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I've been roaming all around the forums, tutorials, manual and the tutorial vids on Youtube but I can't find an answer to what I'm looking for.

There's two problems actually, both regarding cutscenes:

1. I want my game to start off with a cutscene sequence not involving any of the views/character animations loaded into the game, but instead using images (.png, . jpg) perhaps AVI movies and text overlays over the images. The images in mind will be 800x600 pixels, and should be able to be scrolled either up/dow or sideways if larger.

This should then in the end of the cutscene/intro bring the player to the starting point of the game.

2. Then in the second room, there will be another cutscene triggered, the player gets into a cutscene conversation with an NPC and is told to bring it something. This cutscene WILL have to make use of the regular views loaded into the game.

When the player leaves the room to get it, the npc should have switched view to a sitting-view.

How would I go about creating cutscenes like in the two above, should I have to create new rooms for each cutscene or what?

I'm looking to know the actual cutscene scripting, as I already have scripted all the conversation and movement and such between the characters.

[edit by darth]

Wow  :o I love how this looks. If you don't mind me saying the only thing I don't find fitting with the overall beautiful design of the game are the stats.

What about making it graphic instead of coloured text, I mean, everything is so beautiful, the menu, the backgrounds the character, even if you say they are not finished yet.

It doesn't seem to go with the graphic quality this game has,
I hope you don't mind my noob critics

Good luck!!

Well said, I want some kind of bars in the end, along with visible numbers, but for now, the text shown will have to do. I'm concentrating on the first 4 areas right now, trying to finish all the cutscenes, scripting and stuff, to see what a test portion of it will look like. The GUIs visible in the previews are also likely to change in both appearance, size  and location on the screen.

But thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it!

This is looking fab, Shockbolt. Is this your first game? Congrats and good luck to you!

Cheers,
Sparky.

I've been part of other pc games before, but this is the first stand-alone game I've created.

http:\\www.torpia.com

and

http:\\www.xhodon.de

Two strategy\fantasy browser games I've helped creating graphics for.

lol The littl' guy looks so cute with this mushroom on his head. Looks great! From your description I assume you're making something like Quest for Glory. I hope the story is as good as those screenshots up there look

Thanks
It's a character I once created for a comicbook series that I never got around finishing, his name is Shrooms. I'm not quite sure what I'd call this game but it will be both similar to the kings quest games and quest for glory and a bit of "free-roaming adventure\rpg".

The main story for this (first of many?) game has been nailed down, working on the spice: the side quests now.

edit by darth - combined triple-post into one!  No need to make a separate post for each quote

Thanks people for the encouraging and nice words! I've finished scripting the main story and by the looks of it, I will be able to begin on the intro cutscenes, and be able to finish the rest of the walk views today. Might even be able to finish the graphics for the other GUIs.

I'm also getting some help from my brother, creating the ambient music, and the music for special locations and happenings in the game.

I'll post more "teasers" and previews when I have some

The scenes seen above are from the beginning of the game, and it currently lacks mainly the cutscenes showing how Shrooms (the little dude there) ended up where he did etc.
I'm doing some research into creating cutscenes now, so when I get the hang of that, I'll create a few of them for the preview and post the download URL for it here. It'll prob take me a week or two since I got loads of illustration work to finish these days.

And I'm already looking into scripting the story to create an Eye of the beholder type of game. I just can't believe I found this software, it's like a little piece of heaven

So I finally found a software that would allow me to create a quest for glory / kings quest game , just the way I want it to be!
I started learning myself scripting last weekend and I started creating the graphics for my game yesterday.

The game will be part adventure, part rpg and will be a quest type of game but also the player will be able to roam free to gather components and to take on many lesser quests.
The main portion of the game will revolve around the player being able to gather components, and with these, create all sorts of spells, items or whatever the npc asks to have created. Leveling up allows for better equipment, and to produce more advanced stuff. The game will have several stats such as hunger, fatigue, health and so on but there will be little direct combat. Instead the outcome will be based on many factors such as use of correct items, keeping Your fingers out of dark holes, brambles etc that will might and in many cases will cause damage to the player. If too fatigued, the character will simply refuse to walk along, and might even take a nap Which again might cause the player to forfeit a timebased quest.

