Messages

This is a very intriguing idea.  I have had an idea to keep a PC journal and make it available to the player during the game.  Ratracer actually implements such a thing in his latest game "The Uncertainity Machine".    But I never thought about having a readable story after the game was over.   Neat idea, I'd like to see how it turns out.

Nice work Klaus.....  

You should be able to animate all possible 10 objects.  I  can't tell why you are having this problem, from your description.

Use a label and put the following text in the label @SCORE@.  @SCORE@ will be replaced with the players scor when you run the game.

[OpenContent License (OPL)]

May I suggest that we use something like the Open Content license .  It's fairly staight forward and it protects the original artist/author's rights while allowing others to make use of them.  Here is a link to the open content website. http://www.opencontent.orgl

OpenContent License (OPL)
Version 1.0, July 14, 1998.

This document outlines the principles underlying the OpenContent (OC) movement and may be redistributed provided it remains unaltered. For legal purposes, this document is the license under which OpenContent is made available for use.

The original version of this document may be found at http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml

LICENSE

Terms and Conditions for Copying, Distributing, and Modifying

Items other than copying, distributing, and modifying the Content with which this license was distributed (such as using, etc.) are outside the scope of this license.

1. You may copy and distribute exact replicas of the OpenContent (OC) as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the OC a copy of this License along with the OC. You may at your option charge a fee for the media and/or handling involved in creating a unique copy of the OC for use offline, you may at your option offer instructional support for the OC in exchange for a fee, or you may at your option offer warranty in exchange for a fee. You may not charge a fee for the OC itself. You may not charge a fee for the sole service of providing access to and/or use of the OC via a network (e.g. the Internet), whether it be via the world wide web, FTP, or any other method.

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the OpenContent or any portion of it, thus forming works based on the Content, and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

a) You must cause the modified content to carry prominent notices stating that you changed it, the exact nature and content of the changes, and the date of any change.

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the OC or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License, unless otherwise permitted under applicable Fair Use law.

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the OC, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the OC, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. Exceptions are made to this requirement to release modified works free of charge under this license only in compliance with Fair Use law where applicable.

3. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to copy, distribute or modify the OC. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by distributing or translating the OC, or by deriving works herefrom, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or translating the OC.

NO WARRANTY

4. BECAUSE THE OPENCONTENT (OC) IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE OC, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE OC "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK OF USE OF THE OC IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE OC PROVE FAULTY, INACCURATE, OR OTHERWISE UNACCEPTABLE YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

5. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MIRROR AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE OC AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE OC, EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.



What does everyone think?

You would put it in the global script.  Probably you have one there already.  You decode the mouse buttons similar to how you decode gui clicks.   Take a look at your global script and ecerything should be clear.

Thanks guys for your comments.  It's goin to take me a while but at least I have some ideas to try.  I'll get back here when I have something better to show.

Cheers

Gilbot is right on!!   Make sure you have cookies enabled.  The fourm setsa couple of cookies with your login information.  Everytime yoiu click on something those cookies are checked to see if you are logged in.  Make sure cookies are enabled, delete all of your cookies, delete any cookie sites the browser has retained and then try again.

Making it optional would be fine.  Maybe even let it be selectable from the script, for people who want to do fancy stuff.  A simple check box would work for me though.

What I am doing is poping up a little query box, as asking for some kinf of input.  While the query box is up I don't think the player character should be responding to the player anyway.  When the the box is closed then I would want to reconnect the arrow keys to the player's motion.  

I think I see your point though.  I think you are referring to the games that have a text entry box open all the time, and you communicate via a text parser, right?

This would make a nice option to have one of these days.    Thanks.    

CJ:  Wow, thanks for the compliment.  Just understand it's still an Aplha version.  Speaking of compliments, here's what Stefan over at e-novative had to say about AGS.

Rick,

Things look pretty nice! It's amazing what you have achieved in that short
period of time. Now I surely understand why you chose AGS. Well, here's
what I've come up with after some initial testing:

> -  Your opinion of  the GUI alpha version, bugs, modifications, and
> additions.

- I can't get most things to work, in most batch files an error message
appears that the label "translation" cannot be found (Win2000). Not dure
if this this is a GUI or a Win98 vs. Win NT issue
- the "dummy" document should not appear in the document lists. It exists
because we had a problem with creating empty direcories, but is no
document that can be processed
- the GUI should remember the selected document on each pane. When I
switch panes, the first document in the list is selected; it would be an
advantage to keep the selected document since in most cases one will
perform a sequence of processing steps on a "current" document
- in the popup windows, I cannot move the cursor, but only use the
backspace key. It would be nice to be able to move the cursor to prevent
deleting the whole line just to edit a typo right at the beginning

This is how far I got, I was trying to find the source of the batch
error(s), but did not succeed that quickly.

> - Output directories and commands, I think this doesn't work in all cases
In which cases did you have problems with it?

