Messages

If you were going to use AGS to make the mini-game then you could use RunAGSGAme().

AJA: I can appreciate that.  Ijust thought it was worth asking the question though.    

Captian: Regarding, personal attacks - I will be the first to admit that on ocassion I have posted while in a negative frame of mind, have lost patience, and was hard on some folks who really didn't desreve it.  I didn't realize/forgot how young and inexperienced some of the people on the forums are.  

Fortunately, when these things have happened to me, my colleagues and friends here, have brought these incidents to my attention so that I could make appropiate ammends.  

So I agree that these things happen and that we all have been guilty at one time or another.  The important thing is that we make the effort to improve ourselves.   When a debate slips into this kind of muck raking, there is usually very little of inspiration, enlightenment, enrichment, or anything of positive value to anyone expect for the person who is ranting.  I suppose he is a least geting some self-gratification out of it.  

I could go along with another category of discussions provided there is enough content to make it worth our while. IMHO, having too many categories would tend to dilute the discussions and make the situation worse instead of better.   I always thought things like game-theory and such could/should be discussed in the chit-chat forum.  I noticed recently it was re-titled "adventure-related" I suppose to cover more generic topics.

IMHO, Gen-gen is the round circular file of the forums.   It's purpose is to dispose of the chaff and keep the other categories clean.  As long it is consuming only a reasonable amount of resources, is not driving people away, and is not giving us a bad name/reputation then the content of the posts are not very important, rather it's more important  such content not find it's way into the other categotries.

If there is enough serious stuff that finds it's way into gen-gen because it is not appropiate in the other categories then I would support it.  If on the other hand it's being proposed as a way of not dealing with all the nutty gen-gen posts then I am not sure what purpose would be served by creating a gen-gen-plus.  

I guess all I am saying is, let's just be clear about why we need or want another forum category.  Let's be certain that we will not dilute too much the content in the other categories as well.

P.S. Sorry for being so long winded.  Hope it was worth it.

I don't think you need to use a while loop to dop this.  How about something like this:

function gsGetInvWindowIndex(int item) {
  int pos=item - game.top_inv_item;
  if ((pos > game.num_inv_displayed)||(pos<0)) pos=-1;
  return pos;
}

I haven't tested it but it should return the position of the specified item is in the window and a minus one otherwise.  You could do the following for your purposes.
 
  int mypos;
  mypos=gsGetInvWindowIndex(game.inc_avtivated);

The endpoints may be off by 1;  haven't tried it so I don't know.

AJA, what I was asking if it's possible for you to make an outline font generator so that this wouldn't need to be done at runtime.  Seems like you may have done all the heavy lifting already to accomplish this.  Maybe you could simply add the ability to wirte your fonts out to an AGS supported font file?  The alternative, of course would to be to make a standalone allpication to do the same thing.  This would negarte the need of something being added to the AGS editor itself.  What do youthink?  Is it a possibility?

How about ..

harbinger.com, .net, .tk, .us, .biz, .org, ..  

harbi
terra
tera
narrat

You can but tk domains to get rid of the popup as you probably already know.

Why don't we just ask someone to make a seperate font outline generator?  AJA seems to have a handle on how to do it (see thread link below), is he is listening maybe he would like to comment.  In the thread below he was discussing about how to do an AGS plugin to generate outlin fonts.  

[ur]http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=7305;start=msg90[/url]

Are there any other font experts out there?  Great challange eh!

Just an observation.....

I worked at General Electric in the 80s where they reorganized the engineering depeartments 4-5 times during my tenure there.  They added and deleted departments, changed the names of the departments and changed the names of the managers of those departments.  The funny thing is the work got done exactly the same way as it always had, with the same problems, ineffciencies, ect as before.  Nothing really changed.

IMHO, adding another forum won't change the behavior of the people who will use it.  Vicious personal attacks are what stiffle constructive debate.  Likely this won't change as long as there are people here who can't tolerate opinions differeing from their own, who can't logically defend their point of view, and who attempt to discredit the opposing opinion by launching personal attacks on the individual(s) how hold said opinions.

If we truly wanted to improve the AGS community/forums we should all look inward and examine our own behavior, motivations, aspirations, etc and ask ourselves what we can do individually to improve the neighborhood.

As Gilbot says, you won't notice a difference in speed between 640x400 and 640x480.  Choose between these two based upon the the aspect ratio you prefer.

I have made a couple of utility programs using 800x600.  I choose this resolution for these programs because there was not a lot of chararacter and object animation/movement and crisp text displays were important.  

IMHO, the character art is what drives one to want to have a higher resolution and not the background art.  So take a  look at what you characters will look like and let that guide you.

