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Don't forget, Daylight savings is in effect for those who have that kind of thing going on...

My real question is, though, what is the time on the AGS forums? I live at GMT/UTC -6, but the forums is set to a time so that I have to set it to -7. I think that is very odd. Is this a bug?

I could have posted this on the Technical Forum, but I wasn't sure were it would be more appropriate.

And you thought it was merely a Photohsop....

The truth is that since Grundislav gave me copyright authority over Ben Jordan while he was part of the MonkeyGames Empire, I was able to make an official Ben Jordan game!  I noticed that Grundi is all going 3D on Ben Jordan 5,  but what better way to take away everyone's attention from that with this new and improved Ben Jordan:

Download (5.79 MB)

Warning: This game is not suitable for young audiences... It might even check your age!

I remember when if you had a newer version of a game and you were trying to load an old saved game, if the new version had changes to the global script, it would not load the game. However, as I'm working on my game I realized that this is no longer the case. I tried searching the changes file, but I couldn't find anything that would say that this was ever changed.

My question is... when did this happen? I'm glad that I can tweak the global script and still load an old game, but I'm curious to know.

Hey, I was wondering if anyone else has a Wiiiiidescreen monitor. Why? Because I was wondering if you could run AGS game nicely on them.

Here's an example of my problem: I'm running Ben Jordan 3 as a test, and the game is 320x200. Of course, I can't run it at that low res, so I changed the resolution to 640x400. This screen supports 1280x800 (640x2 and 400x2) but when I run the game, it acts like it's letterbox and puts black bars on the top and bottom of the screen, making even wider screen. Everything looks mega stretched.

It's not a big dea, but it's just a thought... I mean, it would be cool if it didn't have those black bars on the top and bottom so that I can play the game at a perfect screen ratio. 

Read these:
http://news.com.com/Software-patent+battle+set+to+flare+up/2100-1014_3-5432364.html?tag=nl
http://news.com.com/Europes+patent+proposal+pending/2100-1014_3-5582138.html?tag=nl

Now, how would this affect our beloved Adventure Get Studio? Is Chris Jones going to run to get patents if this is aproved? or is Chris already out on the streets protesting like the people in the pictures?

Discuss.

[Beta 2 features:]

Hey... you thought I forgot about this plugin, right? Well, you're all wrong!!! (Actually, it had been so long I almost forgot how to program it  ).

Beta 2 features:
2. Added support (sort of) to Ogg Vorbis files. You need to download an external program like Winamp or a codec that can play ogg files. What the media manager will do is just open an external program to play the file. Thanks to Neccy for guiding me into the right direction!

Anyway, I've added a couple of features:
1. The ability to play, pause, and stop files!
2. Speech file descriptions will have the dialog lines, but only dialog lines from the script editor

Issues to be resolved:
1. OGG files can't be played from the AGS Editor. There seems to be some major problem with DirectX when trying to open the file.
2. I've yet to figure out the previous and next track buttons... so that it works more like a playlist.
3. People get the white background which means the plugin didn't load correctly, and I rarely get it myself.

Please test it and tell me how it works, specially on loading those dialog lines...  feel free to give out suggestions too!

It can be used with AGS 2.61 and above.

http:// monkeygames.mixnmojo.com/ ags / AGS_MediaMan_NET_03beta2.zip
(If you really want to download it and become a tester, copy and paste this link on your browser adn get rid of the spaces. Currently it's having problems loading on AGS, and I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with it.)

So I was flipping through my friend's Computer Gaming World January 2005 issue and they had this article on freeware games you can download. I look at page 65 and I say "Hey, it's Maniac Mansion....! Oh, wait...." and then I looked closer:



My friend had two copies of the magazine, so I grabbed one and took it home to scan. No mentioning of AGS... then again, why would they mention it anyway?

Here's a couple of things that are long ovedue, IMO, and should be addressed:

1) when you alt+tab out of an ACWIN-powered game, the music keeps playing, but... it's stuck in a loop so it's pretty annoying. Most games just solve this problem by not playing the music while the program is still running in the background. Is there any way this can be done?

2) You can't load games saved in a different resolutions. So, what's the point of playing the game windowed with a visible size if you can't even load what you've been playing so far?

Thanks.

[Distributing Your Game]

I ran into this glitch where MUSICx.WAV may be an option, but I'm not sure because:

In the Distributing Your Game section says:
"NOTE: MP3 and OGG music files are not included in the exe. They will instead be built into a file called MUSIC.VOX when you click the "Rebuild VOX files" option in the editor. Since OGGs and MP3s override all other music file types, this allows you to have an Digital Music Pack which you can distribute seperately to your game. If it is present in the game directory it will be used, otherwise any other music available (eg. MIDI) will be played instead."

