AC2 is a tool that a number of us use to make our games. When I release updated versions, I'll post them on this thread.

Current version 2.1
http://www.mediafire.com/download/itjgnqlo4170jw4/AC2.zip

AC2 is the replacement for AdventureCreator, and it uses a different format. It is unable to read AdventureCreator files, and vice versa. If you're already working on a game in AdventureCreator, the final version (7.7) is here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/six8ftr3a0iww0q/AdventureCreator.zip

This version has the ability to export files into the new AC2 format, though you still need to do work cleaning things up after the conversion.

Note that there are some downlevel versions of AdventureCreator listed in the original thread. (viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2076)

Tlaero

I've just released AC 7.1. This is the version I used to make Redemption for Jessika and is necessary if you want to make the reach->rub->return animations you'll find there and in the Advanced Animations Techniques thread.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/six8f ... reator.zip

Changes in 7.1
"Advanced UI" is back but it's now streamlined to only add onmousedown and onmouseup to hit targets.
When you type in GameView to jump to a page, you can now type slower. Used to be half a second between keypress, now is 2 seconds.
Rearranged the Edit menu a bit to separate settings that affect AC itself from those that affect the pages it creates.
Updated _functions.js in the Example and Tutorials to support doing animations in conjunction with onmousedown and onmouseup.

Changed files are the exe and the _functions.js. You strictly only need the exe, but you might as well take the _functions.js as well to stay up to date. Only change in _functions is for that animation style.

Tlaero

Thanks Tlaero! I'll take it out for a spin later today. Though I'm a bit baffled by this statement:

tlaero wrote:When you type in GameView to jump to a page, you can now type slower. Used to be half a second between keypress, now is 2 seconds.

Care to elaborate?

There are a couple of ways to scroll in GameView. You can use the scroll bar. You can hit the "Home," "End," "PageUp," and "PageDown" keys. And you can type. Say there's a file called "house1.htm" and another called "house2.htm" If you type 'h' then 'o' then 'u' it jumps to the place in the list that starts with "hou" which is probably house1. If you want to jump to house2, you've got to type all the way to "house2." Prior to this change, you had 500 milliseconds between each character. So if you typed 'h' and 'o' quickly, then paused before typing 'u' it would jump to the files that started with 'u' (umbrella2.htm or whatever).

As my wrists get worse and my typing slows down, I decided to make my life easier by upping the timeout from 500 milliseconds to 2000. Upside is that it's easier to get to house45.htm. Downside is that when you type the wrong thing, you've got to wait 2 seconds before you can try again.

I should make hitting backspace clear the string and let you start over immediately. I'll do that next time I'm in the code.

Tlaero

tlaero wrote:Downside is that when you type the wrong thing, you've got to wait 2 seconds before you can try again.

Yes I was hung up on this, thanks for clarifying. The backspace thing seems like a good idea.

Note: You've gone "Mike" again.

kexter wrote:Note: You've gone "Mike" again.

Thanks. I was just on a different place where I most definitely don't let them know my gender. Sometimes my mind doesn't context switch as well as I'd like.

Tlaero

I've released AdventureCreator 7.2. This is me cleaning some stuff up and preparing for a Localization window (which I plan to do in the next version).

http://www.mediafire.com/download/six8ftr3a0iww0q/AdventureCreator.zip

BEWARE: This version has what we call a "Breaking Change." If you start using 7.2, your game's "Title" will no longer be set. You need to set a gameTitle string in your _game.js. The examples show you how to do it.


Changes in 7.2
To update to this version of AC, you need to update the AdventureCreator.exe, the AdventureCreator_template.txt, and the _functions.js (which is in the example and the tutorials).

Added support for a _gametext.js in case you want to take your text strings out of _game.js so that translators don't need to change it. (The example did this.)

Removed "Title" from AC. You can no longer give each page a separate title. Instead, you now give a single title for all pages in your _game.js file with a line like the following:
var gameTitle = "Adventure Starter";
NOTE: If you don't set a gameTitle, your files will have the title "Adventure Creator Game."

Added a "PostLoad" to compliment "PreLoad." Any function you put in this textbox will be called at the end of the page (just before the body bypass). Because it's at the end, functions in PostLoad can change the image, etc. (PreLoad can't do that because they're run before the image is defined.) PostLoad is where PreLoad used to be, and PreLoad scooted over to the left to replace Title.

Added support for a _size3.css which takes effect if you define gameExtraLargeScreenWidth, gameExtraLargeScreenHeight, and gameExtraLargeScaleFactor in your _game.js. Also support using "gameLargeScaleFactor" for consistency (gameScaleFactor still works for back compat). (Yes, Kexter, I explicitly want 3 sizes rather than dynamically changing to fit the window. I want that control. :-)

Moved ExtraJS and Sound under AdvancedUI. I will be getting rid of ExtraJS in the future, but I don't have anything to put there yet, so I'm leaving it around. Also got rid of the mp3 and ogg checkboxes. Now that all browsers support mp3s, there's no reason to do ogg files.

Removed the option to add a _game2.js. No one was using it.

Added a "Settings" menu and moved a number of options from "Edit" to it.

When you type in GameView to jump to a page, the timeout is now 3 seconds, but backspace resets the timeout instantly.

