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1

Feature requests, suggestions / Re: Camera Interactivity

« on: April 02, 2008, 04:32:38 PM »

You can control the camera with the Scene.ScrollTo method.

You first have to tell the engine not to follow the actor / main object. So use Game.MainObject = null; first. Don't forget to reset it to your actor after your camera work is done though.

You could then have a series of camera movements by repeatedly calling Scene.ScrollTo. The scene can scroll to an Object, or a set of X,Y coords.

Maybe not as elegant as your thinking, but it works. You could in theory record the movements in Blender and write an export scirpt, but I think that might be more trouble than its worth.

As for zooming, I don't think thats possible with WME. Your restricted to a 2d plane to pan around about. Only way around that is with a theora vid.

Whats this Overclocked game you speak of? Link?

--Loken

2

Technical forum / Re: [QUESTIONS] WME Questions. First time user.

« on: March 28, 2008, 04:28:54 PM »

As others have said, creating an rpg is within the realm of possibility, but you'd be going against the flow of the game engine. It's just not designed for that.

RPG Maker might be more suited for you, but you could even use Gamemaker (http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/try). It would still require a good deal of programming, but Gamemaker is quite a bit more flexible in terms of the kinds of games it can make. Theres a free, and non-free version (available for commercial use, but only $25)

Another possibility is Novashell (http://www.rtsoft.com/novashell/), though it has a ways to go. It's a very visual and cut and paste oriented game maker, but scripting is required (which uses Lua). Though it can make a wide variety of games, it is designed with RPG creation in mind. Novashell is free, and cross platform.

3

Technical forum / Re: Complex dialog systems

« on: March 26, 2008, 05:10:01 PM »

Reminds me of Starship Titanic.

Ever played that? It was created by Douglas Adams, of Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy fame.

It was an adventure game on a starship, somewhat similar to Myst in gameplay, but with characters and dialog. Much of it was driven by a parsed text interpreter.

I thought of implementing something similar, but I'm a lazy coder. Don't feel like writing a parser, and if I were to do it, I'd give it some sort of fuzzy logic rather than plain conditional statements.

4

Feature requests, suggestions / Re: Poll: New Scene Edit or HLSL?

« on: March 26, 2008, 05:02:44 PM »

Hmm. Though HLSL is cool, it will bump the requirements up for the game engine.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does the current WME require a card with Pixel Shaders? Granted, you have to go back before the Geforce3 days to find one, but there are some cards (or rather, integrated chipsets) out there that still do a terrible job with them, namely, Intel Integrated Graphics chipsets.

Then theres the question of which version of PS to support. If it's 3 then you have to have a Geforce7x series or ATI/AMD equivalent. The Pixel Shader version might affect the customization ability of the HLSL shader as well.

I'm not opposed to the idea of HLSL shaders, but there's some things to consider. Also keep in mind the target audience. If this were to be implemented, there might need to be an additional hardware accelerated mode for compatibility, along the lines of the now deprecated non-accelerated mode.

Just some thoughts. =)

5

Can't reproduce / Re: Bizarre Screen Distortion

« on: February 18, 2008, 05:44:49 PM »

I suppose it could have something to do with the refresh rate -- I can't change my systems refresh rate to test that idea though as I have an LCD monitor locked in at 60hz. The problem doesn't just distort the characters, most of the screen is completely garbled, and the screen shots don't quite explain it well enough. There's black horizontal bands that flicker as well.

Oh, and no, my video card is at the stock clock speed, as is the rest of my system.

6

Can't reproduce / Re: Bizarre Screen Distortion

« on: February 17, 2008, 10:05:42 PM »

It occurs with the 5 Lethal Demons as well.

It's just weird. I don't get this problem with any other 2d hardware accelerated game engines like Novashell or even intensely gpu bound games like Bioshock.

Oh well. It's largely mitigated by just turning AA on. 5 Lethal Demons works fine with even 2x AA.

Thanks for the help. Unless it happens to someone else, it's probably me and not WME.

