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A certain action makes my game crash for no apparent (to me) reason. Here is my code:

Code: ags

  // script for Hotspot 2 (bookcase): Use inventory on hotspot
if (player.activeinv==1) {
   if (StrCaseComp("Curtis' favor", thought)==0) {
      player.Walk(122, 280, eBlock);
      player.FaceLocation(122, 100, eBlock);
      Wait(20);
      player.Walk(171, 280, eBlock);
      player.FaceLocation(171, 100, eBlock);
      Wait(20);
      player.Walk(255, 280, eBlock);
      player.FaceLocation(255, 100, eBlock);
      Wait(20);
      Display("You spot a book titled 'Chants of Experience', by William Flake. That looks like something Curtis would enjoy.");
      Display("You take it with you.");
      AddInventory(17);
      GiveScore(6);
      Thou10.Visible=false;
      }
   else Display("That provides no further insight.");
   }
else if (player.activeinv==16) Display("That's not the way to return a book.");
else Display("You can't use that here."); 

Using inventory item 1 on that hotspot returns the following message, regardless of whether the StrCaseComp is 0 or 1:

An internal error has occured. Please note down the following information.
If the problem persists, contact Chris Jones.
(ACI version 2.71.894NMP)

Error: run_text_script1: error -6 running function 'hotspot2_c':
Error: Null string referenced
in Room 66 script (line 50)

Line 50 of the room script is the following:

Code: ags

if (StrCaseComp("Curtis' favor", thought)==0) {

I don't understand why it doesn't work, as the exact same line works perfectly in other places.

Any help will be appreciated.

That was a nice touch.

For those who don't know what I'm talking about, try running AGS today.

Hello to all, I just dropped by to say that on Saturday I will begin the hardest adventure of my life, carrying only a bouquet in my inventory.



If anyone has a walkthrough, I'd love to have it.

I was wondering, is it necessary to assign speech files to dialog entries, or can they be used independently as well?
The reason I'm asking is because there are several occasions in which a character has to say a single line. Do I have to create a new Dialog Topic for each line in order to assign speech files to them?

Is there any way of synchronizing a speech animation with a voice? I won't make a lips synched game, but can the speech animation at least start & end simultaneously with the character's voice? As it is now, my character starts moving his lips before the voice is heard and he stops moving them after it's over. I tried to search the forum but couldn't find any relevant problem.

Thanks in advance.

Just wanted to let you know that the latest issue of Adventure Lantern's PDF magazine is available.

www.adventurelantern.com -Just click on the picture of the mag to download.

Interviews
Scott Frost on Awaken
Alkis Polyrakis on Diamonds in the Rough
Dimitris Manos on The Exchange Student

Articles
Playing Old Adventure Games: Part 1 - Zork Nemesis (Continuing Feature by SirDave)

Reviews
Safecracker
Post Mortem
The Egyptian Prophecy
Shivers
Full Throttle
Ben Jordan: Case 4 & 5
The Winter Rose
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Silent Hill 2

Hint: AGS is mentioned.

Hello again.

My composer sent me a theme that I intend to use in the main menu of my game. However, he believes that for the best result to be achieved, the theme must be divided in two parts: the first part needs to be played in the beginning, and the second one needs to begin immediately after the first one ends. The second part must be the one that loops repeatedly, giving a much more elegant and flawless sound.

The problem with that idea is that I can't seem to get it to work correctly. What I did was:

-make the first part a sound effect (sound1.ogg)
-make the second part a musical score (music3.ogg)
-added the following code:

Player enters room (after fadein): PlaySound(1); 
Repeatedly execute: if (IsSoundPlaying()==0) PlayMusic(3);

Although the code works, there is a quite noticeable fraction of a second between the two sounds, which kind of ruins it.

Can you think of a more precide way of making the two sounds play consecutively with no delay?

On some occasions, I want to have an animated object (a lightbulb) displayed briefly a few pixels over a character.
I thought it would simply be a case of displaying the object at player.x, player.y-... But this idea does not work in rooms with scalable walking areas, for obvious reasons: when the character is at 80% zoom, the object appears a few pixels above him, but if he's at 60% zoom it appears way above him.
Any ideas on how to solve this?

