Messages

This is what I have in the global script:

The values are probably wrong (keep in mind that you're positioning the top left corner of the GUI, so mouse.x-10 will have the label run through the cursor), but from the image, it doesn't look like this code runs at all (or if it does, it is overridden by some other code). Where in the global script is it, and have you confirmed that it runs?

Nice work!

I wouldn't call this pixel art, but that's just a technicality. I like your color palettes: they are bright and vivid, giving a nice cartoony look. The perspective construction in the second image is also not bad (although you've screwed up the connection between the stairs and foundation, and the house looks very shallow). Of course, there are always things to improve.

One thing that sticks out in the second screen is that you're not properly considering your light source and how shadows are cast. You have the "camera" facing the sun more or less directly, so things should be casting shadows towards us, but still the shadows of the trees go off backwards to the left. Similarly, the front of the house should be in shadow, but you have the left side lit up, as if the sun was in front of it – or as if sunlight was a kind of glowing fog. All the smaller shadows are also wrong. (If you're only thinking in 2D, it can be easy to assume that shadows should just face away from the point in the image where the sun is, but you need to keep in mind that the sun is immensely far away, and if it appears at all in your image it is not really to the left or right of anything, but behind everything.)

(On that note, you have one of the trees on the left covering the edge of the roof, even though it must be much further away.)

I also find the hatching (the lines you've drawn for shading) too rough: they look like a drawing more than a full-color image, especially the cross-hatching with two very distinct colors in for example the red foundation of the house. When you use hatching, you should be trying to convey the texture of the material, and it doesn't look to me like you're doing that, apart from on the planks to create a wood texture.

Finally, although I do like the colors, I think you would do well to think through the scenes a bit more. In the first screen, the pillars should take on the hue of the green light (the way you've airbrushed in the light actually does this a little bit to the ones behind the cone, but the others are not affected); that way they'll look more like they're part of the same room rather than Photoshopped in. In the second screen, the sun is on the horizon, but the colors of the sky and scenery look like mid-day.

Despite some imperfections, I find the style appealing and charming, and very workable for a game. Keep practicing!

Bob Vylan - "We Live Here"

I've been listening a bit to these guys in the last week or so. Not really my kind of music, but hey, you have to support people willing to speak up against Israel's ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, and the complicity of western governments and media in these crimes against humanity.

Anyway, it's a very common beginner's problem: you typed or pasted the function into the script yourself and therefore AGS doesn't know it exists.

Once AGS 4 is officially released we can hopefully put an end to this issue once and for all (as it produces warnings for unlinked event handlers).

The company that bought the site (which I will not name so as not to boost its SEO, which is what they bought) apparently has this as their business model. They'll buy a well-respected, high-traffic site in a given field (though in this case there are those who feel that the quality and integrity of the site had been going downhill for some time), pivot to some tangentially-related but easily monetized topic, and pump out content written by freelancers—or nowadays more probably AI. There may or may not still be the occasional genre-related content, but if so it will be the most low-effort stuff possible (very likely plagiarized from other sources).

You can control what parts or a room are displayed using Game.Camera, either setting Game.Camera.X and Game.Camera.Y, or using Game.Camera.SetAt(x,y). So you could for example do a check in Room_RepExec() and increment or decrement the Game.Camera.X/Y values if the mouse is close to the edge of the screen, to create a scrolling effect.

As forum members may rightly be suspicious of strange links by unknown posters, I will say that it looks legit. If it hasn't been edited after this reply, the link is to a Google Form (using Google's own URL-shortener) survey about a real adventure game in development:

Is there a way for me to delete it or should I leave it in the mods' capable hands?

If you specify which one you want deleted, a mod can do it.

TBH, I think you should just mark the game prominently with "BETA VERSION FOR TESTING" or something on the title screen, and leave it at that.

If people want to pirate your game, they will. And they'll be more likely to pirate the final version than a beta version, so putting effort into protecting that is probably wasted.

I suppose the deadline is a response to "beta testers" who just want the game for free and don't give you any feedback or play it in a timely fashion. I mean, OK, but it's going to be easy to circumvent (change the computer time). In fact, any roll-your-own copy protection will only be a minor inconvenience to anyone who wants to play the game without purchasing it.

game.text_speed is now Game.TextReadingSpeed.

The total time is also affected by Game.MinimumTextDisplayTimeMs and by Speech.DisplayPostTimeMs.

But even the OED link you shared states it is an abbreviation 

It states that it originated from an abbreviation, in the 1940s. So it's been a word for 80 years. Stupot made the point already, but a large number of words originate by abbreviation or clipping: bus, fridge, gym, memo, perk, flu, exam, taxi, deli, pub...

Dictionaries seem a little slow to catch on in this case: most do list it as a word, but often only list one or two senses (Wiktionary has six, but misses at least one).

It is

Thanks, @edmundito!

I've tried it briefly, and noticed that it doesn't properly handle '\\' or "\\". The closing quote is interpreted as escaped, so the String/character doesn't terminate.

@AGA, @tampie85: the game upload page seems to have been broken for about a month, with the last game added to the db on 20. April.

