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Hi all!

I'm designing a character for my next game, and I thought I should ask for some ideas.

the character is a medical robot, commonly found on a spaceship / space station in the late 3300's. It's main task is to assist in surgery (assess and monitor the patient's status and use its precision lasers and other apparel to assist in the actual operating), assess and treat injuries and act as a lab assistant (draw blood samples and analyze them).

What do you think this kind of machine should look like? Should I go for a human-like look that is designed to calm the patient, or a crude mechanoid that is purely built to do a job and not look pretty at all? How do you think this kind of machine should work?

New stuff at last!

This is a hangar control room, with surveillance equipment for supervising the hangar bay area functions, fuel pods and their pressures, as well as the air pressures in the hangar, in case of the massive airlocks starting to leak.

Opinions and feedback are, again, welcome! I've tried to keep the number of colours and shades to a minimum, and to keep all shapes as simple as possible.

1 week to live (assuming my condition allowed me to continue living "normally" for the week):

Day 1: Eat well and spend my money on all kinds of crazy stuff (have no kids, so no need to worry about their inheritance)
Day 2: Continue what I did yesterday
Day 3: Have all the sex I can, no need to worry about STD's.
Day 4: Travel abroad, see the world. I always wanted to visit Britain, Germany and the US.
Day 5: Return home, attempt to purchase a firearm legally / illegally if necessary.
Day 6: Hunt down all those bastards who picked on me in first and second grade. Senseless murder for childhood wrongdoings. Bastards...
Day 7: Suicide before I die. The last thing I will accept is lying in a hospital bed waiting for that last breath. If necessary, I would commit suicide earlier.

Any time is as bad as any, as I'm working on ALL saturdays from this week on...

But heck, I'll make at least some sort of appearance, that's for sure!

Could be fun! Count me in!

I am currently on a Mac and I am running off a partition with XP. Back up is not needed as my mac is VERY stable. It's a good idea to back up to external drives anyway though.

Most of my friends put their entire computers on TB drives.

I happen to work for an IT maintenance/store company, and I can tell you that even if the MAC is stable, once it plays a trick on you, you are just as screwed as anyone else. If the hard-disk breaks, it will cost you a LOT to get anything recovered from it. If the MAC goes unresponsive, it will take AGES and cost you a LOT to get it back up and running again.

Do yourself a favor and start doing backups! Just buy yourself a 4 Gb USB memory stick and use that, if nothing else.

Holy crap! Nice!
Love the way it looks and sounds.
I don't have much time to play nowadays, but goddammit I MUST try this one out when it's ready!

I like the style and the level of detail. It looks so CLEAN!!!

If I hadn't read the comments posted before me, I'd have said that it was perfect.

Keep at it!

-> Ghost: I just spent ten minutes walking around the room, and I actually noticed that it feels much more natural to NOT move my head when I walk. I prefer to keep my eyes fixed on a target when I walk, so even though it would bring more liveliness to the character, I dont think it will be necessary... I will do a version with a moving head, whough, to see what it looks like, but that will have to wait until friday.

-> IndieBoy: I'll see if I can add some of that bounce to the walk. And yes: I did a half walkcycle and copied it again, and then redetailed it (moving the pocked and the shadows) so that the legs take turns.

-> Crazy: Simply awful... 

Mh, one of the frames looks odd to me. When his right leg goes forward, the pocket on his pants is getting smaller. That looks kinda strage. And try to move the had and backpack, so he doesn't look so stiff anymore .

How should I move the head? A one pixel nod forward on each step?

I just amazed myself... I've already put over 4 hours into this thing tonigh and it's actually starting to look good to me! Anything else to improve, or shall I start with the left side?

Mike here has gone through a slight overhaul. Here's a test walkcycle and a front view.



Ideas? Comments? Wishes? It's all welcome!

For your consideration:

Infection - Episode 1 - The Ship

- Best voice acting

(I really put a lot of trouble into the voicework here, and so did the two of my friends who contributed also. The quality of the voice acting was debated alot, but I think that the effort makes it worth consideration)

- Best music

(Tony Caven, a good friend and ex-boss of mine, did a great job in the music department! The main theme of the game is over half an hour long single track! (Which is longer than the time it actually takes to complete the short game for most of the people that tried it))

- Best story

This one i'm a bit unsure about myself. I know there is a great story at works in here, but this game alone only scratches the surface of it. Consider it... or not...

