Messages

This game was indeed funny and full of witty responses, way to go!

The SillyStoryMaker sounds like fun, I bet it can make for an awesome MAGS theme.

@Sslaxx: Not yet, you can continue running with 2K.

Depends on various factors, such as the license (eg. I don't want to use any GPL code, but LGPL is ok), the usefulness of the library, etc. Do you have a specific example in mind?

Yes!
It's called DockPanel Suite and provides docking abilities to panels a-la visual studio.

I'm not really good with licensing issues, so I'm not sure if it's GPL, LGPL or something else...
Here are the terms and conditions (copied & pasted from the documentation):

DockPanel suite is provided as free software with source code provided. You can freely use it in your applications (commercial or non-commercial). Weifen Luo, The author of the control, owns the copyright of the control, and is NOT responsible for any damage in your application caused by using this control, directly or indirectly.
Weifen Luo will feel honored if his name appears somewhere in your applications using this control (about box, documentation, etc).

[The Quest For The Holy Salsa]

I have nothing less than 3 games for your consideration!!

The Quest For The Holy Salsa


In the categories of:

Best Gameplay
Jump and swish your tentacles around, shoot an arrow, slide down ropes.
Need I say more?

Best Puzzles
Knock Isaac Newton out cold and then bring him back to life, Help angry farmers to find love, dress up as the god of the evil humans, and of course, solve the test of the beards of different sizes!

Best Player Character
He may be an abomination, but he sure is adorable!

Best Non-Player Character
Isaac Newton for the win!

Best Background Art
Jakerpot (where has he gone to?) made some really beautiful background art for this game.

Best Animation
Take a look at the abomination as he squishes on to the floor after his jumps.
Take another look and see Isaac Newton gets knocked out cold.
Faint from excitement as you see the angry farmers find their love.

Best Programming
Lots of programming go on behind the scenes to facilitate the Jump&Raise tentacle mechanism, working with the Rope Module, etc.

Best Sound Effects
TQFTHS was praised for its sound effects, a large portion of them was self recorded.

Best Music
A whole score of original music, including real recording of a female singer for the temple theme.

Best Short Game
A unique experience packed in a small but sweet package!

Robolution


In the categories of:

Best Puzzles
Where else will you get the opportunity to collect bullets from the battlefield with a huge moveable magnet, while you are being shot at?

Best Original Story
The story may not start out to be very original, but I'd like to think that it becomes more original as it unfolds..

Best Player Character
Don't be silly, this guy is so cool that I've even replaced my avatar for him!

Best Background Art
Whacky DOTT style backgrounds!

Best Music
This game works on the thematic music principle, and really tries to utilize its catchy theme with several different variations.

OceanSpirit Dennis: Ray Of Hope


In the categories of:

Best Gameplay
RPG for the win!

Best Non-Player Character
If you played this game to the end, you know who I'm talking about...

Best Music
The battle theme was hand crafted to fit into the OSD world, and has already been used in more (icey) games.

Best Voice Work
Quoting the mighty Ponch on that one when he said:
"Best voice acting in any AGS game ever!!!!"

Made some fan art.  

Edit: never mind, I was violating some license terms.. 

It is indeed.
I'm really excited about this one.
How much is it going to cost? And will you accept pre-orders?

I stand corrected then...

+1 for banana lotti

Thanks for testing, I've now checked in a fix for this.
Can you please get the latest and make sure it's now working ok; also I slightly changed the way the standard Replace works to be more consistent with how VS does it.

Tested and the fix works.

Well, it's not only me that can give feedback. Lately I've been quite bad at keeping up my appearances on this forum, but I'm confident that if I'm not around you guys can agree on the way to do things. In particular more experienced C# developers like yourself can provide guidance to less experienced C# devs which would be very useful.

Generally my opinion is that the most important thing is to keep consistency with the existing code. The editor architecture is not perfect by any means, but rather than everyone going off in different directions and adding bits in different ways, if we just keep within the patterns used in the existing code it'll be easier for everyone to follow.

I totally agree.
My only gripe here, is that experience in c# is not enough. Every code base tells its own story and requires understanding of its inner structure & patterns, a thing which only you fully understands at this point of time.
The rest of us will get there too eventually, but for now I don't feel we're really equipped to give advice on how things are suppose to work and how classes are supposed to interact with each other, we can only give advice on the technical side.
It doesn't mean we won't try though, but you can count on us making a lot more mistakes in the near future that stem from not fully understanding the design.
Not much to do about it, then let time run its course (and maybe also what I mentioned earlier, of doing a study of the code and writing some help documents with class diagrams etc).

I actually do have another somewhat related question, what are your feelings about integrating other open source projects (assuming they're stable and known-to-work)?

Those of you that have contributed so far (is that just tzachs, Calin, progz?) can you please:
1. let me know under what name you'd like to be credited
2. post a quick list of your changes here so that I can assembly an accurate changelog

Actually, I believe that helios123 also made a change to the editor.
Anyway, my name for credits sake is Tzach Shabtay, the entire list of my changes is in the first post in this thread, under "Features Added".

