Topics

This is an awesome site: tap your spacebar in the rhythm of a song and it tires to guess. It guessed the Final Countdown intro and There's No Limit! correctly with me...

http://www.songtapper.com/s/tappingmain.bin

So, with just over a week left, here is an update on the voting in the ags awards...

Over 50 people have voted so far in both the AGS Awards and FOREGOs

7 of the AGS Award categories are very close and the leader has swapped back and forth many times in each.  And in the other categories the leaders are still within reaching distance, so every vote counts!

The FOREGOs are closer still with 11 categories very close and leaders chopping and changing from day to day.

so don't forget to get your votes in by Friday 17th 3pm GMT. And come to the irc ceremony at 8pm on Saturday 18th on irc.adventuregamestudio.co.uk if it is working again, otherwise on Quakenet.

I'm also pleased to say the the awards voting has generally been very considered with almost no-one voting for one game in every category (by almost I mean I haven't checked the last couple of days votes yet!)

[Best Game]

OK, peeps, here's the big list of who and what is nominated.

Voting closed Friday 17th at 3pm GMT, the awards ceremony will be at 8pm GMT on Saturday 18th.

Links to all the nominated game's game pages are at: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/awards.php?action=shownominees . Games with broken download links might be found at hajo's torrent site, or on http://aafiles.bicycle-for-slugs.org/


AGS Awards

Best Game	Ben Jordan 4	Cedric and the Revolution	Emily Enough	Mind's Eye	Stargate
Gameplay	BJ4	Emily	Stargate	Winter Rose	Zugzwang
Story	BJ4	Emily	Mind's Eye	Prodigal	Soviet Unterthingmabob
Dialogue	BJ4	Da New Guys	Emily	Jessica Plunkenstein	Soviet Unter
Puzzles	BJ4	Cedric	Emily	Frank the Farmhand 2	Meta
Player char	Ben Jordan (BJ4)	Cedric (Cedric & Revolution)	The Brain (Da New Guys)	Emily (Emily Enough)	Jessica (Jessica Plunkenstein)
Best NPC	Invisible guy (Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment)	Anna (Anna)	Smiley Joe (Da New Guys)	Uncle Ernie (Great Stroke Off)	Cuppit (Meta)
Backgrounds	Cedric	Emily	Great Stroke Off	Prodigal	Stargate
Char Art	Cedric	Emily	Great Stroke Off	Mind's Eye	Stargate
Anim	Frank Farmhand 2	Great Stroke Off	Mind's Eye	Stargate	The Winter Rose
Programming	Adventures in Galaxy of FW	Anna	Mind's Eye	Stargate	Zugzwang
Sound	BJ4	Lost in the Nightmare	Magsic II	Prodigal	Stargate
Music	Apprentice I Deluxe	BJ4	Great Stroke Off	Mind's Eye	Prodigal
Doc	Anna	BJ4	Stargate
Short	Anna	Cedric	Saturday School	The Bar	Zooreal
Demo	Valis	Wolf Country	Da New Guys 2: Day of the Jackass	Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire
Non-Adventure	Missing in Action	Operation Novi 2D	Labyrinth	Barn Runner 3	Rapstar 1.5
Resource	AGS Wiki by American Girl Scouts	Save/load GUI with Screenshots by SSH	AGS 3D by Steve McCrea
P3N1S	No, I am Spartacus	A walk in da tomb
Lifetime Achievement	MrColossal

FOREGOs

Beginners Tech	Ashen	Strazer	Gilbot
Tech	Ashen	CJ	Strazer
Games in Prod	Darth Mandarb	Ozzie	ProgZmax
Hints/Tips	cittymom	ida	jane	joyce	rosie
Comp & Act	Big Brother	Darth	GeoffKhan	Krysis	ProgZMax
Help Artist	Andail	Darth	InCreator	Loominous	ProgZmax
Musician	GeoffKhan	Nikolas	Petteri
Debate	DGMcPhee	Esper	Farlander	Helm	MrColossal
Overall	CJ	Grundislav	Kinoko	SSH
Funniest	CJ	DGMcPhee	Helm	Pablo	SSH
Worst n00b	Elliot Hird	Flukeblake	LJUBI	theatrx
Best newbie	Becky	Lord Nipper	Nikolas	Krysis
Best IRC #ags	Al_Ninio	Jake	Hajo	SSH
Sexy	Ginny	SSH	The Ivy	Yufster
CJ's Best Deed	Existing	Updating AGS
Moderator	AGA	Andail	Ashen	Darth	MrColossal
Avatar	Chicky	Darth	Pablo	TerranRich
Awaited Game	Ben Jordan 5	Gift of Aldora	Fountain of Youth	Hero Theorem	The Legend of the lost lagoon

