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The nominations process is just like voting.  The more nominations that game receives, it puts it in the top 5 nominated games list and then it's up to the final vote to break the draw.

If you didn't nominate any games, then it's definitely your loss, and that particular game's loss for not getting that game into the final vote.

Only 55 people joined in on the nominating, so don't expect much variety.

[tons]

Yeah these images are so freakin big, they totally make viewing this page really awkward with my resolution (progz, can you resize them for him/her?).


Anyway, I gave a quick go at how I think you could greatly improve your backgrounds.  I lost interest after a little editing, but the majority of my points were made.



It was only a quick edit, so don't expect much.  I was meaning to put some display screens where you have that awkward 'dash' with lines running down it.

Notice how I totally removed that useless area to the right of the screen?  It was completely void of Anything of any interest, except two doors with odd perspective and what appeared to be a mattress nailed to a wall.

I cropped off all the bottom and left side of the image.  This is one reason why I had strongly suggested that the resolution you're using it too much for you.  Resolution should only improve detail, NOT make bigger walkable areas and tons of empty space.  Hopefully this will sink in, and you'll understand what I mean.

I was going to put in a display screen running about waist high along the back window.  I also removed the strong bubbly shape that window had, it had made the scene look as if the camera was using a distort lens to take the photo.

Your perspective was all over the place.  You should Google 1 point perspective.
The front dash/control panel was the worst area, I tried to correct it as best as possible.

I was also going to darken the chairs a bit, but as I said, I lost the energy to touch up everything.


Let me know if you still don't understand the gigantic walkable space, and bare background issue you had on your versions (this edit still has tons of emptiness issues).

[not]

Just because we now have the technical ability to make games with larger resolutions than the older games, doesn't mean you should do it.

Lots of (new) people think that the people here are making games with 320x240 resolution because they're clinging onto nostalgia, making games just like they remember playing.  The majority of the time, that's not the case.

It's easier to fill a background with amazing detail with only 320x240 pixels rather than your huge 1024x768.  And looking at the huge lack of detail on your backgrounds (the pic of the ship's bridge is the Worst for this), makes me extremely frustrated that you won't just redo your game with a lower resolution.  Your character is even up-scaled 200%, so even your character is designed for a 640x480 game.

IMO, one of the most important parts of the graphic design process is a consistent art style.
[..] Personally, I won't even try such a game, no matter how ingenious the puzzles or story are said to be.

Honestly, I completely agree with Khris.  And with your backgrounds the size they are, with the huge areas of solid nothing....    I couldn't.  I couldn't play it.
Sorry for being harsh.  This is the critics lounge after all.

I would love if you'd take into consideration of scrapping the game you've done at this huge resolution, even though it's a huge pain in the arse, and at least play around with 640x480 at the very max.
Toss in more detail, etc.

I'm actually more impressed by the 7-leg spider story (search more to find out what happened to the picture at the very end). It's a bit different in context though.

I did a Google search and apparently he sold it for $10,000 USD.  Is that the correct 'full' story?

5000x5000 image at 32-bit takes up 100 MB of memory

Oh wow.  I honestly didn't know it was that much.
Is that for the background alone when AGS is running the room, or is it only when it gets stored in memory with drawing surface? 

If that is the case perhaps I should rethink how I design my large background games when I need to use the drawingsurface.

This is something that AGS could be optimised to handle better

Curious, getting the drawing surface for a custom sized rectangle portion (for some people it would be the size of the viewing area).
This code (copied from the manual):  DynamicSprite.CreateFromBackground(GetBackgroundFrame(), x1, y1, x2, y2);
Would this optimize the use of the drawing surface, or no?

That's odd, I believe the last time I tried using inventory icons with alpha it didn't appear with a black rectangle behind (with rc2, I believe it was).  I could have sworn that it had an even weirder affect of removing the GUI background where the inventory icon was, making it see-through only where the alpha was on the inventory icon.  It was very odd.

I believe I made the background one with an alpha too.  Oh well.

Much better impact crater.
The background still has a crazy amount of empty space though.  For some odd reason, I really dislike empty space in backgrounds.  For that reason alone, this background would look so much better at 320x240 with everything the same height and size as this.  I don't mean shrink the image, I literally mean cut the tree, barn, impact crater, etc out of the image and past it in a canvas that is 320x240.

Or just toss in more detail, but I fear this would still look empty.

[ags_freak]

If you look, Shade's name is actually ags_freak.

