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Google for Sci Decoder, it also does the earlier VGA games. For the later VGA games, you're out of luck - but if it's backgrounds you want, Screen Thief will suffice.

Anybody got an example? I'm not trying to be rude or anything, I just wonder how a simple post or two can turn into a flaming, unless someone said something really stupid. Also, a board flaming new members(or any flaming at all, actully), isn't really worth posting in, IMO.

I guess it's easy on some boards to say or ask something that isn't actually stupid, but would be considered stupid by members of said board because they've seen it before. I remember getting flamed once because I answered someone's question about a comic book, and it turned out that that question had been a long topic of violent debates half a year earlier. Of course I had no way of knowing that.

I don't think that's possible... maybe that's a feature request for Pumaman.

And a similar one... on a GUI, it would be nice to be able to cycle through the individual items with < and > buttons. If an item is outside the GUI border, or zero-sized, or behind another item, you can't really select it either.

You don't get experience in QfG4.5 (the status screen is in fact a picture, not text). You don't have to climb over the walls either, you can sleep outside town.

No
but a manual search should turn it up.
Maybe it was SetGUIDisabled. Or SetGUIClickable. But there's a page with all functions relating to GUIs, and there aren't that many of them.

This came up in the beginner's questions forum...

We have the functions EnableRegion / DisableRegion.
We also have the functions RemoveWalkableArea / RestoreWalkableArea.
The inconsistency in naming may be a little confusing to n00bs.
(then again this may be largely irrelevant with the new 00 system)

Speaking of which, do try this link:

about:mozilla

(without the http)

Yes, but be careful that you crop them all together (select all relevant sprites at once, then right-click).

Set the other GUIs to disabled (SetGUIEnabled (num, 0)).
Or, hide them.
Or, make your topmost GUI big enough to fill the entire screen.

You know, I was wondering whether PeQ actually uses an AGI interpreter for Flash (FLAGI?), or if it only seems to.

Fishing, nana nananana nana fishing

So, how would you go about creating a 'liking' for the character without ever seeing him on screen (save for one reflection in the mirror)?

How about putting the dialogs in first-person writing, and make them very opinionated and subjective?

Bad graphics, bad story, bad puzzles are all things we are used to in amateur adventures, but bad audio can make something unplayable.

I respectfully disagree with that. After all, if there's bad audio, you can always turn your sound card off, or play a MP3 in the background. Whereas if a game has bad story or bad puzzles, many people will just delete it and not play it any more.

yeah, we talked to death about how the simpsons went downhill. most notibly were its key writers leaving, and their replacements were subpar. Conan O'Brien, one of my favorite past writers is busy with his own fabulous show. Soon he will have the true late night spot and it is well deserved.

They're only finally catching up with season thirteen and fourteen here, I think, but I feel myself starting to agree on this issue. Last night's episode where Skinner proposed to Krabapple just felt out of character. I never realized there was a change in the writing staff (though it would make sense in fifteen years' time...)

Do a lot of AGS games have voice acting? I know KQ1 and 2 do, but can't think of any others... (but then some people here have played far more AGSies than I have...)

I think the best solution to this problem is a slight change to the engine, so that if a dialog line has just changed (within the last 150-200ms) then the click should be ignored.

Excellent idea.

For skipping over the entire conversation more quickly, there's always ESC.

Yes, but that only works with 'true' conversations, not with a series of Display or DisplaySpeech commands (unless you make it a cut scene).

I don't remember being able to stop LA games' dialog timing out.

In most Lucasarts games, he { and } keys set text speed, between 1 to 9, and the tenth option being 'clickable' which means the text only disappears at a mouse click.

Hmm, I think a good arcade sequence would make a much more satisfying ending. It's difficult to make a good arcade sequence though. Keep the best puzzle for last... if you can.

Interesting point. That is probably a matter of opinion, then (which means it probably shouldn't be on the dododo). Personally, I found the ending of both Future Wars and Space Quest III disappointing, as rather than a grand finale puzzle you are simply stuck in two near-consecutive arcade sequences.
At any rate we are probably agreed that there shouldn't be an arcade sequence simply because the author wants 'something different' at the end.

Also btw I haven't yet seen any arcade sequences in AGS games, except for KQ2V (and of course Platformerius and the like). YMMV?

As you say, it's a lot of work and roughly doubles the download size.

However, speech is one of those things that is better not done at all, than done poorly. Arguably some commercial games suffer from this. Poor voice acting will likely ruin your game's atmosphere.

Personally, I usually turn voice acting off with any game, because I read a lot faster than the speech goes and because many responses aren't that relevant (except of course in tension-filled cut scenes).

(edit: DOH! wrong topic)

As Steve suggested earlier, the help file is a standard windows help file (.CHM or something) and you can open it in a separate process by double-clicking it from your AGS folder, rather than pressing F1 within AGS. That way you can alt-tab to both.

Regarding Chrismuk's do/don't document (dododo )...

First off, very good document. It is concise and easy to read, and it addresses some important issues. My only quibble is that you should really make it a HTML document, for easy indexing and stuff.

1. Corrolary,
Dialog should not 'time out'. Because otherwise, a player who is clicking through dialogs, may accidentally find that one line times out at that precise moment, and he ends up clicking away the next line. Ideally the game should have a config option to switch dialog speed between some value and 'clickable'.
(note that all Lucasfilm games do this)

3. Corrolary,
You can use the 'unhandled_interaction' function in the global script to great effect here.

4. Corrolary,
'look' actions should seldom if ever require that you walk over there. Neither should talk. Neither should any 'default' action that would result in a 'I cannot do that' line.

New stuff,
6. Keyboard support. Use it. I know this is my personal pet peeve, but ALL lucasarts games have keyboard support, and if you think about it they had good reason for it. You want your interface to be as userfriendly as possible so there really isn't a reason why not to.

7. Pixel hunts. Don't. If something is important, mention it in the 'look at no hotspot' reaction.

8. Mazes. Don't, unless you have a really good variation on the theme, mazes are generally artificial.

9. Arcades. Be really careful with them - many adventure gamers don't like them much, or prefer them to be skippable. Whichever way you go, an arcade sequence does not make a good climatic ending.

10. Beta test. A lot. Really, I mean it. Not just for bugs, but also for trying if your puzzles make sense to anybody who isn't you. Example, a magical wand charging device that is powered by a slice of rotten cheese you may accidentally have found in a place you should not have been in the first place, is NOT a good puzzle.

What I've done in the past is using 'callbacks'. What you do is initialize some variables that tell the interpreter which function to call once the player presses yes or no. That would commonly mean running some kind of interaction, or calling the room script.

for instance,

Code: ags

function hotspot_3_a () {
  if (action == MODE_USE) {
    CallYesNoBox (some text here, 3 /* hotspot number */)
  } else if (action == YES) {
     // do something
  } else if (action == NO) {
     display ("aborted");
  }
}