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Umm, guys, if there is ANY published example of "prior art" (i.e. someone did it already) then a patent is invalid. Any it can be proven invalid by making a representation to the appropriate patent office showing the prior art, without even needing a lawyer, so I think AGS is safe in all its existing versions. However, someone could patent something after SW patents were allowable and then if CJ added that feature to AGS then it would be a problem. Of course, you could still use older versions.

In case anyoen is interested in my 3 patents, check them out    
here

* Renamed intro.crm to room0.crm, so that it causes no further confusion.

Will importing my beta 17 game do the rename for me, or do I need to manaually move/copy the room file?

Exile was released in 2004?

if I access player.Room in the script, I sometimes get the error "(null) is not a public member of character"...

Can you provide an example, I can't replicate this.

I'll see if I can knock up a simple example tomorrow

I can't reproduce the problem at all. Strangely enough, it was happening in a similar way to the .PreviousRoom thign I mentioned earlier: and as soon as I quit AGS and restarted it, the problem went away.... I think there is actually a bug in there: not on any specific method, but rather having AGS open editing a long time somehow screws up the room script compilation!!!

At least the workaround is save the game, restart AGS and reload, but I guess its a pretty hard bug to track down!

Wouldn't UpdateInventory be better arranged as a method of each InvWindow, or of each character?

Perhaps it should be per-character, but ideally you shouldn't need to use it since Add/LoseInventory deal with it for you, so I'm not too concerned about it.

It doesn't really bother me as I'm suing only 1 inventory anyway, but I use a loop to drop all inv at one point and use Update after that: it was then I noticed it wasnt really consistent with the rest of inv handling

Also it might be nice if GUI buttons had a ProcessClick method to simualte them being pressed, but from a script (to allow keyboard shortcuts)

You could always just call their handler method directly...

Not if you're in a module you can't, becuase handlers have to be in the global script, and thus come AFTER modules are compiled.  Maybe the generic solution is to have the global script as just another (albeit default) module, and then you can manually place modules before or after the global script...

if I access player.Room in the script, I sometimes get the error "(null) is not a public member of character"...

Can you provide an example, I can't replicate this.

I'll see if I can knock up a simple example tomorrow

Cor, I never realised how much good stuff you've got in there, Strazer. Can't it be made an appendix to the CHM manual? 

Also, it would be nice if we could find out if the current room had the "Hide player" checkbox set

if (player.on == 0) {

Is that in the manual? I can't find it and it isn't in the autocomplete, either...

It DOES compile, though!

Well, for exmaple, I'll have a module that uses a GUE as well, so the module dependecies will reflect that, and the GUE shoudl also have some comment in to mention the module, but since the GUE wont really have a lot of script (I'm guessing that it includes only GUI on_click and handler functions)  those will have to go INSIDE one/all of the functions.

Scrop has worked out a scheme where you can check for the presense of a module and flag a compiler error if it's not found.   So I guess you would check for a macro definition in one of the handler functions.  Probably it wouldn't need to be done in all of them since you would only need to generate one error.   

I had a look at the GUI editor and I managed to create the following handler function for a click on the GUI.  Is this more or less an equivalent of "interface_click(...) but for only a single GUI?  If so it would be my inclination to put the module dependency stuff in there, since it's the closest thing to a main function for the GUI.  I guess a good question is should this be the preferred method for GUIs of the type you desciribe?   I don't know the answer really because I haven't had time to play with this yet. 

function gSave_Click(GUI *theGui, MouseButton button) {
  
}

No, the function from the GUI is only for clicks on the GUI where there is no button. Buttons have their own, separate functions (although you can make them all point to the same function)

Naming conventions: well, to avoid clashes, sicne the GUE fdunctions will go in a global script they'll need prefixes. And the defualt _Click suffix is probvabl;y a good convention to keep, too.  So far I've been prefixing all my gui object names with "go".

Yeah, that's kind of why I was wondering if having a single handler for each individual GUI (as a convention) would be a good approach.  There would fewer names to worry about.   What do you mean by "GUI Object",  Buttons, Lables, etc or individual GUIs or something else?  Did CJ make it so that you could get to the controls via a path such as gSave.Ok or do we need to do something like gSaveOk for example,  to access the OK button on the SAVE gui? 

You can give each control its own name and access it directly, or you can use the gMYGUI.control[index]. prefix and then apply the AsButton, AsLabel, etc. to cast them to buttons, labels, etc as appropriate.

Speaking as a parent myself, and this applies to everyone, I would say that unless your parents are completely manic depressive or certifable nutbags, then they love you a lot. Sorry to continue being patronising, but unles syou have kids you really cant understand how much a parent loves their children, no matter what. Even if they disown you, etc. its usually because they think that what you're doing is wrong and they want to use whatever leverage they have to get you to not do it. Of course, they dont realise that trying that kind of stunt hurts people more than it changes behaviour, but there you go.

