Messages

Is there a meaningful way to convert between the time taken by a FadeIn/FadeOut call, and the time taken by a game clock cycle?

(specifically, if music is synchronized to a sequence containing some fades, how does one convert this to a sequence not containing fades but using SetTransparency and Wait commands, without losing sync in the process)?

It seems the rain/snow plugin doesn't work with a recent version of AGS (2.71.628). Is that a known issue or is it my fault?

They're in the controlboard at the spaceship, just above bermuda.

LOL!

However, because of the limitation of the number of simultaneous keys pressed (and some other limitations too, possibly) in most keyboard,

Works fine for such 2p gems as One Must Fall, Bubble Bobble and Squarez. FYI.

Wait a second... Spain? Like, wow! That's very close to the Netherlands! Well, somewhat close, anyway. I'd love to meet you folks!

You can already do two people behind the same keyboard; lots of oldie games do that (cursor arrows vs. AWDX, for instance)

Any chance of Ctrl-Shift-1, Ctrl-Shift-2, etc. opening the module HEADERS?

I'll second that.

When a speech portrait is displayed, after all text is "read", the character's mouth will stop moving. At this point, the character will also stop blinking! Please fix that. In some cases, the first frame of the blinking loop is displayed, but not the entire loop.

If you change a character's BlinkInterval, the first time the character blinks will still use the old interval.

If a character has only two loops (for moving left and right), if the character moves diagonally to the upper right, the loop for moving left is displayed. If the character moves diagonally to the lower left, the loop for moving right is displayed.

In spite of what the documentation says, LockView does not prevent a character's loop number (within that view) from being changed. For instance, if a character is given "LockView" and "AnimateCharacter" commands (e.g. to set loop 4 which is a falling animation), then moves, the character's animation will change to loop 0-3 depending on the direction. Of course a walkaround exists by creating a new view with the falling animation in loop 0, 1, 2 and 3, but it's a bit weird.

it's tricky to get a tile starting at the top left pixel, because the gray area outside the actual bitmap is not responsive to mouse clicks, and on most resolutions or zooms moving the mouse cursor even one pixel to the right or bottom means you won't select the top left pixel

I see what you mean, but it's a relatively big job to change this compared with the benefit of doing so. I'll think about it though.

It would help if you changed the "rounding"... if you zoom the sprite, each pixel of the sprite is mapped to 3x3 pixels on screen, yes? If you click on 1,1 on-screen it should map to (1 / 3), (1 / 3) = 0,0 in the sprite. But it doesn't.


By the way feature request - in the "characters" panel, could you show the sprite from the talk view, as well as from the character's walk view? Would be nice.

Also feature request - the ability to name dialogs (not for any in-game use, but to make the menu with 50+ dialogs more accessible)

I love the idea of someone making a Simpsons game, and the demo is looking nice so far.

That said, could you please do something about the GUI? At present, any simple action takes way too much mouse moving (right click, move cursor to the portrait in the center of the screen, click, move back to wherever you were going to click in the first place).

The easiest solution is to get keyboard shortcuts (F1-F5 for instance, or L=look, T=talk etc; LucasArts did it too, and it works great).

Sure, why not!

I'll point out that ATOTK is also looking for Beta-testers.

If interested, send me a PM about it that briefly explains why you'd make a good tester.

Spoiler

Why is Atropos the one Bobbin talks to?  Didn't Bobbin fly off with his mother as well?  Where is she?

[close]

Spoiler

Good point. The last words in Loom are between Bobbin and Lady Cygna (and there's a lot less swans in the original "swarm" )  Also note that the Distaff actually belongs to Elder Atropos, and that he may want it back.

[close]

Sorry, but I don't like the way this is headed. Loom is one of the most atmospherical games ever, written by the sheer genius of Brian Moriarty. I don't think you, or indeed anyone, should be continuing his story without at least getting his input. Without that, it is next to impossible to remain faithful to the original plot.

