Messages

1

Modding / Re: How to select tiles in parallax layers

« on: December 14, 2007, 08:02:08 am »

I was wondering if there were a way to select tiles without using the mouse.  I need to do this because I'm really confused on how to select small tiles on the parrallax layers since you have to move the mouse somewhere else than where you see the tile (probably because of the parrallax).

It seems to be a bug. If you hold down alt you can draw an invisible selection box from the starting point to wherever you stop (tap alt to go back to single-selection mode), so you can use that to get a bearing on where the offset is or to select entities as needed. Or you can turn off parallax while designing those layers, unless if you're trying to make a coordinated 3D effect. Which would be nice - I can't think of it being done anywhere in the main game.

2

Modding / Re: Aquaria Wiki

« on: December 13, 2007, 08:50:26 am »

Looks good and it's fast, so I'm starting to move data over there; if Alec ultimately makes his own wiki it should be a MediaWiki so anything can be readily ported (I think there's even an import function in MediaWiki). Some tweaks I think you should do: disable anonymous editing. MediaWikis are targeted by spambots which edit pages and discussions and fills them in with really poorly-formatted spam and garbage; Wikipedia can handle that because it's got hundreds of eyes on each page all the time. Also, please enable uploading so that I can put my tileset pictures up.

3

Modding / Everything I Know So Far

« on: December 13, 2007, 06:55:15 am »

I've made a package of all the data I've collected to date. The new big thing is the tiles list - all tiles (that you'd put in a tileset) have been categorised, described, and screenshotted in groups to help you find out where everything is. It also includes a list of files in the data archive, and what I think is a full list of scripting functions (not derived from the mods), although I've barely started that.

I'll keep updating this until we get a Wiki.

http://members.shaw.ca/burton-radons/AquariaInfo.7z

I use 7-zip: http://www.7-zip.org/ (any modern archiver should support it)

4

Modding / Re: Form Trials

« on: December 13, 2007, 06:13:31 am »

Sounds nice and well-directed, since you only need to think about what constructs test the player's understanding of the form and not what, you know, makes sense or fits into a plot or cohesive; "Naija's imprisoned by a jealous god who's teleporting her all over Aquaria to intricate traps of his own design but she's being helped by sea creatures who teach her the necessary song to beat the trap". The only problem is I don't think there's any way to forget a song, but that's no big; just pretend you can until a patch adds that.

5

Gameplay / Re: Sun Temple [Spoilers]

« on: December 12, 2007, 08:17:18 am »

It would be nice if the message reappeared every time you neared the gears until you successfully turn them at least once. I managed to get to the gem without doing so, and I was pretty annoyed I'd been thrust into the master's course right when a mechanic (leaping out of water) was introduced, then doubly annoyed that I wasn't supposed to do that at all!

The trick was to take the swimsuit, jump as high as you can to the left wall, leap to the medium gear; leap to the slow gear, then leap into the passage leading up and leapfrog up to the platform. Then it gets difficult; to the right there's that hole and a shear wall far too high to leap over and nothing nearby. So what do you do? Make your own springboard, of course - throw a charged seed in the plant suit at the wall, then jump onto the vine. The position is really important because your angle depends upon where you are on the springboard, you can't correct that angle, the angle varies hugely, and when you leap off the springboard you're fired at great velocity. So it takes a few times and you'll likely find yourself down one or the other hole multiple times. Once you hit the ceiling near the path across, quickly leap into the hallway and then it's just another leap to get to the gem. That you can't move. So you just wasted ten minutes.

6

Modding / Re: Documentation

« on: December 11, 2007, 07:48:25 pm »

It would be nice to add names of the music tracks from the original too in this uber-list 

abyss, ancienttest, arboreal, archaic, bblogo, bigboss, brightwaters, cathedral, cave, druniaddance, endingpart1, fallenbreed, fallofmithalas, flyaway, forestgod, gullet, hopeofwinter, icywaters, inevitable, licave, light, losttothewaves, lucien, marchofthekrotites, miniboss, mithala, mithalaanger, mithalaend, mithalapeace, moment, mystery, openwaters, openwaters2, openwaters3, prelude, prometheus, remains, seahorse, sunken, sunkencity, suntemple, sunworm, sunwormcave, superflyremix, test, thebody, theend, title, veil, worship1, worship2, worship3, worship4, worship5, youth

7

Modding / Re: Replacing the Main Character

« on: December 11, 2007, 06:20:20 pm »

P.S. there is also a debug output console that you should be able to access with '~' (tilde)

Nope! Doesn't work either in the mod game, in the editor, with the menu open, or with any alt-shift-control-windows-menu combinations. I tried (apparently) unlocking developer keys, but I can't get anything interesting going on with that.

