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61

Technical forum / Re: Limits

« on: March 12, 2009, 04:19:01 AM »

no limits ... only your target distrobution goals.... like if it is a 4 gig game... well you will not get many downloads.

62

Technical forum / Re: Quit Button

« on: March 06, 2009, 03:54:00 AM »

Cat.. think you can re-state your problem... i am not sure i understand it.

63

Technical forum / Re: cursor dont work how want i.

« on: March 01, 2009, 06:58:39 PM »

in the editor you can set the hot spot to be anywhere you like by adjusting the x,y of the image

64

Technical forum / Re: First Visit to Scene

« on: February 26, 2009, 05:46:49 AM »

when do we get to see a demo I'm diing to see what you been up 2.

65

Technical forum / Re: Talking and playing an animation at the same time...

« on: February 25, 2009, 03:44:02 AM »

Please conform to forum posting rules and use the CODE bbcode around your code snips as described in this thread
http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=2013.0

66

Technical forum / Re: problem scaling a character in 3DSmax and exporting them to .X

« on: February 24, 2009, 07:52:44 PM »

Did you reset the transforms on the mesh before linking it to the edited biped....

(reset X-form)

67

Technical forum / Re: Query the node of a different scene

« on: February 24, 2009, 08:02:16 AM »

I think you can get around this using simple naming conventions. If all your backgrounds have the exact same name, and you take the time to name your scenes correctly you can have a scene exit global called say "frombackground = scenename" Then you KNOW that "data/scene/frombackground/background.jpg" will always be your background image from the last scene you came form.... . . . Um... reading that back i suck at explaining... did that make sense?

<----- Edit
Hmm shoudl have prob read mnems post before i posted mine lol

68

Technical forum / Re: Query the node of a different scene

« on: February 23, 2009, 09:25:27 PM »

OK thanks. Just hoping for a short cut.

Best

Well you cna store teh node state in a global, and acess the state from there.

69

Technical forum / Re: Exporting From Maya to .X

« on: February 23, 2009, 03:14:25 AM »

the M$ Direct X SDK kit has a few .mel scripts that handle the exporting of 3d / animation data into .X format as well as some DLLs these need.

look in
Utilities\Bin\PlugIns\Maya
Utilities\Bin\x86\dxcc.dll

In these dirs you will see the mel scripts and stuff.. install and use like any mel script and you will be good.

I think there may be some other exporters about if you look... I think the guys that make quest3D have an exporter for example... .. .


<----- Edit with google results

Pollytranz (not free but very good)
http://www.okino.com/default.htm

CVexpoter (a relitivly new expoter... might b buggy - free)
http://www.chadvernon.com/downloads/cvxporter/

70

Technical forum / Re: Optimize file size

« on: February 22, 2009, 11:18:30 AM »

Also remember that the paths are all relative to the pack dirs your game is using... there is a tendency for people to forget that you can link to other areas of the project. If you have ANY files that are used in more than one place you just need to link to the old files. Examples of this is when using a shadow texture map for the 3d models. Or if you have generic windows boarders.... you can reuse this window data in ALL your windows.. no need to duplicate all those textures used in each window.

Just remember that if you nvr need to have more than one copy of any file in your project, as you can just link to the one that is already there rather than adding a 2nd file.


remember that if you nvr need to have more than one copy of any file in your project, as you can just link to the one that is already there rather than adding a 2nd file.

<----- EDIT

Tried that pngcrush thing.... after doing a brute force like sugested i got a 1.60799 meg png to a 1.607664 png.. hardly worth it really? While the same image with little visual quality loss as a JPEG is 0.107836 meg.

So...
Use jpegs they are smaller and look fine.
Use PNG ONLY if you need true grandiant alpha maps in sprites, if you can get away with colour masking (eg all pink is see though) then use that with JPG.

71

Game design / Re: Gameplay Evolution

« on: February 21, 2009, 01:15:47 AM »

I like all of three. Because it should be the Players choice how he wants to play the game, not the developers. So for the teleportation, it's okay, since it really can be annoying to walk around searching for hints.

For the Hint-System? Great, why not.

Yea, fair enough.... I still think it is lame though. I understand where you guys are coming from but... well ... I still believe that the majority of players will use it and then the game itself will lose all "power". You do not love the puzzles witch you remember for years because you got hints and stuff.. you work it out. Hint systems just mean your game will be played though faster and forgotten quicker.

72

Game design / Re: Gameplay Evolution

« on: February 20, 2009, 05:24:14 PM »

@Jyujinkai:

I personally feel that the inclusion of the teleport is basically the developer just giving up on his gameplay and saying "I can not design a game that is fun to play as i know that the player will be spending hours walking back and forth across the same scene"

I don't think so because maybe you have a game with many rooms and you will have some back-travelling. For example games like Legend of Kyrandia with no overview map have the problem that you get on some point back travelling.

