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Hi,

Ive got this little problem when Im trying to display an emotion with SierraStyle dialog. I can get it to work no problems when Im in normal gameplay, but as soon as I try to get it to work when my inventory GUI is open and Im using the GuiPortrait module, something seems wrong with the timer.

Here is what I do when Im in normal gameplay (this works):

Code: ags

// room script file

int Lampost_counter;

function hLampPost_Look()
{
 if (Lampost_counter == 0) 
 {
  Display("You see a lampost.");
 }
 if (Lampost_counter == 1) 
 {
   Display("Looking closer, you see theres a piece of gum stuck to it.");  
 }
 if (Lampost_counter == 2) 
 {
  cEgo.SpeechView = 17;
  Game.MinimumTextDisplayTimeMs = 2500;
  cEgo.SayCustomFont("Nasty...");
  Game.MinimumTextDisplayTimeMs = 1000;
  SetOfficerSpeechView_Neutral();
 }
 if (Lampost_counter == 3) 
 {
   Display("You notice nothing else of interest about the lampost.."); 
 }
 if (Lampost_counter < 3) 
 {
   Lampost_counter += 1;
 }
}

I change the speech view to 17, which is a grimacing face, and I change the TextDisplayTime to 2500ms, say "Nasty" and then revert the speech view back to default. This works, when the player says "Nasty", the text timer closes the portrait and the textbox "Nasty" also closes automatically after a short time (how I want it).

However, when I try the exact same thing, but while the inventory GUI is opened (when looking at an inventory item), the timer doesnt seem to close the portrait image nor the textbox automatically at all...you absolutely MUST "close it" manually by pressing the "enter" key (as if skipping the speech with the timer no longer works).

What could be the problem here? I can give any other information that might be missing to help me debug this...


***EDIT***

It seems linked to the fact that the Inventory GUI pauses the game...if I unpause, then it works...

Anyway to get it to work but still keeping the GUI paused?

Hi,

I havent posted here in a while (been readin' my manual )...I just wanted to know why exactly someone would want to use a bitmap font instead of a ttf? I know that TTF is a bit "bigger" and "slower" than a bitmap font (I think), but atleast you dont have to actually create a font.

Are there any other advantages of using a bmp font? Im guessing it would solve anti-alias problems since you can just smooth it like you want into the bmp, right?

Im making a game in 32 bits, 1024x768 and so far the TTF's seem to be just fine...although adding some shadow underneath them would be cool...so I was thinking lately of just converting the ttf into a bmp font (Ive got a few links for software to do that, so Ill check that out).

In your opinion, is it "worth it" converting my ttf's into bmp fonts?

Hi guys,

I got this to work "all by myself" with no help (hey, dont laugh, Im learning!) and Im pretty proud about it...  8)

I wanted my mouse cursor to change graphics when its clicked...for example, when Im in Interact Mode, when Im over a hotspot, the hand cursor animated showing me its a hotspot...and when I click on a hotspot, object or character, the mouse changes to a closed hand. When you release the click, the hand cursor just goes back to normal.


In "rep_exec":

Code: ags

  //If the mouse cursor was changed during a click animation, change it back to default  
  if(!mouse.IsButtonDown(eMouseLeft)) 
  {
    if (mouse.GetModeGraphic(eModeInteract)==628)
    {
      mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 199);
    }
  } 

In "on_mouse_click":

Code: ags

  //if the mouse has been clicked, change the cursor graphic to show its clicked
  if (mouse.IsButtonDown(eMouseLeft)) 
  {
    if (mouse.Mode == eModeInteract) 
    { 
      if ((GetLocationType(mouse.x,  mouse.y) == eLocationObject) || (GetLocationType(mouse.x,  mouse.y) == eLocationHotspot) || (GetLocationType(mouse.x,  mouse.y) == eLocationCharacter))
      {
      //Display ("HandAnim");
        mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 628);
      }
    } 
  }

Only problem, it works ok objects...but not for characters or hotspots...

What did I do wrong?

**EDIT**

It seems that since the object disappears once you click the hand on it, it must be doing something to enable everything to work like I wanted...I think my problem is there (something to do with the object no longer there makes it work upon the mouse click).

