Messages

I havent had much time lately to work on the game because of some personal things that have been going on, but I started up again recently. 

I have had to redo the town about 5 times because I am having trouble capturing the 3rd world brightly colored but poorly maintained building look with 16 colors. 

at any rate, I just wanted to post an update with a couple of new pictures in case anyone was curious about the game.  Things are moving along and its fully 1/3 complete.  The hold up is just the graphics and animations that I have to do.

glad to be back

I havent looked at this post in a long time, so I didnt see the request for updates.

I modified the original post and replaced the last screenshot with a new updated one to make up for it.  I dont want to be showing too much of the game before it is released though

I had a big setback in development because here in Seattle we had some major major windstorms.. several over the course of a couple of months.  I had a lot of damage done to my house.  I am my own repair man, so the repairing of the house combined with the holidays ate up a bunch of my time.

I am back on track now before the scorposer gets tired of hearing my excuses and am in development once again.  I just lost a month or two there!

I agree with that.. also, please dont misunderstand - i dont think your CODE is unnecessary, I just try to keep my repeatedly executes to as little as possible; thats just the way I do my rooms.  I wont claim that its superior in any way, i was just trying to offer a similar alternative

Breaking the walk behinds down in the room is really the only alternative that I know of if there are others in the room though, I agree.

I have solved similar problems like this using regions as well but slightly differently.

How I would do it is to make a region that contains the entire walkable area that is behind the fence, when the player walks onto the region, then change the walkbehind baseline to be at the bottom of the screen.  When the player walks off the region, change the baseline to the top.

it prevents unnecessary code in a repeatedly execute loop, but it does have the problem that if other characters are outside the fence at the same time, they will be adversely affected by walking up to the fence.

I apologize if this thread doesnt quite meet the criteria for this section,

I just wanted people to know how important it is to backup your game in full every time you edit it! 

I almost lost about 3 months worth of work because I had a hardware failure last night.  Luckily, I just bought a cheapie computer from work that I wanted to see if the game would run on it, so I copied over the entire tree of the game including source.  It was my only copy outside my local machine that wasnt over 3 months old!

Please don't be forced to turn your projects into abandonware because of a major setback like this!

Oh thats awesome.  Thanks so much, I had no idea.. I just wrongly assumed that speech or 'dialog' options only applied to lucasarts style and I guess I just never tried that.. I set the speech style to 'mouse or key (no auto remove)' and it does just that.  There are no timeouts anymore.

I really really appreciate it!

Hi all
   I really tried to search for this, so I do apologize if this is redundant.

   I have noticed that displaytopbar has a timeout that is something around 5 idle clicks per word in the display message.  The problem with this, is that I find it is too short.  For example, I am dyslexic and I have to read things a few times in order to get comprehension out of it, even if it is my own writing.  I know there are a few game settings for the topbar, but they only pertain to fonts and font colors.

   I have tried to come up with viable alternatives to the top bar, but they all seem to end up being overly complex.  Such as, I tried writing a gui function that appears over a standard dialog, but its too much work to write in it and also generating a dynamically sized gui is not in my grasp if it is even possible at all.

   Can anyone either suggest a good alternative to the topbar or if there is a way to eliminate the timeout and have it act as a standard display window?

I would much appreciate any advice!

Lou

Thanks again for the compliments everyone, but the game isnt done justice until you hear the surrounding music

To answer the question, the parser was the original format of the game, both 15 years ago and the sci version, but the problem with the parser is that there is SO MUCH coding that needs to be done to try and think of every possible example that the end user might type, so when moving the game to ags, I had to come to terms with the icon bar. 

However, the icon bar changes throughout the game giving you more options than a normal static iconbar, and I am working hard to ensure that each icon can actually be clicked on just about anything in any scene and get a useful response.  Its laboring, but it should be worth it in the end!

I will say this about the scorposer..

that guy is amazing.  Why he isnt a professional in this area is beyond me.  This game would be nothing without his music.  It just really brings everything together for a real game feel.

Thanks for the compliment on the game too!

[PreText]

PreText
The legend of the lost jewel was a game that I wrote back in 1990-91 using a sierra style game engine that I wrote in BASIC when I was about 14-15.  The story has been redeveloped, was rewritten in SCI, but because of SCI limitations, is now being re-rewritten in AGS.

To mimic old world sierra graphics with the later versions of the sierra interfaces, all backgrounds, animations and sprites are being made in 16 colors using the SCI editor, then adapted to AGS.

Story
Hundreds of years ago, a jewel existed that was held by an ancient tribe called the Rannu.  It was a jewel that they believe held the universe into balance.  The tribe was destroyed by conquistadors and the jewels were scattered throguh time.

