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A one-room AGI/AGS adventure to promote SpaceVenture?


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I created a more first-timer friendly walkthrough together with Akril but I got it to her a couple of hours late for the release. Just thought I should post it here too in case someone would find it useful. As I said to Akril, I don't have any good way to post this or get it out so please, use it as you like B)

http://www.2shared.c...1By/PQWalk.html

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You have my thanks too, s_d! I'm glad you're helping this game become available to as many peopls as possible. That's one of the biggest drawbacks with AGS -- the games are very Windows-centric, and I think a Mac-compliant version of the editor came out just a few years ago.

 

Just for kicks, I thought I'd post Bea's standing poses here, about 250% larger than her in-game sprite. I colored and animated her in Flash, then shrunk her down to get that classic VGA sprite look.

 

post-721-0-15202300-1339112311_thumb.png

 

That's really cool! Hi-res special edition when the KS is funded, anyone? ;) ... No? Sorry, I'll be quiet now.

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Right, so I've been working on a one-room demo game thing on my own, but I'm using the Roger sprites "mjomble" posted on page 2 of this thread. Is that OK with everyone? And who should I credit for those? The Vohaul Strikes Back people in general or a specific person?

 

There's no name for the character so far and even if there will be it won't be Roger, to avoid any problems that might cause.

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Beta 2, Mac port of PledgeQuest at http://www.40hex.com/projects/PledgeQuestBeta2.app.zip

 

This version uses settings nearly identical to Lunchbox's packaging for VSB. Again, it worked for me, but I only have access to one machine to work with (2010 MBP running OS X 10.6).

 

Mac folks; please do test this and post your results. Problems with the other beta port included erratic/dysfunctional mousing, blank screen hang, and failure to launch. Please note these. I hope this works well for everyone!

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Ok, because I like a challenge, I thought I'd try and get the MIDI working in Linux. So I did

modprobe snd-virmidi
ln -s /dev/snd/midiC1D0 /dev/snd/midiC0D0
(get fluidsynth running through qsynth)
aconnect 20:0 128:0 # connect virtual raw MIDI to synth
# test out the raw MIDI device
(echo -ne '\x90\x3c\x7f'; sleep 0.5; echo -ne '\x3c\x00') > /dev/snd/midiC0D0

And that successfully plays a single note. But when I fire up pledgequest, no MIDI :(

 

For added hilarity, I tried "cat /dev/urandom > /dev/snd/midiC0D0" and got some interesting sounds that required restarting the synth :) I ran "lsof" and confirmed that ags was opening /dev/snd/midiC1D0, and using aconnect to connect the raw MIDI port to another raw midi port, I was able to snoop on the data being sent to it. Hex dump looks like the following:

 

# cat /dev/snd/midiC1D1 > hexdump
(run pledgequest, quit, Ctrl-C this)

# hexdump -C hexdump 
00000000  b0 7b 00                                          |.{.|
00000003

So it sends something, but not much. On an unrelated note, the sound effects seem a bit glitchy too (last part of each sound loops until the next sound effect is played). At least the outro music plays :)

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Ok, because I like a challenge, I thought I'd try and get the MIDI working in Linux. So I did

...

So it sends something, but not much. On an unrelated note, the sound effects seem a bit glitchy too (last part of each sound loops until the next sound effect is played). At least the outro music plays :)

 

Not sure which Linux stalwart you are, asdfasdf (guessing Speedster1 maybe?)... but great work! I spent a couple of hours reading docs and trying stuff. I got about halfway to your point, and decided that the game needed to just go out, and we'd look at the audio problem later. BTW, I'm not entirely certain that this is a general MIDI-on-Linux problem (i.e., difficulty of setup), but it is certainly an AGS on Linux problem. Take a peek at Space Quest: Vohaul Strikes Back, and you may see the same situation as here; gameplay is good, but audio requires a MIDI softsynth chain set up with specific device nodes, etc.

 

There is some AGS configurability, including a config file, that I've not looked much into. There may be some help there via config tweaking.

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Beta 2, Mac port of PledgeQuest at http://www.40hex.com...stBeta2.app.zip

 

This version uses settings nearly identical to Lunchbox's packaging for VSB. Again, it worked for me, but I only have access to one machine to work with (2010 MBP running OS X 10.6).

 

Mac folks; please do test this and post your results. Problems with the other beta port included erratic/dysfunctional mousing, blank screen hang, and failure to launch. Please note these. I hope this works well for everyone!

 

No takers? I'd really like to have some test feedback by the time I arrive back home (driving all day today). I'll probably be lurking, via mobile, but will not really be able to interact much. SO! If you test it and report some results, don't be upset if I don't reply.

 

pcj; if good test results are posted (two perhaps?) then please go ahead and mirror it. If you do, you may wish to rename it from Beta2 to just "PledgeQuest.app.zip".

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Take a peek at Space Quest: Vohaul Strikes Back, and you may see the same situation as here; gameplay is good, but audio requires a MIDI softsynth chain set up with specific device nodes, etc.

Err, I'm not familiar with MIDI playback on Linux, but VSB uses OGG audio, which should be supported.

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Beta 2, Mac port of PledgeQuest at http://www.40hex.com...stBeta2.app.zip

 

This version uses settings nearly identical to Lunchbox's packaging for VSB. Again, it worked for me, but I only have access to one machine to work with (2010 MBP running OS X 10.6).

 

Mac folks; please do test this and post your results. Problems with the other beta port included erratic/dysfunctional mousing, blank screen hang, and failure to launch. Please note these. I hope this works well for everyone!

 

Fully functional on Mac. Some minor things could be tweaked if it was a bigger project, but sound, interface, scripting, etc. all works. Only thing that might give paranoid people pause is that the WINE component asks for network access at launch.

