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Hullo all!

I'm just wondering if the max objects per room limit is fixed at 20 for a particular reason, only we're using invisible blue cups for waypoints for characters to walk to in cutscenes etc, to allow us to reposition characters positions throughout cutscenes without editing the code (and for other reasons relating to our conversation engine)

This means, in the first room for example, I have hit the 20 object limit even though I've only got 4 actual visible objects in the room... the rest being start positions for characters, where characters move to in the room etc.

I could probably get around this for this particular room, but can imagine some larger, scrolling rooms I may simply not have enough objects to put the waypoints I require and the visible objects I require.

Is there any way around this? Would it break stuff or slow down if this limit was increased?

Thanks!

lemmy

Hi CJ,

When defining characters poses/gestures in my conversation editor, the user specifies views, along with start/end frame for the animation. At the moment I can only reference these by the view's ID number, but I was wondering if there was any way I could grab hold of the view names defined in AGS, either through the plug-in editor interface, or possibly reading directly from the main AGS project file?

Simply to avoid the user having to maintain the view names in the conversation editor seperately from within AGS, or to have to use a load of fiddly numbers?

If you had any ideas it would be much appreciated!

thanks!

lemmy

[AGS Particle Editor]

Hi all, we're looking to start beta testing a few AGS plug-ins we have in development in the non-too-distant future, details of which can be found below:

AGS Particle Editor

Users will be able to visually create high quality particle effects ranging from explosions, rain, reflections, fire, smoke or anything else. Utilising hardware acceleration, if present, via Direct3D, the particle engine is capable of creating particles with full alpha transparancy using a range of 32bit blending options within a stand-alone editor. They will then be able to save these and load them within AGS to provide tailor made effects in your AGS games. You can make spot effects to trigger on game events using simple script calls within AGS, or set up room-based effects which will trigger automatically whenever the player enters a room.

aMuse

aMuse gives AGS users the power to create interactive music with more power and flexibility even than Lucasarts iMuse system. Using (free to download) Direct Music Producer alongside (or as) your sequencing program, you will be able to build up CD quality music content that can change and evolve based on player interactions in the game, alowing for chord changes, new instruments to kick in, or even entirely different tunes to blend in seamlessly. Whether you want your town tune to include the "bad guy dittie" as soon as he steps onscreen, or kick in the drums as soon as the player picks up an object, aMuse allows you much control over the audio in your game. You can time music events to game events, or even tie game events into music events. aMuse also allows you to easily create alternate downloads for your game with music quality varying from generic MIDI to high fidelity sampled instruments with effects such as Reverb, Flanger, Chorus and Compressor, simply by replacing a single file. It also ensures that MIDI music will sound identical on ANY sound-card.

Elemental Conversation / Cutscene Engine

A replacement for the AGS conversation engine, this tool will allow you to create conversations for your AGS game using a simple flowchart interface. By defining the path to take upon different conversation choices, setting logic flags, and even moving characters and controlling animation, this editor allows much more control over your conversations and is effectively a full cutscene system. Allowing you to specify different poses for your characters, along with transitions to make sure their animation is fluid and seamless, your characters will be able to gesticulate during speech, pound their feet, shake their heads, or point wildly, breathing more life into your characters. The conversation engine allows you to do full-screen talkies with characters composited onto different backgrounds, and all range of other customisations.

The Conversation Editor even has debugging support! Allowing you to set breakpoints on specific nodes to halt the AGS game, and allow you to look at logic flags and step through your conversation flowchart step by step to find any problems! Not only this, but combined with the aMuse system, the new conversation engine allows for musicians to control the music themselves, allowing them to cue music events themselves independently of the scripters making the game.

If you would be interested, please reply to our beta testing thread and we will send you download links as soon as they are ready for testing.

http://www.cgempire.com/showthread.php38

We need people to sign up to keep track of beta-testers and their mail addresses, but feel free to ask any questions here.

