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I've noticed when I put the character [ in my global messages, I get a line break in game instead of the character showing up. ], on the other hand, shows up fine. Is that er... normal?

GetSaveSlotDescription is totally the way to go. I use it myself and it works beautifully.

Johns was good, no doubt, but I really didn't think he deserved the bulk of the praise he got during/after that game. Especially when there were clearly so many other people in the Blues side doing good things, and they'd barely get a mention before someone started going on and on about bloody Johns. I actually felt sorry for the rest of the team. He was even overshadowing the captain in captaining duties!

Still, good game guys. I'm sad we didn't win but the blues played well, and at least we get an exciting decider at Suncorp now I'll be there!!

True, true. I agree, a proper space for reviews could be well received. The major problem I have is when people feel that they have to write reviews in order to receive basic benefits. I think the points system is terrible, because that's like forcing people to do reviews. Downloads should be freely available. I don't want people to 'earn' my game.

I still think it's just an awful idea to try and make people do reviews. People who want to do it will do it, and those who don't will likely never want to do them. Economics, people! ^_^ Let people do what they want, otherwise you'll scare them away. I'm one of the people who would never, ever, ever do a review unless I suddenly got this amazing urge to do so. No amount of 'incentive' would do it for me.

I do think of this like a market place. Let the consumers do what they want. If you make a game and people want to review it, whoop-de-hey! Otherwise, you just have to be satisfied with whatever feedback you get. There are already HEAPS of places on the net that review just about everything that comes out (I actually got sick of reading all the Cirque reviews, it started to feel like a chore) and if they don't, you can email them and suggest your game, or just accept that noone wants to review your game. Maybe it's just too crappy, who knows? Besides, reviews are nice but they aren't the be-all and end-all. If you don't have many reviews, it doesn't mean your game is bad (it COULD, but not necessarilly).

The best thing you can do is make a game so good it just sells itself. There's nothing worse than knowing you had to shove it in people's faces. I'm getting a -tad- off-topic here but I think it's all related

Pfff, losers > Queensland's gonna take this series, no problem.

It's one waym but it would mean you would have to be sure nothing in either room could change. It wouldn't work in say a Zelda game with bushes you could chop down, or any scene with enemies that move or could be killed.

Well, what have you got figured out so far? Also, could you give some detail on how you want it to work?

I think the first idea's good because a lot of people who end up breaking the rules are actually surprised and sorry, and didn't realise. I think it would at least cut down on the amount of locked threads, though it'd be pretty hard to stop them completely.

Yes, I think we should stop once and for all. June 25, people! Let's leave this topic alone until then. Maybe someone can lock it *hint hint*

The whole idea is that this deadline encourages us to work on things that aren't done yet... even if you have something ready now, maybe you can polish it up a bit more until the deadline.

Right. That's it though. No more entries until June 25!

Ah, touche

Yeah, god damnit. You're all fired!

Mainstream, it's available on DVD now. It was one of my big childhood movies so I know it quite well but there are a lot of people who wouldn't have heard of it.

I don't think you'd need to scrap the project though (really, who's gonna care that much), but it might be worth seeing the movie just to see if you have any serious idea clashes Also, it's just a FANTASTIC movie worth seeing.

I think you just have to be happy with the third party reviews. If people aren't doing reviews now, they aren't going to later. At least not people like me. I just can't be bothered. There are certain people who like writing reviews, and they're typically the people who are already doing them. I prefer hearing people's natural comments, whatever comes to mind. If someone just writes "Cool game", that's obviously all that came to mind when he played it. I think it's a nice honest comment. Reviews are nice, we all love hearing about what someone thinks of our game in detail, but it's definitely not what most people want to do.

The Ctrl-Alphabets can be recognized easily by coutning:
ASCII #1 = Ctrl-A
ASCII #2 = Ctrl-B
...
ASCII #13 = Ctrl-M (Carriage Return)
...
ASCII #16 - Ctrl-P
ASCII #17 - Ctrl-Q
...
ASCII #26 = Ctrl-Z
(I think they're also in AGS manual's ASCII table.)