> - Document types and stylesheets, Can a type include which style sheets
> to be used as well as the xml template?
I'm not sure if I understand what you mean. The type (article or book)
defines the template that is used. The XSL stylesheets are divided per
type and per output format to allow full customization of the output. The
user should not change any e_novative* stylesheet but create a custom*
stylesheet. The e-novative stylesheets provide the default values that can
be changed by upgrading eDE, still the custom settings will be kept. You
can also create a document-specific stylesheet by creating a
document_(name).xsl file.

> - Distribution files size, Can it be split into smaller modules? JRE
> seperate download and install, etc?.
I was considering that before. The problem is the "dumb" users that just
download, click-and-install and expect everything to work. I am planning
on distributing incremental upgrades, however, so the users only have to
download and install the big packag once

> - Seperate user documents from docbook system directory,  Use document
> configuration file?
> - Location of docbook installation directory?
You can put the user documents into another place by setting the
repository variable in the configuration batch. That's the reason why the
document templates have a hardcoded "file"-reference that points to the
original Docbook DTD in c:\docbook\dtd. And this is exactly the main
problem with installing eDE to some other path

So, what do you think we need to do to get the three versions of batch
files (original, W98 and GUI) in sync? The goal should be to have one set
of batch files, everything else calls for serious trouble on the road, I
think.

Kind regards,

Stefan Priebsch
CEO

---
>e-novative> - e-Business Software & Solutions
Isartorplatz 3 - 80331 Munich - Germany

http://www.e-novative.de

I'll keep everyone posted as this project progresses.

Cheers

WOuld it be possible to refine the gui TextBox element so that the left and right arrow keys could be used to edit the input string?  Tis would make it operate the way most people have come to expect.  Thanks.

[Biography: Professora Tessora Primora]

Well art is definately not my strong point.  I obviously could use a lot of help in this department.  So here is my first character.  She was drawn with VISIO, a vector drawing program.  I plan on improving her with Photoshop.  Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks



Biography: Professora Tessora Primora
Professora Primora is a biologist who has recently completed work on her Ph.D.  She wrote a paper entitled "Microbes on Mars".  She is young and enthusatic about everything.  She has a great sense of humor; she'll laugh at just about anything.  She believe's there is life on Mars because she says she has been there and seen it.  She is either a brillant scientist or very crazy, or perhaps a little of both.

**edit
http://www.icehouse.net/rickj/ags/primora.gif

remixor:  Thanks for your comments and additional explanation.  Just to clarify, about stylesheets for everyone, I would expect that we could have a default set of stylesheets available that everyone could use.  The only time someone would need to make their own stylesheets is if they wanted to have their own tutorial format for whatever reason.  So don't get the idea that everytime you make a tutorial you need to make stylesheets.  

The other thing cool thing is that it is as easy as pushing a button to get everything in CHM form, just like the AGS help file.  If we get enough useful contributions then perhaps some future version of AGS would have a means of opening these from within the editor?  So to add a tutorial you would just download the chm file and put it in the AGS (or some other) folder and bamo it would show up in a menu somewhere in AGS.  

Note the reason the full system is such a big download is that it includes a Java JRE (it's required for the XML and FOP processors) and some other executables (i.e. programs) used to edit and manipulate XML.  I think, in the future  the system will be broken up into multiple downloads, so that the size will be less of a problem.

Here is a snipet of the XML that produced the HTML file ilink in the first post.

<article lang="en">
  <articleinfo>
     <title>Creating a Minimal Game Template</title>
     <pubdate>March 23, 2003</pubdate>
     <copyright>
        <year>2003</year>
        <holder>BluSoft</holder>
     </copyright>
     <legalnotice>
        <para>
       Copyright © 2002 e-novative GmbH. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
       transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any language in any form by
       any means without prior written permission of e-novative GmbH.  This publication is provided as is, without
       warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including, without limitation, the implied warranties of
       merchantability, fitness for particular purpose, or noninfringement. The entire risk arising out of the use
       of this publication remains with the recipient.  To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event
       shall e-novative be liable for any special, incidental, indirect, or consequential damages whatsoever (including,
       without limitation, damages for loss of business or loss of business profits, business interruption or loss of
       business information) arising out of the use of software and/or information as described in this publication, even
       if e-novative has been advised of the possibility of such damages. Any brand and product names mentioned in this
       document might be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners in Germany and/or other countries.
    </para>
     </legalnotice>
     <author><firstname>Dan</firstname><surname>Jones</surname></author>
     <author><firstname>Rick</firstname><surname>Jafrate</surname></author>
  </articleinfo>

  <abstract>
     <para>
        This tutorial explains how to create a minimal game template by removing
    non-essential elements from a default AGS game project.  This is typically
    done in preparation for the importation of script modules, GUI interfaces,
    characters, and etc.
     </para>
  </abstract>
 
  <sect1><title>Introduction</title>
     <sect2><title>Overview</title>
        <para>
           A new game, when created by AgsEdit, contains a default collection of sprites,
       OS, and global script code that allows a game designer to begin creating rooms
       with a minimal amount of effort.  This is fine for novices and experimenters but
       in many instances more experienced designers prefer to start from their own code
       base. In this case it is convenient to have a game template that has as little
       content as possible and still compile without errors.
        </para>
     </sect2>

I have been working with Docbook for the past few weeks and it's pretty cool.  

