Messages

You're wrong, geork. The character is called cChair, not cChar.

AHH, I thought that was a typo

On the other hand, the irony is brilliant, so it all works out

Sorry to be pedantic Lewis, but it's

Code: AGS

if(cChar.Moving){
  //this is what it does
}

I know you already knew that, but I felt a bit mean today

I know this will complicate the discussion somewhat, but is it worth trying to factor in a distinction between the views, beliefs and practices of a religious organization and the views, beliefs and practices of an individual within one? Does being religious mean you have to observe every code that is layed down,or does it mean trying to undertake the same spiritual journey, rather, that the organization is attempting to undertake?
I'm not saying I know the answer, I was just wondering what you all thought of that, because if the individual is allowed to consciously deviate from the text if he/she sees that to be imperative on guiding their spiritual journey towards whatever their religion tells them is the end point, does that make them religious or not? I personally (from a semi-religious, although quite deviant, persuasion) see going to church as a boon, but I cannot accept that ALL the teachings in the Bible really are the 'truth' (it was, of course, written by people too).

I'd just like to defend my last post, because flame wars

Most of it was meant as satire to the idea of this topic even being relevant (as Lt. Smash says, no-one is helping anyone here), hence "lens theory" ...although I messed up on the Einstein point (my mistake, I skim read an article once) so thanks for the correction

On a serious note though (well, less silly anyway), it may be entirely possible that there are [correct] ways of looking at life, the universe and everything(TM) that human beings are simply not equipped to comprehend. Maybe yes, maybe no. I'll let that hang as the pointless point it is...

I feel like I want to reply: Put a completely different spin on things

Firstly: Khris, I can kind of see where a lot of your points are coming from (somehow you always end up as the 'bad guy' ) and I'd agree that some sections do still engage in brainwashing (although they are nowhere near as effective now - at least in the western world - since culture has become so disillusioned) but I think that wiki article was a little uncalled for; at least 2 of Einstein's theories have been proven wrong... the brambles grow on both sides of the bush.

How bout this as a theory: What if different epochs of humankind viewed 'obectivity' and 'truth' through different "lenses"? What if, at some point, religion was a "lens", and now science is a "lens"? I wonder what will be next... maybe philosophy will be a "lens" and no-one will ever get any work done

Whatever, I like it... I'll call it "lens theory"

I'm not going to bother engaging with this "religion vs science" debate that appears to be going on - if scientists had a way to impose abstract laws on people at the expense of science, they would - at the end of the day, some people will subvert anything to get power.

[in the church]

Going back to the original question:

Disclaimer: If I'm factually wrong, disregard this argument!

There are really two kinds of marriage - one does not need to include the other, whilst the other necessarily includes the first. There is state marriage and religious marriage - it is possible to just have a reception without going for the church service. If you go for the church service, you still have to sign a legal binding, but not the other way round.

Therefore, since the state has no possible reason why gay marriage should not be a thing, since gay marriage aligns with the idea that all individuals should be treated equally, opposing state gay marriage does, indeed, make you an asshole, as you are denying equality for no sound state reason.

Whether gay marriage should be a thing or not in the church is the church's imperative. It will be very crushing for certain christian gay couples to not be accepted into the community their religious views are founded around - and I'd say that certain sections of organized religion need a huge re-think (other, smaller sections may not be opposed to religious gay marriage at all).

However, I think it is important to recognize that the church has it's own set of beliefs and, as long as the church does not break state law (that includes plotting to break state law, under state law ^^) the state should have no right to tell the church what they should and shouldn't do. The church is an organization just as much as any other business (that includes the government, if I was being cynical).

As for the other debate that's going on:

We live in a late capitalist, post modernist world. Under post-modernism, a person is defined by a huge variety of different, dislocated 'things'. Some of them can be "christian" (there are so many parts and institutions of Christianity, as, indeed, any religion (and non-religion) , that labeling it as one thing would be ignorant), others are political, others cultural etc etc. The things is, most, if not all of these 'things', is in some way trying to instill you with propaganda. For example, since capitalism is so dominant, at least where I am (Britain), it is hard to notice the capitalist propaganda, and often it is not made consciously, but it's there. Therefore, it is impossible to judge a group of people in anything other than very, very minimal terms.

