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I was wondering if anyone here has any particular recommendations to make regarding composing software. I've got a MIDI keyboard and can compose some basic tunes myself. Where I struggle is with timing so I would ideally want an interface to easily correct my wrongly timed compositions afterwards.

I'm not too concerned about the initial capture/edit program's ability to load patches etc. If it can export / save as a MIDI file, I can easily load it into other software for final composition and OGG file generation to use in AGS. It's that initial place to capture multiple melodies, fix my mistakes & save as MID.

If it works on a Mac, that's a big bonus, but Windows is fine too.

Thanks in advance everyone and anyone with any thoughts about this.

After too many deaths and frustrated attempts to get further in Returnal, I started to ponder whether the concept of a roguelike P&C game was ever explored. To my knowledge, no game has ever built this cycle of try-die-repeat fully into the gameplay cycle.

The closest thing would be Sierra's style of game design with permadeath due to a wrong decision. This would then lead to a more frustrating experience where you had to save frequently to prevent too much backtracking.

Elements I'm thinking of in particular are:

• Death being a core part of the game process, automatically reverting you to the start.
• Random level design (screens linking in a new fashion after death or dialogues mixing around.)
• Something that does "carry over" from one run to the next, eg some statistics or items that you can unlock.

It's just a random question I'm pondering at this stage. Does anyone know if there was ever a point-and-click that incorporated rogue-like elements? The genre lends itself more to linear storytelling (with some branching paths), but it could be a fun thought exercise for future game design...

[Porting Kit]

Hi all,

No idea if anyone else is interested in this, but just thought I'd report the steps I took to get to the ideal (for me) development environment. I got a swanky new Macbook Pro M1 for Christmas, having gone to the Mac back in 2006 and never looked back. So using AGS has always been a more challenging setup, but Bootcamp made that easier. With the M1 chip though, there's no Bootcamp / free Windows virtualisation (I'm not interested in that anyway, since that means a whole Windows install *just* for AGS). I've been looking into alternative options and am glad to have a very, very workable solution.

• Using Porting Kit to create a custom wrapper, installing VS Runtime 2015 + DotNet 4.5 in that, then installing the latest AGS into that wrapper. This creates a stand-alone application which basically just runs AGS for me, but makes it possible to utilise the Mac file system. So no doubling up of files, able to swap clipboards, etc. Works great. Only exception is running the AGS games. I might need to play around with DirectX options a bit more, but that's where the second piece of software comes in...
• Daily build of ScummVM (Intel version, running through Rosetta since the M1 version won't work for me, even with xattr -cr usage). With AGS now running on ScummVM (who would've ever dreamed that would happen), I can easily run my test-versions through ScummVM instead. This is a great way to test out my game as I'm coding/building it in AGS.
• Other pieces of software that are Mac-native and help: CHM Reader for the AGS Help file, Aseprite for pixel art, MilkyTracker and Garageband for music, Scrivenerfor writing.

In short, I'm just super happy to be able to run my full AGS production environment on MacOS this way. Yes, parts of it are a bit hacky and held together by duct-tape, but the whole solution works like a dream. And it's running on that very energy-efficient and blazingly fast M1 processor.

Again, not sure if this helps anyone, but the portability of the full AGS editor into MacOS in this way, completely for free, is an amazing step forward for me. Of course, yes, I could run AGS from a Windows laptop, but I'm much more comfortable on MacOS and the various pieces of software on that OS I've come to rely on over the years. Hope it helps anyone else looking to explore this option. I for one am having a lot of fun working on some games on my Mac again.

[imgzoom]https://www.jaapwrites.com/img/street-wip.png[/imgzoom]

I've been working on this one for a while. The idea is to build an adventure game in a fictional US-based city. This is quieter area of town with some shops with some apartments above them. I'm looking for a style that would work, be realistic but also still not too realistic looking (since that would increase development time by... a lot.

Any feedback on the style, the lighting, the colour palette, etc, would be greatly appreciated.

The coffee shop & post office (on the corners) are the more basic ones. The electronics store still has posters to go up, etc. But I want to move on from this one for now, so I can continue towards building a workable prototype for the style of game I'm aiming for.

Slowly slowly working away on my prototype a bit more... I'm trying to add a character name to the creation screen.

I've got 2 questions. It's working fine, but right now the game will allow any name + empty string.

1. As a test I tried to get it to non parse "Shit" as a string. That works. However I don't really want to write 10000 if-else statements. Is there a way to parse all the swearwords in one if-statement?