Don't worry about it, it happens...
You may submit so we'll be able to play and comment, not as part of the competition though (unless it's a delay of a few minutes, then it's ok, or if you'll be the only entry, then you'll win   ).

It seems that the Replace/Replace All functionality is broken in this version (it works in my original version).
Replace in document now replaces the first line of the file always.
Replace all in document now freezes the application (and from a quick debugging session, it seems to replace the same line all over again endlessly).

The rest of the features I put in seem to be working fine.

* If you are making a change that is complex and aren't sure of the best way to do something, please just ask on the forum here! Any changes which are 'architectural' in nature can be discussed and we can agree the best way to do something. It'll avoid having to refactor things later on.

That's good to know, the reason that I didn't ask is because I remember you saying that the code is provided as is without any support, so I didn't want to bother you (and nobody else has enough knowledge of the code as of now, I'm sure this will improve in the future).

Oops! Fixed...
Thank you bicilotti, first mighty moo, now this!  

[WHAT?]

Hello, it's time for another hourgame competition, and I'm carrying on with the fantastic idea of Wyz that helps you choose your own time of submission, and thus will hopefully allow for more entries.

So don't be shy, pick the time that you desire, get the theme, and let the game making begin!

The wonderful journey starts Here!

down to the boilerplate:
WHAT?
Make a GAME in an HOUR, with a THEME.
WHEN?
Whenever you choose but before Saturday the 15th 20:00 BST
WHERE?
From this web form on to where ever you bring it!
WHO?
YOU, not ME. I'm setting the THEME.
WHY?
For FUN and the FUTURE including the future of fun or FUNTURE.
WHORE?
Please CAMWHORE or BLOG.
WEB?
TerranRich's SHUTUPLOAD.
WHEE!

From the AGS anonymous usage stats (I knew they'd come in handy one day!) I can tell you that 88% of AGS users already have 3.5 installed. 12% don't, which is 300 people that would have to upgrade their framework version.

However, of these 300 people, 10 are still using Windows 2000 on which .NET 3.5 is not supported. That would mean that those 10 people could no longer use AGS.

Therefore, if we take the decision to go to 3.5 it's something that we should consider carefully rather than just make on a whim. So for this AGS version I'd like to stick with .NET 2.0, but I'm certainly open to moving to 3.5 for the next version (3.2.2 or whatever), unless those 10 people come up with a heart-wrenching story of the problems it would cause them to no longer be able to use new versions.

Interesting statistics, it's awesome that you have this information handy, and I can live with waiting for 3.2.2.

Thank you! 

And Wyz, for sure I want a copy of the forms.

Sorry for my long absence!

Progz, tzachs and Calin, great work on taking on board the editor code and making improvements! I think I've now been persuaded that open-sourcing the whole of AGS (including the engine code) under the same model is a workable way forward.

Awesome, this is very encouraging to know, thank you! 

Is it correct that the latest version of the editor code with all your combined changes is this one that Calin posted?
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=42092.msg563260#msg563260

Yes as far as I know, but Calin needs to confirm.

* VS2008 -- while upgrading the C# editor code to VS2010 is trivial, the Native assembly contains code specific to the C++ compiler in VS2008 and would need some work to update it all to work with the latest version. Therefore please leave this alone and use VC# Express 2008.

Hmmm, I think both ProgZ and Calin used VS2010, so you might have a problem opening it with VS2008...

* .NET 2.0 -- I want AGS to have a low barrier to entry, ie. people shouldn't be put off downloading it because it requires 3.5. While there are some nice 3.5 features like LINQ that it would be nice to use, at the moment I'd prefer to keep it with 2.0 which practically everyone has installed anyway.

I was afraid you'd say that.
Unfortunately, I used dot net 3.5 for my changes, since my opinion differs from yours, for these reasons:
* I believe that today dot net 3.5 is considered to be a low barrier, and the vast majority alreay have this installed (unfortunately I don't know how this can be measured).
* I think that staying with 2.0 might actually put off potential editor developers, that are used to work with 3.5 (yep, some people are spoiled these days).
* LINQ is simply awesome! It both saves hours of work, and improves the code quality. There isn't a day goes by that I don't use linq in my day job...

Tabata, if you want to know what planet I'm coming from, you can maybe figure it out by looking at my last name...

@Bulbapuck: 1520 points, holy cow!  :o

@Dualnames: 6280 points, holy freaking cow!  :o :o :o
I don't understand how this is even possible, it should be so fast at this point that you shouldn't even see the forks... you are god.

@GuyLaDouch: Yep, what bicliotti said, you can't actually move the cow, only rotate it (this is exactly how cows move in real life).

@bicliotti: Glad you're impressed 
I'm toying with the idea of making it into a proper game, and if I'll choose to do so, I will probably steal your mightymoo(TM) and put it in the game, if it's ok with you (with credit of course).

Got the carrot (and killed the monstosity), yay!
That was funny  
After much deliberation, I decided to give my vote to Bulbapuck!  

Oh, and my highscore so far is 620  

And wonkyth, please don't eat me...  :'(

Ha, I managed to use 4 different emoticons in one post!  :o