It is ignorant to say then that Christians are all like this, Atheists like that, Muslims like so on etc etc. We live in a world where people can commit as much to or as little to anything they like, so every person must be thought of on an individual basis. The idea of a bandwagon is a great example - it's usually just led by a vocal minority, whilst the majority has an interest, but is not nearly as committed - although I should judge that on an individual basis

Of course, this does not apply to all parts of the world, and there are social and cultural pressures...but that's a debate for another day, and is becoming less applicable in 'western' countries.

In case people decide to section me, I'll do it for you very quickly: Brought up in a Christian (first Anglican, then Catholic) house-hold, now a namby-pamby spiritual fence sitter.

    Ahh cool, turns out remaking every GUI worked. I guess a good indicator is if the button on the GUI refuses to link to anything. Thanks also for the tip slasher - if things go wrong later on, I'll know what to test.

    Case closed!

 Yep, same error.

Could it be AGS having issue with imported rooms? I noticed the editor didn't recognize room 31, but did recognize the others (when importing)... that shouldn't have anything to do with it though...

Hmm, no, it's not them either...

I guess it's an issue with importing things then. I imported both GUIs and Rooms from the previous, so I'll see if making the GUI's from scratch helps (please God, please let it not be rooms!  )

Thanks again!

[after the end]

Hello Everyone!

Well, after this post, I decided to salvage everything and run by basically making an exact copy of the game bar the music files (since they were obsolete anyway for the project) and get a lovely uncorrupted experience. Unfortunately I receive an illegal exception error on start-up, which I read up can usually be found by commenting out sections of code until I hit what's causing the error.

So I set "check points" (basically, writing into a file, since Display("Blah") can't be used in certain functions) through what I figured would be the start-up procedure, that is:

game_start() (on all scripts)
on_event() (for eEventBeforeFadeIn)
room_Load() (for the room I'm starting in)
room_FirstLoad() (ditto)
room_AfterFadeIn() (ditto)

It appears that the error happens after the end of room_Load() but before room_FirstLoad() and room_AfterFadeIn() - does anyone know what the engine is loading up/executing at that point?

Thanks again!

Hello TeitakuCoubri!

Ooops! Errm, replace all instances of "m" with "Text" - For personal use I just use short, non-descriptive letters (I have similar code in the project I'm working on), but I wanted to make it clearer so I put "Text" instead, and forgot to change it for the calculation, my bad!

I realize I should have given more explanation perhaps, thus to avoid confusion. I feel like I threw you out into the deep end, which was a bit unfair of me... sorry about that :\

There's great sections in the manual for functions and extender functions which fleshes out what Khris said.

Hopefully that will help clarify things!

Hello TeitakuCoubri, welcome to the forums

I don't know if this is the cause of the problem, but in the manual entry for SayAt it states:

NOTE: This function does not support Whole-Screen speech.

Two solutions spring to mind, and they are both quite similar. One is to write a custom speaking function where the character talking animation plays and a GUI with the text is displayed at the top, the other is exactly the same but with an Overlay instead of a GUI. My preference is overlay.

You could create a custom function using Overlays in GlobalScript.asc, something like:

Code: AGS

void Comment(this Character*, String Text){ //by having (this Character*) as a parameter, you are making it an extender function for characters
                                                      //this means you can call the function by typing: player.Comment("blah")
  this.StopMoving(); //so the character won't keep moving. [this] is a keyword which refers to the specific character calling this function
  Overlay* bgs = Overlay.CreatTextual(0, 2, 384, Game.SpeechFont, this.SpeechColor, Text); //Here you create a textual overlay.
                                                                                           //it's worth looking up in the manual to see what
                                                                                           //all the parameters are.
  this.LockView(this.SpeechView); //locks the character view into it's speaking view
  this.Animate(this.Loop, this.AnimationSpeed, eRepeat, eNoBlock, eForwards); //animates the character using it's speaking view
                                                                              //make sure it is repeating and not blocking!
  WaitMouseKey((m.Length/Game.TextReadingSpeed + 1) * GetGameSpeed()); //WaitMouseKey means wait until the user clicks or presses a key or time runs out.
                                                                       //The stuff inside the parameter is the official AGS maths for how long spoken
                                                                       //text usually appears on screen...I think...
  if (bgs != null && bgs.Valid) bgs.Remove(); //remove the overlay if it still exists
  this.UnlockView(); //unlock the character's view, making it go back to normal.
}//ends the function

Then import it in GlobalScript.ash:

Code: AGS

import void Comment(this Character*, String Text);

Then you can call it in your code, like:

Code: AGS

player.Comment("These heavy oak doors are (etc)");

Hopefully Overlays won't cause the same problem... It should work though. Note, however, that voice acting won't be supported in the same way using this method...you'll have to play the sound files manually.

