Messages

I'm interested.

However I can't see any of your images hosted on 4shared.com -- this site is blacklisted by most companies as an illegal-content-sharing website.

[the files would be simply numbered and you don't want to give a variable name to each of them]

Imagine that you'd want to have the "director's commentary" in every room.
Imagine that you want to offer the opportunity to each team member to record their own comments.
Imagine that you're in charge of importing all the produced mp3 or ogg files into the game project.

...that will be a pain, for several reasons :
- you don't want to do much typing, you're thinking "bulk". So the files would be simply numbered and you don't want to give a variable name to each of them. Is it still possible in AGS to access external sound files through numbers, as before?
- If yes, can they be stored externally in subfolders?

More generally, what would be your most automated process for this?

Bonus question: What's the most convenient tool to record this? (do you know of a super secret niche utility that automatically numbers and saves the files, without requiring to do "new file" or "save file" each tim?). I'l sure there's got to be some obscure tool meant for personal assistants taking notes or whatever.


ACTUALLY: is there a plugin that would allow to do this directly from the beta game? Calin Leafshade, how hard would it be to use the Windows Microphone through the Lua plugin or even ... what was it called... the DLL/C# runtime compiler plugin(s)?

Yeyyyyyy! Now it's so much more appealing
I had down;oaded it anyways! Congrats for finishing the game.

Very interesting.
Another approach could be to first copy the offsetted sprites on an empty sprite, then draw the original character sprite on top of it all?

If I follow, that would create a halo around the character rather than creating a rim that overlaps the character.

Yes.
Step 1 : Render the character all white on an emtpty sprite that you'll call "spHalo". (as I said, I think that yoiu can use "tint" or something to render it all white without any effort)
Step 2: Create an empty sprite, and draw spHalo four times or more, slightly shifted (4 pixels up, 4 pixels down, 4 pixels left, 4 pixels right). Now you got your "halo"
Step 3: In the liddle of the same sprite, draw the original sprite.

Now you've got your original sprite with a white outline around it.

[BEFORE]

Here's the scenario : we have a room that's used as some sort of mini-map (let's call it : "Map room"). It has a few places where the player can walk to. When he walks there, he's transported to the corresponding room of the location (let's call them : "Room1", "Room2", etc.).

On the mini-map, the interesting locations are indicated to the player using hotspots. When the mouse hovers over them, the player gets the description ("Room1", "Room2", etc.)

What we want is that BEFORE the player has visited any of these rooms, the description of the hotspot on the mini-map is "?". AFTER he's visited for the first time, it becomes "Room1", "Room2", etc.

Our problem is NOT to remember which rooms he has visited. We have nice little boolean flags for that. Easy peasy.

Our problem is that hotspot descriptions can't be changed. So how would you implement the description change?

Very interesting.
Another approach could be to first copy the offsetted sprites on an empty sprite, then draw the original character sprite on top of it all?
If you use "tint" (or similar) to make the offseted sprites all white, you won't need to access the sprite at pixel level at any stage of the process.

Why is it that people never post screenshots of their game in the "Completed Games" thread?
Do they realize that it probably divides the potential audience tenfold?
Shardlight got that.

PS: That's not a rant, it's just that it makes me sad to see all these great games not even tried by AGSers, only because of a lack of common sense by the developer. So much effort spent into the game, why skip the tiny final effort of making the game sexy?

Quintaros, out of curiosity, could you describe how you intend on using this feature? I can't think of a scenario where this would be useful.

[scenario 1]

What exactly do you mean by "inverting"? Is this about alpha transparency or "pink transparency"? Which RGB color would a 100% transparent pixel turn into?

Khris makes a good point :
- If your scenario is : "I want to transform 100% opaque pixels into 100% transparent pixels and vice versa", then you're good to go, because 100% transparent pixels can rely on their color ("magic pink", a.k.a. "COLOR_TRANSPARENT) instead of their alpha value. Therefore you can read and write this color to your sprite.
- If your scenario is "I want to transform X% opaque pixels into 100-X% transparent pixels and vice versa" then you can only rely on the alpha value, and that's the scenario that has no solution.

Note that scenario 1 is not self-sufficient: since the color is the same piece of information as the transparency (both rely on the RGB value), then you need extra information to decide what should be the actual color of the pixel that was transparent and has been turned opaque by the inversion.

