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Just when you thought you tolerated it all ... now this!!!

http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=12589&pst=900199&archival=&posts=5

If you find the beheadings appalling please sign the petition.

Interesting talk about the copyright, technology, and everything by Larry Lessig founder of the Creative Commons and Stanfrod law professor.  he makes a compelling case for fair use rights of copyrighted works.  Enjoy! 

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/187

Whilst searching for images I found this link.  Of potential interest to us here are two lists of elements/progressions in an action/adventure story.  The first lists supposedly represents a linear progression of the story from beginning to end.  The second approach supposedly represents a circular progression with a parallel and transformative character development.   

The article at this URL http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/TimeSpace/myth.html contains these two lists:  [edit format]

Joseph Campbell's Monomyth for action-adventure films: The Call to Adventure(II) The Refusal of the Call Supernatural Aid Crossing the First Threshold (pp1) Belly of the Whale The Road of Trials Meeting of the Goddess Atonement with the Father The Ultimate Boon Refusal of the Return The Magic Flight Rescue from Without Crossing of the Return Threshold Master of Two Worlds (resolution) Instead of Field's linear line, Christopher Vogler likes to see the journey as circular with the transformative character arc running pace with the hero's journey: limited awareness of problem ORDINARY WORLD increased awareness CALL TO ADVENTURE (II) reluctance to change REFUSAL overcoming reluctance MEETING WITH THE MENTOR committing to change CROSSING THE THRESHOLD (PP1) experimenting with first change TESTS, ALLIES, ENEMIES preparing for big change APPROACH TO INMOST CAVE attempting big change ORDEAL (Midpoint) consequences of the attempt REWARD (Seizing the Sword) (improvements and setbacks) rededication to change THE ROAD BACK (PP2) final attempt at big change RESURRECTION (Crisis/Climax) final mastery of the problem RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR (Resolution)

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To be honest I didn't understand much of the article as it seemed to ramble on about irrelevant things such as vomit.  The lists are also not very self explanatory either, presumably it would make more sense to someone who had taken the class.  There was one  sentence that caught my eye however and I thought it would make for an interesting discussion. 


"Instead of Field's linear line, Christopher Vogler likes to see the journey as circular with the transformative character arc running pace with the hero's journey..."


I thought it would be interesting to talk about how this might be done or has been done in adventure games.  Is  an adventure game, whose player character goes through profound changes as the game progress, enhanced or does it just confuse and frustrate the player.   

I was also thinking about how "reluctance to change" might be incorporated into the game.  I thought it would be interesting if things were arranged so that it was actually the player's reluctance that came into play rather than that of the player character.    The most obvious approach (at least to me) is to score different aspects of the player's/player character's personality based upon actions taken.      During the "limited awareness" phase of the game the player is encouraged to behave in a way appropriate to the player character's description.  If the PC is a pirate then the player must do piratie things to progress through the game.  The player would continue to be so rewarded during the "increased awaremess" phase as well.  The player would however find him/herself stuck in the "reluctance to change" phase until the player is able to change the personality scoring to fit the desired transformation.  In the PC Pirate example, the player would need to forgo the immediate rewards achievable through stealing, talking mean, and other piratie stuff, in favor of future rewards achievable through new and un-piratie behaviors.    The trick of course is to make this challenging without frustrating the player.  An intuitive gui, helpful dialogs, and frustration sensing logic would, in my opinion, be a necessary ingredient.

It also occured to me that during the "reluctance to change" phase it would be possible to allow the player to make choices that determine how "the" story ends or for that matter "which" story actually will plays out.  Continue to behave like a pirate and you will end up in a pirate adventure.

Well  what do you all think? 

Randy Pausch is a co-founder of the Entertainment Technology dept at Carnegie Mellon University.  He has cancer and has been given several months to live.   His farwell lecture is here on  Google Video.  It's very inspirational and upbeat about life.

I thought this may be of interest to some of the musician folks.   The are looking for music  that is licensed so that it can be shared.   It seems like they will then make it available to the "One Laptop Per Child" project.  There is also a group in Boston that helps people record and promote music that has open license.   Anyway, just thought this may be of interest to someone here.   

http://freemusic.freeculture.org

_{Edit by andail: Fixed link code}

Well we have seen a proliferation of useful public modules. Good work everyone.

I would like to have a discussion about private modules and how we may incorporate them into the "Module Programming Guidelines" published in the technical archive.   You are probably wondering why we should bother if it's a private module.  A naming convention would eliminate the possibility of name conflicts between public and private modules and more importantly if would allow the publication of private modules.