**EDIT PART 2**

Ok I think I solved it:
1) In on_mouse_click, I disabled the animation in the cursor:

Code: ags

  //if the mouse has been clicked, change the cursor graphic to show its clicked
  if (mouse.IsButtonDown(eMouseLeft)) 
  {
    if (mouse.Mode == eModeInteract) 
    { 
      if ((GetLocationType(mouse.x,  mouse.y) == eLocationNothing))
      {
        mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 630);
      }
      else if ((GetLocationType(mouse.x,  mouse.y) == eLocationObject) || (GetLocationType(mouse.x,  mouse.y) == eLocationHotspot) || (GetLocationType(mouse.x,  mouse.y) == eLocationCharacter))
      {
        mouse.ChangeModeView(eModeInteract, -1);
        mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 628);
      }
    }    
  }

2) In rep_exec I enabled the animation once again:

Code: ags

  //If the mouse cursor was changed during a click animation, change it back to default  
  if(!mouse.IsButtonDown(eMouseLeft)) 
  {
    if ((mouse.GetModeGraphic(eModeInteract)==628) || (mouse.GetModeGraphic(eModeInteract)==630))      
    {
      mouse.ChangeModeView(eModeInteract, 24);
      mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 199);
    }   
  } 

I noticed there is a "Mouse.GetModeGraphic", is there something similiar for the modeView...something like "Mouse.GetModeView"??

If not, we should have that feature added !

Hi!

Ive tried searching the forums without any luck to this specific problem. Ive found some that "kind of" points to some aspects, but not quite.

Its pretty simple I guess, basically all I want to do is when my savegame or loadgame GUI is open, when I flick down or up on the mouse, it will scroll up or down the lists, but selecting each one at the same time (not just scrolling the list up and down as a whole, but scrolling the selection/highlight for each save game or load game). Ive got the scrolling working with arrow buttons, but it only scrolls the whole list up or down, not each individual item.

This is what I tried, and well...doesnt work!

Code: ags

else if (button == eMouseWheelNorth) 
{ 
	if (gSave.Visible)
	{
    		stSaveGames.ScrollUp();
	}
}
else if (button == eMouseWheelSouth) 
{
    	if (gSave.Visible)
    	{
      		lstSaveGames.ScrollDown();
    	}
}

Hi,

Im not the most computer-savvy guy, so be easy on me

On my computer, my most heavy area in my game (full screen gui animations 60 frames, etc) runs at about 54 fps. Ive tested this on another system and that same part runs at like 10 fps. They are both pretty modern computers, with the exception that the second one is a laptop with a crappier graphics card.

What will affect the frame rate more, the graphics card, the processor, or ram? Its more so I can gauge the minimum specs, etc...

Thanks in advance guys

Hi,

Im not entirely sure if this is the right place to post this, but I think it would be great to have a feature in the scripting part of AGS to right-click on a line and "add comment" or "remove comment"...so you can highlight a whole block of script, and add a comment...kind of like in UltraEdit...and also to have a feature of adding bookmarks so you can press a key and scroll though your bookmarks...

Does anyone think this would be useful?

In my on_mouse_click I deleted everything for the eMouseRight to debug something with my inventory:

Code: ags

  else if (button == eMouseRight) 
  {

  }

Basically, by putting nothing there I figure right clicks are now diabled...What I dont understand is when Im in pointer mode, I can still right-click on icons in my iconbar, and right-clicks work in my inventory, even though in my on_mouse_click there is nothing "set" for the right-click (?)...is this something to do with the "pointer mode" overriding something? Or is it one of those "aww man, thats simply stupid, just do this" kinda things?

How can I totally disable the right click when Im in my inventory? Something like this I figure:

Code: ags

if (gInventory.Visible=true)
{
     *disable mouse right-clicks code here*
}

I tried this without any luck:

Code: ags

if (gInventory.Visible=true)
{
       if (mouse.IsButtonDown(eMouseRight))
      {
        //do nothing, please, for God's sake, do nothing
      }
}

Whats up with this?