That is exactly my point.. this is bad game design if you are forcing the player to do this... "teleports" is a lazy "out" to get around this. You should NOT have to move though a scene many times.

If you include one people will use it as soon as they hit a hump. Adventure games should be, IMO, just long brain teasers, putting in hint systems just gives them an out and people are lazy and they will take it at the smallest bump in the road. FAQ systems on line are all over the place, just a simple google will find the most obscure adventure walkthough.

Well the hint system i thought about was not some "im stuck, tell me the answer", it was just highlighting all interactive zones, instantly killing all pixel hunting.

Again, this was my point.. and remember these are just my own opinions. But this is a game design issue. If you present a room where the player can not instantly see what he is meant to do.. 99.9% of the players will instantly hit the "show me the hot spots" button. This is retarded, and for me defeats the point of a puzzle game. When designing the game it is up to the developer to make the scene "readable" so he knows to click on the ash tray.. by it eather being the answer to a clue already given or obvious to click on.

Like the teleport I feel that both the "hint" systems and the "teleport" are just symptoms of bad game design and even worse, lazy developers not caring about the bad game design and just adding a bandaid patch (sorry just watched house MD. think i can cram some more medial metaphors in here?)

73

Game design / Re: Gameplay Evolution

« on: February 20, 2009, 04:23:46 AM »

1) fast travel - double clicking on a room exit and get instantly teleported.

Personally I do not like this at all. I do like "auto move" so that you can click on a object and the toon moves to it rather than you having to move near it before you can click on it. Still I know what people mean when they want this teleport thing. I personally feel that the inclusion of the teleport is basically the developer just giving up on his gameplay and saying "I can not design a game that is fun to play as i know that the player will be spending hours walking back and forth across the same scene"

Personally, the way to go is to use game design to stop this. Teleporting across every scene (say double click) removes any control the developer has on mood and tone. For example you can not make a scary ghost story with out time to walk around the spooky house and listen to the spooky music.

2) hint system - shows all interactive objects in the room that will be important, like exits or items etc.

Again, i think hint systems are lame. If you include one people will use it as soon as they hit a hump. Adventure games should be, imo, just long brain teasers, putting in hint systems just gives them an out and people are lazy and they will take it at the smallest bump in the road. FAQ systems on line are all over the place, just a simple google will find the most obscure adventure walkthough. I say if they want to cheat let them use those.

Also, again, Game design is what i am talking about there. I mean, if you have the guy needing to click on a 3 pixel large ciggy butt under a chair, well you might need a hint system then.. but then again you would just suck as a game designer.

3) action menu/action coin - already standart in wintermute. But still very interesting, i think this gameplay element was invented by LucasArts in CMI and is the final result of reducing its verbal system to its basis. Sierra and other companies already where using a similar system but it was a very annoying "click right for the next verb", where you had to scroll through all minus one button if you are unlucky. LucasArts fixed this issue with its action coin and im a little bit disappointed that this feature is still missing in most commercial games.

I a not sure iunderstand what you are talking about here.

Then i was thinking about gameplay elements that are still a typical problem with adventure games. One thing is the annoying standart sentence "i cant do this!"
Games like A Vampyre Story try to solve this with funny dialogs. So instead of getting "i cant do this!" or "that does not make sense!" you get the sentence "Oh hello little door. How are you doing?".

Yea this is a problem. You are right funny games are easier to get away with it as you can build a database of funny replies. These can be generic with the occasional one tailored to the user bumble. The thing is that the very nature of adventure games is a kind of trail and error based on the user so there is no way that you will able to stop players trying to do stupid stuff.

If you do not like the sound of a random "i can not do it" sample.. how about using sounds. For example... Any time you do anything right have a "good boy" chime... and everytime you do something wrong have a "your a fucking idiot chime" Maybe flash the coursour with a red X on it or a green tick. This will remove the need for voice results but still give feed back to the player that they have in fact tried something and the game is working.

74

Foro técnico / Re: Optimizar variables

« on: February 19, 2009, 05:06:20 AM »

for some reason you can not revice PMs.....

Please take the time to conform to forum rules on posting code snips.

Here are the instructions here
http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=2013.0

If you would edit your post
http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=3456.msg21207#msg21207

Please try to use the bbcode in future posts

Thank you.

75

WME sources discussion / Re: i have problem in exiting

« on: February 18, 2009, 12:15:38 AM »

chnaget he compile settings on the release compile so it embeds all teh needed links and junk.