Btw, I think most people these days are producing games with hi-color and 640x480/400 resolution.  

If you decide to go for the hogher resolution, be sure to let us know how it's turning out.

Cheers

CJ - I downloaded the new ACWIN and had a go last night.  I couldn't get it to crash again (so far).   Since I don't know how to reproduce the problem with any certainity, I can't be sure that there is no longer a problem.  I can only say that I can't seem to make it happen anymore.  Thanks

 

It happened to me when walking from behind and maybe a few pixels from the right.  Is there possibly a "sweet spot" or something.  Like the character and object being  located in exactly the same pixel location?  Or perhaps it's a temporal thing where the problem only happens if the character hits a specific location during a specific paret of his animation or other engine operation.  Sorry, that's all I can tell you at this point.  I'll see if I can figure out what to do to reproduce the problem and let you know if I come up with something.  Sorry I'm not able to be more helpful as I know how frustrating it can be trying to solve these sorts of problems.

Sylph:  Nice clean format.  I appreciate the simplicity of it.  

Good idea but "@" is used for e-mail addresses and a number of people are talking about simulated web-browsers, e-mail, etc...

How about using a tilde "~", back quote "`",  or making the special character selectable some how.   Is it possible to use the "%" sign that's aready used for formatting strings?

Darth:  This is a really intersting concept.  The idea of the player character actually causing everything to happen by accident is real genius.  It reminds me of Peter Sellers movies (i.e Pink Panther).  

Think of all the turning points in our history where things could have easily gone the other way.  Wouldn't it be funny if they would have, if our hapless hero hadn't turned up .  

Imagine poping in on Napoleon and his advisors, Napoleon is saying "I don't think now is the best time to take on Waterloo..." and the hero interjects with "Yes!  Because that's where you are going to be defeated.." and Nap get's pissed and says "Napoleon defeated? Never!  To Waterloo I say...".   Well, it's just an example of what I mean.  

I think you have a real opportunity for humor mixed in with suspense, action, drama, etc.  I can't wait to see more.  

Cheers
Rick

P.S. I like Robin Tyme for the name of the player character and "The Cause of History" or  "Causing History" for the name of the game.

CJ here is the zip of the game that crashes.  Just make EGO approach the upright bottle from behind.  If you hit it right you will get the crash.  You may have to try several times, I guess you need to hit the right spot or something.

www.icehouse.net/rickj/ags/es.zip  

I honestly don't think that the more annoying people will last that long. If they do, then they will have to be dealt with appropriately. ....

Junc:  I can agree with much of what you say.  I always thought that  being "dealt with appropiately" meant being relegated to the gen-gen forum.  

=====

I think I am going to throw my lot in with the newbies, at least the ones who are sincere and are willing to put some time into what they are doing.   I can handle enthauasism and annoyances as long as they are not accompanied by deception,  and mind games.    

RC1 - Fata exception whil PC was walking behind, through an object.  

An exception 0x0000005 occured in
ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x00426B22;
program pointer is _22, ACI version
2.56.605

- Antiglide mode on
- Scale speed on
- No diagnoals
- Walkable area used continous scaling
- Walkable area allows PC to walk through object
- Crash occurs when PC walks through or on object.

Thats all I can think of now.  I'll zip what  have in case you need to reproduce the failure.

bspeers100:  hehehe, I like the sounds of that title.    

Has anyone noticed the absence of many notable and acomplished AGSers from this discussion.  Perhaps there already is an elitist forum and we just haven't been invited.   :o

[honest, sincere, and willing to work hard]

Andail:  Thanks for the thoughtful essay.  I think there is a little too much emphasis on releasing games.   There are many people  here who have contributed immensely without completing a game.  As you said a game can be a big and long project (hehehe, I won't take this opportunity to make an immature comment...).   If someone is actually working on something, (not just farting around and thinking about working on something) then I think that is enough and if that's more or less what you meant then I can agree with you.  

Darth: You make some very good points.  I think young people who find us should be mentored.  We should try to channel their enthausism into productive channels rather trying to supress it.

A PM explaining to a newbie why he or she wasn't well recieved by the community is a usually a much more effective means of persuasion than public chastization, IMHO, of course.

=====

I help people, especially new people, as much as possible, if they are honest and sincere in their requests for help and are willing to work hard to achieve their goals.  

So I guess I would suggest that all we ask of newbies is that they be honest, sincere, and willing to work hard.  Individuals fitting these parameters, it seems to me, would acclimate themselves to our AGS culture soon enough.  

Andail:  Thanks for trying to clear the air a bit and giving us a chance reassure the newer folks that they are welcome.  

========

P.S.  You stop being a newbie when you are no longer irratating to the rest of us .