Messages

I could never get ResHack to swap out the icon and then recomplie the game properly afterwards. It looks like an AGS game and even had all the right properties, but as soon as I tried to run it, it would crash with some sort of error.

After a while, I just used PhotoShop to create a better looking 16 color icon.

Does anyone else have this problem or am I the stupidest guy in the world?

Thanks (and let the humiliating mockery of me begin!)

Wow! Thanks for doing this! I have the old version of the demo game floating around somewhere but I hadn't even bothered to look at it in quite a while.

This new version is giving me the chance to revisit my first AGS experience.

Cool!

The best way to learn scripting is to dig into the technical archives here or read the BFAQ.

At first, just try to use scripts to accomplish simple things that you could use the interaction editor for: making the player walk to a certain place or prick up an object and add an item to inventory.

It seems pretty obtuse at first but once you play around with it for a bit, it's amazing how easy it becomes to use.

Oh my God, "Pumaman". What a horrible movie! I remember it despite my best efforts not to.

Poor Donald Pleasence. I just felt sorry for him the entire time.

My favorite bad movie is the live action adaptation of "Fist of the North Star." While it had some impressive kung fu and the talents of Malcom MacDowell and Clint Howard (CLINT HOWARD!!!), nothing could save it from it's own delusions of depth.

Best of all, it cast a hulking brit as the japanese lead and paired him up with a lovely actress that I'm pretty certain learned her lines phonetically and "Downtown" Julie Brown (old MTV viewers take note) against a pretty-boy overlord with fingers of steel and his evil minions - Chris Penn and Clint Howard amongst them.

This movie is so terrible I've worn out two VHS copies of it in the ten years since it was released.

Poor Chris Penn. I just felt sorry for him the entire time.

"The North Star and the Southern Cross should never have fought (then this movie would not have been made)"... Words to live by, people.

- Ponch

Thank you!

If Barn Runner gets a laugh out of anyone then all the work was worth it!

- Ponch

Allrighty, I've fixed the bug and recompiled the game (along with a snazzy new manual) so people who are downloading it for the first time don't have to worry about the patch.

For anyone who has an older version of the game (pre May 2005), the patch is still available at the link specified in the above post.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please enjoy version 2.1 with my apologies.

- Ponch

Very cool!

It's cool to see the things people do with AGS that it was never intended to do. Nice example of "thinking outside the box" (as much as I hate to use corporate happy-speak). I mean, seriously, I would have never thought of using AGS to create Pong. Awesome! 

Plus tt took me back to the early days of my childhood when Pong was simply the most AMAZING thing any of my friends had ever seen! It's a wonder that none of us died from shock when we got Ataris for Christmas.

Thanks for that one!

- Ponch

You might want to consider MicroTech hosting also. They have a 20mb file limit and 10 files per upload session. You can also host your screenshots with them.

http://12.22.230.41/MicroTech/Hosting/FileHostingHome.html

I upload all my files there and I've never had any problems with them.

- Ponch

Cool! Thanks for this. I just downloaded it and will take a look at the code over the weekend. Thanks for letting everyone in on this!

- Ponch

A strange and rare bug has been found in Barn Runner: The Armageddon Eclair. So rare in fact, that only one person (that I know of) has ever been bitten by it.

At the moment, I am trying to recover from a terrible computer meltdown so I don't have the time (and possibly not even the original files) to upload a completely fixed game so, for the moment, a quick-fix patch will have to do.

I whipped this patch up from the files of an older build of the game that I was able to find on an old CD and it seems to work just fine. Simply download the following file (63 kilobytes) and follow the simple instructions in the read me file to apply it.

http://home.earthlink.net/~tackyworld/patches/Eclair1Patch1.rar

I'm sorry that this bug somehow made it past beta testing and has only just now been discovered but if you want to play the game and avoid a rare "walking dead" occurrence, this patch is the way to go.

I promise to have a complete fix of the game available as soon as I can but given the fact that I've lost so much and I'm still not sure of what files I have backed up and floating around here somewhere, I can't say just when that will be.

Thanks to Naomi for spotting the bug and reporting it and let this be a lesson to everyone to back up your files regularly and not to blow it off just because you're really, really busy... especially when you're trying to finish another semester and have a game nearing release.

-Ponch

Why does everyone hate mazes so much? I don't mind them as long as they're not ridiculously large. If the sole reason for putting a maze into your game is some arbitrary reason such as "My game is way too short, but a maze will make it take longer to play - Longer game play equals greater quality!" or something just as short-sighted, then I could do without it. But a well-designed maze can add a nice dimension to a game.

Or am I just a freak?

- Ponch

Thanks for playing the Armageddon Eclair! A complete walkthough can be found at the following address:

http://home.earthlink.net/~anvilpress/eclair.htm

Just scroll down the page a bit and click on the Walkthrough link. That should help you beat the ChefBot.

- Ponch

Wow! Lots of replys!

