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That's true, although I think the self contained adventures you do in small groups are the fun part, the massively multiplayer element is just a little extra, and considering how much it costs to run a MMO server setup, compared to the small games which people could run on their home connections the purely group based games seem to make more sense.

Helm, blocking commands would not work too well for multiplayer, true, but you don't have to use them if you don't want to.

Yeah SSH's idea sounds almost exactly like the ship, which a few of us played once.  It wasn't as good as it sounds, but then that was mostly an FPS, not much of an adventure.
Kinoko's idea is more or less what most people have decided is the more workable way of making online adventures, when the topic comes up.  They really do need to be small numbers of players, and small, one session games.  I might look at if it's feasible to make a framework for this kind of game in AGS.  The barrier for people trying this has always been the complexity of doing the networking.

Do you think adventure puzzles could be added fast enough? Ã, Many RPG players are content to bash the same handful of monsters over and over for XP and trade, the developers can add content at a leisurely pace, but adventure puzzles take time to design, make art for and script, more than RPG quests. Ã, Also when one person solves a puzzle, that's it, they can spoil it for everyone else. Ã, This happens in Kingdom of Loathing, there are a lot of inventory and riddle based puzzle quests, when you finish them, the game starts to become boring, just making money and bashing monsters, and it is easy to find the solutions to the puzzles that are there. Ã, The incentive to cheat comes from the fact that there are other people to compete with.

I can envisage a graphical adventure MUD type thing, with a regular group of users that know each other well, and some of whom are involved in developing adventures for each other, the social aspect keeps people coming back. Ã, But MMORPGs are too big, anonymous and competitive, Ã, the adventures would be of a lower quality than something that isn't designed in a hurry, and what is really gained by having a load of other people in the world, except more people to brag to about the 1337 items you've found? Ã, You can only really organize puzzle solving with a few other people at a time, so I think a small scale set up would work just as well, from a gameplay standpoint.

I have not played many online RPGs, perhaps I do not know what I am talking about.

The Futurama cel shading, along with the Iron Giant, or the Tachikomas are all examples of where the effect works, mechanical animation, which you'd do quite technically if you were doing it by hand. Ã, If the human characters in these productions were done with cel shading the animation would not look right imo, perhaps if Pixar's animators tried it it'd be expressive and flowing enough but if you're that good, why work against the medium, normal 3d shading won't be much of a challenge.
If you're not a great animator it'll look like Runaway, wooden.

You can have 15000 iterations, this should be enough for most things, the thing is, you don't put in anything that slows it down in your original code, it will run as much time as it takes to do 15000 key checks, then crash, and that's not much time at all.

if you did something like while (IsKeyPressed(pressed)) {Wait(2);}

it'd check for the key press 20 times per second, more than enough, but after 12.5 minutes you'd get the error, it is unlikely anyone would press a key that long, but you can put a check in to make sure that at least it fails without error.

int i = 0;
while (IsKeyPressed(pressed) && i<15000) {Wait(2); i++;}

I'm assuming that IsKeyPressed will detect changes, because I can't find a function for refreshing the keyboard, like the one that exists for mouse position.  if it doesn't then that still won't work.

Machinima refers to all non interactive animation scripted in a game engine, as far as I can tell.  So yes, it would be.

If you can get a proper animation program I don't see a big reason to do it myself, other than novelty value.

Quick paintover ideas



for the sea, yeah the main thing is to make the changing depth apparent, and reflect the sky a bit, also, the shading could me more consistent, if something casts a clear shadow in one direction, that side of it should be quite a bit darker than the other.

The thing I'd work on after that is the clouds, look at pictures of real clouds, or the cartoony ones you like, they also need to be shaded based on the sunlight.

Yes, he shouldn't worry, lie to him if needs be.

The music.vox can be extracted, in fact I made a program that can do it, http://www.agagames.com/scotch/music11.ogg I just took that out of BJ4, as proof.

It is too complicated to explain, really, you really need to properly understand networking to be able to use that plugin for anything useful.

Also, I do not think anyone should try helping you with starting yet more new game ideas, you have a big problem with this.  Finish something else.

Possibly one or two, but most of us gave it up.
Like almost every RPG, it only has a few months of interest in it, at most.

