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Sory, I couldn't resist copying the style of subject.

Yesterday, I went out and bought a second hand mandolin. I don't play any instrument, and I got up that morning thinking I would go out and get a ukulele. When I got to the place, they didn't have any ukuleles, only 2 mandolins. Oh dear, such a pity (insane sarcasm there!).

So I got one and played with it a bit and tried for hours to tune it (there are great videos on youtube) and took the strings off and cleaned it and restrung it (expertly done, I might add) and tuned it again. Then I learned a couple of chords which I will practise until I can do them in my sleep.

One problem - I'm left handed. It didn't occur to me until I was about to restring the first E-string that I couldn't restring the mandolin to be left handed thanks to the extra frets. I did a little reading about it, some people say it makes almost no difference to the sound so you might as well do it anyway but I chose to restring it right-handed again and thought I would try and learn it that way.

It's a round backed mandolin, btw ^_^ Cheap but pretty.

But, I don't know. Any mandolin players out there? Any LEFT handed mandolin players with any further advice or suggestion?

Hmm, well I'm happy to hear some of you are still looking forward to Gift of Aldora but I've sort of ditched that project ^_^ I'm not ditching it 100% because I still like the work I did but... I'm not sure what to do with it yet.

The game I'm working on now is a much smaller project but an idea I'm very curious about. Then I have something else I very much want to get started on.

Hey, how're you guys doing?

I haven't been here for a really long time apart from the very occasional glance through.  I'm not even sure how long it's been. I suddenly got the urge to see what was going on and I found a bunch of mail from people asking how I was and I thought that was rather nice so I just wanted to say that I appreciate it.

For anyone who's interested, I've been spending my time designing a couple of commercial games. I got a job with Konami as a translator and ended up having some higher ups discover my great game ideas and... well, one thing led to another and now I head a small team of designers.

Oh, wait, where am I? Sorry, I fell asleep... must have been dreaming.

Weird.

Anyhow, I got a job at a great company (small, very casual and awesome English school) last year and have been working there, living in Shizuoka with my roommate and good friend, and have had many adventures and good times. Been trying to study, do a lot of art and work on game ideas in the meantime.

I'm still working on the same game idea I probably was when I left here and it's what I intend to do for most of today. I'd like to get it finished and out of the way to do some more things.

Recently my dear friends in Australia sent me copies of Curse of Monkey Island (which seems to have a fucking bug in the menu system and won't let me play the game), Full Throttle (which I played for the first time ever the other day), and Grim Fandango (replacement copy for the one of mine this guy lost). I guess playing FT might have put AGS in my mind a bit more so, well, I hope you're all doing well and being productive and creative and PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF IMAGINATION AND INNOVATION, MY REVOLUTIONARY COMRADES!

Also, my cat, Sophie, went missing (we assume dead) about 3 months ago, but 2 days ago, I found and rescued a little 3 week old ginger kitten which I'm nursing back to health now. He's the most adorable and well behaved thing on the planet, so uh, if anyone knows someone in Japan that needs some kitten lovin', please let them know 'cause I need to find a home for him.

Anyway, I'm gonna go look around a little and see what you poor, sad losers have been doing with your copious amounts of unemployment time besides eating pringles and making crossover Lucasarts remakes with Buffy cameos.

*love cuddles*

Nope, not even close. I laughed a couple of times, he's alright, but not "best" at anything, I'm afraid -_-

I was reminded tonight, thinking about exactly what it is that I often like in games, of three computer games from my childhood.

I played zillions of games during my childhood as I had a very early start on the whole business, but these three were very different because I played them when I was in grade 1 or possibly 2, so were talking 1989-ish here.

I have very distinct memories of these games because they ENTRANCED me so. I can picture their visual style and many things about them, but I have no idea of specifics that would actually help me search for them. I was about 6 years old, so I have no idea what the system was, except that it was a "computer", and they may well have simply been games that circulated on the educational scene.

1. This game was probably the most basic, visually. I think it had a plain black background with simple coloured paths and whatnot drawn on each screen. You were a zoo keeper or something, in a zoo, and you had to feed the animals. I think maybe time was involved somewhere, like feeding the right animal at the right hour, but I dunno. Great game, but the least favourite of the three I'm talking about here.

2. This game was set in a mouse's house - an English cottage style white 2 storey house if memory serves tea. You had to go from room to room, or possibly out the back into the garden, to find this mouse. I think you basically clicked on various objects until you found him. The rooms were cluttered and there were seemingly endless places to look. I have a very strong feeling the title was, "---'s House", --- being the mouse's name, which could very well have been something cliched like Morton or something.