Happenstance causes Derek, the main character into a modern day story of murder, deception and adventure.   He looks to find his way home from an archaeology expedition and ends up entwined in the middle of blood-thirsty power hungry people seeking to find the gem in their own desires of greed.

Screenies





Status
Story: 100%
Graphics: 50%
Music: 50%

Crew
Game development, graphics and code: provost (me)
Game music sounds and supplimentary storyline help:  Chris "Scorposer" Moorson

right you are.. I was pleasantly surprised to find that to be the default behavior.  Everything is working great now.  I just have a function that you call in the room
update_compass(1) for example

the function updates the gui immediately if it is on, if the gui is off, it just stores the information for update the next time you turn it on.

thanks again for your help
Lou

a gui.. man.. ok, thats a great idea, I dont know why I didnt think of it before.  Thank you!

I am pretty far along in the game.. really, this game was originally done in SCI, but I ran into too many limitations, so I moved to ags.  I took a break for about 4 months from the game and it caused me to forget a lot of things, and I just need to get my brain back into the possibilities.

I have the toggle key done for sure, and I have made several custom guis for different purposes, this just didnt cross my mind. 

my main thing is to be able to keep the state of the gui between rooms.  If you turn it on, it needs to stay on in the next room until you turn it off.  I can probably figure that out, the first thing that comes to mind is doing an on_event when the room changes.

as far as the individual rooms, I have always planned just setting an initial variable of something like: compass_direction = [1-8 depending on the direction] so thats not a problem. 

Thanks again!
Lou

Greetings

   I REALLY tried hard to search exhaustively to find a solution but I am coming up dry.

   I need to create a couple of objects that need to be able to turn off and on in every room I create.  To be more exact:  the player picks up a compass at one point in the game.  Hitting f4 should turn the compass on.. the background of the compass is the face, and the foreground is the needle which wobbles back and forth over the right direction.

   I had minor success creating an overlay in the global script that turns the face on, but then when you leave the room, of course the overlay goes away, and if you hit f4 to try and toggle it, it has lost the overlay.  I tried importing and exporting the overlay but it doesnt seem to be something you can import and export.

   In short, does anyone have ANY idea how I can accomplish this in the global script so I dont have to have the same two objects in every room?  I can do that and have a function that is imported into every room that controls the direction and animation and such, but that seems like the wrong way to go.

   Again, the goal is to be able to hit f4 to toggle two objects.  One is the  compass background and one is the needle foreground.. and if it is possible to animate the foreground with a view, that is the ultimate goal.

Any advice would greatly be appreciated!

Lou

bbc!

Spoiler

There is only one bowl, so if you have it from the kitchen then you have the right one!  Look to the back of the kitchen, there is a knife and spoon on the wall!  (the spoon is called a ladel, but a ladel is just another kind of spoon so it will work!

if it is still not working, then you must be missing something else!

[close]

Ok, apart from the fact my game keeps crashing, i seem to be able to walk on sky and rocks, and the wizard is now giving me approx 2 mins before he shows up and kills me, I'm a bit stuck;

Spoiler

Im trying to make the 'turn into animal' spell, and have all the ingredients, but havent got the right bowl to put them in nor a spoon to stir it with. Can someone just tell me where these are please before i loose the little patience i have left ? Thanks

[close]

Spoiler

I know that when I want bowls and spoons and stuff in my house, I get them from the kitchen!

[close]

regarding the cat fur

what rooms does it work in??  I am fairly confident that I have tried in every room.. in two rooms there is no effect .. clicking the hand does nothing, and in the rest I just get a 'he is too quick for you, why would you want to do it anyways'  I figured there was a change in the game and maybe you had to get cat fur from somewhere else.

I am flummoxed.. any help here would be great

How can I catch the cat?

holy crap.. 20 years?  I am old and going to die soon.

kq3 was without a doubt my most favorite sierra game ever produced.

Thanks so much for doing this

Howdo..
   My name is Lou, I am out of seattle.  I have been making adventure games since the mid 80s.  I wrote my first AG engine in BASIC when I was around 12 years old, and made several games in it.

   Later, I picked up SCI and started remaking one of my original games, "The Legend of the Lost Jewel" and its getting near completion.  Once I finish it, I will probably port it to AGS and start over from there.  I am glad to see that there are so many adventure gamers out there still. 

   For a living, I design computational clusters that crunch bio data to build DNA on microchips, I have a side business that I started just to earn extra money making costumes (see my post in images of yourself) I have a wife and a newer 5 month old baby girl whom I am trying not to screw up!

Glad to be here.