Messages

I be looking for a writist.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=35358.msg505683#msg505683

[Corr, this game making lark's tougher than it seems, innit?]

Corr, this game making lark's tougher than it seems, innit?

Well, another five months, another update.

Here's what's been happening...
Way back when, I was working on the game happily and (fairly) productively, until it got to the point of writing dialogue.
I found it really tough to write anything halfway decent, so I decided to take a break, do something else for a while, and come back to the game fresh and full of new ideas.
Then I kinda... forgot to come back.

Jump forward to the now, and I finally got back to working on it again a couple of days ago, but I still suck at writing dialogue.
I replayed the old demo to see how I used to do it, and it just felt really weird to be playing it.
It seems like a decade ago that I made that, and I almost can't believe that I made it.
I can kinda remember doing it, but it feels so distant.
It creeped me out.

Aaaanyway, I'm back, and I'm asking for help.
I'm looking for somebody to help me write some decent dialogue.
You don't have to be a fan of the show, just able to write better than I, which shouldn't exclude anybody beyond the age of three.

I realise that my track record may not inspire confidence, but believe me, I really do want to finish this project, and the more help I get, the easier (and quicker) it will be to realise this goal.

Help me [your name here], you're my only hope!

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Smeg and the Heads
Arthur Hodgson and the Kneecaps
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Josie and the Pussycats
Jem and the Holograms
Jimbo and the Jet Set
Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors
Jason and the Argonauts
Harry and the Hendersons
Nina and the Neurons
Duke Fame and the Fame Throwers
Speedy Service and the Little Tokyo Felines
Brendon Poppins and the Chimney Sweeps
B-B-B-Benny and the Jets
Captain Planet and the Planeteers
Dogtanian and the Muskahounds
Rude Dog and the Dweebs
or
Reg Trademark and the Impending Lawsuits

I did think of a load more, but as soon as I started typing I forgot them all.

My guess is that you're using low-res coordinates in a high-res game.
Your character is being drawn off-screen.

Try halving the optional x and y (i.e. if you want your guy at 400,200 put in 200,100 instead).

If that works, there's an option in the game settings window that you need to change.
Can't remember what it's called off-hand, but you'll know it when you see it.

right now we're interested in keeping it to the Stickam/TokBox regulars because we already all know eachother.

Yeah, I got that.
You can relax, you don't have to worry about me showing up.

Okay, cool. Thanks again.

One final question: is there a way to allow apostrophes with this method, maybe by their ASCII number or something?
Typing namestring.Chars[] == ''' doesn't work, for obvious reasons.

So, this is like Brittens but on a smaller scale?
It's like mini-Brittens, so you should call it Mittens!

Wait, that wouldn't work. It's such a silly name.

Aaaanyway...
Is anyone going to end up being at Mittens, Brittens and Stickittens?
And maybe Lapaset, too?

You need to use a "if (namestring.IndexOf(".") >= 0" check to get the behaviour you want.

I actually knew that.
I've used it properly elsewhere in the script, I just forgot with this one, I guess.

Anyway, rather than having a list of punctuation characters that you want to ban, it's simpler to define a list of safe characters that you want to allow -- eg. A-Z and a space.

How would I do that though?
Using the new method of warning the player to change their name rather than just changing it automatically for them with potentially disastrous results, how can I write an if namestring contains characters other than these, display this clause?

What do you mean? Why do you need to use EndsWith?

Ignore that.
I was going to have something like...
if (namestring.EndsWith(".") || namestring.EndsWith("!")) namestring=namestring.Truncate(namestring.Length - 1);
But I changed my mind.


Thanks again for the help.
I realise I must be tedious asking so many stupid questions that most people would probably be able to figure out on their own.

Was this Swordwielder or Goldies problem?

Yes.

You keep an elephant in your pants?

You're damn skippy, I do!

I keep losing mine.

No comment.

I like Lost... 

I like turtles.

Okay, scratch that.
I've opted for a different approach now, with this...

if (namestring.Contains(".")) Display("Please only use letters from the alphabet.");

Surprisingly (to me), that one example of a "." catches any and all punctuation or numbers in the string.

