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Well, I made a major googlefest, but couldn't find one thing:

A database of materials - or more specifically some kind of datasheet to achieve realistic materials in 3ds max.

Like a page which lists different fabric/surface/material types, and correct (well, some kind of basic) values to use in 3ds max for transparency, transclusency, reflection, diffusion, etc.

All I found was some very informative databases, with everything from density to reflection, but they are NOT meant for 3d modelling software such as max, and I'm not experienced enough to convert values by myself or figure out what goes where.

I'm quite sure that databases like this do exist for specifically MAX too - where else do professionals get their values?

I remember someone linking to a forum where was a tutorial-like thread about transclusency, and typical values for different surfaces... resources like this is exactly what I need.

Good day to you, and meet Mr.X,
an agent who works for government...



Your mission, should you decide to accept it - is to animate him doing some top secret work, such as firing a gun, using camera to take some important photos, decoding secret message, planting a bomb, etc. Just as long as it's related to him and some secret-agent-stuff enough.

There's no any other limitations to your task, feel free to improvise and be as creative as possible.

As always, should you or any of your fellow AGSers be caught or killed, I will disavow any knowledge of your actions.

This thread will self-destruct in 2 weeks.
Good luck to you, ladies and gentlemen.

Seventh track, more ambient than usual, this time.
I'm totally in love with Syko guitar and Sytrus pads.

http://www.increator.pri.ee/muz/henri7.ogg

Something is missing though... what?

and I can't fight this repetitivity thing I like in music (damn you, trance!).

Ah, and are some things too loud? Not sure...

Please C&C!

[But he needs to follow the arc C to do this.]

Well, at my experiments, I reached the point where my math is absolutely not enough.

Problem, though it's simple, is quite hard to explain. I'll try.



Note: This is not neccessarily AGS related, but more like math and programming overall.

An object needs to move from point A to point B. Simple.

But he needs to follow the arc C to do this.

The distance between A and B is known, but the highest point of arc should be adjustable, so it generation of different arcs would be possible.

A and B are 2-d coordinates. Green lines are just to explain it.

Is there a simple way to do this?

What for, you may ask?
Imagine a random 2D basketball game. How did they make ball fly on arc towards the basket from random position on field?

Or - imagine a random "tank" type game. Like Scorched Earth, Tank Wars, Worms, QBasic Gorillas, etc.


Like those

In these games, you adjusted the angle and velocity but could only guess where shell actually lands.

In my version, you don't know the velocity or angle, but you DO know where the shell lands. A code which is usable for making a perfect AI where computer never misses... etc.

There's no particular project I need this for, but I've always wondered how to do this.

Anyone?

Alright, with great enthusiasm I started "leaving a trace" by introducing this simple crap I can do best and what amazes some people.

A complete tutorial. Serious one.
I made one when I was total n00b and made to tutorials section in ags main page. So this is the second one.

It's way harder work than I thought, i'm practically doing something that's usually 2-minutes work for 3 days already!

Now, when I'm through with start, I got doubts about this...

* Is my english sufficent for a thing like this? Sure, I can post on forums and majority understand, but a tutorial...?
* I'm not a web designer and hardly know how to make a page. Frontpage XP is quite easy thing to use, though. Is it comfortable-readable enough?
* How do I explain? Or let me rephrase - do you understand a thing I'm trying to teach?
* What's the level of telling things? I tried to dumb things as down as possible, but it's dumb for me, I can't feel/think for others. Or did I go overboard telling some extremely easy thing too long?

This thing takes lot's of my time, which is quite valuable thing anyway, since I have no holidays and 1-3 hours per evening free time after all. If noone needs this, I'm wasting my time.

So, main question is - should I continue?
And will anyone actually need it?

http://www.increator.pri.ee

Thanks for checking out.

Does anyone know how or what to use to fix "invalid long filename entry" under DOS? I can't install windows since it suggests scandisk for windows to repair this, yet it won't install windows until problem is solved

Googleing around didn't help much. And I can't take HD out to fix it on other machine, since the stupid guarantee. But I also don't want to take computer to the guarantee because of pr0n important and top secret stuff on hard disk.

2x:


Title says it all. This is most likely the best bg I've ever produced and also record of time spent on bg; I drew it yesterday 7 hours non-stop...

After all this work I somewhat hesitated to ask for C&C since bigger improvements that take heavy time again are something i'd rather avoid... but if I got this far, let's make this perfect.

BTW, for fun facts: reference photos I used were: a scene from streets of city of Prague, a Japanese research center and a scene from NY City  And of course, lot's of freestyle drawing.

