Messages

I find your graphic style interesting.

Have fun making the game, I hope to have fun playing it soon .

Tony Hawk's Proving Grounds for Nintendo Wii. Never ask me to complete an action which is almost impossible to complete due to absurdly sloppy controller implementation. Anyone who has tried "Skate Checking" in this game on this console will understand what I mean. After trying for half an hour to finish a single lousy mission with this ridiculous "innovation" and wondering rather angrily whether anyone had actually playtested the game at all, I realised that it could be completed if I held the 2 controller sections at an absurdly odd angle in a completely unnatural grip I could manage that mission. Then went on to find that one of the final missions required me to beat some guy in at least 2 out of 5 things. When I beat him in 4 out of 5 but could not finish the last one, causing the game to state that I had failed the mission, I lost patience.

Neverwinter Nights 2. I breezed through the game very easily indeed. When I got to one of the final sections, I found that resting had been disabled. Considering that the strength of my party was basically fully dependant on being able to rest, the area was full of kickass enemies and I couldn't go back and restock or rest in another area despite having the item and character necessary to do so I gave up. Never before had I breezed so easily through a game only to be defeated so quickly near the end.

I'll take a look at it, sounds good. But I'm curious - how do you find MMF to be limited?

I'm actually a big fan of scripting myself, and so even if the drag-and-drop based software is "easier" to use, I'm not sure if I feel quite comfortable with that idea. Perhaps I have the impression that it's going to be more limiting - but if that's not the case, I'm more than happy to be corrected on the subject!

I guess I mean limited in the sense that you rely on Clickteam predicting what you wanted to do with it. The drag and drop interface is slightly less comfortable to me than AGS, for example, seeing as I cannot simply type in what I want done, I have to select it, but it is very intuitive with practise. I haven't had the software for very long, so I'm sure that it is me limiting the potential of the software, rather than the other way around, but sometimes when I want to achieve something I consider quite basic in the engine I feel like I have to work the long way around to get it to work.

But hey - I'm a bit of a dummy when it comes to scripting, so don't let me bum it down. I'm very happy with MMF2, even if I have yet to build a proper game in it yet.

Multimedia Fusion 2 is very nice to use, agreed, even if it is a bit limited. However, I believe there may be a way to actually write your own code to go in the engine, so perhaps it's worth checking out? Try the demo - there's a tutorial there that teaches you to program a game in under an hour, so it must be good .

As this is my first try I am kind of learning as i go so every part is a little different and I have no set style yet. I can see how that makes things look mixed.

I think this is a pretty common thing - I know I dealt with the same thing when I started trying to draw backgrounds. Keeping things small and simple is a good way to get along nicely until you settle with a style you're really comfortable with.

Again, have fun making your game

Just some... well, thinking aloud, I guess.

This feels like a very empty room that you've tried to "fill up" (composition wise) by adding in textures and lighting.

The first thing that I noticed was the perspective looking like a photo taken from the inside of a shoebox. A couple of notes about this (obviously not so bad as it is quite popular) style of room:

(before I start, let me say this is all opinion, not sourced from any art authority that makes it more accurate or effective)

-The ceiling is rarely important in a game. Or in a real life room. Rarely do I walk into a house and immediately search the ceiling. Same goes for walls and floors, really. Walls, floors and ceilings are rarely important. What they are is a boundary to contain the items within. Therefore we can speculate that tiles do not make a bathroom - hygiene related fixtures do. Heck, I once lived in a little old house with carpet on the bathroom floor. When I draw a background (these days) I try to focus less on the walls/floor/ceiling and more on the items within and exits. The trapdoor could render the ceiling important enough to show, but it still seems to take up more space than the existance of a trapdoor would justify. Drawing a ladder alone should indicate to the player where the exit is quite clearly in this situation. Seeing as there are no other exits, we can surmise that the side walls are hardly important either. A quick "sketch" on how I'd plan this manner of room:



- The lighting doesn't seem like candle light. Small suggestion: give lighting a skip for now. We can still get the idea of lighting from the colours you use within the background without you having to go out of your way to draw actual lighting. Use colours with an browny hue and we're sure to get the idea of gloomy, candle-lit-ness.

