Messages

If you need Gameboy-like sounds for your game, use this online tool BXFR ( http://www.bfxr.net/ )
You can create virtually any sound effect.

Try it (open the page and click on "play") and you'll see.

I dunno...spending 10 minutes doing nothing but looking around in a train right at the beginning bored me even then, dunno why people loved that so much .

You, Sir, are a scoundrel.

That's really good, and the contrast is good! (as opposed to your older backgrounds)

Maybe you could make sure that the upper part of the trees (in the volcanic backgrounds) is lighter than the lower part (instead of having a black outline, even at the top). Because the light comes from the sun, above.

*medieval.

Just sayin'

[1. This isn't really pixel art.]

Well the thing is that what you're asking for is too broad.
I'm just trying to explain why it will be hard to help you :

1. This isn't really pixel art. The resolution is too high for that. This is just computer-assisted drawing. This is pixel art: http://piq.codeus.net/static/media/userpics/piq_31154_400x400.png Because the exact location of every single pixel is important (if you move even only one, you completely change the drawing). I'm not nitpicking about a definition, I'm just helping you understand what's your actual goal. You want to draw with a computer, but you're not trying to do pixel-art.
2. You're asking a question about "how to draw". How to shade a character? Well, this is a general art question, not an adventure-related question. We'd be willing to help you, but you didn't shade it at all yet, so we can't give improvements advice.

So, my advice would be : Choose a picture on the web that has a shading similar to the one you want, and imitate it until you feel comfortable enough to innovate.

[textures]

I'm not an expert on 3D, but I recommend you work on your textures. Adding a texture layer of bump-mapping (especially for the bricks and the rooftiles) in your materials would probably help achieve a much greater level of photo-realism (also commonly known as "awesome non-amateurish-looking-3D") without too much effort. by that, I mean: Without requiring overdetailed meshes.


Apart from that, what anian said : non-flat town, and work on the light : try to google for a tutorial on sunlight. Maybe a final little "outdoors lighting" shader could help as well.

fianlly, try to have a different texture for the ground inside of town, where people walk and grass doesn't grow.


Small comment: I can see from the round towers that you don't master the cylindrical texture mapping yet -- you need to work on that. Once you know how to apply a flat texture to a round object, it's easy.

This rendering technique is a long, ongoing quest.
Nobody ever achieved the perfect production process.

It often comes down to this :
- Either you manipulate your layers "By hand" in your favorite painting program. It's fine but then you need to be a good animator.
- Or you use the little app that SSH wrote ("WalkCycle Generator" or something like that). Here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=26501.msg451190#msg451190
- Or you use some advanced 2D animation program, that does "onion skin" -- I think ProgZmax is the specialist around here. They come in 2 flavours :
    a. those for pixel-art (they put a lot of emphasis on palettes, dithering-removal, aliasing-removal, etc.)
    b. Those for vertex-based graphics. (there are a lot of new specialized programs since the age when everybody was using Flash for that)
    Nowadays, with the rebirth of Indie games, you can find some interesting hybrids. There was a free and powerful app posted recently on the forums, but I can't find it.
- Or you use some advanced animation program/3D program, like Poser. then you have 2 approaches :
    a. you can render only the animation (and then go back to using a paint program to draw around)
    b. you can render the whole 3D mesh (possibly with cell-shading shader) and save it as a 2D picture.

Or you can combine all techniques above.

For some reason you and Monsieur OUXX didn't have a title.  Apparently CJ hates the Irish and French?

It's OK, I added my title myself last year ;-)

<------------

I don't consider myself "initiate" now I'll be when I come to the next Mittens (in Germany *lobbying*) and actually speak to people (that requires not breaking my computer the very first day).
Oh, and you're right. CJ *is* a hater He almost started a pub fight.

If it works, it's pretty nice :-)

It doesn't sound like terribly reliable information, since they get basics facts wrong (e.g. calling Yahtzee's Trilby/Chzo games a "collaborative series"). The current version of the knowyourmeme page only mentions The Tall Man from Trilby's Notes as an example of the meme, not as having contributed important original characteristics.

I've read too fast about the "collaborative" thing. They don't say it's collaborative, I have no idea where I got that from. [EDIT: I misread the Wikipedia article: They say it's a collaborative title, not a collaborative game]
But it all comes down to the fact that the oldest SlenderMan-looking character in the computers world is from Trilby's notes. Pretty cool

[invented by Yahtzee and other contributors to the AGS collaborative series "Chzo Mythos"]

As you know there's a lot of hype around the "Slender" game, and the "Slender Man" scary character.

