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Paid Work / Re: SCUMM-style adventure game dialog
« on: October 28, 2012, 07:48:28 am »
I added it to StencylForge with the name 'Dialog Tree Kit' and some notes in the description about how it works.
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Paid Work / SCUMM-style adventure game dialog
« on: September 27, 2012, 07:05:38 pm »
Not sure if anyone else is interested in this, but I've been working on creating a dialog tree system that's similar to the old SCUMM adventure games.
I tried to set it up in such a way that editing the dialog isn't a complete pain in the neck.
http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/14759
The way the behaviors are set up, there's one Dialog Manager behavior that handles all the text drawing and UI stuff. Then your player actor has a single behavior that contains custom events for each of the dialogs the player could have with other characters. Each custom event is a dialog tree representing a conversation with that character.
Depending on how you fill it out, you can have the player start first, the NPC start first, or whatever.
Attached is an example of one of the dialog trees. The idea was to keep all of the game logic out of the event that had the dialog, so that you could keep track of the dialog writing better.
Let me know what you think! I can put these up on the Forge after I clean a few things up.
I tried to set it up in such a way that editing the dialog isn't a complete pain in the neck.
http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/14759
The way the behaviors are set up, there's one Dialog Manager behavior that handles all the text drawing and UI stuff. Then your player actor has a single behavior that contains custom events for each of the dialogs the player could have with other characters. Each custom event is a dialog tree representing a conversation with that character.
Depending on how you fill it out, you can have the player start first, the NPC start first, or whatever.
Attached is an example of one of the dialog trees. The idea was to keep all of the game logic out of the event that had the dialog, so that you could keep track of the dialog writing better.
Let me know what you think! I can put these up on the Forge after I clean a few things up.
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Paid Work / Re: Music Request
« on: June 25, 2012, 01:42:07 pm »
I'd be willing to do a track for you. I've started doing NES-style chiptunes stuff and am pretty pleased with how it's been going. Some examples here:
http://soundcloud.com/squarenote/sets/squarenote_8bit/
The first one is the newest, which I did with a chiptunes VST, and is representative of what I can do if I have time to pay attention to details. The other ones are older and were done using a MIDINES (i.e. an actual NES plugged into my sound card)... they have a noticeable buzz at 60hz that I didn't do a very good job of getting rid of.
http://soundcloud.com/squarenote/sets/squarenote_8bit/
The first one is the newest, which I did with a chiptunes VST, and is representative of what I can do if I have time to pay attention to details. The other ones are older and were done using a MIDINES (i.e. an actual NES plugged into my sound card)... they have a noticeable buzz at 60hz that I didn't do a very good job of getting rid of.
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Ask a Question / Re: Some questions about sound/audio in Stencyl...
« on: June 19, 2012, 06:02:25 am »
Good news theabbott, it sounds like this is on their radar at least. Scroll down to "The Future" section on the sounds page in Stencylpedia:
http://www.stencyl.com/help/view/playing-sounds-and-music/
http://www.stencyl.com/help/view/playing-sounds-and-music/
Thanks Hansbe,
Squarenote got a pretty good BPM counter working already, My question is specifically about getting real-time digital signal processing working , such as a real-time reverb effect or flange etc. I know actionscript is capable of this and here's a link to exactly what I'm trying to get working in Stencyl,
http://www.anttikupila.com/flash/soundfx-out-of-the-box-audio-filters-with-actionscript-3/
If anyone could help me out (custom code block anyone?) I will forever be in their debt!
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Ask a Question / Re: Some questions about sound/audio in Stencyl...
« on: March 23, 2012, 02:22:29 pm »
Also, I would love a more sophisticated response from the Stencyl devs about audio sync'ing in Stencyl, because trying to work on audio-based games has been extremely frustrating and I don't really have a handle on what Stencyl is capable of or isn't capable of in that regard (and I'm really not much of a programmer). I'd like to know if I'm wasting my time trying to figure it out.
Specifically talking about looping tracks, playing multiple sound files at the same time in order to fade in different loops and have them all still be in-sync, and playing an extended bit of audio and having animations and behaviors that are triggered according to a calculated tempo remain in sync with the audio. I think the fact that they eventually drift out of sync is related to framerates somehow and that's what Hectate was helping me unravel in that linked thread, but I still don't really understand it.
