Messages

I prefer to ask a ninja.

The problem with the orcs site is that it doesn't know if it wants to be funny or not.
The girls especially seem to be treating as "serious advice, but with green make-up".

Hello people.

I'm finding it tough to come up with ideas for my game's settings panel.
Here's what it's like so far...



The icons were liberated from a free clipart site.
I don't pretend to be anything of an artist. 8)


Aaaanyway...
The sliders are self explanatory, but here's a run-down of the left side, top left -> bottom right...

Toggle music on/off, toggle arrows* on/off, restore default settings
Save game, load game, reset/restart game
Exit game, continue playing

(There's also a red circle that goes over the music icon, just like the one that's over the arrow.)


So, what do you guys think?

I can't think of anything that could visually represent "continue", and I'm not particularly happy with the "default" or "reset" icons either.
There is a separate status-line that tells you what each of the buttons do as you hover the mouse over them, but I'd really like for that to be used only as a backup; i.e. for the icons to be readable on their own.

Does anyone have any ideas that could make it more... good?
Also, how about the layout? Do you think the buttons' positions are alright, or should I shuffle them around a bit?


Thanks in advance for any input.
J.


* The game has optional arrows that can be overlaid onto the room screens to help show where the exits are, in case you were wondering.

Okay, cool.

For what it's worth, it seems to have stopped after I changed/swapped a few of my sprites' numbers.

Recently I've been getting this error report.
It happens whenever I have the sprites section open at the same time as anything else.

Every time I click the sprites tab, this shows up...

Error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Version: AGS 3.1.2.79

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
   at AGS.Editor.frmMain.FindPropertyGridItemForType(String fullTypeName)
   at AGS.Editor.frmMain.tabbedDocumentContainer1_ActiveDocumentChanged(ContentDocument newActiveDocument)
   at AGS.Editor.TabbedDocumentContainer.SetActiveDocument(ContentDocument pane, Boolean updatePaneOrder)
   at AGS.Editor.TabbedDocumentContainer.tabsPanel_MouseUp(Object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnMouseUp(MouseEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(Message& m, MouseButtons button, Int32 clicks)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

Followed by...


I've tried closing and re-launching AGS, but it still happens every time I shift focus to the sprites section from anywhere else in the editor (though not the other way around).

Any ideas?

Less porn, though.

I personally like the old ones, like pushing the key out of the lock onto the paper.
I think they've gone beyond cliché into kitsch; you know exactly what to do and what will happen, but it's still fun.
Like when a joke is so bad that it's good.

What bothers me is when you have a shitload of inventory items that will solve a particular puzzle logically but only one ridiculous solution works.  A perfect example of this is going back to the crowbar thing.  I've played so many games where you'll have 2-3 items in your inventory that could be used to pry something open (a hammer, a metal pipe, a common screwdriver), but then you need to specifically find a crowbar to do it.

This. Very much this.
And it happens all the damn time.
What makes it worse when there's no clear indication which one you're supposed to use.

Ever played Phoenix Wright?
There are several moments in that game where you've got half a dozen items of evidence, all of which point to the same conclusion in their own way, but you have to guess which one you need to use because apparantly none of the others will work.

Geek alert!

I think I got a little too carried away with this one.

That was a cool little game. Very cute. Great graphics and sound especially.

I found a bug.
First time I played it...

Spoiler

After pressing button 3 on the keypad, buttons 2 and 4 stopped working.

[close]

I tried it a few times. Saved, loaded, quit, loaded again, and it still didn't work.
I started again from the beginning, and it worked fine.

Also, I noticed the same Freudian slip at the beginning that Leon did.

Anyway, back to playing the game.

Yes, but there are no more games being made for my SNES. Or my Sega.

And there are also no more games being made that'll run on a 16kb machine with a 5¼ floppy drive.

Or even any good ones for the PS or PS2, really.

Whether they're any good or not is entirely subjective.
You could also claim that there are no good games that will run on a 5 year old PC.

I just don't see the distinction between upgrading everything in a PC but the tower, and getting a whole new machine.

If every two or three years the same company releases a newer, next generation of their console, to stay up with games, a person would have to buy them every time.

"A console costs $300-400 dollars and is good for 5 years, more or less. (Much more, in the case of PS2.) A gaming PC costs over a thousand and you start to have trouble keeping up with new games after about a year, barring constant hardware updates."
- Why PC games no longer sell

Wouldn't this make for an interesting adventure game? Where the puzzles would be simple for a human with a fully functional body but because the character has some disability, the puzzles are hard(er)?

