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Even though I have no idea what you guys just said, that little piece of code was useful. I didn't know how to tell the script not to execute if I was in a certain room, so I did it this way:

Code: ags

sectionstart on_key_press
  if (player.Room !=0) {
		if (keycode==32) PauseGame(); {
    mouse.Visible = false;
    gMenu.Visible = false;
    gStatus.Visible = false;
    gInventory.Visible = false;
    gPause.Visible = true;
		}
	}

and this to re-enable it once the game starts:

Code: ags

#sectionstart on_mouse_click 
function on_mouse_click(MouseButton button) {
  if (IsGamePaused() == 1) {
    UnPauseGame();
		gMenu.Visible = true;
		gPause.Visible = false;
		gStatus.Visible = true;
		mouse.Visible = true;
	}
}

Well, that worked. The pause screen doesn't come up anymore on the splash screen, although I still wish I could stop the inventory window from opening there. Yes, I know... I'm a clean freak. Most people wouldn't bother if the game works smoothly, but I like to sweep the dust off everything I can.

With the room descriptions. maybe I should have mentioned that I run a variable called "Location" upon entry of every room, including the splash. I set Location = XX (RoomXX). In the game, my character finds map pages for his little book (ala MYST... ish) and the overlay will show only those maps that are found while the character is in that area or display the message "You don't have a map for that area."

As I don't really understand much about  creating properties, do you think that doing so will be a better method of handling descriptions, locations and map overlays in the properties rather than in simple numeric variables? I'm a bit thick with all this, so please... treat me like a complete idiot. Thanks again in advance.

G'day friends. Such a wonderfully resourcefull forum that I rarely need to post anything at most times, but this time I'm a little miffed (as I usually get ), but my issues are answered quite appropriately and very quickly when I get stuck, so here goes...

I have made myself a nice little pause screen for my 800 x 600 hi-colour game. Basically, its a small 320 x 120 box within an 800 x 600 GUI with the words "Game Paused - Click mouse to continue", but it's a graphic, not a text box. In the area around the box, every second pixel is black with every other the transparent colour, making it appear as though the screen tinted when the game is paused. It's a very nice effect.

Now here's my problem... Room0 is the splash screen of my game with all GUI's made invisible and the player hidden (obviously). The space bar activates the pause even here and when you unpause the game, all GUI's become visible like I want them to in the global script. The thing is, I don't want the pause GUI to be active while on the splash screen. I've tried disabling the interface but that just stops me from quitting or continuing the game. The game works fine otherwise, no scripting errors.

Q. Can I disable the space key until room1?

While I'm on it, I've not found anything in the help files or online, unless I have not read everything...

Q. I have @SCORE@/@TOTALSCORE@ on the left side of my status bar, @OVERHOTSPOT@ in the middle, but I would like the room description on the right. How do I display the room description without calling a script in every room? Is there a GUI token that handles room descriptions?

Thanks in advance...

I got an error using this, but I can play around with the script and find the results I need. I appreciate your help. Thanks.

Edit: I got it working and its exactly what I wanted. Thanks heaps.

I have a question regarding setting baselines for characters. Well, only one really, but I change his view occasionally and one of the views requires that the baseline be set to the middle of the sprites. I have a normal view and an isometric view, but when I try to set a walkable area with an overhead view, I want to be able to alternate the baseline to account for overhead areas. Otherwise, I have to shift the walkable mask down a few pixels til it looks right. I would much rather import a predrawn set of masks. I'm not using seperate characters, only several views on the one character. My AGS version is up to date and I know the script function for changing the baseline, but I'm not very good with scripting and I don't really know where to put it or how to make it change back to normal baseline when I need it to. Can anyone help me? Thanks in advance.

I'm not in any comps I guess, but can I show a few pics I've made?

Edit by Andail:
This thread is for the competition whose instructions you can read in the initial post. Please use the critics lounge for c&c on random pictures. Good luck

I didn't know that you could change the character's baseline. All this time I've cropped my character images to fit and the animation goes all wonky. So I leave a bit of space around the sprites and the character animated properly, but because of the space under his feet, the walkable area I shifted down a little. I had to do thid in the bird's-eye view walkable area too.

That was all very helpful, thanks. Now my monitor turns on, the character can walk away (and in front of) the computer, leave the room and return again to find the computer still on. He can switch it off and on again, but I gave it a conditional loop so I don't go through having to read the same email. Instead, I've decided to have regular access to the computer by making a whole list of variables and conditional loops. I'm only learning how to do this using the main AGS auto script functions, the only actual scripting I did was made the cursor change when I mouseover an entry/exit of the room. As frustrated as I can get, I'm still enjoying the learning.

Can you make the cursor change colour or animate when there is actually something for it to detect? While I'm on this, is there a way to add animated or static arrows pointing to ways out of a room once it detects a door or edge of a screen?

Like I said, I'm quite new to AGS and I have read the manual quite extensively. I must have missed the part about the graphic overlay, that seems like what I want it to do. I made a hotspot to interact with on the actual image of the monitor in the room. Once the interaction takes place, the overlay can appear to make it LOOK like the monitor is switched on, and then disappear once the string of commands are finished. I don't need this to happen anymore, but I want to keep the hotspot for future interactions, such as tellling the player character that action has already been done. I don't remember the error message I saw, since I tossed out the idea of having the monitor being an object. I do beg your forgiveness for my ignorance. I am usually very good with any kind of scripting and I tend to jump straight into a new engine thinking I can command it right away.

