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Weren't Darth and Farl working on a resources site?

Where is it going to be next year, anyway? Somewhere further north, I hope.

I got that too... but Miez is the admin of the forums, not m0ds.

To keep in the player character, you could always have part of the puzzle to explain to an NPC why the writing is upside-down or whatever. Is that the best of both worlds?

Iona is here

If I went to Ireland, I couldn't resist going into Waterford's PC World and asking if they know when Fountain of Youth will be released I've been to (London)Derry and Giant Causeway, etc. though.

And Green Flag came free with my Zurich insurance... but if you can get me a discount come renewal time in November, then maybe I'll go with yours, what was it called aagain? 

When you're on an island with only 4 or 5 repair garages on the whole place, it doesn't make much difference which one you're with as they'll all call the same guy anyway!

Well, our little family went away for a long weekend to the isle of Iona. Sounds romantic, doesn't it.

Well, we set off for the four hour journey with spirits high. The scenery was great and the rain in Glencoe was mitigated by the rainbow. OK, we realised that my wife had forgotten to pack any waterproofs, but hey, the weather was going to get better, wasn't it?

So we crossed the very short ferry to the Ardnamurchan peninsula and I drove down the single-track road to the Loch Aline ferry to Mull.

BANG!

What that, I wondered? Probably just a pothole. However, after a bit more driving, it became obvious that it was somethign more. Stopped, examined wheels. Front left totally flat. Started to rain heavily. Changed tyre for spare. Now realised that could only just make the ferry had planned to get... next one 1.5 hours later. Lochaline doesn't exactly have much to occupy a toddler for 90 minutes, so pressed on as quickly as possible.

Just made the ferry and crossed to Mull. Thought I'd check at local garage we passed to see if they could fix tyre, but no-one was there. "Closed on Saturdays" said the guy in the nearby shop. Oh well.

Went round Torosay castle and gardens. Rained intermittently (i.e. stopped while you were inside and rained while outside). Rode on minature railway. Went back to car. Back left tyre flat too. Bugger.

Called Green Flag assistance, who I'd had free with car insurance and  had only just got around to putting their contact info in the car that morning! They said that no-one could fix the tyre but they could tow us up to 25 miles. Well, that was neither far enough to get us to our B&B nor back to the mainland. Fortunately, the great people in the castle shop helped a lot, phoned round the people they knew and found a guy who would come and repair it and was covered by green flag. So we got to our B&B that night. However, it was just a temporary fix and he would get us two new tyres on the Monday. Fine, we weren't planning on using the car on the next two days anyway.

Next day, got ferry to Iona, where you need a special permit to take a car, so we left car parked in Mull at Fionnphort. Struggled on foot with luggage to our B&B through mild wind and rain.

Rain and wind got worse from there on. Couldn't do much on Iona, which is geared up for people looking for contemplative silence, not full-of-beans toddlers. Spent night sleeping, but with drips in our room and tiles rattling on roof, not to mention constant winds howling round teh bed and breakfast.

Morning weather was slightly better, looked round island quickly and decided to head home. Caught very stormy 11am ferry back to Mull. This truned out to be the last one that day. Tried to put temporary spare tyre from garage on car: locking nut would not budge with my pathetic Ford wheel-nut spanner. Eventually mamanged to inflate the slow puncture and get hold of mechanic's mate to arraneg to meet him as he got (late) off the ferry from Oban to Mull, 35 miles away. Drove 35 miles through poruing rain with half-flat tyre on single-track roads. Met guy, got tyres, found another guy to fit tyres. Just made 5pm ferry to mainland. Thought troublers were over.

Then had to drive 4 hours back again through what turned out to be partially-flooded roads in many places.

AAAARRRRGGGGH!

On the other hand, I've never been so happy to be back from a holiday. And the people we met were all great and helpful (except the people on the phone at Green Flag). And our duaghter behaved very well considering what we went through. And its kinda funny lookign back, but it was hell at the time. Oh, and those tyres that burst were both quite new. 

Why can't you animate the object? It's possible with AGS.  Just draw a non-exploded object,. a fulyl exploded object and then a half-exploded object. Fill in with more in-betweens if you like. Then put the sprites in order in a view, set the object to have that view and then assign that view to your object...

And with the latest beta version having GIF anim import, it is even easier: just find a GIF on the web and rip it: e.g.

I hope you all know that the "miliHelen" is the international standard amount of beauty required to launch one ship.

btw, if I had any photos of my wife handy, I'd post them becuase she is beautiful.

