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I don't think the cartoony feel is related to the high resolution. A lot of games were graphically cartoony before high resolution arrived: Discworld, Sam and Max, Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion, DOTT, Leisure Suit Larry, etc.

I think we're going by different definitions of "cartoony" here. Zak McKracken uses a very different style than Gobliiins.

I've never even heard of that band, but I can think of many other things named Petra...

As I recall, both Sierra and LucasArts had a few "early" cartoonish titles (notably, Gobliiins and DOTT), but went cartoony with all their titles and series at the precise moment where they switched to high resolution.

Because it's a completely different style. 320x200 tends towards the photographic or landscape art, 640x400 tends towards the cartoonish. Indeed, nearly every adventure game developed for "high" resolution is either cartoon-styled, or faux-3D. This also means that most artists work best in one style but not the other.

Well...

I don't know this Meredith, of course, but those remarks she make strike me as pretty nasty. So I suppose it would be worth finding out whether (1) she was deliberately nasty, (2) she, for the lack of a better term, lacks the social skill to realize this was nasty, or (3) she made the remark in jest, like some people make mock-insults to their friends, and misjudged the apparent fact that she and Anita aren't friends.

Since in case (2) or (3) Meredith would probably be willing or happy to apologize once the confusion is cleared up, and since she refused to apologize earlier, it's quite possible that Anita assumes she was in fact being deliberately nasty.

$.2

Hint one: clear your browser cache.

Hint two: if you're still using internet explorer, get a good browser instead.

My blue cup is full of helpful advise. And adviceful help, too.

Are you by any chance using this function to "spawn" the player character?

There is absolutely no need to use fishy workarounds or to switch the engine version. Just keep your coordinates at multiples of 2.

And also, your sprite sizes - because in some cases, it apepars that the coordinates are calculated from the bottom of the sprite.

- sprite-en.pack ( contains some sprites, shown in-game that was translated )
i.e. in-game a sign shows "Le Bakery" and in the translated version "Bäckerei" [graphical translation]

You can already do that, you just need to check which language is selected in the room script, and do SetObjectGraphic() based on that.

Is anyone familiar with Roger Zelazny's works? I've always thought the "shadow walking" from his Amber series would make for an excellent adventure game.

(and one exists, but that is a text adventure which really doesn't do it justice).

Also, I've got this bunch of old and partially-developed game ideas.

The easiest way is by

Spoiler

using the wishing well to make the faeries trust you.

[close]

However,

Spoiler

if you give Pooka the cider or cold iron rune, she should let you pick up all six objects in the first room, after which it should be easy to find all four Gems.

[close]

Furthermore,

Spoiler

the puzzle remains possible without doing any of the above, if you draw up a map.

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I'd suggest getting a decent FTP client. Uploading through web browsers can be fickle (depending on your browser, of course).

Several of the File Upload Servers have their own client which effectively does this.

It depends on why your game is so big.

If it's an AGS game, I'll hazard the guess that either you're including your source (don't do that, you only need the "compiled" directory), or your game contains a lot of music, sound effects, or movie files (none of which can be significantly compressed further by WinRAR and the like, because MP3/OGG/WMV and so forth all already use compression).

But in this day and age, 90 Mb isn't an unsurmountable obstacle to download.

It seems the only thing holding back cooperative gameplay is the notion that people would abuse it

I don't think that's the case. Rather, it would seem to be exceedingly difficult to design a game so that (1) the players are dependent enough on one another that they aren't simply playing a different game each, and (2) the players are independent enough so that one's lack of progress doesn't hamper another's.

It would seem that adventure games don't mesh well with this. I suspect the only way to persuade people that this is a viable approach, is by designing a game that does it.

Wasn't there an option in SETUP or the GENERAL SETTINGS where you could choose how much memory your game uses?

Yes, under the 'advanced' button.

How about splitting resourses and compressing sprites? Would they do anything for memory?

No. Splitting resources is useful for spreading a game over floppy disks or multiple FTP archives, but has really become pointless over the past few years. Compressing sprites only helps with disk space, since the sprite has to be decompressed in memory.

First off: Should I try importing into AGS3? Could that possibly make any difference?

Probably not.

Note the difference between two different kinds of transparency: (1) holes in sprites, and (2) alpha fading effects. The second is a lot slower than the first. I tend to refer to the latter as "translucency" to indicate the difference. A "lives remaining" GUI is likely the former.

In three dungeon scenes there are (forgot about this) like 3 objects that are almost the size of the room and they are being turned on and off by a timer. Is this still running once the room is exited?

No. Room scripts only run in the room that is presently loaded.


Is it possible that your issue is with memory? AGS can take a lot of memory for sprites, and windows tends to slow down when memory is lacking (plus, several windows-based applications have memory leaks of their own accord).

The two main ways of doing that are

Spoiler

Using the wishing well to get people to trust you

[close]

and

Spoiler

Using the elixir from the tool shed to grow the vine next to the city wall, and climb over.

[close]

Large GUIs, particularly translucent ones.

Lots of rawdraws.

And yes, complex scripting can be a serious slowdown, but I doubt anybody really scripts in such a way

Near as I can tell, none of them.