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[stonlinewiki.com]

So, as the title says, I'm starting up a wiki for the forthcoming game Star Trek Online. One already exists, but it seemingly has nothing to do with the game, so I may very well the first one to attempt such an undertaking. I'm thinking along the same lines of www.wowwiki.com (the World of Warcraft wiki) where they list every little detail of the game, right down to specific details about every spell, skill, item, and whatnot.

Thing is, I need some help in coming up with a domain name that is easy to remember, not that confusing, and fits in with a Star Trek Online wiki.

Here's what I have so far, divided up into those that are already taken and those that are available. The ones that are available aren't really perfect... for example, stonlinewiki.com is kind of long and may be misread in some way, while sto-wiki.com has the dreaded hyphen in the domain name that some web developers tell you to stay away from (although memory-alpha.org, the Star Trek wiki, has a hyphen and is a .org domain to boot).

Taken, So Don't Bother Suggesting It
trekwiki.com, .org
stowiki.com
startrekwiki.com
trekpedia.com, .org
stopedia.com

Available, But Not Quite "It"
stonlinewiki.com
sto-wiki.com
stowiki.net, .org
trekwiki.net
startrekwiki.net, .org
trekpedia.net
stopedia.net, .org

I was also tossing around the idea of following the "Memory ___" format. While Memory Alpha is for the main "canon" of Star Trek, Memory Beta is for the novelverse (or the Star Trek universe extended by the novels and other publications). There's even a Memory Gamma, which is dedicated to fan fiction. I was thinking a Memory Omega, for the Star Trek Online universe and information within the MMO. But I'm just not sure.

Any suggestions, or even new ideas would be wonderful!

Pretty basic. How would one define an array as a set of specific values... something like "int values[5] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5};". How would that be coded? I tried searching and came up with nothing relevant. Thanks!

[1.]

I may or may not do this again, but I decided to share with all of you the mathematical algorithms I came up with for displaying a spread of cards in a 320x200 room ("table").

First off, certain limits must be set, stored as constants (or at least as variables that you promise not to change)...

You first need to make a mock-up in Photoshop (with each card on a layer) to figure out the smallest gap between cards where the visible values on each are not obscured, as well as how many cards can fit in the width of the screen. In designing my Uno clone, I found that I could fit 20 cards in a 320-pixel space (with space to the left and right), with 12 pixels minimum between each card (where I could still see the values of all cards). I then figured out that this would take up a maximum of 275 pixels.

1. The spread of cards cannot exceed a certain width. Let's call this MW, for maximum width, in pixels (275 above).
2. Cards cannot be shown too close together, or the player will not be able to see what they show. Let's call this SG, for smallest gap, in pixels (12 above).
3. Conversely, cards shouldn't be shown too far apart, for aesthetics. Let's call this the LG, for largest gap, in pixels (in my game, it's 20).
4. You need to know the width of each card, CW, for card width (in my game, it's 47).
5. Finally, you should know at what point on the Y-axis (how far down) to show the top edge of all the cards (in my game, it's 172), called, simply, Y, for Y-axis.

A. Find the largest possible gap between cards without the total width of the shown cards to exceed MW, given the current number of cards (N).

Code: ags

SPACE = FloatToInt( (MW - CW) / (N - 1) ); // This is the inverse of the WIDTH formula in step B
if (SPACE > LG) { SPACE = LG; } // Can't go any farther apart than LG

This is the space between each card. Knowing this will allow you to draw each card, and increment the X value by this amount each time.

B. Find the starting X value for the top-left of the first (leftmost) card. Since the row of cards will be centered, you would use the usual "half of the difference between screen width and graphic width" formula, after figuring out the width, in pixels, taken up by the row of cards.

Code: ags

WIDTH = ( SPACE * (N - 1) ) + CW; // You're only adding up the gaps between each card, except for the last card, where you factor in the entire width
X = FloatToInt( (320 - W) / 2 )

C. Go through each card to be displayed. It's up to you to figure out which sprite to display, and what code to use to display each one. Start with the X value above, draw the card, then increment by SPACE, draw the card, etc. This will center the spread of cards (accurate to 1 pixel), with no less than SG between each card, and no more than LG between each card.

