Messages

1216

Forum Support and Suggestions / Re: Strange happenings

« on: December 24, 2006, 10:25:44 PM »

There was one day when I rearranged a couple of threads, feature announcements, bug report, feature cancellation addressing everything in the new feature thread, that may have been part of it.

Also the AGI category is always marked with a new posts icon, just because I can't really check for a cookie from Chris's site to turn it off. Also the thread title in that recently changed but held no relevence because I'm pulling it from another sites rss feed, testing it until Chris comes up with making the rss feed, if everybody thinks this approach is good enough, no one has added their opinions 

Beyond that since it opened, I have been tinkering testing and editing my posts and the scripts constantly, some of you may have even seen my errors, but none of that should influence anything about new posts, unless editing posts changes the new post icon, but I don't think it does. All I can say is that except for some minor editing to the members profile in posts, to include awards and arcade stats and then to incorporate Chris's rss feed maker into these forums providing a similar fake board on his own site. I'm hoping he'll make that part anyway, I made the display  There isn't much else script editing on the horizon.

I haven't ever noticed it myself, but if it persists, let me know as my script editing is definately winding down. So if it continues, it isn't because of me editing scripts, but before now, I guess its entirely possible.

I also stickied a couple of threads, as I plan to add to them giving each category its own resources reference like with the sci sytax and listing all of the known resources for them. I stickied one of Omer's threads in the game section because it had game related links on it that I had no idea about so I figured it was a good starting point. If that is an example of what you meant.

Or even it could be, the sci syntax board has two more child boards inside of it, sci how tos and template fixes. It could be the new posts were in those but because of the new post icon you thought you were looking for it in the first board level when it was actually further in.

1217

SCI Community How To's & Tutorials / How to determine the location of the mouse cursor

« on: December 24, 2006, 08:41:35 PM »

This is a question that I recently asked at Mega-Tokyo in which Troflip was good enough to write up some code illustrating that exact functionallity. This is a little snippet of code which I had hoped Troflip could enter here, but as he has not signed up yet and I really didn't want to lose this snippet as I plan to find a use for it, I have moved it here.

Troflip's code to get a view to follow the cursor broken up with small explanations added by me.

We first need to create an instance of an Actor, it needs to be an actor so that it can move around the screen. An init method has been included in the instance telling the actor to do what that script says.

Code: [Select]

(instance thing of Act
   (properties
      x 100
      y 100
      view 800
   )
   (method (init)
      (super:init())
      (self:setScript(thingScript))
   )
)
Now that the instance is complete, we also need to create the script which the instances init method references.

Code: [Select]

(instance thingScript of Script
   (properties)
   (method (doit)
      (var myEvent)
      (super:doit())
      (= myEvent Event:new(evNULL))
      (send client:setMotion(MoveTo (send myEvent:x) (send myEvent:y)))
      (send myEvent:dispose())
   )
)

 
...and then of course do (thing:init()) in your room's init method.

* View this how-to script in it's entirety here

1218

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Fabulous Las Vegas (in development)

« on: December 24, 2006, 08:15:37 PM »

Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas!

During a working vacation in Vegas, you find yourself in a casino lounge enjoying the Spice Girls  one night only show. Having finished your sixth or eighth  cocktail, afterall no one's counting, you find yourself the center of attention for some young hottie. Made confident by the drink, and your pending successful "business" venture planned for the following afternoon, you find yourself not only witty and charming, but also trailing behind this young woman on the way up to the penthouse suite, her room.

After a night of raw unbridled animal passion, you assume since you blacked out shortly after entering the elevator, you find yourself rudely awakened by three very "Italian looking" gentlemen. The biggest, fattest, most italian looking one it turns out is your night of whatever it was's husband.

Left with few options as the men who awoken you advance, you leap from the bed, severely lacking of clothes, and dart off to the bathroom and quickly shut the door. As the impending doom reaches the outer limits of the flimsy bathroom door, your mind flashes to the business you have to conduct later that afternoon... paying back the 20 grand you borrowed from a loan shark to cover a hot tip. Luckily the tip was spot on, unfortunately your clothes and your money are both on the other side of the door with the "Italian looking" gentlemen... oh wait, change that, they're on their way in.