Anyway, the point of this is, by reading those books they were trying to understand and accept you. Now, being christians they probably found a bunch of books that might not engender the attitude to you and your sexuality that you might hope, but at least they care enough to try and understand: remember that for right or wrong, this is all very difficult and confusing for them too. So, have hope: they're probably on YOUR side more than they are on the side of any book or any dogma. My advice would be to use this as a foot in the door to make your announcement. Give yourself enoguh time first to at least pretend you have read the book , or they might just say "We'll talk about it after you read the book", but then tell them how you feel and that you feel you ARE this way and you don't think that any kind of "conversion back to straightness" would be anything other than brainwashing.

I hope I'm not out of line in saying this, but to me the most important thing here is to keep a good relationship with your parents and with God. If you want some Christian backup in this, I'd be willing to talk to them on the phone or by email: PM if you want my contact details. You could mention that I'm a married  straight evangelical christian with 2 kids... 

Well, for exmaple, I'll have a module that uses a GUE as well, so the module dependecies will reflect that, and the GUE shoudl also have some comment in to mention the module, but since the GUE wont really have a lot of script (I'm guessing that it includes only GUI on_click and handler functions)  those will have to go INSIDE one/all of the functions.

Naming conventions: well, to avoid clashes, sicne the GUE fdunctions will go in a global script they'll need prefixes. And the defualt _Click suffix is probvabl;y a good convention to keep, too.  So far I've been prefixing all my gui object names with "go".

Other than that, I haven't really thoguht much

Just thinking:

Wouldn't UpdateInventory be better arranged as a method of each InvWindow, or of each character?

Also it might be nice if GUI buttons had a ProcessClick method to simualte them being pressed, but from a script (to allow keyboard shortcuts)

Also, if you miss a semicolon from the end of a module header (in this case the last line of the header) you can get the strange error "Cannot declare body of imported function" or something like that...

edit:
Also, if you do CTRL-E after you just closed the interaction editor in a room, the room script does NOT come up. If you then change room screen and back again it works OK

edit 2:

if I access player.Room in the script, I sometimes get the error "(null) is not a public member of character"...

edit 3:

It would be nice if the debug console and single-step stuff mentioned if you are in a module script

edit 4:

Also, it would be nice if we could find out if the current room had the "Hide player" checkbox set

Have you guys played around with the new single GUI import/export. Are the rules you are creating now applicable to these, too. I'm not sure yet how much script gets included with the .gue files... CJ, can you enlighten as to what exactly goes in there?

Just in toime for it to have to be rewritten to cope with OOP overlays in 2.7

At the risk of embarrasing myself, I seem to be having problems with the "Walk off screen edge" interactions: they don't seem to be running at all for me. Now, I haven't got this game in an older version and I never used them before, so I wonder if someone else could double-check this, please...


EDIT: I foudn the problem. I wanted to walk on an area that was also a hotspot, but the hotspot's walkto was set outside the hotspot (and outside the Top of Screen marker). Everytime I clicked walkto on the hotspot, it walked to the walkto point rather than where I clicked. This is DESPITE me NOT having "Don't automatically move char in walk mode" set in game options, which according to the tooltip thereof should mean that it behaved how I wanted. Something is wrong here , eithr in the documentation or the behaviour. I worked around it by putting

if (mouse.Mode==eModeWalkto) player.Walk(mouse.x, mouse.y) else ProcessClick...

in on_mouse_click

Currently savegames with screenshots dont work in 256-clour hgames unles you have the same palette for every room. Is there some way that in 256-colour mode, the palettes of the screenshots are converted to neraest neighbour or dithered or something when loaded?

See Tiki's post here...

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=10802.msg234175#msg234175

Very good question, Tiki. I think the best solution would be to get CJ to get the saved screenshots to be loaded in and converted to the universal palette of the game. I don't think a separate room would help, as how would you know what palette to use for that room?

Incidentally, my tutorial won't quite work in the latest beta, but I'll soon be releasing a module and GUI to let people use it with the latest version.

Yeah, before I met my wife, I used to kid myself that I was happier being single, too.

Spoiler

Now I'm married, I know I was happier... 

[close]

Have you tried using a different Ethernet card on your PCs?

And seriously, run AVS, Avast, Spyboy S&D and Adaware on both PCs just to make sure that they don't have some nasty infection

What is AVS

See this link here

In the UK you can't breathe for loan company adverts in the middle of the best programs. Presumably such things as banks and finance companies exist in the US as well...

Have you tried using a different Ethernet card on your PCs?

And seriously, run AVS, Avast, Spyboy S&D and Adaware on both PCs just to make sure that they don't have some nasty infection