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16

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

« on: March 25, 2008, 02:52:40 PM »

My reason why I've voted for Scene Editor is, that Shaders can be implemented whenever in our game development cycle whilst better Scene Editor would speed up the development process a whole lot. And adding eye candy is usually not done at the very beginning of the process. Knowing that there WILL be shaders available in WME is enough so I prefer better tools.

What you're saying is true if you belong to the above-mentioned group b. It is very different when you belong to group c, however. As a group c developer, you have to *commit* to what your game will feature *in advance*. I can't tell a potential publisher that the game will *probably* have said feature as they will never put one cent on something like that. When you belong to group b, however, you put in the game whatever is available during the development process. If a new WME version is released with new eye candy features during your development process, then you can incorporate them in your game. If, however, such features don't become available during your development process, your game will simply go out without them and it's perfectly ok because you never had to commit to such features in the first place.

WME is Mnemonic's pet project and he works on it on his spare time. In all the years that I've been using WME, I've never known him to promise any feature whatsoever (and I understand him completely) and I don't think he is going to start now. When he says he *would like* to see both the new scene editor and HLSL in WME 1.9, that's all he means. It's not a commitment on his part and I can't promise anything to any publisher based on that.

What I'm saying is that unlike in your case, I need the eye candy features as soon as possible so that I can commit having them in my game. If a new set of development tools comes out during my development process, I'll gladly take advantage of them but even if they don't, I will still be able to use WME without them.

17

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

« on: March 25, 2008, 01:05:13 PM »

Well, the way I see it, it all comes down to WME's intended target audience. I can see three major groups: a) Developers creating free games just for fun, b) Developers creating relatively small commercial self-funded games, and c) Developers creating full-scale top-notch publisher-funded games. When a developer belongs to group c, technical features like bump and normal mapping, dynamic shadows and lighting, and other 3D effects in a 2.5D game become an issue because some of the larger publishers in the field demand those technical features even in adventure games. The reason is the competition that has sprang in the last two or three years in the newly revived adventure market. I know this first-hand from dealings with publishers and I'm already pushing the limits with WME.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is that if one of WME's target audiences is indeed group c, then the way to go would be to add more support for eye-candy features. I agree that better development tools like the new scene editor is indeed very important but if I have to abandon WME because it doesn't support the eye-candy effects that the publishers demand, having a new set of tools won't help me much as I won't be able to use WME at all. And believe me, I love WME and the last thing I want is switch engines.

That's the reason I'm voting for HLSL.

18

Technical forum / Re: ANN: Dropping support for DirectDraw

« on: March 16, 2008, 06:33:22 PM »

As I see no point in creating games for extremely low-end machines, I'm perfectly ok with this drop of support for DirectDraw.

19

Community bulletin board / Re: New User Intro to Community (Hi!)

« on: October 19, 2007, 12:03:34 PM »

Welcome!

It's often questions from new users that incite the most interesting discussions, so feel free to ask any questions you like (even if you don't really keep them intelligent )

And Stucki, I do whole-heartedly join the compliments regarding that sky actor of yours! Great unorthodox thinking!

20

Done / Re: particles starttime

« on: October 18, 2007, 04:37:46 PM »

If I understand your question correctly, the InitialTime parameter of Emitter.Start() does exactly what you need.

21

General Discussion / Re: Sales of adventure games

« on: September 30, 2007, 06:00:56 PM »

Planning to sell Until I'm gone?

I thought the same thing 

More to the point though, 300,000 sold copies at full-price is a huge success. Hey, even 100,000 copies is a mildly optimistic scenario. There are many games out there selling a lot less than that and not only that they don't make any profit at all - they even lose money!

22

Technical forum / Re: Making NPCs Follow Your Main Actor?

« on: September 30, 2007, 01:12:17 AM »

I rather think he's referencing himself ...

Could be... I'm just not very used to people using third person to refer to themselves...

23

Technical forum / Re: Making NPCs Follow Your Main Actor?

« on: September 29, 2007, 11:47:13 PM »

If you're referring to the same OldGuy from the demo, then if memory serves, he is an Entity and not an Actor. Entities can't walk in WME, if I recall correctly, and therefore they don't have any GoTo() method. If that is really the case, you should try what meta recommended but this time with an Actor instead of an Entity and it should work.