So, criticise and comment my background, please.

Okay. Let me show the bg I also showed in "Release Something!".



Now, for those who might be guessing how do such things happen, here's a render of very simple flat-textured render in 3ds max 4.



I didn't find good photo of diner to trace, so I made reference image by myself... in 3d. And simply redrew it in ArtGem.

It's about evening time, with a bit foggy weather.
So, it's a bit dark inside and it would be believeable that the lights inside diner are lit.

So...
As you can see, there's an omnilight at upper right area of the room which caused these shadows of tables, adding strong amount of reality. Problem is, should the light source be visible? I tried and ended up with this...




What do you think? Should I use the one with light or the on without?

Any other suggestions and traditional C&C is welcome too.

[Photorealism 2: Your very own adventures!]

Since last SJ was a bit shorter and therefore got only few entries, I think we try again with this one:

Theme: Photorealism 2: Your very own adventures!

What: Draw yourself as an adventure game character. You may use a photo for reference or anything else that could help to achieve as recognisable result as possible. It wouldn't harm to include a link to your real photo for comparasion. While the face should be real, outfit, accessories, whatever else is free of choice, either you're dressed up as Indiana Jones, a ninja or Roger, there's no matter. Also, you don't have to use anyone else's outfits but make your own.

Restrictions:
* maximum image size  60x110
* colors: no limit!
* no copy-pasteing; you have to draw
* sprite should look usable in real game

Good luck and start drawing!

How to change chraracter name via script? I mean, not script name, but full name? I found character[CHAR].name variable but don't know how to use it... or is there some other way?

I think I found a tiny buglike issue:

Faulty code like

if (GetGlobalInt(100==2))

Won't generate any errors, though it could.
I slipped such thing into my code and spent hours to find out what's wrong, because game compiled normally and everything worked, exept that code bug, which AGS simply ignored.

(AGS 2.71b, Don't know if it's fixed in latest version)

Also, which globalints are reserved? I didn't find any info in manual, though debug console shows that there's some for cursor modes and other things? 

[Theme:]

Drawing castles is quite fun, so this time, the BG blitz has

Theme:
Stronghold.
It should be as powerful and grand-looking as possible, looking as really unconquerable fortress. Not just some brick house with towers.

Size: 320x240 or larger

Restrictions: None!

Good luck!

Right, I noticed that if you forget semicolon, like

cEgo.Say("Hello!")
cBman.Say("How do you do?");

other line (the one after it) gets simply lost.

Game compiles and all, but dialog line after "hello" won't be spoken in game.

Nothing special, but thought that I should note it (if it isn't known) and it would be better if AGS would report error instead of compiling problematic script.

I had hell of a bug searching when one globalint wasn't set because of similar case...

[script]

1) When setting walk-to-point for hotspots, walkable areas could be seen in some form, even outlines if nothing else.
It's hard to set a walk-to if you can't figure out where walkable area is. And characters won't act very smart in game if the point's outside walkable area. It's nothing special, but I find very little use to walk-to-points if i have to character.walk by script every time anyway.

2) oObject.Visible, etc object-related variables can't be changed outside room script.

But if I need to set it from character interactions, like after talking to character - turn some object on/animate/whatever? It's quite a pain to set GlobalInt only, then check it from room's repeatedly_excecute, then perform the thing... etc. Especially, if there's more than 1 object-related thing which comes from character's interactions.

Can't AGS recognize object names from all rooms (in future)?
Let it compile, but generate error when character isn't in that room (with used object) or something... current way to work around in such cases is too primitive.

Well, there's another track I would like to have C&C for.
It's supposed to be an intro music, as ambient, quiet and non-disturbing as possible.

So tell me did I succeed or does it annoy ears?
Is it way too simple or vice versa, not so ambient after all?
Maybe it could be improved somehow?

http://www.increator.pri.ee/muz/music3.ogg

~2.6 MB

[Objective:]

I've been messing with this problem with ages...

Objective: Transclusent text window GUI

Method: since text windows *still* don't support gGui.Transparency, I made text window gui totally transparent (background image - none, bg color 0) and I'm trying to use another (transparent) gui over (under) it, so it had a semi-transparent background.
Since this other gui must be at the same size and position as the text window, I have to resize and reposition it every time text is Displayed. But hey, there's gGui.X, gGui.Y, gGui.Width and gGui.Height properties, just what I need. But there's also a...

Problem: Where and how do I use these commands to make other gui appear in right time, size and place? Does it work at all, I mean

-Let's say that other gui is named "other" and text window one as "text"-

gOther.X = gText.X;
gOther.Width = gText.Width;

and so forth.

