Messages

OK, I've finished the game now. Thanks. It was quite funny

Unless I've overlooked it or the title is misspelled, I'm a bit surprised there is no hints and tips thread for Washed Ashore, especially as it was August's MAGS winner. Or maybe everyone found it really easy and didn't need any help?

Anyway, I'm stuck... any help would be appreciated.

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I have four metal plates stuck together but need at least one more to make a bridge. One of these plates I got out of the stream with the makeshift fishing rod. As well as the four plates and the fishing rod, I have a sharp piece of steel, a handful of bolts, some rags and the communication thing.

The rags are fireproof, apparently, but I can't use them on the hot metal.

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Any ideas? Thanks.

Stuck near the beginning:

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I got outside the first room and now I'm at gunpoint. I've tried using everything on everything but I'm still stuck.

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This has already been answered here, but if that is not enough of a hint for you, here's another:

Extra hint:

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Have a good look around until you spot something that you might want to ask the steward about.

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Thanks, Brad, for the mirror and for the compliments on the game.

the download link from ags seems not working. ( I downloaded from your website )

Paolo, I saw in your profile that you translated a game to french, will you do so for trance pacific ?
if not, may I ?

A toi! (Be my guest!)

Thanks Paulo, I got stuck due to a bug

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sometimes when you enter the bar, the GUI dissapears.

Anyway, I am stuck again! The bartender is standing in the doorway, and i am completly lost in what to do.

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Hi Jon,

A few people have pointed this bug out and I'm looking into it now. Sorry for the inconvenience - I hope you had a saved game you were able to go back to.

EDIT: I've now fixed this bug and uploaded v1.02 to the website. You don't need to download the game again - just revert to a saved game (if you have one) or restart and make sure you don't do the same thing as triggered the bug, that is

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don't leave the bar before you have done everything you need to there.

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Some hints for you:

Hint 1:

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He's involved in the scheme, so it would be a good idea to try and use the Memo on him. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

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Hint 2:

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Pay attention to what he says.

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Hint 3:

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What did he say about the Memo?

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Hint 4:

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He's got one himself, and it has a block mode.

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Hint 5:

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You need to find out how to disable the block.

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Hint 6:

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Where might you find out how to do this?

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That should be enough to get you going again... I can't give you any more hints without telling you the actual answer.

paolo:

I have encountered the same problem as TassieDevil has: After equipping the nice lady with a fashionable haircut, leaving the bar and then coming back in, the GUI doesn't work anymore. It simply stays disabled when you move the mouse to the upper part of the screen - did you by chance overlook at some point to turn it on or make it visible again?

Quite possibly - I'll look into this. Apologies for the inconvenience - please revert to an earlier saved game if you have one. Incidentally, you don't need to return to the bar after giving the woman a haircut, unless you

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have not told her that you've done her hair before leaving, in which case Eve will call you back anyway.

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But I had not tested that, so thank you for pointing it out. I'll fix it now.

EDIT: I've fixed this bug and uploaded the updated game (version 1.02).

Thanks, ThatOneChick87. It was as much as we could do in the short time available for the MAGS competition, otherwise we would have made it longer.

Jon:

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Grace, the janitor, is curious to find out what is going on. The woman in the bar seems to know something. How could you pass that knowledge on to Grace?

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Slightly off-topic (apologies to the mods for the noise) but do you need to understand any of the Greek at any time? I understand Greek, and I'm just wondering whether this means I'll be at an unfair advantage. I've only got as far as

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going to the fisherman's house for the first time

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but maybe later on in the game there's a puzzle where you need get something translated into English and knowing what it means already might spoil the game in some way.

EDIT: I've just finished the game and it's fine - it didn't make any difference in the end.

Nice game, lovely artwork and a vote from me

Thank you very much. I'm sure Ben304 will be very happy that you liked his artwork.

I finished this game and I like it paolo.

Well done, and thank you. I'm sure Ben304 (my co-author) will be pleased that you enjoyed it too.