Huh??? ... What?   Publish private modules?    WTF Rick???    You #$%@! Idiot!!!!

Hehe, I know it sounds mad but it makes sense in the case of game templates that include private modules and in the case of modules that are actually templates for private modules.  I guess the  kind of private module I am talking about would have the following characteristics. 

• Unique contents for each instance/game in which it appears.  Modifications are allowed and encouraged.
  
  
• Unpublished, except in the case of private module templates or game templates.  Such a module template would be a guide, tutorial, and would contain some basic functionality and examples.
  
  
• Less strict adhearence to Module Programming Guidelines.  Deviations would be allowed if necessary or desired. 
  
  So what I would like to propose is that all private module names, or at least the ones that are published,  begin with a unique character such as an underscore.   I know it's a modest proposal but I think it's worth doing something.  For example private modules would be named somethin like:  _Math,  _Lib, _Misc, etc.
  
  Chers
  Rick

I don't like having to pay extra for consumer electronics so that DRM can  be added to protect some else's interests.   I don't like anyone telling me when, where, or how I llisten to music I plegally purchased.  I don't like my "fair use rights" under copyright llaw bein eroded.   Don't encourage the scoundrels by purchasing DRM'd devices or music.  Please take a look at the Electronic Frontier Foundation's petition in the link below.  If you agree with it please sign and submit it. 

http://www.eff.org/share/petition/

Here is a video of a guy ralking about one of the RIAA infamous lawsuits that you may also be interested in.
Video - Rant Against RIAA

Here is the blog of the attourney who represents Mrs. Swartz and a number of others.
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/

The following code runs inside a module and aborts with an "array out of bounds" error.   There are only 7 guis defined so apparently that's all that was allocated.   What I would really like to know is how to get the actual array size at runtime so that I can wallk the entire array?   I haven't found any global variable or constant other than AGS_MAX_GUIS that would appear to serve this purpose.  Have I missed something or is AGS_MAX_GUIS not being defined correctly?

Code: ags

	game_start() {
		int i=0;
		while (i<AGS_MAX_GUIS) {
			if (gui[i]!=null) gui[i].Visible=false;
			i++;
		}
	}

For the benefit of novice scripters who may be wondering why I just wouldn't just change the while statement to "while (i<7)", I did say that this is in a module so I can't know how many GUIs future users of the module will have in their game.  Presumably they would not all be the same anyway.

I cam across this a while ago while playing an old RPG and thought that perhaps it would be a useful/desireable feature to add to AGS.  The RPG seemed to use the concept of rooms similar to AGS.  Although the game seemed to have a huge and continous backgound or playing area it seemd to be broken up into seperate "rooms".   For example if the PC continued to walk right eventually he would walk into the next room.   The room transition would occur by scrolling the current and next rooms' backgrounds left until the next room's background was approx. 50% or 75% on screen.   Since the right edge of the current background matches up to the left edge of the next room  the playing area looks continous.  When crossing the top, bottom, or left edges of the room the transition works in a similar manner. 

There would be a number of advantages if something like this were available in AGS, provided of course that there would be a practical implementation.

• Easier to make RPG, platform, and other non-adventure game
  
• Easier to make maps and top down navigation,driving,etc
  
• Easier to work-around object and other room limits
  
  Anyway I thought I'd share the idea and see what everyone thinks.     

I came across this and thought it may be of interest to some.  It lends a little insight into the trouble Kairus had in getting (or not getting) permission to publish his fan game.

http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/garfield/garfield.htm

I just came across this and thought it would be of interest to the Linux and Mac users among us.   It seems like a fairly new project but it seems like it has a lot of potential.  If they get anywhere with it it may be of use to AGSers and other gamers.

http://alkyproject.com/

Although these aren't buringing issues I, never the less, thought that they would be handy features to have when working with fonts and worth a mention.

• Display Character's numeric value - Either mouse-over or right click on a character in the font preview window to display it's numeric value. 
  
  
• Display font's filename - Retain and/or display the filename from which the font was imported so that it can be identified.  In the case of TTF, I guess you would want to also capture the point size at which it was imported.

I have a couple of quick listbox questions.  It seems like I must have know the answers to these at one time or another but am drawing a blank at the moment. 

• Listbox Limits - What is currently the max number of items or characters that can be contained in a list box?  Is this documented somewhere?  I've looked in the manual under "System Limits", "Constants", and "AddItem".  Does AddItem() returnan error or null when the listbox is full? 
  