However, this also includes spaces and hyphens, and I'd really rather it didn't.
Is there a way around this, or is it very much an all-or-nothing deal?

I only do magic to pick up girls.
I'm not a weirdo.

getting a snake out of your trousers is not magic 

But making an elephant appear out of nowhere is.

/thread

Does christianity disapprove humor?

Does the Pope shit in the woods?

http://thru-you.com/

I really dig this kind of stuff.
I just wish I had enough patience to sit through hours of footage looking for, and then organising clips to have a go at it myself.

See also: Pogo and Lasse Gjertsen.

Use two Substring calls to get the left and the right parts of the string either side of the character you want to remove, then join them back together.

Thanks, CJ.
To that end I now have...

Code: ags

String NixCharacter (int characterIndex)
{
  int e = namestring.Length;
  String namestringend = namestring.Substring(characterIndex + 1, e);
  namestring = namestring.Truncate(characterIndex);
  namestring = namestring.Append(namestringend);
  return namestring;
}

//main code
   namestring = namestring.LowerCase();
   namestring = CapitaliseLetter(0);
   int i = 0;
   while (i < namestring.Length)
   {
     if (namestring.Chars[i] == ' ' || namestring.Chars[i] == '-') {
       if (namestring.Chars[i+1] == ' ' || namestring.Chars[i+1] == '-') {namestring = NixCharacter(i); i--;}
       else {namestring = CapitaliseLetter(i + 1);}
     else if (namestring.Chars[i] > '0' && namestring.Chars[i] < '9') {namestring = NixCharacter(i); i--;}
     i++;
   }

Is there a way to set up a "catch all" for punctuation, like how the >0 & <9 works for numbers, without having to put them all in separately?

Also, whereabouts should I put the if Sting.EndsWith code?
It doesn't seem to want to work wherever I try to put it.

I only do magic to pick up girls.
I'm not a weirdo.

If you mean actually beneath (through) the Gui, simply put if (GUI.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y)==null) in your cursor switching code.

If you mean anywhere on the screen when the Gui's open, then make a custom bool variable called something like isguiopen, then put if (isguiopen==false) in your cursor switching code, isguiopen=true in the code when you open the Guis and isguiopen=false when you close them.

At least, that's how I does it.

Thanks for the help, guys.

I finally got the chance to get back to this, and after a bit of tweaking the code that CJ posted it works great.
Here's what I ended up with, for the record.

Code: ags

String CapitaliseLetter(int characterIndex)
{
  if (characterIndex < namestring.Length)
  { 
    String namestringtemp = namestring.UpperCase();
    char capitalCharacter = namestringtemp.Chars[characterIndex];
    namestring = namestring.ReplaceCharAt(characterIndex, capitalCharacter);
  }
  return namestring;
}

function myNamePlayer()
{
 namestring=txtNameinput.Text;

 if (namestring=="") {
   SetTextWindowGUI (5);
   DisplayAtY(402, "Please enter a name before proceeding.");
   SetTextWindowGUI (16);
 }

 else {
   namestring = namestring.LowerCase();
   namestring = CapitaliseLetter(0);
   int i = 0;
   while (i < namestring.Length)
   {
     if (namestring.Chars[i] == ' ' || namestring.Chars[i] == '-') namestring = CapitaliseLetter(i + 1);
     i++;
   }

   cStephanie.Say("It's nice to meet you, %s.", namestring);
 }
}

How about the number/punctuation thing?
How do I delete characters from the string?

I got as far as...

Code: ags

if (namestring.Chars[i] > '0' && namestring.Chars[i] < '9') namestring = namestring.ReplaceCharAt(i, );

...but I don't know how to finish it.

Is there a way to say replace char with nothing, i.e. delete the character?

Thanks for the reply, but I've already read that particular manual page, and searched the forum, several times over.
It doesn't help.

I already use Sting.Contains in a couple of other places, and I know how to use String.Chars to return which character is in a certain position, but not how to return which position a certain character is in.
Or how to shift focus from that position to the following character.

And String.EndsWith is useless to me right now, as I don't know how to differentiate between characters.
Well, short of making an if statement for each letter in the alphabet and then an else to delete anything those statements don't cover.
And I assume there's an easier way than that.