Messages

True, without the bevel feature, rounded buttons would have been already added.
Let's see if this module attracts users at all. If so I might consider adding at least rounded buttons.

Couldn't you whip up a quick and dirty solution, like duplicating the top row of pixels from the sprite to create some sort of lazy outline? If it works with fonts, it could work with sprites

Non-rectangular buttons would require a fix to the engine to let pixel-perfect detection of GUI items.

Oh sh#t I forgot that, it might ruin our upcoming verbcoin interface.

I suppose your next challenge would be to make this work with non-rectangular buttons (the difficulty would be for the punched-in darker outline)

I trusted "CopyTransparencyMask" when applying the gradient on the font - it simply works
As for Challenge #0: Are you sure you don't want to rely on a c++/lua plugin?

to be honest I'm not sure that the CopyTransparency mask doesn't already do what I want to do. I need to check your code.

Laying me off with removing me from the credits and dev list. Just rude, Meansieur OUXXX. 

That is not what happened (the list above was the list of current active members) and you'll definitely be credited as you provided some art.

do I still unlock the achievement, if I make this public or does it have to be exclusive?

"Achievement"? Crazy young people with their crazy achievements madness.
--> Strictly nothing needs to be exclusive. 100% of our script will be open-source, and we've already shared several modules from it. Make it public, by all means!

If you manage to write a (slow) function to intersect some sprites (I can't tell if there's a gradient inside the button's characters) then you've completed chalenge 0 at the same time!

Guys, I'm just baffled by how nice (and smart) you are.
Abstauber: if you manage to add a gradient INSIDE the font characters, then you'll have achieved a flawless result...
Also I hope it's possible to add yet another gradient on top of the final result? that'd be cool.

[Khris]

Khris has achieved chalenged 3! (spinning transition).....

KEEP THEM COMING!

[Scavenger]

Amazing. Scavenger has already achieved chalenged 2! (fog of war).....

KEEP THEM COMING!

[LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!
Believe it or not, the project is moving forward. What is it you say? You want evidence? Oh, but certainly! Look below.




At the moment we're a team of not 3, not 4, but 9 on-and-off people, each working in their own field! CassieBg and Frikker (3D black magic), doctorFargo (some admin), Selmiak (AfterEffects and stuff black magic), myself, Tremulas and GromDessoun (programming), RetroGuy, WRK and FredFive (sweet, sweet pixel art).

And yet, we still need more!

That's why we're launching 4 NEW PROGRAMMING CHALLENGES. I think each of them could be quite fun for people who like to create cool effects from the sheer power of their intellect (and by that I mean: scripting nerds! ).




Note: ALL the challenges below must be natively 32-bits!

Challenge 0: state-of-the-art Intersect sprites (medium?)

Spoiler

GOAL: Drawing a sprite onto another sprite only if their alpha channels intersect. Or, if you will, use a sprite as a mask to draw onto another sprite. and to make it reasonably fast even supremely slow. We'll use it for some pre-rendering.

HINT: Use function CopyTransparencyMask? Since recently, it does not fully overwrite the target sprite. the issue is with the resizing of the sprites to make them match in size. Cna you wrap your head around this?


REQUIREMENTS:
1. A function that works with two DynamicSprites (and generates a new one as output if needed)
2. If it's not possible to work with real intermediate transparency levels (not fully transparent, not fully opaque) then we'll be happy to have a function that works only with the transparent Pink color, AS LONG as it works with a 32-bits game.

[close]

Challenge 1: Dynamically generated GUI (difficult)  abstauber did it!

Spoiler

GOAL: to be able to generate the Legendary Lucasarts 9-verb GUI, BUT some graphical details can be set up arbitrarily, such as the backgorund image, the depth and colors of the gradients, or the text. See this image.

REQUIREMENTS:
1. You cannot predict the number, size, name, position of the buttons. For now we'll consider that all buttns are rectangular.
2. For now, simply work as if you should apply the processing onto every button of a given GUI, by irerating on them. Call the buttons by their individual names as little as possible!
2. At game_start, each (rectangular) button will check out the piece of graphic that occupies the space immediately below it (in the GUI graphic), and duplicate it (to make it its very own NormalGraphic). Then...
3. ...each button will apply some additional decorators onto their "NormalGraphic", "MouseOverGraphic" and "PushGraphic". These additional processings will be generated by functions that apply graphical effects onto DynamicSprites. These could be (non-exhaustive list) : 1) A gradient, 2) An outline. etc. Don't focus on implementing them for now, but leave some room for them.

Spoiler

3a. Gradient: You must produce a simple function that generates a horizontal gradient, from a solid color (black, white...) to fully transparent. By "horizontal", I mean that the gradient is fully colored at the TOP and fully transparent at the BOTTOM (or reversed). The width can be passed as parameter and only decides how cropped it is on the sides (1-pixel wide, 2-pixels wide...). The height, however, decides how progressive the gradient is (obviously if the height is just 3 pixels, then the gradient will be much less smooth than if it was 50 pixels high). The gradient is generated into a DynamicSprite that can then be pasted onto any graphic we want (i.e. : onto the buttons Graphics)
3b. Outline : This simply draws an empty rectangle onto a DynamicSprite. We can decide the size, color and transparency of the rectangle as function parameters.

[close]

4. the button's text will also be dynamically written onto the button, depending on the language.4.