Hope this helps!

Hello Crimson

I don't know exactly if it was just a few mp3 files that corrupted, or whether it was all of them - but taking the sounds out in different orders didn't effect anything until they were all gone... Here's one of them.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/qefiwbqxz43i984/au000001.mp3

As an update; it seems as if taking the sounds out in the AGS 3.21.1115 editor does not fix the problem - it has to be done in the 3.3.0.1132 version.

Thanks again!

Hello Crimson

I built the game in the 3.3 editor and got the same problem, only the name of the .dmp file changed to reflect the version I was using.

However, as this issue seemed to have been cause in the past by corrupted mp3 files, I removed all the mp3 files, and the game no longer crashed. It seems weird though, since the game ran along happily until it hit the line I mentioned; it seemed to take issue with the command.

Code: AGS

DynamicSprite.CreateFromScreenShot();

I don't know if this information helps find a bug - but it seems like corrupted sound files cause trouble wherever they go.

Thanks again!

Hello Everyone!

I have encountered a curious error whereby my game crashes when it encounters the following code:

Code: AGS

sMenu = DynamicSprite.CreateFromScreenShot();
sMenu.Tint(0, 64, 128, 50, 75);

Where sMenu is a Dynamic Sprite. It is deleted at points, but whether it is deleted or not before the above usage comes in the game always freezes up and gives me a CrashInfo3.21.1115NMP.DMP file.

The exception information: "The thread tried to read or write to a virtual address for which it does not have the appropriate access"

However, this ONLY happens when I run the game from the .exe - in the editor this line executes fine and nothing goes wrong.

Also, as I said before, the game freezes, doesn't crash (actually managing to lock up mouse controls at one point). I have to open the .DMP file with VisualStudio C++ (although that may be my default programs taking over).

Does anyone know what could be causing this?

Thanks again!

Hello Khris!

Ahh, I understand. I've updated the code on assigning the sprites to reflect a linear scaling path, and it works fine! Now the only issue (apart from a slight character offset, which is easily fixed) is that the rate of zoom increases the further out it gets... But I guess this can be worked around by either adjusting the timings of the rate at which new frames are displayed (which seems a bit rough) or to keep to the original zoom I had and update the character movement math with this linear formula in mind.

If anyone is interested, the code to assign progressively more zoomed in sprites used to be: (for CENTER-RIGHT corner at 50% zoom)

Code: AGS

int i;
while(i<64){
  Background[i] = DynamicSprite.CreateFromBackground(0, (i*8), (i*3), (i*8), (i*6));
  Background[i].Resize(1024, 768);
  i ++;
}

and is now:

Code: AGS

int i;
float c = 1.0/64.0;
float d;
while(i<64){
  if(i!= 0) d = c + (IntToFloat(i)*c);
  else d = c;
  d += 1.0;
  Background[i] = DynamicSprite.CreateFromBackground(0, (1024-FloatToInt(1024.0/d)), (384-FloatToInt(384.0/d)), FloatToInt(1024.0/d), FloatToInt(768.0/d));
  Background[i].Resize(1024, 768);
  i ++;
}

Thanks again!

Hello everyone!

I'm very sorry if this is a simple question to answer - my brain just seems a bit fuzzed today (I'm sure that's a verb)

I'm writing a zooming out function (from a zoomed in image of 50%) where the character is scaled and placed separately from the image. More precisely, I have 64 Dynamic Sprites where each contains a more "zoomed in" version of the background than the last, and a character who is animating separately with the proper scaling. I'm trying to have the character appear as if he is staying in the same place, but scale correctly. I tried, therefore, implementing this code:

