Various bugs/questions for all
Hello forum, I'm working on Nearly Departed, as you all know, but I've come across some issues/oddities that I'm hoping some people might have some insight on. 1) the fadeScreen TIMe. I'm just not sure if this TIMe is funtioning correctly. I find that no matter what I set the alpha for, it always fades to 100%. I also find that if I turn the mouse block and suspend actions to true, it freezes once it's faded (pressing tab will bring the menu, when you resume it fades back in.) Setting either to false just skips the fade altogether. Has anyone gotten this to work for a sequence where you want a room to fade to black, perform some TIMe's, then fade back in? 2) the playDia() TIMe. I've found that the playDia() TIMe acts weird when you have animation TIMe's between playDia TIMe's, and I've also found it acts odd when you have NPCs talking. This isn't a conversation problem, just when there's dialogue for the _char and an NPC in a single que and you want them to play in sequence, just a playDia() TIMe doesn't seem to cut it. For example, when you select the talk option over an NPC, I have this as the sequence: dialogue 1 (_char): Hello. dialogue 2 (NPC): How are you? dialogue 3 (_char): Fine weather we're having. dialogue 4 (_char): When's the next bus? dialogue 5 (NPC): Not for an hour. Now, there isn't any custom animation in the sequence, so just a single playDia() TIMe should play them all out. But instead, it plays dialogue 1, then 2, then skips 3 and plays 4, then doesn't display the text for 5 at all, but the sprite might continue displaying its talk animation. I've tried using a playDia(5) or multiple playDia(1) TIMe's, but none give the proper result. ANd things get even screwier when you want to have TIMe's in between dialogue, like have the character say something, then move, or lift his arm, or whatever. It just starts skipping dialogues or animations. Anyone have any insight? 3) enter room TIMe's: this is more of just a question: I have a scene where I want an NPC to say something right when you enter the room. Since there's no dialogue window for the enter room TIMe's editor, is there a way to assign dialogue that can be played with a playDia() TIMe upon entering a room? If this isn't possible, I can live without it. 4) callObjectInteraction TIMe: I've had odd results with this. Trying to get it to call a 3 interaction resulted in it calling the 4th. Using 2 made it call the 3rd, but it didn't play any of the playDia() TIMe's attributed to it. It would be nice if the TIMe worked, but I've been making do without it. I'm sure there's more stuff that's giving me trouble, but 1 and 2 are the big ones (1 I can probably find a clunky work around, but 2 I need to figure out somehow.) Thanks!

I'm a TOTAL noob at lassie... but I may have SOMETHING for number 3. From what I understand, you can add a action script command called "CallTimE" or something like that, if you were to simply add a flash object to the room you wanted the event to start in, you could do pretty much anything you wanted off the bat. example: enter room A flash animation starts, and calls a PlayDia command (the flash anim could be all alpha) Flash animation removes itself by changing phases when its done. and viola, autostart actions. again, I haven't actually tried this, and I'm a Uber noob, so IDK how well it will work.

I actually did something similar to that in the LassieDirector demo of Nearly Departed, but wasn't sure if there was an easier way in AS. If nothing else, I'll just go with that method. Thanks!

Arg... sorry John. My head hurts from action script. Been writing it for about 25 of the past 30 hours. I'm afraid I'm not going to be much help right now.

No problem. For the time being it seems these are all isolated, so I know not to worry about them for now and move on to something else. Just curious if anyone else has experienced something similar.

