Halloween Challenge

[gumby]

Yes, thank you.  I'm fine, wasn't even sure if I'd be able to travel, but I'm much improved now.  Still haven't found any time to work on this game yet, and not happy about that .

[Cloudee1]

Glad to hear things are going well Gumby. If it makes you feel any better, my progress has pretty much come to a stand still. I was right, the wife stepped in. 

[Cloudee1]

I have managed to get some more work done on this bad boy and it feels like I am getting close. I'm not really, but it feels like it. The approach I am taking I am seriously struggling with my heap. I have managed to unfragment it and I am just plain putting way too much code in the rooms.

I have 1 room that has 410 free heap available and another one sitting at 230 free. Just an FYI 230 is too low, it won't even open a print dialog without throwing an error "Can't open window" which is a new one for me. It doesn't crash the game per se, but it definitely tells me that I need to trim out as much code as possible. The sad part is that both of those rooms don't make use of sciaudio so there is no way I'll be using mp3 sounds throughout the game. Here and there maybe, but for the most part definitely not.

*Edit: Just went through and totally butchered the main script and managed to get a little over 900 heap back in every room. So I am beginning to feel a little better about where I am now. Thinking though that I should probably make a pass through the other scripts that are "used" and see if I can't trim a little fat in them as well

[Doan Sephim]

That's great Cloudee1!

I am afraid I'm going to unceremoniously bow out of this one. My sparse spare time has to be focused on my masters courses...

Good luck you Cloudee1 and gumby though!

It's too bad...I'd really like another trophy in my possession!

[Cloudee1]

Just a few days left.

I should have mine ready in time. All of the game play is coded and from what I can tell, relatively bug free. I am currently working on the outro and then to finalize the intro which itself is pretty much completed. Maybe slip as many sounds in as I can here and there and I am done. I wasn't able to use sciAudio nearly as much as I had intended so the sounds I still want to try to get in will have to be midi sounds, but we'll see what I can come up with.

[stateofpsychosis]

definitely going to have to check out any games that come out of this when they're done

[Cloudee1]

Ok, it's done and it has been uploaded to the fan games page, source code is included.

Manic Mansion is my official entry to the Halloween challenge.

[JRedant]

Well done clouded! I will take it out for a spin.

So now I will have to design a trophy, now.  Okay, can do!

[Doan Sephim]

Cloudee,

Wow. This was a fantastic entry! I loved the creepy music and sound. I'll have to give it a rating and review in the downloads section.

I definitely was frustrated trying to get the lights on and having my flashlight stolen. After a while I realized just save after each room, and restore if I lost the flashlight before the batteries.

Finding the batteries was a pain in the butt, but I eventually got it.

Overall, a great job! The art was fantastic.

The use for the perfume was a bit strained (my opinion)...but I did something similar in one of my games...so who am I to say anything, lol.

So, I accidently got 100 out of 99 points... 

[Cloudee1]

I am glad that you enjoyed it Doan, but the art is not something I can take credit for. I may of did a little rearranging and some little modifications here and there, but it was all pretty much a total rip off from Maniac Mansion by Lucasfilm.

Now then in regards to your comments,

I tried to close the gap a bit with the perfume in the look statement when viewing it in your inventory...

This stuff reeks. The tiny bit you can smell makes your eyes water, you couldn't even imagine what it would do to your senses if you got even a tiny bit on your skin.

But yeah, there always seems to be a bit of a stretch here and there when it comes to adventure gaming. That was a bit that Andrew and I talked about when we were discussing Voodoo Girl and a couple of his puzzle solutions.

As for losing items, yes I agree. Seems like the attack percentage was a bit too high to be enjoyable, but who knew that until it was actually up and running. But it was defined as part of the competition requirements to thats Jredant's fault not mine

I'm not sure where the extra point came from... Chances are it is from a stolen item reappearing in a room that it started out in, hence triggering the point for picking it up again. Oh well, I am going to let it ride and pretend that I never heard you say it lol... otherwise I would have to pop it back open and try to track it down. There for a while the game was set to 100 points but I dropped one off just so the menu bar wouldn't shift. Maybe I got mixed up in my versions and that point never actually got stripped out afterall. But like I said, Oh well...

The part I figured would cause the biggest complaints was the combination of the point and click, yet still making use of the menubar for saving and restoring.

[Doan Sephim]

I actually liked the point and click interface (which is rare, because I usually don't). Walking with the mouse was all but impossible, but I just used the directional pad for that and everything else worked great.