But the Music and Sound section says:
"For background music, AGS can use OGG, MP3, MIDI, WAV, MOD, XM, and S3M music files. For sound effects, you can use OGG, MP3, WAV and VOC files. When AGS needs to play music number X, it will search for the files in the following order. The first file it finds, it plays: MUSICx.OGG, MUSICx.MP3, MUSICx.WAV, MUSICx,MID, MUSICx.MOD, MUSICx.XM, MUSICx.S3M."

and...
"NOTE: WAV, MP3 and OGG music files are not included in the game EXE, but are instead bundled into a seperate file called MUSIC.VOX. Whenever you add any new music files of those types to your game folder, you need to choose "Rebuild VOX Files" from the Game menu in order to update the store and make them work in-game."

However, it is not mentioned in the Multimedia Functions section under PlayMusic:
"PlayMusic
PlayMusic (int music_number)

Changes the currently playing background music to MUSICx.OGG, MUSICx.MP3, MUSICx.MID, MUSICx.MOD or MUSICx.XM (where X is MUSIC_NUMBER). The game will search for the files in that order until it finds one to play."

So, which one is it? what is the situation with MUSICx.WAV files? I really can't remember since most of us use OGG/MP3s these days... can anyone clarify?

Here's an interesting thing I noticed about the whole save screenshot system.

Let's say that you save the game in full screen mode with a screenshot-based save game system. If you save the same exact game in windowed mode, the screenshot on windowed mode has better scaling! Is there any reason for this?

Here's some samples I took from "BJSOURCE" as seen in Mittens (well, only by AGA and Grundislav, I believe. Everyone else was just playing Puzzle Fighter or eating Sour Cream n' Onion Crisps):


Game saved under 320x200,  Screenshot taken at 640x400


Game saved under 640x400, Screenshot taken at 640x400

Another interesting thing is that if you look at the two saved games on 320x200 full screen, they look exactly alike, except that the old man in the 640 saved game looks better scaled (You can see his buttons).

Hey,

So, I have this automated code that I want to happen after an action has been processed, like this:

under on_mouse_click

Code: ags

if (button == LEFT) {
    ProcessClick(...);
    MyCode();
}

The problem is that MyCode is being executed before process click! and I don't want that! Am I doing something wrong, or is processclick one of those oddball functions like NewRoom, etc?

Check this out:

http://www.altoids.com/index.aspx?area=game&sitegameid=87&relationid=405

I haven't beaten the game yet, but it's an adventure game! It's got a nice interface too!

You know, I've been online for a big chunk of my life... 6 years, specially for most of my years as a growing and awkward teenager. A while back, when I was an IRC junkie, I always ran into cases where online people were dating other online people, which I thought was kind of silly and whatnot. I don't mind making friends at all, like the folks I met at Mittens I think I can trust them (except for that Christopher Jones!), but I'm referring to dating and whatnot, and even long distance relationships in general.

I was wondering if anyone else had any experiences with it (through yourself or others) and opinions on the subject. I wonder if anyone on #AGS is dating another person in the channel, from the few girls that exist there (I think I can count them with my fingers ). I've not only seen situations online, but I know people in real life who have gone insane and dropped out of high school for sex with some online stranger (true story). Maybe I'll tell these stories in later replies, if the thread gets pretty popular.

[Games]

I was going to post this on Grumpy Gamer's latest post, http://www.grumpygamer.com/1878449, but then i thought it was too long so I decided to place it here and start "some shit":

._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-.

I don't give a damn that anyone makes adventure games for comercial purposes. It's been more than 15 years since Maniac Mansion, and all that has been advanced in adventure games is the GUI and the graphics (Except for like Grim Fandango, sort of, because the gameplay was partially based on the 1993 Alone in the Dark engine). All adventure games have the exact same exact basic solve puzzle gameplay, and even some adventure games have gotten worse in perfecting the puzzle process (Runaway, apparently), making it illogical and stupid. Even first person shooters, which are pretty mindless games, had added new things with each iteration, like multiple floors, the ability to jump, the change in movement, actual storylines (which came from adventure games), and now days realistic physics. I guess you could say "uh.. you still shoot around", but there is more things you can do! The number of outcomes has increased. Some things as not as predictable as they used to be (maybe Doom 3 breaks the rule?).

LucasArts for years revolutionized games with things like the graphic adventure Point & Click GUI, voice speech, full motion video and so forth before many caught on, and they put so much effort into quality, but then they eventually got too carried away with adventure games, and they realized they had spent millions of dollars on (adventure) games that were not going to sell zillions of copies by the time of their release and saw that their star wars games were making good money. So instead of coming up with revolutionary new methods of game design (in the field of adventure, for example) like they did years ago, they just threw everything away and just relied on making star wars games. I don't know who is to blame... maybe it's because all the good people with actual ideas left, and all they got is a bunch of star war fans making games. Or maybe it's preasure from the LucasFilm Empire. Who knows.

