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Well, I had to completely recode the split screen functionality because the jury-rigged way I did it was going to make building the rest of the game an incredible pain. 

Thankfully, I finally taught myself how to use viewport and game cameras, so it's not jury-rigged anymore but is a legit split screen. 

Now that that's done, hopefully the rest of the game should be easier (famous last words  )

The foundation is in place!

OK here we go. 

THE ANGRY APPROACH

Spoiler

You dig up the buried item. It's a bottle of rum. Nice! But it won't help you get off the island.

You engage the partit in conversation but it only continues to mock you until you get angry. You wish you could shoo it away. Burning the palm tree might do it.

That's it! You get an idea to make a smoke signal to the passing ship by burning the palm tree.

Rip apart the paperback thriller and pile the pages in a heap at the base of the palm tree.

Take two keys from the key ring and rub them together as a flint until you get a spark that lights the pages on fire. You have only a minute before the pages burn out, so add the t-shirt to keep the fire going.

The palm tree doesn't catch fire!

Add the shorts to keep the fire going.

Take the glass shards from the boat and scratch the base of the palm tree until it becomes frayed.

It works! The frayed bark of the palm tree catches, and palm tree sends dark smoke up into the air, and drops its coconuts down. The ship on the horizon turns towards you! But more importantly, the parrot flies away.

Now you must find a way to celebrate! Use the bottle of rum on the bottle of coke. Collect some oysters from the shallows. Sit back, and celebrate your rescue by drinking a rum-and-coke and eating the coconuts and oysters.

[close]

Commenting both to bump the thread up and to say I've been busy but do plan on submitting an entry soon. 

So the .gif below is all placeholder graphics, but for my interpretation of the "cut in half" theme, I've been attempting an extremely faux split-screen effect (note the changing cursor color    ). It's been fun to program, but only because it's working so far.    We'll see whether I can get far enough to implement actual gameplay (it needs a lot more to become something besides a programming exercise), but I'm happy with the result at this stage. 

UPDATE: Solved on discord. Thanks @Laura Hunt . It was a transparent GUI because I always end up making the controls invisible when I'm trying to hide the parent GUI instead.

So when I click the mouse, none of the script from the global on_mouse_click runs. I have a message right at the beginning to test if it runs, and the message does not display. I'm using the blank game template. Version 3.6.0.49.

Here's the entirety of the room script:

Code: ags

function room_RepExec()
{
  Region *LeftOrRight = Region.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y);
  if(LeftOrRight == region[1]){
    if(player.ID != 0){
    cPurpleMort.SetAsPlayer();
    }
    if(mouse.GetModeGraphic(eModePointer) == 45){
      mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModePointer, 46);
    }
  }
  else if(LeftOrRight == region[2]){
    if(player.ID != 1){
    cGreenMort.SetAsPlayer();
    }
    if(mouse.GetModeGraphic(eModePointer) == 46){
      mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModePointer, 45);
    }
  }
}

function room_Load()
{
  Mouse.Mode = eModePointer;
  cGreenMort.ChangeRoom(3);
  if(cPurpleMort.Room == 3){
    cPurpleMort.x = 80;
    cPurpleMort.y = 145;
  }
  if(cGreenMort.Room == 3){
    cGreenMort.x = 240;
    cGreenMort.y = 145;
  }
}

And here's the Global on_mouse_click:

Code: ags

function on_mouse_click(MouseButton button)
{
  if (button == eMouseLeft)
  {
    Display("This click was processed!"); 
    if(GetLocationType(mouse.x,  mouse.y) == eLocationNothing){
      Room.ProcessClick(mouse.x, mouse.y, eModeWalkto);
    }
    else{
      Room.ProcessClick(mouse.x, mouse.y, mouse.Mode);
    }
  }
  else if (button == eMouseRight)
  {
  }
}

Any idea what I'm missing?

Sorry but the page is still quarantined when I try to download the game.

Ugh, this is ruining my game release. So many views and so few downloads and I have no idea what caused it. 

EDIT: All right, enough moping from me. Stuff happens. Thank you to everyone here who had downloaded the game. I'm grateful and I hope you enjoy it. [Thumbs up]

The wheels in my head are turning
... I really shouldn't start another game right now but maybe I can keep it small for once. 

Thanks! I'm a bit intimidated, considering the previous great competitions, but I will come up with a new topic.

The great thing (I hope!) about this competition is that even if you were to just rush it and throw together random room elements, a random goal, and a random collections of inventory, I think people would still enjoy trying to figure it out.    At least, I know I would. 

Looking forward to the next round!

The issue is fixed now.    If anyone was unsure about downloading the game, itch.io has un-quarantined my account. Thanks again @glurex for bringing it to my attention. I hope everyone feels safe trying it out now. 

When I tried to download it, I get this message

Thank you for letting me know. I'll see if I can fix that.

Is everyone else seeing this message too?

UPDATE: Evidently this happens on itch.io frequently. I emailed the support team. They will supposedly review the account and confirm it is flagged in error. In the meantime, I can guarantee the game is safe.

[In My Siblings, the Stones, a dropout mage finds herself stranded in an unfamiliar village, and must help the locals solve a thorny problem in order to find her way home. Explore a history-infused settlement, discover unexpected clues, and learn who can help you as you navigate a damaged land. And maybe, with persistence, begin to learn magic.Playtime: 30-45 minutes]

Hello all,

I've finally finished my second non-MAGS game. This one went faster than the last one because I had a lot more help.



In My Siblings, the Stones, a dropout mage finds herself stranded in an unfamiliar village, and must help the locals solve a thorny problem in order to find her way home. Explore a history-infused settlement, discover unexpected clues, and learn who can help you as you navigate a damaged land. And maybe, with persistence, begin to learn magic.

