Messages

There's also this one that doesn't work too badly if I recall. http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=26379.msg445079#msg445079

The problem with online connections is that the TCP/IP plugin is just what it is -- Well... a TCP/IP plugin. That means (almost) the lowest possible level of remote communication.

Then you still have to build your own communication system on top of it, to match the kind of protocol/connection that you want to connect to. I recall a guy did that with IRC: he used the TCP/IP plugin to send the connection request, the handshake, the formatted data packages, etc.

Feel free to do the same with SQL, but... I'd really recommend using some out-of-the-box C++ (or C# or whatever) SQL client code, and then force-fit it into an AGS engine plugin. You might save yourself a lot of trouble, not to mention you might have something that eventually works


======

EDIT: why not lua for AGS? I'm sure there is a mySQL for Lua packahe floating around in the interwebs. Maybe it's even part of the core packages.

-- What do you think game companies today should or could learn from that?
-- I think it would be "watch who you accept as a board member."

Some wise advice for Screen 7 and Wadjet Eye, who will be both entering the NY stock exchange imminently.

Al Lowe is probably telling the truth about the dirty financial stunts that happened at the time.

That said, never forget that Sierra also died of relying on a games genre (point n' click games) that didn't know exactly where it was going back then, and needed some atrociously expensive mutation just to *hope* for survival. That's why Sierra tried FMV (Phantasmagoria and its several CDs), why Broderbund/Cyan experimented a whole bunch of bold pre-rendered 3D techniques (the dynamic depth-of-field in Myst 4 manages to top the 360° video of Myst 3!), and that's why some companies miserably failed with moving to real-time 3D adventure games.

All those changes had one thing in commong: R&D and development were very expensive, so Sierra (and others) turned to bigger companies to receive financial backup, willingly or unwillingly.
Sierra was also a game publisher, and tried diversification (remember how they actually launched Half Life?) but there's no magic: for all that, you need a lot of money, you can't continue to do things in your garage the way you used to. Maybe Roberta and Ken were not the sharks they should have been. I'll leave that very cynical sentence to your judgement

Woaw, five years already. It's funny how some people change the life of so many other people, and then disappear, pretty much like Mary Poppins

Nice. Real nice. Congrats

I haven't finished this game, mostly because of the oblique goal. You've created an awesome environment, the graphics and overall effort are amazing, but being plopped into a mysterious world with zero character motivation (other than a vague "get out there and explore!") is inherently unengaging. I hope that's not too damning a thing to say.

It worked exactly in the opposite way for me: indeed, you don't know what you're doing, but since it's obvious that you're exploring your own mind, and taken for granted that you don't understand yourself, then it reinforces the suspension of disbelief rather than breaking it.

I got a question is this a remake or a  re mastered version?

It's a remake, but by the same guy who made the original game (he got help from professional graphic artists this time)

Also, congrats for upgrading the game to 2.0. I feel like re-playing it now that there is music.

I have mixed feelings about this mix of Lovecraftian horror and cuteness overdose. By essence, Cthulhu is the very opposite of a cartoon.
Yet, it all looks lovely and perfectly crafted, which makes me forget all my criticizing.

I'll have a look at that asap :-) Thanks for the effort!

monkey_05_06 gave the answer: it's a very common trap in photoshop: I fell into it countless times :
- At some stage, by mistake (possibly with a stupid shortcut), you change the color depth from 8bits per layer to 32bits per layer
- Photoshop then won't let you save your image in common formats such as BMP, JPG or PNG and you don't know why
- You suspect it's caused by the color depth, but then you get confused by the "32 bits per layer", which is NOT synonymous to "32 bits image".

Never forget: 99% of the times, The correct setting is 8 bits per layer.

@OUXX:  Hm, not sure if that little red fellow is handsomely named Mathieu...    But it better is at least Marcus or even Henry, I excitedly waited for years just to see a character (I once was rejected to draw... )

Don't cry, we settled with ProgZMax's sprite, who is (once again) ten times better than all other sprites. Which doesn't mean that the other sprites were bad! Far from it.
His name is indeed Henry... Henry Jones Jr. to be accurate
Also, one is not "handsomely named Mathieu". One is "named Mathieu and handsome" Oh wait, is it too late for the flirt trophy? haha.


For a moment there I thought I had missed the deadline. I really, really REALLY want to finish this background.

This is not guaranteed to work at all : After the game starts, try switching between different open windows (using Alt+Tab) and then switch back to the game window and explicitly click into it. I've found it sometimes helps the game catching the focus of the mouse.

Interesting! That's certainly emprisonment!

Sounds more like a puzzle game than an adventure game?
But the concept is interesting anyway : yes, it could be a little online game.

For someone like Monkey, creating a text control using low-level graphical routines is easy, but not for everyone

I'd recommend sticking to your original idea and using a GUI. You can output your custom text into labels or into a listbox. Listboxes are cool: if you hide the scrollbars and "unselect" the latest entry (so that it has the same color as the other lines), the player won't see it's a listbox. You'll still need to write a small text-wrap function to split your text into lines, but you'd need to do that anyway. There is one such function somewhere around the forums (written by monkey himself ;-)), so you don't even need to think too hard.

I need to say that indeed a few things don't work exactly in 3.0 as they do in 3.3+, but still, they're almost 100% compatible, except for a few things (the sound system, was it?). Actually, if you bump into commands that don't work the same, just post your questions in the beginners forum and we'll help.

I don't know how old is Ashen but he's the one who answered all my beginner's questions back in the days.

sadly, i remember that back in the day there is such plugins, and i already try to look for it again in the module section but the link is dead. and many people stating that its not working correctly with 3.3.3 and some directX problem?

It's true that there's been a short period of time where the weather thingies were either too young or too old and didn't work properly. But if I recall, if you search modules (rather than plugins), there are at least one or two that qualify (I always forget their names but I think I recall that akumayo's one works well even with the latest AGS versions)