In the most general sense, a cutscene is a blocking sequence during which the player doesn't have control (except that speech can often be skipped as normal). In AGS, you create cutscenes simply by using blocking walk, speech and animation commands, or Wait() while other stuff happens. The distinction between e.g. a dialog cutscene and just a normal dialog (without dialog options) is fairly subjective.

The StartCutscene() and EndCutscene() commands mark the boundaries of a skippable cutscene. Allowing players to skip a cutscene is often good design, but in some cases you may want to have a (short) unskippable cutscene.

AGS gives you a lot for free when it comes to cutscenes, but here are some things worth considering/testing.

- During cutscenes, you typically want GUIs to be disabled and (normally) hidden. Make sure that code to pop up GUIs doesn't run while blocking (e.g. in repeatedly_execute_always). Similarly, ensure that GUIs and objects that are not supposed to display (e.g. a closeup on an inventory item) are hidden when the cutscene starts.

- In a blocking sequence, avoid short non-blocking bits in the middle, where the player gets control for a brief moment. This can cause mouse cursors and GUIs to flicker, and potentially enable unwanted interactions.

- If you have a long cutscene, it can be good practice to break it up into parts that must be skipped individually, so that a single click doesn't jump past too much. Use your best storytelling judgment, but for example switching to a different room can be a good reason for a cutscene "chapter break." Slow/lengthy sequences included for atmosphere or cinematic appeal but where no information is conveyed (such as a still image slowly fading to black) should also be separately skippable. Try to be consistent so that the result of skipping is predictable.

- When you skip a cutscene, AGS still has to run all the scripts for all the game loops until it reaches the end of the scene, just without displaying each frame or waiting between each update. Functions that do at lot of heavy processing (for example one that generates sprites dynamically) and run repeatedly during the cutscene can cause the game to freeze for a while when you try to skip it, as the engine has to run that function maybe hundreds of times before it can proceed. To avoid this, use if(Game.SkippingCutscene()) to skip heavy work that isn't needed if the frame isn't going to be displayed. For example, the Speech Bubble module does not bother to actually render speech bubbles while skipping past a cutscene.

- This is more general game design advice, but don't provide critical information only in a one-time cutscene that cannot be replayed, especially if it is skippable. If someone accidentally skips it, or is momentarily distracted, or struggles with short-term memory, or comes back to your game after a longish break, you want them to be able to proceed without having to go back and replay from an earlier point. You can either make the scene replayable, or provide the information in some other way that can be accessed later (e.g. an in-game notebook, quest log, or as dialog).

Well, I meant in terms of the debate, trying to sway people to your position.

But I really do believe that within probably a single-digit number of years, practically all professional/commercial illustrators will use generative AI as part of their toolbox, much the same way practically every film made today uses CG (even if it's just e.g. to composite in the view out the window of a scene shot on a movie set). Complete rejection will be marginalized to "arts & crafts" hobbyist work on the one side, and "fine art" for a niche, luxury clientele on the other. That's not total irrelevance, but definitely outside the mainstream.

in my option, if you're using A.I. image generators and filters you are effectively telling me you don't care about what you're creating. And if you - as the creator - don't care, then I will care even less. And if you do care...then I see no excuse for you not learning at least basic drawing skills. Even if only to share your ideas so you can collaborate with an actual artist to bring your vision to life.

I think you've got that the wrong way around. Someone using AI image generators probably does so because they only care about what they are creating, and much less about the other issues you and Limpingfish bring up (learning a skill, collaboration, providing an artist with an income, and all the ethical issues that have been mentioned).

Also, if you're not making a commercial game, the cost of actually hiring an artist to make a bunch of graphics at a living wage is out of any reasonable hobby budget. It's not a realistic option. You might hope to convince an artist to collaborate with you for free, but remember all the people asking for graphics artists to help them out back when this forum had traffic? Few were able to find what they were looking for. A longshot at best, especially as an unproven newbie. (Or maybe someone who doesn't work well with others.)

I'm not denying all the arguments against generative AI, but I don't think you're going to get anywhere telling people not to use it, when in many cases this is the way they can actually realize an idea that was previously out of reach. Because people care about what they are creating, not the broader impact.

Complete rejection is a position that renders itself irrelevant; people are just going to tune you out.

Hi!   Is there a way of making the images of the load/save screen tilted?

So, the answer is yeah, with some caveats.

To load the screenshots in the first place, you would use DynamicSprite.CreateFromSaveGame(), creating one DynamicSprite for each slot.

If you're using AGS 3.x, you would then use DynamicSprite.Rotate(). However, you can only rotate by an integer number of degrees, so if you have a particular template they need to fit (like your sample image), that may not work precisely. The positioning may be a bit fiddly, and if you need click detection to follow the outline of the images, that's also something you'll need to do manually.

In AGS 4.0, most graphical elements (Edit: but apparently not GUI Controls) have a .Rotation property, so you would (Edit: not) be able to put the DynamicSprites on Buttons (for example) and rotate those directly. The property is in floats so you can set it precisely, and the click detection will work correctly.

Actual image link:

If you are referring to the horizontal alignment, then it does not center it in the provided "max width", but (apparently) longest line's width? This makes the whole text aligned to some seemingly random horizontal point, which is not what a user would expect.

That sounds correct to me. Consider the case of a textbox that is resized to fit the text content: you don't want to center the text around the halfway point of the "max width," but around the halfway point of the actual longest line width.