3. You had to look for a little girl who was playing hide and seek with you. From memory, all outside scenes where you would say be looking down a country oad with a barn and trees on the side of the road. I think you were given clues about where she was hiding perhaps, and again just clicked on places until you found here.

These last two in particular gave me WONDERFUL memories and had an amazingly mysterious feel to them for a 6 year old.

If anyone can shed any light on these games for me, it'd be much appreciated.

Probably not the right forum, but I can't see anywhere else to put this.

Just wondering if anyone can help me get the pops out of this track of music. I tried with Goldwave, forgetting that I actually have no idea how to use the program. Any genius sound engineers know enough to cover these pops and clicks up enough that they're barely noticable?

The song is "Nashville Nightingale" by the Charleston 7, a public domain track that I'll be using in a game.

Here: Download

Thanks Matt! I found lyrics and got Babel Fish to translate the two French ones. Still can't find the German song lyrics but I've decided against that song anyway.

I'm choosing some music for my new game, and I have three tracks that I pulled from archive.org which I'm interested to find translations for. Unfortunately, I don't have the lyrics for you, all I can do is upload them. The first two, as far as I can tell, are French, and the third is German.

If anyone with a lot of spare time could translate these, even very roughly for me, I'd really appreciate it. If not, no biggie but it would be nice to know what they say before I make some decision to include them in my game.

Seigfried Gautier - Jim
Seigfried Gautier - Anniversaire
...someone or other - Der Funkdoc

EDIT: Links fixed, thanks Matt

Wow, Buloght, nice! That was fun, cute, excellent graphics, nice and appropriate music... good job! I really, honestly enjoyed that ^_^ I liked the length, personally. It was just long enough to be worth it but also easily finishable in one sitting.

Is it already possible to do this? If not, I think it'd be useful.

My game will have a control panel for the music where you can increase or decrease the music volume from between -3 to 5 (the game error message told me -3 to 5, but the manual says -3 to 3 ... which is it? I must admit, I don't hear a difference between 3, 4 and 5 but can someone confirm this for me?)

I intend to also have a "Music On/Off" button which will allow you to, obviously, stop or restart the music.

It's not a big deal at all, but it seems to me that it would feel more natural if you could actually go one value lower than -3 when lowering the volume to actually mute the music. I can't just use StopMusic because when you increase the value again, the music will have started again from the beginning.

Although there's almost certainly a work-around for this, I think it'd be a good idea to simply have avalue of -4 for mute, if it's possible.

[Mushroom Republic]

Right, well any chance to plug!

Mushroom Republic - http://mushroom.chickennation.com

Founded by Rebecca Clements and Patrick Alexander. Using AGS, Game Maker, cement, bricks and mortar.

Created with AGS:
Cirque de Zale

Created with Game Maker:
Chu-chi

In Production:
various little secret pieces of wonder...

Time for another one? Well, I guess I decided that myself because I've already posted about it in the Comp forum.

The next date is November 25th. The previous ones have been great so I just want to thank everyone for participating, though of course... this is about YOU, not us. I just hope this has been helpful to people.

Gil: Could you sticky/lock the post in the C&A forum? Thanks ^_^

Time for another one perhaps!

ABOUT RELEASE SOMETHING:
This isn't a competition as such, just a big free-for-all where we can all showcase our talents. Basically, a date is set for "Release Something!" Day and on that day, people are invited to post to this thread anything they like, really. For example, some sprites,Ã,  screenshots of your game, music, sound effects, backgrounds, rooms, a plugin, a storyboard, a demo, or if you can manage it, a full game. Heck, even if it's 95% done or 1% done, if you wanna release it, you go for it!

WHEN:
It's starting on November 25th (that is, NOW) and usually runs for a couple of days to accomodate for different timezones and people actually having lives.

Remember, anything you want, as little or as much of it as you want! Get working, people!

Well, I'm gonna copy the 'instructions' some other guy on the insertcredit forums wrote:

MASSIVE SPOILARS

Spoiler

1. Those things flying at you are the enemies. Graying them out and making them poof increases your power, as denoted on the purple bar to the right. It's a BIG bar, if you notice. Once you catch on, you don't really need to fill it up all the way. Also, musical notes will sometimes appear when they poof as well, which gives a fairly hefty boost to your bar. Grab them when possible.