The Beeb are redoing the old infocom HHGTTG game with graphics for invetory items and rooms.... and they are looking for help from Joe Public.

I should mention: winning images are included in the game, and an overall winner  will be invited to take part in a recording for the next series and receive a script signed by the cast

If you want to submit your own artwork to them for submission, look here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/pictures.shtml

If you want to play the new game version so far..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml

They're lloking for drawing of the follwoing rooms (756x448)

#  Marvin's Pantry

#  An expensive speedboat heading to an island on an alien planet

#  Engine Room of the Heart of Gold

#  A skeleton in a cave, holding a computer circuit board

#  The Captain's Quarters on a Vogon Ship

#  A Presidental Dais, surrounded by a crowd on an alien planet

#  Inside the Lair of the Bugblatter Beast of Traal

#  A Spongy Grey Maze of twisty little synapses
#  A cave surrounded by small stones and a large memorial tablet

#  Galley of the Heart of Gold

#  The War Chamber of a star battle cruiser, with views towards the local star system

and the following inv items (240x240):

# Number Twelve Asteroid Paint Chipper

# Ionic Diffusion Rasp

# Molecular Hyperwave Pincer

# Pair of Hypersonic Pliers

# Ultra-plasmic Vacuum Awl

# Thermo-fusion Chisel

# Laser-assisted Monkey Wrench

# Seat Cushion Fluff

# Jacket Fluff

# Common Sense Particle

# Nutrimat Computer Interface

# Santraginean Mineral Water

# Satchel Fluff

# Pocket Fluff

# Thing your aunt gave you which you don't know what it does

# Atomic Vector Plotter

# Strange Gun

# Shipping Carton

# Alien Fruit

but I recommend looking at the pages above first, to read the full rules and to get an idea of style...

And let us know here  if you enter, and if you win!

Broken Sword has the innovation, that I also used in Awakening of the Sphinx, that you can use every inventory item as a conversation point, as well as any specific dialog options...

Many old text-based adventures had a weight system on the inventory. You could possibly also have other limits, for example, you can't put the fox nad the chicken or the chicken and the grain in your inventory at the same time, or something will get eaten, likte that old crossing the river riddle. Many games had mazes that were easiest solved by dropping inventory in the otherwsie identical rooms in order to be able to tell the difference. Other games had objects that you had to drop everything else in order to be able to pick up.

Also, if you sometimes have to drop objects, its worth considering if there is any risk nivolved in that: might an NPC steal objects that are jsut lying on the ground, or even ones you are holding? Dun Darach and Tir Na Nog had this...

If you're calling her Rogi, why not Bluecup? 

Alba is a great name... or Scarlett, to match her clothes, or given that her clothes kinda look like the Moulin Rouge video, how about Kim, Mya, or Christina?

And what is it with females from former UK colonies suddenly appearing with great games?

Embarrasing and pathetic, but I can't seem to do anything in this game except wander around, look at things and talk to the wizard guy.

krismuc is right: the only method of using a generic room function in a global script is called "cut-and-paste". However, the CallRoomScript function cna be used to call a spepcificly named function in a room script. See the manual entry for that function for full details.

The search should show a random selection form all the people who can do a particular thing, otherwise people whose names begin with A tend to get all the appeals for help....

I vote for yaron, with ninja lemurs chasing close behind!

How about if AGS unpacked the sprites during a games intro sequence or while waiting for the user to select which savegame, etc. Certain sprites to be used in the intro could be designated as non-compressable?

In short, for those that dont want to fire up AGS to import the room, you can use each room's on_call function, running it with CallRoomScript (int value) from the global script. The value passed represents the event: Enter room, exit, click hotspot, move onto region, etc. So all the room stuff goes into one function in the room script and no "if ( room == 1) { etc." stuff is required.

Quit beating about the bush SSH and tell us Radiant's secrets.
What is this, 20 questions?

[edit]
Ok, I'll start.
Is there a "switch (room)" statement (equivalent) involved?

No

19 left... 

Darn, competition... 

I particulalrly like the toilet/towel thing, but I don't quite understand what a SLEEPING BEER BOTTLE is and where it comes from...

Hi ranger, can I draw your attention to some of the cool features of this forum:

1. You can click on someone's username to send them a Private Message
2. You can edit any posts you have made after you make them, if you realise you forgot to say something. Just hit the "Modify" link.
3. In your profile, you should only say that you can help people with, scripting, for example, if you really have a lot of experience using AGS scripting.