2. Also, how would I parse an empty string and not accept it?

This is what I have so far:

Code: ags

function Button1_OnClick(GUIControl *control, MouseButton button)
{

if (TextBox1.Text == "Shit") { Display("Try again... foulmouthed person!"); }

else {
 player.Name = TextBox1.Text;
 player.ChangeRoom(3, 536, 229, eDirectionLeft);
}
}

Dear all,

I'm currently working on a prototype to see if I can make a game using a very simplistic day-night system.

My parameters are:

• The game has a maximum of 30 playable days
• A day consists of 5 slots: 9-12, 12-15, 15-18 & 19-22
• Certain actions advance time.

So I'm looking for a number of global variables to run, I think.

• Global Variable that indicates what Day-part it is (1 out of 5).
• Global Variable that indicates what Day it is (1 out of 30).

I would then have certain activities you perform add a number to the variable of the day part. As soon as you hit day-part 4, your working day is over. The evening part is freed up for leisure.

So far I'm envisioning a game that mixes the easy job-part of Jones in the Fast Lane with a more narrative-driven part running alongside it. So players have the freedom to choose whether they go to work or not. But within these 30 days they have the time to complete the game or fail.

Next part would also be how to show this in a GUI (what day part it is, what day it is, etc).

Basically at the end of day-part 4, the screen should list a GK1-style "Gabriel decides to head home for the day" and then you'll be transported back to your apartment for day-part 5 regardless.

I'm struggling to come up with the proper integers to run this with in a global script. Since the game would have multiple activities available that advance time, it would need to be run as part of the global script. Would I put it in its own function? Would I update the GUI with the repeated_execute function?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Dear all,

I'm trying to get the best resolution available. I've started drawing backgrounds at 320 x 200. However there isn't a proper multiple of 320 x 200 to get to 1920 x 1080. I've now changed my resolution in-game to 320 x 180. This way a multiplication of 6 gives me proper 1920 x 1080 (320 x 6 = 1920 and 180 x 6 = 1080).

I do find that my graphics suddenly lean more towards the AGI sprite-size than the smaller pixel size of later SCI games, which is the style I'm going for. I'm curious to hear what resolution other people program their games at to get a proper fullscreen in AGS but still keeping the pixelart style very much intact.

I'm possibly maybe toying with the idea of starting a new adventure game in AGS after... ahem... 13 years. So what better way than to purchase Aseprite and have a go at creating a background image + main character sprite?

I call this one: The Old Tree + Unnamed Character. And yes, the tree is supposed to be abnormally big.

Having some difficulty setting my profile picture, for some reason the forum won't accept my GIF. (Solved)

So I've recently taken up coding in AGS again. Since it's been several years and the last version was 2.62, it's quite a switch to work with 3.1.

I've started a new game with the GUI template of the Verb Coin. It's been working wonderfully, but now I get a really weird error whenever I'm compiling.

Room 1 is an empty room, but when I compile, the compiler halts with this code:

Error (line 80): unexpected '4' in File ASCII Quick Converter.ash

I didn't even touch this script, which worked fine until a few hours ago. What happened in that time? I added all the rooms I'd need for the game and loaded in the backgrounds. That's it! And suddenly it stopped functioning...

Anyone have a clue what happened here?

-------

Never mind! By disabling line 80 (which only shows the W character), things are working flawlessly again!

It is a weird bug, though...

Hey all,

I've thought about posting about this in my Buc2 thread in the "Games in Production" area of the forum but instead posted it here...

After a long time of not doing anything I've decided to cancel Bucaneer 2. It's been on hold for a very, very long time now, and I really can't see myself working on it anymore. Real life commitment and a general shift in interests have lead to this.

I'm willing to offer ALL the files I have of Bucanneer 2. So if anyone is interested in developing a sequel, a spin-off, or something like that, please make it known in this thread... I'll get back to you then.

- Jaap

This painting isn't game-related at all. This weekend I went out and got myself a very, very basic starter kit in acrylic painting. At a loss at what to draw, I picked a random Calvin & Hobbes book from the bookcase and sketched Calvin on the canvas.

It's a pretty basic painting, but I wondered what you think of it.

Since lgm and mods have been showcasing some of their film stuff here, I figure: why not me?

So far I only have three trailers online instead of full movies, but that might change in the future.

For now, I'd love to hear some feedback on what kind of emotions these trailers instilled in you. I am, of course, looking for deep, deep fear.

But I'll settle for a good laugh.

http://www.sweetnessfollows.net/films.php

Oh, the pages are in Dutch, but the trailers are not.

