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Hey,

I'd love to hear you guys' comments on this:

http://www.itu.dk/people/ofktoubro/3rdWorldFarmer/index_content.html

EditÃ,  22-04-2006:
The site is up with a slightly modified version.
Crits are welcome here or at the site forums :-)

link: 3rd World Farmer

- Frederik

Got an idea that maybe somebody can benefit from.

People who are downloading my AGS game "Demon Day", are now presented with the option of playing a game of online Soduko while downloading. I think it's a rather nice service to provide, and would like to know if anyone else has thought abut these kinds of "things to do while you're downloading" and whether you think its a good idea or a pain in the neck.

Check it out:

Demon Day download page (the page as such needs a makeover soon, but at least the link is there):
http://83.73.63.99/freden/

Directly to the Soduko page (requires java plugin):
http://soduko.netgubbi.dk


Feel free to link to the soduko-page from your game's download site, but please let me know if you do so. Also, if you have other kinds of online games that people can play while downloading (that don't take up the entire bandwidth), maybe we can share links from our download sites?

Hi, I'm trying to write a plugin in C++ for my game, using the ags-plugin-dll-template.

My reason for wanting to write a plugin is that my game has 1600x1200 pixel scrolling backgrounds (16bit color depth, 800x600 resolution) that need to be dynamically drawn, not every game-loop or so, but when the player enters a new room.

Right now I'm using an ags-function that loops through the 1600x1200 pixels and paints bitmaps of different colored stars at random positions on the black background image, using RawDrawImage() and RawDrawImageTransparent(). This function is called when the player enters a new room, and the stars stay in the background once they've been painted on, just like if a premade bitmap with fixed stars was loaded as background pic.

Now I want somethig a little more complicated then just drawing a bunch of semitransparent bitmaps on top of and beside each other, in other words, i need access to a two-dimensional array containing the pixel information (rgb-values) for the background, so that I can manipulate each pixel manually from the .dll I'm writing, adjusting overlapping stars and creating other weird graphics effects, before the final pic is drawn to the background. But once the background is drawn, it needs to stay fixed for scrolling when the player moves.

In the template dll, there's a call to AGSE_POSTSCREENDRAW, but whatever is drawn here is translated as the player moves around the room, and doesn't stay fixed in the background.

How would I be able to draw on the real room background picture? Do I need to call GetRawBitmapSurface(BITMAP *bmp) ?Ã, 
And what does the warning in the PlugIn API about this function only working with the virtual screen, mean? Isn't there a way to get and manipulate the real background picture?

- Fred

I just installed windows xp on my computer and found that the ags game I have been puttiing together under windows 2000 no longer works. I can open it in the editor and edit it, but when I test it or run the compiled .exe file, all I get is an empty/black windows-standard-type window. I can hear from the sounds that the game is running, but how come there's no visual? And the game isn't set to run in windowed-mode anyway, so how come it opens in a window?

note: i have been using both ags 2.61 and ags 2.6_sp1 to develop the game under windows 2000, and that didn't give me any compatibility problems there. Does win XP handle this differently?

I hope someone else has had this kind of problem or will be able to help me in some way, as I'm really depressed to see hundreds of hours of work compiling to a black screen

fred

-------------------------------

Note: I SOLVED the problem: updating my display drivers and reinstalling directx. Now I can edit, compile and play my ags-game(s) again. 

fred
------------------------

Demon Day

Waking from a weird dream, our hero finds himself taking part in a strange chain of events, involving demons, a walk in the park, and lots of bad behaviour.

Medium-length game (640x400, 16-bits)

Download the game (2,7 MB):

https://creativesparkstudios.com/demonday/

(http://www.id.cbs.dk/~jmc/freden ) obsolete