Specifically talking about looping tracks, playing multiple sound files at the same time in order to fade in different loops and have them all still be in-sync, and playing an extended bit of audio and having animations and behaviors that are triggered according to a calculated tempo remain in sync with the audio. I think the fact that they eventually drift out of sync is related to framerates somehow and that's what Hectate was helping me unravel in that linked thread, but I still don't really understand it.
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Ask a Question / Re: Some questions about sound/audio in Stencyl...
« on: March 23, 2012, 02:20:25 pm »
Let me know how that works for you both because I was still having trouble with it the last time I was using it.
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Ask a Question / Re: Animating Actor to a Music?
« on: March 23, 2012, 02:15:25 pm »
Hi theabbot -- I've been away from Stencyl for a while but I wanted to jump in and say that the thread you linked to isn't actually solved, it turns out. I thought it was working but it still drifts away from the beat after a time pretty easily if there's a lot going on or if you leave the browser window and come back. I'm going to start investigating this again soon and I'll take a look at your AS package link too when I do. A generic, block-based solution for keeping events synchronized with music over time would be ideal and probably useful for a lot of projects. But I'm not a programmer either so this nitty-gritty stuff is all pretty arcane to me.
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Ask a Question / Re: Simulating key strokes
« on: August 03, 2011, 08:27:05 am »
It's not a question of capturing keystrokes, it's more like generating keystrokes that are initiated by the game itself rather than the player. Basically I'm trying to get SOME kind of information out of my game in a way that can ultimately be interpreted by GlovePIE.
I asked around on the Flixel forums and they said that AS3 can communicate with JavaScript using ExternalInterface and I can potentially use that. So have the game send something to the JavaScript which then simulates a key event that GlovePIE translates to something else.
Except I can't find any info about ExternalInterface in the Stencyl docs so I'm not sure it's supported here. I only barely understand how all of this fits together, so maybe I'm looking in the wrong place.
I think I might be out of luck on this one.
I asked around on the Flixel forums and they said that AS3 can communicate with JavaScript using ExternalInterface and I can potentially use that. So have the game send something to the JavaScript which then simulates a key event that GlovePIE translates to something else.
Except I can't find any info about ExternalInterface in the Stencyl docs so I'm not sure it's supported here. I only barely understand how all of this fits together, so maybe I'm looking in the wrong place.
I think I might be out of luck on this one.
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Ask a Question / Re: Simulating key strokes
« on: July 19, 2011, 07:31:18 am »
I didn't think of the security angle, but yeah, that makes sense. I'll poke around on the Flixel forums to see, but I won't get my hopes up.
GlovePIE is a great little piece of hobby software that can convert a ton of different control inputs to different control outputs. You can use it for things like connecting your WiiMote to your PC via BlueTooth and mapping the pointer, the buttons, and gestures to keystrokes and mouse movement.
What I was thinking specifically was to use GlovePIE to convert a keystroke coming from the Flash game into a MIDI command for a MIDI sequencer.
GlovePIE is a great little piece of hobby software that can convert a ton of different control inputs to different control outputs. You can use it for things like connecting your WiiMote to your PC via BlueTooth and mapping the pointer, the buttons, and gestures to keystrokes and mouse movement.
What I was thinking specifically was to use GlovePIE to convert a keystroke coming from the Flash game into a MIDI command for a MIDI sequencer.
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Ask a Question / Simulating key strokes
« on: July 19, 2011, 06:15:31 am »
I know it's possible to have a behavior set the x and y of the mouse, but is it possible to have a behavior simulate the pressing of a key? I know this wouldn't make sense in most game contexts but I have some ideas for interfacing between the game and external devices using GlovePIE, which would listen for key presses. I would want the key presses to be able to come from the game itself in addition to the player.
Any thoughts?
Any thoughts?
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Ask a Question / Re: Keeping track of the beat
« on: July 18, 2011, 04:24:49 am »
Yup, tempo's customizable.
I'm going to mark this solved for now. Thanks for the help!
I'm going to mark this solved for now. Thanks for the help!
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Ask a Question / Re: Keeping track of the beat
« on: July 17, 2011, 06:29:03 pm »
Ok, I'm not 100% sure I'm handling this correctly, but this seems to be working better.
"Sync Behavior Test" game on forge.
If you get a chance, can you look at the Metronome behavior and let me know if what I'm doing there makes sense?
http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/5460
"Sync Behavior Test" game on forge.