Oh, and welcome to the forum, by the way

24

Technical forum / Re: Executing files

« on: September 25, 2007, 10:56:29 PM »

Thanks Mnemonic, I learned something new today. I didn't realize before how extensive the WinAPI (and other libraries, I guess) support is from within the script engine. And I didn't even know about the MemBuffer object before, and how it can be used to fill WinAPI (and other) structures.

Once again, I'm amazed!

By the way, just out of curiosity, any idea why ShellExecute with SW_SHOWMINNOACTIVE didn't work for meta, while CreateProcess with the same parameter did?

25

Technical forum / Re: Executing files

« on: September 25, 2007, 03:37:46 PM »

LockSetForegroundWindow doesn't seem to be supported by Win98 though.

You seem to be right, Mnemonic. I'm so not used to coding for older systems that I didn't even pay attention... Sorry about that...

Does this prevent you from using this function then, meta?

26

Technical forum / Re: Executing files

« on: September 25, 2007, 12:43:25 PM »

It doesn't open any kind of window. It's console application which only returns a number.

But a console application *does* open a window (the console itself) so I'm not sure I understand... If a console application opens, it will indeed shift the focus from the game.

Anyway, did you try 7 (SW_SHOWMINNOACTIVE) as the nShowCmd parameter? It should work even if a console opens.

If it still doesn't work you can try:

Code: [Select]

external "user32.dll" int LockSetForegroundWindow(int uLockCode);

and call the function with a value of 1 (LSFW_LOCK) to disable subsequent calls to SetForgroundWindow(). Like this:

Code: [Select]

var retval = LockSetForegroundWindow(1);
var a = ShellExecuteA(Game.Hwnd, "open", Filename, "", "", 8);
Game.Msg(a);

Hope it helps...

27

Technical forum / Re: Executing files

« on: September 24, 2007, 11:40:30 PM »

What are you trying to launch? I'm asking because launching notepad or mspaint, for example, worked just fine for me. I tried the following:

var a = ShellExecuteA(Game.Hwnd, "open", "c:\windows\notepad.exe", "", "", 8 );

and:

var a = ShellExecuteA(Game.Hwnd, "open", "c:\windows\system32\mspaint.exe", "", "", 8 );

and both opened the respective application in the background while the game remained on screen.

Did I miss something? 

Btw, I used 8 (SW_SHOWNA) instead of 0 (SW_HIDE) as the nShowCmd parameter but I don't think that's what's causing your problem.

28

General Discussion / Re: WME 1.8 (Sep 23 2007)

« on: September 23, 2007, 06:26:18 PM »

big thanks Mr Mnemonic !!
i love this engine and admire your work for it  !!

I couldn't have said this better!

Thanks Mnemonic for your great work and for this great feature-packed release. 

29

Technical forum / Re: WME docs improvement suggestions

« on: September 21, 2007, 08:26:27 PM »

Well, for me the docs and the step-by-step tutorial worked like a charm back when I started. Maybe the explanations given in the docs for the Methods and Attributes of the various game objects could have been a bit more elaborate, maybe even with accompanying short sample code, but other than that the documentation has always been very helpful.

The toughest part for me has always been figuring out the new features that haven't been covered by any step-by-step tutorial, like the 3D actors, particle engine, video playback, etc. It's true that most of them came out with their own very helpful demo projects, showcasing the respective features, but step-by-step tutorials are always the best for new users, in my opinion.

Also, it was a pain for me to understand the process of creating game assets for using with WME. It's true that it's not really WME's responsibility to teach people how to create 3D scenes, 3D characters, or Theora video clips but if you're looking for new ways to assist new users, then having guides on how to create such assets using commonly-used external programs is bound to make their lives a lot easier, I believe. I'm referring to guides like the one created by CMK2901 for the Theora video clips, for example.

Those are my two cents for now...

30

Game announcements / Re: Adam Syndrome - Announcement

« on: July 29, 2007, 02:35:04 PM »

Wow, all I can say is that your game looks really impressive. I especially like the look you've achieved with your renderings. Are the shots on the website concept art, or actual screens from the game?

Thanks. The images are concept art. I feel it's too early for us to be publishing screenshots at this point. And the "renderings" are in fact retouched concept drawings.

Very nice. Good luck with finding a publisher and a lot of energy for bringing this game to the market! 

Thanks meta. Energy and dedication is somewhat we have in abundance and I don't believe we're going to lose it anytime soon