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look up ways to get them into .ogg files and they'll be A LOT smaller and have the same quality to them

Audacity is one program that will enable you to export sound files in ogg format. It's also a pretty cool sound-editing program.

Just wondering, why don't you create a custom view with some extra frames in the frame you want "locked" then use that view when you want the character to... ¿ice-skate?

Hm, I don't think that would do what I want. I don't want the character to glide but to remain still for a moment.

In any case, I have now written my own code to do both of the things I was looking for. Thank you both for your ideas.

I know that you can extend or shorten the time that each frame of an animation is on for using the SPD setting below the frames in the animation view, but is there a way of varying, in any given frame of a walk animation, the speed that the character moves across the screen while that frame of the animation is being displayed? Specifically, I want the character to go through the full cycle of frames, moving forward as they do (as already happens), then remain stationary for a moment before repeating the cycle. Is there a way of doing this in AGS? At the moment the only solution I see is to write my own code to do this, which wouldn't be too hard, but obviously I'd prefer not to if there's a way to do it in AGS.

On the subject of writing stuff myself: is there a way of determining in AGS which position a character will walk to when the user clicks on a given position on the screen that is not in a walkable area? Again, I could code this up myself but it would make life a lot easier for me if the information is already accessible somehow.

Just to be clear, I'm asking if there are functions to do this in AGS rather than how to code either of these things up from scratch.

Thanks.

[Three things that make up a good game]

Every time I see a thread about what people don't like in adventure games I look at the game I am currently working on and start worrying whether I should be removing X because people don't like it or doing Y instead of Z.

Then I have to remind myself that you can't please all of the people all of the time, and then I carry on working on making the game as good as I can to my own satisfaction. There will be things that some people will love and others will detest, but that's par for the course.

EDIT: Of course, I know the sorts of things that people tend to dislike (such as bad English, puzzles that have nothing to do with anything, pixel hunts and crap graphics), and so these won't be featured in the game

And my answers:

Three things that make up a good game
An exciting plot, fantastic graphics, humour.

What is it about a game that inspires you?
Good design and clever programming.

What do you consider 'off putting' about a game?
Crashes, poor English, object interactions that don't do anything, no suggestion of what the next goal is... essentially anything that says that the game-maker hasn't put in much effort.

Your Preference: Lucasarts or Sierra or other?
Regarding the interface, Sierra. Having to do everything with two clicks (verb, object) soon gets annoying, as does trying out myriad verb+object combinations that have no effect. As for the games themselves, I can't comment as I've never really played any of the originals.

Mouse or Keyboard controls?
Mouse, but if there are keyboard shortcuts for mouse operations (eg, for opening a particular verb on the verb coin), then that can only be plus.

Yes paolo, but additional work is required if some fancy tricks are used to generate dialog. Like for example when looking at something character says "It's a/an [itemnamehere]." And the script decides the indefinite article based on what item player is looking.

Ah, I see what you mean. I'd forgotten about that.

Another problem is when the same word is used in the source language for two different objects or items that have different names in the target language. For example, in Italian, "vaso" means both "vase" and "flowerpot", so when these objects appear in the same game (as happened when I was translating a game from Italian), they need separate translations. In this case I had little choice but to ask the game-maker to change the name of one of the objects so that two separate strings were generated in the .trs file.

HOWEVER, we've only released one translation (Dutch) because it's the implementing it back into AGS that is time consuming. At least, it was back in 2006/7 - I don't know if newer versions have made it easier.

It's dead easy now, and has been for a while. AGS generates a .trs file that lists all of the game text that is visible to the user, with blank lines between each piece of text and the next. The translator fills in the blank lines with their translations. AGS compiles the completed file into a .tra file, which you release with the game. The user selects the game language from setup.exe, and the game then translates text as it goes along.

Just my thoughts as someone who has translated quite a few AGS games. For the most part, I've done translations into English. I have translated a couple of games into French or Italian, but the audience for these is usually much smaller than games translated into English, so without the demand, it's questionable whether this is worth the effort. (I doubt that many people here have played Trance-Pacific in French or Italian, for example.)

Also note that translating a game might not be an easy task.

You can say that again. There is a lot more too it than looking up the occasional word you aren't familiar with in a dictionary. However, that's not a reason not to translate a game if there is enough demand for it.

I think that the urge of finally releasing a game is more important to lots of AGS game-creators then to wait some more time and add one or more translations...

True, but translations can be added later on - the files can be released separately without any need to change the game executable.

