Messages

Ghormak, excellent example!
Supercarrot, superb. I can just imagine the game.
DG, nice job, but a bit derivative of the Mittens image... [EDIT] Good point! You win $5!

I like Arby's too!
Unfortunately the "local" one is up the interstate a bit, so it's a little inconvenient...

That's pretty good english for a non-native speaker!
Just a couple of things:
the plural of ignoramus is ignoramuses
claimings should be claims
stubb is spelt stub
on short supply should be in short supply
get on the car should be get in the car
I also thought that the words "operation" and "diplomatic" were slightly out of place.

On the wider issue of remaking 5DaS, I agree with mätzyboy.
Maybe you could write a prequel or sequel (with Yahtzee's approval), or a sequel to The Lurking Horror, or somesuch.

Ooh, deluxe!
What's changing?

A love interest?
But he's only 12 years old!

Looks like a fantasy background.
Maybe there are two suns?

Unless a puzzle is to locate the sun in the sky I don't think anyone is going to notice.
The lighting works for me.

Very nice!
I like the skin colour. It looks like you're embarrassed to be pixelated.
"DON'T" should have an apostrophe.
The jean edges look a bit rough - unless you really have *that* baggy jeans. In which case I hate you all.
Cheers!

Sounds like a plan!

You might be better off writing your own dialog system.
Each dialog would be a separate function which is called from the dialog interface when you select an option.

if (currentDialog == D_TALKTOERIKESTRADA)
{
  dialogFunctionErikEstrada(dialogOption);
}
else
if (currentDialog == D_TALKTOBRIANBOITANO)
{
  dialogFunctionBrianBoitano(dialogOption);
}
etc

You'd need an array of dialog structures which contained the conversation options and a function to initialize them all.

Then you can use script language instead of dialog script.

Not easy but once you have the basic setup going it could work out cleaner.

Hmmm, can AGS work with function pointers? *Goes to check*

Yes. You would. Look at the picture.
Case bloody closed.

Now if they were both OBJECTS, then obviously you wouldn't see any background.
But because the walkbehind uses a single image + alpha, you can't avoid mixing in some background.

What about that Apprentice II? Hell of a game. *Whistles tune*

My girlfriend loves fountain pens... (I can't use them easily because I'm left handed.)
Thanks! I'll point her at that site.

No, it should be FG/2 + OBJ/2.
And that's why this technique doesn't work.

It's tricky to do in photoshop, but eventually I managed it...


Left: what you want, Right: what you get

Subtle but ugly.

I think it'd be pretty good as an idle animation, just not playing constantly.
Maybe two cycles then back to standing still.
Love the rug!

Is it any good yet?

Why alpha-ed walk behinds won't work...

Let's consider a pixel on the border of an alpha-ed walk behind - it's 50% transparent.

Let's call the background BG, the foreground FG, and the object walking between them OBJ.

Now, without the object, the border is FG/2 + BG/2. This is the colour in the image, IM.
With the object, the border should be FG/2 + OBJ/2.
BUT, using a walk behind technique, the border will be IM/2 + OBJ/2 = FG/4 + BG/4 + OBJ/2.

Hence there will be a bit of the background visible through the object. Not pretty!

Steve

You could, but I think Geoff wants to change the transparency on the fly.

2. You can't do that already? That's a shame. Sounds useful.

3. The concensus on alpha-ed walk behinds was that it would blend to the wrong colour, and that you should just use an alpha blended sprite in front instead. You can keep the non-alpha portion of the walk behind, and just separate out the alpha-ed border as a sprite.

Steve

Why cheat if you're not going to win?

We could use an external editor, but then we'd miss out on all the lovely autocompletion stuff!
Unless there's some way to get our hands on the autocompletion info?
Cheers...

I tried googling for some info on those indians and the first hit said:
"Warriors would stare into the sun all day long. They would then suspend themselves from poles by running wooden skewers through their chest muscles."

Maybe it only improves your eyesight if you do the second bit.