Messages

About the "patches.dat" problem: Go to /usr/share/doc/liballegro4.2/examples and unpack allegro.cfg.gz as ~/.allegrorc.
Edit it and look for the line "patches =".
Set it to "patches = ." (patches equals dot)
Set the music driver to "Software wavetable" for your game. Make sure the patches.dat is in the same directory as your game.
Should work.

In my game, basically the character can walk into four directions (up,down,left,right), so I set "No diagonal loops".
But when the character turns, e.g. I walk to the left, then I walk to the right, he turns up and then right. This is okay, but the turn "animation" looks rather choppy. So I made animations of my character "rotating" from looking left to looking up, from up to right, from right to down, and so on. I hope you can follow me to that point. What I want is to play these "turn animations" whenever the character turns in another direction.
E.g. when I walk to the left and then to the right, the character should rotate from left to up and then from up to right, and then continue walking. That would look much smoother than the standard "characters turn before walking"-setting.

Anyone an idea how I could accomplish this?

Thanks in advance,
Oncer

I'm taking this seriously because I want to develop graphical adventures with AGS, and I want a small engine behind my game. If the AGS runtime gets too big for me I'll use an older version. Currently I'm using 2.62 and it provides everything I need for my graphical adventures. No more and no less 

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention -- the DOS engine is no longer included.

When I had my hard drive crash I lost my DOS compiler installations, and I really can't be bothered to get it all downloaded and set up again unless anyone really needs the DOS build.

Well... I really need the DOS build! If you don't include it I'll stay at 2.62. We want to release our game for Win, DOS and Linux, so... I won't use 2.7 if there is no possibility to build the game for DOS   
I'm also going to wait for the linux build before upgrade, but I'm sure it will be released in a few days
Beside that, the DOS port has a better performance if you use real DOS

But it is very dangerous to do such things. If CJ would include features for arcade sequences or even other games in the engine it would get bloated like hell! IMHO it is an adventure engine and if you want to create other games, use a different engine! 

You can use the AGS_MAX_HOTSPOTS constant to reflect the maximum number supported by AGS, if that helps.

Yes, that helps 

Now, what about my other problem?

The blinking circle looks perfect on hotspots, but it is drawn "behind" the objects! The reference manual says

NOTE: The Raw functions always draw onto the current background frame only.

What can I do about that?

What I want is to display a blinking icon on top of each object (and hotspot). But if there is an object, the raw functions draw behind it (on the background frame).

EDIT: Oh, sorry, you have answered that question too, thanks!
[quote="Pumaman]You won't be able to make any raw drawn stuff appear in front of objects. You might find you need to create an overlay and place it on top of the object.[/quote]
Yeah, an overlay probably is a good idea!

Aww... I thought way too complicated. Now it's clear to me, but I've also experienced another problem!
The blinking circle looks perfect on hotspots, but it is drawn "behind" the objects! The reference manual says 

NOTE: The Raw functions always draw onto the current background frame only.

What can I do about that?

EDIT: And how can I get the Clickable-Attribute from an Object? I only want to display the icon on objects the player can interact with!
EDIT2: Is there any way to get the number of hotspots in a room? Or should I iterate through all 30 hotspots every time. This isn't a good solution for me because the max. number of hotspots could change in future AGS releases...

You mean Room Properties?

E.g.

Code: ags

Hs1X 239
Hs1Y 40
Hs2X 112
Hs2Y 30
Hs3X 70
Hs3Y 20

Hmm... I believe this is the best solution if I don't use the walk-to points. I'll ask my project leader if he really wants this feature 

I fully understand why hotspots haven't got coordinates. But I need the walk-to points as walk-to points  .

Is there any other possibility? Using objects instead of hotspots is probably a bad idea. Making a list with coordinates for each hotspot, OTOH, is very much work  .

Any idea?

I want to add the following feature to my game:
If the player holds F10, there is a blinking symbol at the position of every object/hotspot the player can interact with.
I've made a small script for this in the repeadedly_execute section:

Code: ags

while (IsKeyPressed(368)) //F10, blinking circles
    {
      RawSaveScreen();
      int i=0;
      while (i<GetGameParameter(GP_NUMOBJECTS,0,0,0))
      {
        if (IsObjectOn(i))
        {
          RawSetColorRGB(255,255,255);
          RawDrawCircle(GetObjectX(i),GetObjectY(i),3);
        }
        i++;
      }
      Wait(5);
      RawRestoreScreen();
      Wait(5);
    }

Here comes my problem. I want the circle at the exact position of the object, not at the top-left corner of the object sprite. The (horizontal and vertical) centre of the object would be perfect. And how could I do the same for the hotspots in a room? I can't even get the position of the hotspot area, and I don't want to waste my walk-to points for this   

Anyone here with a solution?

Oncer

[Adventure Game]

AGS...It's not just for adventure games anymore.  Smiley

If you look at the games section on the AGS homepage, there should be a list of non adventure games you could check out.

IMHO AGS should be an engine only for adventures. Yeah, it's great to show, that the engine is very flexible and that you are able to do even a realtime pong game with it, but after all, AGS stands for Adventure Game Studio.
It is only for adventures.

Thanks again! Phew, that was fast. Now I know the benfit of using a very popular engine ^^

The SetLabelText did it. I had to add a space after "Walk to", so it is now "SetLabelText(0,8,"Walk to ");
This is because the normal text is "Walk to @OVERHOTSPOT@" and the text is centered in the statusline. If I don't add the space, the text isn't exactly in the correct position.

Oncer

[walk]

Why should this be annoying in a game? The cursor mode is "walk" anyways if I walk to a new room!

Thanks for your help! 

EDIT: When I enter the room and the Cursor Mode is switched, the "Look" text shows up in the status bar (LucasArts style) for a short time. How can I prevent this?

Maybe it's a bug, maybe it's just me, but I experience the following (very annoying problem):
It seems that the cursor mode changes from 0 to 1 when I go to an other room.
Dunno why this happens. I'll try to track down when it occours exactly.

EDIT: Ok, I've found it. I have one "normal" room and one room with "Hide Player Character" enabled. If I go to the second room and then return to the "normal" (first) room, the cursor mode is 1, although it was 0 when I was in that room the first time.
This is a problem for me, because I don't want to say "SetCursorMode(0);" in every room! :

I'm using AGS Version 2.62, but I haven't seen anything like this in the changelog for 2.70.