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Here is an example to a script that causes the problem (OSER, the player character, talks to character GATE):

character[OSER].Walk(160, 210, eBlock);
character[OSER].FaceLocation(character[OSER].x - 50, character[OSER].y , eBlock);
character[OSER].Say("&5301");
character[GATE].Say("&5301");
character[OSER].FaceLocation(character[OSER].x - 50, character[OSER].y , eBlock);
character[OSER].Say("&5302");
character[GATE].Say("&5302");
Wait(18);
character[OSER].FaceLocation(character[OSER].x, character[OSER].y + 50 , eBlock);

OSER lines, which are quite short, are cut a little before their end.  GATE lines, which are longer (4-5 seconds), are being heard until their end, but then an unnecessary talking animation proceeds with no sound for several seconds.

Two more things that maybe should be mentioned:
1. I'm not using texts in the game - only voiced speech.
2. The speech files are in MP3 format.

Could someone please help me with this one?  This is a really annoying bug, and I won't be able to release the game this way.

Hello,

I've got a strange problem occuring with all the speaking characters in the game.  Whenever the player is speaking with a character, both of them voices are either cut before the end of the voiced sentence, or reach to the voice's end and then an unnecessary speech animation continues for several seconds without voice.

This happens in about 50% of the speech sentences, and in other cases it works fine.  I've checked it out: the "problematic scripts" and the "proper scripts" are just the same.  I've checked the original speech files as well - they all end exactly when they should have.

Any ideas?

Ok, I think I got it...

Pretty heavy stuff (at least for a newbie like me).   I'll try to work it out in the near future.

Thanks again for your patience   

Hey Ashen, many thanks.

Yes, I'm cool with all the whole variables thing, I'm actually kinda loving it, but I'm still pretty mixed-up:

First and foremost, I don't see how to do what you suggested in the Bank or the Dress examples, in which I think timer shouldn't be used.  The NPC needs to do a whole set of actions that aren't blocking the player from doing other things in the same time, not based on a specific timer but on the length of the list of actions defined.

I take the Bank example to make myself clear...  During the player's conversation with the manager, the manager calls the teller.  From this time, the player should be free to roam around and do stuff, while the following actions are taking place in the background: the teller is walking to the manager and facing him, the manager runs a talking animation (without voice or text), the teller runs a talking animation, the manager runs a talking animation again, and the teller runs a talking animation again.  Then, the player shouldn't be able to move or do further things, while the teller walks back to her place.  When she's back in her place, the player is free again to go around and do stuff.

Could you please show me how to do this using variables, and where should I put every part of the script?

Regarding to the example you've given me:

1. Where do I place the timer?  In the original "talk to character" script's end?

2. Since the merchant is a character, do I really need to place the laughing part in the ROOM rep_ex script (since the characters appear in the GLOBAL script)?  Or is it not the case?

3. Where do I place the last part of the script (when the merchant's talking after he already laughed)? 

Thanks a lot, I deeply appreciate you helping my game to come true 

Jonathan

Hello,

In my game I have several sequences which in the player can do something only if a certain NPC is doing another (non-blocking) thing:

- During a conversation with a merchant ("talk to character" script), the merchant is talking, laughs for several seconds and then continues talking.Ã,  ONLY while he's laughing, you can steal something from his stand.

- When the player says something to a clerk, she leaves the screen for a minute, and then returns.Ã,  The player can mess with her stuff only in the minute she's outside.

- When the player says something to a bank manager, the manager calls a teller and they have a background conversation (animation only, no voice or text) for several seconds.Ã,  Only in these seconds, the player can use the teller's computer.Ã,  Afterwards she returns to her seat.

- When the player gives some guy a dress, the guy is going to a closet to put the dress back there.Ã,  Only while the guy is standing in front of the closet (and his "putting the dress back" animation is running), the player can push him and lock him inside.

- When the player shows an inventory item to a guard, the guard walks away for several second, and only while he's walking or out of the screen, the character can ran away.

I figured out that most of these situations can be handled with timers and repeatly_execute scripts, but I didn't find any clear explanation for my problems or the repeatly_execute thread in the manual or in the forums.Ã,  I simply don't understand how is it possible to start one script ("talk to character" for instance), make this script continue in a non-blocking way (the NPC go away and only then the player can do something he refused to do before), and then returning to the original, blocking script (the NPC returns to his place and says something).

Help, please?

Jonathan

Great, so I'll just import all the variables used in the character scripts to the global header.

Thank you!

Ashen, thank you very much for your (consistent) help.