I think you might be the first person to finish it - would you like to vote and write a review for it? You might also like to vote for it in the MAGS competition (voting opens tomorrow, I believe) - see http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/ac.shtml

Yes, but I'm not going to tell you

Here's a hint:

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Find something else to talk to the steward about.

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[splat44:]

splat44:

Thanks for the pointer about freewebs. I like the way you can set up a website there. I've also stumped up some cash to increase the bandwith to several gigabytes a month - fingers crossed this is enough. I might look into transferring to a different server - do you have any recommendations?

TassieDevil:

Thanks. I think you have found a bug there that the beta-testers and I overlooked. I'll look into it. Are you closing the Memo GUI? If there is only one memory to choose, then after you have chosen it, it disappears. To proceed, you then have to click on "Go back to the main menu" and the "ON/OFF" button. Or is this not what the problem is?

EDIT: Now fixed - see kaputtnik's posting below and my reply to it.

pslim:

Thanks for the compliments! Thanks too for the bug report. Looks like that one is serious.

EDIT: See EDIT above.

ciborium:

Thanks for your bug report too. I had already fixed a bug where the steward would stand up if you spoke to him but overlooked you trying to use the Memo on while he is unconscious. You guys are good!

EDIT: I've fixed the bug you reported, ciborium, and uploaded the updated game. You won't need to download it again as the game will still work fine for you. Thanks again.

[* Read the README file]

This is the official Hints and Tips thread for Trance-Pacific.

Please be nice to others:

* by using spoiler tags around hints, like this: [ hide]your hint goes here[ /hide] but WITHOUT the spaces before the "hide" and the "/hide". This gives:

Spoiler

your hint goes here

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* by NOT posting solutions or walkthroughs.

The most valuable hints I can give you are the following:

* Read the README file
* Pay attention to the characters' conversation in the bar in the intro - there are clues that will help you later
* Talk to Eve or Nick when you get stuck - often they will have a good idea or will get things moving again
* Look in your inventory for something you can use
* Try using the Memo on the other characters in the room

Thank you for playing, and enjoy the game!

[TRANCE-PACIFIC]

Yay, our (my and Ben304's) very first fully-fledged AGS game is now ready to download!

It's an entry to the September 2007 MAGS competition.

TRANCE-PACIFIC

Vince is a stage hypnotist, and is close friends with Eve, a magician, and Nick, her assistant. They have just completed a long season and are now going on a long cruise to relax. They soon discover something underhand is going on aboard ship. It's not just the ocean that smells fishy, and the cruise is going to be anything but relaxing...



Featuring:

* Eight characters
* Five rooms
* Six customised GUIs, including an innovative one
* Puzzles that should take a while to crack
* Main non-player characters give hints when you speak to them
* Plenty of humour
* A peppering of authentic Australianisms (with a glossary in the README file)
* Sly references to classic adventure game situations

Download the game from:
http://www.freewebs.com/paoloags/Trance-Pacific_v1.02.zip
or:
http://www.victorygames.info/free/Trance-Pacific_v1.02.zip

Don't forget to vote for the game on the MAGS website if you like it (go to http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/aclinks.htm, click on "MAGS" and then the "voting" button).

[TRANCE-PACIFIC]

Here is our (Ben304's and paolo's) contribution:

TRANCE-PACIFIC

Vince is a stage hypnotist, and is close friends with Eve, a magician, and Nick, her assistant. They have just completed a long season and are now going on a long cruise to relax. They soon discover something underhand is going on aboard ship. It's not just the ocean that smells fishy, and the cruise is going to be anything but relaxing...



Features:

* Eight characters
* Five rooms
* Six customised GUIs, including an innovative one
* Puzzles that should take a while to crack
* Main non-player characters give hints when you speak to them
* Plenty of humour
* A peppering of authentic Australianisms (with a glossary in the README file)
* Sly references to classic adventure game situations

How the game fits the MAGS competition rules:

1. The main character is a stage hypnotist and has no plans to change his job.
2. The game is set on a cruise ship (there have been many games set on ships before, but never on a cruise ship, to my recollection); the characters are all Australian.
3. There is a new and interesting GUI.