As much as just telling him a big lie would make things easier on my end, I'm basically an honest person so I'll just be upfront with him and hope he still comes through anyway.

Thanks all,

Ponch

Hello all,

A friend of mine is a studio musician and I've almost convinced him to contribute a couple of original tracks for one of my games at some point down the road. However, he has a question about the security of vox files. And frankly, I don't have a clue about them since all my gme music is midi (and most of that "borrowed" from Video Game Music Archive!)

What I would like to know is if it is possible to "crack" them and swipe the music. If it is possible, I DO NOT want to know how it is done. Just whether or not the possibility exists that somebody could break it open and steal his original music with relative ease.

I understand that almost anything can be cracked with a lot of effort; I just wanted to make sure that there isn't some sort of "Vox Ripper" floating around out there on ther internet somewhere. Because if there is, then I doubt he'll cooperate.

Thanks in advance,

Ponch

I agree with Mr. Flibble. I approach it sort of like a movie script. I even doodle little story boards to help me set the scene before I start working on it.

However, if I'm simply unable to come up with an idea or am stuck on a particular part of a scene, I just don't think about it. I go away from the scene for a day or a week and suddenly I find myself with an idea for it that I have to scribble down on a napkin before I forget it. (The game project drawer in my filing cabinet is filled with such napkins!)

The way I see it, nobody is paying me to do the game so why force out a bad idea just to meet an arbitrary self-imposed deadline? I'd rather take a day or two off and come back to it with a better, freshed take than before. The game will be better for it.

That's how I deal with writer's block anyway.

- Ponch

Although some people really seem to hate them, I don't mind action sequences one bit. The first Gabriel Knight zombie attack sequence actually shocked me enough to make me sit up straight! It was so out of left field and unexpected (though totally appropriate given the scene) that I was completely surprised when I suddenly found myself running for my life in an african tomb.

Shadow of the Comet had another nice catacomb chase that I remember rather vividly. Given all the Lovecraftian styled languidly paced research and somber nosing about with dusty, musty things prior to that scene, I have to admit I liked the chase through the catacombs with that giant man/worm close on my heels.

Action scenes can give a game just the right "oomph" if it fits the scene and doesn't feel tacked on. Too much action, however can get in the way - witness the demolition derby bit in Full Throttle. I mean, I knew how to solve the puzzle but the other cars wouldn't leave me alone long enough to do it!

On a related note, I liked Full Throttles "Old Mine Road" puzzle where the action sequences actually had a simple puzzle element built in: You had to figure out what weapon would be best used against which opponent. Clever and fun.

But any action scene should have either an auto-save before hand or a clear set-up that danger is imminent and you should think about saving your game. That just shows the player that you're not out to get him or waste his valuable playing time. (And yes, I know that my own game The Armageddon Eclair didn't have auto-saves before it's arcade bits. I didn't know how to do that at the time!)

Just my two cents

- Ponch

Genbus Favor? You mean somebody actually made a hentai game with AGS? I was just joking people!

Joking!

What people will spend the valuable hours of their life programming....

- Ponch

(Oh yeah, I'll be downloading your shooter tonight, Geoffkhan. Thanks for posting a link to it. I didn't even know it existed!)

Which, or course, raises the question of why no one has ever made a hentai dating sim with AGS. Or if they have, why has no one told me about it.

As far as a shooter goes, you can do quite a bit more with AGS in that regard than I would have thought at first glance. My upcoming game The Forever Friday has a few sequences where you have to draw your gun and lay down the law before the bad guys either shoot you or run away or call for reinforcements. If you're willing to do the scripting and willing to spend hours and hours chasing bugs out of the code, then you might be surprised what you can accomplish with CJs engine.

Perhaps you could pair a hentai dating sim with a shooter. Some sort of tranquilizer gun / subway grope virtual simulator. Just throw in some of those big-eyed sailor-suited school girls (all college aged, of course) that seem to be ever so popular and it would sell like gang busters!

"Full Dose Subway Grope" or maybe "Dart Ride Secret"? Perhaps "Hentai Hunter Love Collapse"? There are just so many possibilities when you think about it.

Somebody get cracking on this right away!

- Ponch

AnimateObject  to animate the object on room load (check the manual for all the parameters pertinent to the animation you require).

As for animate the object after a certain amount of time - if it's for a cutscene, just use the Wait command before using AnimateObject. If it's something you want to have happen in the background while the player is exploring the room, use a Timer and a repeatedly_execute check. (Again, this is in the manual.) The code might look something like this:

Player enters screen (after fade in):
SetTimer(1, 100);

repeatedly execute:
if (IsTimerExpired(1) == 1) {
  AnimateObject(x, x, x, x);
}

That should do the trick.

Ponch

After loading the first room, just make the game wait 14 seconds before loading the next room.

Wait(560);
NewRoom(x);

And just make the new room play the new music on load.

Hope this helps,

Ponch