 

Thanks for bundling this up, I hadn't played it until today. Great job, folks!

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Ok, got MIDI working. Digging through strace output I could see it was using Allegro. Allegro can use DIGMID if you set up a patches.dat file, by following the instructions here http://alleg.sourceforge.net/digmid.html (for .sf2 soundfonts, this means downloading Allegro 4 and building the pat2dat tool). Through strace I could see it was looking for patches.dat in /usr/share/allegro (although you could change this with a allegro.cfg file). So no soft synth / raw MIDI shenanigans required (although there's probably some way to make this work too).

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OK, so my "game" is done.

Can be downloaded here: http://www.mediafire...d6r5yk2dlzrncqf

 

It's really a very basic thing and I'm not very comfortable writing in English, but hey... I had fun with it and figuring out AGS the past couple of days. :)

 

No problem, it played very well and I didn't notice any bugs. It's missing a little humour maybe but great job nonetheless. I wrote a walkthrough for it as I actually found this one trickier than PQ even though there were fewer steps: http://www.2shared.com/file/qai2IwFO/TMCWalk.htmll (It's the link at the bottom just above the file url)

 

I still think it's crazy (awesome) how awesome (crazy) this community is and it just shows how much TGA are worth. I mean, come on, two awesome fan games in a week just to promote some kickstarter? Go Scott and Mark!

 

Jason

 

PS. Not sure how many know about kicktraq but it's an awesome way of seeing where things are going. Scroll down to the bottom and click the tiny link on the left. That'll open the experimental charts including a cool projection cone: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/spaceventure/two-guys-spaceventure-by-the-creators-of-space-que/ Actually I just saw a comment to the last update mentioning it too.

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Cool! Well, I think the humor is more in trying stuff that doesn't work... like the cartridge on the keyboard or trying the numbers on the note as the password and stuff like that. Of course, I'm not sure how funny would other people find that.

 

Well, if anyone wants to spread it around, be my guest!

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Err, I'm not familiar with MIDI playback on Linux, but VSB uses OGG audio, which should be supported.

 

Um. Wow, major brainfart on my part. I have no idea what I was thinking, because I did know that before. I was packing madly this morning to get ready for my drive home and it appears that I basically babbled into a forum post. Mea culpa.

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Cool! Well, I think the humor is more in trying stuff that doesn't work... like the cartridge on the keyboard or trying the numbers on the note as the password and stuff like that. Of course, I'm not sure how funny would other people find that.

 

Well, if anyone wants to spread it around, be my guest!

 

Well, I personally thought it was hilarious and brilliant! It's definitely more subtle and would benefit from additonal writing, but I completely understand not feeling comfortable with exposition (especially if, as I assume, English is not your primary language). If that is the case, I'm fairly certain that your English is a hell of a lot better than any other language of mine.

 

I've packaged it up for Linux, exactly like PledgeQuest, and it is available here: http://www.40hex.com...0_linux_x86.zip

 

It dawns on me that I could have trivially made, and probably should have used, UNIX tarballs instead of zip archives, but I was basically replicating bero's package style, lock, stock & barrel...

 

I'll edit this post to add a Mac OS X version in a bit.

 

Edit: Mac OS X package at -- http://www.40hex.com/projects/TheMysteriousCartridge.app.zip

Edited by s_d
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Thank for the Linux pack s_d! I uploaded a new version with a couple of fixed typos and removed all (I think) keyboard shortcuts that would display parts of the interface that I haven't used (and so I haven't changed either) from the default game.

 

http://www.mediafire...y1o43j1d00hgwcg

 

And yes, English is not my native language. I would have added more text, though, but it's already so close to the end of the Kickstarter that I thought I'd just leave it like this.

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Thank for the Linux pack s_d! I uploaded a new version with a couple of fixed typos and removed all (I think) keyboard shortcuts that would display parts of the interface that I haven't used (and so I haven't changed either) from the default game.

 

The package I've posted now has the updated version in it (the URL is the same).

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Ok, got MIDI working. Digging through strace output I could see it was using Allegro. Allegro can use DIGMID if you set up a patches.dat file, by following the instructions here http://alleg.sourcef...net/digmid.html (for .sf2 soundfonts, this means downloading Allegro 4 and building the pat2dat tool). Through strace I could see it was looking for patches.dat in /usr/share/allegro (although you could change this with a allegro.cfg file). So no soft synth / raw MIDI shenanigans required (although there's probably some way to make this work too).

 

Awesome work! I knew I was missing something, but just had no more time to spend looking, and had never worked with Allegro before. That's such a big help, thank you for taking the time to root-cause the issue and point me in the right direction!

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Fully functional on Mac. Some minor things could be tweaked if it was a bigger project, but sound, interface, scripting, etc. all works. Only thing that might give paranoid people pause is that the WINE component asks for network access at launch.

 

Thanks for bundling this up, I hadn't played it until today. Great job, folks!

 

Hey, you're welcome! I'm glad it's working. Consider the "asks for network access" to be one of those things that could be tweaked were it a bigger project ;-)

 

I have no earthly clue why it's doing that. I barely spent enough time reading docs & following tutorials to just build the installer, which turns out to be a trivial affair, by the way. The only aspect of it which would pose a challenge for *any* forum member here who can click a mouse and type into a text entry field is prior knowledge of subtleties in the differing Wine engine versions (not even developer experience on the Wine project). And that, it turns out, is a matter of being able to use Google and read & understand Wine project changelogs (and a tiny bit of background into stuff like X windows input conventions to help with understanding the changelogs). That's it. With that knowledge and the browsing, anyone can probably choose the right Wine engine version and do what I did, as long as they have beta testers.

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