Messages

Hehe, the "official" and considerably more busy hints/tips thread is at the Zombie Cow forum : http://www.zombie-cow.com/forum/index.php?topic=1672.0

Paolo, some non-specific hints:

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Saw--> have you talked to the munitions worker yet?

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Toffee--> He says he's a jumpy sort.  Is there something you have that could give him a bit of a startle?

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[/quote]

Ooh, power of posting... I had another go at the game tonight and worked it out for myself, and it was just as I thought:

Spoiler

getting the toffee from Frank

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is the key to fixing a whole load of puzzles. Thanks anyway - that might help someone else.

Thanks for the link too. I hope I don't need it use it

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What no H&T thread yet? Is it just me or is everyone else breezing through this game

I've got a long way through the game without getting stuck and so far the puzzles have been just hard enough to be challenging but not so hard that I've been completely stumped, so well done on that, Ben and Dan. But I'll leave the review for after I've finished the game... on with my stuckness.

Spoiler

I think that all my woes stem from not being able to open that bottle of alcohol - there are at least two puzzles that, as far as I can see, will be solved once I've got it open.

Now I have seen something that looks an awful lot like a corkscrew but need to find some way of detaching it from its owner... perhaps something from the construction site will help here?

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So could anyone hint on the following, please?

1

Spoiler

Getting the saw from Frank.

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2

Spoiler

Getting the toffee from Frank.

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I think that's probably as much as I need for the time being in order to get further.

Thanks.

[@InCreator]

@InCreator

I'm always misusing "ä" [æ] when speaking english. I cannot understand why there isn't a letter for this vocal.

An apple. (äpl)
Language. (längvich)

It's there! And yet, I'm never sure if it really is.

Dance. I say "dääns". British say "daans". I'm wrong. But it feels so natural there. And I think I've heard it with my version million times in hollywood movies.

Also, lack of "ö" in whole language feels like absurd. "World". I haven't heard it pronounced like "worm".
Say those words! Hear the difference between 2 "o"-s? Or is there none?
So there's "ö" in language. But it's SO rare! In estonian, shortest word is "öö" (night). A whole word dedicated to and made of 2 same vocals!

But english... none.
Helluva strange language. I will never get over misusing those two - for me - so natural letters.

Another sick thing is using in and on correctly. I usually make (or might make) mistakes. I got sick on december or in December? My language-sense points to latter. But I'm never sure really, since I rely on sense only (as with all languages I know) and never memorize any actual grammar rules.

ALSO thing I never made clear for myself, even though I got A's on tests:

Is an animal he, she or it? If I want to speak about a cat, do I have to lift (her/his/its) tail first to decide on gender?  

So many questions!

Unlike some other languages, English has more sounds than it has letters to represent them, so the same letter (or combination of letters) is used to represent more than one sound. The vowel "a" can represent the "short" sound in "cat" or the "long" sound in "day". The sound in "dance" is the same as the sound in "cat" in northern England and the US, which is why you hear it pronounced like that in American films. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-open_front_unrounded_vowel. For the vowel in "bath" as pronounced in southern England (which is considered the standard for British English), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_back_unrounded_vowel. (No point in me trying to explain this with words - you need to hear the sounds.)

The vowel sounds in "worm" and "world" are identical - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_central_unrounded_vowel. These are different from the sound in "for" - that is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_back_rounded_vowel. (This is for British English - other varieties of English may vary.) I'm not sure how "öö" is pronounced in Estonian. Maybe it is like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-mid_front_rounded_vowel or this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_front_rounded_vowel

Animals... usually you use "it", but "he" or "she" can also be used when you know the (physical) gender of the animal, and especially when talking about an animal affectionately (such as when referring to a pet). For example "Is that your dog? She's lovely" ("It's lovely" would sound strange here, so usually you would ask whether it is a male or a female first and then say "He's/She's lovely").

@GuyAwesome

Is that because the "didn't" in "didn't use to" means it's already past tense, so the "use" doesn't have to be, while the other part doesn't have that modifier so you have to have "used"?

Yep, "to use" is an old verb meaning "to do habitually" that is now used only in the past tense, so, strictly speaking, "didn't use to" is correct, but because the verb is now only used in the past (as "used") and only before "to", "used to" naturally sounds like it should become "didn't used to" in the negative. Both forms ("didn't use to", "didn't used to") are now considered correct.

