Messages

It's not like Runaway and TLJ are the only commercial adventure games of recent years. This year alone saw Myst V, Still Life, Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Another Code, VOYAGE, 80 Days, Bone Chapter 1, ECHO, another couple of Nancy Drew games and a Law & Order game. Most of these games were well received, critically, and at least one was a runaway success.

Somehow I've managed to miss all of those entirely. Well, except Myst V, which I really don't believe qualifies anyway unless the Myst series has changed dramatically since the first few.

I d'know, I suppose it's possible they're just not being carried by the local chain franchises or something, because when I browse EB or whatever, I just don't see traditional adventure games hardly at all. I only found Runaway because it was in the $5 bargain bin at Half-Price Books...

And, believe me, I see this as a shame! If I'd heard about them, I might have sought these games out! Were they marketed at all well? How'd I manage to miss 'em?

So while we're not in the golden age of Sierra and LucasArts (and Revolution, and Westwood, and Access, etc, etc), the genre is hardly dead, either.

Well, you coulda fooled me, honestly. Because I've been looking...and not finding.

Well, that could be done, but I'd really like to do this with a GUI.

And even if I didn't, how do I make that generic so it then passes the result to the function the player just came from? I mean, half the point is making this so I don't have forty-eleven versions of the same "Yes/No" question popping up in different functions...

So...what is this for, anyway?

And, I'll ask again, what do the characters look like?

The day version looks pretty cool, too, BTW. I like the use of texture, looks pretty real and unflat.

I think the issue I had with Myst was that it really wasn't story-driven. There weren't really any characters to interact with, and the plot seemed little more than a vehicle for another math-or-pattern-recognition puzzle as the game progressed.
While that may entertain some folks--and more power to 'em, I say--it doesn't do anything for me, really. Different strokes an' all that, neh?

And, yeah, I have to agree, the commercial adventure game is really a thing of the past, Runaway and The Longest Journey notwithstanding. Exceptions, both of 'em, and considering how far apart their release dates were only illustrates the point.
Not that I wouldn't mind a resurrection of the genre, but most gamers these days are much more interesting in 3D bells-and-whistles, action, and instant gratification than anything else. I say most, not all very specifically; I think the AGS community alone shows that there's exceptions...but we ain't the majority, here, folks. I wish it were otherwise.

Re: Walk2.jpg: his legs probably shouldn't cross over each other quite so much, laterally; that's a much more feminine way to walk.

Legend of Lost Lagoon looks nifty.
And How to be a Ninja looks bloody great!

Wanna play both'a dem.

Poser 6.
Do you like it?

Well, yeah, I like it...but as a 3D modeler myself, I think I'd like it better if you had, you know, done the modeling yourself.  Just sayin'... 

Yes, exactly. 3DS MAX, Blender, Maya, Lightwave...etc.

I have to admit, I'm deeply confused, now. I've been trying to make a GUI system work all morning and I'm just running into way too many half-right solutions that don't work at all.

See, I'm trying to put together the standard idiot-proofing most games have:

"Are you sure? (Y/N)"

But I'd like to make it generic, so if the player has elected to start a new game or quit the game entirely, they get the same "Are you sure?" GUI.
There must be something wrong with my methodology, because I'm very very very confused and nothing I try has worked.

I think first and foremost, I'm confused by GUI controls. What is the difference between a GUI button's script name and a GUI button's Left-Click name? Becaue the script name seems to have no relevance whatsoever to ANYTHING, which the Left-Click script seems to be an actual function within the game's script. The manual just dismisses all the GUI button controls as "self-explanatory" which, I'm sorry, they're not.
And when a script is called by clicking on a GUI button, the function looks like this:

function GUIbutton (GUIControl *control, MouseButton button);

But GUIControl, *control, MouseButton, and button are never used by any of the functions I've seen in the script, so what good do they do? Why are they there at all? I've scoured the docs for n explanation, but all I've really found is the section on pointers, which only sort of describes what *control is, but not why one might use it in a GUI button's function.

And I'm really not sure if any of that is relevant to what I'm trying to do.

Here's what I'm trying to do:

When the player clicks on, say, the New Game button, which is on the GUI called gNewquit (the New Game, Quit Game, and Cancel buttons are on that GUI), I turn off the gNewquit.Visible variable, turn on the gBelt.Visible variable (gBelt is the Suspenders-and-Belt GUI, the one that asks if you're sure; idiot-proofing for mis-clicks) and...that's where I'm stuck.

