Messages

I'm all but ready to auto-number the speech files in Astroloco now, but I've got a quick question before I do so.

If I run the auto-number wizard, and then add a new character later to add developer's commentary nodes, will it keep the old speech numbers for everything else? I don't want to have to re-number all the voice files!

On a similar note, if I add more lines to a character will they be added to the end of the current numbering, or will it all get jumbled up again?

An aeroplane?

As obvious a starting point as this may seem, what controls are on the text bar GUI and what do they do?

There's a tickbox in winsetup.exe called 'Force alternate letterbox resolution'. Try that?

Try running the winsetup.exe of both your game and the games which run correctly. There might be differences in the configuration?

[Piano Stories]

It looks like you've tried to simplify it, but ended up making things confusingly vague. Why not be more specific with what you're offering? The customers may not be 100% internet-savvy, but they're (probably ) not idiots. You should always be as clear as possible with what you're offering.

Piano Stories
For Piano, 4 Hands

Download All Audio (26 MB compilation)

-- or --

Download Primo Parts Only (14 MB compilation)
Download Secundo Parts Only (13 MB compilation)

-- or --

Download individual (solo) audio files:

Work	Primo Part	Secundo Part
If only he was carefree	Primo Download (1.1 MB)	Secundo Download (1.5 MB)
A rather innocent incumbus	Primo Download (1.1 MB)	Secundo Download (1.5 MB)
How to live in an underground home	Primo Download (1.1 MB)	Secundo Download (1.5 MB)
The sparrow and a rainbow	Primo Download (1.1 MB)	Secundo Download (1.5 MB)
Building light momentum	Primo Download (1.1 MB)	Secundo Download (1.5 MB)
Meteor fight	Primo Download (1.1 MB)	Secundo Download (1.5 MB)
Your text here...	Primo Download (1.1 MB)	Secundo Download (1.5 MB)

I've noticed this as well, although I've just taken to visiting the forums more often to check for replies.

If anything, the only result is that I'm more active

There's a much easier solution than using a screenshot if you're able to use alpha channel (PNG) sprites.

Expand the edges of the object to your desired dimensions, and then fill the outside layer with pure black/white at the minimum opacity (but not 0%). You won't be able to see it in-game, but AGS should treat it as visible pixels for the purpose of click detection.

You could also use the OnEnter and OnLeave events of the region to set character.Transparency to 100 and 0, respectively.

Really looking forward to taking part. Any hints on what the panels will be about?

What? What's that? A trailer you say?!

OH, YES.

>> Watch it on YouTube <<

Regarding boat question. I have this suggestion: make boat as a Character too. When player takes control of a boat, you hide his initial character and give player control over Boat Character.
Hide character by one of those:
...

I find the best/cleanest way is definitely to do:

Code: AGS

cBoat.SetAsPlayer();
cEgo.ChangeRoom(0);

One of the locations will be a huge rubbish dump containing some famous shipwrecks (but no trains):

I sense a collaboration...

Backgrounds are looking good! Do I get to scavenge from the wrecks?

Do the mouseover images still trigger if you use the same sort of code to modify gMainMenu.Clickable? That should make the entire of the main menu (and all of its controls) ignored by the mouse.

In my experience it's almost definitely going to be down to your audio, especially if you're using WAV.

subAtomic has 13 8-bit-style sound FX (all < 1 sec long) and half a dozen short (< 10 sec) music loops. The sound FX were imported as WAV, and the music as OGG. The AudioCache folder for the game is 2.03MB, and the game came out at 24.5MB.

When I made Plan M, I was a lot more ambitious. It's got 43 individual sound FX and 17 music tracks, between 1 and 3 minutes long. This time I encoded both the FX and the music as OGG at 128kbps. This time around, the AudioCache folder clocked in at 14.6MB. The game itself, including audio.vox, is 20.1MB.

Yes - by including over 300% more sounds and music, I reduced the size of the game by 4.1MB. Somehow, it seems that AGS massively inflates the size of uncompressed audio files when they're built into the final game exe.

In case you're thinking that it must be to do with graphics instead, Plan M has 15 rooms at 640x400@32-bit. subAtomic has only 10. Plan M also has a custom font, more cursors, more animated objects, copious use of gradients (which don't compress well), and a whole boatload more characters doing more animations than subAtomic ever had. The only possibly culprit is audio.

As always, your own mileage may vary, but it's definitely something worth looking into. I've found that you can easily get away with 128kbps OGG for almost every audio file in the game, including most music. In fact I'd go a step further and say most sound effects lose nothing in the transition to 96kbps, or perhaps even less. Speech also compresses excellently without loss of fidelity. Compress, compress, compress.

Check your game setup (winsetup.exe) and see whether or not you have 'smooth scale sprites' turned off?

For anything more complex, this module works wonders:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=26306.0

Yeah, I've used LockViewFrame instead of teleportToggle(true) a couple of other times in the game (when I didn't need or want to show the 'entering teleporter' animation) and it works fine.

I'm busying myself fixing up other parts of the game now, but I've still got absolutely no idea why cPilot decides to take a brief walk to the left when - as far as I can tell - no script tells her to do so.

Edit: OH. I think I just worked it out. I may have a call to teleportToggle(false) being run when the player enters the room (for when they teleported there during normal gameplay). I have a sneaking suspicion that it's calling it twice, which would make it play the teleport animation, unlock the view, then play loop 0 of the walk cycle.

I'm an idiot.

Yeah, that's deliberate. I only call that function on characters who are already locked to view 9 - it's just to make sure they're on the last frame of the animation before I reverse it again.

Just got around to taking a look at this niggling little bug in one of my cutscenes...

Is there anything in AGS that would be causing a character to walk when I haven't told them to?

In one room I do this:

Code: AGS

cPilot.LockViewFrame(9, 0, 9);
cPilot.ChangeRoom(3, 100, 285); // This is the player character

Then room_AfterFadeIn() in room 3 picks up some variables and starts a cutscene:

Code: AGS

teleportToggle(false, cPilot);
// The problematic movement occurs between these two lines of code
cPilot.Say("Hey, I saw a train leaving in a hurry as I pulled in and-");

teleportToggle is an imported function from the global script and looks like this:

Code: AGS

function teleportToggle(bool dir,  Character* teleportee){
	if(dir){ // Enter the teleporter
		gPoRT.Visible=false;
		teleportee.LockView(9);
		teleportee.Animate(0, 3, eOnce, eBlock, eForwards);
	}else{ // Exit the teleporter
		teleportee.Frame=9;
		teleportee.Animate(0, 3, eOnce, eBlock, eBackwards);
		teleportee.UnlockView();
		
		// Face towards the furthest edge
		if(teleportee.x<320){
			teleportee.FaceLocation(640, 200, eBlock);
		}else{
			teleportee.FaceLocation(0, 200, eBlock);
		}
	}
}

Now, for some reason, between the two lines of code I showed above in the room 3 cutscene, cPilot faces left and walks on the spot for around a second. The cutscene then continues as normal.
I can't find any code that would be causing this behaviour, and it's driving me mad!