I liked that the items went grey when you couldn't use them...that offered me a subtle hint at a time-sensitive moment when they were not grey...I otherwise wouldn't have thought I could interact with the event as it happened.

You know what...your hint if you looked at the item should have been sufficient for me. I retract my statement about it being strained.

[Collector]

As intriguing as this game is, I would rather have you invest your time in VG. It was one of the best fan AGI games and from what I have seen of it, it could end up being one of the best of the fan SCI games. too.

[Cloudee1]

Don't worry Collector, this one is already on the shelf. I don't plan to spend any more time on it. I may pull it out from time to time to steal some code from it, but beyond that it is what it is.

Voodoo girl is currently on deck, I certainly haven't forgotten about it by any means but I am taking a small break from it to work vigorously on something else. I am not going to come right out and say what it is but if you have seen any of my questions lately in the help section it wouldn't be that hard to figure out what it is.

[gumby]

Cloudee, I'm curious.  How did you accomplish the lack of light in the game? Did you overlay black views over the pic and moved them around as the ego moved?  Technically, I'm impressed.

A how-to on this would be awesome

[Cloudee1]

The source code is in there, but yeah that was pretty much it.

Horizontally I cut the playable area into three equal strips. Then used an all black view a few times to fill in those strips... maybe 4 or 5 blocks to fit all the way across the screen. So multiply that block for all three rows...

If I remember correctly, the top and bottom strips only had to adjust up or down as the ego moved up and down, It was really only the center strip of blocks that had to adjust in the x directions as well as the y. Then there was a view that surrounded the ego with a transparent center. It followed the ego around. Depending on the light level as to how big the transparent hole was. The center row of black blocks had to adjust in such a way that they didn't cover any of the ego's transparent cover as you moved left or right.

The priority of the border of the picture resource as well as the menu and icons was set high enough that they always showed on top of the all black views. Switching between the room screens and battle screens, I totally faked by placing a fake ego with the expected background drawn onto the actual view into a totally separate room from the room that it appeared to be in. By the time it was all said and done, between the darkness and the inventory logic (specifically the random placement of items in random rooms if they were stolen) ever present, there just wasn't much heap left for anything else. That was probably the biggest reason for switching to a intermediate room for the battle sequences. It freed up the heap I needed to make use of SCIaudio.

Easy right?

I am not even sure if I looked at the source code now whether or not I would even be able to decipher it again. 

*Edit
So I pulled out the code... Here are the relevant bits

In the init method of the public instance

Code: [Select]

(if(== lightLevel 1)(noLight:init()ignoreActors()cel(1)setPri(13)posn((send gEgo:x) 95)setScript(noLightEgo)))
  (if(== lightLevel 0)(noLight:init()ignoreActors()setPri(13)posn((send gEgo:x) 95)setScript(noLightEgo)))
  (if(< lightLevel 2)
   (coverA1:init()ignoreActors()setPri(13)posn(37 (- (noLight:y) 75)))
   (coverA2:init()ignoreActors()setPri(13)posn(112 (- (noLight:y) 75)))
   (coverA3:init()ignoreActors()setPri(13)posn(187 (- (noLight:y) 75)))
   (coverA4:init()ignoreActors()setPri(13)posn(262 (- (noLight:y) 75)))
   (coverA5:init()ignoreActors()setPri(13)posn(337 (- (noLight:y) 75))) 
   (cover1:init()posn((+ (send gEgo:x) 75) (- (send gEgo:y) 20))ignoreActors()setPri(13))
   (cover2:init()posn((+ (send gEgo:x) 150) (- (send gEgo:y) 20))ignoreActors()setPri(13))
   (cover3:init()posn((+ (send gEgo:x) 225) (- (send gEgo:y) 20))ignoreActors()setPri(13))
   (cover4:init()posn((+ (send gEgo:x) 300) (- (send gEgo:y) 20))ignoreActors()setPri(13))
   (cover5:init()posn((- (send gEgo:x) 75) (- (send gEgo:y) 20))ignoreActors()setPri(13))
   (cover6:init()posn((- (send gEgo:x) 150) (- (send gEgo:y) 20))ignoreActors()setPri(13))
   (cover7:init()posn((- (send gEgo:x) 225) (- (send gEgo:y) 20))ignoreActors()setPri(13))
   (cover8:init()posn((- (send gEgo:x) 300) (- (send gEgo:y) 20))ignoreActors()setPri(13)) 
   (coverB1:init()posn(37 (+ (noLight:y) 53))ignoreActors()setPri(13))
   (coverB2:init()posn(112 (+ (noLight:y) 53))ignoreActors()setPri(13))
   (coverB3:init()posn(187 (+ (noLight:y) 53))ignoreActors()setPri(13))
   (coverB4:init()posn(262 (+ (noLight:y) 53))ignoreActors()setPri(13))
   (coverB5:init()posn(337 (+ (noLight:y) 53))ignoreActors()setPri(13))
  )

and then there's the instances for all of these

Code: [Select]

