Messages

quote]Because autocomplete now shows you the possible values, you don't have to remember anything so is there any point allowing it to accept 0/1 as well?

Yes, allow it to accept 0/1. I ALWAYS use numbers unless I can't help it.

I second that.

Hear hear!
Early Sierra games (notably KQ1 and KQ2) had alternate solutions for just about half of hte puzzles. Then later games had nearly none. Well, except for QfGs of course I really like alternate endings, accessed through an important decision or just a hard task that you may or may not have done. Plus it adds to the sense of story and replay value.

Does this mean, for instance, that object movement is analogous to character movement? Specifically, can objects use anti-glide mode? Ideally a character should be a superset of an object.

For consistency, it may be useful to create structs for rooms, regions, areas and hotspots - for all the functions GetHospot*, SetRoom* etc. Then again I don't see a very high need for this.

And thanks for all the good improvements!

Try this:

Code: ags

 else if (button==0) {                                           // click on a save game                                   
    index=ListBoxGetSelected(LOADGUI,0);      // select it
    if (sprite != 0)  DeleteSprite (sprite);
  sprite = LoadSaveSlotScreenshot(savegameindex[index], 106, 49);  // load its screenshot
    if (sprite != 0)  {                                                // if there is a screenshot
      SetButtonPic(LOADGUI, 3, 1, sprite);         // show it in button 3   
   }

and also delete the sprite when you close the saved game window. Also, of course, sprite must NOT be a local variable to the interface_click function!

What I love is when you suddenly understand the (sometimes twisted) logic behind a game. What comes to mind is Spellcasting 201, as well as Sorcerer. At a certain point you get a feel for how the puzzles should work (e.g. for a spell you need squirrel vomit. Therefore, you summon a squirrel, carry it to the school cafeteria, and have it eat the food )

Okay, okay, and you got to dance as well, all you had to do was enter the faerie circle.

Look for a secret passage.
Or, wait for Eillonwy (sp?) to come and get you out.

Hm, given the recent discussion on GUIs, it would be nice to see one that goes [ race ] [ stealth ] [ dance ] [ fight ]

It's not very difficult. You create a GUI with labels stating something like '22 of 48 hp'.
Then, whenever necessary, you use

Code: ags

string buffer;
StrFormat (buffer, "%d of %d hp", char1_hp, char1_max_hp);
SetLabelText (THE_HP_GUI, 0, buffer);

Ah, there you are then.
AGS does pad backgrounds if they are too small. It does not crop them when they are too large.

And yes, I meant Paint in my earlier post unless you wanted ASCII graphics of course.

You should call DeleteSprite (sprite) when you close the saved game window (because at that point, the sprite is no longer needed and can be removed from memory).
You should also do a DeleteSprite (sprite) before loading a new sprite, because otherwise you lose track of the old sprite.

At a guess, if the GUI is clickable, then it will catch any clicks directed to the room beneath it. It may also affect GetLocationName to instead return the fact that there is a GUI object present.
Try setting the GUI to non-clickable?

Also, (small feature request) int ReadConfigOption (string name), and WriteConfigOption (string name, int value). These could read or write a line in the game's config file (of course this can be done with the existing file functions, but it's neater this way)

Why would the game need to edit its config file? I can't see where this would be useful.

It wouldn't need to edit it, but it may be nice to be able to add things to it.
For instance, a game could store its SetGameSpeed () setting in there, and automatically read it in when starting a new game.
Or you could make a command GUI that is displayed either on the left or the right, and that state is saved in the config file.
Or, if you did some kind of non-adventure game like Platformerius, you could use it for a high score table.
Or, for a Indiana Jones-styled game, it could be used for storing the Indy Quotient.

I realize that all of these can be done with regular file access functions, but esp. the former two are actually config options and it would make sense to place them in a config file.

Hm... on a related topic - is there an official feature that allows you to save a var beyond a restartgame command? (short of opening a temp file and storing it there). Because I could think of a way where that would be useful.

Also, (small feature request) int ReadConfigOption (string name), and WriteConfigOption (string name, int value). These could read or write a line in the game's config file (of course this can be done with the existing file functions, but it's neater this way)

If it's only one background, then most likely that background is in fact too large vertically. Have you tried copying it into notepad [Paint?] and reducing it?

I am not entirely sure what you mean, but you could try playing in windowed mode (use the startup program) and see if that works. Or maybe your backgrounds are indeed larger than the screen resolution, in which case you should resize them. Or the problem may be that 320x240 is a rather exotic resolution and not all monitors support it (just like 960x720, or 24-bit color mode)

One thing I have been wanting to do is create a wiki-manual on the website, where people can add comments to manual pages. These sorts of little additions could be best added that way, although of course any larger errors/omissions in the manual should be corrected properly.

I think that's an excellent idea! The www guide to PHP does the same, and all sorts of users add helpful comments and sample code and everything. Whenever forum members answer a tech question, it would be easy for them to copy/paste the answer to WIKI for future reference.

Huh? I thought RestartGame simply made a saved game at the first point where the player is allowed to do anything - so how come the values don't reset?

If it's a MIDI file, you can open it in any decent midi editor and change the tempo. Then save under a different name and you can play both. Of course it's not exactly gradual.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by a money manager, but it's entirely possible to generate a location-dependent random amount of money. For instance, you could create a pan inventory item, then in the script for 'use pan on EGO', add a like like 'money += Random (100) + location_value', then set 'location_value' in each room's 'enter room' script so it can be different eveywhere.

Converting backgrounds into night... you can open them in Photo Editor (comes standard with most windows versions) and crank down the gamma a couple of notches. It also helps if you increase brightness for blue, as bluish nights look better than blackish ones.

Could you show us some of your backgrounds?