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I hope a month isn't too long to dig up this thread, but this is one bit of functionality I'd love to see most in 2.73  .

Anyway, I had another thought. If CallGlobalScript is too messy, what about some sort of forward declaration? I know full forward declaration has probably been on the tracker for ages, but even a simplified version would work. I was thinking a version of "import" for script modules, so you could do something like:

Code: ags

//in a module

import global function foo(int bar);

Anyway, what do you think?

For my 2 cents, this SystemDoctor actually made my sister switch to FireFox permanantly.
(Mainly because we can't figure out how to get the $^*%!ing spyware crap OFF of the computer.)

Never had any problems. Some pages do load differently in FF, but usually that's because they were written for IE's non-standards-compliant quirks, and not through any fault of FF. That, and a couple of heavy-media sites don't like FF. (On that note, anyone know how to get Yahoo Music to work in FF? Will the IETab do it?)

HoN

Not sure if it's complete enough, but have you looked at Yake? It's an engine built on top of OGRE, and it has a couple of different physics plugins, and a vehicle abstraction class.

HoN

Prolly doesn't have all that you need, yet, but have you seen MakeHuman? Nowhere near done, yet, but it's pretty neat so far.

HoN

Having coded the module (well, copied it from the old plugin, anyway), I feel I can answer this...

The main use of an FSM is to help map out complex series of states and transitions in a way that is easy to understand and code. In particular, you do not need to know the current state to change it. You can just send the FSM a signal (like BE MEAN) and it will change the state accordingly. If you only have a couple of different states, or if all of the actions always have the same response, then a FSM is probably overkill.

HoN

P.S. To the best of my knowledge, no has ever used the module or the plugin it was based on, not even me.

Just to throw them out there, another couple of #D engines that take the bare minimum of actual CODING are Delta 3D and Reality Factory. I've never personally used them, so I'm not sure how easy thet are to use.

Unfortunately, with these (and, indeed, nearly any other 3D game engine) you'll find they they are overwhelmingly biased toward making First Person Shooters. They are certainly capable of more, but it takes significantly more work. Kinda like making an action game with AGS. However, in the long run, whichever engine you went with, the majority of the work would go into modelling / level design / etc.

I'm not trying to discourage you, just let you know what you're in for if you go this route. Switching to 3D doesn't double the work, it SQUARES it. I'd recommend modding some existing game first, to get an idea what's involoved. Neverwinter Nights has been mentioned already, or even any of the Quake or Unreal games.

HoN

I've honestly never played Sam&Max, so I'm not sure.

But, really, you should end up with whatever you want. You need to supply your own GUI and icons (and dialogs, for that matter). The module is just a scripting framework to make things a little easier. The sample game should give you a pretty good idea how to use it (despite that little glitch that I really am gonna get fixed someday. Honestly)

One thing to bear in mind... If you ever intend to use voice speech, remember that AGS does not automatically number the sppech lines in script modules, so any dialog used in this system will need to be numbered individually.

HoN

This may not be true, but it is not a joke. In truth, the developers of TADS and HUGO put this out to distract us, so we wouldn't realize they had shut BOTH engines down to facilitate the return of, I quote, "REAL adventure games".

HoN

Just noticed this, while playing around. "Auto-number speech lines" does not number any lines that are in a script module.

I'm not sure about this one, I wouldn't like it to be changing module code ... and if it did, it'd need a per-module option for whether to number the lines or not. I'd prefer to say that modules shouldn't really have any hard-coded speech strings in them, ideally.

Yeah, I can understand this. I mainly noticed it playing around with my IconDialog module , in which the user HAS to put the dialog into a module for it to work right.
(which I keep meaning to debug/update, but I'll probabky wait until 2.72 final, just in case you decide to continue updating the dialog system like you've started...  )

It may yet be possible to work around, now that I know about that limitation. I'll think on it a bit. If nothing else, I could do it as a template instead of a module.

HoN

Don't forget Eric the Unready!

For those not familiar, all of these Legend games were basically text adventures, but with a graphical interface. THere was a complete list of words that the parser understood on the side, similar to Bernie's GUI. On the one hand, this ALMOST eliminated guess-the-keyword, since the complete set was listed right there. On the other hand, Bernie's idea sounds a bit more ambitious, if I'm understanding it right, being able to add new keywords/synonyms during the game (right?), or at least not giving ALL the keywords away up front.

Looking forward to seeing this.

HoN

Just noticed this, while playing around. "Auto-number speech lines" does not number any lines that are in a script module. I can see how you might want that, if it's a third-party module, but if you made the module yourself just to separate some of the code, than you might want some of that speech auto-numbered.
Perhaps an option, or a prompt like it does for Display() ?

HoN

If you do use the encryption module, bear in mind that it is meant for files accessed with the File* commands, so you would still have to do the whole copy thing like in the example above. (This seems rather much to me, honestly)

On the other hand, it seems unusual that Windows still recognizes the file as a video file even after renaming it. Are you sure that you renamed the whole thing? Go into windows Explorer or My Computer, and open the Tools -> Folder Options menu, go to the View tab and make sure "Hide extensions for known file types" is UNchecked. If it WAS checked, you might have just renamed the file to "gamename.005.mpg" (or whatever), so it would still be recognized that way.

Hope this helps,
HoN

that last one is neat, too, but I feel it should be mentioned that the ads around it are not work or child safe. (Doesn't bother me, just thought I'd warn people.)

HoN

* removed the Novodex support since it was a bit of a gimmick

Right. You should go with ODE instead.   

HoN

Taking a look at myspace and how it works, I don't think it's really possible. Not without some major hacking, at the very least. Anyone who knows better do correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like the MySpace pages are generated on the server side by code that you don't get to change. You can edit the idividual sections, and do whatever you like with the html in those, but not with the layout of the page as a whole. They do this mainly so you can't cover over the advertisements, but the upshot is that they just don't let you do it.

If I am indeed correct on this, about your only option would really be to either a) live with it, or b) get some real web-space (there are some decent free ones) and put your page on there, possibly linking to it from MySpace.

Of course, all of this was from looking at a single MySpace profile for about two minutes, so I may be writing out my arse. 

HoN

Like "Sin City" the comic would be EXTREMELY difficult to do in animation. Not impossible, but really hard. Allowing some shades of grey but keeping it high-contrast (like "Sin City" the movies) would make things quite a bit easier.

Otherwise, I don't think there are any real tutorials around. Just study some good artists and movies for examples.

(Cabinet of Dr. Caligari the adventure game... that would be SOOO messed up, but I'd play it.)

HoN

Out of curiousity, would switching to DirectDraw surfaces make the Linux or Mac ports more difficult to maintain, or would it make any difference?

(Not that either of them have been updated lately...)  :

HoN

Re: line thickness

There are a couple books out there on comic book inking that go into more detail on this topic than anything on just drawing would. I recommend The Art of Comic Book Inking by Gary Martin.

One very basic technique that I recall is to use the lines to suggest lighting. For example, if you want the light source to be on the left of your character, make the lines on the left thinner, and those on the right thicker to suggest shadow.

Hope this is useful

HoN

I'd use it. (Well, I'd WANT to use it. Whether I actually ever got around o doing so...)
I was actually half-considering making this suggestion myself, but wasn't sure if anyone else would want it.

HoN

If that doesn't work (and you can't/won't shell out for MS Office) I recommend trying OpenOffice.org. It's is a very hefty download, but it's free, and, in my experience, usually works just as well as anything in Office.

HoN