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If the editor code is opened up, does this mean that 256 colour mode could be made a little easier to work with (More remapping options, like when importing GIF animations [they can't be imported exact palette, if I recall], viewing the room palette rather than having only one pane for a global palette, exporting backgrounds as indexed etc)? I know I'm probably the only person left on the planet who uses 256 colour mode, but still, it would be nice to have the workflow a little easier. I don't like having to wrestle with AGS for 8bit mode.

I thought I'd update this thread with some assets I've been working on, it might keep me from slipping . Unfortunately no new backgrounds, as all I have to work with at the moment is MSPaint and Microsoft GIF animator (my computer is in for repairs, rage!), so I might as well show my work.

Ollie's updated design:

Yes, she's now recognisably a human, not a marionette with softballs up front. She also contrasts more with Desiree now, being more tomboyish and casual. She's also MUCH easier to animate, thanks to her hair.

Diagonal Walk cycles!

Good news: Fully animated jiggle physics!
Bad news: Lack of busty women to apply them to!
Very bad news:

Loop has a walk cycle. Well, that's good news, really. Walking is healthy!

Anyway, that's a flavor of what I've been working on for Death Wore Endless Feathers.

I've actually been working on a whole lot more, but I can't show you without spoiling the entire game.

Are you putting the Y value changes in repeatedly_execute, or repeatedly_execute_always?

The latter is what you want for a constant, do-even-when-blocking effect. It isn't in the main script afaik on empty games, so just add it in there:

Code: ags

function repeatedly_execute_always () {
//Put code here.
}

If it's just a room-only thing, put it in the room script.

I'm not a programmer of any relevant caliber (I only know out of date coding practices), so take everything I say with a pinch of salt.

One engine that really benefitted (and bloomed) from open sourcing the code was OHRRPGCE - lots of things that community wanted were implemented in record time and it's still growing to this day. It's still the child of James Paige, and he takes an active role in it's development, but it's still leaps and bounds above what he could do alone. Open sourcing it merely made it easier for programmers to contribute. And that community is smaller than ours. AGS is established enough and with famous games enough that there a programmers willing to make it happen. Source ports to other platforms, for compatibility, for one, would be a major, major boon. I think the advantages of open sourcing vastly outweighs the disadvantages. Decompilers are the least of our concerns, when we could get so much in return for that risk being a little higher.

Open sourcing the editor code is a good step forward. I'd love for really old AGS engine versions to be open sourced, too, so more people can play them. There are plenty of gems that falter on new machines, and anyone who wants to make an AGS game isn't likely to use the versions that only have a DOS engine. (I know, DOSBOX, but isn't that a bandaid rather than a cure?)

I too, am afraid of the fragmentation of the core, since it'll mean only certain iterations get love, but you can still retain control of the trunk, and lots of cool stuff can be merged into it. (for instance, all the bugfixes and agreed features first.)

I appreciate all the hard work you've put into this thing, and it's one of the most amazing programs I have ever used (and cannot live without!). I think with the entire community's help, we can help it evolve together.

I sure don't want it to peter out and die. I want it to grow!

Well, if it doesn't exist, you could always rectify that.

I can't find anything on Google about "And the Chocolate Bar" title of game wise. It doesn't seem to have any entries anywhere.

I wanted to ask people their opinion on soundcards and this is just the place to do it. (because making a thread would be a little wasteful)

I want to get a new soundcard for MIDI playing. HW Soundfonts are a must, and OPL3/Adlib hardware support is good, but not required. I have an AWE32, but my main PC doesn't have an ISA slot and I can't find any suitable alternative. It's just for MIDI, I don't mind not having 3D surround sound and technicolor 64bit quality (as I already have a soundcard) - but something that can do GM MIDI like an AWE32 (and maybe OPL3) but in a PCI slot on an XP Computer? Is perfect. I already have an MT-32 for some of my MIDI needs... but the rest of it needs work now. The Microsoft SW Synth is really bad and softsynths eat too much CPU and RAM.

Thanks guys

Also, as someone who's actually studied any Japanese, I can tell you that while "Before Crystal" sounds pretty daft in English, 前に would be the wrong thing to use. In this case, because you've got both "Past" and "Crystal" as nouns, your title means "Crystal's Before" (i.e. the Before belonging to the Crystal). A word like 過去 would be more appropriate than 前に  (Making it "The Crystal's Past" rather than "The Crystal's Before"), since 過去 refers to the past in a more suitable context, like bygone days, whereas what you're using...oh heck, who am I kidding. If it's a troll, he's probably intentionally botched, and if he really is real, he won't listen anyway.