For instance, in the few pages of intro you've already made several continuity errors...
*"Forbidding contact with ... another Guild"
*"Bobbin has been ... rejected by the Weavers since birth"
*"[Bobbin] began a long journey ... to prevent Chaos from taking over the pattern"
*"[the swans] have found a place to make a new pattern"

And worst of all, the introduction of Greek god of music Orpheus, which is very inappropriate in the universe of Loom.

While you're probably a competent designer, you are overreaching yourself in writing this game, and your time would be better spent writing something else that will be better received.

A humble request...

The game META was never intended for everyone, indeed it is unlikely to appeal to people who aren't already AGS coders. As such, I am very grateful for the good response to it here, and the several people who found it funny, or crazy out-of-the-box thinking, or who spent ages trying to get Cuppit to shut up.

However - on the AGS games page, the only comment on the game is that it's a dumb waste of time. Well, of course everybody has the right to their opinion. But I would really appreciate it if one or two people who did like the game and expressed such in this thread, would leave a brief note to that extent on the AGS page so that the game doesn't seem totally worthless from there. Thanks.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=653

Some more things with the sprite importer...

it's somewhat counterintuitive that, to select tile size, you have to right-click, hold and drag - yet to select a bunch of tiles, you have to left-click, release, don't drag, then left-click again.

it's tricky to get a tile starting at the top left pixel, because the gray area outside the actual bitmap is not responsive to mouse clicks, and on most resolutions or zooms moving the mouse cursor even one pixel to the right or bottom means you won't select the top left pixel

when task-swapping, sometimes the selected tile size changes of its own accord

if, while in the task to select a bunch of tiles, you click the right-mouse button, the editor gets confused about whether you're resizing or selecting

importing multiple tiles into a folder gets progressively slower if there already are tiles in the folder; it seems as if the entire folder is rendered between any two sprite imports, and that can take as much as seconds on low-end systems.

speaking of sprites, it would be nice to be able to re-order sprite folders. Also, the interpreter occasionally crashes with an internal error when deleting a sprite folder, even if it was empty. If this happens, game data is not saved, which is kind of annoying

The "current location" in the sprite manager (as well as the opened/closed status of individual sprite folders) sometimes resets when you switch between menus, and sometimes doesn't, for no apparent reason.

Also, when a dialogue picture shows up, the character will blink wrongly when the actual dialog is finished and his mouth stops moving. Specifically, the first frame of the blinking cycle is shown, but the rest are not.

When you right-click on the list of rooms, there's a menu with a "refresh" option. However, this option only works if you right-click on an existing room, i.e. if you click below the rooms but still on the list, the option appears but doesn't actually do anything.

If you edit the room description of the current room, the room menu still shows the old description until you re-load the room.

If you are setting baselines for objects, and you load a new room, you are still in "set baseline" mode, which is somewhat unexpected. This is not the case for walkbehind baselines.

Small bug: if you import a sprite using the "tiled sprite import" option, you can import things that are out of bounds of the sprite. For instance, set the import tile to 10x10 pixels (using the right mouse button) and then import three tiles horizontally. If the sprite size was e.g. 28x10 pixels, you'll import two columns of out of bounds pixels. These should probably be transparent or disallowed. At present they're undefined.

1. Where did my questions go?
2. When do you start and end mandatory education in your country?
3. Howcome kids are scared of me?

1. I'm not sure, I'm just answering these voices in my head.
2. Sorry citizen, that information is above your security clearance.
3. Must be that pink hat you're wearing.

And, of course,
3. Why am I counting backwards?
2. What is the largest palindrome you can think of?
1. How many angels can dance on a pin?

[best non-adventure game]

Ah, if we're talking about best non-adventure games anyway, I'd just want to mention MOTLPAA.

http://adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=649

Is there anyone else coming to Brittens that isn't on this list?

Me, probably.