I've done a quick search on the forums, but didn't find any reference to this : According to "Know your meme" ( http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/slender-man ), even though the Slender Man is an old urban legend/myth, his design as we know him (the tall guy with a white face and no eyes) was invented by Yahtzee and other contributors to the AGS collaborative series "Chzo Mythos" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chzo_Mythos ).

I was so baffled I thought I'd share. I'm sure I'm not the only one who didn't know that.

Huh? Did recognise anyone in the intro, but I thought one of the portraits looked like Matt *g*

Well, that's because you were too busy thinking i was a weirdo drawing you on the train the last day, instead of looking at the actual drawing

Haha, apparently cat's face is not the only one to guest-star in the intro sequence.
Didn't I recognize Abstauber as well?

Love it!

Would it be possible to base this Editor branch on Alan Drake's one (the one that has programming facilitators, such as code collapsing, etc.).
That would be pretty much the ultimate edition.

Also, can you say if it's possible to revert a project saved in that version to a "regular" AGS? What become of the script/resources folders for example?

That doesn't make any sense. The line "Point3D* p3d = p2d;" is invalid because AGS doesn't allow casting to derived-type pointers. Hence the need for the AsPoint3D property.

Yeah, yeah, you got the idea; that was just a quick example of switching back to Point3D* to make the apparent type match the real type.

Use some of the more advanced work existing around, rather than the tcp/ip plugin.
I know the TCP/IP plugin has more visibility on the forum, but there is better stuff around (not necessarily in the "Modules/Plugin" forum)

[1) Shaders]

Hi everyone,

This thread is meant to cover 2 topics :

1) Shaders
I searched, and didn't find any recent thread about shaders. Either color shaders or displacement shaders. I think AGS is now technologically mature enough to allow massive use of sharders (the not-so-cool-anymore bloom, heatwaves, flashes, fake palette cycling, etc.). Did I miss the big fat plugin that already does it?

2) Limitations on plugins access to drawing surface/drawing events
I think I remember reading that plugin developers are not very happy with the access given to the drawing surface, because of some limitations that don't allow them (in some circumstances) to write in the right place at the right time (game-loop wise).
Is it true, or is it a problem from the distant past?

One note though, you cast the Point3D into a Point2D pointer. In AGS this means that the base class functions would be called, not the derived class functions

I wonder what happens with this :

Code: ags

Point2D* p2d = Point3D.Create();
Point3D* p3d = p2d;
p3d.foo();

It will call Point3D::foo() I suppose (I'll double-check later today). So, it always calls the function defined in the apparent type, doesn't it?

Code: ags

//Imagine this:
Point2D* p = Point3D.Create();
p.foo(66); //it calls the code of "float foo(this Point3D*, int newParam)"
p.foo(); // what happens? Was "Point2D::foo()" definitely overridden by the extender, even with this prototype, or only overloaded?

//if I declared "foo2(this Point3D*, int newParam)":
p.foo2(); //what would this do? Was "int foo2(this Point2D*)" only overloaded by "foo2(this Point3D*, int newParam)", or completely overridden?

Interesting points, I don't think I actually fully tested them, but my gut instinct would be that they have been completely overridden and the parameterless methods would in this case be inaccessible.
One note though, you cast the Point3D into a Point2D pointer. In AGS this means that the base class functions would be called, not the derived class functions (again, this is something that goes against true polymorphism, but CJ never intended this behavior to begin with ).

OK, part from the fact that this is giving me a headache, I just wanted to mention that I tested the code above (Not with a pointer obtained via Point3D.Create(), though, but instead with "Point3D p;" for the time being).
the Point2D versions of the functions are indeed entirely replaced. The AGS compiler forbids the call to "p.foo();" AND to "p.foo2();". In both cases, the parameter-less version is gone.

Perhaps the exporter should (for the time being) generate constructors such as "Class.CreateClass" rather than just "Class.Create". It does seem redundant, but this is probably the best we've got (for now).

Yes, that's the naming "convention" I was going to adopt in case I'm going that way.
Now I have to find the motivation to do all the scripts tests to be 200% sure of what works and what doesn't, regarding extenders overriding/overloading :-) :-( :-) :-(