1
Off-Topic / Re: Meet Your Soulmate!
« on: March 09, 2009, 06:21:16 am »
I was curious as to why there were so many replies to spam, and I found an awesome picture instead. Nice one, Derek! 
Hey, we have forums!
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2
Heh, yeah, that would be quite a contrast, and I'd love to see it. You might even say it's on-topic since people ski on sand!
If your son doesn't already have stitching software (or even if he does), he may be interested in Hugin. It works disturbingly well, and it's completely free.
If your son doesn't already have stitching software (or even if he does), he may be interested in Hugin. It works disturbingly well, and it's completely free.
3
General / Re: Weird Underwater Creatures
« on: March 01, 2009, 05:16:05 am »
Woah, that is really cool! My favorite part is that it actually looks through its own head when needed. Man...so cool... 
4
Off-Topic / Re: Name change!
« on: February 28, 2009, 07:00:42 pm »
I just noticed I missed a light bit on her shoe, so I fixed it.
So many choices!
So many choices!
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Games / Re: Similar Games To Aquaria For A Mac
« on: February 28, 2009, 06:16:50 pm »
I'm also useless for Mac gaming suggestions, but to add to what Quemaqua said, if you have a Wii, you can grab Super Metroid for the virtual console. That's my favorite, but I've heard the GBA ones (Fusion and Zero Mission) are really good, too.
6
Nope, it's not Banff, though that does look like a nice area! This was at Stowe, Vermont. We also went to Jay, which is totally awesome if you're into skiing the woods, and it's really close to Canada. I live in Virginia, but my aunt lives up in Vermont, so we go up there each year.
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Off-Topic / Re: Name change!
« on: February 28, 2009, 05:57:31 pm »
Edit: Just see the bottom of the post. 
Ah, that's right!
You can use the magic wand to select the background, dragging left and right to adjust the threshold. If you watch the threshold value in the toolbox as you're doing that, you can see what value is reasonable so you can set it and then just click the background of the rest of the frames. A threshold of 30 seems good for the first frame.
Hitting delete now will probably leave you with blueish borders around the character, so if you want to put more effort into it, do the following: right-click the picture and go to the "select" menu, then click the dotted line at the top to detach it for the sake of convenience. In that detached menu, click "save to channel" to save the selection. In the "layers, channels, [etc]" panel, click the tab at the top with the stack of white squares (the layers tab; ctrl+L also gets you there), and click the layer you were working on. Then click "grow..." in the detached selection menu, and make sure it's growing the selection by 1 pixel. Then use the paint can/bucket fill with the threshold set to 255 to fill in the resulting selection. Next, click the tab with the stack of red, green, and blue squares next to the white ones you clicked before, and click the selection mask that you recently created. Click the red square at the bottom there, or right-click the channel and select "channel to selection". One last time, go back to the layers tab and click the layer you were working on, and finally, hit delete. Next layer!
Once you're done, save the file as a gif file using "save as". Choose "save as animation" when it asks how to export. Then check the three boxes at the bottom: "loop forever", "use delay entered above for all frames", and "use disposal entered above for all frames". Then before you click "save", make sure the delay is 100ms (or whatever; 100 seems to work for this one), and the disposal option is "one frame per layer (replace)". All done!
There's probably a quicker way to do all that, but yeah.
Ah, heck, I did half the work while writing this, so I just went ahead and finished the job and did a little touch-up. Here you go:
Ah, that's right!
You can use the magic wand to select the background, dragging left and right to adjust the threshold. If you watch the threshold value in the toolbox as you're doing that, you can see what value is reasonable so you can set it and then just click the background of the rest of the frames. A threshold of 30 seems good for the first frame.
