Messages

[1)]

I've read a lot of articles abvout the Singularity, and I've observed a truly weird phenomenon: Commenters (including techies) tend to contradict the plausibility of the Singularity on the grounds that: 1) Moore's law is unsustainable, 2) Computers don't work the same way as a brain. 3) We haven't even simulated a brain yet. Even Bill Gates and other prominent industry actors do these statements.

I think that's insane. It's like even programming engineers don't understand at all AI and/or neurology.

That's overlooking : a) The fact that people who work on AI are quickly switching to real neuronal networks instead of using traditional computers. By "real", I mean that they now leave a lot of space for "relfexes" and statistics in their artificial brains, instead of wiring and programming everything. That's how the brain works. "It takes too much calculation to make a decision? Fuck it. I'll take a shortcut and do what my DNA tells me to do" b) It's only since recently that IBM started massively  producing cheap neuronal chips that work in a truly parallel way, and that you use in bulk (we're talking millions of them). And it's only since recently that AI specialists really taught themselves massively-parallel programming. c) We don't know how brains work? Yes we do. We don't know the details, but who cares. As I said it's all about the brain teaching itself, and about having quick cycles of artificial evolution. It's building shitty artificial brains by trial and error that will teach us how the human brain works and what is intelligence, not the other way around. d) Moore's law is unsustainable? No relevant. Parallel programming doesn't care about computing power. Your brain is super duper slow (less than 100 operations per second. That's 100Hz, as opposed to the several GHz of a regular computer). It's all about the trillions of neurons firing up in an intricate and semi-structured way.

To me, it makes no doubt: singularity is on its way. We might fucking see it before we die! I'm so scared and thrilled at the same time.

It will come gradually. And the scary thing is that the very nature of intelligence will make that we won't know exactly when artificial braisn will become smarter than humans. We won't know what tasks should be given to them or not. And because intelligence can emerge only from randomness and neuronal "shortcuts" (reflexes, misconceptions, subbornness, etc.), it will be impossible to set simple rules like "don't harm a human".

Yes, it's a good idea to move your minigame to a module.
You can also move the buttons code from the global script into the minigame module (or the room module if you're lazy), but that requires slightly more work. If you look at my "standalone click" module, you'll see how I do it (I would tell you to use it as-is, since it's what it was made for, but I can't remember if I found bugs in it since I released it).

Basically at each game cycle you manage manually if the mouse has been down then up, and you check if it was above a button and/or a gui, and if so, which one.

I'm so glad you included Panoramix's house (Getafix for our English friends, and Readimix in the US)

Yes, much better but still too shy (make those sahadows even darker). In particular: Everything oriented directly upwards should be super bright. Especially that grass in the foreground. Way, way too dark. Make the sandy ground brighter. That also goes for the upper part* of the leaves, and the upper part of the fience.

*which is virtually 90% of the leaf...

Oh, and Ykni is right about the back of the tree that should be dark, like on my sample drawing.

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[xil]

Yes, this module has issues with scrolling backgrounds or anything bigger than 320x200, because it's hard-coded. Xil, it's a pity I saw your posts too late because I had corrected the issues in the version of this module that I use in my own game. I made other changes too, but xil if you have the opportunity you should upload your version of the module.

You're way, WAY too shy on your lighting. Go crazy on it, add a shitload of contrast. It's a tropical island! The shadow under the tree should be almost back. And basically everything that's at more than a 90 degrees angle from the sun.

The suggestion below was made with Paint (not easy...) but if you use photoshop, just select the diffrent areas using the magic tool, and then add brightness layers to play around with the luminosity. That will turn your drawing into a great scene.



Apart from that the drawing technique is pretty and the wood technique is OK, unless you want to go super realistic.

Just to make Snarky's answer less scary: 1) You need to create the "onclick" event of your GUI to intercept clicks on it. on_mouse_click is more for handling clicks inside of the game. 2) Then, only if you also need to have your right-click behaviour inside the Inventory window, do what Snarky said after his first two sentences.

SetLightLevel

Cool cool cool!

So in fact, all your BackwardsCompatible module needs to do is provide a script header with the appropriate import declarations in it

He didn't seem to think it was problematic for the built-ins to still exist (be registered) even if not using them.

Good to know.
I say leave them for now. There are still billions of old-yet-still useful modules out there.

[jwalt]

Concept : jwalt. Come on. Who wouldn't shiver standing there, wondering if they'll enter the Bates manor?
Artistic : Loominous selmiak. Loominous is way better, but I really really like the rocks at the bottom of selmiak's scene. I don't why, but I love this weird rainbow coloring.
Playability : Greenbeams, for all the clickable details. That said objectively, I can perfectly see jwalt's scene fit in Alone in the Dark, Sinsin's scene fit in King's Quest, or Loominous' scene fit in Monkey Island 3. To be fair, I don't think any of those backgrounds is really 100% playable, they're all a bit empty.

late_repeatedly_execute_always()

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. I didn't know the existence of this. I'm excited.

