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That's right, folks, those hearing aids aren't on the blink after all. The second installment in the Apprentice trilogy is now available for public download!

Check out the game entry here:

http://www.agsforums.com/games.php?action=detail&id=435

Or our official website at:

http://herculeaneffort.adventuredevelopers.com

NOTE: Game includes several original jokes.

My band's website is now online! You can check it out and download audio samples from http://www.pyrotones.com.

Enjoy!

So I'm working on Apprentice 2, and I ran into an interesting bug. Or, at least, it appears to be some sort of bug.

In one of the rooms I'm using the repeatedly_execute script, and it speeds up the delay on the main character's idle animation. I have the delay on the idle animation set for 17 seconds, but when you go into the room with the repeatedly_execute script, he repeats his idle animation much, much faster (like about 1 second between every repeat).

Has anyone else encountered this?

Thanks,

Geoffkhan

P.S. I also noticed that when the character is playing his idle animation, it doesn't set off the 'character[EGO].animating' thing. I was trying to figure out how you would make it so that when you talk to another character who is playing his idle animation, it would wait for him to finish before starting the conversation. But I solved that issue by using this:

while (character[TEST].view != 73) Wait (1);

(being that 73 is the normal view for the character, and that the character's idle animations are stored in a separate view)

Now wouldn't this be nice:

character[EGO].idleview

That way you can check to see which idle view the character is using, which would be useful if you were using multiple idle animations -- switching between several. Then you could check which one was being used.

Thanks,

Greg

P.S. CJ, is 'increasing number of available hotspots' and 'more dialog options' on your to-do list for the next beta? Working on Apprentice 2, and I really need those, please. Actually, to do with the dialog options, it's just that one of the conversations has 31 options. If it's a big deal, I could always attempt to split it up into several topics.

And I appreciate all your work on AGS, CJ, I really do.

Ug, I'm starting to sound like the Master from Apprentice.

Back to work!

Hi guys,

Just wanted to post a link to my content-filled blog: http://geoffkhan.blogspot.com/

You can learn many new things here, like wacky slap-bass riffs and such. It's brand-new, so there's not a LOT of stuff on it. Yet.

Thanks, and please post comments!

Hi,

Here I am working on the scripting for Apprentice 2 and I run plain out of hotspots! Yes, in this Three-Screen Scrolling Background I indeed have over the maximum of 19 hotspots planned.

Do you think that's a limit that you could increase, CJ? I need about 25 for that particular room.

Thank you so much for your time and effort!

- Geoffkhan

Hi,

I've done Google searches and stuff, but I'd rather have people's personal opinions on domain hosting. Basically what I want is a cheap _____.com domain name and about 50 megs of space and as much bandwidth as I can get.

Apart from that, PHP would be nice, but I'm willing to go without.

Any suggestions, folks?

I'm going to be starting a collection of small Jamfonts for the musicians here. What is a Jamfont exactly? It's in soundfont format, but it isn't one-shot samples. Mixed in the plain notes are stacatto notes and short riffs and slides, etc. Here's a quick MP3 demo:

http://www.sonic.net/~schlae/herculeaneffort/slapbassdemo.mp3

Interested? Download the slap bass Jamfont here: http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/sbdemo.zip (by the way, this Jamfont works best at about 95 bpm, but it should work at other tempos all right, too)

Note that this is only a beta version -- I only took about 15 minutes putting it together. Also notice that this is only a beta version. I wanted to see if you guys think it'd be useful and then I'll put together some big Jamfonts of wahwah guitars, distortion licks, pop basses, and more.

Enjoy!

P.S. Notice that little smiley I put after the "Enjoy"? Imagine the artist who drew that, knowing that millions of people would be seeing it. That reminds me of that person who drew the little stick figures for road signs...

Dark Stalky piqued my curiosity. Sue me.

What is your favorite brand of shoes? Adidas? Reebok? Nike?

Forgive me, not sure if there's a similar thread, but this should be interesting.

What are the things that you hate in adventure games? I've played lots of adventure games, and here are the things that annoy me. As a game developer, it is important to know the things to avoid.

- Mazes. I hate mazes unless there is some sort of puzzle (for example an inventory object that will point in a certain direction like the flag from Grim Fandango)

- Missing interactions. As soon as I run into one, the game just goes down a notch. Everybody should put in an "unhandled event" in their game just in case.

