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i have written my intro cutscene...but I'm a little confused how to make it start before I give the character control.  Currently it starts when they click the "eye" on a hotspot...but I WANT it to start as soon as the game starts.  How can I do this without putting an inefficient conditional//boolean state variable in the repeatedly execute loop?

There are a lot of cool ideas and features for AGS that don't REQUIRE additions to AGS itself.  wouldn't it be nice if there was a searchable library of pre-written functions for AGS that could be accessed from this website?  Users could upload their functions along with PRE/POST information and it would be added to a searchable database.  This would increase the overral quality of games created with AGS by allowing designers to waste less time re-writing code that has already been written before.

I think this would be even better if AGS supported a way to include libraries that contained lots of functions that could be written by AGS users, so all you had to do was download "m_cutscenev2.inc" put it in the AGS include directory and then type "#include "m_cutscenev2.inc" in the script header.

Hey, I'm working on this jungle scene.  I am not looking for any C&C, but rather, suggestions on what I should do to make it more like a cartoonish alien jungle.  In this jungle the flora IS ALSO the fauna...most of the plants can move around, etc.  Sort of like the jungle from Dark Crystal.

I'm not sure if I should use a lot of hand-drawn textures rather than just colors because I don't want to take away from the cartoon feel but I things aren't right so, any ideas how to achieve that cartoonish feel?

I know this place is flooded with suggestions...but it can't hurt.  I think this one would be relatively easy to implement, and be useful in a lot of games making it worthwhile.

CreateLightOverlay(x,y,sprite,factor);

It doesn't actually use the sprite as an overlay...what it does is gets each pixel that is underneath the sprite, and increase the brightness by a linear factor of the opacity of the chosen sprite.

For instance, the sprite you use could be a white cone which dissolves into transparency.  The program would then calculate the increased brightness of all the pixels under this sprite, and then create a graphic overlay of these pixels...which could then easily be removed to revert back to the original state.

This would be useful for programming lights that turn on and off in the game.  In my game I would want this for a large room that has numerous lights which come on and off in different orders and can overlap so I can't exactly use different rooms or overlay a different image because there are too many combinations.  But i think this would be a cleaner way of doing it for simple instances as well.

i have an avi file for a character animation and im not sure how to break it up into frames that i can load in as sprites to make a view for animation

I'm just curious, because BMP take up so much more space, why JPG format isn't supported.  I'm looking at 60 MB of background images alone...

funny, this function doesn't exist?

come on, there MUST be a function that returns the number of the current room...why it isn't called GetRoom I don't know, but it's not listed under room functions in the manual...I don't allow myself to believe that such an important function doesn't exist...

(I need this because I've got an inventory item that teleports you to a room when you look at it and you need to be able to return to whatever room you came from...could be called from anywhere)

how do you clear the text in the text box?  every time it pops up it still has the old text

Hello,

I am currently working on a very large scale game (55 rooms, all rendered in 3ds studio max by myself, plot and all written by myself) which will probably be the only game I make in AGS.  I have made myself a nice custom control GUI system, which you can see an example of here:

http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/ss1.jpg

However, I am not sure if I should implement it.  I am thinking that perhaps I should make everything done with a text parser, no mouse.

Why?  I feel the old adventure games had a sort of magic about them...it was more like a puzzle game, you had to be clever to think of the right thing to say.  At least you felt clever...

My game is going to be a bit different than other recent adventure games.  I don't like "inventory" puzzles, and I don't like unintuitive "lever" puzzles like Myst.  But I love puzzles.  The puzzles are logic puzzles, word puzzles, deciphering, clues, etc.  I also have designed it so that nobody should have to look for a walkthrough only to find that they didn't notice to pick something up 2 hours ago.  All puzzles should be able to be solved by thinking and noticing the clues under your nose.

Well, I need your opinions guys.  Would you like to play a game like this controlled by a text-parser?

Hello,

I am in a situation where it would be really nice to be able to write a script that would exectute every time a room is loaded.  This is because my mouse cursor icon is displayed as a RawDraw image whenever the icon is changed.  There is only one way I know of to do this, and that is to draw the image continuously.

Other game design systems such as Bioware's Aurora Engine for NWN offer a MUCH cleaner way to get around problems like this.  Instead of having just one "global" script, the game can accept a number of script files defining notable events.  In AGS, you could allow any number of script files which could be named by the designer, and then allocated into runtime slots such as "continous", "game start", "room load", and anything else you might think of.  This would allow much cleaner code by breaking up large script files in addition to allowing for less hack-jobbing.

