Messages

I think "permanent consequences" is a valid design decision, just like permadeath.

True, but it depends heavily on what genre the game is.

Only allowing the player a single save slot is intended to make things harder.

This falls under 'fake difficulty' and players won't like that much. If you want to make a game hard, do so by playing difficult but fair; don't mess up the player by hampering his interface.

Could you give us a full build (including the latest hotfix) so that we can help you test?

Perhaps it depends on the AGS version used?

Oddly enough, disabling MIDI music in the winsetup also turns off all music.

When does it make sense to have multiple different images that are *not* part of a single animation?

When some of them are reused in multiple animations. That's actually pretty common in HQ.

Generally speaking each sprite is part of one animation and used nowhere else so doesn't it make more sense to contain the images in larger and less numerous files?

Not particularly. Contemporary computers should have no problem with smaller and more numerous files, and using these is more convenient for the programmer.

It strikes me that memory efficiency is something you can fix at load time, i.e. by combining several sprites into a larger sprite in-memory when needed.

The AGS method is view/loop/frame where frames refer to a sprite, and as I understand it your method is view/loop/atlas where atlases refer to coordinates within a bigger sprite. I get the impression that's less convenient and more error-prone for the programmer.

The comment went something like this: "Traditional adventures don't tend to rate above %75 on the sites that Metacritic uses.

This despite Telltale having over a dozen games rated 85% or above

One user reports that with Heroine's Quest he gets a 'Problem: Failed to init MIDI music driver' on loading the game, regardless of the sound settings. This turns off sound in the game entirely (or at least in the beginning), and there's really only one other option for the MIDI device anyway, the Win32 Music Mapper, which doesn't help. Dxdiag comes up with no problems, everything's running as it should.

This despite the fact that the game uses MP3/OGG music, not MIDI. Does anyone know what this is about and how to fix it please?

[+1]

Make a game you want to make, not one you think people will play. If you conform it will just be average and boring.

+1

+2

+3. You don't design games by committee vote.

Very well.

Aww, and SSK and QuickHak can't actually be downloaded

Oh, I see your point. When I do the last test, I actually get 1920x1080, which means it does have top and bottom borders, they're just small enough that I didn't notice them.

Ok, everything seems in order then with build 1160. Thank you for your time!

CJ actually made a lot of homebrew games (mostly clones of famous games such as B*bble B*bble, etc.) and tools for DOS back at the time.

Do you have some links or screenshots of that please?

Testing now...

Scale x2, no side borders. Works as before, it gives 640x480 with the game running 640x400.
Scale x2, side borders. Works as before, it gives 1280x720 with the game running 640x400.
Scale max, no side borders. Ends up running in x4 scale with no borders, as expected.

Spoiler

Built library path: d3d9.dll
Created graphics driver: Direct3D 9
Initializing screen settings
Game native resolution: 320 x 200 (32 bit), letterbox optional, side borders disabled
Initializing gfx filters
Requested gfx filter: max
Chosen gfx resolution: 1280 x 800 (32 bit), game frame: 320 x 200
Applying scaling filter: StdScale4
Switching to graphics mode
Attempt to switch gfx mode to 1280 x 800 (32-bit) fullscreen, game frame 320 x 200, gfx filter: StdScale4
Succeeded. Using gfx mode 1280 x 800 (32-bit) fullscreen, game frame 320 x 200, gfx filter: StdScale4
Preparing graphics mode screen

[close]

Scale max, side borders. Does exactly the same as above, which is a bit surprising.

Spoiler

Built library path: d3d9.dll
Created graphics driver: Direct3D 9
Initializing screen settings
Game native resolution: 320 x 200 (32 bit), letterbox optional, side borders enabled
Initializing gfx filters
Requested gfx filter: max
Chosen gfx resolution: 1280 x 800 (32 bit), game frame: 320 x 200
Applying scaling filter: StdScale4
Switching to graphics mode
Attempt to switch gfx mode to 1280 x 800 (32-bit) fullscreen, game frame 320 x 200, gfx filter: StdScale4
Succeeded. Using gfx mode 1280 x 800 (32-bit) fullscreen, game frame 320 x 200, gfx filter: StdScale4
Preparing graphics mode screen
Initializing colour conversion

[close]

Scale max, no side borders, tob/bottom borders. Does the same as above, which is expected.

Spoiler

Init gfx driver
Built library path: d3d9.dll
Created graphics driver: Direct3D 9
Initializing screen settings
Game native resolution: 320 x 200 (32 bit), letterbox forced, side borders disabled
Initializing gfx filters
Requested gfx filter: max
Chosen gfx resolution: 1280 x 800 (32 bit), game frame: 320 x 200
Applying scaling filter: StdScale4
Switching to graphics mode
Attempt to switch gfx mode to 1280 x 800 (32-bit) fullscreen, game frame 320 x 200, gfx filter: StdScale4
Succeeded. Using gfx mode 1280 x 800 (32-bit) fullscreen, game frame 320 x 200, gfx filter: StdScale4
Preparing graphics mode screen

[close]

Scale max, side borders, top/bottom borders. Now I'm getting the side borders.

Spoiler

Init gfx driver
Built library path: d3d9.dll
Created graphics driver: Direct3D 9
Initializing screen settings
Game native resolution: 320 x 200 (32 bit), letterbox forced, side borders enabled
Initializing gfx filters
Requested gfx filter: max
Chosen gfx resolution: 1920 x 1080 (32 bit), game frame: 384 x 216
Applying scaling filter: StdScale5
Switching to graphics mode
Attempt to switch gfx mode to 1920 x 1080 (32-bit) fullscreen, game frame 384 x 216, gfx filter: StdScale5
Succeeded. Using gfx mode 1920 x 1080 (32-bit) fullscreen, game frame 384 x 216, gfx filter: StdScale5
Preparing graphics mode screen
Initializing colour conversion

[close]

So everything works fine, the only thing I don't understand is why I'd have to enable top/bottom borders in order to actually see side borders.

No. It will look for all resolutions always, as was requested, so that SOME resolution is found in the end.

If borders option is enabled: it will look for resolution with or without borders, the one that matches better. The desktop aspect ratio is preferred.
If borders option is disabled: it will look for resolution without borders first, and for resolution with borders only if failed.

Excellent. Thank you very much!

Thanks, that's much clearer. So if I understand correctly, if borders are enabled then AGS will attempt for a resolution with borders first, and if none are found, it will find a resolution without borders; whereas if borders are disabled then AGS will only look for resolutions without borders. Is that correct?

Ok, I'm a bit confused now what does what. The options are still called "side borders on widescreen monitors" (does this actually detect whether a monitor is widescreen?) and "force alternate", but apparently they've changed now? It would help if these options were worded in the same way and were placed adjacent in the setup screen.

Chris Jones is actually Yahtzee in disguise.

That's because you're misunderstanding the advice. It explicitly says so pick common words, and not a sentence. Doing so gives you substantially more entropy than Mgwnf7Aa,&aIgwtlromp does (and precisely as the comic indicates, in the latter case you'll eventually forget which letters were capitalized and where the comma goes). I'm well aware that it's counterintuitive.