Hitting delete now will probably leave you with blueish borders around the character, so if you want to put more effort into it, do the following: right-click the picture and go to the "select" menu, then click the dotted line at the top to detach it for the sake of convenience. In that detached menu, click "save to channel" to save the selection. In the "layers, channels, [etc]" panel, click the tab at the top with the stack of white squares (the layers tab; ctrl+L also gets you there), and click the layer you were working on. Then click "grow..." in the detached selection menu, and make sure it's growing the selection by 1 pixel. Then use the paint can/bucket fill with the threshold set to 255 to fill in the resulting selection. Next, click the tab with the stack of red, green, and blue squares next to the white ones you clicked before, and click the selection mask that you recently created. Click the red square at the bottom there, or right-click the channel and select "channel to selection". One last time, go back to the layers tab and click the layer you were working on, and finally, hit delete. Next layer!
Once you're done, save the file as a gif file using "save as". Choose "save as animation" when it asks how to export. Then check the three boxes at the bottom: "loop forever", "use delay entered above for all frames", and "use disposal entered above for all frames". Then before you click "save", make sure the delay is 100ms (or whatever; 100 seems to work for this one), and the disposal option is "one frame per layer (replace)". All done!
There's probably a quicker way to do all that, but yeah.
Ah, heck, I did half the work while writing this, so I just went ahead and finished the job and did a little touch-up. Here you go:
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Off-Topic / Re: Name change!
« on: February 28, 2009, 02:36:43 am »
You can use GIMP's eraser to make pixels transparent, but you'll have to go through each frame/layer individually. Also, GIFs' pixels can only be opaque or completely transparent, so on forums without a dark background, you'll end up with a chunky outline. I can give you more details if you want to do it this way. There are some other ways I can think of, but they all require more effort in the end, unless you can get in touch with the person who made it.
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Off-Topic / Re: My video clip
« on: February 28, 2009, 02:26:44 am »
Wow, well done! Thanks for sharing!
Just out of curiosity, how much planning did that take? The music makes me imagine someone just sitting back, relaxing, and drawing whatever comes to mind from the shapes on the screen, but I suspect it took more work to make it look that good.
And as far as the ending goes, I was holding out for a last-second rebirth of the flower, but no such luck! Maybe that's what Silver's talking about. Still, I really enjoyed it. Good work!
Just out of curiosity, how much planning did that take? The music makes me imagine someone just sitting back, relaxing, and drawing whatever comes to mind from the shapes on the screen, but I suspect it took more work to make it look that good.
And as far as the ending goes, I was holding out for a last-second rebirth of the flower, but no such luck! Maybe that's what Silver's talking about. Still, I really enjoyed it. Good work!
11
Gameplay / Re: For a good time, call...
« on: February 26, 2009, 03:53:19 pm »
Yeah, it is fun to learn the characters as you go through. It makes it feel like you're uncovering some ancient secret or something. As I went through the game the first time, I made notes on a piece of paper about the messages and letters, and by the end, I could read most of the messages without referring to it. There's a lot of backstory in that text!
Morrowind also has its own alternative font, but it still vaguely resembles the Latin alphabet, and it's not used as interestingly in-game. Still, it's fun to be able to read the names of places on the paper maps.
Anyway, thanks for the tip, Zeke! It's kinda cool to see those messages more immediately.
Morrowind also has its own alternative font, but it still vaguely resembles the Latin alphabet, and it's not used as interestingly in-game. Still, it's fun to be able to read the names of places on the paper maps.
Anyway, thanks for the tip, Zeke! It's kinda cool to see those messages more immediately.
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General / Re: Game time
« on: February 23, 2009, 06:40:10 am »
Holy cow, Aquaria in two hours?! I don't think I could bring myself to go through that quickly, even if I knew how! I've tried to speedrun Deus Ex since I've played it so many times, but I can never resist the urge to explore and mess around with the AI and throwable objects.
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Modding / Re: Hi, I have questions.
« on: February 23, 2009, 06:19:40 am »
Yeah, I was stumped for a while with custom music because the first 10 or so seconds of the song I was using were quite quiet compared to the rest.