(instance noLight of Prop(properties x 400 y 400 view 2 loop 0 cel 0))
(instance coverA1 of Prop(properties x 37 y 30 view 2 loop 1 cel 1))
(instance coverA2 of Prop(properties x 112 y 30 view 2 loop 1 cel 1))
(instance coverA3 of Prop(properties x 187 y 30 view 2 loop 1 cel 1))
(instance coverA4 of Prop(properties x 262 y 30 view 2 loop 1 cel 1))
(instance coverA5 of Prop(properties x 337 y 30 view 2 loop 1 cel 1))
(instance cover1 of Prop(properties x 37 y 100 view 2 loop 1 cel 0))
(instance cover2 of Prop(properties x 112 y 100 view 2 loop 1 cel 0))
(instance cover3 of Prop(properties x 187 y 100 view 2 loop 1 cel 0))
(instance cover4 of Prop(properties x 262 y 100 view 2 loop 1 cel 0))
(instance cover5 of Prop(properties x 337 y 100 view 2 loop 1 cel 0))
(instance cover6 of Prop(properties x 37 y 100 view 2 loop 1 cel 0))
(instance cover7 of Prop(properties x 112 y 100 view 2 loop 1 cel 0))
(instance cover8 of Prop(properties x 187 y 100 view 2 loop 1 cel 0))
(instance coverB1 of Prop(properties x 37 y 140 view 2 loop 1 cel 2))
(instance coverB2 of Prop(properties x 112 y 140 view 2 loop 1 cel 2))
(instance coverB3 of Prop(properties x 187 y 140 view 2 loop 1 cel 2))
(instance coverB4 of Prop(properties x 262 y 140 view 2 loop 1 cel 2))
(instance coverB5 of Prop(properties x 337 y 140 view 2 loop 1 cel 2))

noLight was the blackness that stuck with ego and had the transparent hole cut out of the middle... 75 x 75
coverA# was an all black view 75 x 35 - used at the top of the screen
cover# was an all black view 75 x 75 - used in line with ego
coverB# was an all black view 75 x 53 used along the bottom of the screen

and finally, the noLightEgo script instance which determined the positioning of everything

Code: [Select]

(instance noLightEgo of Script
(properties)
  (method (doit)
  (var lightingLevel)
  (super:doit())

 
  (noLight:posn((send gEgo:x) (- (send gEgo:y) 20)))

  (coverA1:posn(37 (- (noLight:y) 75)))
  (coverA2:posn(112 (- (noLight:y) 75)))
  (coverA3:posn(187 (- (noLight:y) 75)))
  (coverA4:posn(262 (- (noLight:y) 75)))
  (coverA5:posn(337 (- (noLight:y) 75))) 
 
  (cover1:posn((+ (send gEgo:x) 75) (noLight:y)))
  (cover2:posn((+ (send gEgo:x) 150) (noLight:y)))
  (cover3:posn((+ (send gEgo:x) 225) (noLight:y)))
  (cover4:posn((+ (send gEgo:x) 300) (noLight:y)))
  (cover5:posn((- (send gEgo:x) 75) (noLight:y))) 
  (cover6:posn((- (send gEgo:x) 150) (noLight:y))) 
  (cover7:posn((- (send gEgo:x) 225) (noLight:y))) 
  (cover8:posn((- (send gEgo:x) 300) (noLight:y)))
 
  (coverB1:posn(37 (+ (noLight:y) 53))) 
  (coverB2:posn(112 (+ (noLight:y) 53)))
  (coverB3:posn(187 (+ (noLight:y) 53)))
  (coverB4:posn(262 (+ (noLight:y) 53)))
  (coverB5:posn(337 (+ (noLight:y) 53)))         
  )// end method
)// end instance


noLight was obviously positioned by the ego
coverA# y's position was based then off of noLight's y and had a static x so the only shifted up and down
cover# x's was based off the ego's x and noLight's y and they all moved in both directions when ego moved
coverB# y's postions was based off of noLight's y and had a static x so they only shifted up and down