8

Modding / Re: Replacing the Main Character

« on: December 11, 2007, 10:33:28 am »

Edit: Whoa! You hadn't responded while I was writing this, Alec. Thanks for the info!

Technically you can do so by calling "entity_initSkeletal(getNaija(), "priest")". This causes the avatar to change correctly while editing, but as soon as I switch back to the game it crashes. I think the problem is that entities often keep bones in their variables (such as the neck for hanging the cloak). These bone references are to pointers that change depending upon the skeleton, so when you change the skeleton the bone references are garbage and entity_getBoneByName needs to be called again. There should be a function in Naija's script that allows it to reinitialise those for costume changes, but I don't know how to call an entity's function from another script directly. I really doubt you can.

One way to hack this is to make a second entity that hides Naija and moves itself into her place. Here's a start of doing that:

Code: [Select]

dofile("scripts/entities/entityinclude.lua")

n = 0 -- Link to naija.

function init(me)
setupEntity(me)
entity_setEntityType(me, ET_ENEMY)
entity_initSkeletal(me, "mermanthin")
entity_setState(me, STATE_IDLE)

-- Find the Naija entity.
n = getNaija ()

-- Move the bones to the right positions.
entity_animate (me, "idle", LOOP_INF)
end

function update(me, dt)
-- Hide Naija.
entity_alpha (n, 0)

-- Face the same way as Naija; I don't know how to get rid of the transition.
entity_flipToSame (me, n)

-- Move to Naija's position.
entity_setPosition (me, entity_getPosition (n))

-- Change to Naija's angle.
entity_rotate (me, entity_getRotation (n))

-- Use the same animation as Naija if they're different.
-- If the skeleton doesn't have this animation then it turns into a body part jumble.
if entity_getAnimationName (me) ~= entity_getAnimationName (n) then
entity_animate (me, entity_getAnimationName (n), LOOP_INF)
end
end
Just put that into an entity lua file, add it to entitygroups.txt, and then put it in the level (you can keep the editor open and just hit F1 to reload the level). As soon as you get out of the editor you should look like a mermanic jerk. His animations work for idling, swimming, surging, and sort of for wall hanging (he doesn't have a proper animation hanging onto the ground and he tries to walk along the wall).

Even if you could substitute a skeleton directly, the behaviour would be similar to what you see with this hack, with body part jumbles showing up if it doesn't have that animation. Naturally a sea turtle doesn't know how to hang onto walls, or even how to swim.

Edit edit: Here's an update of the animation part that allows you to substitute animations which don't work, and it also shows a nice way to use setControlHint to pass information about game state while testing. You can keep Naija from hanging by calling "avatar_fallOffWall ()" in the update function.

Code: [Select]

anim = entity_getAnimationName (n)
if entity_getAnimationName (me) ~= anim then
changeto = anim -- The animation to change to, or "no change" to ignore Naija.

-- We don't have "walllookup" (for when holding onto the floor), so use "wall" instead.
if anim == "walllookup" then
changeto = "wall"
end

if changeto ~= "no change" and entity_getAnimationName (me) ~= changeto then
entity_animate (me, changeto, LOOP_INF)
end

-- setControlHint ("Animation: " .. entity_getAnimationName (n), 0, 0, 0, 2)
end

9

Modding / Re: Creature

« on: December 10, 2007, 11:16:19 pm »

I guess that opens the floodgate, so here's an archive containing a full list, a list with groups and short descriptions, a tree form organised by group, and an entitygroups.txt that contains all usable entities:

http://members.shaw.ca/burton-radons/aquaria-entities.7z

Note that this includes all story entities and so could give you plot information before you expect it, although I try to keep descriptions functional; what this looks like and what it does rather than how it's used.