Messages

Adventure games are meant to be played single player

This is simply not true. Cooperative adventures range from titles such as LOTR: Return of the King to mods such as SvenCoop where team mates must progress through admittedly quirky but clever puzzles in order to continue on. Replace your bow and arrow or glock with an inventory and allow your characters different roles for each player to choose from and you have the basic framework for a true cooperative adventure.

I honestly can't think of any way that multi-player would work

Did you read my earlier post? I tried to lay a few examples out on the table already.

I'm not saying there isn't a way... I just haven't found one yet.

Well for starters, I suggest you play some of the existing cooperative adventure games out on the market. You can be sure they are in the few but the more cooperative games that reach our market the more popular the idea will become. Unfortunately and surprising for some, cooperative gameplay is still considered a new idea by the majority of developers. It's a ridiculous combination of conservative thinking and copy-cat marketing that has kept cooperative gameplay at a seeping rate. This is attitude is evaporating as more and more developers explore non-competitive multiplayer.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Gears of War turned out to be a rather large wake up call to developers who were overly cautious about whether or not their money was worth spending on developing cooperative campaigns.
I can guarantee you that this expediential change in attitude will inevitably reach the adventure market. The one we know best that is.

For us, it's either a mountain to conquer or a waiting game.

Paul.

I agree. I think hot swapable vox files are a smart way to accomodate different launguages for Talkie games.
Would it be reasonable to suggest that the translations manager manage not only text but graphics and speech too?

Cheers,
Paul.

I think you've all made valid points and your worst case scenarios for cooperative gameplay of this kind are not unreasonable. The truth of the matter is, as Radiant has expressed is if theres going to be a paradigm shift in Point & Click Cooperative gameplay, somebody is just going to have to do it.

Theres nothing I can see here that cannot be accounted for and carefully designed to avoid a detrimental effect on multiplayer gameplay.
I assure you, this can be done gentlemen, it simply has never been done.

Cheers,
Paul.

[EDIT:]

Difficulty level design?  MI2 and MI3 definitely had them.

No I meant design in general. The cooperative gameplay, the carefully though out puzzles.

Renal's scenario makes sense in games like Day of the Tentacle

Day of the Tentacle would be an ideal game for cooperative gameplay because players are indeed reliant on each other to solve puzzles with their own unique powers. Be that stuck in different times or possessing unique skills like in Maniac Mansion.

The same idea can be applied across the board.
It seems the only thing holding back cooperative gameplay is the notion that people would abuse it
Suffice to say there are by far worse ways to abuse a computer game and online gameplay than to be slow at solving puzzles.
These issues are present in modern 3d shooters where a newcomer will join a server expecting it to play like it's single player campaign only to be impossibly blasted in the face by fast twitch hardcorer's who clearly out-skill the majority. Again, these issues are about but they are not impossible to solve.

Classic Point & Click Adventures represent an era before mistrust and abuse shrouded the internet. Why anybody would want to abuse online cooperative entertainment in general is a mystery best solved by computer sociologists.
Our job is to make great games that the majority can enjoy. 

EDIT: Does anybody know if the TCIP Plug-in works for AGS 3.0? Or has something better been developed so far?

Paul.

Giving two people remotes for the VCR would just end in chaos

While that scenario might occur, I disagree with your statement entirely.
It doesn't matter what game your playing, if your team mates arnet pulling their weight then the game is less enjoyable.
This is an unavoidable downside to playing with people you don't know over the internet but the issue is not one that should deprive any game of cooperative gameplay mechanics.

The reality is, people who play new games online learn as they go so if your the poor fellow stuck on a puzzle, and your team mates have reached their 'checkpoint' they can offer a friendly hint to you over chat or the game might decide when a player needs a kick in the right direction. This is of course an ideal situation that can be reinforced by strong game design.

For example: multiple difficulty levels.

Player 1 might have chosen 'easy' puzzles, the second might choose moderate and the third player might decide that difficult puzzles are more appropriate. If your game puzzles are constructed at their most complicated level, they could be dropped back in complexity to accomodate the other difficulty levels.

A Point & Click adventure has never been graced with such design but it's certainly possible and well deserved.

Cheers,
Paul.

So your true background (the one your actually working with) is perfectly lined up and true to the grid?

Paul.

I could click an 'update' button back in AGS

I have to agree entirely with Monkey on this. If we're making a lot of sprite edits with many files we tend to save a lot.
Perhaps AGS could update when this 'temp' file has changed due to a save from Photoshop. This way an update button wouldnt be neccesary and AGS could remain as is.