But since I'm here now and I got a few replies, I've been looking around for random scripts, but I can't find what I'm looking for anywhere in the forums. I would like to make a few NPC's walk randomly  around a room. Another thing... if my character changes to a top-down birds-eye view, I need to offset the walkable areas, because he only walks based on the bottom of the sprite (usually the feet). I know its a lot to ask for help on these, but I do try to find answers. It's just that I have not been able to and I don't want to be a pest asking random questions everywhere.

I have a problem with one section of my game. Eddie turns to his computer to check his emails, the monitor can be seen to switch on while he is online and then switches off when he turns the monitor off. Now...

1. First attempt to try this to work was to create a single image of the room, make an object invisible on it (the overlay for the monitor) so that when Eddie switches it on the object is shown, initially invisible. Since this action is only done once in the game, I have the object removed from the room. The problem is that when I interact with the monitor, I get a script error. I am sure I'm not doing it correctly, but I haven't found a solution in the forums so far. Basically, I want an object to show itself in the room (which is located over a room hotspot, where the initial interactions are run), then disappear once the scipt for the interaction is complete. I have added a conditional loop to not have this happen a second time, so I can discard this object after this interaction.

2. Second attempt to do this is to create the same image for the room, only in the second image I have the monitor turned on. Question: without animating the room, is there a way I can swap the room image from the original, to the monitor on image and back again? While I'm on this subject, is there any way I can place images in a room as overlays using the same interactions? Like non-object animated sprites.

Any help on this is much appreciated.

It sounds interesting, but I could neither link to the RAR or save target as. It just sends me to the file server without info on the file.

I'm just a newbie with AGS, but I've been doing graphics since Jesus was a baby. I do have one suggestion though. I use antialiased sprites all the time and I import them as PNG images, originally with transparent backgrounds. Before I did this, most of the images I made with the default magenta background... only to find when they antialias, they have a pinkish line around them. I did the same using black as a background and ended up with a dark line around them. I guess when AGS antialiases the sprites, it uses the soft edge from the background of the sprites. I could be wrong, but in my opinion PNG images with transparency and pallette index 0 work best for this effect, though the game will probably bloat a little in size and performance on older machines.

I only just joined this forum yesterday and I had mentioned about Mean Streets. Yes, I've seen the Mean Streets remake Tex Murphy: Oveseer and it is quite a good remake, except they took away the flight sim. I am still a great fan of the series, but I perticularly like the first two and the fact that they can be both remade in AGS quite easily. I should have read up here to tell people about my plan to make a total conversion of the classic Mean Streets.

Thanks for the warm welcome, thanks Nikolas for that complement and thanks to Colossus for moving this to the correct area. I'm glad to see that forum moderators are on the ball here. I've been a member of too many forums that don't know how to run them. I would like to show off some of my music, but I can't even seem to get my avatar woking. Perhaps in time I will.

[This is me BTW... sorry if I'm breaking any rules.]

I just wanted to say g'day to everyone here. I'm pushing 40 and I've been a PC geek since I was 13. I have composed music since that time both using the PC and real instruments. I have also helped in the production for a few games in the past, but I have since lost track of where they have gone. (Stupid me for not keeping a proper portfolio.  ) At the moment, I have been (re)composing music for 2 games. One is a Pipe Mania style game and the other is a retro remake of Moon Patrol. Both can be found at http://www.shinobis-place.de//Page_neu/Templates/index.html This is me BTW... sorry if I'm breaking any rules.Anyway... I've had AGS since around 2.0 and have been updating regularly. I'm not a whiz at scripting, but I know a few things. I've not yet completed a game, although I've started and erased over a dozen projects due to either work commitments or lack of interest. The main reason is because I keep finding other game engines and try to make a game with each one, but I keep coming back to AGS because it's simple, the functions are well organised and the games always worked on every platform I've tried them on. (Also, the engine never crashes like some so-called big commercial engines, which I won't name here.) One of these days I might actually finish one game. I do have one idea for a remake, although a far superior one has been done. I refer to Tex Murphy: Overseer, which waqs a remake of an old point-and-click adventure called Mean Streets. I have the latter PC version which works poorly on Windows XP, but runs okay without sound. It is a fairly crappy game for most people, but I enjoyed it. I wish to ATTEMPT to remake this game using AGS. The scripting was fairly simple and the graphics stunk, so I'm sure I can make it better.I'm also happy to have joined this forum and I just wanted to give everybody a head's up and share the fact that I am quite a talker and typist. I just hope I don't bother or bore people with that. Now to the main point of the post... g'day.    I don't have mIRC, Yahoo, MSN or ICQ... only Skype, because I use it for conference calls with clients. I run my own Interactive Multimedia business. Anyway... that's way more than I wanted to share in one post, because I would run out of things to say later. Nah... that can never happen... Here are my PC specs:
AMD Athlon 1.91GHz
1024 DDR RAM 400MHz
128MB ATI Sapphire Radeon Atlantis
5.1 Sound Blaster Live!
512 DSL