Playtime: 30-45 minutes

DOWNLOAD HERE:
AGS Database
Itch.io






Features:

-Atmospheric, story-driven gameplay -- much more story-based than puzzle-based, which is different for me. 

-Intuitive one-click interface

-Music by @Eric Matyas  - Thank you so much for providing such a large database of free music. It really elevates the game.
-Background photos by Mathias Lang -- sourced from OpenGameArt.org

And a HUGE thanks to @Wiggy and @Rik_Vargard for volunteering to be play-testers and working hard to improve the final game. You both made such a difference!

I hope you enjoy playing!

Voted for @cat obviously.

Great room setting and solutions by everyone. 

@eri0o @Crimson Wizard @Snarky Thank you for your responses. Sorry if my tone in my previous post was a bit harsh. This is something I've had a hard time with for a while, and it always seemed like the manual ought to be enough for me to understand it, when ultimately I think there needs to be more detailed clarification there (see below for suggestions).

But I think I finally get how this works, and how indexed images work. I was able to use LibreSprite (which like aseprite makes it very easy to edit palettes) to create an indexed .bmp with at least 17 index slots used (0-16), and was able to import it into AGS as a walkable area mask, with all the areas preserved and index 0 as no area. So, success.

Something that could be useful, perhaps, is to add some of the following clarifying instructions to the manual page:

-Make sure the image is the same resolution as the room you're importing it into.
-Make sure you save the image in indexed color mode. (It seems to me that it's possible to save an image to 8-bit without it being indexed - I think this was what confused me before).
-Use a graphics program which allows you to see which colors are indexed as #0-15, and use only those colors. (This may be partly stated already, but clarifying it would have helped me understand it better).
-Make sure the image saves specifically as 256 colors, and that the colors you have used are not shuffled out of slots 0-15.
-If any of these conditions is not met, the mask will not import properly.

Hopefully, this would help users like me to understand and navigate better what AGS needs for its masks.

If it's helpful, here's the image I was able to use, an indexed 8-bit .bmp with only slots 0-15 using bright colors and index 16 filled with an off-black just to bump it up to 8-bit.

I'm going to look like a complete newbie here, and maybe that's still what I am after using AGS for only 1 year, but I have never been able to figure out how to make importing room masks work, and have resorted to using the editor tools even when this is a pain.

I'm also someone whose computers growing up skipped over 8-bit. My family was working class and held onto our old EGA computer for so long we jumped up to 16-bit when we replaced it.

I have, even now, no idea how to create the particular 16 colors that AGS wants, in any graphics program (I use GIMP, MSPaint, and LibreSprite (an Aseprite branch)).

Creating images that are limited to 16 or 256 colors is easy. Creating indexed images like .png is easy, and they can at least be converted to the .bmp format that AGS needs.

But finding the exact colors and order that AGS wants is not easy. I still have no clue how to do it.

I can download an 8-bit palette no problem, but AGS seems to have a particular order in mind for the 8-bit palette and I can find no way to figure out what that order is and therefore what the "first" 16 colors of it should be.

I can google 8-bit palettes all day, but that's no help in telling me which particular 16 colors AGS wants. I've had some colors show up and others not be imported because they aren't the right index.

Hence the giving up and using editor tools. I have never complained about it or asked about it in the forums because even after reading the documentation, I could tell that figuring out how to use any of my preferred graphics programs to do this was going to be another complicated step.

8-bit tools and palettes are so outmoded at this point that most graphics programs, in my opinion, require expert knowledge in order to somehow locate the 16 colors AGS wants.

Maybe this post makes me look young and silly and very, very unintelligent. So be it. But I have been using computers and graphics programs my whole life, and in this particular case, I still don't know how to give AGS what it's looking for.

I managed to get it using string.format as follows:

L1.Text=String.Format("%s%s%s%s", V0, V1, V2, V3);

Is this the right/best (a stupid) way of doing it?

Don't know if it's the best way, but that's the way I do it. 

UPDATE: NOW READY FOR PLAYTESTING!!     

If anyone's interested in volunteering, please DM me, and I'll send you a download key. Hoping to release in the next couple of weeks. 

My votes have been cast.

I also just want to say thanks for all the new positive comments on Elevation.    It's really heartening and fulfilling to see that little game get some more love all these months later. 

This looks really good.

The walking actually does have personality in my opinion. It's a very forceful walk, as opposed to a gentle or leisurely one.

I see what you mean about the jacket wrinkles. I don't think they jump around, but they seem oddly placed. I feel like the wrinkles might look better if they were more vertical. The ones on the sleeve look good but rather than moving should maybe shrink as the elbow and sleeve unfold.

The expressions are good too but if he puffs and grins every time he walks it will take forever to move him anywhere. As a player I'd get tired of that within minutes.

Great work for your first go at it!

@cat There are three puns in a row at the end of my joke, all of which are based on English idioms/adages/cliches.

"Don't judge a cook by his hover" is a (very groan-worthy) play on "Don't judge a book by its cover", meaning "Appearances can be deceiving."
"Fortune favors the boiled" plays on "fortune favors the bold," meaning "no risk means no reward."
"This diner chain is only as strong as its weakest (sausage) link" plays on "A (metal) chain is only as strong as its weakest link (component)." Harder to explain, but it means "a group / team / force will only succeed if every member is strong, because all depend on each other, so if one is weak, the whole thing can fall apart."

Hope that helps. 

It's fascinating to me how idioms are sometimes equivalent in different languages and sometimes entirely different. For example, in English we have "the straw that breaks the camel's back" (a.k.a. "the last straw"), whereas I believe the closest in German is "the drop that overflows the barrel" (I don't know if people actually say that in German, I just remember it from Duolingo).