If you get a chance, can you look at the Metronome behavior and let me know if what I'm doing there makes sense?
http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/5460
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Ask a Question / Re: Keeping track of the beat
« on: July 15, 2011, 10:25:02 am »
That sounds promising.. are you saying that something like:
do every (1000 x step size) seconds
is somehow different than saying:
do every 10 seconds?
do every (1000 x step size) seconds
is somehow different than saying:
do every 10 seconds?
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Ask a Question / Keeping track of the beat
« on: July 15, 2011, 06:25:56 am »
This is a long-ish post but I'm looking for advice & feedback..
I'm trying to create a basic framework for games like Rez where events in the game are sync'd with the rhythm of a song. Here's what I'm doing so far.
Play Track:
This behavior initializes a bunch of game attributes that I use for tracking the measure number, which beat in the measure it's on, what the tempo of the song is, and how many beats there are in a measure. Then it starts looping the track. Ignore Weapon1BeatList for now.
Metronome:
This behavior takes the tempo (in beats per minute) and every beat it updates the BeatPosition to the next beat number. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Every time it goes from 4 back to 1 it updates the measure number.
I use GameBeatWindow to let other behaviors trigger events on the beat. I set a short window around when the beat changes, and during that window, the flag is true and behaviors can check that to make sure they're firing on the beat. For example...
Explode Death Actor:
I attach this behavior to a death animation that spawns when the player dies. This waits until beat 1 rolls around and the beat window is open, then makes the dead player's body explode with a sound. That is, when you die, you're disabled but your body sticks around until the first beat of the measure, then it explodes, on the beat.
This is pretty cool when it works, it turns out. But what I'm finding is that the synchronization between the song that I'm looping and the metronome is really sensitive and prone to falling out of sync. So after a while when the metronome says it's on beat 1, the song isn't on beat 1.
I figure this is related to CPU load or having lots of 'always' behaviors or something.
So finally, my question(s)!
Is trying to sync a behavior to the sound like this a dead end? Am I always going to have syncing issues?
Is there anything in particular I should be avoiding that would be making this worse? I'm using the pieces of the run&gun kit that constantly updates player x and player y in game attributes, for example.
Any other thoughts on better ways to accomplish this?
Thanks a ton!
I'm trying to create a basic framework for games like Rez where events in the game are sync'd with the rhythm of a song. Here's what I'm doing so far.
Play Track:
This behavior initializes a bunch of game attributes that I use for tracking the measure number, which beat in the measure it's on, what the tempo of the song is, and how many beats there are in a measure. Then it starts looping the track. Ignore Weapon1BeatList for now.
Metronome:
This behavior takes the tempo (in beats per minute) and every beat it updates the BeatPosition to the next beat number. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Every time it goes from 4 back to 1 it updates the measure number.
I use GameBeatWindow to let other behaviors trigger events on the beat. I set a short window around when the beat changes, and during that window, the flag is true and behaviors can check that to make sure they're firing on the beat. For example...
Explode Death Actor:
I attach this behavior to a death animation that spawns when the player dies. This waits until beat 1 rolls around and the beat window is open, then makes the dead player's body explode with a sound. That is, when you die, you're disabled but your body sticks around until the first beat of the measure, then it explodes, on the beat.
This is pretty cool when it works, it turns out. But what I'm finding is that the synchronization between the song that I'm looping and the metronome is really sensitive and prone to falling out of sync. So after a while when the metronome says it's on beat 1, the song isn't on beat 1.
I figure this is related to CPU load or having lots of 'always' behaviors or something.
So finally, my question(s)!
Is trying to sync a behavior to the sound like this a dead end? Am I always going to have syncing issues?
Is there anything in particular I should be avoiding that would be making this worse? I'm using the pieces of the run&gun kit that constantly updates player x and player y in game attributes, for example.
Any other thoughts on better ways to accomplish this?
Thanks a ton!
15
Game Ideas / Question for other musicians
« on: June 29, 2011, 07:23:00 am »
I'm always curious about how other people's creative processes work.
How long, on average, would you say it takes you to produce a minute of music (in your chosen style)?
I mean including writing, sequencing, recording, programming & automation, mixing, effects, etc. The whole works, from start to finish, for an average minute of your music.
SquareNote
How long, on average, would you say it takes you to produce a minute of music (in your chosen style)?
I mean including writing, sequencing, recording, programming & automation, mixing, effects, etc. The whole works, from start to finish, for an average minute of your music.
SquareNote
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