Below is an example of a spread of 7 cards, and then a spread of 20 cards, given my values above:





If anything is unclear or confusing, please let me know, and I will try to clear it up. I hope this helps many of you who aspire to create card games in AGS. I love math, and I absolutely love coming up with algorithms and formulas for things like this.

I'm making an Uno clone to re-acquaint myself with AGS, but I'm having trouble trying to figure out what to do with displaying cards. I wanted four players (the first of whom is the actual human Player), each with their cards spread out in front of them. For the CPU players, I wanted to show their cards, face-down, spread out in front of them (rotated so they're in front of the CPU player, each to a side of the "table").

Thing is, I would quickly go over the 40-object limit if I were to use objects for the cards. What other way can I have cards in front of each CPU player, to show how many cards they each have in front of them? I mean, sure, I can just show one card face-down with a number next to it... but still. I'd like to know if there's an alternative. Thanks!

Yes, folks, I'm back. Once again. Hopefully, for good this time.

First off, yes, I am still planning on working on By the Sword and its two prequels.

Basically what happened is my wife and I separated. In the beginning, I took it really hard and could barely function in regards to work, let alone AGS-related stuff. All production on my game ground to a halt, and I had to deal with a lot of things. We're going to get a divorce. At first, the reason was that we were just fighting way too damn much, and for the kids' sake, we were all better off if we split... then, I found out that she was cheating on me with a coworker of hers. A coworker that she had already "jokingly" called cute when she first started training there.

I'm going to skip all of the bullshit, mind games, and lies that ensued... suffice it to say that I also found out that a LOT of what she had told me over the years were all lies, and she did a lot of things behind my back, including send naked pictures of herself to an ex of hers... an ex that she had claimed all these years to have never done anything with.

She lied about having been raped at the age of 14 by her mother's boyfriend (at the time). She was telling the truth about being forced into getting an abortion by her grandparents... but only because she got pregnant from the same boyfriend as above.

Soooo many other lies and deceptions popped up, but there are too many to even remember right now.

Anyway, I've over all of it and ready to move on. To get myself back into the AGS groove, and re-acquaint myself with the program, I'm going to be making a simple little Uno clone (called "Ohno"). I don't care if it's been done before, I'm doing it and there's nothing any of you can do to stop me!

So yeah. I'm back for like the 148th time.

Found this on www.xkcd.com and thought it was relevant...



(http://www.xkcd.com/461/)

Hey guys, here is a preliminary design for a GUI for By the Sword. I sketched out the placement of the buttons and other features, and then came up with this in Photoshop:



How does it look? What things can I do to improve it? (By the way, there are no mouse-over drop-downs... they are always on the screen, the game is 800x600, and the rooms themselves will be 800x500, leaving 50-pixel-tall spaces on each the top and bottom.)

As shown above, the active button will be highlighted and the icon within turned to white instead of black. The mouse cursor will show this as well. From left to right: Walk, Look, Interact, Talk, Shoot, Inventory, Control Panel, and Info (like game info, credits, etc., like the old Sierra games had). (The gun icon is just a placeholder until I can find what will be the final design for the in-game weapon used.)

Are the icons obvious enough that players will know what they are for?

Is the font used for dialog/narration clear enough, yet still sci-fi-y enough?

After beating Quest for Glory IV again just a few minutes ago, I have to say, the ending finale music for QfG4 is perhaps one of the best fanfares ever. I'm in too much of a post-game-completion daze to remember any others, but I have to say I loved the ending music.

What other games do you guys just LOVE the ending music for? I've always thought ending music is a very, very important part of that feeling you get after beating an adventure game. You watch the ending credits/scene roll and have this sense of utter satisfaction and contentment. What say you, AGS Community?

I've been finding myself with a lot of time on my hands lately, and I've been getting that itch again... the itch, the urge to design adventure games again. I still have my pet project, By the Sword, on the backburner, and have for some time now.

I've also been playing Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle lately, and completed it just now. And no, I still can't claim that I've beaten an adventure game without cheating.

But anyway, playing Runaway 2 have just reinforced that desire to start up BtS again, but then I come to the inevitable impasse: how do I do it?

