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Oh, and WHAM, I wanted to point out that Character.Name is writable, so there's no need to create a separate variable for it.

Oh, goot to know!

'Tis a sad day for the forums to lose another upstanding memb...

Wait, what? He did what? And posted it THERE? Really?

I say! How dastardly and utterly inappropriate! Good riddance then, old bean.
Is it time for tea and schnitzel now that we've successfully assimilated the nazis?

I haven't really thought what the thing on her shirt is. I was thinking it could be a symbol for her favourite band or somesuch. My main point was to have something on her shirt to separate the front from the back more clearly.

I tried to fix the issue with short legs. I think I've read somewhere that the head is usually 1/7 of the entire length of the body. I added a bit to the head through hair and tried to have a little room to animate the face (though still not much).

Added contrast to the pants, fixed pant sleeves to be more consistent.
I tried to give her a bit more "pronounced hips" aka. "ass", but if I do it symmetrically, I end up having to add 2 pixels and suddenly she has a HUGE ass, or either I think she looks a little broken.


Old
New

As an added bonus I added some detail to the shirt as well as her shoes. Fun fact: this is the first female character I've ever drawn!

This sprite was seen in the Dark Mansion thread, but I wanted to give it a new thread (I hope people don't mind my 'spamming').
I'd like some second opinions before I start animating her.

I also misunderstood, but shouldn't something like this work:

Code: ags

 
@1
   player.say("My name is %s", playername);

I just got the idea from an earlier thread where Studio3 was trying to use SayAt commands in dialogue and this was offered to him as a solution by Barefoot:

Code: ags

 
@1
   cDave.SayAt(8, 167, 320,"Dave: I like waffles.");

Sorry if I was unhelpful here, I haven't used the dialogue system much. =(
EDIT: To clarify, if I understand this correctly, the idea and t he only way is to replace the dialogue text by a script command like Sepiroth said above.

@SpacePirateCaine
I listed all endings here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=42977.msg571455#msg571455

Spoiler

Those items are red herrings of sorts. I had some interactions planned for some of  them, but ran out of time and simply left them lying about, since taking them out would have made the corridor seem a bit barren. The bullet is a nod-wink towards the Infection 2 demo I made, which has an identical box in it.

[close]

I have some designs and ideas for a sequel, but I've already started a different project (with time-based elements, so keep an eye out for it if you like those) that I intend to wrap up by the end of the year.

I recommend storing the player-entered name in a global variable, and calling that:

Code: ags

// global variable playername stores player's name

player.say("My name is %s", playername);

Took Atelier's advice about the room. Here's the room without the light / shadow effects added.

Added some decorations
Added curtains
Changed the wall paneling and added panels to left wall
Added a simple rug
Changed colour of window frames (I googled some mansions and houses and it seems Atelier's idea about the colours is correct. On the inside they often used darker colours, while on the outside the same windows often had white wooden edges to highlight them.)

I tried some stuff out, resulting in making (I think) the darkest picture ever so slightly darker, while sharpening up the others a little bit. Adding a blue hue didn't really work out, and at the moment the darkness I use on the overlay is 0.0.10 in RGB, with trancparency starting at 15% and going up as lighting is added. In the lightning strike the transparency is lowered to 5% to make most of the screen essentially just black with the lightning creating a bright while light in the window.

I would really like to add a shadow for the characters when the lightning strikes, but I fear that may be a little too complicated to do in AGS when I think about how rarely the effect will be seen. I would have to create an upside-down shadowy version of each character in the game (looking at about 5 characters, probably) and have those follow the characters around, animating with them frame for frame and only be visible for about a second at a time, possibly never even seen in the entire game. Gah!


In these pictures you can see all the different states of lighting the room can be seen in during the game.

@ Babar

The darkness and light thing will be a gameplay element. Candles will burn out and need to be replaced, and failure to do so will make some rooms impossible to solve until light is restored, creating an extra level of gameplay through resource management. As the player struggles to keep rooms lit, he will also be strugglin to keep all the pretty backgrounds I made visible as well! 

@ Flibble

I like the look of these edits and will try to take some pointers from 'em. Especially with the lighting around the candle, I believe I can do something like this with the overlays I am currently using, by editing the overlay sprites a little bit.

I think I need to clarify a little bit on what I am doing here (I will copepaste this to the first post as well):
The room background itself is drawn fully lit. After that I use one or more mostly black (will try to add blue hues now) sprites to cover it up and to simulate the changes in lighting, I increase or decrease the transparency of these sprites. In addition, they usually have a few shapes built into them, to accomodate a light source etc.

I updated the picture in the first post.
Does it look more like a flash of lightning now. (I just realized I cannot find a single good picture of this type of event on google...)

What iuf you drill through the floor and then a voice says "What are you doing? My cell's under here!!"
That sounds pretty tense.

Sounds silly, not really tense. 

From these comments I get the feeling that the issue Khris encountered has to do with his CRT monitor. Those monitors work quite differently than LCD monitors, and since the latter are far more common nowadays, I will work with making it look good with those.

http://www.whamgames.com/images/mansion/lighttestroom.rar

You can see what sort of lighting I am working on. It's far from perfect, but it's a start.
Press number keys 1 or 2 to toggle the candles and space bar to trigger the lightning.

@ Kjammer

Spoiler

The door breaks after a set amount of time has passed, which can be delayed by reinforcing the door and keeping the water leakage to a minimum, OR if the water level rechers the player character's neck, as that would have led to some very unrealistic situations.

Basically if you play really well, the water will reach your neck before the door breaks. If you play poorly or forget to fully reinforce the door, the door will break earlier.

The system is far from perfect, as I ran out of time refining it as the MAGS deadline got closer, so I just sort of went "Meh, it's good enough..." 

[close]

What I'm planning for the game is this: the room is drawn in full light, and then an overlay representing the lighting is drawn over it as a transparent layer in AGS. This overlay is altered in transparency, colour and shape to represent different lighting, such as candles, lanterns, sunlight, electrical light and fire.

In the dark some hotspots and objects for small items and such are either disabled, or misidentified, wihle in more light the said hotspots and objects are correctly available.

My own monitor is a pretty crappy one, so I checked the pictures on my GF's computer which has a more high-end monitor.

The result is pretty much the same on that as it is on mine:
1 - Outlines of the room are barely visible, fine details cannot be discerned
2 - Room well visible, though you are correct that it does not really seem like lightning
3 - Visibility somewhere between 1 and 2, right side of room lit slightly better by candle

I checked the LCD tests you linked to, and my monitor seems to be doing pretty fine. Blue shades were a little darker than they should have been, but otherwise all tests seemed ok.

I'd like more opinions from people on the visibility of the first picture, especially from people with flat-screen monitors, which are the most common platform nowadays. Meanwhile I will see about making the lightning look more credible.

Desingning an interior for a new game project.

I think I need to clarify a little bit on what I am doing here:
The room background itself is drawn fully lit. After that I use one or more mostly black sprites to cover it up and to simulate the changes in lighting, I increase or decrease the transparency of these sprites. In addition, they usually have a few shapes built into them, to accomodate a light source etc.

1. A room in the dark
2. A room as lightling flashes outside
3. A room lit by a candle


I'd like some critics for:
The room overall (it is a small joining corridor between an entrance hall and a dining room)
The lighting (does it look ok?)
Anything else, really. Opinions are always welcome!

Can't I just resubmit Lasol? 

Nah, in all seriousness I think I will take a break from mags, at least for a month or two. Maybe create something bigger now to put all this practice to good use.

I hope he is grey enough, 7 colours.
I like to keep things pretty simple, so it might not be fancy enough, but oh well.