Well there's nothing stopping you using a two button mouse, or making a control click activate right click on single button mice, or something.

buh? I mac is almost the same as a PC these days, but with a bit of a different (perhaps a bit better) processor.  It just doesn't run windows, that's the only difference for personal computing.
If AGS was ported to a mac it'd work just the same.  They are not over complicated, you could probably say because of the control apple has on both the hardware and software they are much more elegant.

Now too expensive and proprietary, is one thing they are

CJ, the editor uses WxWindows, right? Would it be too much work to make it cross platform in (perhaps the distant) future?

Well the multi region "hacks" were built in by the designers generally, right?  But I'd trust any firmware I can read the source code to, or someone with more knowledge in the area can.  It sounds like these things are on a more fundemental hardware level that firmware is not going to fix.  However these aren't the only companies capable of making chips, it is too restrictive to take off in the worst form, people would jump ship to other platforms and operating systems.

it's probably the worst thing MS could do to themselves if they went through with it.

I think the best answer to the can I make a shooter/rpg/platformer type posts is "Yes, but don't."  Why make a non adventure in AGS? there is no reason to... especially if you're not already familiar with and attached to the engine.

We make long posts and tutorials with very kludgey inventory and npc handling scripts for RPGs or collision detection for shooters when shouldn't we really direct people to an RPG or shooter engine where they won't have to fake and hack everything in?

I am not sure what kind of shooter you wish to make, but I'd suggest Game Maker as a good general purpose action game engine.

AGS is really only a good choice for adventures and perhaps hentai dating sims, if you want to have a couple of action scenes in the game it is still work AGS scripting them, but if the majority of the game is not 2d adventure try something else.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/shots/p,2/gameId,316/gameShotId,2362/ shows it in game.

I think I will get one.

Well, depends on the artist then I guess.  As for me, I could certainly not paint that in an hour.  But I could model it in a day or two, and I could paint it in a similar amount of time (mixing the two would be fastest, did you paint the background?).
However, the whole point of the cel shading idea seemed for people who are not good artists to have a short cut to backgrounds with good perspective, well drawn lines, in a half way decent style, without having to learn skills.  For them I think basic 3d might be quite worth it.  It wouldn't look great, but I think placing some boxes and stock models around and applying textures/shaders is easier than learning to draw properly.
I'd prefer it to (most) MS Paint rooms, but only just.
For someone who can paint well there is probably no advantage, as I've said, go for 2d if you can do it, it works best in AGS.  And again, the main advantage of 3d cel characters is in character animation, I'd even consider that myself.

Yes, Rodekill made at least one AGS game that way.  I don't know the technical details of doing it, but it does work.

It is just windows based I'm afraid.  No port to OS X is planned for the forseeable future, not for the editor at least.

This discussion is about people here, using cel shading in 2d ags games.  Sure a whole 3d level of a game could take one person a couple of months, but for one static 3d screen, well I think it's about the same amount of work, textures included.  I've spent a week on one painted AGS background easily.  If I'd done the same scene in 3d it'd take around the same amount of time.  If I had done it in cel shaded 3d that minimizes the amount of texture work so maybe it'd be faster.
Not that I think that'd look good, and I have a fair amount of 3d experience, to a newbie it'd not be an easy process.
And physics? Why? most ags animation is pretty crappy, and not even most commercial games use cloth physics.

For people considering 3d backgrounds I'd suggest not doing cel shading, there are some good examples of nice 3d rendered low res graphics that use normal textures and lighting in the critics lounge.  No radiosity or anything complex, just basic 3d scenes.  It can work very well.

I hate the GIMP, I would have recommended it, but I actually had to use it recently, it's terrible for drawing or pixelling, especially if you use a tablet (not because it doesn't support them, but because if you click off a window by mistake with it, as you are prone to do with a tablet, you need to bring all the seperate toolbars back to the top of the window order, it's hell).  If you can make the windows work more like PS/PSP or even if they must have no mai window make it work like PS on a mac, then it'd be usable.

Paint.NET seems nice if you want something more PSP looking (probably less features, but you won't really need them).  Either of these can do what PSP can do.