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When answering these questions, it's important to recognise that different varieties of English use different rules. An American writing the previous sentence would have written "recognize", for example, and this can also be used in British English (it is the form preferred by the Oxford English and used by the Times newspaper) but endings in -ise are more common and are equally valid. The argument for the "-ize" form is that these words derive from Greek verbs ending in "-izein".

In answer to the apostrophe question: in British English, the underlying rule is that you add an "s" after the apostrophe if you pronounce it, and don't if you don't. Hence "a dog's breakfast" (= the breakfast of a dog) needs an "s" after the apostrophe because we add one to "dog" when pronouncing this, but "the dogs' owners (= the owners of the dogs) has no "s" after the apostrophe because "dogs" (plural) already has one. Proper nouns ending in "s" can either take an extra "s" or not, according to preference and whether it "sounds right". So if you prefer to say "Davisiz ..." for something belonging to Davis, then you write "Davis's ...", but if you think this sounds clumsy and prefer to say "Davis ..." instead, you write "Davis' ...". Dublin has "St. James's Hospital" because whoever named it chose to pronounce two "s"s in the second word, but the football (soccer) stadium in Newcastle-upon-Tyne is "St James' Park" because whoever named it pronounced only one.

American usage differs... from my experience, there seems to be a rule that any noun ending in in "s" or even "z" has no extra "s" after the apostrophe (eg, "the bus' passengers", "the Ritz' clients") whether or not one is pronounced, although I might be mistaken. This looks odd to my British eyes because "the bus' passengers" looks like it should be pronounced "the bus passengers" rather than "the bussiz passengers".

So the point of my post... a lot of these rules depend which type of English (British/Commonwealth English or American English) you are referring to, so, when posting, it is helpful to point out which variety of English you are referring to as things may be different elsewhere in the world.

I search in the game section but i did not found a scooby doo game. is there anybody from here created something laike this ?

We dressed up as monsters to scare you off and keep all the AGS Scooby Doo games for ourselves, and if it wasn't for you pesky kids we'd have gotten away with it!

Meowster, I think you not wanting them into the parliament(that's what I get) is racism too. You're being a racist against racists. We're supposed to have democracy (supposed to), so it's good to hear all thoughts. Even the bad ones. Even the racist ones.

Well, it would be discrimination rather than racism, because the BNP don't belong to any particular race (putting aside the fact that you have to be white to be a member).

Yes, it is fine to give a platform to racist viewpoints provided they are heard in the context of balanced debate, which they (hopefully) will be in the European Parliament.

Most funniest accidental said thing I heard all day, and that on the day that one of my colleagues told me he had to go home to play with his new pussy (cat).

...and of course that gag in all its variant forms is (c) Mrs Slocombe, circa 1974 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_you_being_served_%3F#Characteristics)

Hm, does this mean that as we had the MAGS special last month, the winner of each MAGS competition will now end up setting the rules for the MAGS competition after next rather than the next one?

His head looks tiny in comparison to the rest of his body. By a rough count, it fits 9 times into his full length, whereas the convention in art is for the head to fit into the full height 7 or 8 times (I don't remember which - no doubt someone more artistically informed can tell us which it is).

Most convenience stores have several rows of shelves. I would suggest putting one along the left-hand wall (perhaps a fruit and veg stand?) and one or two more between this one and the one that's already there. This will partially block the view of the counter but will make your shop look more realistic. (If this means you can't see the counter, then maybe the viewpoint is wrong; the Larry Vales images have several rows of shelves and use a different viewpoint so that you can see the counter.)

The items in a convenience store would be crammed together rather than spaced out. These items currently look more like exhibits in an art gallery. Space is at a premium in convenience stores and owners try to pack things into every available cubic inch. The items don't have to be individually recognisable.

Some ideas regarding the colours... A lot of things in real life come in light-coloured packages rather than dark ones and usually have pictures on their containers.

You could always try looking at a real-life convenience store for more ideas.

A nice game. I liked the graphics. Just one criticism from me:

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There wasn't any clue that the jacket was too big to fit, and I got stuck at this point.

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Or did I overlook something?

Update... the music is now all finished and it is awesome (thanks, Jordi)!

The backgrounds are coming along very nicely (thanks, James), and I'm gradually getting through the huge pile of scripting and testing there is to be done.