[close]

1. So no, no pattern to the enemies.

Spoiler

2. Shift projectile changes the colour of the bar of the music sheet scrolling underneath. When that specific colour returns to the top, it changes the loop of music being played. The matrix corresponds to this colour. If you get the sequence completely correct, it will send the bossguy down, plus a better power-up note each time the sequence is replayed entirely.

[close]

2. The Shift Projectile changes the color of the bars, aye. It's related to the matrix in the top right corner. If you pay attention to the music, you can see it changes every so often, even loops. The matrix only lights up if you're doing the music right. It's a guideline of sorts to finish the game.

3.

Spoiler

Your shots are four in total.
The first is your puny pew-pew-pew weapon that causes minimal damage, on D.
The second is S, which is average in all ways. Using it decreases your purple bar a little bit each time it's shot.
The third is A, which is a near one-hit grayout weapon. Using it decreases your purple bar significantly.
The last is the shift button, which changes the colour of the musical bars and is the only way of damaging the boss at the end. It will also do one-hit grayouts on normal enemies.

[close]

3. S, A, shift use some of the purple bar each time they are shot. So yes, using them constantly will downgrade your purple bar to a lower level if you aren't careful.

4. Musical Notes seem to be pure randomness.

'Twas indeed.

Aha! Turns out it -was- that the cursor wasn't centred properly ^_^ I am a fool.

Bumping this, because you people ought to be playing it and leaving comments, damn it!

Hmmm, interesting.

Then I still have the problem of the screen being offset.

Thanks guys! The combination of those codes seems to work pretty well. I appreciate it ^_^

One problem still in the way is that I've discovered although the game is set to 640x480, the screen size is only 320x240.

On top of that, the screen is 10 pixels off-centre. My cursor stops 10 pixels short of the bottom of the screen, calling that point on the Y-axes "240" (actually, "239" to be exact). Of course, it goes 10 pixels off the top of the screen too.

Yet, I originally set the game to 640x480 and that's what it says in Game Settings.

This is the only piece of code in this game so far, so there really can't be aything conflicting. Whatever the problem is, it's here.

Basically, I have a room with one GUI in the top-left hand corner. The room background is 2040x2550 and the "map" GUI is 68x85. The map is a smaller version of the background and what I'd like is if you click on any given area of the GUI, the view scrolls to the corresponding area in the room.

This is the code I have so far:

Code: ags

		int ypos = 0;
		int xpos = 0;
		destx = ((mouse.x-gMap.X)*30)-640; //Establish the destination by converting
		desty = ((mouse.y-gMap.Y)*30)-480; //small map coords to large room coords
		if (destx<0) destx=0; //if destination is within 640x480, make
		if (desty<0) desty=0; //sure the dest coords don't go below 0
		
		int diffx = 0;
		int diffy = 0;
		if (GetViewportX()<destx) diffx = destx-GetViewportX(); //Establish the distance between
    else if (GetViewportX()>destx) diffx = GetViewportX()-destx; //current X,Y coords
		if (GetViewportY()<desty) diffy = desty-GetViewportY(); //and the destination X,Y coords
		else if (GetViewportY()>desty) diffy = GetViewportY()-desty;
		
		int speedx = (diffx/10)-(diffx%10); //Set speed so larger distances are 
		int speedy = (diffy/10)-(diffy%10); //covered in the same time ie. scrolls faster
		
	while ((ypos != desty) || (xpos != destx)) {
		SetViewport(xpos, ypos);
		Wait(1);
		if (ypos<desty) ypos+=speedy;
		else if (ypos>desty) ypos-=speedy;
		if (xpos<destx) xpos+=speedx;
		else if (xpos>destx) xpos-=speedx;
	}

Perhaps more convoluted than it needs to be, but it seems to me it should work. It half works, because when I click on areas of the map, the screen does move but often ends up going twice as far as it needs to on the Y axis, or occasionally in the wrong direction entirely.

I can't help but feel it's my maths which is wrong here, and/or the mouse recognition.

Any ideas?

Oh, I've also noticed that the mouse cursor doesn't go down to the bottom of the screen. It stops perhaps about 20 pixels short, and of course seems to go about that much higher off the top of the page. What on earth could be causing this? I've never really coded for mouse/cursor functions so I'm stumped.

Also, I have another GUI made up with almost the exact same properties as the map GUI (which shows up everytime) which I just can't get to appear on the screen. I can think of no reason whatsoever for this. Even if I code a gDebug.Visible = true; into the game start, it won't show up. And yet, the gMap GUI shows up, as it should.

Sorry to ask so much, its just baffling that I have all these problems when there's really no more to the game than what I've mentioned here.