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Hi, I'm trying out this game (demo?) and I appear to be stuck at the very first puzzle. There is a locked bike, and I can't get the key. I suspect it is in the drawer, and that is as far as I got. I have a lot of books + a towel (don't forget your towel!).

Help?

Yes, it should be a simple matter to have module keep track of in which room each item has been dropped. Using a character per room would require a very large number of characters.

Good idea. I had started putting one-line descriptions of the modules in the list, is it possible to have something like that show up in the category listings? I like the idea of seeing immediately what the module is about, without having to click to a separate page...

Syberia, definitely. I can second Ali about "the feeling of being lonely and whistful.", well put!

I have Myst 1, 3 and 4, and I started all of them but so far have not finished any of them. Why? Because there doesn't seem to be any reason to any of it. It feels like wandering around, pushing random buttons in puzzles that exist for no reason. And, at the beginning at least, there is NO plot, no story whatsoever. I guess something develops later, but I never made it that far

Perhaps you should have someone else do the sound and music of your game, once it is close to completion? I think there are a lot of talented musicians/composers on the boards who could help...

Hang on... is this thread about moving, like changing houses? Or what?

Oh CGA, that brings me back. I remember dropping 300$ to upgrade from CGA graphics, years and years ago... Oh my, I'm old! 

I liked it well enough, mostly for the story. As others have said, the ending is a bit predictable, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't enjoyable to play.

Since a picture is worth 1000 words , I've prepared a image showing what I want to do:

All 4 images come from the same file.
The 2 on the left are imported with the alpha channel.
For the 2 on the right, when importing the file I specified NOT to use the alpha channel when AGS asks. The antialiased edge shows up as pure black instead.

What I would like to do is circled on the picture. I want to use the same sprite (the one imported with the alpha channel) to produce both effects. At 100% scaling, use the alpha channel to keep edges anti-aliased, and at other scalings, use only the pink color for transparency, and so be able to smoothly scale the sprites.

If I'm not mistaken, when they remade it they went point-and-click.

http://www.infamous-adventures.com/kq3/index.php?page=features

So... no typing.

Hi,

I'm having trouble understanding how to use the plugin function SetSpriteAlphaBlended properly. Here is what I am trying to accomplish:

• 1.  Import sprites in 32-bits, with alpha channel (the sprites have anti-aliased edges).
  
  
• 2.  In rooms where the walkable area scaling is different than 100%, I would like the sprites to be displayed as though they had been imported without an alpha channel. The area around the edge, with opacity < 100%, becomes black. The rest of the sprite is scaled smoothly.
  
  
• 3.  In rooms where the scaling is 100%, the sprites are drawn normally, that is, using the alpha channel. This keeps the edges looking nice.
  
  

I have tried using SetSpriteAlphaBlended on the sprites that were imported in the editor, and as the documentation says the result was unpredictable. The same sprite, if switched from blended to not blended, would appear differently at different times. As well, the non-alpha blended sprite was not scaled smoothly.

I was able to get something working by copying the original (alpha) sprite to a dynamic sprite, and using SetSpriteAlphaBlended on this. However this requires copying ALL the character sprites, so it is a little clunky and uses up memory.

Is there a way to do what I describe directly, or could it be added?

Thanks!

May I ask why 800x600 is not supported by your plugin? On my computer, at 640x480 I get framerates > 200, so I would guess that even at 800x600 it would not significantly slow the game down.

[Update:]

I noticed that this feature had not yet been added, so I tried to make a plugin to anti-alias alpha-channel sprites. The result, graphically, was quite good. But I ran into lots of problems:

• I would have to redo the entire drawing of characters AND objects, to make them in order.
  
• I would have to trick AGS into NOT drawing the sprites on top.
  
• And worst of all: it was super slow.  (I was doing it pixel-per-pixel)
  

So I took another look at the AASTR2 library that I mentionned a few posts back. I made a few changes to the demo, compiled it, and saved the result (the image is at the bottom of this post). As you can see the stretching looks quite good, even down to 20%. I did a non-anti-aliased stretch below to show the difference. It seemed quite fast, but I did not do exhaustive tests.

The code for the antialiased stretch is like this:

Code: ags

      convert_alpha ( sprite );     
      aa_set_mode(AA_ALPHA | AA_BLEND); 
      aa_stretch_sprite(buffer, sprite, 0, 0, w, h);

Update: I did some speed tests, and for a blitting a 200x200 sprite with smoothing + antialiased edges took about 8 milliseconds (on a 3500+ AMD). That's slow :o ! With a slower computer, and maybe an extra character on screen, the framerate would be unacceptably low.

I hope I don't sound to pushy, but I'd love to see this in a future version of AGS!

Update: Never mind, CJ, at least until we get hardware acceleration (just kidding )


Here is the link to the library anyway:
http://www.allegro.cc/resource/Libraries/Graphics/AASTR2

Ah so it's not that crazy after all ... Maybe I'll start playing with flash and see.

Thanks, I will check out those games to see how it looks.

Like the post subject says, it's a pretty crazy idea, but has anyone though of putting flash animations in AGS (somehow)? I've never done anything in flash, but the vector animation makes it look nice and smooth, without having to draw 1000000 sprites. I don't imagine actually integrating the two would be possible, but maybe exporting the animation for use in AGS?

Thoughts?

Wow, I think that's really great! What program are you using to do this?

I've had good success in trials with Magpie, exported to Pamela format. The best part is the automatic lip-synching function! Not a free program though

Hi,

I have a suggestion for the editor that hopefully would be pretty simple to do :

1. When a mask for a particular area or the background image is imported, save the path to the file with the room.
2. A "Re-import mask" button would import the mask again using this path.
3. Perhaps a menu option for "Reimport all" could import all the masks and the background in one click.

The idea here is to make it a one-click operation to update a background/mask. I am working on a program (might become an editor plugin) which would automatically make masks out of a photoshop document. Clicking one button to re-import everything would make it a piece of cake to change a room.

Alternatively, if the COM plugin interface could do this, that would be even better. As it stands there is not even any access to the rooms (like getting the name, etc.).

Thanks for listening!

Hi everybody,

Check out the latest "comedy goldmine" on somethingawful.com:
http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3749

I thought it was really funny! Am I the only one who thinks this could be a cool concept for an adventure game?

have a look at this from WME

--> http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=1439.0

My favorite quote from this thread:

but who the hell is Mike Hunt??

It's always funnier when someone doesn't get it!