:'(

Well, if he wanted to really butcher it, he could type it:
"ベフル キリャシタル "

or

"イシ ガメル - ブロケン プロミセ オフ ガメシ! "

I can make whatever Sierra remake I want but I can't make my own game that has a currency called Gil and have a character in my game that called Moogle... Oh wait, I cannot add that -  it will make my game stupid and I will have to keep hearing this.

Well, people object because the Final Fantasy trademarks have become so overused, so cliche that the inclusion of them makes someone a laughing stock simply because it's been done by fans for years in every single possible way.

That and adding Final Fantasy trademarks to your game just make people confused and annoyed. It's not good game design, at all. Make a parody of it or something. A parody of moogle designs. Something that isn't just "this thing lifted from this franchise".

Also, adding Square Enix as a credit is a legal offense. I believe it's a breach of trademark law, even if you're not selling the game.

But even so, I want to play an infamous Pub Master Quest (does that japanese subtitle read "Before A Crystal"? Or is it just me?). Just... try to only make one game at first. I'm not keen on the idea of 20 titles in a franchise that has so far not even had one release, and rips off ideas from another franchise.

I like it when they object, but still do it.

"I don't see how this'll help, but what the heck."

They point out the absurdity, but it doesn't take away from the player's interactions. I also implement this when people give quest items to NPCs before the NPC has told them what they want. The acceptance dialog is slightly different.

Where and when can I buy this?

I crave it like a vampire craves blood.

It was returning COLOR_TRANSPARENT! Very odd, especially in an 8-Bit game - since there's already a transparent colour

• . But, I put in the check you suggested and now it runs absolutely fine, and quite speedily, too.
  
  Thankyou!

So I'm working on functions for my game (which I'm programming from the bottom up, as the last version had unworkable code.), and I need to judiciously use GetPixel since I don't want to use plugins this time. Once again, working in 8-bit. I am using 3.1.2 SP1, but I did compile it on 3.2, with no improvement.

As I was working on a colourisation function, I noticed I was getting a lot of strange crashes about "Array Out of Bounds: Range 0-255, not -1". So I tested it a bit and found out it wasn't my shoddy coding producing this result, but the GetPixel function itself.

I'm not sure quite what's causing it, and I'm pretty sure GetPixel isn't supposed to give values like that.

EDIT: The problem has been found and a workaround given. Quite a surprise!

I changed palette slot 254 to Magenta, which messed up the background colours. I have since reimported the background, but maybe that's what's going wrong.

Thanks, guys I am pretty hopeless without y'all.

I wish easy online support,HD support,video(avi) to be pack with exe

Online support is never that easy - it's one of the hardest things to ever to be attempted in a game. I doubt adding it to AGS's core system would even make it that much easier, beyond letting the linux and mac engines [such as they are] have the same code.

And if you're worried about people spoiling the game by watching the FMVs, I'm pretty sure you can just rename the files "videoXXX.dat" and run them. Packing them into the EXE itself would be a nightmare.

I loved the entire disk 1 and didn't notice any need for improvements or change of style... except for Jakob's walkcycle.

There was really something grating on the eyes in the way the front and back view switched to the side views - it always felt to me not like he turned, but like he teleported to a different position. Possibly it was some incompatibility of his visual weight and the quickness of the turn, but I'm not sure.

I'm curious if anyone else felt something is wrong.

Yeah, I'd love to put a little turn animation in for him and other characters, since the transition is a little grating -  I'd prefer something like Broken Sword's turning (with actual turning frames rather than the standing frame). I'm not sure HOW I'd implement it, though. Maybe that's why people have waif-like leads most of the time.

[But while I'm reforming and reviewing, were there any parts in the original game people didn't like? Parts that people thought "Heck, this game would be better if it weren't for this thing!". And parts that people want to see more of? If I knew, I'd be able to revise it for the final game.]

It's encouraging that people were thinking of this game even when it vanished! It spurs me ever forward. Even now, the whole thing is taking a more organised shape than it has ever done.

But while I'm reforming and reviewing, were there any parts in the original game people didn't like? Parts that people thought "Heck, this game would be better if it weren't for this thing!". And parts that people want to see more of? If I knew, I'd be able to revise it for the final game.

This project isn't dead yet! I have been working tirelessly on it all summer. I don't want to give too much away at the moment, so here's a selection of what's been going on.

Some concepts for a new background aesthetic.


Limited animation closeup mattes. This one hasn't been set into the game yet, since the background behind him is still a temporary lightmap. His eyes, mouth, and arms will be animated. This is Sugar Loop, one of the original members of Black Sun, when the player first meets him in the flesh - at an old arcade machine.