I was doing so well, and then...

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I have the appropriately styled hair, the jacket and the "smoke" and have proved to Klaus that I have the right attitude, but what happens now? I still can't get into the club, speaking to Klaus just throws up the "How do I get the jacket/'smoke'" options again, and using the items on myself doesn't work.

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I found out what the problem was in the end - the credits use the speech GUI (GUI number 3) and I had modified this. I changed it to use an invisible sprite, and now everything works fine.

Sorry if someone's posted this before, but I've only read about 2/3 of the thread and have better things to do than to read it all...

Incontrovertible evidence that aliens exist:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=1022

To those of you who want unexplained objects in the sky to be visitors from alien civilisations who have travelled millions of light years just to dupe the gullible flash lights at us and don't even stop to say hello, I have just this to say: Occam's razor. Otherwise known as "KISS" or "keep it simple, stupid". If there's a simple explanation (a house on a mountain or a fast-moving military aircraft, some kids with ropes and a board) and a complicated one (alien visitation, aliens with lasers making crop circles), then the simple one is probably correct.

Movies you can reference from:

[...]
Ground Hogs Day
[...]

AKA Sausage Meat Day

There you go, there's another example - be a spelling/grammar Nazi!

I also like changing the autocomplete in Word so that when your victim types their name, it automatically replaces it with something more amusing.

Another favourite among nerds computer professionals: if someone leaves their Excel spreadsheet unattended for a moment, press Scroll Lock and then when they come back, watch them go crazy trying to figure out why it's not working any more...

Some others...

* Have a conversation on a cellphone in a crowded public place in a loud, whiny voice.

* Trigger your car alarm to go off at random intervals while everyone is trying to sleep.

* Mix sand in someone's jar of peanut butter, then when they complain, say, "Oh, I think I damaged the inside of the jar when I was scraping it with that knife... never mind, a bit of ground glass never hurt anyone."

* (one that parents of young children will relate to) During a conversation with someone, ask them a question, and then answer everything they say from that point on with "Why?"

Forgive the double post and the bump, but I thought I'd tease you all with another screenshot



By the way, I'm still looking for someone to draw the characters in a style that fits well with the backgrounds (the characters you see in these screenshots are temporary), so if anyone wants to take it on, please PM me.

Hm, I'm not sure whether this should go here or in the modules forum, or whether I should just contact SSH directly, but anyhow...

So, I'm using SSH's credits module, and two things aren't working as I want them to.

1. The first thing in the credits is an image, and I'd like this to stay fixed in position for a second or two before scrolling up to show the rest of the credits. Is it possible to do this within the credits module, or do I need to script this separately (which shouldn't be too hard to do). If I have to do it myself, then how do I get the credits to pause for a certain time before starting?

2. When my credits come up, all of the text appears in boxes of solid colour. It looks like these boxes are the GUI I am using for the text displayed when I use the "Think" command, but if I set the game not to use this GUI for Think before displaying the credits, the boxes still appear.

Can anyone help? Thanks.

One tip if you really start a translation: Don't try to translate a game, that hasn't been finished yet. Always wait for the complete text. It will save a lot of work.

Definitely - you're wasting your time if you start translating a game before it is finished.

Another tip that I find really useful and would recommend to all translators - ask the author to send you the complete game and play it while you are translating. You can then see the text in context, which helps greatly with problems that arise in translation such as working out the appropriate gender. For example, "I see it" could be "Je le vois" or "Je la vois" in French, and "Where are you going?" could be "Dove vai?", "Dove va?" or "Dove andate?" in Italian. These can only be translated correctly if you know who or what is being referred to. Playing the game as you work on the translation can also flag up problems where the same piece of text is used in more than one place with more than one meaning. This can be resolved by asking the game author to modify the game text so that there are two separate lines to translate.

There are French and Italian adventure game communities out there who welcome translations of AGS games into their own languages (http://katurajdr.fr/jeux-ags-fr/ for the French versions and http://www.adventuresplanet.it/ for the Italian ones).

@Ookki: There is an option in AGS to output all the text of the game as the file that Harg mentioned... you then fill in the blank lines with the translations and give it back to the author, who then runs another command in AGS to put the translated text into the game. Anyone playing the game then has the option (in the set-up options) of playing the game either in the original language or in the translated language.