._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-.

That's it. It's mostly about gameplay, true. After all, Adventure Games are supposed to be Games, if you thought they were some sort of interactive movie, and they have perfected the story telling quite well. Shouldn't we just try to get over with how witty and great the story is and develop better gameplay? It's something that LucasArts and Sierra sort of took for granted when the money was coming until the later 90's.

Having access to a computer, I feel like checking the AGS Forums, a lot. I really don't want to sometimes, but I feel I have nothing else better to do. They give me an assignment, I do it, but then it's really just wait for a response and nothing happens. I think, "what can I do?" and I really don't know what to do. It feels kind of bad, but what else can I do?

When you're at work and you have abosultely nothing to do or are kind of lost at what you're supposed to be doing, what do you do?

Doom Cubed? I'm glad they're not calling it that! they just think that putting the three in a top left corner is cool... then again, where else would they put it without making the DOOM logo look bad.

I was wondering if anyone is buying the game. It came out like yesterday, and it looks pretty scary. Yeah yeah, I can see people saying "T3h g4me that k1ll3d 4dventur3 g4m3z!!!1" but really that's just a bad excuse.

Any thoughts of on DOOM and DOOM^3? I was wondering if anyone had anything to share.

I would buy it but... 1) It's $55!! I'll wait for it to be $20-30 if anything, 2) My video card probably can't handle it, and 3) I NEED TO MAKE AN ADVENTURE GAME. I can't be playing games right now. I'm already having a hard time making one with not playing games nor watching tv? what the hell am I doing, then?

Ok, I'm sure some of you guys remember that the reason why adventuredeveloper change its name to adventuredeveloperS was because some company in HK called ultsearch bought the domain name when mojo was down and I don't know the exact details, but I guess the domain name was marked as abandoned. You can still see what happened at http://www.adventuredeveloper.com/

Anyway, for years I've been looking at the domain name www.monkeygames.com (for obvious reasons), and it seemed that some dufus owned the site and had it as half his homepage half 3 game reviews. Then after years of not updating the page, he didn't either update the domain registration or his contract finally expired. Guess where I'm getting to. Yes, ultsearch has bought the domain, which you can see the horrible results at http://www.monkeygames.com/

now, what do I do? I wanted a cool domain name. I had monkeygames.net for a while, but I hated the .net part so I decided to abandon it. monkeygames.org sounds kind of silly to me.  dot COM is the cool one.

I could go for another domain name. My other choice is www.monkeygames-entertainment.com. But there may be some who disagree. For one, isn't it a litte bit too long? Any other suggestions to what domain name I should get for MonkeyGames Entertainment?

I'm older today... 21, actually! That means that in the US I can buy alcohol myself and go to the bars! (well,  this is bible belt state and they don't let you in a bar in you're 21)... woo!! 

Happy birthday to Mr McMoo. CB...  unpredictabletwist, sellyourbaby, Peter Thomas, and pftgb 

Hey, if you've been here long enough, you know that there's been times when AGS games have been sold on ebay and whatnot without the author's permission. So, what I do is stick a license agreement on all of the MonkeyGames Related games. There have been a few changes to it over the years, and here's a brand-new version:

This computer game software is considered FREEWARE and cannot be distributed for commercial profit.

This game may be redistributed on websites focused on video games or computer software as long as it includes all of its original files and documentation. It may also be redistributed in a disc bundle attached to a software or video gaming magazine under the following conditions:
i)   The magazine publisher has prior written consent from MonkeyGames Entertainment
ii)   The game is featured in the magazine itself
iii)   The game is redistributed with all of its original files and documentation
iv)    The game is strictly marked as FREEWARE

If you, the user, have acquired this game from none of the means above, then return it immediately and contact MonkeyGames Entertainment at netmonkey@cellosoft.com.

Anyone is free to use this template for their game... I won't get mad.

Now here's where I need your help. Maybe someone could look at this (play lawyer ) and see what needs to be added and changed. Maybe we can build a general license agreement for everyone to use, too! Well, at least the freeware folks. We could call it "The AGS Game User License" or something (TAGUL?!).

I'm suprised that this feature has not been implemented yet: where you can animate inventory items when they're on top of hotspot or object or when it's moving, just like you can do with cursors... there is probably a work around to it, but it would be a pain in the ass to do it if you had like 150 inventory items or so.

Also, IsInteractionAvailable and IsInventoryInteractionAvailable are pretty handy, but I also need a way to check whether there is an interaction available for a specific inventory item... Like, for example, you use the key in the door, and it's not the right door and the character knows that, so he says something like "That's not the right key for that door.", instead of walking all the way down to the door and trying, which is what would happen if you used the correct key.