I've gone back and forth with the graphics... at first I used Poser for all 3D scenes, then I was trying to use Bryce... then I tried learning 3D Studio Max... then I toyed with the idea of hand-drawing all my background, but I honestly don't know if I can do that. I'm not a good drawer by any means, and my 3D skills are minimal at best.

Runaway and Runaway 2 used a combination of 2D and 3D graphics to create an incredibly detailed and graphically amazing environment, and I'm more than a little intimidated.

How should I proceed? Should I stick with 3D graphics? Try to hand-draw everything? Perhaps use 3D as the basis, then hand-draw over that? I'm making it a hi-res game (which has always been the plan), and that decision is definitely final. How would you guys suggest I design the game's backgrounds, objects, and characters?

I may have answered my own question with the drawn-over-3D idea, but I have a feeling there's more than that at my disposal. I've had an entire decade to refine the story and details, so that definitely isn't a problem. Am I thinking too much about the little things?

I need some guidance here. Any help would be appreciated.

This is what I have so far for a new blog idea I have:


(Click to enlarge.)

The "Diagrams" link is colored to show what a mouse-over effect would look like.

I want brutal honesty. I know I can count on the AGS community for that! Is it too plain? Too excessive? Too colorful? Not colorful enough? Too big? Too small? I mean I know it's bare right now, but it's just the beginning and I'd love feedback on how it looks so far.

Thanks guys!

[2muchinfo.info]

Hey AGSers. TerranRich here, back from a hiking trip in Siberia. Or so it seems. I've just been busy. I haven't been ignoring you! Honest! I love you, baby! No, no, please don't leave! I CAN CHANGE!!!

Ahem.

So I'm working on a web site that is basically a blog featuring interesting but random information. To give you an example, some entries would be things like "Weird Al Yankovic Song Parodies" (which would list each Weird Al song that is a parody and show what song inspired it), "Hard-to-Find Internet Retail Phone Numbers" (which would list hard-to-find toll-free phone numbers for businesses online, like eBay, Amazon, etc.), "Useful Windows Run Commands" (which would list "Run" commands that Windows users may find interesting), and "Latin Phrases in Scholarly Writing".

I already have a site called Miscellanea! (misc.xylot.net) up and running, but it is a wiki format and doesn't look very good because my MediaWiki skills aren't that great and it looks like a cookie-cutter Wikipedia site.

So you can probably tell that this site will just feature random collections of information. I also plan on including charts, diagrams, tools, etc. that people would find useful.

But the big obstacle I've come across is getting a domain for this site. 1&1 has a deal on .info domains (99 cents the first year), and I already have hosting with them, so I figured I could just add on a .info domain. And since this is in fact an informational website, a .info domain would be perfect.

My original name for the site, "2 Much Info" isn't possible in any permutation I've come across (such as 2much.info). I wanted to come up with something fairly clever, a name that ends in the word "Info". Here are some available domains I've come across:

2muchinfo.info (just for the hell of it)
miscellania.info (to keep the Miscellanea name, but change the spelling to be "unique"...and because the correct spelling is already taken)
allyour.info (as in "All Your Info)
just2much.info ("Just 2 Much Info"... I'm leaning more toward this one, I think)
way-2-much.info (don't like the hyphens, but way2much.info was taken)
chockfullof.info ("Chock Full of Info"... would this work?)
foryor.info (as in "For Your Info" but intentionally misspelled as a twist... and because, again, the correct spelling was already taken)

What do you guys think is the best one? Are there other ideas for domain names that I'm missing? A lot of .info domains are taken, so it's tough to come up with something that would be memorable and not too outlandish or long.

Crap, I forgot all about it this year! This would've been the 5th Annual Look at Future Movies, too.

Should I still do it? Does anybody really care anymore?

Is there really a God?

These questions, and more, answered soon! Check your local listings.

I didn't really know where else to post this (i.e. AGS as opposed to other forums...I don't get around much ), and since I know there are at least a few web developers out there, maybe someone can help me with this idea:

I had the idea for a CAPTCHA that has you tick checkboxes in a random, specified order. They would be arranged in a square grid, perhaps 3x3 or 4x4, like my mockup below:



The checkboxes would, of course, be blank, and the user would have to match the pattern shown on the left in order to be able to leave comments, etc. The correct "answer" is what is illustrated above.

