Messages

[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.

Well,

Magintz made a successful work, especially in tech part! I like it!
Largopredators comic looks very simple, yet funny and professional.
Totoro drew some cute stuff here, though the idea gets lost a little.
And Viktor totally pwned the contest with his rabbit story... 

Gongratulations, Viktor, you're the winner!
And others, thank you for participating.

A penguin! This bg tells me that this game definetly needs a cute penguin for main character! 

Well,
* Make sky lighter blue
* Clear the are where snow meets sky
* add some more shading to snow, there too much simply white area, imo
* remove gray stuff at rightmost part of screen

[game]

... post a game with no screenshots or information...

What does this "post a game" means?
What's a game without screens and info? Nothing.
so, ...post nothing...
And idea for game is too small reason to even post it to CL ...where CL residents usually just ignore this or give directions outta there.

Any sort of restrictions (other than strongly enforcing the rules) would make it too unfriendly

Well, "Don't post nothing!" still sounds like a rule everyone should naturally obey, without any exceptions...

Yeah, but instead of tongue, make the green dude fly, grasping to mouth not to fly out with gas

So, Flukeblake

1. Draw a background, sprite, etc
2. Polish it until you feel that you've reached your limits
3. Post it into Critics Lounge
4. Hear all critiques and comments, don't take offense, because they usually are a bit harsh from starters point of view... once you improve, the C&C gets softer and there's less of advice like "redo all" and more "just fix these two pixels"
5. Improve, improve and improve. It may need you reading tutorials, try very hard and maybe skip some suggestions while taking others into account and do even better than suggested*
6. Occassionally, people will be statisfied enough with the graphics and you'll get more "I like it!" replies than "Erm, change this, this, this and this"
7. Now, practice until you can keep the quality people liked throughout the whole game
8. And you're there.

* - You can't dance to EVERYONE'S music. If you start to adjust your gfx to every single reply, you'll never get anywhere. Deciding what has to be improved is a part of art by itself. But this is also quite unlikely for a starter

I personally find CL the most respectable, useful and helpful part of AGSforums and rarely someone leaves it without getting useful aid... rarely? Maybe never.

* Windows don't make much sense: the window frames occupy more space than window itself... who would waste so much wood just to frame a tiny window?
* Angled bottles look extremely flat, like they're just painted onto ground - to imrove this, make their bottoms  visible. Give em' cylindrical shape!
* Open dumpster reveals that these bins are made of atleast 10cm thick steel!
* pile of wood - the cylindrical ones, doesn't look like a pile, but more like a wall of wood... very weird
* flowers could have different angles. And - usually, flowers grow towards the sun, not sideways

[acceptable]

You have started a new project every month since March.

But I was thinking, if Flukeblake is the age he says, and has the lack of experience he says, this is the standard of art I would expect, especially when using computer programs.

If dear mr. Flukeblake had spent this time on learning to draw and visit CL frequently - instead of starting pointless projects and attacking moderators, I'm sure he could achieve at least acceptable standards in background and character art.

Flukeblake seems to be quite creative person, and my best guess is that new ideas rushing into his mind is what makes him also rush his projects and keep valuable seconds thus making this insane crap instead of computer game graphics.

Well, don't. You CAN write, so if you have good story in your mind, just take a pencil and paper. Or notepad. And write it down, so you won't forget it. No need to slap together some rubbish in few seconds just not to forget it.

If I post a thread about a new game, I want to amaze others and impress them with ideas and art. So I put much effort into it.
What are your goals, Flukeblake?
How did community accept others?
What- and how did they do/act?

For the rest of you, seeing as you think the graphics are so shit, don't play it. It isn't like i am selling it or anything.

Rest of... who? You found an admirer? Okay, then you just complete one of your projects and prove that graphics is just a minor issue and game itself is good... good luck!

My sympathies to Andail and Darth Mandarb.

[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?

I agree dg, though the overall attitude in GTA:SA annoyed me a bit. While other GTA games are witty and neutral, playing off like a good crime movie, in GTA:SA It seemed like all the characters praise the whole gangsta crap a bit too much.

All this pimpin' and ganstarapping fashion thing that's seen so much on TV nowadays (and discussed so much at these forums) came into mind while playing this game.

Anyway, if there's some game to blame, it's clearly and only GTA:SA.

string buffer;
StrFormat (buffer, "%d", GetGlobalInt(110));
naitur.SetText(buffer);

Like this.

The whole problem was that these lines were in GUI script instead of repeatedly_excecute so the label didn't refresh in time, but only when some button was clicked on this gui.

I think that's a bit harsh considering that I was asleep between the time you first posted this thread and the time that you resolved it.

I didn't mean to be harsh, sorry if I sounded like that.

@GI110@? It's first time I hear about such thing...

Though, at times, the distance I would need to travel to get from A to B was a little too great, but I don't see how that could really be avoidable.

It scared me aswell at the first, but then I found a wonder recipe to travel across country:

1. Get a motorbike, the faster the better (cross bike is best for this)
2. Turn into direction of destination
3. Hold down "up" key*
4. if you end up in water, swim, get out, get another bike and keep pressing gas

* - the trees, mountains, etc are not obstacles. just go forth through, under and over everything and avoid roads. Bikes rarely blow up because fall damage (almost never) and easily go over any obstacle. Also, they're fast.