This is Desiree, the game's femme fatale, walking and showing off her.. uh.. assets. She was the most difficult to animate, as she isn't strictly a cartoon.

Adlib music? I would also love this, considering the game I'm making.

A plugin would be perfectly possible, and I've attempted it in the past, though I'm not a programmer probably hacking an already extant Adlib emulator is probably the best idea.

Something like Adplug would be useful as a starting point. It even supports actual OPL chips. Though then you'd have to actually make the Adlib music

So I'm trying to create some graphic effects for my game that are reminiscient of the stuff you'd find on the Super NES, and one particular one I thought I'd cut my teeth on was dissolving a sprite into nothingness.

Turns out it's harder than it looks in AGS! With the following code, I can make things dissolve at an increasingly slow rate (depending on how many pixels have already been decimated), slowing down to infinity as my "Is it Done" checker slugs along. Without the checker, the code does pretty much function, but leaves behind one or two errant pixels that annoy me and make it so that I can't tell whether or not an object needs to be removed or not.

How do I speed up this code? How would you run a check on a sprite to see whether it's fully dissolved? Am I doing this completely wrong? Is there a way to do this in reverse? (I wanted to do this in code rather than with sprites because I'd be doing this on several sprites of varying size rather than just a select few.)

Code: ags

function Dissolve (this DynamicSprite*,  char speed)
{
  DrawingSurface *surface = this.GetDrawingSurface();
  char i=speed;
  int x;
  int y;
  int errorchecking;
  int area = surface.Width * surface.Height;
  surface.DrawingColor = 0;
  while (i)
  {
    x = Random(surface.Width);
    y = Random(surface.Height);
    if (surface.GetPixel (x, y) != 0)
    {
      surface.DrawPixel (x, y);
      i--;
    }
    else errorchecking++;
    if (errorchecking > area)
    {
      surface.Release ();
      return 1;
    }
  }
  surface.Release ();
}

function CheckDissolveComplete (this DynamicSprite*)
{
  DrawingSurface *surface = this.GetDrawingSurface();
  int x1 = surface.Width;
  int y1 = surface.Height;
  while (y1 != -1) 
  {
      if (y1 == -1)
      {
        // You should never get here. This is in case whiles run one last loop when their condition is met

        surface.Release ();
        return 1;
      }
      if (surface.GetPixel (x1,y1) != 0)
      {
        surface.Release ();
        return 0;
      }
      else x1--;
      if (x1 == -1)
      {
        x1 = surface.Width;
        y1--;
      }
  }
  surface.Release ();
  return 1;
  }

//The Room code I used (object 0 is needed, uses default game)

function room_AfterFadeIn()
{
DynamicSprite *sprite = DynamicSprite.CreateFromExistingSprite(object[0].Graphic);
Display ("This is a test of the Dissolve function.");
char speed = 30;
while (sprite.CheckDissolveComplete () == 0)
{
  sprite.Dissolve (speed);
  Wait (1);
  object[0].Graphic = sprite.Graphic;
}

Display ("This has been a broadcast of the Dissolve Function.");
}

Any help would be appreciated. This kind of thing really stumps me.

Wasn't the charm of Monkey Island that you weren't a bloodthirsty pirate and you had to solve your problems through ingenuity and guile rather than beating up pirates and taking the easy way out?

Voodoo was supposed to be really inefficient and dangerous - you don't learn Voodoo spells you can just flick out at the cost of some mana. It's really dark stuff.

Adding RPG elements to Monkey Island would destroy it entirely, since you'd replace all the witty banter and puzzle solving with charging through a world grinding pirates and killing the final boss with 9999 damage. Hardly the pirate experience created by the original. You can't just add RPG elements to things and expect it to be good.

What's next, an FPS version of Broken Sword? It's just not right to have a story butchered by inappropriate game mechanics.

There's only one thing I'd ever want to be implemented at the moment:

Dumping sprite data into an array. So a 32x32 image can be dumped into image[1024] and back again. This will make pixelwise modifications, custom tinting, and palette changes a lot easier. Say, if one wanted to change every pixel in the palette to something on a blue gradient, ala Discworld I (In 256 colour!), or even to recolour or change a sprite totally. You know, some more grounded, low levels stuff. Either that, or making GetPixel a lot faster. It just seems to be more efficient to turn a sprite into a raw array. Just how slow IS GetPixel, anyway?

I got around it by making a plugin last time, but to be honest it was really inflexible and I'd like to be able to do things like that in AGS itself, rather than outside of it.