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[explicit]

Hi there,

The new beta version of KQIII+ is now available, at
http://www.liacs.nl/~psimoons/kq3b5.zip

This version has VGA screens, courtesy of Zeus (aka IronMan). Yay! I hope you like them.
I haven't updated all the walkables and walk-behinds yet; please don't tell me they are wrong, I already know that.

I believe all bugs mentioned before have been fixed, but as usual feel free to doublecheck. Thanks to Dreammaster and Fluxmaster, and all the other people who helped there.
Spells now work. You can legally obtain all ingredients except amber stone, nightshade, mandrake (but those are available with Stuff Pockets) and make the spells, and you can for instance scare the shopkeeper while invisible. You can also get past all of the bad guys, except the spider, and you can't catify Manannan yet. And, several of the puzzles have had a clue or two added.

Note for any beta testers: when reporting bugs, please try to be as explicit as possible. Anything that starts with 'sometimes' is probably very hard to find for me.

(and I've started a new thread because the other one was getting too long, please lock that one?)

Enjoy everyone!
- Radiant

Hi there,

it would be cool if there was something like TRANSITION_SCROLL_LEFT, which would cause the current room to scroll away to the left, and the new one to scroll in from the right. For instance Space Quest 4 uses that in the sewer system, among others, and QfG1 when you climb up Erasmus's mountain.
(similarly, SCROLL_RIGHT, _DOWN and _UP)

Hi there,

I would find it useful if the dialog GUI could display a header line (e.g. 'select one...' or 'your answer?'). The easiest way to implement this (or so it seems to me) would be that the first dialog option is displayed centered, and is not clickable.
(of course this requires a switchbox in the dialog editor)

Hi there,

I'm having problems in Garfield. I've recently created the lasagna and eaten most of it. However, now when I continue playing, the main character has a tendency to become stuck. By which I mean, he'll keep to a walking animation but won't change position any more, as if he were no longer on a walkable area. This happens in a large variety of places. Of course I can restore a game to get around it, but it tends to happen again.
Suggestions, anyone?

Hi there,

KQ3 enhanced!! Well, it had to happen sooner or later
I've been working on an enhanced version of the Sierra classic King's Quest III. The game has now progressed to a playable stage, and I would really appreciate everybody's opinion of it. In particular, that of testers and proofreaders.


This first public version allows you to play most of Llewdor, about fifty rooms or so. The plot has been enhanced and deepened (which is one of the things I'd like feedback on). Also there are more puzzles, and less items just lying on the floor. And Manannan is as bad as ever.
KQ3+ was created with AGS. uses the original AGI graphics (with a few new ones), but has a mouse-driven interface. Also, the music sounds a lot better in MIDI than it ever did on your PC speaker.


beta-4 Just a meg and a half! Downloadable version here.
(edit: this is the FOURTH beta)

(includes teleport cheat and the usual debugging features, with Insta-Logging (tm) as well)
Please find some bugs for me? Thanks!

Hi there,
I was compiling a list of Sierra adventures, and was wondering if I missed any...

All AGI (low-res, text parser) games:
KQ1,2,3,4
SQ1,2
LL1
PQ1
Mother Goose
Black Cauldron
Donald Duck
Manhunter 1,2
Gold Rush

All SCI (EGA, text parser) games:
KQ1,4
SQ3
LL2,3
PQ2
QfG1,2
Colonel's Bequest
Conquests of Camelot
Castle of Dr Brain
Gabriel Knight 1

All SCIV (VGA, mouse-driven) games:
KQ5,6
SQ1,4,5
LL1,5,6
PQ1,3,4
QfG1,3,4
Conquest of the Longbow
Island of Dr Brain
Dagger of Amon Ra
Eco Quest
Gabriel Knight 2,3

Games with other interpreters
KQ7,8
SQ6
LL6
QfG5
PQ:SWAT

More tiny bugs. But I've been working full-time with AGS last week and this is all that came up, so I must say AGS is remarkably stable.

I have a song playing repeatedly. Now I want to turn it off gently by using SetMusicRepeat (0), then PlayMusic (that song) again. I believe this should play the song once more and then stop; instead, it keeps the song playing and repeating.

If you have the dialog script editor open, if you add new topics to the dialog, the '@3' etc only appear if you close the script editor and re-open it

If you rename a view, the name is only really changed if you first select some other view, i.e. if you click on the sprite manager button the view remains unnamed

If you delete a walk-behind area, you remove its baseline. If you then press 'undo', you won't get the baseline back.

