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Despite the title, Pixel Hunt should not feature any pixel hunting. The game is set in a land of pixels, and puns on graphics terminology are at saturation level (see, there's one already!)

Pixel Hunt is a point-and-click adventure created with the AGS Adventure Game Studio for the Monthly AGS game creation competition, February 2005.

Pixel Hunt is a Crime game with 9 rooms, 8 characters, optional voice pack and various possible endings. The "optimal" ending scores 100 points. Other endings score according to number of deaths and number of bad guys caught.

Uncompress the ZIP file in a directory, and then double-click the Setup program before playing the game for the first time. Here you can set the usual AGS options: resolution, window/fullscreen and sound settings. If you want to hear the voice acting, unzip the voice pack into the same directory as the game, and it will be used automatically.

The game uses a Sierra-style interface: left-clicking the mouse on something will perform an action on it, right-clicking changes the action. You may also click on the buttons on the bottom of the screen to change the action, or interact with an inventory item to use it on another thing.

The source code of the game is also available at http://www.ssh.me.uk/phsource.zip This game was produced with the new Object-Oriented Style scripting in AGS 2.7 beta 17 (I'll probably update the version and tidy up the code a bit when the full 2.7 comes out). I hope that this source code will be helpful to someone else trying to write a game with the new scripting style.

If you like my game, please vote for it in MAGS Feb 2005! Or post a comment on its game page

Credits

 
• Pixel Hunt was designed, drawn and programmed by Andrew 'SSH' MacCormack
• AGS Engine by Chris Jones
• MAGS administered by Klaus (http://www.mags-competition.tk)
• February 2005 MAGS rules by Neil Dnuma
• Beta testing by Tommi 'Ishmael' Kivisto, Gal 'Al_Ninio' Macover, Zooty, Dart (and Pumaman)
• Voice acting by SSH, Erik 'EldKatt' Igelstrom, Nataly 'Ginny' Eliyahu and Bell Labs

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Mirrors:
Source: http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/phsource.zip

History:
v1.01: fixed "better find tess" bug
v1.02: fixed "better find tess" bug MORE

I found a couple of things:

After doing automatic numbering, then dumping dialog scripts, global scripts, etc. and reimporting, the numbering on my first dialog topic's options disappeared. i.e. my five options were numbere &1 to &5 but the &n all disappeared, but just on the options on the first dialog.

Also, it would be nice if leading 0s in sound/voice/room names were not significant: i.e. sound001.ogg would get picked up as sound 1. Obviously there would need to be a priority in case both existed, but I don't care which way around it is.

It's the END of Friday it has to be in by, right?

I just noticed that GUI control script names aren't allowed to contain digits 0..9.  I can undestand not wanting a name to begin with a numeral but why not allow them in subsequent character positions.  For example it's not possible to use button1, button2, button3, etc for script names.   There are a few cases where it makes sense to have names of this form.  I was wondeing if this were an oversight or if there were some other motivation to make this restriction. 

Oh yes, I forgot to moan about this earlier, becuase I was too busy moaning about other things 

Sorry that I haven't got back to you yet, but I'm desperately trying to finish my MAGS game by the end of Friday. I'll see if I can have a look at the tutorial code, as I've modified my own version of that stuff a lot since then.

Ooops, I thought that function was room-specific. Ah well, thanks for spotting that, CJ! Glad that it's not a bug in the engine

Do a MAGS game... the time limit means you'll be too busy to get bored with it!

Funnily enough I did mean non-alchoholic beverages, even though I didn't say that, and everyone is either tee-total or has stuck to that.

And JetXL, I wasn't claiming to be original 

Well, its about due for another silly "what's your favourite" thread, so...

What's your favourite beverage? If I want something warm, I love ruch, black coffee. For cold, I'd probably do with Fanta lemon, or Irn Bru, or maybe Rubicon Exotic Guava, but I dunno if they still do that.

Now, here you should be able to walk tothe left OR bottom of screen to go back to the corridor, but it seems that other people find this doesn't work. For me, it does, so its impossible to debug! And the limits are set a good 10 or so pixels in.

Ok, I tried it the first time and it worked fine (640x400 windowed) but then I tried once more (320x200 fullscreen) and yep I couldn't walk-off either. Maybe it has something to do with a resolution?

Al_Ninio said that he tried various resolutions, fullscreen/windowed etc and it still didnt work for him in any of them. The code in the script run by "Player walks of edge" is just the changeroom method, nothing else so resoultion really shouldn't affect it. Something seems broken in AGS for it to behave so intermittently!