Well, I think I'll stick to using global variables for characters.  I don't have a problem that they're on the global script, I just was worried that too much global variables (100-200, I assume) will slow up the game.  Will they do that, and will importing them only to the relevant room scripts might help in such a case?

I didn't understand your response to the first question.  Must I use the "if character[NPC].Room =..." function to manage characters that switch rooms?  This seems a little too complicated for such a basic function - I would think that most of AGS games have NPCs that switch rooms.

(As for the slightly irrelevant note    Believe me, I thought about it a lot before choosing to do it this way.  That's because the speech lines are very short, you can always skip them with the mouse click if you want, and the language uses a lot of slang that will be  less appropriate for reading. Furthermore, I think that texts are more important for games in English, because they can help non-English players understanding the voice speech.  This is not the case with my game).

Hi all,

In my game there are about 10 NPCs that appear in more than one room.  Every time the NPC is being interacted in a specific room, he supposed to react differently.

I guess it'll be possible to define the different reactions in the character scripts using the "if character[NPC].Room =..." function, but isn't there an easier way to do this other than adding more and more variables to every interaction?

Please note that my game includes voice speech only - therefore no use of texts at all (I don't use the "dialogs" pane).

By the way, is there a way to use variables that aren't global variables in the character scripts?  I've succeeded to access only global scripts from the character scripts, not room scripts of the room the character's presently in.

Thanks,

Jonathan

Thank you very much.

There isn't a conventional method or a specific module to clone characters, right?

Hi all,

In my game I have two scenes with multiple and identical characters - one with about 10-15 soldiers, and one with about 20 activists.

I want them all to look the same, and to react the exact same way to the player's actions.

I know it's possible to create all these characters manually by using the same views and copying all the scripts, but for 30-35 characters that would be a real pain.

Does anyone have an idea how to solve this issue?

I tested it in several game rooms and it works fine.

This module is very handy and easy to use.  It basically enables you to draw (or photograph in my case) the characters in any size you want, without worrying about the proportions afterwards.

I was stucked for a long time due to the fact that all my characters were made in different sizes.  This module saved me many hours of work, and reduced the game size as well.

640X480 is not terrible, but when I tested the character animations (which are about 500 pixles high in their original size) in 800X600, everything looked a lot better.

Isn't there an option within AGS or a module that can handle this transition in a smooth way?  Changing EVERYTHING manually will be an extremely long proccess...

Hello,

I'm working on a 640X480 resolution game.  Since my characters are high-res ones (based on real video), I thought of upgrading all the game graphics to 800X600.   My problem is that it's messing with all the previous coordinates I defined for the game.

Does anybody know how can I change the game resolution, and change all the coordinates proportionally?

Well when I first tested it it worked, but it would crash for AGS V2.72, due to the fact that the module codes tried to access characters with out-of-bound ids (probably newer versions of AGS has better checks).

I'm too lazy to modify it to work better at the moment, but a quick and dirty fix is to change line 48 of the module code to:
Ã,  Ã,  if (char_scales[ii]!=100) if (character[ii].Room==player.Room) {

Sorry for the delay, but - thanks a lot.

You may also try this quick module I just mucked up, hope it does what you want.

Hi,

I tried to use this module and got this message:

Error: run_text_script1: error -6 running function
'repeatedly_exectue':
Error: Array index out of bounds (index 4, bounds 0..3)
in Individual Character Scaling (line 48)

Help?

Speaking of a similar subject, what audio format is best for AGS (in quality/size calculation)?Ã,   The game will include a lot of music & speech.Ã,   Is OGG better than MP3 for that matter?

Thanks a lot for the information, fellows.  I'll just keep the files in BMP format.

(BTW, Shivah is a really nice game).

I'm not sure I understand.  You're basically saying that converting all the files from BMP to PNG won't reduce the final game size?

I don't have interst in saving HDD space while creating the game, as I have a rather large HDD.

Hi Everybody,

I'm working on a big game (at least in terms of disk space), which contains a lot of photographed backgrounds and characters.Ã,  All the pictures are in 24-bit BMP format.

I want to keep the pictures in the current quality, but on the other hand I don't want the game to become huge.Ã,  Will converting the files to PCX or PNG harm pictures quality anyhow?Ã,  Which format is better for my (and perhaps everybody) needs?

I've understood that the new version of AGS contains better archive abilities.Ã,  How much this is relevant to this issue?

Thanks a lot.

Since I'm only going to try it in a month or so, please tell me if case you try it and it works.