Topics

[Edit]

I'm having a weird issue in which sometimes, after using a tween to fade in/out an object's transparency or volume value, that value can't be set anymore through the use of the "regular" (non-tweened) property.

In this very simple example, I want an object to appear out of nothing at transparency 40, and then fade out:

Code: ags

function region13_WalksOnto()
{
      oObject1.Transparency = 40;
      player.Say("Did I see something there?");
      oObject1.TweenTransparency(0.5, 100, eEaseLinearTween, eNoBlockTween);
      player.Walk(155, 234, eBlock);  // moves character outside of region13
}

The first time the player walks on the region, everything works well. But if you step into the region again, the object does not appear, and furthermore, other attempts to change its transparency using oObject1.Transparency = whatever stop working too. It's as if the tween had "locked" this object's transparency at 100 and now I can only change it again using tweens. So if I do this, now it works:

Code: ags

function region13_WalksOnto()
{
      oObject1.TweenTransparency(0.5, 40, eEaseLinearTween, eNoBlockTween);
      player.Say("Did I see something there?");
      oObject1.TweenTransparency(0.5, 100, eEaseLinearTween, eNoBlockTween);
      player.Walk(155, 234, eBlock);  // moves character outside of region13
}

Has this happened to anybody? Is this a known bug, by any chance?

Edit: I'm using AGS 3.4.3.1 with Tween module 2.1.0.

I've just realized that part of my sounds and music are in the exe file and some in a vox file, and I don't remember ever having consciously made the decision of placing some in one file and some in another, so I'm looking to do a bit of tidying up by placing all my sounds inside the executable. If my game doesn't use speech/voiceover, is there any advantage to having the sounds and music of your game in a separate VOX file rather than compiling them directly into the exe file?

So yeah, like the subject says... Any players of Fallen London around these parts? Feel free to ping me! We can, uh, do stuff? And things? And play chess? And get married, apparently?

https://www.fallenlondon.com/profile/DreamingOfGlaciers

To give you an idea of what point I'm at, I just got started with the process of becoming a PoSI. I'm about to unlock access to the Labyrinth of Tigers, and I already have access to Mahogany Hall, The Shuttered Palace and The Forgotten Quarter, but not the University (I have the requirements, but I have so much on my plate right now that I'd rather wait a bit).

And remember...

Spoiler

North, go North, do not go North, never go North

[close]

[Edit]

I just posted something and noticed that if I use the ampersand symbol, it's taken as an EOF marker or something.

If I write "clicks and cuts", no problem.

But see what happens if I use the ampersand instead and write "clicks & cuts"...

Edit: interesting, so it does get displayed when I publish the post, but it's not showing in the preview. If I hit Preview while I'm editing the post, everthing after the ampersand gets cut off.

Care to take a look, AGA?

I'm extremely confused about this. I have a function in my global script (called in rep exec always) that handles the footsteps of player characters:

Code: ags

function HandleFootstepsSound()
{
   Region*r = Region.GetAtRoomXY(player.x, player.y);
   
      
   if (r != region[3]) // normal floor 

   {
     if (player == cLadyW) {
       
       frame1 = Game.GetViewFrame(player.NormalView, player.Loop, 4);
       frame1.LinkedAudio = aFemaleFootstep;
       frame2 = Game.GetViewFrame(player.NormalView, player.Loop, 9);
       frame2.LinkedAudio = aFemaleFootstep;
       
     }
     
     else {
       frame1 = Game.GetViewFrame(player.NormalView, player.Loop, 1);
       frame1.LinkedAudio = aFootstep_wav;
       frame2 = Game.GetViewFrame(player.NormalView, player.Loop, 7);
       frame2.LinkedAudio = aFootstep_wav;
     }
   }
 
   else if (r == region[3]) // carpet

   (same thing but with carpet footstep sound, yadda yadda)

(frame1 and frame2 are defined in the Global Variables panel as instances of ViewFrame*.)

This works perfectly well (thanks Vincent! ). So well, in fact, that when I have a NPC following the player (as cLadyW) in one specific room, the NPC's footsteps can ALSO be heard. But the NPC does not have any sounds associated to any frames!

But if I change the "else" in line 18 above to

Code: ags

else if (player == cCharlie || player == cSamuels)

Then it works as intended and there is no footsteps sound playing when the NPC is walking (it's supposed to be a ghost/incorporeal/imaginary presence).