- Keyboard controls. Why can't you control the character with the mouse (like standard adventure games) in games like Monkey Island 4 and Grim Fandango? I don't see how programming it would be THAT much harder (besides a pathfinding system).

What are things you hate in adventure games?

Ahah, you're thinking I'm looking for a platform game engine for AGS? Well you're wrong! I made a platform game engine for anyone to use or learn from. My scripting in it was kind of messy, so you can scratch out that "learn from" part.

Anyways, I made a quick first level with a big scrolling map. It's pretty straight-forward to make levels in it--just look at the example map.

Well, here it is: http://herculeaneffort.adventuredevelopers.com/lf.zip

I may mention that it was originally designed on a slow computer, so you'll probably have to take out the "SetGameSpeed" thing in the start of the script.

Thank you and enjoy!

I've been doing some scripting and here are a few little things I ran into. It would be nice to have...

1. A few more sound channels. (not really THAT necessary, but all the same cool)
2. Non-looping ambient sounds (not sure if there's a practical way of scripting this)
3. RawDrawImageTransparent (like the normal RawDrawImage function, except you can specify the transparency level -- now this would be useful)

Anyways, I hope this is not too much to ask for, but I would be extremely grateful if these were implemented in AGS.

Thanks,

Geoffkhan

I found the AGS calculator plugin lying around just now, so I've decided to host it (and some of the other plugins) because I see that the website for it is frozen due to bandwidth problems.

Here's the URLs:

AGS Calculator Plugin: http://herculeaneffort.adventuredevelopers.com/plugins/agscalc161.zip

AGS File Plugin: http://herculeaneffort.adventuredevelopers.com/plugins/agsfile10.zip

AGS Scaling Plugin: http://herculeaneffort.adventuredevelopers.com/plugins/agsscaling10.zip

Hope this helps!

Just within a few minutes, I noticed the spiffy new forum design, complete with "Adventure Game Studio" in the upper right corner of the screen -- just in case you forgot where you are.

Maybe this is CJ's way of saying sorry for his evil April Fool's joke.

Yes, yes. The little magical webhosting angels bestowed me with free hosting (with much bandwidth also). I am so lucky!

Go there now and listen to my songs! And download free soundfonts!

http://www.memyselfandi.necron.uni.cc

Thank you, little magical webhosting angels!

I have no idea what this is.

It looks to me like some energetic fanatic for the game, Apprentice, that desperately wants to get the part as Pib for the talkie version.

Any I keep telling him, "No, we already found the most awesome voice actor for the part. No, please, I really don't want to watch your 'audition video'. Hey, what are you doing, didn't you hear what I said? Turn off the VCR already! Aw man, I don't want to see this. This is really stupid."

Well, you get the idea.

Hi,

I'm looking for somewhere to put my music so people can hear it. What do you recommend? Soundclick.com?

I would also prefer something where you wouldn't have to register a user to be able to listen to the music.

Thanks!

I've finished my first MAGS game, called Evil Enterprises!

It features:

- 320x200 3D rendered backgrounds
- 32-bit alpha blended sprites
- full MP3 soundtrack
- voice!

Here's the link to the download:
http://herculeaneffort.adventuredevelopers.com/EvilE.zip

And here's a screenshot:


Enjoy!

Hi,

I was wondering if we could set up some sort of soundfont exchange website or something. I have many original commercial-quality soundfonts that I'm just dying to put out there on the net.

The site could have some sort of point system, where you get points for uploading soundfonts -- the better and more rare soundfont gets more points. With those points you can download other soundfonts. You can also preview the soundfonts with low-quality MP3s to see if you'd want it.

What do you think?

That last contest was fun with the theme song stuff, so I thought this contest could be similar. This week's rules:

- Make an original theme song for any character; one that already exists, or one that you create.

Other than that there are no restrictions.

Also, I will be giving out prizes to the top three entries -- one prize of your choice:

- War drums (Celtic Bodhran drum, and a Kodo drum)
- Slap Bass (with wah-wah effect)
- Harpsichord

These sounds are very good, and cannot be found anywhere else. They are available in Soundfont, Gigasampler, Fast Tracker 2 (XI), and MP3 format. I can also do a few other formats, too.

Have fun!

EDIT: You also need to post an image of the character your theme song is about. That will help me judge it when the contest is over.