I was trying to come up with something that would be accessible to most people, as well as hard for computer programs to crack. But as for the latter point...is it really safe? Is it too cumbersome? Complicated? Is there a possibility it might not be understood by many at first?

What do you guys think?

BTW, a CAPTCHA is one of those deals where you type in some distorted word to prove that you're human...but now it seems many of those methods might be crackable by computer programs.

Also: As a web developer, this would be very simple for me to program and make it work. What I'm wondering is how the end user would fare.

Okay, this is quite a long and weird story.

So basically one of my wife's old friends started talking to her again online. Naturally, I add her to my MySpace, and I obviously see her pictures and know what she looks like.

Fast-forward a few months later...just yesterday. I regularly browse through http://www.sxc.hu which is a free stock photography site. As such, any members can add their own photos. So, just out of boredom, I use the search term "nude" and just start browsing through the 17 pages of results. Right around page 12, I see a picture of a girl in a pose that is much the same as my wife's friend. She kinda looked like her, too. I laughed to myself and said "Hey, woudln't it be funny if her pictures were on here?"

And, of course, on the next page...there she is. Now, she was nude, but she was covering herself. So I just sit there for a few minutes, stunned speechless, something which rarely happens to me. I looked at the user that uploaded them, and the name is "Bella". So I talk to my wife about it and she says "That's weird! Bella was her nickname...we never knew why, it just was." I look on the profile, and the name given was some weird name that I'd never heard of before...not her real name.

So I talk to the friend about this and apparently the name given was her ex-boyfriend's sister, and her ex was a photographer...but she never gave permission to put the pics on a stock photography web site.

This isn't the end of this story.

On one of her pictures, somebody commented "Oh, hey you're so-and-so from deviantart.com!" I go "Whaaa?" and head over to DeviantArt.com under the username given...and there she is. Again. The bastard put up her pictures for everybody and their mother to alter ("deviate") and post. Her face (and body) are plastered all across the web.

But there's more.

One of the blog entries on the deviantart page says "Well you can see me nude at SG". I started to wonder what SG was...until I saw a link below it linking to SuicideGirls.com

Anybody ever hear of SuicideGirls? Basically, they're "punk" kinda girls posing naked. So, being the snoop I am, I head over to SG and do a search for all the aliases I've come across, including the user name "she" used at DeviantArt. Nothing popped up. So I Googled the DeviantArt user name + "SuicideGirls" and BINGO.

Apparently the friend either is a SuicideGirls model and leads a double life...or I'm going nuts. Never did she give any indication of that. My wife used to be a subscriber of SuicideGirls and loved the site...and now I'm pretty sure she'll definitely want to join again to see the 7 photo sets her friend has up.

Weird, man. Weird couple of days, I'm telling you.

I have a brand new laptop that I got for free, and it has everything that a store-bought laptop would, and it came with (yippee) Windows Vista. Thinking it woudl be a new and exciting experience, I was looking forward to using Vista.

If you consider consistent freezing (yes, the mouse cursor freezes when ONLY Firefox is open, with ONE TAB, something that hasn't happened to me since the days of Windows 95) exciting, then Vista is for you. Seriously, the damn thing freezes when I'm barely doing a fraction of what I used to do with my 4-year-old Dell Inspiron with Windows XP. I'm not about to play lemming and wait for dozens of updates to come my way. I used to run Firefox with 10+ tabs open, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and a bunch of other programs all at the same time, and my XP laptop would barely blink at me. But my Vista laptop hacks and wheezes every time I ask it to do the most basic of functions.

So what I'm thinking is...I can't relaly afford to buy another copy of Win XP, and I've had back luck with cracked/patched (illegal) versions of XP in the past... So should I consider putting Linux on it? I know it's free, and it's God's gift to nerds, etc., but should I do it? Is it a big learning curve? Is it worth it? Are there any real drawbacks?

I've gotten so used to Windows, and I've never seen a problem with it until now. I dunno, I might try getting a cracked version and seeing if that works, but I have a bunch of projects being worked on, and I can't afford much downtime.

I don't know, I just wish Vista would work right. Would it improve performance at all to set Vista so that it looks like the old Win 9x interface? Would the Aero feature realistically be slowing down my computer?