[Atropos Studios]

Dear all,

I'm happy to announce that the positive feedback I received on my freeware game Other Worlds has made me decide to found my own Adventure Games Developing Company, Atropos Studios.

The production on our first game Diamonds in the Rough has started.
In the game, you play the role of a 20 year old American called Jason Hart. Jason is a high school dropout who works as an office boy. All that is about to change in the beginning of our story, when he is approached by a mysterious man who seems to know more about him than Jason does himself.

The man claims to represent an organization that recruits people who are believed to have "special abilities". Those abilities could be telepathy, telekinisis, or other extraordinary powers. Jason has had such an ability all his life, fearing to admit it to himself, let along others. He accepts the job offer for this organization, which is called "Diamonds in the Rough".

The story begins as soon as Jason moves to a town in the Midwest, where he will do this mysterious "work". He will soon start to wonder who he is really working for, and what the purpose of the organization is.

The game will be 800x600, True Color, 3rd person perspective. We will focus on a solid, deep storyline and innovative puzzles.

A couple of screenshots:





Status Report (June 12, 2007):
- graphics 100%
- puzzles 100%
- story 100%
- music/sound 100%
- testing 90%

More information and screenshots can be found in the official website of Atropos Studios.

I have the following problem. My artist gave me some objects (with Alpha Channel) to import into AGS. Take these scissors for example:



They look fine, but when I tried to import them into AGS I got the following weird result:



Instead of importing the image, I then decided to try copying & pasting it as a new sprite. The result was better, but not perfect as you can see:



My artist told me that this outline is caused by "half transparent areas" in the image, which AGS doesn't seem to support. He said "Half transparency is for better fitting of overlay to every backround without sharp edges".

Does anyone know if there's anyway around this problem, other than the obvious of not using half transparent areas?

My game is 800x600, 32bit.
Thanks in advance.

Is there any way of creating a walking animation by skipping the first frame (the one that's used as 'standard' view) when walking?
I'm trying to create a walking animation for my photorealistic characters. I was able to do so just fine for the up/down walking, but the left/right seems to be a problem because of that damn first frame. If you observe a human walking, you will notice that they never assume the "standing" position (legs still, arms dropped to the sides) during their walk. Therefore, my animation looks flawless until it ends and uses the first frame again.. there's an inevitable little "jump" that spoils it.
Can this frame be skipped in any way?

My second question is, do I understand correctly that the "Run the next loop after this to create a long animation" does not apply to walking animations? I mean, whether I click on it or not, Loop 0 is 'down', Loop 1 is 'left', Loop 2 is 'right' and Loop 3 is 'up'. It's a pity because I would prefer to use 30 frames instead of 20.

Thanks in advance.

I have another graphics problem that I hope someone who is not tired of my questions yet will be kind enough to solve...
Imagine I have a room that features a lamp on a desk. The lamp is initially off, and I want the player to be able to turn it on. So I import the complete room image with the lamp turned off:



and then I import the part of the image where the lamp is turned on:



On Paintshop, I'm able to position the image perfectly:



but when I try to do the same on AGS, I can't. I get the vertical position correctly, but when I position the image at 170,187 it's too far to the left (note the posters on the wall to see the inacuracy):



and when I position it at 171,187 it's too far to the right:



Note that my game is 800x600, 32-bit. I never had this kind of problem in my previous 640x400, 256 colors game.
Any idea what I can do?

Thanks in advance.

Sorry if this is more a drawing problem than a scripting one, I couldn't find the appropriate forum section to post this.
What was much easier in my previous 256 colors game (where I pretty much drew every sprite pixel by pixel) seems very difficult now that I'm going for a 32-bit one.
My problem is that I can't get the "invisible" color right, as whenever I try to create something, there is a fine line bleeding around the object that is very slightly different, but different than the invisible color.
Let me give you a simple example, because I doubt I'm making sense: Say I want to create a GUI button (I use Paintshop Pro). I draw it over a (255,0,255) background, and the result is something like this:



The problem with the above image (which you will see if you open it with an image editor), is that there is a fine line or two around the button with various pixels of colors such as (219,0,227) or (251,3,250) (and I'm not talking about the shadow, but about colors that do look like purple in the naked eye).
If I import this image into AGS, those pixels will be shown, creating a poor result.
Although the above image is easy to fix (by either drawing a fine line of the correct color around the object or using the color replacer to change the few additional colors), it becomes a nightmare if the image is a character I exported from Poser (below is an example from the Poser 6.0 demo):



Is there an easy way around this problem I'm not aware of?