I'd play it.
Not wishing to sound glib or insensitive, but I think the greater the disability of the player character, the more interesting it would be.
i.e. you'd have to set up an elaborate chain reaction just to do relatively simple things.

Yeah, I'm only on my first game, but already I've had three or four instances of "I just found a much better way to script that thing that I pasted all over the inside of my game" and "it'll take so much effort to go through and change it all, I may as well just start again from a blank page".

That, and the GUI stubbornly refuses to stay relevant.

Rather than having to paste code like that into every room, this would be much easier if you used Custom Properties -- just define some sort of "Special Mouse Cursor" custom property, and set it on the appropriate hotspots.

Yeah, after I read Khris' post I went back and incorporated that into my code as well.
Must admit I just simply didn't think of it before.

Now I have this in global...

Code: ags

int exitpoint;
export exitpoint;

                     // bit of a gap...

function repeatedly_execute()
{
  if (exitpoint==1) {
   mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeLookat, 7);
   mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 7);
   mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeTalkto, 7);
   }
  else if (exitpoint==2) {
   mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeLookat, 8);
   mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 8);
   mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeTalkto, 8);
   }
                     // snip the other 4 directions as you can see where this is going...
  else {
   mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeLookat, 2);
   mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 3);
   mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeTalkto, 4);
   }
}

...with import exitpoint; in global.ash.

And this in each room...

Code: ags

function room_RepExec()
{
 if (Hotspot.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y) == hLeftedge) { 
   exitpoint=1;
   }
 else if (Hotspot.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y)==hRightedge) {
   exitpoint=2;
   }
                     // etc.
 else {
   exitpoint=0;
   }
}

It also makes disabling right-click (as I mentioned/suggested earlier) easy.
I just changed if (button == eMouseRight) in the controls section to if (exitpoint==0 && button == eMouseRight).

I had the exact same problem a while back.

I came to the conclusion that it's better to use this method instead...

Code: ags

function room_RepExec()
{
 if (Hotspot.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y) == hLeftedge) {
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeLookat, 7);
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 7);
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeTalkto, 7);
  }
 else if (Hotspot.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y)==hRightedge) {
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeLookat, 8);
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 8);
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeTalkto, 8);
  }
 else {
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeLookat, 2);
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 3);
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeTalkto, 4);
  }
}

...where the sprite in slot 7 is the left exit arrow, 8 is the right, and 2, 3 and 4 are the defaults for each of those modes.
And you can just add an extra if for each additional exit.

Even better, if each of the exits in all of your rooms are in the same hotspot slot (i.e. hotspot1 is always the left exit and hotspot2 is always the right), then you could just put this one in global...

Code: ags

function repeatedly_execute()
{
 if (Hotspot.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y) == hotspot[1]) {
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeLookat, 7);
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 7);
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeTalkto, 7);
  }
 else if (Hotspot.GetAtScreenXY(mouse.x, mouse.y)==hotspot[2]) {
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeLookat, 8);
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 8);
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeTalkto, 8);
  }
 else {
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeLookat, 2);
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeInteract, 3);
  mouse.ChangeModeGraphic(eModeTalkto, 4);
  }
}

...instead of having to put it in each room separately.

With these, you should also make each hotspot activate with any click, rather than a specific mode.
Give one of them a try and see how it suits you.

The only thing is that you might also want to disable right-clicks while over those hotspots so the player can't change mouse mode until they come back off of them. I'm still investigating how to do that, myself.

That really was a cute little game, and it made me chuckle a couple of times, too.
The only thing is that the constant cursor switching was a bit annoying.

But other than that, really well done.
And, of course, it looks fantastic.
Jolly good show, old bean.

Well I liked it.
I did have to look up how to find the note, but apart from that I thought it was a pretty good game.
The music especially added a lot to the atmosphere.

9% of posts are of YouTube vids or image macros stolen from 4chan

Or not.

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it.
I'm not sure if that amount of praise is deserved, but it is very much appreciated.

The one problem I found with the demo was the the quotes around everyone's dialogue were unnecessary, but as a problem it's not very major, and that was the only problem I found.

I did that because I though the random text on the screen with no kind of framing looked a bit sparse.
Now I'm leaning further towards putting all the dialogue into boxes (like the the narrator's in the demo), and it does make the inverted commas look particularly... unnecessary.
So don't worry, they are already on their way out.

Thanks for the feedback. 8)

Can you post some of the code?
It'd be easier to help you if we can see what's there and what isn't.