Messages

Coffee,

Well, like I said, I'm throwing out this walk cycle so it doesn't really matter...switching over to all 3D characters so that I can have more animations and keep them all consistent.  I'm also not sure if any of those backgrounds I painted will make it into the final game!  I might re-do it all in 3D as I am getting continuously better (but if I do...I'll still be painting the textures).

I'm really happy that the character looks good to you...I've been working hard the last couple days to get everything to "come together" in a way that works...but I'm not done yet because I still have to get it working in my animation program.

DontTread,

The first character was drawn by hand, using a series of skeletal walking leg bone images as reference.  No rendering involved, so I'm not sure what you mean!!

The second char is 3D, but modelled in Silo (not Milkshape)...which is MY favorite modeller on the planet.

Garage, your idea of using object properties is a good one, but it's not limited to list boxes.  Since there are a short number of interaction possibilities, you could also make a button for each interaction type, and hide the buttons which have no interaction for the object.  I see why you wanted to use the listbox -- so that the list has no gaps -- but it would also be easy to script 4 or 5 buttons to be in a "list" order on a GUI, and the button text/visibility could be set by the object properties.

Here's the new design for the Wistan (main character) in my Tanglewood game.

Here is the old walk-cycle:


I don't have a walk cycle for the new one yet, I'm trying to learn some new animation software but you can have a look see and critique the model still.  I've put him into a pose here so you can see him in something otherr than a t-stance, I realize it isn't the greatest pose.

First of all, stop ripping your hair out.  You'll need that for one of the puzzles later.

I see you've made some changes since I saw it last time...I can't exactly remember how it looked before, but it looked great then, and it still looks great now.

You don't need to have a realistic level of shadows.  If shadows aren't your style, then maybe don't stress it?  Without shadows you get a more sterile look which can be neat.  It's not as if it's going to look real anyway.  Also I know that this is your first background so remember that whatever level of detail goes into this one ought to go into the rest of them to.

But, ok, if you want comments on the shadows...you have real nice ones on the walls, but the floors have none.  Trace the lights out and see where they should go, I'm not going to explain the spots.

The root formations on the left most trees look oddly exposed, as if they were ripped out vertically.  The rightmost tree's foliage pattern looks like it's falling down through the branches.  Other than this, it looks pretty good.  However, it seems like you've put a lot more detail into this sketch than necessary...considering that the scanned pencil sketch is really just a guide for how to paint it, there's a lot of detail that will be lost...unless you're planning on just drawing in blocks of color and using a Multiply layer in Photoshop to have all the details transferred to that.

Whoa, did you write all that for the purposes of this example, or are you using this in a game?  If so...I'd be interested to know what game that is...because I didn't think you were into 3d..

Nothing, because I mixed up the 4th of July with April Fools and thought it was on April 4th....you know, "four" and "fools" kind of sound alike...look I don't have street smarts only book smarts...leave me alone...you don't understand me!

I'm in the process of playing right now.  It will probably take me a lot more than 6 hours because I'm not very good at adventure games...but the only thing I have to add is this is definitely a game for ninnies.  I mean it was obviously made by a team of girls; the main character is so squeemish, when you click on a flower patch you can name every single rare flower, and so far the characters are all women or talking cute little forest animals!  Yuck!  Also, it says it's strictly serious...but there are some funny parts (at least I think so).

IMO....

1) autosaves before any situations where your character can die.  It's no fun repeating a whole lot of work and makes me quit some games if I have to do that.

2) Clues for every ambiguous puzzle.  The player should never be forced to resort to a walkthrough in order to determine what they need to do or look for.  If there are clues hidden somewhere then a dilligent player who doesn't get the puzzle right away will eventually figure it out. 

3) if it is possible to make a flaw that will prevent continuation of the game, then that should result in immediate death or notice that the game can no longer be completed

I don't think there's any way to make the actual inventory display a rotating object.

However, I don't know of any professional games that do this either.

For instance I can think of QFGV, the inventory images are static, but when you select them you see a rotating 3d image on the side.  And in a game like Hitman, you can cycle your inventory, and the selected object rotates in 3D. 

Both of the above options could be done in AGS.  You would need to make the object a 3D model, and render out the full rotation, make that into a loop, then on your inventory GUI make a button or something and animate that button with the proper loop that represented the selected inventory item.  I might be doing this in my game too.

