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Getting a key from the other side of a locked door by using a small stick and a piece of paper. Way too obvious.

It seems that this is still considered quite clever outside of adventure gaming circles. I just saw it used in Neil Gaiman's recent novel 'The Graveyard Book' and groaned my way through the page or two of meticulous performance of the task.

Does anyone watch The Mentalist?  Just a few weeks ago, the mystery of the week involved a girl dead in a room with a guy that had been locked from the inside.  The guy inside claimed to be innocent, but since the room was locked from the inside he was thrown in jail.  Well, luckily for him, the "brilliant" mentalist came and noticed that there was significant room under the door to pull the old newspaper under the door trick with the added twist of putting a string back through the lock, tying it to the key, and pulling the key back into the lock from the other side.  "OMG!" the police all shouted, "He might be innocent afterall!"   :

Oh come on, mazes aren't very common in adventure games anymore!  They're ripe for abuse....er, use again!

I agree.  I think the hate directed towards mazes in adventure games have been due to repeated misuse.  Poor implementation and a lack of proper integration into the story have given them a bad rap.  I took the general hate directed at mazes as a challenge, and have included one in Resonance to demonstrate how I think they should be done.  And if that strikes fear into your heart, then I urge you to wait and see it, because you haven't seen a maze done like this in an adventure game before!

You're almost there.  All you need to do is pass the character's name as the argument for the GiveObject function for that character's "Use inventory on character" interaction.  So for each character you can give items to, you just have:

Code: ags

function cChar1_UseInv(){
  GiveObject(cChar1);
}

function cChar2_UseInv(){
  GiveObject(cChar2);
}

etc...

Obviously, substituting the characters' script name for cChar1, cChar2, etc.

Then you can start thinking about having the player character walk over to that character and play a giving animation and maybe saying "Here, hold this." in the GiveObject function.  That's how I do it in Resonance.

I don't know all the details of his techniques, but I know that he does use basic 3d to build some of the more complicated scenes.  (I believe he just uses Google Sketchup to get buildings or whatever in perspective)  And he often takes textures that are meant for 3D programs, but he lays them on manually in photoshop and will paint over them at least partially to make them blend with the scene.  There are also, I believe, some photo references used for shape or texture.  And he loves to use grunge brushes to make things dirty.  (This isn't a shiny, picturesque city, afterall.) 

He also works in a higher resolution and we scale it down for the game, which pixelizes it somewhat and hides some of the imperfections.  If we kept the backgrounds higher-res, he'd have to be spending a lot of extra time polishing things up, which would increase his fees and would probably increase the cost of the game!

Let me know if you want more specifics than that.  I could ask him.  Actually a background from start to finish would be an interesting developer diary.

I mean it could very well get over 500 files, or more, which is a nightmare to keep tidy and all that.

Haha... yeah, we're going to be a bit over that...  like 4 or 5 times that at least.    But this kind of discussion can go back to the development board.

I'll make a decision regarding the voice acting for thoughts once I get to a place in the game where I know that the script is finalized and mostly implemented.  We've just got Deirdra Kiai on board and she's cleaning up and rewriting numerous dialogs, so I'm nowhere near the time when this decision has to be made.

Well, I know what you think! 

Yes, it will be commercial.  Sorry, but I'm not expecting to get rich from this, just hoping to make back the investment I put into it.

As far as voice overs, I haven't said anything about that yet, because I didn't want to commit myself to something.  I'll tell you what I'm planning, though.  As you can see in the developer diary video linked to in the first post, the characters use thought bubbles while thinking to themselves, like when examining items in the room.  I think that these will not have voice overs.  However, the spoken lines of dialog (which use a speech bubble instead of a thought bubble) will be voiced.

The reason for this is that there is a freaking huge amount of text in the game.  Remember, you can add pretty much any item you see to your memory and then talk to any character in the game about that item.  I'm trying my best to give a large number of those interactions unique text.  That creates a lot of things to talk about.  So, to cut a corner, I'm planning for only spoken text to be voiced.  Internal dialog stays internal.

Does this sound like a good solution to you?  Would anyone be upset by that?

If you're not actually divorced yet, it may be prudent not to post allegations on the internet just in case some lawyer finds out and uses it against you...

Seconded.

Alright, time to reset the sign...

IT HAS BEEN 0000 DAYS SINCE AN AGSER OF OLD RETURNED

Why did we even put four digits on that sign in the first place?

And Terran, what's happening with the kid?  I hope that your first thoughts are about the kid's well-being and care.

Don't vote for Nanobots!  (Except for best programming, which it totally deserves!)

Yes often the dialogue can be repeated by talking to characters again, but sometimes that particular dialogue option disappears after use, or your character says something the first time they do something or enter a location and they won't say it again unless you load up and replay.

This is a point that absolutely should be avoided by game developers.  I was planning on making a WYGIB with this point.

If a character says an important piece of information, whether it be the code for a safe, or a hint about what to do to move on, it must be possible for the player to hear that information again. 

Imagine talking to a character, choosing the option "What can I do for you?" and having that character tell you "I've hidden a note under the fourth rock from the left near the cabin in the woods.  Bring it to me."  Then, that dialog option disappears.