To play, go to http://www.freewebs.com/paoloags/ and click on the download link. Don't forget to vote for the game on the MAGS website if you like it (go to http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/aclinks.htm, click on "MAGS" and then the "voting" button).

Alternative link kindly provided by Eugen: http://www.victorygames.info/free/Trance-Pacific_v1.01.zip (PLEASE NOTE: The freewebs link is the latest version. The version at victorygames does not include the latest bug fixes: if you leave the bar and then return, the game interface disappears. This bug is fixed in the freewebs version.)

Thanks. I've used a variation on the code from the other thread, and added some code to do the random talking more or less in the way you suggested, Ashen (although I didn't read your edited reply until after I had done it). In case others would like to be able to do the same thing, here's an outline:

* Set up some global messages - these must be numbered consecutively
* In your code, set a variable (character_saying_messages) to true to indicate that the character should now start saying the messages (and set it to false when you want the character to stop talking)
* Then in repeatedly_execute() in the global script (this is just pseudocode):

if (character_saying_messages)
{
   if time since character last said something > time limit plus some small random number of cycles (to make the messages come up after intervals of varying lengths; for the time limit, use 40 times the number of seconds you want to wait)
   {
      message number = x + random(y) (where x is the number of the first global message you want to use and y is the result of subtracting x from the number of the last global message)

      c(your character's name goes here).SayBackground(Game.GlobalMessages[message number]);
      reset time since character last said something to zero
   }
   else
   {
      add one to time since character last said something
   }
}

I don't know if this one's been answered before (searching for "pace" or "pacing" gives too many false positives containing "space" or "spacing") but it might well have been, as I'm sure others have wanted to do the same thing.

I have a cutscene which I want to end with a non-player character continuously pacing up and down, occasionally saying things, and continues to do so even while the user has control (until they do the right thing that will stop the character from doing this).

There are two aspects to this:

* How can I get the character to walk up and down even after control has returned to the user? I could write something like:

while (true)
{
  cMyChar.Walk(x1, y1);
  cMayChar.Walk(x2, y2);
}

but this is blocking and would never return control to the user.

I tried

  cMyChar.Walk(x1, y1, eNoBlock);
  cMayChar.Walk(x2, y2, eNoBlock);

but the character didn't move at all - maybe control was returned immediately, or possibly my character wasn't on a walkable area, but I'm fairly sure she is.

(EDIT: Of course, the above are equivalent: eNoBlock is the default value.)

I think I need to use something like repeatedly_execute() or repeatedly_execute_always(), but the pacing is not something I need to be done every game cycle.

* The second problem is having my character say things (phrases taken at random from a list, and at random times) as she is pacing. I can code up the random selection of phrases easily enough, but again am wondering how I can get this to happen while the user has control of the game. This exact thing has been done before by Cinfa in his game Roccio's Quest, so maybe I should PM him to find out how he did it. His character did not pace but followed another, but the talking aspect would be the same.

Thanks for any help.

OK, that makes sense. I remember reading that in the manual but didn't pay too much attention to it. Looks like I should have done!

I killed the game and posted after getting just the two messages. If I'd let it continue, I would have seen the block of code in the global script being run to its conclusion and then the code in on_call() being executed, which is effectively what you saw too.

I don't know why I didn't realise that you could refer to objects in the room in the global script - you can do the same with characters, etc, so of course you can with objects too. I've got rid of the on_call function, moved the code into my global script and used object object[] to access the object, and it now all works as it should.

So there's another one solved (and the thread title updated accordingly). Thanks.

In future, when your problem is solved, please edit the title to include (SOLVED), or something similar. You might've noticed I've been doing it up 'til now, but it's getting hard to keep up with all your questions

Yes, I had seen that - it's certainly very useful when you're searching the forums. For some strange reason, I had it in my head that only moderators could do that. Now done for this thread. Thanks again.