I feel a little embarrased asking a question in the Beginners' section, after having made a full length game... But the thing is, in my previous game, I used the built-in interface with just a few changes. This time, I'm trying to create my own interface, and I can't get it to work. The fact that I'm using AGS v2.71 while I made my previous game on 2.55 does not help either, as I'm still trying to figure out all the changes.

What I want to do is create a custom inventory GUI, with the following features:

-Pop-up bar when the mouse is placed on the top of the screen, displaying the first inventory items.
-Left and right arrows will be placed on either side of the bar, which will scroll the bar to display the remaining items.
-I don't want any buttons in it; I want the player to be able to click on the inventory item right away. Therefore, I don't want the mouse cursor mode to change when accessing the bar; if the current mode is Look, clicking on the item will examine it, if it's Use, clicking on the item will pick it up etc.

My problems so far:

-No matter how I try to alter the script, whenever the bar pops up the cursor changes to an arrow. Clicking on the item will still give the correct result, ie: if the cursor mode *before* accessing the inventory was Look, clicking on an item will examine it, but how do I prevent the cursor from changing?
-Clicking on an item always closes the pop-up bar, while I want it to remain open (in case the player wants to examine more items, or use one item on another) until the mouse is moved out of the area.
-I want the game to do NOTHING if the right mouse button is clicked on the inventory bar. I don't know how to do that. 

Note that all of the above is *without* checking the "Handle inventory clicks in script" option... If I check it, I can't get anything to work. 
As for the left & right arrows, I haven't even tried them yet, as I want to get the above right first.
I've read plenty of tutorials and previous threads on custom inventories, but they all require the use of buttons, which I'm trying to avoid.
Any help would be very much appreciated.

Hello all. I want to add a small note in my game's (Other Worlds) information in order to let people know that an Italian version is now available. However, it doesn't accept my password although I'm sure it's correct. Can anyone help?

I'm probably breaking a few forum rules by doing this, but I hope moderators will understand my position and give me the right to defend myself. The "Awards nominations" thread was locked before I had the chance to answer quite a few direct attacks to me. Now there is a locked thread in the forum, full of insults and inaccuracies about me, right there for everyone to read. It gives a completely wrong picture of me and I respectfully ask for the opportunity to set things straight.
So.. first of all, I don't understand why some people are being so hostile against me. I think my post was expressed in a very polite manner. I was not looking for a fight and I didn't want to cause any trouble to the web site of a community I appreciate and admire. If we're going to continue this discussion, I'm sure we can do it in a civilized way.
Before I forget... please stop using the words 'Alkis' and 'pimp' in the same phrase.
Vel, you are right, most of my post in this forum are about Other Worlds. I know this doesn't look nice and believe me, I would love to join other discussions, but I'm afraid I don't have too much time in my hands. I try to read most of the threads though. If you look more carefully, you would notice that most of those posts are in the Hints and Tips section, where I tried to help people solve some puzzles. Almost all of my other posts were posted IN THE SAME THREAD. I fail to see how this can be considered "over-advertising" (I'm not saying the word). If that was my intention, I would have annoyed you with my game long before it was published, flooding the forum with posts about it. Instead, I was silent except for a brief period when I released a demo.
Why did I make Other Worlds? Because, like most people here I suppose, I've always wanted to make an adventure game. Praise and awards? Well, it's not like I get any money from it, so it feels nice to hear that some people liked it. Okay, maybe I was enthusiastic and I wanted to talk about my game. I didn't realize it was a crime.
I would like to point out once more that I was not *complaining*, I was *disappointed*, I thought the difference was obvious but I'm probably mistaken. I never said OW should have been nominated; I never said it was better than other nominees; I said that I was sorry it didn't get enough votes for "Best Story" and "Best Puzzles". How is that a complaint? Did I say "why did you vote for game X instead of mine, OW was better"? Of course not, that would be stupid!
LucasFan.. wow. You should work for a tabloid. I've never seen such a complete distortion of reality. Selecting sentences from specific posts to make me look bad? Do you dislike me that much? I really can't imagine what I did to provoke that kind of behaviour.
In my defense:

-About "My intention was to create the best amateur freeware game ever": I never said I succedeed, did I? I only told you what my intention was.