I don't understand why this function, which is very clearly linked to "player", should affect NPCs. As I already have found a solution, this post is more about the "why is this happening" than "please help me fix this". Please, oh wise AGSers, enlighten me?

[in room 6 downstairs]

Hey, here I am with another headscratcher. I'm aware that there's probably no other way to see what's happening here other than looking at my code, but I will try to explain my issue in painstaking detail to see if there's anything I might be missing.

I have the following room in my game: (don't click the tags if you're interested in playing it when it comes out and don't want to be spoiled!)

Spoiler

[imgzoom]https://s.put.re/hg462Gss.png[/imgzoom]

[close]

Spoiler

[imgzoom]https://s.put.re/zgEiLVae.png[/imgzoom]

[close]

And there's also a sort of day/night cycle (seen here without any items because it's the only shot I have at hand).

Spoiler

[imgzoom]https://s.put.re/fU1LEdWY.png[/imgzoom]

[close]

Instead of letting AGS manage the scrolling, the viewport is fixed. When the player crosses over from one half of the room to the other, the backgrounds crossfade and the viewport tweens over to reposition itself. Objects that were active fade into their "shadow" or inactive versions, and inactive objects are swapped for their active versions. (For reference, see this thread.)

This works perfectly in all cases: I can go from the left side to the right side of the room and viceversa, and all objects will fade in and out and become clickable or disabled as expected. I can click on the door to the right to go to room 4 (bedroom) and come back, and everything keeps working. I can go downstairs to room 6 (parlour) and back, no problem. I can go into the bedroom again, switch from night to day, and everything still works.

BUT if I switch from night to day in room 6 downstairs and then come back up here, those three statues have disappeared and their inactive/shadow versions are showing instead.

The first thing I did was figure out what exactly "disappearing" meant here: whether the statues were being set to invisible, or if the sprite was being "unassigned", or what. Turns out, what's happening is that the active statues are being set to 100 transparency and set as non-clickable. In other words, it's exactly what happens if you cross from the left side of the room to the right.

But this doesn't make sense because:

- I exited the room through the stairs on the left in order to get to room 6. This means the statues were active when I exited the room. As far as I know, if an object is clickable when I leave the room, it should still be clickable when I go back. It's as if these objects were losing their last saved state for some reason.

- "So are you setting these statues to clickable/unclickable on room_Load or what?". Nope. The ONLY code in my whole game that sets these statues to non-clickable and transparent is contained in the region_WalksOn functions that control the crossfade between both halves of the room. There is literally no other call to oStatue1., oStatue2. or oStatue3.Transparency in the whole game.


The only clue I have been able to come up with is that room 6 has a region 14 and region 15, and these regions are also the ones that trigger the crossfade in room 5 when the player walks over them. So maybe it was a bug and regions being triggered in a room were also affecting stuff in another rooms? Also no. I removed regions 14 and 15 from room 6 and the issue is still there.

My other working hypothesis right now is that AGS can sometimes have issues when you have multiple entities with long similar/almost identical names that differ in e.g., a number. I had some trouble in the past with invisiblecharacter1 and invisiblecharacter2 which went away when I renamed the latter to dummychar1, so maybe something weird is going on here between oStatue1, oStatue1Covered, oStatue1GreyedOut and oStatue1CoveredGreyed? Is AGS getting confused? Senile? Does this even make sense?

I have managed to work around this issue by simply setting the objects' clickability, transparency, etc at room load, but having no idea what might be causing this is extremely frustrating because it means it could happen again anytime. I'm at my wits' end here. Any help or ideas where I could poke around next would be greatly appreciated.

[Names]

Hey everybody, here I am going crazy again over something that maybe is simpler than I think but I can't for the life of me make it work.

OK, so in the "Properties" panel, objects and hotspots have Names (oObject1, hHotspot1) and Descriptions ("Porcelain vase", "Blood stain").

I have a GUI at the bottom of the screen that displays in a label the description of any hotspot or object when you move your mouse over it:

(in my global script's repeatedly_execute)

Code: ags

lblDescription.Text = Game.GetLocationName(mouse.x, mouse.y);

This works perfectly, no issues whatsoever (although it's confusing that the function is called GetLocationName when the value it's taking is not the Name but the Description.)

Now my problem is that I want to change this descriptive text for some objects at certain points in the game.

