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While my first RON game, Night and Day, is being thoroughly tested by Renegade Implementator (if anyone else is interested, we can still use some help), I'm looking ahead at what else I could do that not involves creating any art.

Having a go at a remake seems a good possibility, but of course it should be a game that somehow benefits from that.

Did any one here try playing Black Sect? Did you finish it? The game is insanely difficult, at least by today's standards.
The whole game is timed and you can die, but there are only 5 saveslots.
There are over 60 inventory items, but you can only hold 5 at one time.
And it has 16 different action icons plus a few extra.
In addition, some hotspots are only 1 pixel big and a smart cursor wasn't yet invented in 1993.

Even following a walkthrough to the letter I had a hard time finishing it, and in the end I wondered what the game would have been like if I could have just experienced it the normal way, finding things out myself.

So, would anyone be interested in a remake like that? I already imported a few backgrounds and changed the interface, so by now I think it's doable to avoid the timed aspect and deaths and redo some of the puzzles to fit a look/action cursor system. I'll keep the original art as much as possible.

Anything I should consider when doing this (my first attempt after all)? Any advice? Are there legal issues involved? Is anyone else working on something similar?

If there's any interest, I could try to make a demo of the first few screens to show what the gameplay could be like.

thanks

I'm trying to find the boolean custom property value of a hotspot/object in the on_mouse_click function in the global script.
Something like:
if GetProperty("UsesText") == true do something first;
else do something else;
ProcessClick(mouse.x, mouse.y, mouse.Mode );

The manual gives this example:

if (hotspot[1].GetProperty("Value") > 200)
  Display("Hotspot 1's value is over 200!");

But how do I find the [1] then?

thanks

In the default game template, the cursor goes through all available cursors by right clicking, but that doesn't happen when the inventory gui is visible.
I take it it's this bit from the on_mouse_click function:
else if (button == eMouseRight || button == eMouseWheelSouth) mouse.SelectNextMode();

Is there a way to create the same behaviour when the inventory is visible?

thanks

I've done this:

Spoiler

ask Phil about mayor Gowen

[close]

And now nothing is happening anymore. Is this the end of the game?

Night and Day is my first attempt at learning AGS.
As I am uncapable of doing any art, I used mostly existing sprites and backgrounds from the RON community.

A mysterious advertisement in The Realiser fails to shock the citizens of RON.
Is Elandra Desmond the only one that sees the danger facing Reality-on-the-Norm, or do the townspeople have their own agenda? And how does the disappearance of Davy and Mika connect to it?
There are only two days left.

I don't think you must have played other RON games to understand this one, but that's something I'm hoping to get test feedback on.

Progress:
story: 100%
puzzles: 90%
scripting: 90%
music: 10%

Apart from music the game is actually finished, but I kept puzzles and scripting at 90% because I expect to redesign some of it after hopefully someone gave it a test run.

So now I'm looking for a tester to not only report bugs, but also to give general feedback on playability.
Is it too easy or too difficult? Too much/not enough handholding? Too much talk?
Things like that. Anyone interested (for a mention in the credits)?

As said I didn't do any original art, but to comply with the rules:



edit: Here's a sample of the music playing in Scid's bar: http://www.box.net/shared/yipv1d0ocgsrexvz7mzq
(No need to download, you can listen directly)

Night and Day is my learn-how-ags-works game. I started off trying to script things just for excercise, but now I think there is an actual playable game here.
I do still want to add music and maybe a few sounds, but I think I can work on that while the game is being tested.

So, is anyone interested in trying this out? If possible I would, besides bug reports, also like general feedback.
Like is there too much dialogue? Is it too hard/easy? Is there too much hand holding (or too little guidance)? Are there RON continuity errors?

I prefer to not give a plot synopsis here, because that is also something I like to discuss with a tester (including how much of it to give away on the forums).


thanks

edit: The game is now finished!
Look here for the announcement or  here for the AGS database entry with download link.

Hope you like it.

Hi,

Hopefully this will be my last tech question for a little while, cause I'm doing a final test run.
But... I tested my game from within the AGS editor by changing the start location of the playable character and changing some global vars and everything worked fine.

Now I made an .exe (F7) and suddenly some of the facelocation and facecharacter commands are failing.
'Characters turn to face direction' is set to false. I don't know exactly what that does, but in most cases the playable character correctly turns to the specified coordinates. But not always.

Example:
cChpaltr.Say("something");
Wait(10);
cMika.FaceLocation(330, cMika.y,eBlock);
//cMika.FaceCharacter(cChpaltr, eBlock);
Wait(10);
cChpaltr.Say("something");
Wait(20);
cLarry.Walk(158, 78, eBlock, eAnywhere);
cLarry.Walk(158, 80, eBlock, eAnywhere);
Wait(20);
cLarry.SayAt(70, 5, 80, "something");
Wait(10);
cMika.FaceCharacter(cLarry);
//cMika.FaceLocation(cMika.x, 0);
Wait(10);
etc

I put in the wait commands to see if that changed anything, but it didn't.
Here cMika does NOT face cChpaltr (=look to the right).
She does face cLarry, but much later in the sequence.
And after that she immediately faces back again, while there no scripted command to do so.