Hello, I've drawn a simple animation, created an object, placed it on the screen.  I've made a script to move the object across the screen.  Now I want it to be animating while it's moving.  I've tried to do:

AnimateObject(0,BIRD,0,1);

to make it animate using the sequence of sprites in the view called "BIRD", but it gives me an error saying "object has not been assigned a view"

I dont see anywehre to assign it a view without making it a character

DOH!  found it

SetObjectView(3,14);

I'm trying to write a function to drop an item.  There doesn't seem to be a function for "createobject" at coords.  is this possible, or do I need to fudge it by drawing an overlay of the object's sprite, and then hard-scripting for if they click on it again with what cursor etc...?

what the heck.  i tried:

testArray[5];

int testArray[5];

int testArray[5] = 0;

int testArray[5] = {0,0,0,0,0};

int testArray[5] = [0,0,0,0,0];

int testArray = {0,0,0,0,0}

int testArray = [0,0,0,0,0];

so how do u do it?



ahhh ok, I figured it out.  the problem was not in the syntax but in the order...I guess the order of the functions in the global script is important.  That is a real pain...something they should change for the next version of AGS; allow functions to be declared SEPARATELY from their definitions, as well as include files.

Hi, I want to display endlines in my text string outputted using the Display(" xxx") function.  I tried "\n" which is the standard C/C++ way...no luck.  When I separate into separate calls of the function it just pops up with a new window.  So how do I do it?

I want to start by remaking the simple window that pops up to show text to the player when they look at things.  I've looked through a couple tutorials but didn't find anything specifically on this.  I've made an image which I want to use as the basic background.  

1 - can anyone direct me to an information source on this?
2 - is it possible to have the gui automatically change it's size based on how much text is displayed, or do I need to just figure out how much will fit, and pause/display on a new window if it overflows the current one?
3 - in the GUI editor, I cant see how to import a new picture for the background.  
4 - what settings would I need to adjust to get this thing working as the default GUI for popup text?

Hello,

I am fooling around trying to make my own character sprite.  My game is in 800x600 32-bit color.  I have background that meets these specifications, and my character sprite is 170 pixels tall.  I give the character a starting position at the bottom of the screen.  It starts there like it should, buuuuut....there is also a copy of the first sprite image in the center of the screen which stays there while I walk around.  Anyone else familiar with this problem?  

If my problem is not clear I can upload a screenshot for your viewing pleasure.

Hello all,

I have designed a detailed plot that I'm ready to make into an adventure game.  But before I go all the dirty work of the art (which I am considering rendering in Studio MAx which means hundreds of hours of labor) I want to make sure that I will be able to implement things the way I am expecting -- and if not, it might require slight changes to the story and consequently to the artwork.

I have a general idea on some of these questions, but since I have never used AGS before (but have used other C++ orianted game design engines), I want to double check.

1 - will it be possible to have the main character swap between different sprites to show that he is wearing different clothing?

2 - will it be possible to report x/y locations of characters/sprites

3 - will it be possible to run continous scripts on the current room.  in other words, can I make an infinite loop that checks the state of a variable, so that as soon as the variable changes an effect occurs...or do all of my effects have to be direct action/reactions?  (this one I would use to have NPC sprites which might follow or block the character)

4 - will it be possible for the player to enter text which can be parsed within the language  (for instance, the character needs to type a special word to open a door) ?

5 - will dialog options be possible, or will your character be forced to follow a predefined conversation tree?

6 - will it be possible to script it so that looking at an inventory item reveals a close up of the object (for instance, a detailed map of the game world) ?  (I am thinking this would be achieved by making the map be a "room", and then transporting the character there but making him invisible and immobile, and then when the character clicks, teleport them back to the previous room they were in at the same coordinates)

7 - I am pretty sure of this one already...but just to verify....it is possible to customize the look of the popup window which displays messages to the player?

8 - any possible way to convert to 32-bit color (this would better take advantage of the high quality rendered scenes)

9 - is it possible to have a introductory screen (showing the game title or something) using built in functions, or would this have to be crudely done using some room-manipulation technique with an invisible character?

Thanks in advance,
Hope to share my game with you sometime soon.