@Monsieur if I were to change my camera angle what would you advise(For now i'm only brave enough to tackle 1-point and 2-point(maybe)).I've been thinking about tricks to make sure everything stay 100% so I can use "daring camera angle" like you once said(for now I just make the VP very high).Even though I somewhat understand the concept i'm not sure I know how to properly implement it yet.

It doesn't need to be very daring. Just avoid the "Maniac Mansion" camera angle (with both right and left walls perfectly symetrical). Move your camera slightly to an angle of the room, to the left or to the right. Just a little. Make it so that the horizontal line (the one at the junction of the floor and the back wall) is no more horizontal, but slightly diagonal.

Another way of making it cooler: You'll notice that you put your camera rather high in the room -- higher than would usually be the eyes of a person watching this scene. It's almost like the camera is resting on a shelf. You can make the scene more intimate and slightly creepy by actually making it look like the camera is on a shelf. To do so add some black objects silhouettes in the close foreground (i.e. at the bottom of the scene). For example, the black silhouette of a bottle of shampoo, or something like that. Just like this (the barrels at the bottom), but much closer, and they can be all black.

[SmoothScrolling]

One thing though: it seems when the view scrolls, the unmoving object is always one frame behind everything else?

I'm not expert enough to tell the reason for sure, but I know that what you say is plausible, because when you update obj.X (resp. Y) you do it during your game cycle, whereas Viewport's X (resp. Y) was given to you from the previous game cycle.
I can't think of a solution from the top of my head, so I'll just say that you should use the SmoothScrolling module, which also allows parallax.

BOOM: just when I mention smoothscrolling, Ali pops in.

EDIT: if the jerkiness is inevitable, then another workaround would be not to do a perfectly still background, but instead a background that has a very slight scrolling/parallax effect. This way, nobody will notice.

[1.]

I guess the whole question is :
1. Do you want to check if the player pressed the letter which position on the keyboard is the same position as the position of letter "A" on QWERTY keyboards?
OR
2. Do you want to check if the player entered an "A" no matter his keyboard.


If you're trying to achieve 2., then you don't need to do anything. No matter his keyboard, if his Windows is set properly, then if he presses "A" on his keyboard, then AGS will read the letter "A".
If you're trying to achieve 1., then there's no easy solution except from create custom settings in your game for all expected keyboards.


Two workarounds though :
- Ask the player to press "Left Alt + Left shift" in-game. That's a Windows keystroke that will switch to English keyboard. Try it. For example if the user's keyboard is an AZERTY keyboard, it instantly becomes a QWERTY keyboard.
- If you're just interested in the WASD keys (like most game), then simply ask the player which keyboard he has at game start, and in your code, replace eKayA with eKeyQ, and eKeyW with eKeyZ, where needed. That ought to be enough to manage WASD on a AZERTY keyboard.

[Notepad++]

The tools named previously are great, but if you want to stick to a general-purpose tool without installing an extra application, then use Notepad++ (note the "++"). You should have already have it on your computer, like every civilized person on this planet. Then simply add the Compare plugin. You're done.

Can you gather the entries in a post? With my connection at work sometimes some images get blocked anfd the trouble is I don't even know they're supposed to be there. So I might overlook some entries.

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On a different note:

I think we should stop bending the rules with extra days and stuff too. What is the point with having a timed competition if it's always gonna be "can we extend this a few days"?

I agree

I don't agree -- many entries have been posted in the last moment lately, and I think it's part of the creative process for some (including me). They work better in a rush, time for inspiraitona d motivation to grow. If you remove the extra day, you remove half the entries I'm not saying it should be the general rule, but if the competitors ask nicely... The decision should remain the competition host's.

[lighting]

It's the lighting that makes it dull*. You didn't draw the beholder's attention to any particular point. There should be darkers areas, brighter areas. Right now it's all about barely noticeable linear gradients.

For example: what is the light source? A window? (then why don't I see the light it casts somewhere?) A lamp? (then why don't I see yellow light somewhere?)

*Provided you don't want to redraw everything by changing the camera angle

PS : despite my criticism, your background is cool. And is perfectly acceptable for a game!

An alternative would be to use dynamic arrays outside of the struct and simply use a struct interface (specifically, struct functions) for getting/setting the items you need.

Yes, it's the closest thing you have to an array of structs.

Whenever I update an older module to 3.3+, I post it in the original authro's thread. But indeed it's supposed to be the job of the author.