So it's not searching by name exactly, it's searching the Author: category.  It appears to be doing an approximate search through the Table instead of an exact search.

Edit:
Just to make sure I was correct, I quickly changed who the Author was on my game, and this was the result:


Calin, I'd pm CJ and just let him know.

Well yes, there is.  But making an object with the name "Wreck" to just replace the object with the name "Car", would be much easier.
But if I really needed to do this, without having to make multiple objects or hotspots with different names I would do this:



Instead of having the Label in your GUI with the text @OVERHOTSPOT@  do this in your rep_ex  or  rep_ex_always (depending if you want hotspots to be checked during blocking moments):

Code: ags

  //Global Script
  Label1.Text=Game.GetLocationName(mouse.x, mouse.y);  //this does the same as  @OVERHOTSPOT@

  //Room Script
  if (Label1.Text=="Car") Label1.Text="Wreck";

Obviously, you'd have to have a boolean to set whether the car is damaged or not, and needs the new name.

Edit: Actually it would be even better if you did this:

Code: ags

  if (Label1.Text==oCar.Name) Label1.Text="Wreck";

Freakin wicked.  No more blurry images for me, thanks Calin.

I've known about a fix similar to this for earlier versions of Firefox, but I was always too lazy to do it.  Not this time... Not this time!

When I was a very young I had this really angry babysitter/daycare.  We were brought to her house after school for a few hours until the parents were done work. 

Well one night after she had babysat us, I had a nightmare that the she went angry and was trying to find me so she could punish me for something (probably for not eating my cold and gross oatmeal that she loved cooking, haha).  In this dream I was hiding under the piano while she walked around looking for me.  Then the oddest thing happened, this little fairy-like creature, similar to tinkerbell I guess, appeared floating around my head under the piano.  She/he/it tells me, "You're having a bad dream. If you ever have a bad dream, just blink twice."

Well in my dream I blinked twice and I suddenly woke up.  For some odd reason it worked.

I actually remembered this method for waking up during a bad dream, and for years I used it until I either stopped having bad dreams or until I forgot about it.

It was pretty cool how a bad dream had given me a technique to wake up from future bad dreams.


I also had a few dreams when I was younger that I was aware that I was dreaming, and started to control the dream.  I remember being in an office building and I started controlling my dream to do what I wanted since I knew I was dreaming.  Then someone handed me a clipboard and I woke up with my arm in the air. lol

So, do Anti-alias TTF fonts actually work in a textbox?

I've mentioned this before, but I believe this is a sound suggestion since not every programming language is the same:
For the basic programmers who don't/didn't know that these are called Operators (including me when I started with AGS :), I would like to see 'or' and 'and' in the manual, which could then direct you to the Operators page.

For testing purposes since you seem to be having problems, I'd make sprite number 0 a visible sprite and align all the objects in a visible row in the room, then when the function is called, see if any of the objects in the row move to the correct place or if they disappear.  They could be moving off-screen.

Edit: Actually it probably is moving off-screen.  You wrote: "set it's position to the top-center of the player", but you're doing: object[FreeObject].Y = player.y+173, which would be under the character.  Try player.y-173.  Also it could be appearing behind a walkbehind.

Any chance you could point me in the direction of Vince12's article? I've had a look for it myself but haven't found anything.

Right here buddy, it's a year and a half old, but worthwhile reading:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=35142.0

Thanks m0ds. I swear, I'll have a few scenes in the next few releases with little UFO's and such.  I'll try to give demonstrations on what the lens flares can be used on. 

Tier: that's cool that you're actually in need of something like this.  That will definitely push me into making it fully functional as an actual module as soon as possible and with a very easy interface (easier and better than the one I posted above, since I've had a few more days to think about it).

Here's an object drag script if you need any assistance.
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=35002.msg458179#msg458179

Just imagine destroying the ecosystem on an entire planet/moon with only a few strands of bacteria.

Code: ags

function room_RepExec()
 {
    if (Object.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x,mouse.y)==onewmotley && onewmotley.Animating==false) {
      onewmotley.Animate(0, 5, eRepeat);
    }
    else if (Object.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x,mouse.y)!=onewmotley && onewmotley.Animating==true) onewmotley.StopAnimating();
}

It's been awhile since I've animated any objects (I'm usually working with drawing functions ), but this should work.

Ahh..

CJ didn't mention anything about the Game.agf.user, I also removed that and suddenly the dead games came back to life.
Too bad I've already created a new game each time the old one died, haha.