Island of Secrets

[gumby]

Not bad.  Could you utilize some purple to get another dark tone for the interior of the cave?  Maybe in the cross-hatched area, instead of black/grey use black/purple?

EDIT:  I just checked out the original 'Island of Secrets' - nice to see that you are porting a text adventure to SCI!

[JRedant]

The book where "Island of Secrets" came from has some pretty great artwork in it. I had to give it a try. Not wanting to jump the gun, since I should get one project done at a time, if this goes over well, I'd like to try to port another text adventure to SCI.

...however, back to the project at hand!

I recall a cave scene in a Sierra game back in the late 80s that effectively used purple in the cave scene. I'd like to try that with mine.

I'm almost tempted to patch up the little bits and release what I have right now as a demo version.

[MusicallyInspired]

Anything you made in Studio will work fine in Companion Script-wise (for the most part, but I doubt you'll run into problems). What Cloudee is talking about is the template game itself. Code you haven't written. There are some "errors" (for lack of a better word) inherent in SCI Studio's template game which SCI Companion fixes. The SCI Companion help file has the information you need on which specific lines of code to fix in which scripts.

[JRedant]

That was really clever, actually. It's now a clean compile.

[JRedant]

Absolutely beautiful. I wanted to share this with everyone before I change it:

https://sites.google.com/site/saskolinasoft/rough-draft/snelmslair

I made it far too long to do me any good. So I'm going to shorten it. I'm close to releasing a demo.

[Cloudee1]

If you only have a couple of rooms you'e coded and  the pics, yeah it might be easier to export the pics and any views from studio and import them into companion and then just copy and paste the scriptwork you've done. But then again the bugs aren't that hard to fix either so it's up to you

[gumby]

Hey, make sure that you review the bugs in the template game. There is a thread here regarding that.  I think there are still undocumented issues (the Dispose script comes to mind) - starting new thread.

[JRedant]

Bugs have been sorted out, and it runs cleanly. I have to do one more thing before I feel fully competent. I need to introduce an "actor". the first one is not going to be an easy one. It's a "Wild Canyon Beast" So now I need to figure out how to animate four legged characters. If I can do that, I can do anything.

[Cloudee1]

That's where I usually look to a sierra game's views for reference. Conquests of camelot has several animals, same with the king's quest games

[JRedant]

I really should stop posting things that I say could be a challenge before finding out that they're not.  Google Image Search just became a great resource for people wanting to look for cel animations of animals. I'm underway to making the sprite now.

[Cloudee1]

Oh yeah, and by the way, the demo has been approved and is ready for download off of the fan games page

[JRedant]

Very cool! Thanks, cloudee!  

Update: It took me two days to figure out what to do with the Canyon Beast. The thing looks like a pink horse now. I'd like to give it some claws or something.

I'm also been having a pretty bad cold too. I'm managing.

[edit: >.< good thing I had a backup copy. I was working on the Vocab file, removing words I didn't need. Which ruined my game. Never do that again.]

[JRedant]

(Just watch me figure it out :-P)

So I'm about to put in the Canyon Beast into the game, following the instructions in the tutorial. And it's not happening. I'm not sure if it's because the Canyon Beast is bigger than 19x42 pixels, or however it's supposed to be.  Or even if that matters. There might be something else I need to do with the scripts.

The Canyon Beast is 57x42 pixels. And it will be moving. So... ideas?

Five minutes later, I get it. Strike that. Anyway, making good progress!

Nevermind! ^.^'''

[Doan Sephim]

I played the demo and I have a few criticisms. First I want to say it is remarkable how much work you were able to get done in such a short time (on the pics I mean). Pics take me eons to do and I dread them!

First thing I noticed was that you cannot really "look" at almost anything. I know it's a demo, but this will be important in just a minute.

Second, when I entered the cave, I do not believe you have a way to get out of the cave.

Third, in the cave, I have no idea what the yellow/gold things are on the ground. I tried looking at the ground to see, but the "look" message gives me no input.

So I ended the gam ewith 0/5 puzzle points because there is virtually no interactivity in the game.

Again, I know it's a demo, so I'm not trying to be harsh. Just treat this as a beta test review 

EDIT - I looked at your website and I lol'ed when I saw how you made your canyon beast! I used the exact same black and white pic for my horse sprite! It worked very well. Finding a running one was harder, but I made one and you can use the sprite (with color modifications of course). It may save you some time. You can find it in the art gallery (public domain)

[JRedant]

Thanks for all of that, Doan!

1) That is a hard thing about translating a text game into a graphic game. When all the text game says is "You are at the southern edge of the forest", well sure you can draw the southern edge of the forest. But now after having completed seven of these screens, I feel that I need to write a story about all of these screens, thread them together somehow. Which means I'm going to have to start using a lot more of the book than just the program.

2) Resolved with the additional screens that I've rendered.

3) Resolved with the "look" statement. Although I should have an automatic statement that says "There are mushrooms here". Those are tough buggers to interpret on that kind of a scale.

4) Lack of inactivity, I hope, will continue to develop as I become more familiar with the game. As it stands now, there's hardly anything to interact with. Which is also another drawback to interpreting a text game into a graphical one.

5) That walking horse is pretty valuable, isn't it? :-)

6) Actually that input is necessary. I need those kind of harsh words, actually. I have some of the same issues with the game myself. I give you 5/5 points in being a pretty darn good Beta tester! Once I iron out the Canyon Beast scene and iron out some more issues, would you like to try out what I have now?