When using 'inputbox()' with a string longer than two lines or wider than 40 letters or so, the result looks weird.

If you've opened a room's script in the editor, the room is set to 'dirty' even if you don't modify the script at all. The same applies if you click on the 'animating backgrounds' button but don't change a thing.

By the way there's a button to copy the first background to the clipboard, but the only way to copy one of the animating backgrounds to the clipboard is by taking a screenshot from mid-game

If I create a game with a '+' in its name (i.e. the name of the directory the game is stored in; this name is actually legal in windows), the game crashes at startup with a fatal exception in strcopy/strcat

Hi there,

I'm stuck in this game near the end...
at a certain point, the sheriff's men are chasing me through the forest (around day 7 or so). I can evade them

Spoiler

by using the hand code to get help from the Druid trees.

[close]

now a couple days later (after ambushing the treasure train) they are chasing me again... I've googled a walkthrough and it says I should do the exact same thing again... however the instant i walk onto any forest screen, I am caught and killed.
What is this, a bug? Or am I missing something?

Is it true that during a cutscene, regular controls are disabled?
What about in a room that is marked 'hide player character in this room'?

Hi there,

I'm looking for a tool that converts AGI sound files to MIDI format. I know this tool exists because it shows up on Google, but every single site that is supposed to host it is either down or otherwise unreachable. Dose anybody here have that tool and could they please send me a copy? It would be much appreciated.

- Pieter

I have a Bad Guy (tm) 'attacking' EGO by using FollowCharacter (BADGUY, EGO, 0, 0), and doing something nasty upon touch (e.g. if AreCharsColliding).
However it seems that the pathfinding algorithm used is kind of weird. If no straight path exists the first time this function is called, it may take BADGUY a very long time to actually find EGO. Is it possible to make the pathfinder more, well, aggressive? Or should I code my own, maybe using MoveCharDirect or something?

Hi there,

For the life of me I can't find out what is wrong with the following code:

Code: ags

    int i = GetPlayerCharacter ();
    SetCharacterView       (i, EGOFALL);
    AnimateCharacterEx     (i, 0, 5, 0, 0, 1);
    //SetCharacterViewEx     (i, EGOFALL, 5, ALIGN_CENTRE);
    AnimateCharacter       (i, 5, 5, 1);
    MoveCharacterBlocking  (i, 100 + Random (60), 175, 1);
    AnimateCharacterEx     (i, 4, 5, 0, 0, 1);
    ReleaseCharacterView   (i);

Okay, so what does it do... it is triggered when EGO moves onto a certain area, i.e. a cliff edge. Hence animation EGOFALL is used, which has a number of loops for falling and hitting the ground.
The first AnimateCharEx causes his arms to wave wildly (loop 0). The second one at the bottom is a splat where he hits the ground (loop 4). This part works.
The part that doesn't is the central part. EGO moves down (MoveCharBlock) using his falling animation, either selected by the AnimateChar directly above it, or the SetCharViewEx. But it doesn't work; EGO gets the wrong view every time! Can anyone figure out why?

Thanks!!

Suggestion:
plugin DLLs don't work in the Linux or Dos versions. Now it may be useful to be able to use the same game data file for both Linux and windows... this could be done if the Linux version of the AGS runtime simply ignores the DLL function calls. In the AGS editor I could supply a list of external functions; in windows these are linked to the DLLs, in Linux they are not.

The King's Quest two-and-a-half project is looking for a background artist.
The game uses a realistic medieval style, and runs in 320x200 in 16-bit color.
Interested parties should drop me a private message. Thanks!

We have a demo of the game, which is discussed here.

I've read Pumaman's extensive list of ideas for AGS (it comes with the latest non-beta version) and came up with the following wishlist... I believe most of these should be relatively easy to implement, and very useful. Some of them may already have been done, sorry about that if I haven't noticed it.