- Try using more solid brushes. Blurriness of texture at low resolution can look very odd. Use some more opacity, and don't be afraid to let us see actual brushstrokes in there!

- Keep your style unified. If you're going to use antialiasing on edges, use it on all edges. Nothing says amateur like a mix & match style! Don't be afraid of using hard edges on things that normally wouldn't have the hard edge (such as straw) - at low resolution, 1 pixel of blur can really take the definition away from an object.

I hope I've not dawdled through these thoughts at too slow a pace. Have fun making your game

Edit: I also think a lantern on the wall would look kinda cool; quick example:

x2

Watch out, Admiral Flapjack! It's your arch nemesis Professor Pan and he's on the prowl! Watch out for his face - it's sizzling hot and you'll be burnt to a crisp! Best get out of the kitchen before you're all out of butter.

Hahahah....considering this is Zero-G space, I'm envisioning magnetic butt-clencher chairs, and a computerised hand-writing recognition enabled desk-surface. Funny how many ideas you can model around the environment...

Well, it's quite unlikely that he's gonna make a zero-gravity station. Of course there must be some sort of artificial gravity. Otherwise any walkcycle would be senseless and the characters/objects had to be flying around all the time. But that's not the case here since the given characters and objects are STANDING..

So why not make a desk?

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=35458.0

Now you've made me think of (and therefore want to play) Arcanum again. I hope you're proud of yourself. 

In different news, great theme.

Is the game that bad? I've always wanted to play it an never heard of it being related to Bugs or Dead Ends. haha

Arcanum was incredibly buggy (I remember my brother once crashed the game by leveling his character up to lvl 50 ). It was also incredibly good despite a bunch of people complaining about the graphics (which were fine imo).

EDIT: Oh, and due to some cheap tricks with the map screen designed to prevent all but the most persistant and geeky players, I managed to get my character to level 50 (the level cap) in the demo. I had far too much time on my hands, obviously. An interesting note - I found many, many aspects of Arcanum quite similar to Fallout, so if you liked Fallout, it's a safe bet.

Sorry for the off-topic post

Haha RAD!

"Underland" = underful title

Killing + Capitalist + Magic Kitty = instant win!

If this is even remotely as freaky as AM's Alice, then I will be a happy comrade indeed.

I don't agree that shaded characters are harder to animate - it merely takes more time + effort. ArboriS has quite a nice feel going with his last paintover, however I have some suggestions so here is a quick paintover:

x2

-I find characters can lose the serious expression when you draw whites of their eyes
-The legs seemed at a rather awkard posture
-The boots did not look terribly boot-like
-Various other little touches

Hope this helps

Sorry, I didn't know what OROW stood for.  But I still can't see the point of trying to complete a game in one week, expect as a practice exercise.

It's a good challenge, it's fun to see what you can put together in a week, it's a competition with friends and it means that 6 months down the track you won't still be sitting on that same old game design wishing it was over and done with.

There were 12 OROW games this year and I don't think any of them had a play time of more than 15-20 minutes. Some of them (probably including my own, and at least 2 others) had playtime that was shorter than this one, and had more basic puzzles. Perhaps those games would grab you more? That's up to you. Nevertheless, for a one week game this game is definitely a good achievement.

Not meaning to gang up on you or anything, just voicing an opinion.

This has fixed the problem.

I honestly thought it was something I had done, rather than a bug in the engine. Thanks

Hey all,

I was just compiling a new build of a small test game and I got the following illegal exception:

Code: ags

---------------------------
Illegal exception
---------------------------
An exception 0xC0000005 occurred in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x00442D88 ; program pointer is +72, ACI version 3.00.1000, gtags (2,37)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and notify CJ on the Tech forum.



Most versions of Windows allow you to press Ctrl+C now to copy this entire message to the clipboard for easy reporting.