Hi guys,

This is what Im trying to accomplish:
I simply want to hide/show the scroll arrows in the inventory depending on if a number of objects are in my inventory. Ive checked this thread, and it works partly...something is missing!

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=26364.0

This is what I did (when you click on the iconbar's inventory button, this function gets called):

Code: ags

function show_inventory_window () 
{  
  invCustomInv.TopItem = 0;
  gInventory.Visible = true;
  // switch to the Use cursor (to select items with) 
  mouse.Mode = eModeInteract;
  mouse.UseModeGraphic(eModePointer);
  // But, override the appearance to look like the arrow

  if (invCustomInv.ItemCount <= 12)
  {
    btnInvDown.Visible=false;
    btnInvUp.Visible=false;    
  }
  else
  {
      if (invCustomInv.TopItem > 0) 
      {
        btnInvUp.Visible = true;
        btnInvDown.Visible=true;
      }
      else 
      {
        btnInvUp.Visible = false;
        btnInvDown.Visible=true;
      }
    
  }

}

When I get more than 12 items in the inventory, my down cursor shows up like it should, however, once i press it to scroll down, the up arrow doesnt appear, it stays hidden...I dont understand whats missing...
 

EDIT:

I placed the script above in my rep_exec and it now works...One question, is it "bad" to have lots of lines in the rep_exec function? Since everything is run all the time, if you haves lots of code in there it can get "slow", right?

What is considered "insane" amount of lines to be found in that function? As in, whats the average for a full length game...?

Thanks!

Hi,

I would simply like to know what is considered "heavy" in terms of GUI Animation? What would be considered "overkill", "insane", etc...

Here is what I am using with the module GUIAnimation:

It is my IconBar GUI...
60 png files (1024x115) for the animation (around 85kb each, so a total of 5100kb)

I tried with lower frames (like 20), but the animation wasnt as smooth...

Is this considered "too much"...? Im not too sure how the engine processeses this.

PS: Is there a "frames per second" kind of debug mode where I can see when/where the game slows down?

Hi,

Ive been trying different solutions and I cant seem to get what I want without doing a "hack". Im sure there is a much simpler way of doing what I need done. Ok, here we go:

All I need is once a character finishes saying something to the main character, I want him to smile, but hold the smile for 4 seconds...and nothing else is displayed (and everything else is locked/paused).

Right now what I have is my normal speech view and a "smile" speech view...just 3 frames of my main character smiling. What I tried doing was in my dialog simply changing the speechview to my smile view...it works fine, but since the line he says while smiling is very short ("Great!"), that smile view only gets displayed for like 1 second.

I tried gamepause...Wait(80)...putting a delay, etc...

I tried looking in the manual for some sort of "display for x seconds then disappear" kind of deal, without luck.

A little nudge in the right direction is all I would need

Hi,

I hope this is the right place to ask, but Ive recently checked out Visionaire, and I dont see why it would intice someone to change from AGS other then 2 things...higher resolutions, and widescreen support (as in, I think it the engine detects the screen size and automatically places black bands on top or sides to adjust for widescreen).

Other than that, in your opinion...is it worth it to try to learn it, and eventually use it? Ive found so far AGS quicker and easier to use, and the community seems better...there is also way more documentation, even some youtube tutorials.

Im in the stage of choosing an engine and its really hard to decide what features are more important. I dont need 3d, Im doing the game at 1024x768...but there will be lots of video (cutscenes). I do find it annoying though right now when I run the game fullscreen it gets stretch out of whack, looking "fat" cause its filling the widescreen...

However, Ive heard praises for Visionaire thats its "better", but I dont see how, exactly. I doubt anyone will say "yea man go use visionaire"...thats not really my question. Why would someone use this engine over AGS? What would be "good reasons"?

Should I investigate further, or just let it go and not bother wasting my time on Visionaire?

Hi,

Ive come across what I believe could be a bug, however I could be mistaken. I will do my best to describe what I have found.

I had my game settings to a resolution of 1024 x 768. I wanted to change it to 640 x 480 temporarily, to test something out. When I finished, I reverted it back to 1024 x 768.

I noticed then that all my GUI's buttons have been moved, and resized, etc...