Hey all,

This is just me toying around with making a background in Photoshop for my game. I might not do hand-drawn backgrounds at all for the game...I just wanted to try it out. I kinda like the semi-final result (resized x2, originally 320x240):



It's a corner of a hallway on a ship where everybody has been killed. The smudged parts of the walls were my attempts at making the walls look more natural after applying a grain effect. I think it screams "fail", but I dunno.

Now I know that I could show different levels of brightness on the walls as a result of the lights shining down. But how is it? What can I do to make it better? Paint-overs are welcome.

[seriously]

http://www.helpmybabylive.com/

I seriously hope this is some kind of cruel, heartless joke. Read through just the main page.

Apparently they won't give the baby up for adoption because the girlfriend can't bear to part with the baby once she's given birth, but if they don't raise $50,000, they'll apparently abort the baby. So they can't part with him/her, but they can end its existence?

I'm in the middle on the whole abortion debate, but this is just seriously beyond screwed up.

I had a great idea. An idea so brilliant it reminded me of the AGS forums and inspired me to perhaps revive a project of mine that I abandoned over a year ago.

I recently came across something called Machinima after finding something called "Star Trek: Borg Wars", a movie made using Machinima. From what I can gather, it uses graphics from an existing game with 3D graphics and lets you make your own animation and 3D movies.

Basically, I had the idea that I could revive my old game By the Sword. The major thing that kept BtS from becoming a reality was the cutscenes I'd have to create. But with Machinima, I might be able to make the cutscenes for BtS, and then model the rest of the game (the actual gameplay graphics) on the cutscene graphics.

I know the Machinima site has forums, but I've become somewhat of an online hermit lately, and I'm reluctant to register on their forums, get to know the environment and the way things work, and search their forums, etc. My question is...has anyone here ever messed around with Machinima before? How easy is it to create original content?

If there's even a glimmer of hope that I could revive By the Sword and make it a possibility once again, I want to take the opportunity.

[MIGHT]

Big news, folks. Long story short, I've been with my current girlfriend for over 11 months and we plan to spend the rest of our lives together. We are not yet married, but we were planning on getting married very soon. Our love is beyond words, and therefore transcends anything I can possibly explain.

That having been said, last night I got the sudden and rather surprising news that she is pregnant.

She took three home tests and just today went to the doctor, who confirmed it. I'm gonna be a father.

A strange coincidence is that the baby's due date is right around my own birthday (May 14-20, where mine is the 18th), so that'll be strange/cool.

How am I feeling right now? LMFAO. Words can't describe that. It's like, one part of me is exhilarated beyond belief. I'm gonna be a damn father after all!

On the other hand, my parents are more or less traditional Portuguese parents, which means they cling on to old fashioned beliefs like marriage before children and being absolutely ready before even considering having kids. They let us move back in with them (they are generous), but forbade us from sharing a bedroom (old fashioned).

I have no idea how I'm going to tell them. Andrea and I were even considering getting married by the Justice of the Peace (the official way), then having the wedding ceremony when we can afford it. It's kinda weird and nontraditional, but I'm starting to think that tradition shouldn't necessarily be a requirement to live life.

The shock is only now started to fade away, slowly being replaced by desperate panic. Actually, denial was the first step. I kept saying that she MIGHT be pregnant and hoped to God that further testing would prove me right. Then there was the anger, where I was horrendously pissed off at myself (and no one else) for allowing this to happen. Then I was bargaining at my local sandwich shop to get chips for free because they were already crushed. Then there was depression when I realized that this is not going away. I think I'm in that stage right now. Hopefully acceptance will follow.

Can somebody explain why I'm going through the stages of grief Jeez, it's not a funeral or anything. But I digress.

I'm gonna be a father!

Hi all,

I was just browsing through the manual for KQ2+ VGA, ready to actually sit down and play it for more than 5 minutes, when I noticed something:

King's Quest III was the first Sierra game to include an “automagic mapping” system. This feature was widely promoted on King's Quest III's introduction... However it was not included in future King's Quest games, since players' feedback indicated that it reduced the challenge. This mapping feature was later built into Roberta Williams' Mixed-Up Mother Goose adventure game for children, where it was better appreciated.

What in the world is "automagic mapping"? Every search I do for it comes up with that passage above.