If the player now saves and quits and comes back several days later, he will likely have no idea what it was he was supposed to do for this character.

In this case, it's probably best to create a dialog option that says "What was it you wanted again?" or something like that, and have it never disappear.  Another solution would be to have a dialog log, but it had better be easy to search through to find information from a specific character.

Anyway, the player should never have to load and go back to a certain point in the game to retrieve information that he either forgot or accidentally skipped.  That's bad design practice IMO.  All pertinent information should be available (if obfuscated) to the player at the time that it is needed.

Edit: However, I don't see missing small comments or jokes as being a problem worth creating a dialog log for.

If the character is going to be behind the walkbehind at all times, set the baseline to the bottom of the screen.  That goes for things on the ground like rocks, or things hanging from the cieling like vines, any walkbehind that the character is always behind, set the baseline to the bottom of the screen.

However, if the player can walk in front of the vines too, then you have to think, like Ghost said, about the characters' feet.  If the vines are hanging from the ceiling, set the baseline for their walkbehind at the point on the floor that they would be directly over.  Think: If a drop of water fell from the bottom of one of the vines, where would it hit the ground?  That's where you need to set the walkbehind.  In that case, you'd also want to make a hole in the walkable area at that point so that the player doesn't just pop straight through the vines and instead walks around them.

Of course if the player is always behind the walkbehind, then like I said, just put the baseline as low as it goes.  That'll make sure it's always in front.

Looking incredible Dave!  Looking forward to both of your upcoming releases!

In general, if statements work like this:

One command to be run if the expression in the parenthesis is true:

Code: ags

if(light_is_on==1) //put command to be run here followed by semicolon

More than one command to be run if the expression in the parenthesis is true

Code: ags

if(light_is_on==1){
  //command to be run followed by semicolon
  //another command to be run by semicolon
}

So, if you have only one command, it can go on the same line as the if statement.  If you have more than one, you need to put {} around them.

Make sure that the expression to be checked in the if statement uses "==" instead of "=".  "==" compares the two parts to see if they're equal.  "=" sets the left side to be equal to the right and will produce a "parse error" if used in an if statement.

Also, notice that the "if(...)" part is never followed by a semicolon.  But each command to run inside the statement (or on the same line in the one command example) must be followed by a semicolon.

More complicated "if" statements involve "else" or "else if" lines.

Code: ags

int variableName=3;

if(variableName<=0){
  //do this
}
else if(variableName>=10){
  //do that
}
else{
  //do something else
}

since variableName is not less than or equal to 0, it will skip the first part.  Since it is not greater than or equal to 10, it will skip the second part, then it will do run the third block of commands (where it says "do something else") instead.  You do not need to use "else if" if you have only two results, or you can use an unlimited number of "else if"s to add as many results as you want.

I hope that gets you 100% up to speed on if statements.

Keep reading that Scripting tutorial to help you further.

A little info in here:  Resonance Developers Diary #3

Basically, it's just a "What's happened in the game so far" collection of memories, as well as some character back-story memories.  These are used in some dialog puzzles where you have to bring up previous events and can be used to flesh out characters by talking to other characters about things that have happened.

More walkable areas please!  I've run into this several times thanks to Ivy's crazy ideas!

Or the ability to draw walkable areas at runtime.  That would be wild!

Yes,  int means you are declaring an integer (number).  You have to declare a variable before you can use it.

Read the Beginner's tutorial on scripting here:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/actutor.htm

You'll see inside that second block of code Khris wrote the first line is

Code: ags

int light_is_on;

That's him declaring a variable.  Actually, you should probably give it a starting value, 0 for off, 1 for on.  Like this:

Code: ags

int light_is_on=0;  //makes the lights start off

What I was talking about with Tint will help you make the objects black.  Read about it in the manual and post back with any specific questions.

For making interactions change depending on the light being on or off, just use an if statement inside the interact function.

Code: ags

function oObjectName_Interact(){
  if(light_is_on==1){
    //do stuff when light is on
  }
  else{
    //do stuff when light is off
  }
}

Mayhaps we could go by trebuchet?

D'oh, I wrote a big message and then Khris beat me to it!

I'll just add that if you're changing the background frame, you might want to experiment with SetAmbientTint, Character.Tint, or Object.Tint to make the characters and objects on the screen get darker as well.  Otherwise, you could just make them invisible if you don't want them to be seen at all when the lights are off.

That would be done in

Code: ags

function oRope_Interact() {
  light_is_on = 1 - light_is_on;  // toggle light
  SetBackgroundFrame(light_is_on);    // update background
  if(light_is_on==0){
    //change the tints to black here
  }
  else{
    //remove tints here
  }
}

I'd do it if I could convince my wife that the price would be paid back in Resonance sales.  Hell, I'd bring ProgZ.  God knows I owe him.  As long as he can get over his loathing of planes.

Oh yeah, my mirror of that is down.  I've stopped paying for that old site.  I'll make a new mirror on xiigames tomorrow.  Limpy, could you email me the latest version?  Email on http://www.xiigames.com right column.  (Just in case that other mirror does have a virus.)

Edit:  I just DLed and got a virus warning too.