I've tried setting up a variable that is supposed to be modified by the choice the player makes on gBelt, but because the new_game_Click function isn't paused by opening the gBelt GUI, if conditional statement that checks that variable goes off right away before the player can pick on gBelt, and so nothing gets resolved.

I've thought about passing a variable to gBelt that tells it which GUI the player just came from and make whatever is supposed to happen do so within gBelt (which is why I was wondering if the (GUIControl *control, MouseButton button) part might be important), but I'm not sure if that's the right way to go. I would like the GUI the player was on before gBelt to become Visible again if the player chooses to Cancel from gBelt, which is another reason why knowing gBelt's parent GUI is important. Plus, handling what happens in gBelt would make the function no longer generic.

Unfortunately, the screens that come up with QuitGame(1); aren't available to look at in any script I've come across, so I can't look at those to unravel this.

Can anyone help me out here? I know this is doable, I've seen it in other AGS games...

Thanks.

Not bad at all! What platform are you using?

She could do with more of a neck.

Ah, see, now that's true and not true.

She's actually got plenty of neck...you just can't see it.
Like I said, I had to tilt her head to make her not look as if she were looking in the wrong direction all the time, and this not only concealed her neck rather a lot, but also changed the (apparent) length of her hair. It's kinna annoying, really.

But I'll give the FOV trick a try and post the results, possibly tomorrow (though with my dad in town I may not have time...we'll see).

In fact, I have not. It's worth a try, I suppose, but I don't think adjusting the FOV will help much, especially with such a small subject. But I'll see what happens.

I'd planned to. How's this?



That's the first frame from every one of this character's walking loops. You can sort of see the perspective issues if you really look for 'em. It's especially apparent in the diagonal loops; her shoulders kinna look hunched or tilted. In truth, it's her head and the camera that're tilted, but it's all relative.

Ah, so it is. Well, I'm adding my voice to the plea for this one, then. Thanks.

Incidntally, where is the link for this tracker doo-hickey? You know, so I can check it some other time?

I know there's Mouse.SelectNextMode(); but why is there no Mouse.SelectPreviousMode();?

I'd love to have one to attach to the operation of the mousewheel. You know how it is:

"I want to look at that object...[right-click, right-click, right-click] Crap! One too many clicks. Dammit. Okay... ...[right-click, right-click, right-click] Crap! Okay..."

Has anyone implemented code to cycle through cursor modes in reverse to make this functionality possible?

I'll be sure to keep tabs on this one.

My least favorite kinds of puzzles: Mazes or big empty areas.

Think of the desert in King's Quest 5, where not only is it a big empty wasteland, but unless you can find the oasis, you DIE of dehydration after walkign a few screens, but it's absolutely vital that you traverse several locations in this desert. GRAAAGH! I hate that.
Legend of Kyrandia 1 did the same thing, sort of, with these fire berries or something that could light up caverns but which burned out after you walked a few screens, though they somehow stayed lit if you dropped them... So you spend HOURS trying to put a fireberry in every cavern just so you can walk around without getting eaten...
That's not fun, that's frustrating busy-work!

And then there's that stupid in-the-dark ladder-and-cavern maze in SpaceQuest 2...

Or the labyrinth in King's Quest 6.

Or--and this is going back a ways--the maze of little twisty passages, all alike, in Adventure and Zork and all those others.

See, okay, I could enjoy a maze if it wasn't simply the same room over and over with no distinguishing features to help figure out whereintheheck you ARE, but geez!

In fact, I guess ANY puzzle that's there just to artificially make a game longer without actually adding more content bugs the holy drek out of me. Like the slot machine in Space Quest 1 (the original; in the VGA version you could bypass it with a widget). One can spend endless HOURS trying to get past something like that without ever encountering another puzzle of any kind. I really hate that.

I kinna like the mist that bright. It's creepier, looks more like something spooky-magical is gonna happen.

I agree, it looks nifty. I also agree about the trees. I'm gonna comment about the one in the lower left: some of the twigs don't look like they're actually attached.

Other than that, it looks way cool. Can't complain about much!

What do the characters looks like that might be strolling about in this scene?

I don't understand - why don't you just crop out the blank space, either in an art program, or in AGS itself (Crop sprite edges")? Assuming you were otherwise happy with the results this way, of course.

Well, I really wasn't happy with it, ultimately. And I handled the cropping right in the 3D program anyway so that when I imported the frames into AGS they were pretty much ready to go.

I'll have something to show by tomorrow, I think. I'd like to see what people think, actually.