Thanks all,

lemmy

Hi all,

We're currently writing a plug-in, along with an editor, that we want users of which to be able to write in bits of AGS script into flowchart nodes, which will then be run by the game engine. I've found two functions in the engine interface relating to calling scripts in-game:

int CallGameScriptFunction(const char *name, int globalScript,
                int numArgs, int arg1 = 0, int arg2 = 0, int arg3 = 0);

void* GetScriptFunctionAddress (const char *funcName);

The first I'm guessing is only for my own functions, the second obtaining an address to an AGS script function for me to call.

I was wondering if, either directly or indirectly, there was any way for me to pass a string buffer of actual script for the engine to run, or is this impossible due to internal compilation of the script or something?

Something line:

char szBuf[] = "cEgo.Walk(oBeachWaypoint.X, oBeachWaypoint.Y, eNoBlock, eWalkableAreas); cDoctor.Walk(oBeachWaypoint.X-30, oBeachWaypoint.Y, eNoBlock, eWalkableAreas);";

If this is not currently possible, is it something that is likely never going to be due to internal workings?

thanks!

lemmy

Hi all, we're having problems getting our talking anims working properly.

Basically, what we want is to have 3-4 forward facing talking poses, say one with hands on hips, one with folded arms, etc etc. The problem we're having is that the character reverts back to their idle pose (i.e. "SetIdleView, delay 0)) as soon as their line has been spoken. The snapping between the talking pose and the idle pose doesn't look too great, unless we use the talking pose that's the same as the idle pose.

We could turn the Idle anim off, but in that case it uses the first frame of the walking animation, which again causes a nasty snap.

Lastly, we could see a solution of having an idle pose for every single talking pose in the game, but we have fears for the 600 view limit, as we've already hit 100 and can't even be a tenth into the complete game, so don't want to start frivolously creating extra views.

Is there anyway to do this without doubling up our talking views? I was hoping to use the first frame of the talking animation, in the same way as the game automatically uses the first walking frame if no Idle View is set.

Also, as a side note, a suggestion on anims which we would find really useful for doing gestures and anim transitions and such:

Would it ever be possible to have a loop specified as a "transition" loop. where, for eg: Loop 0 of a view was a transition from idle 1 to idle 2, and loop 1 was the idle.

So when you told the character to switch to that view, they would play the transition loop automatically, then start looping the main anim loop. Likewise when leaving that view, you could set up a loop to be the transition out of that anim? I imagine this would lead to more opportunities for more animated dialogue as the character could shift poses and do gestures from those poses smoothly without loads of extra views and script commands needed?

Cheers again!

lemmy

Hello all, I know I said I wasn't going to post again but just thought I owed a few people an apology for being a bit narcy about some of their comments on the vulgar thread. At the end of the day I joined this community to make some new friends, not new enemies, so this one goes out to Squinky, Big Brother, Helm, and everyone else, I still disagree, but respect I should of perhaps bitten my lip on a few occasions. You're entitled to your opinions, and you've all been here much longer than I have.

I was going to post this on the vulgar thread but thought since it's dying out I didn't want to risk resurrecting it

neway I'm still not gonna be around here much for a while, lots of stuff to do, not least FE, but didn't want to leave any sour feelings behind.

Laters all! Take care, and sorry again!

lemmy

I was just curious as to which people prefer:

- A point-and-click where the main character is unable to die. The focus is on experiencing the story and solving puzzles.

- A point-and-click where the main character could die at any moment for taking too long or doing something incorrect.

I can see pros and cons for both, I like the feeling of danger you get knowing that your character's life is in your hands, however I find games that you cannot die a lot less frustrating to play.

I'd probably side with not being able to die, all things considered. A more relaxing experience and you don't have to worry about when you last saved all the time

Just wondered what other people thought about this?

Cheers,

Lemmy

Hi all, I'm trying to get a fade-in working immediately after entering a room. Basically our game starts with someone waking up, and we wanted to have the room fade in really slowly to give the effect of waking up.

However the only place I can seem to get the FadeOut/FadeIn working is in the "After Fade In" interaction, which means the screen fades in itself before I get chance.

Any suggestions?