Imagine a greek bust that is covered with a sheet at first but later on in the game, the sheet is removed. Instead of using two different objects, I would simply like to change the graphic and the description text of the object, so that when it's covered (oBust.Graphic = 100), moving the mouse over it would display something like "Mysterious object", and when it's uncovered (oBust.Graphic = 101), moving the mouse over it would display e.g., "Greek bust".

Is this possible at all? I know the manual says that it's not possible to change the name of a hotspot or object at runtime, but like I said, I don't want to change the Name, I want to change the Description. Or is it basically the same situation? Do I have to use a custom property instead of the built-in "Description" property?

[IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT, FOUR TRAVELERS]

IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT, FOUR TRAVELERS

or

A tale of dark and troubling things

(A free point-and-click adventure anthology in four acts.)

A train. A masked ball. Four strangers and their stories.

THE SILENT ROOM

(Progress: complete.)

In a luxurious hotel room in Rome, freshly arrived from Turin, Carlo awaits for his lover Patrick to arrive. Yet even in the wild and roaring 1920s, these rendezvous must be held in secret, and the tension of meeting in constant hiding is taking its toll.

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/WK5c6No.gif[/imgzoom]

(Main influences: The Talented Mr. Ripley, Inland Empire, and the unsolved mystery of Room 1046.)

THE SLOW VANISHING OF LADY WINTERBOURNE

(Progress: 40%)

Lady Winterbourne has lost her husband in a tragic accident. Now letters from pretenders to her title -- and her vast fortune -- keep arriving every day at her mansion, but the only thing she's interested in is the bottle of laudanum she keeps in her cabinet.

(Main influences: my own experiences with substance abuse, loss, grief, and suicidal ideation.)

THE NAMELESS RITUAL

(Progress: 20%)

Downtrodden by the racism of the American medical establishment, Dr. Jordan Samuels has resorted to the Dark Arts in an attempt to achieve the success denied to him by his peers. However, when the nightmares begin, he starts thinking he might have bitten off more than he can chew.

(Main influences: The Knick (TV show), Doctor Faustus, Twin Peaks, Aleister Crowley, any stories in which somebody finds Something Beyond Human Understanding that drives them to insanity such as The King in Yellow, Le Horla, etc.)

IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT

(Progress: 50%)

Laylah likes her job, but sometimes she yearns for a bit of variety. So any time the opportunity arises for her to experience something different from her daily routine, she will take it -- even if it means going against her very powerful bosses' orders.

(Main influences: Dr. Terror's House of Horrors.)

BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/6mhQav9.png[/imgzoom]

Laura Hunt: coding, writing, music & sound design, game design.

Thomas Möhring: art, animations, cutscenes, game design.

Additional music (so far!):

- Jack Stillman & Orchestra, At peace with the world (Irving Berlin, 1926). Restored mp3 transfer of original recording licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC 2.5 by the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.

- Walter Scanlan, Always (Irving Berlin, 1925). Restored mp3 transfer of original recording licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC 2.5 by the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.

- Gerluz, Serenade for Strings Op. 22 - II. Menuetto (Antonin Dvorak, 1875).  Licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

- Emanuel Salvador, 3 Old Viennese Dances - I. Liebesleid (Fritz Kreisler, 1910). Licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 3.0.

- Gnossiene No. 1 (Erik Satie, ca. 1890). Piano performance by Edward Rosser, from public domain recording. Harp performance arranged by Laura Hunt from MIDI file by unknown sequencer.

- Lady Winterbourne's Theme by Laura Hunt, inspired by Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# Minor Op. 3, No. 2.


This post will be updated with new screenshots as we have more to show for the following acts!

I still haven't begun to work on this because I don't have the art yet, but I'm trying to preemptively figure out how to go about it.

I want to achieve the classic effect where a character is carrying a lantern or torch and everything is dark except for whatever's inside the lantern's light radius. What would be the easiest way to do something like this? (By "easiest" I basically mean "without using Draw commands or dynamic sprites or other scary stuff" ).

I've seen that there's a Flashlight plugin, but I'm not sure if it does this or if it only handles a beam of light, or if it's even compatible with current versions of AGS. I've also searched around the forums but most of the more-or-less related threads I've found tend to be pretty ancient (2007-2009). I've probably missed something, though, because this is such a common effect that I'm sure lots of people here must have used it at some point.

Anyway, all I need for now is a hint in the right direction, and if I have any questions once I actually start working on it, I'll definitely come back to pester you all

I have an animation with a sound linked to one of its frames and when this sound plays, the sound that was playing before it gets cut off.

