Messages

If you want to see very good hi-res graphics, you should try Broken Sword 2.5 and Zak 2: Beyond Space and Time, although both are not AGS games and rather suck at being adventurous (Zak2 being slightly better than BS2.5).

As for AGS, I think many people here like the pixellated style, but you should nonetheless give some games a try. They're great!

AFAIR buloght had the exact same thing you look for in his game "The Family Treasure". Unfortunately, he hasn't been on the forums for a long time, but he had the fairy style cursor without any impact on game performance.

[Oddysseus]

Okay, great entries everyone. I declare Oddysseus and his Sawblade Frisbee the winner.

Okay, is someone else entering? If not, I'll declare the winner the following evening.

I've got a 3â,¬ MIDI keyboard off eBay and a 5â,¬ MIDI2USB adapter. The keyboard itself is quite old (some old FATAR I think), and it hasn't sounds by itself (although there are many keyboard with built-in speakers and library; in fact, in the old days, people were not only using it to get MIDI data into the PC, but vica versa, because the PC libraries sounded like shit), so you'll need a program that interprets it. But it does it's job well; the only one who is incapable of making music is me ^^

You could use THIS MODULE. Don't know if it works with 3.0, though.

1. Draw each step of the animation (i.e. each frame) with a paint program of your choice.

EDIT: And then follow LimpingFishs tutorial advice.

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2. Import all the frames as sprites into the AGS editor.
3. Create a new View and -- with the frames you imported -- set the front, back, left and right loops (or whatever animation you wanted your NPC to have).
4. a) If they are walking animations, set the Normal View of the NPC to the view you used.
4. b) If they are other animations (like picking something up), call the View from the ScriptEditor (help file -> character.ChangeView) where you want it to play.

Unlike some other creation suites, AGS is actually not initially friendly to everyone. In some programmes you can do simple stuff by just moving keywords, filling in boxes or moving sliders just by mouse clicks or the drag and drop method, while in AGS it is impossible to do much without writing text scripts. (Well, starting from AC era, there were indeed attempts in making the editor simple for beginners to do simple stuff. First the graphical script editor, then the interaction editor. But as it took a lot of effort to make them really usable, and they were unable to coop with the speedy development of AGS itself, so both attempts failed.)
The learning curve is quite steep for beginners to start using AGS, especially for those who have little or no programming experience.

I had very little programming experience, but going through the tutorials pretty much got me started, resulting in two games (which are bugfests, okay, but they are games and even use non-standard GUIs), so I think the initial post has quite a point. Reading the tutorials (and following it's steps in the editor) is really helpful and should already give answers to "how do I change rooms?" and "how do I use objects?" questions.

But it's true that the 3.0 build ist quite complicated for beginners: I would advise a newbie to start with 2.72 and then switch when he thinks he's ready.

Windows' zoom-function isn't that bad. I used it often when I drew regions, walkbehinds and stuff, so it's quite helpful.

[Sports no one has seen, yet]

What is a Photoshop Phuesday?

Photoshopping isn't drawing a completely new image -- It's editing images to create a new image, such as editing one image or combining several images. The contest usually lasts for a fortnight. Also, you don't have to specifically use Photoshop -- Paint Shop Pro, MSPaint, or any other programs can be used. Please make sure your image doesn't exceed the width of the screen.

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This week's topic: Sports no one has seen, yet

And that's it. Show us a sport no one has seen, yet, be it giraffe-throwing, a rock-eating-contest or something even more ridiculous.

cheers
nihilyst

Thanks ... I'll come up with one soon.

That's the restaurant at the End of the Universe?

Never thought of that, but now that you say it ^^

Wow. Looks really great! I wish you good luck in finishing this game.

Why on earth should anyone have to fork out for an expensive graphics card to play a point-and-click?... I can sort of understand with games like Half-life etc where frame-rates and everything are important to the players... but adventure fans just want to solve a few puzzles and be swept up in a good story.

Guess what: Alone in the Dark 5 has compatibility-problems with ATI graphic cards, even with the newest models.

I guess sometimes the engine of a game is plain shit, and altough it's graphics are not so great, it needs tons of RAM and CPU power.

Sometimes things do happen that seem rather strange and spooky. I once saw some tv-magazine-show, that showed a cat in a nursing home. It used to stroll around all day. Sometimes it visited certain people and stayed with them. All those were people that were about to die.
That's kind of a different story. It's quite possible that cats can sense some things earlier then human beings, but in your case Squatch was miles away, so I guess it's just coincidental. It's still kind of strange, though.

A few years ago my grandmother's mirror glass fell off the holder (and I wouldn't consider that normal). It is said, that when that happens, the mirror's owner is going to die. And three weeks later, my grandmother got ill and died. Sure, could be a coincidence: the mirror was quite old. But nevertheless it was spooky.

Okay, after managing to get around the glitches I finished it with 547. I could have been more, but everytime I tried getting that one letter I constantly fall through the platforms. And that's probably the main issue with this game (as has been said): You fall through platforms, sometimes he doesn't jump, sometimes he bounces off the letters, sometimes he lands on invisible plattforms.

And the sound when fetching the mails is too loud really horrible. I had to mute my speakers.

But other than that, I guess it could be a cool platformer. Keep working!

I think the main problem of BS4 is not the fact, that it's 3D. It's how awful the overall controls were implemented. This mixture of keyboard and mouse just ruined it totally. You couldn't really play it with mouse alone because George was better controlled by keyboard, but you couldn't use keyboard only, either, because you couldn't do anything other then walking with it. BS3 worked much better imo.

So I guess 3D adventure games could be good, but they should either have fixed camera angles or should not be controlled with a mouse cursor.

But I like the 2.5D approach more.

I liked the PP. I'd be happy to see it again.

Also, what's with the random supernatural crap?  Max Payne had some surreal moments (when you're inside his memories) but I don't remember valkyrie-griffon things grabbing people and flying around in huge fire tornadoes.

Silly.

True, but I can imagine a Max Payne movie or game to have some dark fantastic elements. But what those things are, exactly, who can say it?