Messages

Yes.

Well, I think the mouse pointer should act the same way it does when moving to the edge of the screen.

When mouse bounds are in effect, a tester of my game noticed strange behaviour that I also could replicate: when moving the mouse pointer to the bound, the pointer stops (as it should). However, when moving the mouse back it seems that you have to travel a virtual distance back before being able to move the pointer again.

For example:

Bound is set to x 180. I move the pointer to 180 and beyond (to 200, perhaps). The pointer stops at 180, but an invisible virtual pointer seems to move on. When moving the mouse back along the negative x axis it seems I have to move 20 pixels before the visible pointer starts to move.

So it seems that the engine keeps track of the actual mouse position while only updating the visible pointer while it's in bounds. This is a bit annoying as it causes the pointer to "stick" to bound edges.

The MPEG might be 24-bit. This may be the problem...

I like making up stories... and full-screen animations. It's also quite satisfying to script something (when it works). But I'll never do frame-by-frame animations. That's too nerve-wrecking for me.

16-bit.

Yes, it's the same format as the game (640*480)

Here's a new screenshot from the last photo shoot. We decided to go with a bridge instead of the tunnel.


A dangerous Zone dweller

We noticed that when pressing ALT+TAB in Windows when playing a game caused the game to minimize and continously loop a section of the sound playing. Would it be possible to mute the sound while the game is minimized?

Also, if in a dialogue, the screen wouldn't redraw until you clicked the mouse (which would cause important messages to disappear...).

Is these things fixable somehow?

This didn't work at all, unfortunately. One tester of mine tried this and first got a blank screen when an MPEG was supposed to be displayed, then another blank screen where a FLC was supposed to show. Then the program quit unexpectedly.

After showing a MPEG movie, some of my testers report that the game application minimizes. Can I do anything about this?

Right, thank you.

Are you saying that it is impossible to have lip-synced talking animated views of characters with speech? Seems it is only possible using Pamela and Pamela is only for Sierra-portrait, roght?

So if you use Pamela you cannot use the built-in lip sync system? But what does these two alternatives apply to? Character animations or Sierra-style portraits?

I did, but as I understood it Pamela was only useable with Sierra portraits. I want an animated character to spell out speech lines.

Well, I want to use it. Can I do so while having speech played?

Just out of curiosity (and inability to understand the manual): can I have a lip-synced character animation with speech? Or do I have to resort to the Sierra portrait to have speech and animation at the same time?

A question: is it possible to add some sort of movie support (other than FLC)? That format really sucks.

The ritual was alright. Now for the scariest part: the release of the first beta for the testing crew. After working on this for two years, it's pretty horrifying to see the first actual reactions... ahh.

I would like to see your beutiful art in high-resolution. You might save a few Mbs by having a lower screen size, but you will lose part of the experience. I think you are doing games to provide an experience.