[SimpleRain module and demo game]

Well, its really just the SimpleSnow hacked about a bit, but if you want a lot of rain, try this

SimpleRain module and demo game (Requires AGS 2.71)
Mirror

// Script header for module 'SimpleRain'
// Author: Andrew MacCormack (SSH)
//   Please use the PM function on the AGS forums to contact
//   me about problems with this module
// 
// Abstract: Rain, without using a plugin
//
// Dependencies:
//
//   AGS 2.71Final2 or later
//
// Functions:
//     
//  function SimpleRain.Init(int view);
//    Prepares some Rainfield sprites to use, using the sprites in view as Rain.
//    Ideally, this should be run in a room that is wider than the screen, or
//    when there is any wind at all, the Rain will look odd.
//        
//  function SimpleRain.Go();
//    Starts Raining
//
//  function SimpleRain.No();
//    Stops Raining
//
//  function SimpleRain.SetWind(int wind);
//    Sets wind speed and direction. 
//
// Configuration:
//    
//   Fiddle about with the #defines here to change Rain, but its not an
//   exact science
//
// Example:
//
//   int wind;
//   function room_a() {
//     // Room script: after room fadein
//     SimpleRain.Init(RainFLAKES);
//     wind=0;
//     SimpleRain.Go();
//     SetTimer(1, 40);
//   }
//
//   function room_b() {
//     // Room script: repeatedly execute
//     if (IsTimerExpired(1)) {
//       if (Random(1)) { if (wind<8) wind++; else wind=1; }
//       else { if (wind>-8) wind--; else wind=-1; }
//         SimpleRain.SetWind(wind);
//       SetTimer(1, 40);
//     }
//   }
//
// Caveats:
//
//   No transparency
//   Rain movement sucks
//   Lots of overlays is slow
//
// Revision history:
//
// 20 Jan 06 v1.00  Initial version, modified from SimpleSnow
//
// Licence:
//
//   SimpleRain AGS script module
//   Copyright (C) 2006 Andrew MacCormack
//
// Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
// of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to 
// deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the
// rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or
// sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
// furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
//
// The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in 
// all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
//
// THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR 
// IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, 
// FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL 
// THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
// LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING 
// FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER 
// DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Mordalles and buloght have both told me that they are having problems gettingn the awards nomination page to recognise them as logged in to the forums.  I think this is an issue of cookies, browsers and so on, rather than a bug in CJ's PHP, becuase plenty of others have managed to vote so far already. Please let us know here if you have this issue, or more importantly, know a way around it!

Please sticky!

FOREGO nominations are open alongside the AGS Awards. More details in this thread. You can only sumbit the form once, so put all your Award and FOREGO nominations down on the one page! Nominations close at the end of the month.

[YOU CAN ONLY SUBMIT THE FORM ONCE.]

Yes, thanks to the wonderful CJ and the even less wonderful AGA, we now have everything ready to accept your nominations for the AGS Awards and FOREGOs.  Check out the links to category definitions and remember YOU CAN ONLY SUBMIT THE FORM ONCE.

That's important, so I'll say it again. YOU CAN ONLY SUBMIT THE FORM ONCE.

Once all the nominations are in, I'll add em up and annouce the shortlists. Nominations closed at 1530 GMT on 31st January.

That link again:


AGA's Awards page: http://www.americangirlscouts.org/AGSAwards/




N.B. Moved nominations close forward by a few hours... for administrative reasons

This thread is for those who think that their game might be worthy of an AGS Award to post a small image or bit of text about their game and a link. Please limit images to a double-height sig banner (i.e. 600x100) or a small screenshot-size (320x200). Larger images may be removed! Any posts off-topic will also be pruned...