A technical implementation could be this: having the entire image as a sprite (with no transparency anywhere), that you keep as a source, and two sprites that will be used as masks : One with pink pixels wherever you want (the other pixels can be any color, it's just a mask), and the other with pink pixels exactly reversed from the first mask. Each time you want to "invert" image, then you'll start from the original image and then apply either mask 1 or mask 2.

Any ideas on how to script it?

Hmmmm.... I don't know. I don't think so, but I might be mistaken. The reason is : I think you can't access the alpha value of each pixel individually. You can access their RGB values, but not their alpha value. The access to transparency values is very recent (see "DynamicSprite.CopyTransparencyMask")and not completely implemented.
But I might be overlooking something.

[The main question has not completely been addressed :]

The main question has not completely been addressed : "should I upgrade?" --> YES, you should upgrade, if you expect people to be able to play on modern systems:
- OS and permissions related isues (Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10 admin rights, special User folders, etc.)
- hardware-related issues (DirectX5 versus hardware-accelerated)
- Resolution issues (3x scaling on resolutions higher than 1600x1200, as well as screen proportions: 4:3 vs 16:9)

Spoiler

(I'm hiding this part, as you said everything works fine except the Views issue)

The simplest and safest way[/b] to upgrade has been mentionned :
1) upgrade from 2.6 to 2.72
2) Upgrade from 2.72 to 3.3.5 (released) or 3.4.0.6+ (still in alpha but stable)

If your scripts don't compile, there can be two main causes, relatively easy to fix:
1) The functions you use are no more global functions, but instead part of an objet (e.g. "ProcessClick" is now Room.ProcessClick). The manual usually helps you finding the names matching (each manual entry says : "function formerly known as...")
2) You're using old-type strings. For that, use the checkbox to keep using them
3) You're using old-style sounds. So, if you have trouble using PlaySound and such functions, ask for help on the forums, it's not too hard to switch to the new style.

[close]

If you would be so kind as to describe :
1) The features of your framework (in particular, the pathfinding and clickable areas : vector-based or bitmap-based?)
2) Your management of pixel art. The weakness of such engines is usually to mix low resolutions and high resolutions -- making it possible to move low-resolution sprites by fractions of pixels (nobody wants to move their sprite half a pixel up or down) and introducing unwanted bluriness.
3) The licensing of your framework. Will you release it free of rights? For commercial games too?

- a few highlights on his left leg that look a bit like stray pixels.
- The zipper is a pixels width too far to the right

Yes. I actually tried to fix the zipper thing in #2, but someone revertedto the old zipper.
As for the stray pixels, I don't know where they came from. I'll fix them in the final iteration.

Cool

Does this mean it works?

Didn't test, was just praising the idea

I think I've taken everyone's advice into account in sprite #8

[imgzoom]http://41.media.tumblr.com/52fcfbd8e13ddc87ecf6b8d41464ce9a/tumblr_o5ul75xxPz1tsfksfo1_1280.png[/imgzoom]

Look, Hat 1 reminds cowboy and hat 3 reminds blue oyster

Ouch. And now, Mad's hats remind me of this :


Well, mine was hat number 2, so ...

[user's]

The user's managed structs are still limited. This is not because we want them to be limited, but because allowing pointers inside them would require a big amount of extra work, which none of us could find time for yet.
We found that it is easy to just let user have managed structs with no pointers for now, so we added that.

Hey just to be clear: I'm not criticizing all the work -- and I know that it's only missing for lack of time! The fact that I'm trying to sort out what's possible does not mean that I'm not grateful for this amazing engine and the great recent enhancements.

Body 3
Hat 4

OK I must say this hread confuses me a lot. Am I the only one to see hats 4 and 5 only like a bowl hat ? How could it be Indiana Jones' brim/fedora ?

Gurok : After verifying, it's not possible to do this :

Code: ags

//None of this is valid even in 3.4.0.6+
managed struct MyStruct
{
  DynamicSprite* sp;
};

managed struct MyStruct
{
  int a[];
};

Therefore, it kind of defeats the purpose...

The side view is still not OK. You have issues vizualising the hipbone in 3D (hence drawing it sideways)