So I decided to quit AGS without saving so I could get back my previous version.

When I re-opened AGS, and my game...I found that is saved AFTER everything got resized, etc...as if the "dont save" function didnt work.

I tried reproducing this bug and I successfully reproduced it each time (3 times).

If  this is indeed a bug, I would say its a MAJOR one because I had to basically reset all the button's positions and the GUI sizes, which is a real bi*atch!! 

Hi,

I can get transparency to work when there are zones 100% transparent. I either use the PNG or I use a bitmap with a pink color to punch through...however, when I want to make an area semi-transparent, it doesnt work.

When I load the PNG with semi-transparency, the preview shows its semi-transparent, however, when I start the game, its just opaque. I then made an alpha channel and saved as a TGA file, but when I come to import the tga file, it doesnt seem to be supported (doesnt show up in the options to import)...even though while browsing the forums Ive seen people mention they use TGA.

Its in 32-bit true color and the sprite Im trying to get semi-transparency to work is a dialog portrait set to Sierra with Background.

Thanks!

Hi,

I found some topics discussing how to change the text color, or even the speech color. What I would like to know is, is there a "simple" way of having different characters linked to different speech colors + their own font? Im using a custom text window, and its color is black. So when I use the "sierra with background" in the settings, the character's speech is black (of course). When I choose "sierra transparent", then I can have different colors because there is a place to set that up in the character's options.

Is there a way to keep the custom text window, but override the text color assigned to that custom text window with each character's own text color setting?

During a dialog, with a custom text window, when Character A speaks, he has font A and color A...when Character B speaks in response, she has font B and color B...

If this isnt possible via the menus (no scripting), this is something that we should implement in the next version of AGS!

*ps: in the meantime, if this is possible via scripting only, Ill take that route if I dont have any other choice until it is implemented!

Sierra no longer exists...I believe they were bought by Vivendi (I think), and now Vivendi has been bought out by Activision (or merged together).

Can we still make games with their titles, such as King's Quest, etc...? I know there are remakes out there, but what does one have to do/not do so that a user-made game doesnt get pulled..."cease and desist", etc...or get sued by a company?

If all sprites, backgrounds, animation, etc...are originals, but we use the same "series" title, and use the same characters + locations + storyline...is that "ok"?

Hi,

I have a character that has the 8 angles of movement...front, back, left, right, 3/4 up and left, 3/4 down and left, 3/4 up and right, 3/4 down and right.

The problem is when I test it out, it seems it doesnt know which loop to show...I click somewhere on the screen and the characters moves there, but uses a wrong loop.

In the preview, all the animations are ok. They have 11 frames per animation loop. In the character, diagonal loops are actived.

Is there something I did wrong/missing, etc...?

This is the first time I tried out diagonal movement. The basic 4 views works just fine.

Thanks for your help in advance!

(ps: I can send the character export if needed).

I was wondering if there is an "offset" function for placing sprites.

As an example, here is what I would want to do: (Temporary Rip from PQ3, Sonny Bonds)

I got the blinking view to work, but right now I have to use a blinking Sonny portrait with the animated part (mouth) transparent (pink color)...this is a waste of memory...I would much prefer using only the closed eyes as a sprite instead...and indicate with numerical values where I want this sprite to superimpose onto the underlying layers of Sonny's animated talk view.

Does this make any sense?

Here are 2 pics:
1st pic to show what I have now (which is a waste)
2nd pick is what I would rather use as the blinking view that would be super-imposed over the talking animation.



If there is this feature, it means I wont have to use same-size sprites for every animation when only small parts of an image are actually moving...therefore saving image space (and time).

Does something like this exist?

Thanks!

Hi,

I just wanted to get people's opinion on a simple background I did if it matches Police Quest 4's style...the car + character is ripped (for now, temporary...just to see)

Ive only got two so far.

Does it match "ok", in your opinion?

Also, does anyone know of a good program that converts video into 256 colors and divides the animation into individual cels? Back in the 90's I heard Sierra used to use a program called "Movie 256" that permitted this but I cant seem to find anything like it (but I will continue trying!).

Thanks!