You can never go wrong with using a classic for reference...

http://www.americangirlscouts.org/agsresources/Pics/templates/sq6.png

It's in German, sure, but take a look at the LED numbers... there is a hint of dark red on segments not being used (the middle bar on a "0" for example), to make it look more realistic in terms of an actual LED display.

I would also get rid of that gradient and (if possible) animate some long streaks of green "static", kind of, of some other fizzling effect. Even if it has to be static, it can be done. Check out an example below (I have the Photoshop file if you want, with layers in tact):



Otherwise, AWESOME gui, I'd love to play a game with a GUI like that.

You've actually inspired me in the GUI design for my own game.

You have a good idea, and I'll have to try and redesign the holo-beam between the projectors indeed. I'm keeping a bit busy right now, bu I'll be back with a new version ASAP.

Amen to that!

I searched for a while but found nothing... (my searching skills must be rusty...)

As said in the headline:

How can I get my Ego to say a line with an integer embedded in it?

cEgo.Say("Hi! My name is" *insert string varible here* "and I love you all!");

Moriarty: Thanks for the tip!

Khris: I found that out too, but I dont know if that's so necessary, as I only really use the code here and once it's written, there's no need to change it anymore. (I hope...) I only use three different mouse modes in the game amyway, so they shouldn't be too hard to remember, especially when I have them all documented.

After reading you'r codes and trying them out a bit, I ended up with the following and it seems to be working well.

In the code, as you can see, I use other mouse modes (to keep the code clearer in other places) but only in a quick flash so that the player never realizes he used another mouse cursor at all! This way I can still use the "talk" function on characters and "interact" with objects and hotspots.

Code: ags

function on_mouse_click(MouseButton button) // called when a mouse button is clicked. button is either LEFT or RIGHT
  {
  if (IsGamePaused() == 1) // Game is paused, so do nothing (ie. don't allow mouse click)
    {
    }
  else if (button == eMouseLeft) 
    {
      if (GetLocationType(mouse.x,mouse.y) == eLocationCharacter) {
        if (Mouse.Mode == 8) {
          ProcessClick(mouse.x,mouse.y, mouse.Mode);
        } else {
        Mouse.Mode = 3; 
        ProcessClick(mouse.x,mouse.y, mouse.Mode);
        Mouse.Mode = 2;
        }
      } else if (GetLocationType(mouse.x,mouse.y) == eLocationHotspot) {
        Mouse.Mode = 2; 
        ProcessClick(mouse.x,mouse.y, mouse.Mode);
      } else if (GetLocationType(mouse.x,mouse.y) == eLocationObject) {
        Mouse.Mode = 2;
        ProcessClick(mouse.x,mouse.y, mouse.Mode);
      } else if (GetLocationType(mouse.x,mouse.y) == eLocationNothing) {
        Mouse.Mode = 0;
        ProcessClick(mouse.x,mouse.y, mouse.Mode);
        Mouse.Mode = 2;
      }
   }
  else if (button == eMouseRight) {
    if (Mouse.Mode == 8) {
      Mouse.Mode = 2;
      } else {
        Mouse.Mode = 1;
        ProcessClick(mouse.x,mouse.y, mouse.Mode);
        Mouse.Mode = 2;
        }
    }
}

How do I identify what the player is clicking on?

For example: If I use a mouse mode "normal" as the default cursor, and want it to talk to characters when it is clicked on a character, use when it is clicked on a hotspot/object and walk to when none of the earlier apply?

How would I do this?

Even though it's space, the perspective is a bit off with the ship. The direction and angle of the ship and station clash. Also, it's hard to give a size comparison. Matching logos is an alright way to do it, but layering will really help.

I dig how the space station is looking, but I think it'd look a little more space stationy and a little less flat building if you put some sections above and below. Even if there's gravity on board, they're going to want to condense space. Maybe they should all look different too.

Yellow thing on the station looks cool, not sure what the one in the background is.

Ship looks good. Some basic shadows will really make it pop and give it a lot of dimension.

Stars look better. Should be more crisp. And the dark void in the middle isn't working for the composition. A big backwards S of brighter stars might pull things together a bit more.

The ship's brighter coloring makes it stand out a bit too much and make it look like its closer to the viewer than the station, but if you look at the modules it's carrying, you'll notice that it's actually a bit further and slightly below the station. (I should probably use shadows or something to establish this)

The yellow thing on the station is a crane, that is being assembled there to act as a stabilizer for the addition of further components onto the module that is opened up.