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, docbook  is a widely accepted XML standard and is similar to HTML.  The difference is that docbook tags are used to define what the enclosed content is rather than how it looks.   The result is a document source file that is easily converted to single or multiple html files, pdf file, html help (chm) files,and other formats.  Table of Contents, index, and glossaries are automatically generated and the document look and feel is determined by reuseable stylesheets.  Professional publishers use this system extensively.   Actually, I believe that a form of docbook (SGML) standard was the forerunner of HTML and XML.  

The problem we have with AGS tutorials at the moment is that they are all in different formats and are widely scattered amoung our individual websites.  We seledom share these with each other because of the amount of work involved in reformatting them to have a consistent look.

I think that using docbook to make AGS tutorials would solve this and other problems by providing the following benefits:

• Documents by various authors would be consistent with each other.  
  
• Collections of documents from different authors could be easily created and provided to the community.  
  
• The "look" of a document, or collections of documents, can easily be changed by modifying style sheets and republishing from the source.
  
• Documents can be provided in different formats without any additional work.
  
• Since the author doesn't need to worry about the final format, only the content, it is easier to make the document is this respect.
  
• Automatic table of contents and index generation.  In the case of HTML these are hyper linked.
  
• Fairly easy to learn to use.  
  

Here is an example tutorial I have created using this standard.  The HTML headers and footers are from a slightly modified  default stylesheet.  These can be changed as we see fit.  

Here is an example of the single HTML output format...
Example HTML

Here is a zip of the complete example including the source document mingt.xml, and the CHM, Multiple HTML, Single HTML, and PDF outputs formats.
Complete Example (300k zip)

Here is an alpha version of the compelete system.  This system was an open source project sponsored by [urlwww.e-novative.de/docbook[/url].   The original system uses a command line interface.  I have used AGS to create an intuitive GUI front end, in cooperation with e-novative.  The command line version is at V1.01 (or soimething like that).  The GUI is at the Alpha-2 stage.  You can download the complet thing from here if you want to try it.    

Complete Publishing System (28Mb zip)

To install this just unzip it to c:\docbook.  You will need to install a java jre if you don't have one already.  There is one included in the zip, just goto the docbook/jre folder and run jre.exe.

To run the GUI just go to the c:\docbook directory and click on the short-cut eDE or goto the gui directory and run ede.exe

The example document is mingt.

Well, I am curious as to your opinions of all this.  At least take this time to look at the source and output files.  Keep in mind that you edit the the document.xml source file and then run a program to generate the HTML, PDF, CHM files.  

Thanks to Scorpiorus and Jimi for their indespensible help on this project.

I know this last statement should be obvious but you would be suprised to know that an entire General Electric Engineering department spent nearly 10 years whining and complaining about how the  productivity tools  I made for them were a pain in the ass.  I could never understand their position, until I returned 10 years later as a consultant and they showed me how they were editing the text processor output files and were therfore manually editing page numbers and table of contents, instead of  letting the damm computer do the work.  

So I appologize for talking down to everyone, I assume you got it, but just in case I thought I would be clear.  To this day I still can't believe this whole bunch of engineers are so dense!!!

And I was also thinking that maybe with the demo and source of each game, we can include a text file which could be a tutorial for what we did? What do ya think?

Funny you should mention this JD, I am about to spring a docbook tutorial system on everyone.   I'll make  seperate thread in this forum about it.

So yes, I agree that it would be nice if there were tutorials, in some form, for each of the demo components.  Templates would also make a lot of sense for GUI's as well.  I think you would want to strip out any un-necessary stuff from templates so as to minimize the work some one would need to do to start a new game.

JD would you like to be a project coordinator, you seem to be pretty good at that sort of thing?  I will be willing to contribute .

** edit **
Here is the new docbook thread ...
http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=5745&start=0    

The way to do costumes is to create a copy of your character with the different costume.  As for limiting the the characters actions to walk that is a fairly easy programming task.

The first thing to do then is to come up with a number of main categories.  I think this mostly done in the current demo game, but we may want to revisit this in light of the new approach.  I haven't been in the demo for a long time but this is what I sort of remember. Please feel free to add your ideas or correct  me on this.

• GUIs
  
• Multi-media
  
• Arcade
  
• Characters and Object
  
• Rooms (i.e. scrolling room, etc)

If it were I wouldn't have asked.  

Have you tried something like this ...

  if (Said("anyword AGS")) DisplaySpeech(EGO,"It's a nice tool.");

I haven't done much with the parser but you probably can't use special keywords inside brackets the way you expect.  

Not a bad idea.  I would add to that the ability to have horizontally oriented sliders as well.  I haven't checked for awhile, we may already have them?  

A work around that would work now, is to have seperate transparent GUI with the slider on it.  You can make that GUI non-clickable.  Just make sure that the transparent GUI doesn't overlay any clcikable parts of the underlaying GUI.