Code: AGS

//somewhere above:
DynamicSprite Background[64];
//these then get assigned to the backgrounds at progressive level of "zoom" (63 = max zoom)
int i = 63;
float xFactor = IntToFloat(cChar.x-EndCharXPlace)/64.0; //where EndCharXPlace is where the character's final x coordinate should be
float yFactor = IntToFloat(cChar.y-EndCharYPlace)/64.0; //and so on...
float sFactor = IntToFloat(cChar.Scaling-EndCharScaling)/64.0; 
float j;
while(i >= 0){
  object[0].Graphic = Background[i].Graphic; //there are reasons why it's an object...I think...
  j = IntToFloat(i);
  cChar.Scaling = EndCharScaling+FloatToInt(j*sFactor, eRoundNearest);
  cChar.x = EndCharXPlace+FloatToInt(j*xFactor, eRoundNearest);
  cChar.y = EndCharYPlace+FloatToInt(j*yFactor, eRoundNearest);
  Wait(3);
  i --;
}

Whilst the character (cChar) starts and stops at the right X/Y coordinates and scaling, the character appears to move down and left on the screen (relative to where he should be) for the first 32 frames, before slowly returning back to end up at the correct position for the last 32. How can I correct the formula so the character moves the correct amount of X and Y to seemingly stay in the same position?

Apologies again if this is a waste of time - I feel like I should know the answer :\

Thanks again!

I need to stop posting things at midnight

Ahh, I see - my mistake, I'd heard in places that Smith was planning on leaving - but I guess that will be after the end of the next series. That'll be good, since I still think he's managed to truly craft his own DW character within this series.

Well, this will make the November episode VERY interesting - unless something like this happens again. That would be very interesting if John Hurt's Doctor turned out to be pre-Hartnell, since he physically is the most similar (older actor age, that is). Although Hurt is presented as a Doctor who broke the promise of being 'The Doctor' - suggesting that he must have already named himself.

Still, it's a better theory than mine was for Clara - I thought she was the Doctor's daughter from the episode 'The Doctor's Daughter' (Tennant; Series 4 episode 6) come back to save the Doctor! Errm, Not my best moment

Hello everyone!

*SPOILERS WARNING!* This discussion will be about perhaps the most spoiler-ish episode in recent DW history - DO NOT read on if you have not seen Series 7 Episode 13! (or series 33, in real terms )

Firstly: apologies if this is the wrong place to post - it's the first one I've done outside of the tech area!

I don't know how big a deal Doctor Who is outside of the UK - but man, that Finale!

The construction of the episode itself seemed to be almost bang on this time (it's been somewhat lacking this series) - while things like "dream worlds" and psychic links felt a bit trope-y (especially the bloody enemies which didn't make any sense), it felt like it was all leading to the moment we discover, if not all, at least a substantial part of the Doctor's mystery (and Clara's!)

I also found the way Moffat decided to create and sustain this mystery of Clara, and it's final explanation, much, much better executed than the whole Rory/Amy/Riversong storyline. This time the mystery didn't require a lot of exposition, but just enough to still create an intriguing, and intellectually satisfying ending.

That said, the recurring motifs I found still didn't work - the leaf is significant sure, but it feels out of place - we already know the delicacy of the situation, we don't need it to be shoved in like that - that's what actors are there to convey!

Speaking of which, I don't know what everyone thinks about this (I've heard varying opinions) but i really think this series has let Matt Smith really create his own, unique Doctor. The light, comic side to him no longer feels like it is the dominant one, with his serious side coming into effect. It seems a shame that now that he's truly carved a Doctor's niche for himself, that he will leave so soon.

However, the new Doctor - John Hurt I believe - looks incredibly interesting to take Matt Smith's place - simply in the contrast between the two. Certainly at the end, he seemed to be the Doctor's ultimate dark side, or dark secret. I've looked around and seen rumors that John Hurt may actually be something along the lines of the 9th Doctor, making Matt Smith the 12th, and final, one. It will be interesting to see how they write in a darker, more overtly troubled Doctor, especially if that's set just before or after the Time War!

Anyway - I'm curious to see what other people think of that Finale (and future of DW) - apologies again if this is not the right place to post

@Nanuaraq
Also, you can have no return type by declaring the return type to be void, so:

Code: AGS

void DoSomeStuff(){
    Display("Doing things");
    //NO RETURN STATEMENT!
}

I'd recommend this if you have a function that doesn't return anything.