Messages

I think the game looks marvelous <3, would definitely buy it!

Hey, thanks! Great to hear that from an acclaimed AGSer!

Good luck finishing the game, I wishlisted it today!

Are you planning to make it commercial? Cool idea... but personally I don't like Steam...

That is the idea currently, and it could make further development possible. There are many places where you can buy and sell games, so you could probably get it from somewhere else too.

Looks great

Thanks! I haven't read the story in few years, and at this point I kind of dread it. Who knows what I have missed!

Hi everybody!

I wanted to share something new, so here's a GIF of the Miskatonic river and the Unvisited Island. What are those mysterious lights on the island? Is someone there?



It's been about two years(!) since I shared the day version of the same location, so it was about time. Fortunately the evening and night versions have been completed long ago, but now there's little more activity on the island.

I've been working on the game now full-time for several months and this quote by Tom Cargill starts to make sense: The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.

Because I started to make the game with relatively no experience in coding, I think I have redone it now several times. Nice thing is that when you condense a huge block of bad script into a nice, tight package, it's kind of purifying feeling, like you just cleaned your house. And the game is now much easier to work on and edit, when it's standing on a solid ground.

But a very daunting task is looming in the horizon... Deciding how to publish the game! It is something that I need to focus on quite soon, and make some tough decisions!

Looked pretty good to me!

Denis Villeneuve is one of the best current, big-budget directors. He made the impossible, and did a good sequel to Blade Runner, so I have a lot of faith in him.

Just a quick note in defense of AGS. This forum is one of the very few sites that I follow daily. I've been working on my game for five-six years already(!) and constantly visited the forums. The main reason is to get technical advice, either by reading old posts, or sometimes by starting a new thread. And I have always been surprised how quickly I get an answer! So without the forums, I would have gotten nowhere. The interest that people have showed my game is also very much appreciated, and has been a needed motivator.

I feel a bit bad that I don't post here more often, or give technical advice myself (well, I think there are people who are much, much better at that). I try to stay far away from heated arguments, or conflict situations here, I don't have time for that, and nobody has ever managed to change someone's views with online discussion. Also english is not my native language and in today's (overly?) sensitive atmosphere, one typo, or a bad joke could cancel you out before you even noticed that you made a mistake.

So while I may seem inactive, I follow closely what happens here, and wish AGS best of luck in these difficult days! Now, back to making games! 

[targetCharacter = player]

I had similar problems with Smoothscroll that were connected to changing the player character. I didn't understand what was going on, but simpy using the targetCharacter  = player again seems to have fixed the situation. Feels good that I can remove my own messy fixes!

Thanks Ali, Laura and Crimson Wizard!

I believe that Tween module already has these though.

Yes, I'm using Tween module as well, and I'm very happy with it. This current room that I'm working on is a bit special. I'm using Smooth Scrolling & Parallax so that I have nice smooth camera movements, and the parallax effect as well. But yes, it looks like that I could disable the smooth scroll feature and use Tween module to control the camera directly (currently there is a dummy character as a camera). I think the parallax effect still works, eventhough smooth scroll is disabled.

[Game.Camera.Move(122, 150, eBlock);]

What do you mean by "animating directly"?

I mean that there are no commands that would move the camera, like Game.Camera.Move(122, 150, eBlock);

You can move camera in smaller increments too, simply by breaking big move into steps. Example:

Yes, I have something vaguely similar, but this seems much sophisticated!

You can read the positions from an array or calculate using something like a sin function

I'm afraid that might be too much for my coding skills...

I had some trouble deciding how to do the speed of the shakes. Something like this works fine for fast shakes, where I just change the camera's placement:

Code: ags

Game.Camera.Y += shake_power; 
Wait(1);
Game.Camera.Y -= shake_power; 
Wait(1);

But if I want to make a slower shake that has several inbetween frames,  the above method wont work. And I don't think we can animate the camera directly? I figured out an ugly way to do it, but it could use improvement.

To make it blocking, don't put it in room_RepExec. Instead move camera in a loop and call Wait(1) to force game redraw:

This seems to work nicely! I can make few different shake speeds / types and repeat them as long as I want. Much better than manually adding every single movement.

Thanks again!

[room_RepExec()]

Ok, I think I can manually animate the camerashake in room_RepExec(). It just needs testing to see what values work. So only thing that is missing compared to ShakeScreenBackground is that I have to make the effect blocking. That's because the camera manipulation won't work when smoothscroll is on.

But I think I can live with this!

[Game.Camera]

Thanks CW!

Yes, using Game.Camera seems to work. I had to disable the Smoothscroll first, using SmoothScroll_ScrollingOff();. But I think I can turn it on again after the effect.

Now I just have to figure out a good way to animate the camera to create the shaky effect. Any tips? 

[ShakeScreenBackground]

Hi! I have an issue that has been bugging me for ages, and finally decided to ask.

So I want to create a shaking screen effect. ShakeScreenBackground is just what I want, except it creates an ugly black border on top of the screen. I have some extra space at the top of my room (it's a very high scrolling room), so I want that part to be revealed, instead of the black, empty area.

I've undersood that it's a constraint of the engine, and that I should animate the viewport instead. I tried, but didn't have much luck.  I tested it with something like this:

Code: ags

Screen.Viewport.Y +=5;

It too created the black bar on top of the screen, eventhough my room should still continue there. 

So what would be the best way to achieve the shaking screen effect? I'm using the Smoothscroll module, but I tried disabling it and got still the same results. Would the new camera system help?

Looks great, and the setting is interesting.

Wishlisted!

I'm using Aseprite for characters and objects, and Photoshop for backgrounds. Quite happy with Aseprite, before that I used to animate with Photoshop and that was painful.

Whew!  I’m so relieved that you’re still working on this gameâ€"I was getting worried!

Every update/new screenshot looks so, so good!!

Thanks, very nice to hear that!

The game is far beyond being abandoned, but real life and other work have a habit of delaying it. I'll try to post updates more often, so that I won't cause any unnecessary worries. 

So exciting.... Well done with awesome graphics and what will undoubtedly be great game-play... Once you finish it you will have something for the rest of your life you can be proud of and 'own'.... well done

Thanks for the nice words!  There is still a lot to do, so I need to keep my feet on the ground.

Great news! I'm so hyped for this

Thanks! I'm hyped for Winter's Night!