I think that the popular threads forum are for ones that are repeatedly restarted again and again by different n00bs, not for individual threads. After all, a n00b isn't liekly to post a coming out thread as one of their first.

I dunno if its possible but it would be nice if the page disabled the Enter=Submit key binding, becuase I justdid what JetXL did. Either that, or people who have submitted nominations can still submit more on categories they havent filled in....

Yes, but it WOULD be practical for the Say method. Also, the file could say if a string was done with a Display, DisplaySpeech, etc and just reproduce whatever argument there was if it wasn't a constant. After all, if the person is recording speech for it, they can decide how to do it...

"Hugh's room", actually experienced as Room 201 in the game (uts set in a hotel) to get to that point in the game (right-click or use buttons in GUI to change cursor mode). Oops its not room 4, room 4 is the corridor. I think the correct room is 8 (not got game on tis computer)

New Game, ESC skips opening cutscene. Walk into the hotel (this works for me by just walking up to the top of the screen, but it seems that others may need to Interact with the Hotel. Talk to the recpetionist behind the desk, CHeck in, end conversation

Interact with lift, choose level 2, interact with door of left room (room 201). ESC skips cutscene, end up back outside room again. Inteact with door marked STAFF to hide in there. ESC skips next cutscene, Interact with left room (201) again. Now, here you should be able to walk tothe left OR bottom of screen to go back to the corridor, but it seems that other people find this doesn't work. For me, it does, so its impossible to debug! And the limits are set a good 10 or so pixels in.

I'm getting a very strange behaviour with my beta testing! Everyone who tries beta testing this game says that in Room 4 that they can't leave the room if they get there by "natural" methods. However, Al_Ninio say sthat if he uses CTRL-X to teleport there, it does work. Now, it also seems that all my other "player walks off X edge of screen" interactions behave the same way. Even wierder: they work for me when I test the game, no matter which way I do it.

NB, you need to go to room 4 twice as the first time the cutscene will boot you back out again

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/phbeta4.zip

Also, in this next version, I added a door object in room 4 which can be interacted with to leave the room. THAT works.


http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/phbeta5.zip

This was made with beta 17.

Can anyone throw some light on the problems. There's nothing complicated in the "if player goes of edge" script: just a call to player.changeroom

I created a template from this version so you can fiddle with it, too if you like:

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Phbeta.zip

I'd really appreciate it if someone could throw some light on the problem soon, as MAGS closing date is 25th! Worst comes to worst I can just make more door icons or something...

I'm sure someone suggested this before, but i couldnt find it in the forums or tracker...

It would be nice when doing voice recording if you could dump a file like the translation file, but with the character doing the talking prefixing each line: or even if you could dump one file for each character. It would make voice recording much easier.

[I]

Why do I have patents? Because my employer at that time offered a nice bonus for every patent filed, and every one accepted. Unfortunatley, since the acceptance process takes a number of years, I had left that company beforethey were accepted, so I never got the second part of the bonus. Also, it looks good on your CV to have 4 patents on which you are (co-)inventor!

They are a DMA engine, which could copy data from 4 different areas of memory to/from a special Digital Video decoder; an XOR gate used to improve testability of logic around RAMs; the Digital Video decoder as a whole; and programmble arbitration method

Is that any clearer?

If you mean why in general, they are there to protect the Intellectual Property of a company, but also to share knowledge. In return for publishing their method or details of an invention such that anyone can read it (all patents are downloadable on the web) the inventor is allowed exclusive rights to manugfacture or licence as they see fit, for 20 years after filing.  Of course, publishing means that its not secret, but it also means that if anyone copies it, you can sue their pants off, even if they invented it independently, but later...

Its maybe a trite answer and sorry if its silly or offensive, but:

MAKE A GAME!

I find that few things make me feel better about myself than being creative.

The Patent office can invalidate a patent without any courrt required: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/03/05/eolas_web_patent_nullified/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/30/microsoft_fat_patent_rejected/

Old-style scripting is still supported with the "Enforce object oriented scripting" box: eave it unckeched and the old scripts still work. However, I guess that any new features will only be implemented in the new scripting style, and also the demo game is supposed to illustrate how to program a game in AGS. It no longer fulfils this role in any significant way whatsoever.

However, I am going to release my OOP MAGS game as open-source if you want to have an example...