Suggestions taken from your Future file
* save current line number in script editor when exiting editor and returning
 similarly, it should remember its last search string.
* How about shift-F3 searching backwards?
* export/import single GUI
* option for objects to block at their base / make characters & objects block like walls
* script 'modules', or #include (especially to break up a large main script)
 (easy way for instance is allowing three of them, to be edited by pressing
 ^1, ^2 and ^3, then the compiler simply concatenates them)
* option to not draw bottom half of character in areas, ie. shallow water
 (with option for a view to be displayed at the character's new bottom, for
 splashing water)
* make ctrl-A cycle none, walkable, walk-behind, hotspots, none.
* Patch system, to allow patching of finished games AND to incorporate other team members
 changes into the editor
* option to see room areas semi-transparent in editor
* right-click in edit hotspot/area/walkable/walkbehind editing should
 select the color you clicked on for drawing (rather than copying the cursor
 contents, which could be done in the room options panel as it is now)
* hotkeys for hotspot editing: L for line, D for draw, F for fill
* Option for new QFG3-style speech, where if no speech view it displays
 at the top as if there is one, rather than doing LEC-style as at present
* button to cycle through GUI Objects on a GUI
* allow to start drawing areas outside of the drawing area
* change tempo of music
* Loop oscillate animation (1-2-3-4-3-2-1-2-3-4 etc)
* zoom in on Areas tab, esp. for walk-behinds
* some function that does MoveCharacterBlocking() but that aborts the movement if the
 player clicks the right mouse button (or presses ESC); the function returns false if
 it was thus interrupted, true if it completes
* sound panning option to set left-rightness of a sound (eg SetChannelPan)
* Make characters block so you can't walk through them.
* stop chars moving through each other
* AddNewObjectToRoom(x,y,pic) to add a new object with no interactions
* multi-select in sprite manager
* walkable area have sound effect for footsteps
* function GetSubstring (string source, string dest, int start, int end)
* talking idle-anim - eg. blinking/flexing muscles. should be overlaid on top of
 normal talking anim occasionally
* option to skip entire dialog by pressing ESC
* manual setting of character zoom level (eg. for effects like character shrinking)
* option to flip frames of animation left-to-right

I was reading some SCI script files this weekend, when I noticed that the SCI resource reader (latest download from their website) is only capable of reading SCI0/SCI1 games with 'split' resource files, i.e. RESOURCE.### numbered 001 through 010 or whatever. Some more recent Sierra games have a single file called RESOURCE.000; is the format of this file known and legible? Does anyone have a tool for it please?

Hi there,

On replaying it yesterday, I noticed that the famous scifi author Orson Scott Card is mentioned in the credits in Monkey Island (under 'sword fighting insults', to be precise). Does anybody know if this is true, or an inside joke, or something else?
(of course it's in the same category as 'art and animation for disk 42', but Card is pretty famous so maybe it's homage?)

Hi there,

I was wondering about something... fifteen years ago (roughly) when Larry 1 was still new and being sold, there was a story about it, claiming that if you made an illegal copy of it, it would spawn a virus that would wipe your hard drive.
Needless to say this is untrue (and it would have been very poor marketing, too). But I was wondering if anybody heard of it, or what the origins of this story might be...

Announcing King's Quest two-and-a-half.

In the score years between Graham's and Valanice's wedding, and Gwydion/Alexander's triumphant return and defeat of the fearsome dragon, all has not been quiet in Daventry. A horde of goblins is marching towards the nearby kingdom of Avali, and its old and weary king Vortigern has requested Graham's help in dealing with the matter. But treachery is afoot, and before long Graham is framed for murder and on the run from the Avalian guard. Going incognito, he has to deal with goblins, faeries, a giant and an evil wizard (not to mention ignorant villagers and a tendency to fall off cliffs) to clear his name and free the land from the goblins' yoke.



We have a three-room demo of the game available at
http://www.liacs.nl/~psimoons/dls/kqproj.zip (roughly 1 megabyte).
It even contains a puzzle. I am well aware that Graham looks like a Roger, and that there's no sound or music yet; but other comments are welcome.
The full game will have roughly 75 rooms and long play time comparable to KQVI and KQII+.

Our team could use some more help. In particular, we could use a skilled room artist, a character animator, and a musician. If you're interested in joining, please send me a private message.

- suggestion: when displaying a SCI-font, it would be easy to add support for extended characters (German and French accented letters, in particular). These correspond to ASCII codes 128-140 roughly. It seems to be easy to modify the WFN font format to support 140 characters rather than 128, or alternatively the game could use the characters 0-32 instead, which are currently unused (i.e. char % 128). Both SCI studio and Radiant FontEdit allow editing these. This would be helpful to all people making translations of games.

For instance I've added accented characters to this font file: agsfnt0