Messages

16

AGI Community How To's & Tutorials / Re: Better dialogue in AGI

« on: May 02, 2025, 08:09:45 AM »

Thanks for chiming in! Good points there.

I am now styling the dialogue with only print.at and a static portrait of the speaker next to it. That already greatly improves dialogue presentation and avoids confusion. Perfect solution for me, as I love the classic AGI look and feel and don't want to stray to far away from that. The display command is great for text in arcade sequences and special story events, and I will definitely use that add a couple speech bubbles to the game for dramatic effect.

EDIT: Here is what looks like.

17

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI Version 3.0.0 Progress Updates

« on: May 01, 2025, 08:52:18 PM »

Right on! Gonna try it out this weekend. Thanks for your continuing work on this!

18

AGI Community How To's & Tutorials / Re: Better dialogue in AGI

« on: April 30, 2025, 06:21:06 PM »

Right on! Had totally forgotten about MUMG. Two interesting techniques in there:
1) The speech bubbles are great, just a static view cel and display commands on top.
2) There's also a "fake" text window with progressing text and an animation playing underneath. They set windows_remain first, then open up an empty text window, and then display single lines on top of that:

Code: [Select]

 
  set(f15);
  print.at("                                   \n\n\n\n\n\n\n",0,3,37);
  display(1,3,"There was an old woman");
  display(2,3,"   who lived in a shoe.");
Neat! Thanks for bringing up that game!

19

AGI Community How To's & Tutorials / Re: Better dialogue in AGI

« on: April 30, 2025, 01:47:16 AM »

Thanks for your input folks! I will play around with 1 and 3 in the coming days and let you know what I find.

20

AGI Community How To's & Tutorials / Better dialogue in AGI

« on: April 29, 2025, 08:47:02 AM »

Hi folks,

I'm wondering how I can improve the gaming experience for an adventure game I'm working on (V): There's lots of dialogue between player and npcs, and the print command with its black on white text works fine, but compared to how SCUMM presents dialogue, it's not optimum: Colored text on top of the screen, without window popups, character animations while they say something and we can read the text, this must be achievable in AGI somehow.

It's not just about the look, I mainly want the player to be less confused about who's speaking after 2 or 3 AGI print popups.

How can we achieve neater dialogue flow in AGI games? Several aspects and approaches:
1) The display command gives us colored text. Neat! If I do that on an animated screen, how I can I erase it smoothly without breaking the screen?
2) Is there really no way to get the typical AGI text popups to use something different than black on white? Can we at least mess with the red border or something?
3) Can we have a text window pop up (with print.at) simultaneously with a sprite next to it, and then both disappear on key press? That would offer a workaround, where the player at least sees who is speaking at all times.

Need to experiment around with this, but maybe some of you have ideas or experience with character dialogue presentation i thought...
Cheers from the workshop!
b.o.k.

21

SCI Development Tools / Re: Sound Resource Converter and/or MIDI Exporter?

« on: April 24, 2025, 01:55:12 PM »

SND2MID.COM converts from Sierra sound resource format to Standard MIDI File format. Syntax is: "snd2mid  devices   files". "Devices" can be "*" for all, or "a" for AdLib, "m" for Roland MT-32, "h" for "General MIDI", "s" for "PC Speaker", "t" for "Tandy", and so on. More than one letter is possible, and "files" can be more than one file. Example "snd2mid am *.snd" converts all .snd files, extracting only tracks for devices AdLib and Roland MT-32. The track names of the resulting Standard MIDI File have device lists in brackets that are needed by Sierra's SMF.EXE for re-conversion. Reverb controllers that MT32.DRV translates into System Exclusive Messages are kept as they are, and all other events are untouched. This makes it possible to later convert the Standard MIDI Files back to Sierra sound resource format.

Can anyone point me to a place where I can download this? Never heard of SND2MID.COM before and can't find it on here.

EDIT: Found it! Here:
https://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php/SND_to_MIDI

22

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Back in development: V - Resist or Perish

« on: April 21, 2025, 04:43:38 PM »

Happy Easter everyone! Here's another quick video from the pixel workshop. This time featuring a lovely tune by the wonderful Jean-Michel Jarre in AGI sound:


Cheers everyone!

23

AGI Community How To's & Tutorials / Re: Official AGI Documentation

« on: April 03, 2025, 04:36:17 PM »

Best thread ever! Can't believe I'm only discovering this now, but better late than never I guess...
Thanks for the massive heap of info everyone!

24

Everything-Else / Favorite 80s tv shows

« on: March 31, 2025, 08:03:19 PM »

If someone were to develop more AGI and SCI fan games based on classic 80s tv shows, what would your wishlist be?

I would love to see Airwolf, MacGyver or Miami Vice in a game. The 80s games we got for those didn't deliver the full potential I feel, most of them being silly and simple arcade games. A Sierra style game could make for much more interesting gameplay I think.

25

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Back in development: V - Resist or Perish

« on: March 30, 2025, 02:28:06 PM »

Cheers from the workshop everyone! Here's an AGI rendition of Stevie Wonder's Sir Duke for your enjoyment:


PMKelly, thanks for your work on AGI Studio!

26

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Playing around with AI Image Conversion on Sierra titles

« on: March 29, 2025, 04:45:30 PM »

Great renditions! Keep em coming folks. Would love to see some SQ3 scenes. Cheers!

27

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Back in development: V - Resist or Perish

« on: March 24, 2025, 02:09:33 AM »

Thanks for your feedback folks! Nice to hear people remember the game after 20 years of absence. Will contact the other dudes directly via mail.

Thanks for the AGILE link. Very neat project.

And thanks again for Picedit Lance! Still using the good old DOS version, works like a charm.

28

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Back in development: V - Resist or Perish

« on: March 22, 2025, 05:33:20 PM »

Howdy folks,
it's been a while... Good news everyone: The V adventure game is back in development. Release is set for december 24 2025. Demo 2 was well recieved back in 2002, so the final game will expand on that, while Los Angeles is going to be restructured to be more realistic and feature more prominent landmarks all over town.

No idea if Ed, Chris and Vonster are still around. Anyone heard from them lately?

Cheers and thanks to everyone for keeping the forum going in 2025!

29

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI Version 3.0.0 Progress Updates

« on: March 22, 2025, 05:15:14 PM »

Wow, that's impressive. Thanks for your work on this! I've returned to AGI this year and am finishing a game I started more than 20 years ago... call me crazy. I use both WinAGI and AGI studio and am super grateful for all the great tools out there. Cheers from Germany!

30

Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re:V - Arcade Sequences

« on: October 04, 2004, 05:20:13 AM »

Hi Chris,

of course your vote will count. As you're involved with the V project, I'd say it counts at least double.  

I myself can't objectively decide whether the arcade sequences are too hard or not, so it's very important to have some feedback from players.

Thanks to everyone who voted so far. The poll will still be running for some time, so if anyone out there hasn't voted yet, please leave us your opinion.