Resolution will be 800 x 600 , with many planned panoramic rooms.

There will be different seasons and a day/night cycle, thus allowing for variations in both play and objects in each scene.

The graphics seen below might and will change before the game is completed.

I'm currently creating the walking animations in PS CS 2.0, and I've included one example below, along with my mouse cursors and some screenshots:









Panoramic view that the player will see pretty early in the game.


Update (5th. April 2009);
Remodelled the GUIs and I've sketched the map and scenes.
Painted one of the crafting areas today, a preview of it can be seen here:

It should be noted that this tutorial is really old and wasn't exactly perfect when it was published, either (sorry Gord).
You did a good job of adapting it to current script though.

For reference: String.Format returns the first parameter with the following ones inserted. So it is exclusively used to the right of a "=" or as parameter of another function.

Thanks! a few days of studying code scripting for the first time can do wonders.
I just wish the manual would give more obvious examples as to what the more advanced commands do (going further than what's seen in the tutorial(s), examples that
are related to adventure games. Cuz frankly, it's a "hell" trying to imagine what the commands do, and which commands fit together and are appropriate for what You want to do.

That said, I think I've learned alot of what I need for my games just by visiting this forum for the last few days, and I guess I'll post some of the stuff I've made so far, if there's an appropriate thread for that in here somewhere.

Well...I'm just curious to learn what a Verb coin is actually. Could anyone please tell?

Well...I'm stumbling along after a computercrash last night which ruined my progress so far with my game..
Starting all over again is so fun

I've been going through the tutorials, manual, forum and other websites such as:

http://www.geocities.com/akk13us/rpg-tuto.htm

My problem is that I want my adventure/rpg to have a handful of stats that can be affected all over the gameworld.
These are : Alchemy, Coins, Fatigue and Hunger.
These should be GlobalInt's and be constantly updated and shown in the GUI 0 : gStatusline.

Lets focus on just one of the stats: Alchemy, as I'll be able to cope with the others based on the help I'll get with that one.

in GUI 0 : gStatusline , I've made two labels : label 1 shows text "Alchemypoints:" , label 2 shows "..."

In the Global variables I've defined : "myAlchemypoints" "int" and the initial value of "5"

The problem appears when I test my game using these codes in the rep_ex :

  String Alchemy;
  String.Format(Alchemy, "%d", myAlchemypoint);
  Label.Text(0, 2, Alchemy);

The error message I get is:
GlobalScript.asc(62): Error (line 62): must have an instance of the struct to access a non-static member


Whatr am I doing wrong here?

------
Edit:

I actually found out myself in a reply that had escaped me in the first searches:

LabelAlchemy.Text=String.Format("Alchemypoints: %d", myAlchemypoint);

-------

Problem solved

There's a function called repeatedly_execute() in the global script that is called 40 times per second (40 is the default value, the current setting can be obtained using GetGameSpeed()).

You'd use a variable to count minutes:

Code: ags

// above rep_ex

int timer, minutes; // declare two variables, intial value is 0

// inside rep_ex

  timer++;
  if (timer == GetGameSpeed()*60) {   // one minute of real-time has passed
    minutes++;  // increase minute counter
    timer = 0;    // reset timer

    if (minutes%20 == 0) SwitchDayNight();  // cull custom function that handles day/night

    if (minutes == 60*4) {  // four hours of real-time have passed
      AdvanceSeason();   // call custom function that advances to next season
      minutes = 0;  // reset minutes
    }
  }

Thank You! Simply amazing, I don't know if I'll ever be able to do stuff like that.
I mean, my brain hurts just by looking at the codes above, trying to understand how on earth one is able to understand and know when to put everything together
and make stuff work like You want it to. *sighs*

AGS allows up to five background frames for each room; instead of using them for constantly animating the background, you can switch between them, so that's how I'd go about having four seasons in each room.

