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... Save condom for (sexy) emergency.

Are you implying that the dead woman isn't sexy enough? Eric's been trying to get 'WEAR CONDOM' to work since we came in here.

- Sorry Eric.

I'm pretty sure that link was only supposed to be valid during testing anyway. Leaving multiple beta versions lying around would play merry hell with bug fixing.

If you're curious as to the direction AGS development is taking, there's a few threads in the general chat forum.

Do you guys remember the game Captain Blood? The way the player could talk to aliens through a set of icons that meant something? I remember being hard but really rewarding. It was like learning a new language. I can see all that we've been talking about done through a similar system, where you would build sentences and thoughts in a sequence by arranging icons that could be ideas, places, objects... Any ideas on this?

Not strictly an idea, but something that's worth a look;- The auto translators used by some MMO's \ Online games. Yes, the text versions are generally awful, and a massive troll magnet, however I think PSO used icon based communication with custom arrangements to get around the multilingual user base, and lack of console keyboards.

Same concept, only the 'aliens' are just on the other side of the planet.

Usually the player will see/hear the character draw his/her own conclusions based on finding or combining inventory items. This means that even highly “logic-propelled” games can be solved by trial-and-error clicking on stuff, until you’ve stumbled upon the proper trigger to forward the plot.

How about letting the player screw up? That'll cut down on the trail and error. You don't have to make it fatal, but allowing the player to combine two pieces of contradictory evidence in order to support their personal 'hunch' removes the classic adventure game safety net ('can't do that' 'I don't think this will work' 'I shouldn't do this now').

This forces the player to think, or waste hours of their time.

Of course, in order to be fair you'd need to let the player break up the combinations again, so they can start from scratch.

Just out of interest;- How many sprites do you have in that folder? Based on experience with an old laptop, AGS can struggle to bring up the sprite manager if you've loaded too many in one directory.
l
If Khris' solution doesn't work, try shifting some of them into subfolders and try again.

Same game dev advice as always;-

Shut up and get on with it.

I'm not being unpleasant, it's just that it all boils down to:-

A. Talking about a game doesn't get it made.
B. If you make a game, and it's good, fans will come.
C. If you fail to make the game, no-body knows, and no-body is disappointed.
D. Screw the fans. - Pro diligo of venatus. (no python please, It's been years since I did latin.)

8)
> Use scissors to cut off the thumbs of the 2 people
> search them for weapons, keys, maps, IDs, clean underwear and other useful stuff

Woah there sparky. Aren't you forgetting the first rule of survival horror;-

Never trust the dead.

At least poke 'em a bit with the pool cue first....

I like that rather than succumb to ripping off (or riffing on) a jRPG style you've sat down and put together your own for these characters.  I'm looking forward to seeing more, though I would recommend brightening up some of your colors as the shades tend to become very close to each other so as to be hard to distinguish (this could be a low contrast issue with your monitor settings).  Brighter, more vibrant highlights coupled with some nice shadows and darker colored outlines would really make these characters 'pop' visually.  You could likely get away with considerably fewer colors by using broader contrast and this, in turn, will make animating a much easier process for you.

I think you're definitely onto something regarding the brightness (it's not the monitor - It's the accursed nvidia control panel which keeps boosting it.).

I'll probably try to sort that out when* I get around to doing the dodge\darken filters. - After about 30 of these little b*stards, horses, and  I'm a little sick of the sight of this lot at the moment**. It's that or just just palette swap the sprite sheets en-mass.

I really love the edit though, although I've struggled with lower colour counts in the past, I'll give it a go once I've smacked the coding about for bit.

As for the not-quite-jrpg stuff. - I have a love hate relationship with the jrpg. Square \ Enix stuff I can't tolerate (I have tried...multiple times.), but a lot of the older, 16-32bit titles I enjoy. - The one's that let the actual game do the talking, not the pre-defined cutscenes. I'm still fascinated with the way that some games manage to pack more character into someone that gets 4-5 lines of dialogue and battle sprite, than other games manage by shoveling 6 hours of unskippable emotional drivel.

In short, I don't hate the jrpg, but I'm conscious of it's tropes, so hopefully the characters (and maybe the game) will stay free of the worst of them.



*when, as it 'when' I'm happy with everything and set on all the character designs, which my past track record suggests will never happen, which is also why I never get around to releasing things......
** Which would be my cue to go play something pre-1998, then wonder how it was coded, and wander off into a different project.

Got the love the character graphics style.

- Six languages (including ENGLISH (UK), ENGLISH (USA), ENGLISH (CANADA), ENGLISH (NEW ZEALAND), ENGLISH (ZIMBABWE) and ENGLISH (FEDERATED STATES OF MICRONESIA))

er....

- Does this mean the UK version will spell words like colour correctly?
- I notice once again the Aussies are missing out, although they'd ban it for some idiotic reason.