  
• FillSaveGameList - The manual says "The save game list can only hold 20 save games. ".  Does this refer to the list that FillSaveGameList creates or something else?   I believe that this number has been increased to 50 now (Btw, manual still says 20).    I know that it's easily scriptable but perhaps FileSaveGameList should have a couple of optional parameters,  to specify the first save game slot where the list should begin and the number of save slots to include in the list?
  
  That's it!  Thanks..
  
  
  
  

I'm making a GUI module that supports multiple text input fields by dynamically sizing and positioning the textbox control over the button used to implement the field.   The problem is that whenever a new field (i.e. buton) is added to the GUI the textbox control must be deleted and then re-entered so that it overlays the field.  Otherwise it it's hidden behind the button.   

Would it be reasonsable/possible  to have the ability to set a control's z-order either at run-time or during edit, by other than the "deletion/re-entry" method?   

[edit]
I see that it's already on the tracker so I would like to add my above comments in support of this feature and perhaps bump the priority a tiny bit.    

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=497

I enjoyed the last discussion about the death penalty immensly and thought I would give everyone another opportunity to opine about this new case I read about on the ABC News Website.  Click on the link to read the full story.  Here are my favorite parts:


ABUL, Afghanistan, March 22, 2006 â€" Despite the overthrow of the fundamentalist Taliban government and the presence of 22,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a man who converted to Christianity is being prosecuted in Kabul, and a judge said Sunday that if convicted, he faces the death penalty.
:
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Relatives denounced him as a convert during a custody battle over his children, and he was arrested last month. The prosecutor says Rahman was found with a Bible.
:
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Presiding judge Ansarullah Mawlazezadah tells ABC News a medical team was checking the defendant, since the team suspects insanity caused Rahman to reject Islam.
:
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The post-Taliban constitution recognizes Islam as Afghanistan's religion, and decrees that Islam's Sharia law applies when a case is not covered by specific legislation. The prosecutor says under Sharia law, Abdul Rahman must die.
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The judge, however, holds hopes for a solution.  "We will ask him if he has changed his mind about being a Christian," Mawlazezadah says. "If he has, we will forgive him, because Islam is a religion of tolerance."
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There are a number of listbox suggestions on the tracker so here are a couple more.

• Background Color - Currently the listbox has a transparent background, would it be possible to add the ability to specify the background color?   The transparent background makes it very difficult to do "drop down lists" and other sorts of dynamically sized lists.
  
  
• Resizing - Currently it's possible to get the number of items in the list  and how many items are displayed.  To resize the list to display N items then you must calculate how many pixels are required.   A function to resize the list height so that a specified number of items are displayed would be really handy, if easy and practical to implement.   If not, the calculatoion  is do able in script, just not very pretty.
  
  [edit]
  re: Resizing - Well I guess it's not that ugly but still it's not as simple as a one liner though ...
  

  Code: ags

  
  int height=0;
  WinBluListbox.Height = 0;
  while (WinBluListbox.ItemCount>gListbox.RowCount) {
        height = height+5;
        WinBluListbox.Height = height;
  }
  

  
  [/edit]
  
  As always thanks for the listen.
  RickJ
  
  
  

I would like the module, I am working on, to do some cleanup when the game exits.   The obvious solution is to make a MyModule.QuitGame() that does whatever I want and then calls QuitGame().  That's OK but it leaves open the possibility that a future user of the module may not realize that this is required and just use the built-in function instead, causing the module to potentially misoperate.   

I checked the on_event() documentation and there is not a eEventQuitGame event listed there.  I was wondering if there is perhaps another clever way of doing this from inside a module?   

How do I make a String parameter optional as shown below?   

// Module Script
struct WinBlu  {
   // Some stuff
   // :

   import static String   Data(String Name, String Value=null);

   // Some more stuff
   // :
};

When I set it equal to null or to ""  I get the error below.  If I set it to zero
the compiler is happy but I don't think that is right either.   

Error (line xxx): Parameter default value must be literal

I assume I am missing something really obvious here;  it makes me feel so damm noobish.     

We have one for the max number of GUIS so perhaps one for the max number of controls per gui would also be useful? 

I guess what I want to do would be something like having a virtual method defined in the module that could be redefined in the global script.    I don't think virtual methods are supported but is there another way of calling a function in the global script from a module?  Perhaps trigger an event or something?