Most similar scripts don't give this problem but a few do.
Is this something with blocking statements?

thanks

Hi,

I'm using the RON template and I noticed the load screen only shows the last  5 saves. There is no scrolling so earlier saves are not accesible. Is this a setting somewhere?
I tried the game 'note to self' again for reference and it has the same problem. So maybe it's something with the template?

Any ideas?
thanks

How can I write something on the background and later write something else without losing the first text?
For practise I tried:

DrawingSurface *surface = Room.GetDrawingSurfaceForBackground();
surface.DrawingColor = 11;
surface.DrawString(0, 100, Game.SpeechFont, "First line.");
surface.Release();
// do things
Wait(60);
DrawingSurface *surface = Room.GetDrawingSurfaceForBackground();
surface.DrawingColor = 11;
surface.DrawString(0, 120, Game.SpeechFont, "Second line.");
surface.Release();

This gives the error variable 'surface' already defined.
The manual says: To do any further drawing, you need to get the surface again.
How would I do that?
Or is there another way?

thanks

Hi,

I set the MaxScalingLevel and MinScalinLevel properties of a walkable area to suit the playable character.
Later in the game I used a different view but that character sprite is bigger, so I want to adjust the scaling levels for that area in a later part of the game.

I couldn't find a way to set the levels in the script, so I've drawn a second walkable area over the first one with different settings. Then I used  RemoveWalkableArea(1); RestoreWalkableArea(2); where needed.
But apparently the first walkable area gets erased when you draw another oner over it (tried it a few times because I thought I erased it by mistake).

Is there a way to do this?
thanks

I did nested if/else statements before in my RON learning project, but this time I must be overlooking something.
I have this:

function room_AfterFadeIn()
{
 if (cChpaltr.Room == 34){ //Elaine is in church
   if (Game.DoOnceOnly("MeetElaine") == true){
     cChpaltr.Say("Something");
     //do things
   }
   else{ //already talked to Elaine
     cChpaltr.Say("Something else");
     //do more things
   }
 else{ //Elaine not in church
   cLan.Walk(285, cLan.y, eBlock, eAnywhere);
 }
}

I get a parse error at the else-line that says //Elaine not in church.
What am I doing wrong?

thanks

I'm trying to add standard reactions for certain inventory items.
In function unhandled_event there was already this code

if (mouse.Mode == eModeInteract){
  Display("That's not something you need to touch.");
}
else if (mouse.Mode == eModeLookat){
  Display("Nothing interesting.");
}
else if (mouse.Mode == eModeTalkto){
  player.Say("There's nothing to say.");
}

For money I added:
else if (mouse.Mode == eModeUseinv){
  if (player.ActiveInventory == iMoney){
    player.Say("That's not for sale");
  }
}

What I don't like is that the player says this everywhere you click on the screen with the money.
Is it possible to make it so that this reaction is only triggered when the player uses the money on real hotspots?
(that way it's more clear if you actually hit the hostspot or not).

thanks

Hi,

I'm trying to give a character a specific view when he's talking.
I assigned the view to character.speechview, but apparently the speechview doesn't show when I use SayBackground.
If I set the view manually, I will have to set it back when the talking has stopped (and I don't know how to do that either).

Is this possible at all?

thanks

Hi,

I have used SetViewport to lock a scrollable screen in a set position.
Now when the player is allowed to move around the full screen again I used ReleaseViewport.
However the screen makes a jump to place the player in the center of the screen.

How can I keep the screen the way it is (with the player off-center) and then allow the player to walk around the full screen?

thanks

Hi again,

I have a letter in inventory and when you look at it you'll see a closeup. To do this I created a new room with the closeup of the letter and ShowPlayerCharacter set to false.
To 'leave' that screen I used ChangeRoom(character.PreviousRoom) because you can be anywhere when you look at the letter.

Now I want the character to comment after reading the letter, but if I put it in Room_Leave it will display while still in the closeup, and that looks messy.
So to display the comment after leaving the closeup, it looks like I have to put that code in every room (if character.PreviousRoom == CloseUp).
But I'm hoping there is an easier way to do that...

thanks

Hi all, my first post here.
I've recently downloaded AGS 3.2.1. to have a look how everything works.

Because I'm completely incapable of drawing anything recognizable, and to have a quick start, I loaded the RON template and a few RON backgrounds and sprites.
I'm really enjoying learning this and the tutorials are helpful, but now I'm stuck with the following:

When there are multiple inventory items in the inventory window, they are overlapping.
It looks like this

And when they don't overlap, there still is no space between them (see the coins and the rope).
Is there a way to space the items so they're a bit apart, regardless of their size?
Or should inventory items have a specific size? Or should height and width be equal?
I tried resizing, but it doesn't seem to help much.

Thanks