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Before you do anything else, you must cook the corn. Try to find a place where you can start a fire (think of how you would start a fire in a forest).

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How can I help you, Gabriele?

[voice actors]

We're looking for voice actors on our upcoming commercial adventure game Diamonds in the Rough.

Financial compensation is offered, previous experience is appreciated but not required.

Native English speakers only, please. Contact us for details.

Ευχαριστώ Nikola. Nice picture of your sons you have there. I tried to visit the web pages in your signature but they seem to be down.

Yes, as I said the game will be commercial.

Great improvement over "Other worlds"

I assume you mean the graphics.. whether the actual game will be better remains to be seen. It's hard to match something you worked more than three years on, to be honest. I'll do my best.

Have you modelled everything yourself?

The only thing I can draw is conclusions! We have two artists working for us.

Looking good, that is. What program are you using?

You got me there... I know the characters were done with Poser 6.0, I'm not sure about the backgrounds. My associate purchased the software the artists requested.

I just hope you avoid the way-too-far delivery quests and poorly defined exits that made your last game so frustrating to play for me.

All the feedback (both positive and negative) I got on Other Worlds is going to be taken under consideration.
Pushing the TAB key will display the Exits for a second, and there will be a shortcut map for you to get where you need fast.

Thank you very much for your feedback, it is appreciated.
Regarding the Thoughts GUI, here's how I would describe it:

Think of it as a second inventory. As you progress in the game, new thoughts are added and old thoughts disappear. A simple thought is a character's name, for instance. A more complex one can be a situation, like a meeting Jason just had or something he saw.
Thoughts can be:
-Examined (example: click on a name and Jason will tell you what he thinks about that person at the time)
-Combined (example: use a name on a situation and Jason will think if there's a connection between them)
-Used anywhere else in the game, just like inventory items (example: use a situation on a person and the person may tell you something about it)

Succesful use of any of the above may open a new location ("I'd better go ask X what he thinks of that"), trigger something somewhere else in the game, or even make Jason think of something new (a new thought will be added).

I like to think that the Thoughts panel will make Jason seem more real, instead of a marionette that obeys to the player's wishes. Plus, it should create some original puzzles.


The Thoughts Panel

I'll forward your comments on Jason to my artist. It is certainly not too late for changes; in fact, Jason changes every day and his appeareance is far from finalised. I totally agree with you that his posture is too stiff and not satisfactory yet, although to be honest I haven't had any complaints on his clothes before.

I'm afraid the game will be commercial (low price), I hope it's ok with everyone here. I already got CJ's permission (and it has to be said that he politely declined any financial compensation).

[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'm only guessing, but if it's not in global or any GUI script, perhaps the GUI you imported was a module?
If it was, go to Script->Module Manager and select it. You can edit its script by clicking on "Edit Script" and "Edit Header".

I still think it's an excellent idea.

After some tinkering in other parts of the script, it worked perfectly. Thanks again!

maybe Chris / someone who understands alpha-cannels better than me can explain it better.

It doesn't matter, creating new buttons only took me a minute (and they look a lot better), and I know that future objects will all have Alphas so no need to worry the big man.

Have you tried altering the GUIs Z Order property? If the 'Background' GUI has a higher Z Order than the first one, it will appear on top of it.

Thanks, that did the trick.

For a possible solution to both problems, what if you make one GUI just the inventory window - make it exactly the right size, position it to appear over the Background GUI at the right point, and give it an alpha-transparent BG image. Then have the visible background image and all the buttons, etc, on a second GUI (with a lower Z Order).

That would probably solve it, but like I said doing some new buttons was much easier. The PCX files were just some random objects I imported from my old game when testing the inventory GUI, so I don't need them.

Speaking of the inventory... remember when you helped me with the mouse clicks in this thread?
You said:

You could also try adding an if (button == eMouseRight) mouse.SelectNextMode(); condition to the Inventory GUI's control function (in the editor, double click on any part of the GUI that's not a control to open the Script Editor the the right place) - but that only works for right-clicks on blank parts of the GUI (i.e. if you click a part of the InvWindow object that's not an item, it won't work). I'm sure there's a fairly easy way to get it to work wherever you click, it's just that I can't think of it right now as I'm about to fall asleep.

I never gave that much thought, because as I was testing it I had filled it with inventory items and right mouse clicks worked everywhere. But now that I only left two objects, as you said right clicking on the main inventory area does not move on to the next mouse mode. Can you think of a way to fix this?

Ok Ashen I tried your suggestion and it worked. My scissors are now displayed beautifully over a completely transparent GUI. Thank you.
However, this solution created a number of new interesting problems.

1) All the PCX images in this GUI (including the buttons) disappeared! They are not drawn over the invisible background. I suppose I can make some PNG ones instead, but I'm very curious to know why this happens. This is evern before I go to step 2:

2) As you suggested, I created a second GUI that opens simultaneously with the first one. The second GUI uses the initial image as a background. However, it seems to be drawn over the first GUI, making every other image disappear (inclusing the PNGs)! This can be solved if I make the image semi-transparent, which makes my inventory actually look very pretty, but I have another GUI and I want it be opaque, not semi-transparent. Any idea how I can solve this?

Thanks for going through all this trouble. I'll let you know how it went tonight.

Steve: Yes, I'm sure. I tested both cases in the game, and they looked exactly like they did in the editor.

Deftonesrule: I'm in my office at the moment, I'll try it when I get back home but as Gilbot says I don't think a GIF will do.

I'm using the sprite as an inventory item image.

Can one of you perhaps take the first image I included in my first post and try to import it to see what the problem is?

I did test it. It's displayed in the game exactly as it is in the Editor.

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.

What you need is this module.

Ashen, I don't think your code would stop the blinking either.
EDIT: I just tested it and it doesn't.

Here's how I did it (I have a GUI that pops up when Space is pressed too):

Code: ags

int KeyHeld=0;
function repeatedly_execute_always() {
  if ((KeyHeld) && IsKeyPressed(KeyHeld)) return;
  KeyHeld=0;
  if (IsKeyPressed(' ')) {
    gui[3].Visible = (!gui[3].Visible);
    KeyHeld = ' ';
    }
}

Does Pablo's suggestion work, TD?