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To give you some background on how to make your mask usable with GIMP:

The image you provided the link for is in RGB to begin with.
So you need to change it to indexed. (Clicking: Image>Mode>Indexed)

Even if you choose 256 colors it automatically runs down the colormap to the colors present in the image (2 colors in your image).
So to fix this afterwards I create a new colormap (Colors>Map>Set Colormap) which includes exactly 256 colors. I pick one out of the list which includes a lot of different colors.

Now I also want black to be the transparent background color. AGS uses the color with ID 0 as transparency.
So I open the color map (Windows>Dockable Dialogs>Colormap), right click it and select Rearrange Colormap...
Now I move the black color to position 0, and the colors I want to use to positions 1-15 on the palette. Those are the colors AGS is going to use for Walkable Areas 1-15 (and that you should use to draw the walkable areas, obviously).

That's how you make it usable for AGS.
Note that when you export a mask from AGS and then import it into GIMP, GIMP should never change the color format without asking you.
So you probably changed some settings that made it not work in the first place. Otherwise you could have just exported and used it in AGS.

Also when exporting the image to a new name you have to make sure that both "Run Length-Encoded" and "Do not write color space information" are not selected in the pop-up window.

AGS is very sensitive as to what it accepts to import masks, so I hope that gives you a better overview on how to use GIMP for that

I've been thinking of a story, some puzzles and did about half the art, does anyone want to do the music? It's about an little angel in heaven that just wants to sleep (not revealing more to keep it interesting).

I don't have a synthesizer with me, but I could do you some recordings of some tunes and ballads on my guitar.
If you're interested you can tell me more about it via PM and I could show you what the guitar music would sound like.
I don't plan on submitting this month so that would work for me.

If the comment contains a quote or code part, then you can edit and save it however you want, using the lower modify button. For first try.

It seems to be part of AGS's Design.
After more than two years using AGS I still discovered some tiny buttons and boxes than can be quite useful.

Thanks Shadow1000, I'm really glad you enjoyed the debugged version!

For the fun's sake of everyone playing here's the debugged version:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2428-fatman-the-survival-tale-of-jim-woods-demo/

I removed the glitches (nothing else changed), so you can just have fun till the end even if you need a few attempts!

JackPutter,

Spoiler

I appreciate your feedback.
Regarding the bats, you cannot swing your sword at it after it attacked you...but maybe there is something else you can do to loose the bat?

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Thanks for explaining it, heltenjon!
Well done for surviving every level!
You must have been singing "I'm still standing!" when reaching the end!

Shadow1000

Spoiler

I read what you said and I just checked it out and it's actually another bug.
You already play the debugged version, don't worry.
But when you die you should always restart in the same room where you died and not at the very beginning.
I see that this doesn't work when you play from the very beginning, and I didn't really have to time to test it thoroughly enough, I mostly only tested every room by itself.
I fixed it now, let's see if it's good to post here.

I really appreciate your feedback though, so I sent you a fixed version to your inbox! Just so you can have some fun playing it to the end!

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Stupot

Spoiler

Hi Stupot.
I noticed from some feedback that there are some bugs that when the character is killed off he does not restart from the beginning of the current level, but the player is forced to start from the beginning or restart the game when it bugs.
So I fixed it.
I created a game profile of the game on this website in the meantime.
Is that considered an official bug for re-post, so I can post the link?
Else I wait for after voting deadline I don't mind, it's just for fun anyways

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Shadow1000:

Spoiler

For some clarification of problems you described:
The character speech is probably quite small to read everything, but as Fatman says, in the bat cave you only fight the male bats (the ones with a slightly blue dot on the front). The others don't attack.

Have you played the debugged version of the game?
Just so you understand, you have to take ALL 5 lifes from the dragon to beat him, that's probably why you weren't able to do it.

There is some good stuff coming after the dragon!

And you're right, it's better if the autosave is after the tutorial in a future version of the game.

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example 2link

So to start off with a VERY serious contribution:

deleted

If someone can tell me how easy it was to walk to the place that starts level 2 in Fatman, I'd appreciate it.


Here my short game reviews:

The Mind:

Spoiler

The dog was really cute.
Turning a card game into a computer game is not exciting enough for me personally.
A simple card game is best played in real life, imo.
But all elements were nicely animated (coins, hearts, etc.).

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Barn Runner:

Spoiler

Aw, man, so much dialogue!
I guess I'm more the action type, rather than the talking type, when it comes to games.
However the facial expressions were nice during the conversation.
Expressive and engaging.

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Brothers and Wreckers:

Spoiler

Real fun and action loaded game play!
Well made with all the different elements!
Attackers from above, from the ground! You need to jump!
Very fun game!
Would have liked to play a little longer!

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Dangerous Derek's Livestream:

Spoiler

Very original idea!
Also the Menu which is a youtube thumbnail!
The Sponsor ads that are appearing are very unexpected and it's funny because of that!
The ads were a little bit long though, and that took a little fun out of it after the first ad.
They were a little bit over-realistic.
Maybe there could have been a few more jokes worked into the ads? (I noticed the Suud-VPN reference which was fun)

Other than that it's a big improvement to the previous game, with several rooms, cool loading symbol while the room is loaded, the people are talking and with a more complex story line. Funny joke at the office door.

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Whack-A-Soul

Spoiler

It had me laughing several times.
It has several differentiated levels.
Very funny and clever speech.
Both death's speech lines and the souls were so funny!
Beautiful Menu Guis.
Very well done!
This game was definitely my favorite of all the games I just played!

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Example one
link

I hope this has not been mentioned before, I did not find it mentioned in this forum when looking for it.

