Damn XP for having 800X600 as the smallest resolution . This is probably a problem when downloading or something to do with my pc, not ags.

edit: Finished, it was fun, and a funny ending!

I vote for cpage's entry, it's awesome!
All the others are great too, and darth's is stunning (it isn't participating though, is it?).

Damn, how'd you do that? hehe

Where can you see how many votes each has?
edit: never mind, bottom of page..
GF to the throne! Maybe this'll do some good in convincing lucasarts... See this: www.savesamandmax.com (shameless/ful plug, sorry ).

I think there should be a way to do this with scripting, but anyway, while browsing my ags folder, I found that I have the character control system plugin.
I can send it, but I'm sure I downloaded it not too long ago, I just need to find where...

Make sure the foreground color (i.e. text) is different from the background color/image, maybe that's why you don't see the text? Most likely that's not the problem though, so could you specify a bit more what the problem is? Does the GUI stretch more than it should with the amount of text on it? Are the borders working?

Actually, the last brace belongs to the function, so make sure there are two braces at the end. Just pointing out.

Actually, I can't find game.skip_speech_specific_key in the manual at all. I noticed it in the future text file. What version is it in?

Also, would game.skip_speech_specific_key = '.'; work? I thought there's a numeric ASCII code for each key.

Thanks .

edit: Ah, found it, in the beta. Great feature
The ASCII table doesn't list all keys, such as full stop or delete. Does that mean these can be used without ASCII codes?

That's odd, I thought at first that there would be trouble with this, because MoveCharacter would pause the script, but as far as it says in the manual, it doesn't, and instead of the MoveCharacterBackground function (which I must have imagined) there is MoveCharacterBlocking.

MoveCharacter (CHARID, int x, int y)

Starts the character CHARID moving from its current location to X,Y. CHARID can be either the character's number (as GetPlayerCharacter returns) or its ID set in the Room Editor. If the character cannot get to X,Y it will be moved as close as possible.
Control returns to the script immediately. The character will move in the background.

It's possible though that MoveCharacterPath is blocking... It also ignores walkable areas, which can be a problem. Maybe a parameter to determine wether it's blocking or not and wether it's direct?

Well, there's a list of keycodes in the manual, so as far as I know you can choose one key to skip speech by setting this variable to the key's keycode. It's set to 0 by default to indicate that there isn't a specific key to skip speech, and any key can do that.

Do you mean the textbox GUI that pops up on the Display command? or do you mean a screen of some computer or tv?

I've never experimented with the MoveCharacterPath function, but that should work for this, I believe.
Set up the character's start room and coordinates, and put each point in the path you want him to take, like it says in the manual:

MoveCharacter (SOMEGUY, 160, 100);
MoveCharacterPath (SOMEGUY, 50, 150);
MoveCharacterPath (SOMEGUY, 50, 50);

I think that should work.

I think the pillars look flat because they are shaded differently than the original. One thing taht bothers me is that all the greenery -- the grass, the trees, and the bushes --  all seem to be the same color, almost, where in the original some were lighter. The water is spiffing, but I it seems like the pool is deeper on right.. Maybe it's just the perspective.

A great remake of the old background!

Wow! I really like this style and perspective! Well done making the water look transparent, maybe what's missing is a bit of waveness? Then again it's a swimming pool, they're usuall very still if no one is in them.. I can't really find anything to critic, this style seems to look better without much shading, especcially cause the atmosphere seems so bright and shiny Maybe add something of a shine to the windows?
What's the rectangle of light on the floor near the pool caused by?
I understand it's a scrolling room?
It seems to be isometric, but different..
This is a great crisp style in my opinion.

edit: When I open it in photoshop there are some white dots on the edge of the front door step. That could just be the compression. What did you make it in?
And I'm interested in seeing how a character would look like in this style. Is this background for a game?