The best way to accomplish a day-night-cycle depends on how sophisticated you want it to look.
A very easy way is to use a semi-transparent, black (or slightly bluish), non-clickable GUI.

If you want to use different background images for day & night, you have to use two rooms per location (since you'd need 8 background frames then).

The technical side is comparatively easy; each room has a before fadein event, in there you'd check the current season (stored in a global variable), then change the room background accordingly.

Thanks, but what if I wanted the game itself to handle the transitions between seasons and day/night, by how much real-time You're spending in the game:

For example 20 minutes in realtime would be the lenght of the day or night in the game, 4 hours in realtime would be the lenght of one season (I might end up using just summer/winter for the first version of the game)


I seem to remember that in the Quest for Glory 1 game, day and night occured on a regular basis.

How would one go about, creating a game having a code that changed day into night and the other way around, and also having something that would allow for the game to change seasons (summer, autumn, winter, spring)?

The scenes will change accordingly to the above, and the player should be able to have an option to sleep/rest to speed things up.

I've gone through the tutorials, read up on several website (with old codes that don't help me much now)
I'm reading the manual now, but for a graphic artist, it's mighty tough to understand how it all fits together. I mean, I could aswell have been studying advanced chinese, I don't think it'd be much more difficult than this

[InvAmount.Init(int font, int invGUI_bg, InvWindow*InvWin);]

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/InvAmount.scm.doc

Download, remove .doc, import it.

InvAmount.Init(int font, int invGUI_bg, InvWindow*InvWin);

Must be called in game_start.
Font used to display amount, background color of Inventory Window, used InvWindow (e.g. the default is invCustomInv).

InvAmount.SetGraphic(InventoryItem*item, int slot);

Used to change the current inventory item's graphic used by the module.
I used this to move the graphic slightly to the left while a number was displayed in the bottom right.

InvAmount.AddInv(Character*who, InventoryItem*item, int amount);
InvAmount.LoseInv(Character*who, InventoryItem*item, int amount);

Character who gains/loses amount items.
LoseInv handles amounts above current possession.

NOTE: Currently, the module doesn't display "1" if the player has just one item.

Downloaded script, imported into scripts section and added the codes You suggested above, but still I get an error message when I try to test the game:

GlobalScript.asc(54): Error (line 54): static non-property access: internal error


Here You see the codes I have now:

// Called when the game starts, before the first room is loaded
function game_start() {   

  InvAmount.Init(int font, int invGUI_bg, InvWindow*InvWin);
  InvAmount.SetGraphic(InventoryItem*item, int slot);
  InvAmount.AddInv(Character*who, InventoryItem*item, int amount);
  InvAmount.LoseInv(Character*who, InventoryItem*item, int amount);

  // Put the code all in a function and then just call the function.
  // It saves cluttering up places like game_start.
  initialize_control_panel();
  // Use the KeyboardMovement module to, per default, replicate the standard
  // keyboard movement of most Sierra games. See KeyboardMovement.txt for more info
KeyboardMovement.SetMode(eKeyboardMovement_Tapping);

I'm having the same type of problem and I still can't resolve it from the codes above.

I want to learn how to take an item from the inventory and use it to open up or manipulate something on the screen.
When I use Your codes and change the names to what I have on my screen, I still get an error message saying:
room1.asc(44): Error (line 44): undefined symbol 'Keyhole1_unlocked'

I have a silver key - iKey in my inventory and a hotspot - hKeyhole1 that I want to use the key to open up, then be able to either search what's inside or have the character climb inside/be transferred to another screen by choice of entering the hole.

Here's what I wrote instead fo what You wrote in the code above:

function hKeyhole1_UseInv() {
  if (player.ActiveInventory == iKey) {
    if (!Keyhole1_unlocked) {
      Keyhole1_unlocked = true;
      Display("You unlock the rock using the silver key.");
    }
    else Display("Why would you lock it?");
  }
  else Display(String.Format("You want to put the %s on the rock but reconsider.", player.ActiveInventory.Name));