If it's music you want to trigger, make a node that overlaps the area you want to have the music (such as a boss's lair), and name it (for example) "musictrigger". If you need a circular area, hit "y" when the node is highlighted. Then make a text file in your mod's script directory, rename it "node_musictrigger.lua", and put the following inside it, with appropriate tweaks:
If it's a sound effect you want to trigger, I can tell you that there are several ways to do it, but I'm not that familiar with them yet and I need to go to bed now!
If it's music you want to trigger, make a node that overlaps the area you want to have the music (such as a boss's lair), and name it (for example) "musictrigger". If you need a circular area, hit "y" when the node is highlighted. Then make a text file in your mod's script directory, rename it "node_musictrigger.lua", and put the following inside it, with appropriate tweaks:
Code: [Select]
function init(me)
inside = false --Keep track of Naija's entrance/exit so music changes aren't made every frame.
n = getNaija()
end
function update(me, dt)
if not inside then
if node_isEntityIn(me, n) then --Naija just entered, so start the music.
inside = true
playMusic("miniboss")
end
else
if not node_isEntityIn(me, n) then --Naija just left, so return to the level's normal music.
inside = false
updateMusic()
--fadeOutMusic(6) --fade to silence instead
end
end
endThat starts the miniboss music whenever Naija enters the node's area and goes back to the normal music when she leaves it.If it's a sound effect you want to trigger, I can tell you that there are several ways to do it, but I'm not that familiar with them yet and I need to go to bed now!
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Modding / Re: Hi, I have questions.
« on: February 23, 2009, 12:36:06 am »
Make sure your OGG is indeed in your mod's "audio" folder. In my examples, I'll assume it's "mymod/audio/filename.ogg". To set it as a level's default music, there should be a "music" entry in the first line of the map's XML file. Something along these lines:
<Level tileset="main" music="filename" sceneColor="1 1 1" />
You can also use playMusic("filename") in a script to play it.
If it's not in the right spot, you'll see this toward the end of your debug.log:
playMusic: filename
FMODEX error: 23: Unknown error code
playmusic end
If you can't find that error, it might just be that the first part (or all) of the music is too quiet to hear above other sound effects.
Also, just to check, it is encoded as an Ogg Vorbis file, right? Some programs might have a "save as compressed file" option and not tell you that they're really saving it as an mp3 even though you called it filename.ogg. Probably not, but I thought it would be good to mention just in case.
Good luck! Can't wait to see what you make!
<Level tileset="main" music="filename" sceneColor="1 1 1" />
You can also use playMusic("filename") in a script to play it.
If it's not in the right spot, you'll see this toward the end of your debug.log:
playMusic: filename
FMODEX error: 23: Unknown error code
playmusic end
If you can't find that error, it might just be that the first part (or all) of the music is too quiet to hear above other sound effects.
Also, just to check, it is encoded as an Ogg Vorbis file, right? Some programs might have a "save as compressed file" option and not tell you that they're really saving it as an mp3 even though you called it filename.ogg. Probably not, but I thought it would be good to mention just in case.
Good luck! Can't wait to see what you make!
15
Games / Re: Games We've Loved...
« on: February 22, 2009, 06:21:46 am »
I'm kind of surprised this one hasn't popped up anywhere on these forums: Odell Down Under. In middle school (grades 6-8 and around 1997 for me), this was a really popular game. The basic idea was that you're a fish that swims around eating stuff to survive. If you didn't eat for a while or you ate something poisonous to your species, you'd lose health or energy, and if something ate you, well... There were a ton of species you could be, and each had its own set of enemies and favored, loathed, and toxic foods, and some had special abilities like shooting ink or shocking stuff. I don't know how, but I must have spent hours whizzing around the reef eating random things. Oh, and that link above shows the title screen which is vaguely remeniscent of Aquaria's until the 15-second mark. You'll see why!
Silver, I just checked out the website for Uru. Is it as interesting to explore as it looks? And are the puzzles still Myst-style? I never got into Myst, but I do enjoy point-and-click games.
Silver, I just checked out the website for Uru. Is it as interesting to explore as it looks? And are the puzzles still Myst-style? I never got into Myst, but I do enjoy point-and-click games.