Cheers,
lemmy

EDIT: Thanks guys!

[Entry for Seahorse Island in Widdenfel Travel Guide]

Lemmy & Binky present

Something is terribly wrong with Seahorse Island.

It's about a thirty suns now since the crops and trees began to wither and die. It has been raining for what seems like an eternity, but the rain does nothing to nourish the soil. The leaves have been gone from the trees outside my office for many suns now. The trees look like twisted corpses. I don't recall ever seeing such a sight as I do now as I write this.

Farmer Haywood has stockpiled the remaining grain, and has begun rationing it to the town. It should last us a while, but what then?

Mr. Clancy came to visit me today. He is looking for a woman--an ‘evil and manipulative creature' is how he put it--a mainlander spy, incredibly dangerous, and should I see or hear word of her I should report to him immediately. It may be my imagination but I seem to be seeing a lot of people around town I don't recognise lately. Out of the corner of my eye, just stood in the shadows--watching. The townsfolk seem to pay them no heed, which I find odd given their inherent xenophobic natureâ€"or, dare I say it, am I seeing things? Has the madness that is spreading across our fair island started to affect my mind also?

The headaches are getting more frequent, my eyes burning with their intensity. I would hope it is just fatigue, but I am beginning to doubt that. Either way there is no time for rest now--I fear it is going to get much worse before it gets better.

- Dr. E. Carter

Entry for Seahorse Island in Widdenfel Travel Guide

This small secluded island is situated six miles off the south coast of Widdenfel and is home of a curious community who have long lost touch with the wider world that flourishes around them.

A very much insular society that looks largely at foreigners as dangerous and untrustworthy, although the sea town of Derry in the North West of the island has recently accepted trade agreements with the mainland, and is developing a more trusting and relaxed attitude to their over sea neighbours.

Curiously, Seahorse Island is perhaps one of the only places in the world that employ the Caste System. The island has no formal government structure of any kind, and it is remarkable to see how this way of life has worked so harmoniously for the inhabitants for over 500 years.

Despite the frosty welcoming committee and unsure glances one would be sure to receive, especially as a woman, Seahorse Island is a remarkable place to visit. The island is steeped in a rich ancestral history, with many beautiful landmarks harking back to the Days of Kings. Anyone with an interest in this period in history, particularly of the Great Siege, should make it their aim to visit Seahorse Island at some stage in their lives.

Hopefully, in the years to come, the local community will become more accepting of influence from the continent, particularly in their attitudes towards gender inequality, and Seahorse Island could become an extremely popular and rewarding travel destination.

Now featuring 32bit rain effects!

Continued after Chicky and Saberteeth's posts until server issues are solved.

Hi guys,

Binky and myself are having a problem with character walk speeds without anti-glide set.

Basically, our main character has a fair few walk frames in her animations (20 per direction), which means with anti-glide mode enabled she is coming out really jerky (we're guessing anti-glide is probably designed for lower numbers of walk frames). We turned it off and her animation is now nice and smooth, but we have found that the only sensible speed option for her and every other character is 1. Any higher and they move too fast, and we are unable to slow her down any more.

This also means that, due to the perspective our backgrounds are at, even with scaling the speed of movement, her up/down walk speed is way too fast. But as it is set to 1 we are unable to slow her down any.

So first, my question: Is there any way to either A) change the entire game #cycles per frame, thus giving us more choice for character speeds than 1, or B) Somehow slow the characters down, yet allow them to still obey walkable areas etc.

the ideal would be to have a floating point value for a character's walk speed, so for e.g. setting her walk speed to 0.5 would move her once every two frames, and so on and so forth.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Hi all,

I'm using AGSE_SAVEGAME & AGSE_RESTOREGAME to write/restore data from my plug-in to the save file. However the AGS Plugin API tutorial tells me I "must read in the same number of bytes that I wrote", and the FRead function requires that I pass in the number of bytes I wish to read in... But how can I know this without reading the data in first?