So that's the introduction anyway. After four years of tinkering with sci, I think it is about time that I culminate that tinkering into something useful. Hopefully this game is that result. Featuring a totally point and click interface including an icon inventory interface used for either manipulating two items or for preparing an item for use (changing cursor to item cursor.)

The idea of keeping the game to the confines of a hotel and casino, I thought was going to keep the room count relatively low in an attempt to not get bogged down by the graphics. With the introduction of several mini games and the "activity" present in the background, I have blown that plan out of the water and this game is just as, if not moreso, graphic intensive.

The mini games that are currently functional include blackjack, a slot machine, and boxing. The slots and blackjack scripts were inspired by Eigen's contributed scripts over at Mega-Tokyo, but they have pretty much been entirely rewritten. I still attribute their inspiration to Eigen though, if he hadn't posted his I would have never probably even thought of writing mine. Likewise, the boxing script finds it's inspiration from pikachu's cheap ass battle mode which he posted at Mega-Tokyo.

I know you've all heard about this already, but I wanted to at least get it up here as a subliminal way to get me to get back to work on it now that everything is pretty much set up here and seems to be running fine forum wise. I have added in some screenshots, some of them are in  more states of doneness than others.

1219

SCI Community News / Re: A New home for the SCI Community

« on: December 22, 2006, 04:35:54 PM »

Yeah, I really have no idea of way to get in touch with Brian about changing any of his links, or of even letting him know about the move. I am hoping for that very reason, and all the tutorial links in the scistudios already downloaded, that DF will put up and keep up a redirect link for a while like with chase's OS dev stuff now.

1220

Forum Support and Suggestions / Re: Possible to Archive the Mega-Tokyo Forums

« on: December 22, 2006, 05:12:44 AM »

Alright, I was thinking about having the rss feed act like a forum page on my site but that seemed like a lot of work just for them to need to go to your site anyway to view beyond the title or an abbrev. version of the post. So I figured why not just send them there at the first click.

maybe a simple rss feed with one channel that could be used to show those few variables in the forum index. recent post title, author, time of post, total forum posts, total forum responses. Right now I'm using some random variables just to fill in the spaces so it looks about right without being entirely accurate.

What does everybody think, the featured link the way it is in the forum index or are there bigger steps that we need to take to keep the two communities in contact with each other.

1221

SCI Community News / Our New home listed at SMFoogle and other Search Engine musings

« on: December 22, 2006, 04:46:18 AM »

http://www.smfoogle.com/computers_and_internet/programming_and_development/

Hey you guys, in case you care, I submitted our new little home here to smfoogle, kind of like a google for simple machine forum users and currently we are the only site listed in computers and internet / programming and development. It probably won't last, but its nice being number one

I do notice that they took a screen of the emptysacdesigns homepage and that doesn't reflect anything sci right now (that will change). I guess I don't get to work on my game quite yet, I get to redesign my website first. It needed it anyway, never having been fully finished to begin with.

1222

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: VGA SCI with Parser!

« on: December 22, 2006, 04:14:30 AM »

It's a novel idea Omer but it may not be practical to have both the text parser and point and click. I have made a totally point and click interface for our ega version, and by the time youv'e added all the clickable stuff which is actually a hundred times easier than coming up with all the different phrases that someone would type in,  but to also include all the if saids would seriously put a hurt on the memory.

I don't know what kind of memory resources the later sci games required but if it's anything like we have now, there just isn't room in the game for both.

1223

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Fun Seeker's Guide, what is it?

« on: December 22, 2006, 01:18:51 AM »

I was looking over Omer's wiki article and I noticed in there a title by the name of "Fun Seeker's Guide." I have no idea what it is, the name doesn't even sound familiar. Has anyone ever heard of it, I assume it's not a game but I have no clue and I'm to lazy to go Google it right now.

1224

SCI Development Tools / SCI Development Resources

« on: December 22, 2006, 01:02:57 AM »

If you are thinking about making an SCI game, or fiddling with ones resources, you are going to need some tools. This is a preliminary list as I haven't started tracking them all down yet, I will expand it as time allows. If anyone can think or know of other tools and where to find them please add em to a reply and I'll add them to the list.