I can't remember, but possibly Ctrl-P and Ctrl-Q are not important control characters so they may be usable.

Actually normally it's not trivial to enter these control characters directly into a text file (since most text editors simply wouldn't write these characters as raw). Two possible ways are:
1. Use ordinary text editor to enter text, but for characters you can't enter directly, type some other characters as placeholder (like say, typing ^ to represent Ctrl-P, * to represent Ctrl-Q), after that, open up the text file with a hex editor and replace the appropiate characters with the desired values. This can be an annoying task though (not annoying if you just want to replace say, ALL ^ into Ctrl-P, but can be annoying if you do want some of the ^ to be changed and some not).
2. Make a text editor which you can actually enter those values into a text file directly, using technique like:
(if user tells the editor to add character ASCII #16 here)
--> (add the byte with value 16 to a string)
and then save it to a file. (which is exactly how my translators work)

Thanks heaps Gil! I think I understand now. I didn't realise that a character could be "there" if it wasn't visible in the editor, so I was confused.

EDIT: I've had someone explain hex editors to me now, so I get it even more now ^_^

EDIT: Gil - I had a look at your font, and you also used character #26 (for the small hiragana 'a'). I actually used your font as a template to create my own. I also made a mistake, I meant that I had used characters #16 to #31 ... #32 is a space so I'd left that.

Can anyone confirm which characters from #16 and onwards CANNOT be used?

Also, #16 - #26 appear to be ctrl P - ctrl Z, and #27 is ESC, but I can't figure out what #28, 29, 30 and 31 are. (if they can be used)

Gil: ...and I WILL try that, but er, I guess what I'm asking is what does the translation file that your translator outputs... look like? For example, say I have a line I type in as "muzukashii naa"... when that's translated in your interpretor and the final file is output, what does that line look like? ie, is it like "ksjaaoe js" (just a random example ^_^; ?

Yes, something like that. It can make any standard text files with such kind of text

So, what characters correspond to #16, #17, etc? I can move #26 so that isn't being used, but for the ones I can use, what exactly do I type to have those characters recognised by AGS?

Actually, I only skimmed your storyline before but now that I've read it... seriously, that's almost exactly the plot of Return to Oz. I take it you haven't seen it? I'ts the exact same thing. Dorothy is taken to an asylum and gets disturbed by many things. Before they can mess with her brain, she escapes and ends up back in Oz where things have gone bad (including Ozma and the munchkins enslaved and the yellow brick road destroyed).

I have no opinion on the comics because I haven't seen them and probably won't bother lookng due to the fact I don't know the things they're based on and so many people say they're crap.

I do, however, have an opinion on constructive criticism. Why is it that we aren't allowed to give someone our view of their work if it doesn't include at least one positive comment, or "Here's a way to improve" advice. Someone is putting some kind of work out there, and we, the public, look at it. If they want feedback, don't they want honest feedback? If I look at it, and my gut reaction is, "URGH! That's just awful all over.", or "God, what a piece of crap. You desecrated my childhood memories", or something like that, why should I sugar it up and turn it into, "Well, it's not my cup of tea but that's some not-hideous pencil work there".

This is the reaction of the public to said work. It's the real world. If everyone bags your 'thing', it tells you just as much if not more than a bunch of people trying desperately to think up something nice to say.

Oh yeah, sure. There's no specific time, it's just a way to give people a date to work towards. Deadlines -can- be fun.

Gil: ...and I WILL try that, but er, I guess what I'm asking is what does the translation file that your translator outputs... look like? For example, say I have a line I type in as "muzukashii naa"... when that's translated in your interpretor and the final file is output, what does that line look like? ie, is it like "ksjaaoe js" (just a random example ^_^; ?

To elaborate, the translation file your plugin outputs has to put the text in a way AGS can interprete, and then assign the correct number character from the SCI font I have. How does it do that for characters 16 - 32?

Sorry, I know I'm slow with this sort of thing, I KNOW this must be frustrating, trying to explain this crap to a dickhead like me.