Messages

1) You are trying to use character[CHAR].room as a function to change the character's room.  This is only a variable that records what room the character is in...changing it won't actually move the character.  You are also using this function incorrectly; you need to put the character's script name in the brackets.

2) if you set follow, they will follow through room transitions.  this could work for your situation.  I am also curious if there is a way to directly move a non-player character from one room to another

3) Why do you have the same line (NewRoomEx) repeated in both conditional statements?  It could be written only once

Ok thanks...I never noticed that interaction editor button.

That's like saying instead of typing a letter it's quicker to just write it down on paper.
Of course there are benefits.
- edits are easy
- keep the map with the game
- the map is always up to date
- change the room, and you change the little preview of the room
- automatically rearrange rooms without fiddling around in code

perhaps I don't understand.  it sounds like the idea is to write a complex graphical program that allows you to draw a picture of your rooms with arrows connecting them?

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?

You can make any kind of game you imagine that uses 2d graphics.  Sure you can make an RPG like Baldur's Gate.  Sure you can make a side scroller shooter game like Duke Nukem.  Sure you could make Asteroids.  You could make Solitaire.  You could make Liero...

Not the same thing.  The entire purpose is to speed things up...if someone has to browse a forum looking for something not knowing if they will find it or not, and then when they do find it it might have little or no specifications included in the post...and then the functions would be mixed in together with other material...in other words a jumbled mess that doesn't end up saving any time.  When there is a nice clean database, it also encourages users to go out and write good modular code that can be reused by other people because it is a way to give back to the community and you know you'll get appreciated for it.   Plus, user's can vote on code, and you can see how many other people have downloaded it etc, to give you an idea of what's good.  And as new functions are added, it can have a little news thing that lets you know what's new.

I know this would work because I've used this before on other game development engines.  For example: Last summer I was working on a game and one of my projects was to develop animal AI.  Instead of just using it in my game, I ended up spending 100+ hours writing a set of libraries and functions to build a realistic biodome full of plants and animals that were born, lived, died, hunted for food, used different hunting tactics, grew hungry, angry, etc, with good style and documentation so that the NEXT person who wanted to add all this into the background of their game simply had to download it.  Why did I do this?  Because I knew there was a good database and I could watch the # of downloads ticker go up and see for myself that this was helping other people and that made me feel good.

How does anything great get accomplished in this world?  Everyone adds a little bit.  It took a lot of work to develop computers and software to the level they are at now.  This same philosophy can be applied within AGS with community members building on other's work to create a level of detail impossible otherwise.

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.

i can see the usefulness of mapping out which rooms connect to each other for design purposes...but why would you want to take this off of scrap paper?  it seems thats the fasest way and i cant think of any benefit to having it go digital.

stuh: The chords are a bit repetitive in the first 9 seconds, since there's not much else going on.. I might just remove that part completely and just go from the drum intro dirctly to where the lead guitar starts.

i cant control what you do, but i dont think that would be in the best interests of the song...i think it would sound REALLY good if you alternated it like I said...

Juding by the picture, I think Evil meant for walking around the inside of a 4 sided building...if this were for walking around the outside the lines would be going the opposite direction...in either case, it seems like this is just something that everyone already does...

i think if you made the arm 1 pixel wider it would be too wide.  i think it would look about right if you used gray tones to increase the width less than a full pixel (or make it appear that way when zoomed out), in fact the entire outline could be done this way to make the character appear less superimposed.  this would require the use of an alpha channel.

Ok...I read it.  As I suspected, there was no need to actually see the details of the story, because it was the major plot and design that is flawed in my opinion.  I think it's aweful.  There is no sense of mystery, no feeling of "I wonder what's going to happen."  Without that feeling, there is no incentive for the reader/viewer to keep viewing/watching.  On top of that, Vincent's character seems extremely generic.  The vampires are not well thought out characters; their motives do not seem to make sense, and they don't seem to be mentally any different than regular boys.  As a result their conversation suffers drastically.  It reads like an equally bad version of "scary movie."  I don't think there is any part of this story that could be salvaged and improved.

I hope that this scatching review doesn't cause you to become too discouraged.  Remember it is the story that I am reviewing, not you...and I have no choice but to voice my honest opinion.

looks good to me...i don't know how you would get any more detail in the face at such low res

wow...this is really amazing work!

I have only 1 small suggestion that I think could improve things a lot in the beginning...

The main sound between 0:01 - 0:09 keeps hitting the same note.  I would REALLY like to hear this alternate between this note and a note below it.

great work

Stu, after you render the frames....are you having to crop each frame in photoshop individually?  I'm running into this really innefficient problem and am wondering if other people have found a way around it...

I have heard its extremely hard to animate people in Max, you might try DL'ing the demo of Poser and building your McUrk there.

or Character Studio for max

ok...ive been playing around with the settings (very slow with the high render time) and this is as good as i can do to have the background lines thinner...what do you think

yeah anyways on the animation, i don't know the character you're talking about but a few technical comments...his motion seems a bit jerky and unnatural.  might be due to the animation method you are using.  but more importantly, i think you need to move the knee joint further down on the leg.  but other than that looks good

hey sorry for posting from my other account name, i couldn't access my normal one from where I was...

or maybe we are different people...who just both happen to have the same name, and both use max with AGS using the ink n' paint effect...

the key is to use a lot of white for brightness rather  than yellow