Adventure Creator original thread

[Squeeky]

Graen wrote :
Wow really? Why not use style sheets and have one background image, with the animated image overlayed on top of that... or go even simpler and use tables?

What I am asking of tlaero is a table. The number of cells in the table is one's own choice, in this case the table being considered is a 3x3 array.

From what I understand of her AC style sheets would not be a consideration.

[tlaero]

Hey Squeeky,

Sorry I didn't make this clear, but please don't use my email address. It's shared by multiple people. That's why I have it hidden to all but moderators. PMs and Rapidshares are fine, though.

AC supports the concept of foreground and background images, but, like so many other things, they didn't work in Firefox. My original plan was to have the backgrounds and characters be separate and just intermix them. I think that at some point I bent Firefox to my will, but by then people were pretty used to single images. So I didn't push it.

Your idea works, but I think the additional complexity isn't offset by the performance benefit. I'd rather the storytellers focus on story and art rather than optimizing for animation speed. It's so much work making these games at their current complexity, that I'm afraid we'd do less with them if we started splitting up images. My experience is that the less I have to do per page, the more pages I'll do. Etc.

Tlaero

[Squeeky]

tlaero,

I do recall that you complained about FF giving you some earlier difficulties.

I also realise that your intent was to have writers confine as much of their activity to writing and art rather than having to focus upon elements of programming (at the story level or the move complex VDG scenarios).

Certainly what I was proposing would have required writer/artists to extend their repertoires to utilise the thought. We certainly don't need to put unnecessary obstacles in the way of our creators to gain their maximum output where so I'll not raise this issue again.

[tlaero]

It's not a bad idea, Squeeky, and there's certainly nothing wrong with raising it. We just have to walk that fine line between making things better and making them harder. It's a tradeoff. With software, everything is about tradeoffs.

Tlaero

[Norse Graphics]

I can relate to what Squeeky says, as I had the same thoughts about creating games more in vein of movies. The reason is that it would look better with animations instead of still pictures.

The basic idea was to use a combination of looping animations for the decision-points, and use non-repeatable animations for the "filler" inbetween. The problem is the amount of work that would increase. Say a decision-point need about 3-4 seconds to make a decent loop, that's 72-96 frames for one point only. Then you'd need from 3-10 seconds (72-240 frames) for the fillers.

Now, combine this with the idea of having several different endings, good or bad ones. Sure, you can recycle some of these animations, especially early on were the storylines hasn't diverged too much. For the ArianeB-game, it uses 1246 pictures. Imagine rendering 1246 animations...

It's not the idea is bad, it's just the sheer workload.

[Squeeky]

Norse Graphics wrote : I can relate to what Squeeky says, as I had the same thoughts about creating games more in vein of movies. The reason is that it would look better with animations instead of still pictures.

The basic idea was to use a combination of looping animations for the decision-points, and use non-repeatable animations for the "filler" inbetween. The problem is the amount of work that would increase. Say a decision-point need about 3-4 seconds to make a decent loop, that's 72-96 frames for one point only. Then you'd need from 3-10 seconds (72-240 frames) for the fillers.

Now, combine this with the idea of having several different endings, good or bad ones. Sure, you can recycle some of these animations, especially early on were the storylines hasn't diverged too much. For the ArianeB-game, it uses 1246 pictures. Imagine rendering 1246 animations...

It's not the idea is bad, it's just the sheer workload.

I'm not quite sure that you have my concept completely in context. In an earlier post (up a few comments) I mentioned full page animations. Tlaero and phreaky have used them within the AC tool.

I had in mind to replace a whole page animation where something like the winking of an eye, or puckering to a kiss, might be reduced to localised animated image and imposed within an HTML page of static images.

I think I can see potential value in my proposal in savings if one wanted to draw the story into a Flash environment, but then I have insufficient knowledge of what is required there.

I'm trusting upon tlaero's advice to me re the current genre application.

[Norse Graphics]

Ok, got it, though I just listed my own - non-working - idea. The idea of localized animations, like you listed up, seems interesting, but I wouldn't know how to do it.

[Squeeky]

Basically you use some program which slices images, horizontally and vertically. Many sites use this technique to construct their home HTML front page. You should find some freebie software that does that with excellence. All sliced images need to be converted to GIF for colour matching.

The area which you want to animate is taken into whatever software you choose and you create an animated gif.

You then construct a standard HTML table and apply one image per cell. The image to be animated of course is called by a "trigger" whether 'onmouseover', 'onclick' or some other event; that triggered image replaces the original sliced segment of image.

Although I've shown tlaero that the idea as defined works I do accept that it may have a negative in generating productivity.

[coder]

Slicing an image can be quite easily scrïpted with convert from Imagemagick on a commandline:
convert inputfile -crop widthxheight outputfile

inputfile/outputfile can be most common formats,
extensions determines type.

width and height determine the size of one tile,

Choosing gif as outputformat will result in a single animated gif
add %03d in the name of the outputfile to produce two leading zero's

example:
convert girl.gif -crop 100x200 sofa$03d.jpg
will result in a series of images starting with sofa000.jpg and each time the number is incremented.

You can also name them with x-offset and y-offset.

convert legwork38.jpg -crop 100x100 -set filename:area %X%Y jas%[filename:area].jpg

will result in images named:
jas+0+0,jas+0+100.jpg...jas+100+0,jas+100+100.jpg...

[Squeeky]

The working example which I gave to tlareo required just 9 images (it could have been 2, 4 or 6 even).

Her indication was that she could feasibly incorporate the concept but that is not her inclination. I'm prepared to accept that our artists do not need to learn new skills just to fit a software program but if taero sees future value in the idea then that is her choice.

[coder]

O wait, you're squeeky and not phreaky. I agree with tlaero. I don' t think it much easier to create all those tiles. The process could be automated though, that' s why I gave the example.

[Squeeky]

Yes, Phreaky's the one surround by the "good-lookers"

[tlaero]

I've uploaded v1.8 of Adventure Creator. http://rapidshare.com/files/425649052/AdventureCreator.zip

This version makes it easier to debug your games. There's a new function called debug() in _functions.js and it has a variable called "doDebug". If doDebug is set to 1, it calls "dumpVars()" from your _game.js. What I do is ouput all my variables in dumpVars and turn on doDebug while creating the game. That way I see the variables being updated as I go. Then I turn off doDebug (set it to 0) when I give the game to other people.

Tlaero

[Josefus]

hi all,
i need help for my game
excuse my bad english
i used Adventurecreator for my game
i rename the picture in start.html, switched the pictureformat in _style.css to 800*600
and renamed the start-html in_begin from dfficulty in begin01.html..
After start i see not the pucture in start.html or the start-html after start b_begin.html
2. How i can switch the language.. my game is in german.. but nobody must read this text..he must only find the triggerpoints for the loops in this game..
if this problem ready you can see a new variante from adult interactiv since fiction game..
( in Omega-Version with 6 end-varianten )--> next week in this forum
What is my mistake????

[tlaero]

Josefus, if you place what you currently have on a share somewhere, I'll download it and take a look and tell you what's wrong.

Tlaero