Code: ags

    streetatmo1 = aWhisper1.Play(eAudioPriorityNormal, eRepeat);
    
    cCharlie.LockView(27);
    cCharlie.Animate(2, 5, eOnce, eBlock);
    cCharlie.LockView(28);
    cCharlie.Animate(2, 5, eOnce, eBlock); 
    cCharlie.LockView(29);
    cCharlie.Animate(2, 5, eOnce, eBlock);  // aWhisper1 gets cut off here, when the frame with audio plays

Useful things to know, maybe:

- streetatmo1 is a global Audiochannel which I've been using for ambient sounds. I've also tried defining an Audiochannel* instance on the fly instead. Same issue.
- aWhisper1 is defined as a "Sound" in the editor and I have set Maxchannels = 0 for sounds.
- View 29 is the one that has the frame with the audio clip linked to it.
- Apart from this code, there's a music track playing in the background. This track is defined as "Music" in the editor (maxchannels = 1) and doesn't get cut when the linked frame sound plays.
- Also tried upping the priority of aWhisper1 to "high". No dice.

Any idea what might be happening here? 

Gone Home, Dear Esther, Firewatch, What Remains of Edith Finch, Journey, Kentucky Route Zero... The "walking simulator" or "interactive narrative" adventure sub-genre is as loved as it is maligned, with seemingly very few opinions in-between the two extremes of "games as art" and "pretentious wankery".

AGS forum members tend to have a clear predilection for a very specific type of adventure, and The Puzzles (tm) are often the main criterion on which games are judged here on these forums. But what about other types of adventures? What about task-driven, rather than puzzle-driven, point-and-clicks? What about interactive narratives, whether they be linear or branching? What about exploration sims, story driven adventures, or any of the other millions of things you can create with a point-and-click interface? What about Night in the Woods? What about Layers of Fear? Hell, what about Life is Strange?

I'd love to know what people here think of non-puzzle-based adventures, and if possible, avoiding the fruitless "ugh but are those even GAMES" debate, which always tends to get ugly and not add much to the conversation. Do you enjoy them just as much as puzzle-based games? Less? More? Maybe you don't care too much for them? Which are your favourites? When was the last time a video game made you cry, or gasp in astonishment, or blew your mind with a complex, well-layered story? (Not that any of this is incompatible with a puzzle-based approach, of course! For example, The Talos Principle is literally nothing else but puzzles, but the story is also meant to make you think about what being human means, whether an AI can actually think or feel, what is consciousness, etc etc).

So, what does everybody think? 

From what I've seen, every time a "Say" command is used (or a new line is spoken inside a dialogue), the speaking character's speech animation gets triggered from the start. So if I have a character say five lines, instead of the animation rolling across those 5 lines uninterrupted, it starts again for every new line.

This is a bit of a problem because I have an "angry" speaking animation in which the character among other things moves his arms up and down, so that sometimes the animation gets cut when for example, he has his arms up, and re-triggered from the initial position with his arms down, so it all looks a bit jerky. Nothing huge, nothing game-breaking, just annoying.

Is there a (simple) way around this by any chance, so that the whole animation plays seamlessly from the character's first line to the last?

When you get an error in the Dialog editor, it can be a nightmare to debug because you can't see the line numbers that are being referenced. e.g., today I had a simple "expected ; after ) in line 161" error due to a typo that took me ages to find and fix because one of my Dialogs has over 300 lines.

It would be amazing if line numbers could somehow be added to the dialog editor, even if there is the possibility of a small discrepancy between line numbers once the dialog has been converted to regular script. It would still be better than having no reference at all.

[yabb]

I was referred to this page while looking for a download link to an old module:

https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/wiki/Module_IndexCategory

But the links there are all in the wrong format: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=29358.0, resulting in 404 errors.

URLs are now: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=29358.0 instead.

Could this get fixed somehow maybe?

Have you ever had a question about AGS itself, or a small doubt that just crossed your mind, or a moment of "huh, I wonder why that is" but you didn't think it was worth opening a new topic for and you don't have any BFFs (Best Forum Friends) you can DM (i.e., pester) about it? If so, this is your thread! Hopefully!

The idea would be to post your quick, maybe obvious, maybe not super-complex questions that you think probably have a short and simple answer, in the hopes that you will learn something new -- and of course, give someone the chance to show off their AGS knowledge (And if it does prove useful, maybe it'll be worth sticky-ing?)