Spoiler

Bonus : Apply those effects using the "Intersect sprites" function from challenge 0 above.

[close]

5. (optional) The clicks on the buttons should not be detected using AGS events, but instead using the Standalone Click module. If you're too lazy, don't implement that, we'll do it ourselves. But that would be a big plus because all the processing would be applied onto all the buttons in one function rather than many.


Conclusion: Focus on a flexible way to apply graphical effects onto the several states of a GUIButton, to render it dynamically.

[close]

Challenge 2: Fog of war (medium) scavenger did it!

Spoiler

GOAL: Reproduce the catacombs scene in the Last Crusade Lucasarts game, except that every place visited stays somewhat visible (even though darker than the place where the player currently is). That's exactly the same as every classical RTS game such as Warcraft 2 or Starcraft.

REQUIREMENTS:
1. (essential!) Make it compatible with the Smooth Scrolling" module!!! your testing room should be larger than 320x200.
2. You may use the Flashlight module, or not at all. It's entirely up to you.

[close]

Challenge 3: spinning transition (easy) Khris did it!

Spoiler

GOAL: within one AGS room, invent a visual transition that goes from one fullscreen image to another. This transition should be like the second one seen in this video. In other words: it should be that "spinning" wipe, and the center of the spin should be the center of the screen.

REQUIREMENTS:
1. As said before, it's not a transition between two rooms. It's WITHIN a room, between two fullscreen sprites. You may decide to overwrite the first sprite with the second sprite along the way.
2. No need to add any fading like in the video. Just make it sharp.
3. You may (if you want) rely on a system of triangles being drawn additively at each game cycle. If you go that way, then you should be interested by the "flood fill" function from this module. That will help you paint the triangle after drawing it.

4. The speed should be configurable.
5. The transiiton should start from the top, along the vertical line that goes from the center of the image. and it should spin clockwise.

[close]

EDIT

EDIT

HA! That's funny.

[BUT]

OK, you need to know this : after noticing that the competition didn't have much success (it was before Mad posted his entry), I thought to myself "I'll give them a few more days" and then completely forgot about it. I visit the forum often, but not this subforum. Woopsie doopsie. I apologize for this.

So, obviously Mad is the winner. Not too difficult since he was the only one BUT his entry is actually really cool, I love it! totally in the spirit of the theme.

So, Mad, it is now your responsibility to host the next one! ;-)
Eagerly waiting.

PS: Your forum avatar always reminds me of a snail.

Cool piece of news.
The fact that the sources are centralized doesn't mean that the authors shouldn't maintain them themselves

Going hi-res I see!

Well, now, since you're a professional company and all, and have more time for R&D (haha), then how about you develop a process to add a very light antialisaing on the outline of character sprites? (intrested suggestion)

My AGS 3.3.3.0 has some weird bug that occasionally corrupts...

I would suggest to immediately upgrade your game files to AGS 3.3.4!

Thanks a lot to CW and the other contributors. Like, really. Really really!

[to pay attention to insignificant details while ignoring the big picture]

Back on-topic: the very basics of conspirational thought is to pay attention to insignificant details while ignoring the big picture, hence producing goofy theories.
This thought justifies itself by the fact that "curiosity is good" (which is true), that "it's small details that produce the big result" (which is also true), and that "in the past there have been cases where nobody was believing the outsiders but they were right in the end" (yes, all of that is true)

BUT

it's too vague. One cannot justify their claims with vague assumptions like "what if I was right? It's possible that I'm right. Once a thinker said that I must continue my search for truth as long as there's even just 1% chances that there is a mistake". Yes. But not if you ignore the big picture.

As a well-known example: "jet fuel cannot melt steel beams". Well yes it's true. Rock solid truth. It seems to be that small detail that invalidates official investigations on the plane crashes. And then someone will build a whole theory around this hard fact: they imagine that maybe it was all faked by some higher intelligence.
...EXCEPT they're ignoring the big picture. They'r eignoring that steel doesn't need to reach its point of fusion (to melt entirely) to start bending. Far from it.
In other words: they focus only on the tiny details that confort their goofy thories and don't search for the relevant details.


What I really can't stand with that sort of thinking is that it's undermining the whole principle of scientific thinking while sounding like it's strictly following it. That sort of flawed scientific thinking says that the researcher must not omit any detail. Well yes, that's true. Scientific thinking is fundamental. But don't forget that in real life, you never have all the data. You must constantly infere some truths. You cannot start an experiment thinking "OK, but what if we're in the Matrix and none of this is real?" No. You must admit that ... reality is real. In other words: you must cut the bullshit and sort out the facts. If you don't have this skill then... It's sad but you're not capable of critical thinking.

========

PS: If you haven't read the book "Foucault's pendulum", then it's a perfect example of what I'm describing. The whole book is a made up story of a guy who's a specialist of medieval symbols (starts a bit like Da Vinci Code). The book shows how all the symbols in history are connected (because, well.. a triangle shape stays a triangle shape. In other words: it doesn't mean that everyone who uses a tiangle shape is connected to the previous guy who did the same 100 years before).
But the twist of the story is that, in the end, it turns out that all the symbols are actualy connected. That there is a secret society throughout history who actually does use these shapes on purpose, and they have a meaning.
My point is: every normal person understands that this book is a story. It's just the author having fun, using his knowledge of symbols. But I've seen people who actually believe all these things, and who think that the author was trying to prove them!!!

Ugh.