Messages

Is there another way to deal with Surt in Chapter 2 other than

Spoiler

killing him

[close]

?

Tim is just a normal guy who likes to rib people. When he says "I'm trying to listen to the dialogue." to an INTERVIEWER, that's an obvious joke at the interviewer's expense, but I think it's funny. It's that sense of humor, even if it's not all of who he is, that made its way into plenty of good games.

It's sad that we've gotten to the point where we have to nitpick designer's personalities like this. Designers aren't subject to ridicule because they don't act how we want them to. Hell, some of us have to be a little crazy to do this work. A fan was giving Ron shit on Twitter a while back because he wasn't making Monkey 3a, and told him to get off his butt and do it. Ron replied "Screw you! I'm happy doing what I'm doing!", and I think Ron was right, and I think that applies to all of these guys.

I definitely don't think Ron is conceited, but at any rate, I wouldn't really care if he was. I think buffoon is quite a bit harsh. I'm not sure where anyone would get that.

Honestly, and I'm pretty sure this is controversial to some, I don't think I agree. He's sorta funny (although not particularly in my opinion, he seems to force it a bit) and, most importantly, he seems to be really hard to interact with (ironically). He doesn't even pay attention to what the interviewer/other person says half the time. I know this is not exactly a normal situation and I'm not going to judge him based on that bit of gameplay alone but I can't say that this video made me think: "What a cool boss to have", quite the opposite!

His employees/team members love him. I've met him, though, and he's a smartass. A very, very nice, open smartass, but a smartass. Kind of reminds me of Bill Murray in a way.

Thing 3.

Rewriting the pathfinder.

AGS script is probably too slow to rewrite the pathfinder and the lack of a hashtable means looking up nodes would be perilously slow. In Lua we don't have this problem.



My new pathfinder is more accurate and has tunnel-based smoothing. Also, when walking, characters continue walking at the end of a node which avoids the nasty stopping that AGS characters have a tendency to do at sharp corners.

An added benefit of this is that the walking code is kept within the user domain which means you can dynamically edit the walking frames without that nasty 1 frame delay.

Dear god, I hate the pathfinding in AGS.

The character walk needs to be less stiff, or at least have him straighter/not leaning backward when walking. I love everything else. I agree that the cursor icon should change when in a new mode. Are you using the right mouse button for anything? Maybe make it to where you can change cursor modes with that as well?

I love the art, animation, and music. It all looks great.

You just need to adjust the coordinates so that the object appears in the middle, obviously.

I don't know how to do this. I've tried to figure it out, but at this point it's like a puzzle. I did try setting it to the object's coordinates, but the camera still didn't move when I called SetViewport, so I figured I must be missing something.

So- I've been at this for a few days now, and I'm about at the end of my rope. I have an object that leaves one room, moves across another room, and ends up in a third room. You can move the object from one room to another. From Room 1 to Room 3, and from Room 3 to Room 1.

The issue I'm having is in Room 2. I want to cut to that room, and have the camera follow the object across the room depending on which side it enters from.

By tweaking the code, I've managed to get the camera to pan from the left side of the room to the right side. The problem comes in when I try to get it to pan from the right side of the room to the left side. It just won't do it, no matter what variation of the code I try. I'll post the code here. I've been told this code should work, but the camera stays completely still on the right side of the room.

Code: ags

// room script file
int xpos = 0;
    
function room_Load()
{
  SmoothScroll_ScrollingOn();
  
  if (cartroom == 0)
  {
    xpos = 1000;
    cEgo.x = 1000;
    cEgo.Transparency = 100;
    oCart.X = 1056;
  }
  
  if (cartroom == 1)
  {
    xpos = 0;
    cEgo.x = 0;
    cEgo.Transparency = 100;
    oCart.X = -56;
  }
  
  if (cartroom == 2)
  {
    cEgo.Transparency = 0;
    oCart.Visible = false;
    oCart.Clickable = false;
  }
}

function room_AfterFadeIn()
{
  if (cartroom == 0)
  {
    oCart.Move(-58, oCart.Y, 5, eBlock, eAnywhere);
    cEgo.ChangeRoom(13, 156, 124);
  }
  
  if (cartroom == 1)
  {
    oCart.Move(1000, oCart.Y, 5, eBlock, eAnywhere);
    cEgo.ChangeRoom(71, 298, 388);
  }
}

function repeatedly_execute_always()
{  
  if (cartroom == 0)
  {
    SetViewport(xpos, 0);
    xpos--;
  }
    
  if (cartroom == 1)
  {
    SetViewport(xpos, 0);
    xpos++;
  }
  
  if (!oCart.Moving)
  {
    ReleaseViewport();
  }
}

I'd greatly appreciate any help with this. Oh, and I considered making the object a character instead and setting that to the player character, having the camera follow it across the room that way, but I wanted to learn how to control the camera via SetViewport, and this code should work. Somewhere there's a user error on my part.

I've also tried a variation that has this code instead-

Code: ags

function repeatedly_execute_always()
{  
  if (!oCart.Moving)
  {
    ReleaseViewport();
  }
}

function room_RepExec()
{
 if (cartroom == 0)
  {
    SetViewport(xpos, 0);
    Wait(1);
    xpos--;
  }
    
  if (cartroom == 1)
  {
    SetViewport(xpos, 0);
    Wait(1);
    xpos++;
  }
}

I'll be honest. Using AGS is the only thing that can get me hard.

I like the subliminal messaging in the grass.

I've been reading the AGS Forums since 2003 or 2004. I remember when 7 Days a Skeptic was a new game. I remember when Ben Jordan 2 was a new game.

I also remember never seeing whatshisname around, so I've been curious for YEARS. I can't really say this is a new thing I suddenly started wondering about.

Wait...AGS is easy?!

Easy as childbirth!

As easy as birthing you at your current age!

Sure, I admit that it's arrogance that makes me demand answers. Now it all makes sense. But honestly, I really just wanted to know that this community wasn't some evil asshole community that once pushed out one of its designers. How could I ever come here with respect and a feeling of pride in this community if I didn't know?

I've always thought you all just hid the fact that you collectively pushed someone out of the community. I never even thought for a second that you were all just tired of talking about something a decade old.

Now I know.

Call it his luck or something else but I believe all of this happened on EZ Boards and they're no more.

Maybe. I always found it suspicious that nobody here ever wanted to talk about it.

I did. It was just an apology. It wasn't his exact posts and the exact posts of the people who didn't like him.

I don't give a flying shit if it's twelve years ago. I want to know.

I'd love to know why he stopped coming here, but nobody ever talks about it.

M000000000000DS!!!

OH, M000000DS!

M00000000DS! YOU GOTTA....HEY...GOTTA GIVE DIS A LOOK SEE HERE! OH!

OHHHHHHHH!

Wow, I'm glad someone liked the writing! I haven't had a lot of feedback on that, that I remember, so it's great to know that it works.

I'll give the harpoon a use in the full game. The demo is a demo-only scenario anyway. I probably said it before, but I wanted to use the demo as an experiment with doing a mostly audio cutscene, taking inspiration from old time radio, but sadly, I couldn't find great sound effects for everything I wanted to do, and I didn't know (at the time) how to do text for the sound effects either.

Spoiler

Oh, when you say The Bear, do you mean Teddy or Smoky?

[close]

I've thought about it, if only to do justice to the gorgeous box art, but I haven't had time to give it more than a thought.