-Loken

7

Can't reproduce / Re: Bizarre Screen Distortion

« on: February 17, 2008, 06:27:55 PM »

Hi Mnemonic,

The distortion occurs to the 3d character as well.

I looked, but couldn't find any pre 1.8 versions to download. I'd be willing to try it out if you could provide a link.

Given the nature of the bug and the fact that apparently no one else has reported it, I really think it could just be my video card. Unfortunately I don't have another to test that theory with.

8

Can't reproduce / Re: Bizarre Screen Distortion

« on: February 11, 2008, 11:47:28 PM »

Yes, the 3d demo has the same problem. Only seems to be affecting windowed mode. It occurs as soon as the menu is drawn.

The distortion in the editor seems to be rather random as to when/if it happens. I was able to make it happen by resizing the main window and restoring it.

9

Can't reproduce / Re: Bizarre Screen Distortion

« on: February 11, 2008, 05:26:32 PM »

Hi,

Updated to latest Forceware drivers. No difference.

I forced 4x AA to always be on via Nvidia Control panel, and that does remedy the problem for the most part in both the WME IDE's, and the Demo game so far. I'll continue messing with it.

Still displays a framerate of 1162+ in windowed mode though. Is there suppose to be a frame limit?

10

Can't reproduce / Bizarre Screen Distortion

« on: February 10, 2008, 07:13:49 PM »

I encountered this bug with the first version of WME I used (1.8.1) and the most recent. I've not tested it on 1.8.2 though. I've mostly used the included demo to examine the bug.

The included screenshots will probably describe it better than I can. I see a lot of lines originating from a point in the upper left corner. The image is not static, and flickers a lot.







This usually occurs 2-3 seconds after I've started the game, however, it sometimes happens immediately, and almost always immediately within WME's editor windows.

This only occurs when 3d acceleration is used. Theres no difference when using DX9 or DX8, or Hardware T&L.

If I turn on 2x or 4x AA, the problem is almost completely gone, though occasionally there will be a flicker.

Whether this is related or not, I'm not sure, but when I run the game in full screen, I get a nearly constant framerate of 60fps, but in windowed, it reads as 1600fps or more. If AA is turned on I get around 800fps in Windowed mode.


The nature of this bug makes WME practically unusable for me. To be honest, I really don't know if it's a problem with WME or my video card. Most everything else works fine on my video card, from Blender, to Bioshock. So I'm not sure what's going on.

I'm running a freshly installed Windows XP Home SP2 with all updates installed.
Here's a brief rundown of my system specs:

DirectX 9.0c
Nvidia Geforce 7900GT (256.0 MB)
Forceware Drivers version 163.75
Intel Core2 Duo e6750 (@2.667 ghz)
2 Gigs of Ram
Desktop Resolution of 1680x1050 @ 32bit @60hz

The bug also occured on my older computer, which had a completely different motherboard, ram, and CPU (Athlon X2 4200+) - however, the video card was the same. I thought the bug could be related to having multiple cores, but confining the affinity to just one core makes no difference.

If theres any more information I can provide, please let me know. I would really love to use WME for my project.

11

Game design / Death

« on: December 09, 2007, 05:50:06 PM »

Rather grim subject line for a newcomer, eh? Well anyways before I begin, just want to say thanks to Mnemonic for writing Wintermute. It's truly great software, and even better for being free. I hope to give back in some way when I can.

Anyways, I'm developing a game which carries with it the spirit of Space Quest. It's not a remake, nor a prequel or a sequel. I'm just trying to capture it's essence. So I've been playing through the originals and making notes of their design.

One thing in particular happens rather often in the Space Quest series, as well as other early adventure games -- you die. A lot. Often, unexpectantly. At least it's usually humorous, but it often gives rise to frustration from the player. It seems later adventure game designers realized this and completely removed the idea of player death.

My question is, do modern gamers care? What if dying wasn't so terrible and the player didn't loose their progress up until they bit it? Perhaps an autosave feature based on scene change would remedy the situation? Is there a situation to be remedied?