I have the size that I wrote in SAVEGAME, but since this is most likely a new instance of my C++ class, and a new instance of the AGS engine, I've no longer got access to this info. Do I need to store the data size in another file? Or perhaps some of the AGS stuff is loaded in by this point and I could set a GlobalInt or something?

Any suggestions will be much appreciated!

Hi all, I'm having a problem using the import mask stuff on scrollable backgrounds, mainly for the following reason:

We use DPaint Animation for doing sprites/backgrounds, which is great. Setting up the palettes for import mask is easy... Except DPaint Animation cannot draw a screen larger than 320 x 200, so for scrollable backgrounds, which we paint in Photoshop first, we cannot import it into DPaint to sort out the mask palettes...

Photoshop does stupid things to the palettes, reversing them, and no matter what we try (mainly setting up a palette in reverse in DPaint and exporting it to Photoshop, we cannot seem to get a palette that's accepted in AGS.

Please can anyone suggest any good (free) tools/apps for sorting out the palettes?

Cheers!

lemmy101

Hello, my first post here. 1st off wanted to say how cool AGS is. Just happened upon it a couple of weeks ago and was quite gobsmacked. I work in the game industry and a lot of tool programmers in the industry could take some important lessons from how AGS has been approached... Congrats, I'm now officially hooked!

Anyway, since I do not yet have a solution to someone else's problem, have a problem of my own, or have some screen caps from our AGS game ready to post, I'll start with a few things I've noticed that could be improved. Sorry if some have been suggested before, or if they are already implemented and I've missed them...

* Views and other non-deletable main types referencable by string instead of the explicit index? e.g.:

cEgo.ChangeView("walk1");

Might be some speed issues doing a string compare each time, but then how often do you change the view of a character? Not every frame hopefully, so should be ok? As well as making the script more readable, and specific views easier to find, this would allow them to be deleted without nerfing the scripts I assume?

* A drawable null area around the rooms in room hotspot editor etc. Allow the user to put down a point in this border to make it easier to draw a line that goes through the entire screen. At present you have to aim precisely at the edge pixel.

* Walk-behinds "Set Walkable area", a walk-behind can be told to only affect only one walkable area. This would allow for walking over hill brows unless there's something I've not thought of...

* Walk-behinds "Set peak-line", only a base-line OR a peak-line could be specified for a walk-behind. A "peak-line" would do the reverse, and hide the character only if they're below it. This would be useful for the above hill brow thing (tho it could be worked around without this by setting the base line to be at the bottom of the screen thus on that walkable area ALWAYS walk behind.

* Test Game to automatically ask to close the script window, and then run the game. Having to close the script window manually, and then reclick test-game is very irritating, and the time adds up when retesting regularly...

* Support for sprite pages please!!! Sprite pages would be completely awesome, save a lot of time importing sprites into the editor.

* A quicker way of adding frames to loops. Selecting a range of sprites and it filling out the loop would be great.

* Support for externally accessed sprites. Being able to replace sprites on the HD and re-run the game would be well funky.

* Setting origin point on views. Being able to set the point on the sprite that you consider 0,0 would be great for easier lining up sprite interactions and such.

Some others that are doable as modules, and so are less important, but would be cool for newer users nevertheless:

* Linking objects to characters - I've wrote a module for this but only supports 1 char and one object at the moment. May redo it with 2.71 assuming I can now have an array of pointers in a struct, but being able, for example to allow for someone new and non-programmer savvy to be able to, for e.g. push a step-ladder across the screen, would be very handy. (As a side note, I found I had to do a linking system was because the character movement and object movement speeds didn't seem to tally as the help suggested... tho I may have being missing something)

The way I have it set up:

ELM_BindObjectToCharacter(cEgo, oTrolley, 10/*xOff*/, 0/*yOff*/);
ELM_UnbindCharacter(cEgo);

-------

That all aside, AGS is great stuff and it looks like it's realizing your ambition to bring back point-and-click games to the masses. thanks for this wonderful tool, and thanks for keeping it free!

I'll be sure to release all my modules and plug-ins once they've been tested in our game enough.

Oh and hello everyone

lemmy101