An error file CrashInfo.dmp has been created. You may be asked to upload this file when reporting this problem on the AGS Forums. (code 0)
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

This error only appeared to begin after I added a second timer in (the same error occurred in an earlier much simpler build after I added the second timer as well) so I feel this may be the issue.

I thought perhaps if I posted the bits of code that seem relevant it could help you spot this problem so:

Code: ags

function repeatedly_execute() 
  {
    if(IsTimerExpired(1) == 1){
    if (GetGlobalInt(1) == 0){
      cShip.ChangeRoom(1, 0, 0);
      cShip.Walk(160, 110, eNoBlock, eAnywhere);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
      SetGlobalInt(1, Random(3));
      SetGlobalInt(3, 1);
    }
    else if (GetGlobalInt(1) == 1){
      cShip.ChangeRoom(1, 0, 200);
      cShip.Walk(160, 110, eNoBlock, eAnywhere);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
      SetGlobalInt(1, Random(3));
      SetGlobalInt(3, 1);
    }
    else if (GetGlobalInt(1) == 2){
      cShip.ChangeRoom(1, 320, 200);
      cShip.Walk(160, 110, eNoBlock, eAnywhere);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
      SetGlobalInt(1, Random(3));
      SetGlobalInt(3, 1);
    }
    else if (GetGlobalInt(1) == 3){
      cShip.ChangeRoom(1, 320, 0);
      cShip.Walk(160, 110, eNoBlock, eAnywhere);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
      SetGlobalInt(1, Random(3));
      SetGlobalInt(3, 1);
    }
  }
  else if(IsTimerExpired(2) ==1 && GetGlobalInt(3) == 1){
    if(GetGlobalInt(2) == 0){
      cShip.Animate(4, 1, eOnce, eNoBlock);
      cHealth.LockViewFrame(3, 0, 1);
      SetGlobalInt(2, 1);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
  }
  else if(GetGlobalInt(2) == 1){
      cShip.Animate(4, 1, eOnce, eNoBlock);
      cHealth.LockViewFrame(3, 0, 2);
      SetGlobalInt(2, 2);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
  }
  else if(GetGlobalInt(2) == 2){
      cShip.Animate(4, 1, eOnce, eNoBlock);
      cHealth.LockViewFrame(3, 0, 3);
      SetGlobalInt(2, 3);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
  }
  else if(GetGlobalInt(2) == 3){
      cShip.Animate(4, 1, eOnce, eNoBlock);
      Wait(20);
      QuitGame(0);
      SetTimer(2, 45);
  }
  }
  }

function cShip_Interact()
{
  cShip.ChangeRoom(0);
  SetTimer(1, 100);
  SetGlobalInt(3, 0);
  SetTimer(2, 0);
}

If I have done something silly here and not noticed it, please point it out for me. If necessary, I will be happy to post the relevant .DMP file and/or the game source code for further investigation.

Thanks for your time

Nobody else has commented in here? For shame.

I genuinely laughed at this game. "Captain Research" and "Discovery Girl" are hilarious characters just from the names alone. The story is what we expect of Akatosh - pointing fun at itself and good for laughing. The character graphics are as lovable as those from the Me Go games and haven't gotten stale yet, and the backgrounds function enough that one can see where they are and can go .

The high point of this game for me was just clicking everything to chuckle at the response I got. Superfluos Narration Machine = brilliant. The story is horrifically brutal, unacceptably cute and hilarious at the same time.

I enjoyed this game. I would love to see Akatosh bring his background art up a notch, but considering that this game was made in a mere week, it is a splendid game indeed.

http://www.stickam.com/member/loadChatRoom.do?roomId=720845

Happy birthday Buckethead

Failing all this, if you have a little bit of money, why not consider GraphicsGale? It is super cheap (under $20) and there's a free version of it you can try to see if you like it. Best of all, it is damn simple, without lots of features that you'll never use . You might even be able to get away with just using the shareware version for a month and find that fulfills your needs .

As far as I remember, Radiowaves, unFREEz imports both .gif and .bmp files, so you should be able to save your frames as separate .bmp images and then import them in like that, should you wish to. And no, don't use paint to export .gifs, it often ruins the palette entirely

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