Here are a couple that I had this week:

- What is "better"? 40 fps or 60 fps? Is there really a whole lot of difference when it comes to resource use?

- Are sound clip and audiochannel volumes always relative to the global volume? In other words, if I have my global volume set at 70 and I do Audiochannel.Volume = 40, will the volume of Audiochannel be 40, in absolute terms, or 40% of 70%?

Hope somebody finds this idea useful!

[right]

Please. My game, it's very sick.

I am using Sierra speech with "Alternating" portraits.

My game starts in room 1, with cCharlie as the player character. When the player clicks on stuff, Charlie says things about the stuff. His portrait is on the left side of the screen.

But when I move Charlie to room 2 and click on stuff there, his portrait is now on the right.

When I go back to room 1, his portrait is on the left again. UNLESS I haven't clicked anything (i.e., he hasn't spoken) in room 2, in which case his portrait will be on the right.

I have no idea what's happening here and it's driving me insane. It's as if every time I change rooms, the game treats the player as a different character. Should I be calling "cCharlie.Say" instead of "player.Say"? Should I always be using "cCharlie" when it comes to moving, changing rooms, etc, rather than "player"?

I'm completely stumped and tearing my hair out here, any help would be appreciated!

(P.S.: I know that a possible workaround would be to set portraits to the left in the general settings and force NPC portraits to appear on the right with SetGameOption(OPT_PORTRAITPOSITION) every time a NPC speaks, but I'd rather try to understand why this is happening so I can actually learn some stuff).

[do]

My first post in the advanced technical forum, oh my.

In the game I'm working on, we have several instances of large rooms that are actually made up of several rooms. In this example, we have a living room and a bedroom which are in fact a single game room with two background frames. When the character crosses the threshold between them, the frames get swapped so that the new room is the "active" one and the other is greyed out. Easy peasy, tried it already and it works perfectly (the game resolution is 320x200, so the rooms actually scroll when you walk around, but that isn't shown here for clarity's sake).

However, the artist has now asked me if it is possible to do the following fade:



I'm guessing that this would imply something like grabbing the first background, drawing it on top of itself, switching the original background to the second frame, and then fading out the drawn surface using the tween module? Am I on the right track? Any suggestions as to how to actually do this, code-wise? Like I've mentioned already in some other thread, I've never used drawing surfaces or dynamic sprites before and I wouldn't even know where to start.

Hey once more, everybody.

Brainstorming with the artist of the game I'm currently working on, the topic of intro and ending cutscenes naturally came up at some point. For both of us it would probably be easier if he creates the intro cutscene/animation himself and dumps it directly to video, but I was wondering if there are any caveats to this except of course, for the potential large file size.

Our game is 320x200 in a very blocky pixel-art style, so my fear is that the video will not look as crisp because of video compression, especially when blown up at say 4x or 6x, or that it will simply "feel" different than it would if we did everything in-engine.

So I guess what I'm asking for here is mostly your subjective opinions. Have you used video for cutscenes in your own games? Did you like the results? Or is it better to buckle up and script the whole thing, if only for visual consistency?

So I'm almost embarrassed to have to ask this, but I've spent the whole day searching the forums and I haven't found anything this specific, maybe because it's such a basic question that everybody knows how to do it 

I've managed to figure out how to compile my game for Linux using AGS version 3.4.1 and now I have a "Linux" folder in my "Compiled" folder with files such as mygame.ags, ags32, ags64, etc. All good, or so it seems.

So what do I do now? Do I simply compress it (I guess it should be a tar.gz archive?), upload it to itch.io and that's it? Would someone who wants to play it simply run something like "ags64 mygame.ags", or do I have to include any additional instructions?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Hey all,

Like the topic says, I'm suffering from an awful case of writer's block for my next game and I wanted to see if I can get a hint, a tiny bit of inspiration, a word, something to get me moving along, from Ye Olde AGS Forums.

The corner into which I've painted myself is very simple: there's a murder-suicide, but I don't know why.

So I ask you, honorable members of the community, what do you think could lead a man to murder a good friend/close business partner in a hotel room and then kill himself?

The most obvious answer is "his wife was having an affair with his friend so he killed her and then showed up at the hotel room where his friend was expecting her to show up and killed him too, then committed suicide". Not interested in this, though; it's just too much of a cliché.

What do you think? What could lead somebody to commit such heinous acts? Some sort of blackmail maybe? I don't really need a lot of details, just a tiny thread to pull from. But any help would be greatly appreciated!