Question
Does it work? I mean, do text windows have those properties/variables? (AGS 2.7)
Where do I have to put those lines to keep size updated at time? (text windows stretch and reposition according to text length!)

BTW, this is what I want to achieve:

Well-well. I finally decided to use my lousy FruityLoops skills to create a moody track to my Henri: Don't Drink & Drive! project.

I tried to make neutral, ear friendly, moody and ambient song, though I'm not really sure how I succeeded... Experts may hear hardcore Sytrus overusage and repetivity (probably caused by my love towards melodic/euro trance and dreamhouse genres)...

If it's worth nothing else, then it could at least serve as an example what I need musicians to do when I find some.

But I would be very glad to get some crits and/or good pointers to make it all fit more to a game.

Mp3 format, 3 minutes 55 seconds ~3.5 MB
http://www.increator.pri.ee/muz/Henri_soft.mp3

[17th November 2007]

Okay, I'll collect all my courage now and make finally a public announcement.

story
Big city. 17-year old boy.
Friends. Cars. Street race. Street gangs.
Police.
This all could lead to an adventure.

Street gang, which goes under name "MIR" (Mir stands for "peace" and "world" in Russian language) has tricked local police for years. As Mayor applies more and more pressure to local Police Chief, yet the gang stays uncatchable, situation becomes critical for Chief. Unfortuntely, Henri gets into trouble with the law and becomes a pawn in Chief's grand plan to nail the gang and hide his incompetence....

I don't want to give too much away, since I don't have that much anyway. Stories are my weak side...

Well, for some show, Henri features:

Drama!

Sex!

Violence!

Tricky puzzles!

EDIT: 17th November 2007
I gladly present you this new screen from (hopefully) final portion of the game:


Note that ingame screen might be a bit different, I haven't drawn all interactable objects yet.


EDIT: 25th November 2007

I've chosen two people to help me a bit on puzzles and story. Hopefully, this will speed things a bit up.

EDIT: 3rd December 2007
Good news!

By teaming up with Aussie for ideas, we managed to put together a bit shorter ending and lots of polish, also, managed to straight out alot of the gameplay. It is time to announce that there's very little or none of loose ends on Henri project: it will be finished and this time I know exactly how! Earlier, whole thing was stopped behind not knowing, how it will exactly end, which caused project to be in WIP so long.

Though I have to draw another background (or two), and redo handful of puzzles/dialogs, it will be done and should reach beta in next few months.

Yay! 

EDIT: 3rd December again

G, another helper on story and puzzles bit also posted his ideas. While they were very different from Aussies, there was also some great suggestions, strengthening the plot. It will take some time for me to combine best of their suggestions and even after this, I must actually put them into game. But pace is quick and I hope I'll get this done soon.

[are]

I find modern world quite interesting. Whenever you turn on news channel, you'll always find something to watch.
War in Iraq, terrorism, etc all over the globe. People are crazy.

Now, I find that turning a similar happening into a game may result something interesting. And I'm not the only one, game companies have figured out that long ago. Like Delta Force: Black Hawk Down, which is entirely about war in Somalia in 90's. Or all these WWII games. Vietnam war games. Almost half of the first-person-shooters use some real theme. The real-world-story is often much more interesting that abandoned space stations in far future or ancient lands of the wizards and dragons.

Adventure games seem to have much unconquered land here, especially since in other genres, story is there just to back up the action, but adventure games are the story and how player uncovers and advances it.

Then again, the question of ethics come into way.
Imagine an adventure game where - for example, you play as MI5 agent, investigating London bombings. Would such game result high popularity, or anger of people instead?
But wouldn't it be interesting concept?

[twice]

Well, I really can't imagine what's wrong here:

Code: ags

 
if (button == 1)
  {        
  if (GetGlobalInt(110)!= 2) SetGlobalInt(110,(GetGlobalInt(110)+1));
  }   
 if (button == 3)
  {        
  if (GetGlobalInt(110)!= 0) SetGlobalInt(110,(GetGlobalInt(110)-1));
  }   

Basically, both buttons should change the value of GlobalInt 110.

One button decreases it to 0
Second one adds its value up to 2

Thing is, when the value of Globalint 110 is 0 or 2, you have to press button TWICE until it changes the value.

For example, if GlobalInt(110) == 2
I have to press button (3) twice to get value of 1

But if it's value is 1
a simple click on button nicely decreases it to 0
and vice versa.

What am I doing wrong?