Fixed a bug where the GameView and ImageViewer window locations would get lost if you closed AC without ever opening them.

Moved the text files in the Example and Tutorials to an english subfolder in preparation for upcoming localization efforts.

Tlaero

Please keep extra js. I use it on nearly every page of BEW. It handles all the scene specific logic. The new postLoad sounds interesting also. Interesting changes. I'll be taking it out for a spin tomorrow.

Wolfschadowe

Wolfschadowe wrote:Please keep extra js. I use it on nearly every page of BEW.

No you don't. Tlaero, please disregard him, he is confused.

tlaero wrote:Yes, kexter, I explicitly want 3 sizes rather than dynamically changing to fit the window. I want that control.

Okay, but that still could be done with a single _size.css, would not require javascript, and larger/smaller resolutions could be added by simply editing the CSS file. You should look into CSS media queries, links: MSDN, MDN, w3school. Here's a quick mock up of how it could be done (_size.css only):

Code: Select all

@charset "utf-8";

.center, #says, #score, .debug {
    width: 1000px;
}
#hotspots, #hotspots img {
    width: 1000px;
    height: 500px;
    margin-bottom: 7px;
}

@media (min-device-width: 1280px) and (min-device-height: 900px) {
    .center, #says, #score, .debug {
        width: 1250px;
    }
    #hotspots, #hotspots img {
        width: 1250px;
        height: 625px;
        margin-bottom: 10px;
    }
}

@media (min-device-width: 1920px) and (min-device-height: 1080px) {
    .center, #says, #score, .debug {
        width: 1500px;
    }
    #hotspots, #hotspots img {
        width: 1500px;
        height: 750px;
        margin-bottom: 10px;
    }
}


I think AC checks for the first instance of the "img { width: *; height: *; }" sequence to determine the resolution for the images in the editor, so parsing this file should work in theory, though I haven't verified it. Also, switching AddArea() to percent-based instead of pixel-based could negate the need for the gameLargeScaleFactor and gameExtraLargeScaleFactor variables. All this would make it more dynamically extendable, without the need for recompiling AC and adding stuff to PickSizeCss() and ChooseSize().

kexter wrote:No you don't. Tlaero, please disregard him, he is confused.

Now you sound like my wife. I think she excuses my confusion to someone at least once or twice a week. That is correct though. I forgot that our script that runs on save pulls those in, so the AC reference is now redundant in the case of BEW.

Which caused me to realize, using a save script and "update all pages" tends to hog resources and slow things waaaaay down. Can we get an option to only run the script after the last page is saved in an "update all pages" scenario?

I'm going to defer to Kexter on whether you actually want that. (-: Would certainly be easy to do, though.

As for the size thing, part of what I'm trying to do is balance the tradeoffs between flexibility and understandability for non-programmers. Although BEWteam and I are the primary users of AC now, at it's core it's a tool to make it easy for non-programmers and non-website developers to get started writing games. So, each time I add a feature I have to balance "how much harder is this than what is currently done?" It doesn't matter to you folks, because you already do your own thing with the sizing. It doesn't much matter to me because I'm comfortable with the 3 sizes for my games. But, since I've already taught users that they need to change a couple of things in _game.js, adding a few more options is probably okay. And, if that lets them not need to read and understand another new type of file (css), that's probably goodness.

This is also why I still make individual htm files. That's just a ton easier for people to understand, for little downside.

I'm not sure that I always make the right choice on the balance here, but that's what goes through my head when I make these decisions.

Tlaero

tlaero wrote:I'm going to defer to kexter on whether you actually want that. (-: Would certainly be easy to do, though.

Yeah the option to only run the save-script only after the last page is saved in an "update all pages" scenario would be nice so we wouldn't have to manually disable the save-script before an "update all" and then re-enable and run it. But since we only need to do an "update all" if the template changes, it's not really a super high priority thing.
And just in case I forgot, thanks for the 7.2 update, it works fine with BEW, no issues to report. One question though, in the GameView the contents of the BodyBypass doesn't show up for all pages contianing a BodyBypass (don't know about HeadBypass) - is there some logic that it has to be X-lines long to show up? Just curious because as I was moving single-line BodyBypass stuff to PostLoad and I couldn't simply filter for "BodyBypass" as not all were reporting the contents of their BodyBypasses.

If I remember correctly, I only show the lines in a Head or Body bypass that are strings. I'm not fully sure why I did that, though. I could change it if you folks want me to.

Tlaero

tlaero wrote:I could change it if you folks want me to.

Not necessary, as pretty much everything will go in PostLoad now instead of BodyByass. And I've already moved all the existing stuff. Thanks.

In RfJ there's a point where you may do something or you may not. And that results in future pages having different images depending on which you did. At first I did some checks and duplicated images, but that got annoying so I wrote a little function that checks a variable and changes the image if necessary. But, of course, that function can't go in PreLoad because it runs before the image exists. So I had to put the function in BodyBypass. That, in a nutshell is where PostLoad came from. (-: When I updated AC to do PostLoad, I moved that function there in those files and slipstreamed it in. I'm sure the patrons who already have the game won't notice, but it'll be right for the full release...

I'm keeping Body and Head Bypass for things like defining per-page variables, etc. But, I agree, I'll use PostLoad more often.

Tlaero