Messages

Looks pretty good until you get into the ground, which is really unpresentable.  I think you should come up with a completely different method of doing the ground, that works (no offense).

Make sure that when you are transitioning rooms, you are transporting the character to a location that is on the same walkable area, or a contiguous walkable area.

Dont have AGS before me...but if I recall correcctly, under mouse detection there is some code that checks to see if you are in walk mode, and if you are tells it to walk to that position.  If that is the case, then you can simple tell it to execute the first walking animation (with blocking) before invoking the regular walk to thing.

If my memory is wrong and this code is all handled behind the scenes, then you could try using a different custom mode for walking, in which you first run the loop you want (with blocking) and then execute a click in walk mode to the position they clicked.

There is definitely no reason to need to run the walking animation manually.  I can give you a better answer when I get home if you still havent figured it out.

You might even just include the codec with the game if you go divx.  A lot of people don't have the divX codec and when you're playing a video and ou dont have it its ok to go download and then try again, but in the game, its only going to pop up once and if they get an error message you just made a video for nothing.

Ok, a little better...you've got 6 or 7 plants...how about 300?  It just looks so darn empty back there.  And still, that bark doesnt look anything like a tree.

heres a quick little photoshop jobby to show you slightly closer to how im imagining it...instead of pasting a bunch of individual plants i used some parts of a forest image for a faster edit

got ya!

Good idea, Strazer.  I didn't even know of resource splitting before!

Ok, here's some pseudocode:

int bSarahTalked = 0;

If (bSarahTalked == 0)
{
  Sarah.Say("Hello");
  bSarahTalked = 1;
} else if (bSarahTalked == 1)
{
  Sarah.Say("Hello again");
  bSarahTalked = 2;
} else if (bSarahTalked == 2)
{
  Sarah.Say("why do you keep coming bacl?");
  bSarahTalked = 3;
}

Talk to Sarah three times and shell say:

Hello
Hello Again
Why do oyu keep ocming back?


And never say anyting again..

Name the variable logically.  Here's an example:


int bMariahTalked1 = 1;

if (bMariahTalked1 == 1)
{
}

The "b" indicates that it is a boolean value which is true/false ie 1/0.

For each situation involving mariah I might want to have different boolean counters.

Another option is, if I know Im going to have Mariah say different things a lot of the time depending on the situation, I can just have 1 variable like, "nMariahTalkState"...and then I can set this to different values, and check what value it is at any time.

Since the condition you're checking does not depend purely on any states that the game can check (such a inventory or the number of times the area has been visited), you will need to create a variable with global scope to keep track of this.  There's plenty of talk on Global Variables in this forum so if you get stuck just do a search or check the manual.

I know how daunting it is to create all that groundcover and foliage and stuff.  You might consider a few options to ease your life, such as 1) getting an app that will make generating trees and bushes etc easier, like XFrog 2) rendering your trees and foliage separately so that you can composite tons of them into one image in Photoshop without suffering through hours of rendering time.

Ah, sorry.

To do conditional (if/else) checks, or remove items from the screen will require using AGS script.

You'll need to write a function and then use the dialog function "run-script X" to call it:


function dialog_request (int xvalue) {
    // your code here
  }

To check if they have enough money, it's simply:

if (game.score > 100)
{
  //code here
}


To remove an object from the screen,

use ObjectOff(int x);

or

object

• .Visible = false;
  
  depending on your version

Your character model is very nicely done. Ã, Will the beard be a soft body?

Your scene looks not nearly as good as the character, unfortunately.

The texture on the trees is still looking very much like rock to me. Ã, I suggest you use a high amount of sub-pixel displacement, and a much more treelike and striated texture...perhaps more brownish in color.

Your tree models are also quite simple, and I think they would benefit from a few branches.

But most importantly, I think you need to add more vegetation in the forest, it looks very much like a flat infinite ground plane with some pillars coming out of it, and does not give the forest atmosphere!

Finally, please align your camera so that the horizon is horizontal.

Alias,

I can't suggest Max or ZBrush for modelling. Ã, While Max is a great program capable of modelling, it's a all purpose program and modelling in it is far more tedious than in dedicated modelling programs. Ã, ZBrush is an amazing program, and it is NOT a suitable choice for general purpose modelling...it can be good for organic modelling, but it's primary advantage is the ability to create displacement maps. Ã, Having tried Max, Maya, Blender, ZBrush, XSI, Rhino, Silo, Modo, and Wings 3D, my personal preference is Silo, which is cheapest to all but Wings which is free.  It's very much like Wings actually.

You won't need to do any AGS scripting for this...you can manage all of this with "dialog" script. 

It's really quite simple, but the manual does a pretty good job of explaining it.

You should look up Dialogs in the manual and follow the instructions and it should all work out.

For a list of special commands you can put in your dialog script, check in the manual under "goto-dialog" in the index, then scroll down on the page and you'll find a list of all the other script commands.

You can use the give-score command with a negative value to subtract from the score if you're uisng that as money

there's also a give inventory item ocmmand

If videos arent compiled into the executable, then players will likely view them outside of the game.  I don't want players to be able to view the final ending movie (for instance) just because they felt like it!  This reward must be earned.

Luckily, the PlayVideo command does not have any extension checking on the filename string parameter...so video files which have no extensions (or misleading extensions) can still be played.

However, Media Player does not really care if your video files are misnamed...so any so-inclined user wanted to, they could still play those video files without knowing what format they are in, without playing the game first.

Are there any clever solutions to overcome this?

(Before anyone suggests it, loading the frames as sprites is not a solution, because it would be a royal pain loading all those sprites, and you could not create an animation with more than 320 frames this way anyway, unless you linked together multiple views...it would just be horrible!)

Check out this little tutorial.  I think it's very applicable:

http://sean.sevspace.com/tutorial/tutorial.html

Okay, true...but that only applies to the lines coming off of the couch.  The other lines must all be parallel if the two opposite walls of the room are parallel...and that's pretty much a given, because rooms are never shaped like..

     _____
   /           \
  /             \
/               \
/                 \
----------------

Well, the mouse image really is part of the screen...it's really not a very well named function, perhaps it should be TintBackground.  It would be nice if it had some parameters to toggle between just tinting the background, or actually tintint everything on the screen (GUI's, pointers, video, whatever is on the screen).

Darth, I disagree with most of the areas you pointed out as having problems.  I think the perspective overall is pretty good.  Not perfect...but pretty good.  There is only one edge that has a REAL problem, and you didn't circle that one!!



Ideally, these lines should all go down to one point...you see there's a blob not a point but at least they are all going in the right general direction, the only line that is really wacko is the yellow one.

I don't have a lot of money to buy a new working scanner, so I just use my digital camera.  It works pretty well if I set it to close up, make sure there is good lighting in the room, and try to make sure that the picture is framed rectagonally in the viewer of my camera.

Then I bring it into photoshop and put down some horizontal and vertical guides, and use Perspective to adjust the image to a square aspect ratio. 

The only real problem with this solution is that there is usually a corner of the page that is darker than the rest, which introduces problems when I try to play with the Levels and Contrast.

Other than that, it's a pretty good poor man's method.