Editors

• Troflip's *New Version SciCompanion ...
• Brian's SciStudio 3 ...

Music

• Anvil Studios ...You can learn more about it in this thread
• Soundbox ...You can learn more about it in this thread

Interpreters

• FreeSCI ... This is the first and only non-Sierra SCI Interpreter. Currently it supports SCI version 0.000.xxx games. All kernel functions have been added making not only games fully playable with it, but also many games have been completed on it!

Resource Viewers

• SCI Viewer ... View all resources of almost any sci adventure game.
• Brian's Unfinished SciStudio VGA Source Code ...
• Brian's SCI Disassembler ... Unless you can muddle through the byte code, this one's not for you.

Misc

• Brian's SCI Game Recover Utility ... I'm not sure what corruption this fixes, but if you've accidentally rebuilt your game while it's running I made a how to for fixing that. If your corrupted beyond that, this tool may help.

1225

Forum Support and Suggestions / Re: Possible to Archive the Mega-Tokyo Forums

« on: December 21, 2006, 10:55:31 PM »

Excellent, I figured something along those lines would be more than sufficient to keep our communities linked and up to date of each other, I called us all cousins before, but I guess really we'd be like sister communities.

1226

Forum Support and Suggestions / Re: Possible to Archive the Mega-Tokyo Forums

« on: December 21, 2006, 09:30:59 PM »

Basicly, it revolves around pulling an rss feed from the main news boards of each others sites assuming new games, demos, tools or whatever finds it's way into the news section, or whichever is the most interesting. For instance on my index page a board titled something like News from the agi front, then clicking on that opens up the newsreader page. Displaying the last 15 abbreviated posts or whatever in that board which act as links to each others sites. We wouldn't be pulling all the posts or all the threads, but the ones that keep us up to date with each other as far as major happenings.

That was my initial idea anyway. I don't think it would be overly hard but it would definately take some modifications to the initial and any future themes which is the main drawback.

1227

Everything-Else / The Official Rules

« on: December 21, 2006, 03:32:44 PM »

These are the initial rules of conduct,  which you will be expected to abide by, If for some reason you cannot, or refuse to, you will be banned from the community.

• No posting Serial Numbers, cracks ~ Big no no, Don't do it.
• No Abandonware, warez links or offerings ~ You know what they are, and the games that interest us aren't supposed to be on them. We don't need to know where you steal all of your games from, we can find our own sources if we want them.
• No Advertising, no SPAM, No selling of goods or services ~ I don't want to know where cheap viagra is. Or where I can get something enlarged and If you have posted something in one thread, it very rarely ever needs repeated in another one.
• No Adult Content ~ You know what adult content is, something you would need to hide if your mother came in the room. If you make a "Mature" game please leave out the offensive references and screenshots in your posts here. If done in a conscientious way, you may promote your sci game regardless of the type. But the key word is conscientious. This isn't because I have a stick up my butt, but the host server.

That's about it, besides being respectful of each other, even during disagreements if they arise. You can critiscize a persons work without critscizing a person and if someone offers critiscism, don't take it personally.

__________________________________

This is the preliminary set of rules, if anybody would like to respond with any suggestions or critiscisms then I'm all ears.
 

 

1228

Everything-Else / Re: new home

« on: December 20, 2006, 07:45:32 PM »

Glad to see someone else made it. Welcome and I hope it feels like home, that was my intention.

1229

Forum Support and Suggestions / Re: AGI forum

« on: December 20, 2006, 07:44:24 PM »

I haven't even given it a thought. Chris has a developed agi community and all of the agi resources are easy enough to find already. It's time that sci had it's own space to grow.

I think the two communities will always share a kinship, I often refer to AGI members as part of the family, but we are more cousins than brothers. I really think that seperate houses would serve both communities the best. We have a shared interest, but they are definately different technologies.

1230

SCI Community News / Re: A New home for the SCI Community

« on: December 20, 2006, 03:40:07 PM »

He has already signed up, and I'm sure he'll keep us filled in whatever gets decided.