Now, I guess I would have to use a GUI that pops up when you click on anything interactive on the screen. Now, can you make the location of the GUI relative to the location of the pointer?

Yes, that is easy.Ã,  Mouse.x and mouse.y are the locations of the pointer.Ã,  SetGuiPosition can be used to set the position of the GUI to that spot.

Is it possible to alter the composition of a GUI in-game, or would it be necessary (or more feasible/rational) to make a whole load of different GUIs for different objects?

You can change the composition of the GUI within bounds through scripting.Ã,  You can change the position of buttons on the GUI, make them active or inactive, and make them appear and disappear through scripting.Ã, 

edit: You could also change the text of the buttons (or animate them) or change their picture...and you can obviously change their effect.

happy? 

Please, don't encourage others to use a un-released version unless you both know what you're doing.
Though V2.7 has reached prefinal stage and the changes should be stable now, it's still not a publicly announced version.

I'm sorry that my recommendation does not coincide with yours, but I can't help recommending what I feel is a good option.

That would require not using any of the eMouseModes, and instead manually scripting each mouse click action that could result in the character changing the direction he was facing, then computing the new possible facing location...which would be very clumsy but would work UNTIL they used a function to change the way the character was facing such as FaceCharacter, because you have no way to detect when function calls are made...so you would need to manually change that global int whenever you called another function to change the direction he was facing...which means the  function is not reliable.  Or did you have someething else in mind?

yep, notice the comment at the bottom of my post.  you use a different function.  however, the code you need which I just gave you is the same.  the 2.7 version can be downloaded from a sticky thread in the technical forum (if you want), I can't tell you why it's not on the downloads section...that confused me for a long time too.  it is technically a beta version.

I liked the orange nose

Well only CJ would be able to interpret the exception codes...but it may be helpful to explain what circumstances this unexpected termination occurred under...was it a game you made?  if so, you could show the code that you think may have caused the problem

There are two ways to go about this.

The regular way is to just change the mouse Mode.  Changing the mode effects how the game responds to a mouse click.

Using AGS v2.7 beta:

ex:
mouse.Mode = eModeInteract;

Other modes are: eModeLookat, eModePickup, eModePointer, eModeTalkTo, eModeUseInv, eModeWait, eModeWalkto

If you are in eModeWalkto, then left clicking will cause the character to walk to that position.

However, you could script this yourself....for example, by using this code in the on_mouse_click function:


character[player.ID].Walk(mouse.x, mmouse.y, eNoBlock, eWalkableAreas);

player.ID = character that the player is controlling
mouse.x = current x position of the mouse...
eNoBlock = game is not locked while walking
eWalkableAreas = character will only walk over walkable areas

To have the right click interact with an object on the screen, you could go to the Interaction of an object (in the room editor) and put script in the "any click on object"...and check to see if it was a right click

if (button == eMouseRightInv) {
    ProcessClick(mouse.x, mouse.y,eModeLookat);
  }

this code is pretty obvious, it checks to see if you right clicked, then simulkated a click in eModeLookat on the object

your best bet is to keep it in eModeWalkto to handle the walking and then use script like this to control the right clicking on objects

so, you'll need to pu that on the script of every object

note: using older version of AGS where you don't have mouse.Mode, use SetCursorMode().  the code to make the character walk to a spot would also be a little different but since you don't need to code that if you leave it in eModeWalkto I won't go into that.

DC, don't you think it's important to establish some level of distance between things?

What if your plotline calls for doing something at 2 geographic locations separated by a couple miles of forest.  Should those 2 areas by adjecent screens?  I think there must be a balance...I'm not going to measure the stride of the character and determine that I need 400 screens inbetween (I've tried making a game like this before for LOTR and it totally sucked because there was no way I could populate that much areas with anything other than grassland)....but don't you think there should be at least 2 or 3 forest screens inbetween?  And this distance could be expanded more by introducing artificial things to occupy the player like interesting things to look at or people to talk to or perhaps tiny little puzzles inbetween...

This brings up some interesting animation possibilities.

You could have the head use txt smiliies to display emotion..

or have it spell out short things like W T F, #%@ etc

hmm, good question.  I don't think you can.  I think you'll just have to use FaceLocation (or character.FaceLocation in 2.7) to manually make him look back to a predetermined location after the conversation.  you could always make him simply look down, at the player, when he's done.