It was laughably easy then, and got easier after completing jetpack mission.

So, does AGS go through GUI script in each loop?
Well, it definetly didn't seem so 

btw, it's a popup modal, if that changes anything.
AND, it pauses the game.

It pops up when inventory item has been used on character.
I tried it when walking, character stopped in the middle of the walk. Also, Displayspeech under buttons shows speech, but no talking animation, so it's quite clear that pause is there.

EDIT: Oh yes, the labels change. On static (always-on-screen) GUIs like statusbar, even if the cellphone gui is displayed. The game is paused, but moving mouse around shows @overhotspot@ correctly. It's just this popup-modal that won't change and acts paused along with game.

(OMG, my 1000th POST!)

Thanks for help, but I got it sorted out myself.

Problem was much simpler, as it always tends to be:

Apparently, the GUI labels (which I used for value display) won't refresh themselves in game steps, but only when something is done with gui, like a button clicked.

I found it out when I added third button, which had absolutely no interaction or code. Just a button.

Then made this "empty" click on decreasing button and pressed the third, interactionless one - the label changed to right value though click on third button should have done absolutely nothing. My best guess is that "if interface == x" is called only when GUI itself is being interacted some way.

All was clear then - I simply placed label-changing lines into repeatedly_excecute in global script and it started to refresh value correctly.

Though the value-label was just for test, my game has graphical version of similar thing:
The thing I worked on was mobile phone menu, with graphical images changing, just like on real cellphone (phonebook, settings, etc), and routlines for changing the menu picture were also in GUI script. They scrolled incorrectly, so that's what led me to this error. So now I know that even if not seen, the values were still right and also where to put these lines for correct display.

If CJ had noticed this thread, he could have saved me for trying to figure this out so long, but well, I'm glad i got this to work after all.

[first]

Well, it displays the message, but doesn't change the value of globalint, at the first time.
Second time, it shows the message, AND changes the value.

Not only when reducing, but adding to 0 aswell (with other button)

I spectate the value (assigned a gui label to show it all the time), it doesn't simply change. Yet, the first click is registered aswell. (I thought that ags just misses the first click) But no. Two messages, one change.

And, I went through global script, and disabled everything (remarked out) concerning globalint(110), only line that stayed is declaration on such thing (setting it to 0 at game_start)

nope.
I also tried using other numbers for indexing this int (for case if Globalint 110 it's somehow reserved by ags), no luck.

the gui script has nothing else than this (and label assigning), I provide full portion of this GUI code, just for case

GUI script:

Code: ags

if (interface == MOB) 
 {
   string buffer; // stuff to spectate the value
   StrFormat (buffer, "%d", GetGlobalInt(110)); // int2string
   naitur.SetText(buffer); // "naitur" is the label's script name
 if (button == 1)
  {        
  if (GetGlobalInt(110)!= 2) SetGlobalInt(110,(GetGlobalInt(110)+1));
  }   
 if (button == 3)
  {       
  if (GetGlobalInt(110)!= 0) SetGlobalInt(110,(GetGlobalInt(110)-1));
  }   
 }

I can't be doing anything wrong!
Why me?

I tried other things too, like making max and min value of some other numbers, it didn't help. AGS always gets stuck on lowest and highest number. whether they are 12 and 39 or 0 and 2.
Just when it reaches the "border" number, the button must be clicked twice.


I suspect 2 things:

first, this way to subtract and add 1 to globalint's value. Was that the right way? I recall someone suggesting something like

SetGlobalint(110)++
or
SetGlobalint(110,++)

or something similar in this forum decades ago..

and second... the AGS version is 2.7... yet, I use oldschool scripting much, maybe there's a conflict?

 

Every forum has GTA: SA topic, no matter whatever the forum is about.

I didn't enjoy SA as much as Vice City, but as a hardcore GTA fan, I played patiently through it. Many things annoyed me, but there were good parts aswell.

Like easier missions. This game was half as difficult than other gtas.
Then again, some missions were unexplainably difficult, driving & flying school, anyone? Plane hijack mission? etc. They were completeable only when you had failed them fifty times and experienced enough during failure to do it.

I admit modding game in 2 missions and cheating once:

In the mission where fat guy shoots 4 enemies on train, well, using game's language, this nigga can't shoot for shit.
So, I modified weapons.cfg so TEC9 so the bullets killed almost instantly. It was much easier then.

In plane hijacking mission, i got tired of running whole route again and again to board the plane and fail, so I modded plane's speed handling.cfg to make plane meet other one faster and get some time to maneuver.

The mission in driving school, where you have to drive against time and keep car in mint condition was a bit easier using "less traffic" cheat code.

Once again, Rockstar decided to give main character mega weird personality, the guy kills hundreds of innocent people and still acts like some kind of hero... it's frightening.

The "film effect" thingy that they used in Manhunt (an excellent game, i must say) which was used for rainy weather in GTA:SA is a real annoyance, it slows computer down much and can't be disabled. I hated this the most.

[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?

Does he?

32x32 px...




"as small as possible"

hell no! I couldn't make it recognizable even at 32x32...