When you modify your comment and add just a word, or sometimes a small sentence, and then click on Save, you can't do it and instead the message appears:

"The body of the message has been left empty" and that's regardless of how long your message actually is.

And then I somehow try to work around it by cutting out and re-pasting passages, or writing some random stuff and then deleting it,and then sometimes it works.
Or sometimes I go back and click on the modify button of the comment again, and the second time it might work better.

It's not really reliable and doesn't always work when you do small editings.

I'm really happy about this improvement! This has been bugging me for a while.
Thanks

Yeah I get it.

I've seen you have three of your games listed on this web site.
I'm gonna check them out when I get to it.

Yeah... seems more intuitive that way!

[Edit:]

No, you can't really do that, because if the sound is normalized to -0.3 dB it's already (almost) as loud as it can get without clipping.

Oh yes, I got that wrong.
I probably confused normalizing with mixing somewhere in there.

Edit: Or there's the zero-coding approach: instead of playing all sounds at 100% volume by default, set the default volume to 50% and use that as your baseline for the audio mixing, which gives you room to boost the volume of particular clips if you need.

That's a really great idea! Something I can implement right away, which will give me the playroom I need. It's good practice in pre-mastering to set all audio to -6dB to create more playroom for mastering, so setting the volume to 50% (depending on how AGS works with volume, if that's half the energy level, it would mean to -3dB) would do almost exactly that!
Thanks for the idea!

I'm not sure exactly what method you're referring to, but it would be possible to make it so that turning the volume of one sound above 100 actually just automatically reduces the volume of all the other sounds. [...] (so now Volume:50 is 50/120, or 0.42 of max).

That's exactly what I would be looking for.

You could object that this would suddenly make the volume of other things go down in the middle of the game

I would envision a module like that to register the maximum value used in the entire game from the very beginning on, and adjusting all audio right from the beginning to it.
Or maybe you can feed the module the maximum value manually with a function after you "mastered" all audio files, so all volume is correctly adjusted constantly.

Given the dampened enthusiasm I received for this suggestion I expect I will have to create this module myself.
Your module proposal, would it be possible using only standard channel functions, such as they are mentioned e.g. in the manual?
If I wanted to create the same thing, but so that you can actually change the default volume value of the audio file to more than 100 directly in it's property grid, would I have to learn how to create plugins?
Just theoretically, if I wanted to add a function that is able to read the actual dB level of the audio file in AGS, it would be over a plugin as well, correct?


Crimson Wizard,

It's one item of your checklist exactly.
When I imported the DynamicSprite from existing sprite I did not check preserveAlphaChannel as true.
That's the reason it did not work.
I assume you won't need too much information anymore.
But just a few details:
1-3: Check! Yes for all.
5:3.5.0.23
6: yes, on object.

For drawingsurface:
I created Basesurface from Dynamic Sprite, which was created from sprite 1.
Then I drew unto Basesurface the DrawingSurface called Imagesurface, which I created from a DynamicSprite, which again was created from Sprite 22. The original sprite 22 contained half transparent parts, so I did not add an additional alpha channel.

If you're for any reason still curious I can obviously tell you more.
That makes this part of the thread  possibly more suited for Beginner's Technical.
But I really thank you for your help!

One of the options here is to actually assign a sprite ID to the room frame(s) and its masks. And maybe even handle these as regular sprites internally. Then everything will just go through DrawImage with no need to have duplicate methods.

Sounds great! And useful

Sorry, if there's more to discuss about the volume function, no problem, I thought it was generally considered not important.

With back to topic I meant drawingsurfaces.
Remarks like 'brat' made me doubt the constructive intent of the previous comments regarding volume.

OK, back to volume then:

I was not discussing adding an audio mixer to AGS Cassiebsg, so people with auditory impairment will still have to do the mixing externally. It's unrelated to my suggestion.

If you normalized your audio to - 0.3dB maximum volume and adjusted all audio to that volume, it can still happen that when all the sound is mixed together, there are sounds that are not loud enough when played together with the other sounds. Depending on the frequencies and nature of the sound, some sounds sound completely clear and fine when played by themselves, but when mixed together with other sounds of the same volume, they get completely covered up. And then you would have to make all the other sounds more quiet, instead of simply turning that one sound up. Or obviously instead of doing that you will just turn the volume up in the audio editor, export and re-import it. But you will have to guess the right volume. And if you guessed wrong, do the entire process again. Or you turn the volume too loud in the audio editor just to be safe (which might cause clipping).Or you try to recreate the complete audio scene with all sounds in the audio editor. And do that for every sound that is not right. That again sounds like a lot of work to me compared to having an inbuilt volume up.
And honestly, if you create something really new and you're being really creative, you don't know from the beginning what you're going to create. And you might add audio incrementally, and it will improve your creative process this way, and the end result will be better if you have an organic creative process. And for that process a volume up would be useful.

Sure, of course you need good enough loudspeakers to use your ears as judgement, Laura.

Wouldn't it be possible to use the same method as for turning the volume down in channels?

Right...
You guys done yet?
I know it's a rough time for all of us at the moment, but could we go back to topic?
No one's holding you back to adjust your audio the way you want in case you didn't notice. You can do whatever you want. Do your - 0.3db thing. Be happy. It's fine. I'm not agitated, I don't know why you are.

You do not need a volume unit meter obviously, and that would be a terrible and artificial way to adjust your audio.

Oh ok, so I guess decades and decades of every single audio mixer and audio app having visible volume levels for reference is just a "terrible and artificial way" to do things.

It seemed like you were talking about actual real life metal VU meters. In-app volume meters are useful obviously.
Best meter is still your ear.