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[scenarios where the surface has been released too early or too late]

Hello,
I've been using DrawingSurfaces for quite a long time, doing sometimes complex stuff, without asking myself too many questions: Just get the surface, draw onto it, then release it!

But I'm actually curious about scenarios where the surface has been released too early or too late. Do such scenarios exist? Is there such a thing as "releasing a surface too early" or "too late"?
For example, I've successfully managed to do this: 1. Get the drawingSurface of a sprite, 2. Draw things, 3. Draw that sprite into another DrawingSurface before releasing its surface. It works, apparently.

2. Also, out of curiosity: when you get the surface, does it copy stuff or does it just create a pointer to its data? Is GetDrawingSurface resources intensive?

Unless the view changes all the time, you can simply do

Code: ags

  c2.Loop = c1.Loop;
  c2.Frame = c1.Frame;

That's what I'm doing, so that means it's definitely an issue in my script.

It's so annoying, I'm at work and some image hosting sites are blocked. I cannot see CassieBg's entries. :'(

Actually, hold on. The frame in the "mirror" character is one frame ahead of the original character's frame. So it might be a stupid mistake in my script after all.

There is a new command besides _always?

Yes, there is.

Could you show us your frame delay in a gif or some YTvid?

No, but it's very simple, really. If you use Game.GetViewFrame(c1.View, c1.Loop, c1.Frame) and then get the .Graphic of the frame, you'll see the frame that was the previous frame of the one currently displayed on-screen.

If this is just some animation without changing the positions of the characters, i'd say you put an object(or character?) in front of the two characters which view includes the two sprites of the animation as one and make the two characters transparent at that time.

No, there will be a lot of post-processing involved. However you're overthinking it. I know that there is a catch when manipulating the current data of a character, but I can't remember where it lies.

late_repeatedly_execute_always()

Thanks, I'll see if using this fixes my issue!

[always one frame late]

so I'm trying to animate two different characters simultaneously -- so that Character #2 is exactly in the same animation state as Character #1.
But Character #2 is always one frame late despite getting the ViewFrame from Game.GetViewFrame(c1.View, c1.Loop, c1.Frame).

I know I ran in the problem in the past and I can't remember how I solved it, if I ever solved it.

Isn't there a simple way of doing this now that there is the new repeatedly_execute_late? (or what was it called? _after? I forgot its damn name and I can't seem to find it on the forums, like every time I search it)

I'm using 3.4.0.6 alpha on Windows 7 64-bits.

When I open the script editor, the cursor is annoyingly flickering:
- When I don't move it, it normally displays as this, but very briefly blinks as this exactly every second.
- When I move the cursor, it just blinks between those two cursors very rapidly, as if one out of two frames was the arrow, and the other frame was the text-selection cursor -- back and forth at monitor-refresh rate.

I didn't find this in the tracker.

Note: I have dual monitors, I got 3.4.0.6 in the zip

sweeeeeeet! Don't forget to put that phonebox in. And yeah... finish it!

By the way, I'd like to say that I won't be entering the competition. I'll finish the drawing, yes, but I don't want to receive votes (if any). It's a bit cheating to draw something and then shove a phonebox into the scene. I'm doing this for the pleasure of participating, the artistic stimulation, and to support the real entries! The more the merrier.

@OUXX: something from gabriel knight maybe?

Nope. This game starts in Paris and is French!

New update: This is now the final perspective. I have all the cheats I need in there for the background to be functional in a real game.

Spoiler

EDIT: wooops, I forgot to remove the perspective lines/curves!
[imgzoom]https://36.media.tumblr.com/2f834753f9f5d25252d541be6bfe8b40/tumblr_nwsejhUVRZ1tsfksfo1_500.png[/imgzoom]

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New new update: this is what the final rendering will look like.
[imgzoom]https://36.media.tumblr.com/1ab3e8bbcede76c197a3ad731e6d6cb6/tumblr_nwsut61taj1tsfksfo1_540.png
[/imgzoom]

As you can see, still working on the overall compo, scenery, and color balance.
Also there's a small reference to a classic from the 90's that starts in Paris. Can you guess which one?

Spoiler

[imgzoom]https://41.media.tumblr.com/1b36e04062f9095c91bc644585defa0b/tumblr_nwqe14eUuM1tsfksfo1_500.png[/imgzoom]

[close]

So basically i just have to create a blank GUI with label, and number buttons right?

You don't even have to create "number" buttons.
1. Create a Gui
2. Add a Label called "lblNumber"
3. In your global script, go to on_key_press and add Khris' script.

There you go. Now if you press any key between 0 and 9 (these keys wear built-in names eKey0 and eKey9), the digit appears in the Label. If you press eKeyBackspace, it deletes the last character in the Label. Therefore the Label now acts as a digits-only textbox.

Finish it! 

Spoiler

[close]

Very nice entries so far!!! Really.

Here's my work in progress. "Where's the phone booth" you'll ask? Well, it's an excellent question. The answer is: I have no idea yet where I want to put it! But this phone booth is going to be super Parisian, that's for sure. Wait and see!

Spoiler

[imgzoom]https://41.media.tumblr.com/2ea2c49e7cd9d14e3194d1f1545e191b/tumblr_nwn9moVWWq1tsfksfo1_400.png[/imgzoom]

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the hotspot is called 'hDoor' and the object is called 'oDoor'.

Sorry I don't have the template's code with me right now. Will try to help later.

Wow. Really, really cool graphics. I hope the story/puzzles will be of the same quality.

Regarding this wiki article, I agree that it is confusing. Its title mentions antivirus, but the main problem we were having is that help file was marked as unsafe by Windows, not antivirus. Also, it was not any alternate data stream that caused this, but Zone identifier.

Well originally when I started reading it was all about alternate data streams and antiviruses going paranoid for no good reason. I'm not sure if posts have been edited or what, but since then the thread went in a completely different direction. Feel free to heavily change the article.

Janet advocated against trying to release games on jailbroken iOS in her article (see a few threads before this one)

If you leave some expected loops empty, weird behavior is to be expected.

You summed it up much better than me!

I didn't know Substring was resource intensive, it didn't seem to slow anything down.

Well it's not THAT resource intensive, but still, don't forget that AGS langage is still a script langage, so each time you call a function that works on arrays of characters, it calls a ton of layers of code to eventually reach the simple character processing. But you already know that.

PS: Did I thank you enough for the module you wrote for Indy? I didn't thank you enough for that. I'm doing it right now. Eternal thank you.

Naive answer : if you don't know how to script, it's rather difficult, if you know how to script, it's not too difficult (but it's very long and many people will give up before completion).

Educated answer: the whole difficulty by then (in the 90's) was to optimize the rendering of all the layers of sprites, and the scrolling. the core of such games is "how do I hold a large map in memory AND how do I draw all the tiles in the viewport AND in the right order AND who do I manage the walk-behins (e.g. character walks behind a tree) etc.".
In the 90's you would need to go to quite a low level of programming to prevent the game from lagging. You would use tons of C and even assembly. This kind of problems is not a big concern nowadays, except a few specific situations: 1) if you use an out-of-the-box engine that is not meant to render tons of sprites (namely: AGS) 2) If you use a system that doesn't have a lot of computing/graphical power in comparison with modern PCs and consoles (namely: mobile phones).