Cheers,
Paul.

I think we should take this oppertunity to thank Chris for such a loveley new editor. His work is certainly something you cannot take for granted.

Hip hip horray! 

Paul.

[Edit:]

Hmm. Now that animated cursors are fully operational there seems to be no option to specify the actual animation delay for cursors in runtime.

The view preview has an animation delay spinner that when set to 0, excluding manually delayed frames, animates desirably quickly. I think this animation delay spinner should be outside of the view preview section and it should govern general animation speed for mouse cursors and character animation.

Simply less confusing and more unifying.

Cheers,
Paul.


Edit:

Can we hope for a chrismas present with a 3.0 in the name?

Wait! Not before my Christmas present to all you SCUMM fans! 

That sounds cool! Is this coming in the next release?
I would find it very usefull.

Cheers,
Paul.

Fair enough. Actually your idea of stopping the movement before it moves 1 pixel further is a good idea.
Good luck with this Ali.

Cheers,
Paul.

does it matter if the character stops moving

What do you mean Chris? I though the character is supposed to stop moving while the stopping animation is played. You wouldn't necessarily need an 'ease down' to a halt. You could just stop movement suddenly and rely on the animation to do the easing as Ali has demonstrated.

Cheers,
Paul.

Don't worry Gilbot. I noticed it hadnt worked so I changed it while you were posting. Your message got here first but I didn't notice it until I finished editing my post.

Do you sleep man? You seem to catch me out about 15 seconds after I do something.   It's 4pm here in Australia. Where are you based?

Thanks,
Paul.

I would also appreciate suggestions on how to create different layers of foreground objects

Do you make your background art in Photoshop? If you do I suggest you work with as many layers as possible and then once your background art is complete collapse as many as you can into groups of background_far, background_close, midground_far, midground_close, foreground.

Note the extreme closup objects like the golf clubs in the following DOTT screenshot:


And the scientific instruments in the foreground of this fate of atlantis screenshot:
(Image removed by mod. since the hosting site is now filed as malicious. It won't show up anyway)

The important thing to remember is to build your background environments from the bottom up. From the background to the foreground and not vice versa.
You need the information behind each layer in order for there be something to look at when the objects move from side to side. So if you start with the background and keep adding onto it with new layers, then keep all your necessary layers in tact then you'll have very little to worry about.
Save each layer out with either an alpha channel or a constant background color. You then recompose your scene layers using your sprites in AGS.

Does this make sense?

Also, objects in the far distance, like the sun in the demo, look very jerky.

The reason for this is that they are only moving one pixel at a time. This is generally countered by a technique called subpixel movement where the edges of the sprite will blend into the background (antialiasing) to compensate for the movement. Heres an example:

This is what is happening in your scene:
(Image removed by mod. since the hosting site is now filed as malicious. It won't show up anyway)
Your sprites are being shifted as a whole by 1 pixel.

This is what needs to happen in AGS to solve the general jerkyness of sprites:
(Image removed by mod. since the hosting site is now filed as malicious. It won't show up anyway)
The same scene has been rendered with sub pixel smoothing in after effects.

Cheers,
Paul.

Fantastic Ali. Congrats.
This will come in handy. I think the addition of smooth scrolling paralax is a necessary one. I'll be more than happy to help you with the paralax layers in your module thread.

Cheers,
Paul.

SNAP! I was so going to ask that at one point. I hate having to add one pink pixel to all of my GUI sprites.
Would this be reasonable to change?

Paul.

[Edit:]

That's incredible Ali!
I can't beleive what i'm seeing. How is that possible!? :o

Edit: A plugin for custom character movement might ultimately be a good idea. Maybe instead of reinventing the wheel, we can handle walking movement using a completely different approach. The current AGS walking/movement system has been around for ages. Perhaps we can experiment a little.

Paul.

This is fantastic! Bravo!

Paul.

The downside is that this will screw up elaborately drawn walk-cycles and won't look too good with short distances.

Your right about that. In my suggestion above I mentioned decreasing the movement speed and increasing the animation speed by 1 or somesuch but the success of this is entirely dependant on how far the player travels. Darn. I can't beleive that didn't hit me. Late nights.

Paul.

Would you consider tasking someone with a private copy of the source code for a Windows Mobile port Chris?
That would be one step closer to an internal and closed group support for other platforms.

Paul.