Categories:

Best Game	Best Demo	Best Non-adventure	Best AGS Resource
Best Gameplay	Best Story	Best Background Art	Best Character Art
Best Animation	Best Programming	Best Music	Best Use of Sound
Best Puzzles	Best Player Character	Best Non-player character	Best Dialogue Writing
Best Documentation	Best Short Game	Teh P31NS Award	Lifetime achivement

Please no FYC for the last two categories

This is NOT a nominations thread... this is simply to let people know which games are out there. Vince's post is a good example of how you should do it. If you think it is a bit tacky to mention specific categories just don't bother with that bit (which is, of course, code for "My game should be nomintaed in ALL the categories"  )

Yes, Princess Marian is up to her adventures again. This time she fights the forces of evil in a two-player snowball fight!

With thanks to Haddas for the music and SSH for the snow module and SSH for the spritetext module

Download it now!

Player 1 keys:
Z: move left
C: move right
X: pick up more snow
S: hold to build up power and let go to throw snowball

Player 2: cursor keys

[Download here]

Well, I was making a generic winter festival celebration game  and wanted snow, but the plugin didn't work, so here for anyone with a PC that can cope with 13 concurrent overlays....

Download here

Documentation

Comes with a .cha file that you can import to get some sample snowflakes.

Now upgraded for AGS 3.1+, etc., but still includes the old module for 2.72 fans

Well last year it took an age to get the awards done. Just to try and be a bit more organised this year can I ask the question:

Who is running the AGS Awards this year?

and... AGA... can you confirm that you are indeed going to run the FOREGOs and that it wasnt a moment of inebriated rashness on #ags when you said you would.

[Download v1.20 here (Requires AGS v2.72beta4a or later (includes AGS 3.0))]

Here we go, no longer are you restricted to printing text in one boring colour at a time. No longer are you restricted to less than 100 printable characters. No longer does text need to be printed horizontally! SSH presents.... the Sprite Font module. Includes 4 free example fonts..

Now updated for AGS 3.0 (and 2.72), but v1.02 still available for the 2.71 release.

Download v1.20 here (Requires AGS v2.72beta4a or later (includes AGS 3.0))
Documentation


Download v1.02 here (Requires AGS v2.71 only)

It is quite easy to use the code:

if (Hotspot.GetAtScreenXY == null) ...

which can NEVER be true, becasue it alwasy returns a valid ptr, even if for Hotspot 0. AGS should warn if someone uses the above code, as the code would work for Chars or Objects...

[Download here (Requires AGS v2.71)]

This module is for translating digraphs (i.e. pairs of characters) into single characters. This may be useful if you have accented characters in your font, replacing some unused chars like '$' or '!'.

Download here (Requires AGS v2.71)
Documentation
Mirror
Mirror 2

Just two functions:

//   function Digraph.Set(String digraph, char to);
//     Set up a digraph. One would normally set up a bunch of these in
//     game_start so that they apply for the whole game. The two characters
//     specified in the string will be converted to the char value "to" when
//     the digraph-translation function is used.
//    
//   String function Digraph.T(String from)
//     Translates the String passed and returns a modified string. If no
//     digraphs to translate, will return an identical string. A #define is
//     also setup to allow abbreviation of this function name to DG

Example code:

Code: ags

// global script

function game_start() {
  Digraph.Set("a'", '$'); // a acute
  Digraph.Set("e'", '!'); // e acute
  Digraph.Set("n~", '@'); // enye
}

Code: ags

// room script

function room_a() {
  // Script for room: Player enters room (after fadein)

  Display(DG("Ole', mi espan~ola, que ta'l?"));
}

While reading over the help file again I noticed this inconsistency:

Characters can have alignments or offsets specified with LockViewOffset and LockViewAlign, but Objects cannot. Any chance of this coming in in 2.72? 

EDIT: oops, already trackered... twice!
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=132 http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=176

[Download here (Requires AGS v2.71)]

Here's another LGPL module to let you zoom in and out on a sprite. The RawDraw functions are used to put the sprite on the background with different scaling.