Hey all,

I didn't know exactly where to put this, since it's adventure talk and also related to my own game, but I figured it fitted here the most.

I'm currently busy getting my map screen into the final format and there's still some stuff that's bothering me. The map shows an overhead portion of Amsterdam, and as such, it's quite cluttered. I'm not an avid fan of pixel hunting, so I'm thinking how best to approach this problem.

For reference:

Gabriel Knight 1 had a simple map. Just a vague blue/green background and icons on which you could click. These icons represented various locations you could visit. This made the map very easy, very quick and the need to pixel-hunt was very efficiently terminated. The game was divided into several days, so it was a big surprise which of these locations you had to visit in order to complete a day.

Gabriel Knight 2 solved this problem. Locations you had to visit could blink if you pressed the HINT button. Apart from the Neuschwanstein bug (it never stopped blinking) this worked very well too.

Monkey Island 1 had this large overhead view of the first island. If you moved your cursor over a location you could visit, its name would come up. This worked very well, since there weren't many locations you could visit.

The Fate of Atlantis used a similar method as well, e.g. when you traversed the outer ring of Atlantis. This maze-like structure had rooms you could visit, by simply clicking on them. The purpose of the room remained a mystery until you arrived.

Now... onto Buccaneer 2.



Below is the area map of Buccaneer 2. It uses a system very similar to FoA and MI. This is because I'm using Proskrito's fabulous GUI, so the MapRoom function came along with it.

However, on this map screen we're looking at about 12 locations you can visit. Not instantly, but near the end of the game, there will be 12 visitable locations. Now, some of these can be eliminated (e.g. on a certain day, not all 12 locations are neccessary, so they aren't there).

My main problem with this map is the pixelhunting that will be required to visit these locations. The labels appear only when you move your mouse over them. I don't think it's adventure-fun to try and find a carpenter's workshop by moving across the entire map one inch at a time.

I've been thinking about doing "a GK2" where you could press the HINT-button and have all the visible locations be highlighted. This would, IMHO, decrease the immersive factor somewhat... so I'm somewhat stumped.

And now, after several paragraphs, finally, my question. What system do you prefer? Or, do you perhaps have any suggestions for me?

I've been working on this screen for quite some time now and it's evolved quite a lot. I'm mostly pleased with it now... I've been experimenting with some new brushes in photoshop and it turned out nicely, I think.

I'm still a bit uncertain about the fountain in the foreground (no water there yet). Also, the fence and bushes don't really seem to work for me...

Crits, anyone?

(Feel free to edit, btw.)

Hey all,

Perhaps this is a very simple question. I hope it is.

Is there any way to change the speed with which the engine fades the rooms in and out?

Upon replaying Fate of Atlantis recently, I noticed the first few screens faded really slow. This, IMO, gave the game a very atmospheric opening.

My own game, however, fades from screen to screen very fast. I know it's also processor dependant to a degree, but can't the speed be set somewhere?

Oh, and I use AGS 2.62.

Hey all,

Something about this lady is bugging me... the thing I can't seem to get right is the guitar. And her legs... they're bending rather awkwardly...

Hey all,

I've been connecting a few rooms together in Buc2 which play at night in the countryside... and, it's raining.

This all looks rather good thanks to the awesome RainSnow plugin. However, on the mapscreen it's suddenly not raining anymore.

I'm looking for a way to make it rain there too. Now, I can use the animated background thingy and have 1x1 pixelated raindrops appear at random on several points of the map, since the rain will fall down flat like this:



Now it would be neat if I could randomize it a bit more than the animated background stuff. Plus, it would take up a whole lot of unneeded space just to have a few pixels change.

Can anyone think of an easier way to achieve this effect?

Since I'm not really starting a competition or start a vote, I figured it should go into this forum instead of the competitions one.

I only just discovered the Maggies award and was very enthusiastic about it. I read in the 2004 thread that Foz has won this year, but also last year. Now, after scouring Klaus' site, I found the 2004 maggies zip file, but couldn't find the 2003 one.

Could someone please point me to the proper link for this? The 2004 one was very fun to view!

Hi all,

I've been browsing the web a bit and couldn't easily locate the information on Google. However, I remembered we have a few scots among us.

During the early 17th century, that is 1604-1614 to be precise, was Scotland occupied by the English?

I'm doing some background work on Richard McRoch and it would fit really well with his character if this were so.

Hello all,

I've been drawing a new room for Buccaneer 2 today... It's something I'm quite pleased with, although there are still some perspective issues in it... what do you think?

Note: I've double-sized it for easier viewing.



Edit: Added Strazer's modification.