*spot reserved for when I get my act together*

....and done. Which leaves me with a to-do list empty of characters. All that's left is some Frankenstein coding.

I have nothing constructive to add, but GODDAMN that looks nice!

+1

Cheers for the VoC from you both
@WHAM - You might regret offering to help me test something in a week or so.....

Just to finish off, and stick red in context, here's a somewhat misleading image of things to come;-

I did kinda miss the whole OSD thing though. I caught the start, when OSD was a piss-take of Squaresoft fanboy character design, but I took another hiatus after that point

....because OSD was a funny joke, and many of the sequels turned into 'that guy who won't stop telling the same joke'.

So, having established my complete lack of knowledge on the subject matter;

* Shouldn't Dennis be wearing cargo pants? I'd always assumed he dressed like a colorblind moron who collides with hot topic.

* I don't know if this is what you were aiming for, but Life Partner Ray just reminds me of Elton John.

* The blue mage;-  Given that it's OSD, I guess we should be glad he doesn't learn moves via bestiality....

Is this something spinning through the air, or rolling like a ball?

If it's the latter. you want:-

An enigma so clever and cunning I daresay NONE shall ever solve it!
None! Never ever never never ever!!  8)

Spoiler

It's Darth Mandarb then?
Vader + Black horse (Mandarb is the black stallion from the wheel of time) ?

[close]

Edit:- This wouldn't make a bad forum game. - You could do crosswords but with sprites instead of clues.

I'm fairly sure it's going to be top down like the original.

Awesome news then. Although I'm still interested too see how the lawyers at Zenimax react to developments (i.e. shadowclaws).

On a more general point, I'm still wondering how long will it be before people get burned?

- Say there's a well known game designer who talks big, but delivers small (and often late), someone like the recently unemployed Peter Molyneux. Fans could be driven away from funding projects in this manner if the designers let them down.

and of course there's the marketing goons. I wonder how long it will be before some bright spark in PR realizes that they can abuse this for their own ends. - Get fans to pay for games, or even just 'additional features' (DLC) for games, before the publisher has even released them.

So Wasteland 2, eh guys?

Do we have any assurance that it won't be another generic brown fps with some shallow rpg elements tacked on?

o.X -= 1  // This line reduces the X co-ordinate of the background by 1.
The - causes it to move right to left.

Don't forget the 'Dirty bomb!' brigade.

Spoiler

A Dirty bomb would result in 'fairly high, but not fatal' radiation exposure*, IF you stayed in the area for a year, AND no-one bothered to clear it up.
It's only dangerous because people are stupid. But the media IS stupid, and people believe the media.

*source: United States Department of Energy

[close]

This is probably a good time to recommend a documentary called 'The power of nightmares' to anyone who's not seen it.
(It's jolly-rogered on Youtube if you look.)

Heh, I was waiting for Khris to turn up with a logical method....

Looked into an old project and remembered what I forgot;-

mouse.x is relative to screen position, actors and objects x variables are not. So you get a limited traverse unless you multiply. In my first test, it didn't matter, because the range of the traverse is 640, and the background was 1280 wide (2 screens).

so;
1. You'd need to set the mouse position first, in room_Load()
mouse.SetPosition(320, 240);

2. factor in your scaling factor dependant on the background size.
i.e for 2560 or 4 screens, you'd want something like
cEgo.X = mouse.x*4

Mucking around with this has given me a few ideas about using multiply objects (or just use the Draw functions) moving at different speeds for a parallax scrolling effect, since you could set up the scenery so that certain parts are only visible when the mouse is between certain co-ordinates (and then when you go back to click on them, they're covered up again....)

With a whole bunch of math;

The following code is really, really shoddy. but it'll do as an example. Again with a 1280 wide background

Code: ags

// Insert this after you've moved the player to the mouse cursor.

if (mouse.x > 640){ object[0].X = 640 + ((mouse.x-640)/2); // right
else if (mouse.x < 640){ object[0].X = 640 - ((640-mouse.x)/2); // left

The first line checks if the mouse cursor is over the center point of the background, and if it is, it sets object[0].X to 640 (the centre) + half of the remaining distance: (cEgo.x-640) / 2. This would cause the object move at half speed.

So if the mouse cursor was at say 960, the object would be moved to 640 + ( (960-640) / 2 )= 800. 

the second line does the same, but in reverse;-

if the mouse cursor is less that 640, then object[0].X = 640 - half the distance from the centre (( 640 - mouse.x ) / 2 )

If the cursor was at 152, the object would be at 640 - ((640 - 152) / 2) = 396
If the cursor was at 320, the object would be at 640 - ((640 - 320) / 2) = 480
If the cursor was at 520, the object would be at 640 - ((640 - 520) / 2) = 580....and so on.

If you want to reduce the speed, adjust 2 accordingly (higher numbers give a slower movement)

I'm sure I've forgotten something again.....