-About asking people to vote: A vote can be a positive or a negative thing. I was thirsty for feedback, that's all. I didn't say "vote if you liked my game". I wanted to know what people thought of it.

-About stating the number of people who downloaded it: So I felt good, and I wanted to share. I thought people would be happy to hear that an AGS game got noticed.

-About the Czech review: The fact alone that I posted about a negative review should tell you a lot.

-About my response to Ogre: Why don't you post what *exactly* he said? Ogre attacked me personally (much like you're doing now), not my game. Here's what he said:

"Who asked you to interfere? Hush, back to mama! A guy who doesn't even know my name and calls himself Alkis21 feels offended by me and cries a river... oh, poor boy!  You published a game with horrible graphics and now can't take the critics but cry for mama? If you release something for the public you must face the fire or keep it for yourself because you'll never be able to satsify everybody as you statedt yourself. "Eat or die" is a saying we have here, so don't be such a sissy. Whimps like you give me the creeps. You were not even trying to defend yourself you were just crying.. so again; Hush back to mama little kid!"

Now that puts my response to him under a totally new perspective, doesn't it? But of course you couldn't include his post, you had to make me look bad.
(for the record, the guy sent me an e-mail afterwards in which he apologized for everything he said)

In conclusion.. what can I say. I will only say that AGS was a God's gift to me, and I like this forum very much, too. If I offended some people by talking about my game too much I apologize, I honestly did not realize I was doing it and I would have stopped had I been told to. I'll try to join more discussions if that's what it takes to be accepted as a legitimate member. The last thing I want is people who think of me as a troublemaker. I'm ready to admit that I made mistakes, but I think some of the posts were too harsh and I would be delighted if the people who wrote them took the time to think them over.

Before I begin, I would like to state that I totally respect the people's votes. I would also like to congratulate all the nominees. This is NOT a post that questions the validity or the objectivity of the results. The people have spoken loud and clear.
I cannot help but feel utterly disappointed by the fact that Other Worlds only got nominated for best documentation. After all the positive reviews and feedback from the 4000+ people that have downloaded it in 4.5 months, my expectations were higher. Especially considering that if you look at the votes in the main page, OW's current score is higher than the games that got nominated for the 'Best Game' category expect Apprentice II. Just Adventure called it "one of the best, if not the best adventure game of 2004" and "3rd best Independent adventure game ever". I was really aiming for the Best Story & Puzzles category, but I guess my game is not worth as much as I believed.
I have played many of the nominated games and most of the nominations seem much deserved to me. I don't want anyone to think that I mean any disrespect to the other creators. I just felt that Other Worlds deserved a place among them. I suppose someone complains every year about the results, I'm sorry that this year it's me, I must sound like a spoiled brat to all of you.
Good luck to everyone.

I hope I'm not boring you, talking about my game all the time.. it's just that.. I'm so happy...  :'(

Check out this review!
http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/OtherWorlds/OW.shtm

"Other Worlds is probably one of the best, if not the best, adventures of 2004 â€" and that includes both Independent and commercial -"

"So, where are you international development teams? Don't let talents like this get lost just because they are not in the right place."

What more could I ask for?
That's it, I'm changing my will, Chris Jones gets everything.

A very low percentage of the people who download my game reported that it crashes as soon as they run it, with no message.
What I suggest to them is to:

-Change the sound settings from winsetup.exe
-Close other applications before launching the game
-Update their graphics & sound card drivers

Is there anything else I can suggest?

I noticed that the AGS awards page is kind of outdated. I have some questions;

-When does the Nominations process for 2004 begin?
-Am I allowed to nominate my own game?
-Is it
a)a whole new voting process or
b)is it in any way related to the votes you cast in the Full length games section by clicking on each game?
If it's (b), don't games released on January have an advantage over games released on December? I mean, they will have more votes.

I know I'm not supposed to care about awards, but it would be nice to have some sort of public acknowledgement for my efforts.