Updated 28/11/05: Moved repeatedly_execute stuff into rep_ex_always, so you can use Wait commands with the zoom stuff.
Updated 4/8/06: Fixed to work with AGS 2.72

// Functions:
//   
//   Zoom.zoom(int sprite, float speed, float startscale, float endscale, int startx, int starty, int endx, int endy)
// 
//    Zooms in on sprite from staring scale to ending scale.
//    speed is a multiplying factor for the scale at each step
//    endx and endy are the top-left coordinates of the area onscreen
//    to which the zooming will head towards
//    startx and starty are the inital coordinates of the top-left of the sprite
//
//  Zoom.zoomdone();
//    Returns 0 if currently zooming, 1 if not zooming.

Download here (Requires AGS v2.71)
Documentation

[Download here (Requires AGS v2.71!)]

I feel prolific, oh so prolific, I feel witty and prolific and straight....

Here's another module from my mighty pen, for doing combination locks.

Very simple: Download, read the readme, import the GUE and module and Bob's your builder:

Code: ags

// room script

function room_a() {
  // script for Room: Player enters room (before fadein)

  ComboLock.Combination = "1337";
  gKeypad.Centre();
  gKeypad.Visible = true;

}

function room_b() {
  // script for Room: Repeatedly execute

  if (ComboLock.Status() == eLockStatusCorrect) Display("Woot!");
  else if (ComboLock.Status() == eLockStatusWrong) Display("You die!");

}

Download here (Requires AGS v2.71!)
Documentation
Download here (Requires AGS v2.71!)
Mirror

[Download here (Requires AGS v2.71)]

SSH Productions are pleased to unleash upon the poor public the StarWars scroller module.

Download here (Requires AGS v2.71)
Mirror
Download a quick demo of it in action here.

The instructions ain't long so here we go:



Module 'StarWars'

Abstract: Provides a Star Wars-style perspective scroller

Dependencies: AGS 2.71RC3 or later

Functions:

StarWarsScroller.Run(String t, int font, optional int vanishy, optional int speed, optional int separation, 
         optional int color, optional int colog, optional int colob);

This runs a scroller with the text in t, word-wrapped and centred. The font specified is used.

• The optional vanishy argument sets the y position at which text will have its vanishing point.
• The optional speed argument (default 5) can make the text scroll faster or slower:higher numbers are faster.
• The separation is a number that controls the gap between successive lines of text: it is a number for which a good value has to be found by experimentation (default 200)
• The colour of text can also be set: if one value is specified in 256 colour mode, it uses that palette number, if 3 numbers are specified, the closest colour possible in the colourspace will be used. If none specified, the current RawDraw colour is used

StarWarsScroller.Stop();

Turns off the scroller, after it has been run

StarWarsScroller.SetSpeed(int speed);

Can be used to pause (speed=0) or even make the scroller run backwards (speed<0)

Configuration:

  The font used should be quite large (for TTF, say around 30 points) and it should NOT have an outline, as these tend to give lots of artefacts as they shrink into the distance

Example:

Code: ags

   RawSetColorRGB(180, 180, 180);
   StarWarsScroller.Run("How much is that doggy in the window? The one with the waggly tail", 3, 50, 5, 200);

Caveats:

Due to the AGS RawDrawColour and NormalFont not being readable, I coudl not save their old values when this module is run: therefore the user will have to reset these to their correct values themselves, after having used the scroller.

Revision History:

17 Nov 05: v1.0  First release of StarWars scroller module
17 Nov 05: v1.01 Fixed a wee RawRestoreScreen bug

Licence: LGPL

Well, all I want if the first one, and here's why:

I want to RawPrint in a different font, in a module I am wiritng. I do not control what the normal NormalFont is, so I want to restore it when I finish. I'd like to do:

Code: ags

int savefont=GetNormalFont();
SetNormalFont(myfont);
RawPrint(5, 50, "balh de balh");
SetNormalFont(savefont);

but I can't Get, only Set just now. Of course, the property-style "game.normal_font" might be better, but I'm not fussy how it is implemented.

While we're at it, if there are any other write-only things in AGS, can we fix those too? 

TO try and make a star-wars scroller module, I was trying to use RawPrintMessage and DynamicSprite.MakeFromBackground to grab the text as a sprite for it to be resized as it scrolls away. Now, this works, but unfortunately the text does flash up on the screen briefly, even if I do it in BeforeFadein. I was trying to think of a nice way to write on the screen invisibly, but can't: anyone got any ideas? The only thing I can think of is a giant black GUI covering the whole screen (or overlay, I suppose) but that sucks, really.