I think that non-English speakers were more forthright in demanding translations of games into their own language, we might see more translations being made.

Doesn't "A Second Face" have translations into about 7 languages or something? "A Second Face" has 4 translations (English [the original language is German], Italian, Polish and Spanish). That's not the record-holder - it looks like Radiant's games might hold that distinction. (Radiant, if you'd like a versione italiana of your games, let me know...  )

Don't worry about inadvertently taking other people's ideas. There is nothing new under the sun.

The best advice I've seen on this is: "If someone else has already done your idea, do it anyway and do it better."

Thanks, I've completed it now. I can't believe I overlooked that.

Very nicely done for a first attempt. I hope you'll be making more games like this in the future!

If I remember rightly, you need a tool.

Hint:

Spoiler

There should be a handy tool around somewhere

[close]

I've nearly finished this game. Just one more thing left to do:

Spoiler

get the monkey suit out of the upstairs room.

[close]

I'm guessing I need to

Spoiler

open the window

[close]

and to do that I need something

Spoiler

to oil it with

[close]

but the

Spoiler

cleaning products in the cupboard have childproof caps.

[close]

Any suggestions?

I would like to play this, but cannot download it because the link is broken  :

The link works for me, but the zip file is corrupt.

Looks great! I realize this is no the critics lounge but I find it hard to keep my mouth shut. The 1 px black edges you have around/inside all your objects in the backdrop are not helping you. Why not do the same with them as the outlines on your character? Simply have a darker tone of the current color, that is. It works magic on her and I can see no reason not to do the same on the backdrops.

It will look less "habbo", I promise.

Keep up the good work, looking forward to this!

Thanks. Interesting suggestion. The backgrounds are for the most part the work of someone else and they are all done except one. Changing them now would be a lot of extra work for me (foreground objects would need to be changed too) at this stage. If that weren't the case then I might have tried that out.

@Piotr - at my current rate of progress, I think there is about another year's work to go, so look out for this in autumn or winter next year.

Thanks guys for your feedback and the encouragement!

Although I haven't updated this thread for some time, I'm still making good progress on this game.

Here are the latest versions of the screenshots from the original posting.





This is very probably how they will appear in the game. I've upped the resolution of the player character (Tracey) to match the background resolution, and as you can see from the first pic, the other characters in the game are now fully-fledged. (The other two characters no longer in the image are in the back office having a conference.)

There's lots more still to do, so I hereby cautiously announce the game's release in autumn/winter 2011.

I decided however to keep the "dialect misspelling" on Sabo, since he really didn't have very much dialog, and that certain trope (R->L) is so well known, I figured no one would stumble on it.

[...]

If Sabo ever were to return to the series though, I can assure you, his accent will remain. It is, simply put, the way he talks.

I think that hits the nail on the head. If that's the way he talks, it's the way he talks. If other characters had been pointing out his accent or goading him to say words with lots of Rs in them just so they could laugh at him, that would have been a different story. If Bwana and Kito can have Jamaican characteristics to their speech (like "mon" for "man", which the reviewer points out) without it being made an issue, then why can't Sabo be made to sound Japanese? These nuances add to the authenticity of the game, in my view.

Funnily enough, I've been wanting to do a scene with two people sitting on swings for ages hah.

I hope you're not put off doing it now that someone else has done it. Do it and do it better! The world needs more games with people sitting on swings!

I think Ben makes far better games than this one. With much richer, more interesting worlds to explore.

That's true. It was really the mood of some of Ben's games that it reminded me of.

...then he might very well write something like this.

This is from a Casual Gameplay competition over at jayisgames. Here are the other entries.

I'm curious though, why use a Dialog if there always just one possible option anyway?

You're right, there probably wouldn't be any point in doing that, but consider a dialog with multiple options that are turned off one by one once the user has selected them. Eventually you'll get down to a dialog containing just one option, and by displaying it by itself and allowing the user to click on it, it doesn't end up being displayed as if it's part of the previously clicked option.

AJArmstron, you might like to try downloading and playing some of the games that have been created using AGS to see what kinds of things it is possible to do using the games engine. You can access them here. (I would recommend using option 1 and selecting "Only games with at least 4 Cups" as the rating to find some of the best of the bunch.) There are a few games that are purely puzzle-based rather than "traditional" adventure games.

Interesting. I haven't come across the WaitMouseKey function before. Does that mean "wait until the user clicks the mouse or presses a key" or something like that?