Couple of other things When a room loads, the character appears above the foreground, until he moves I normally have him walk to a point as he enters to stop this If you move a character to a point will a conversation is running or if there's animation as the convo ends, the _char appears above the foreground The copy conversation button doesn't work! I know these are easy sorted by moving points etc, i just thought it worth mentioning for future releases I know your reluctant to look into problems, but from mine and i would imagine John's point of view it would be very beneficial, the not being able to add voices is a huge problem

First one small question: is there a way to have different "enter room" TIMe's? For example, most of my rooms have two startpoints as they have more than one entrance, let's say one on the left side of the screen and one on the right. If I want the character to perform certain TIMe's only when he's entered via startpoint_1, is there an easy way to do this? I just want it to happen when entering from one spot, not every time the character enters the room. The other thing is I'm wondering if anyone's noticed something similar. In my game I've got a lot of sequences where the player will talk, an NPC on screen wll respond, the character will perform some animation, then talk again, then the NPC says something, and so on. I've found that these very rarely play out properly. Having a playAnim after another for a different sprite and multiple playDia and wait TIMe's seem to corrupt the timing of these sequences. I'll end up with characters skipping lines, talking too fast, or getting stuck on their talk animation. Usually just clicking on something else will appear to make things normal. But something internal will get screwed up, because the character will start sliding to walk points instead of animation, rooms will fade out to change before the character reaches the walk point, animations will be skipped, all sorts of weird stuff. Quitting the game and restarting makes things fine, but it seems like the more animations and playDias and waits that are put into a TIMe queue, the more stacked they all get, and the game ends up not knowing how to perform simple actions that worked just fine before (ie, walking to a floor point.) Just wondering if anyone has experienced such a thing.

In NOTH the character has a conversion with the barman, the character then moves to a point, the barman then moves and throws a dart, says a line then retrieves the dart and goes back behind the bar, 75% of the time it works perfectly but the other 25% he'll either do a crazy dance between point or miss out parts of the animation totally, online it just goes berzerk and it never works right. I never mentioned it because the characters aren't fully animated, and I thought it was just me In Dizzy the last room.. dizzy was supposed to enter, play a sequence and then move to a point, another sequence and the room goes to credits, it worked spot on offline but online just ran the whole lot in seconds, skipping every line and was still talking as the credits started If I want the character to perform certain TIMe's only when he's entered via startpoint_1, is there an easy way to do this? I just want it to happen when entering from one spot, not every time the character enters the room. 2 versions of the room maybe?

Well, I'm sort of glad it's not just me. But I was also hoping I'd just been doing something wrong. As for the 2 versions of a room, I'd thought of that, but then the game data would be incredibly bloated, as I'd want to do it for almost every room.

I think its the wait() that causes a lot of the problems, i wonder if its possible to use a sprite swf to act as a timer, ie a two frame movie on two phases, frame two is a set time.. the movie idea stops TIMes locking up leaving a room from a convo TIMes or use a SWF to run the actions?

Well, I've got sequences that get screwy even without the wait command. I've got parts where the character is just supposed to talk back and forth with another person (not an interactive conversation) and they don't play properly. I can have 4 lines of dialogue with one playDia() TIMe, and if it's just the _char talking then it's fine. But if it alternates between the _char talking, then an NPC, then the character again, it usually only plays the first two lines, and never makes it to the later lines of dialogue. And that's trying it with one playDia() TIMe, which should play everything, and trying it with playDia(4) and individual playDia(1) TIMe's. It seems like if a TIMe queue calls for talking or animation that involves just one character (_char or an NPC) everything's fine. But if you have more than one character talk, or have a character talk, then another have a playAnim command, some internal timer gets screwed up. I've got a lot of instances where even though the playAnim TIMe has the "wait for animation to finish before continuing" toggle to #true, it just doesn't wait. Oddly, if I add a wait() command before one of this playAnim TIMe's that are getting skipped, instead of the sequence waiting the set time and THEN animating, the animation plays DURING the waiting. SO I end up having to use the wait() TIMe a lot to make sure that animations play out completely and don't get skipped.

I dunno what to say really, i haven't done anything as complexed, I'd be tempted to look at a way to get AS to do the work using the sprite to start the Times in a flash movie.. it just seems to stop Lassie going off on one You must be pulling your hair out at times! I'm just messing about really so work arounds arent so hard but i can imagine its a major headache when it all starts to go pear shaped and randomly on such a big project.. shame Greg wont take a few steps back and look at the problems.. i would of thought ND was important for Lassie's future BUT i can understand the need to move forward! which will benifit us all in the long run