i might put out a minor update that fixes all these problems but i am not sure yet. what i really need to do is duck my head down and get this done instead of futzing around with demos all the time. but keep posting bugs and such and i will acknowledge and try to roll the fixes into the final game.

try this. open up your nvidia control panel with the game running and go to "adjust image settings with preview." if that gets rid of the holes then this next fixed .exe i have will probably work for you.

if not, see if you can get an updated driver. i know that's kind of a phoned-in response but i'm seriously at a loss here!

did this ever work out for you dosmaen? i am going to assume it didn't but the way it's supposed to work is that doing this blanks the alpha channel of the surface since some nVidia cards have problems with resetting that properly when dealing with GM. let me know!

edit: as a temporary fix, i could draw non-surfaced menu backgrounds everywhere that the text screws up, so that the windows are there, but they're being drawn on the screen anyway, so you don't see them. sort of 'patching the holes,' so to speak. it shouldn't create too much overhead and you'd be able to play the game without gouging your eyes out.

Oh sorry dude, I thought that I had posted it didn't work. Was there a specific setting I was supposed to use?

Am I the only person who has been having this problem with your game?

yes, but the problem's not unheard of with GM games. i think i'm just going to patch the holes behind the transparent windows in case i get other people whose video cards can't really handle GM surfaces properly. yeah, i'd love a true fix for this problem but that comes down to submitting a bug report and hoping they roll it into GM9 (ahaha).

so yeah i'll have a workable .exe in a bit!

edit: also (to your first question) no, once you went to that part of the nVidia control panel the problem should've cleared up immediately.

Minor update (0.5.13)

This update addresses the following issues.

- fixed the bug where the placeholder sprites would appear after AI state was set to DAMAGED
- fixed the door knock freeze bug. a freeze_off statement wasn't added to the necessary scripts.
- fixed the placard freeze bug, which was (somehow) completely unrelated to the door knock bug. the root cause of this was conflict with open banter boxes. since the message interrupts the banter, the banter is never able to complete. thus, the game freezes.
- changed the names of and organized the majority of actionqueue commands in order to put them into distinct categories
- made an abstraction script to change the names of old actionqueue commands to new ones
- fixed still frame issue with AI when teleporting to a new map
- added workaround for the 'hole in surface' bug some users were experiencing
- flagged the Xirdalani customs house as being in a town to prevent weapon use

Standalone .exe (for those who have already downloaded the game, please replace your current .exe with this one): http://www.modestarcade.com/documents/Alcarys_Complex.exe
Full package: http://www.modestarcade.com/documents/Alcarys_Complex_RC1.zip

http://i48.tinypic.com/15evdhd.jpg

that's so fuckin' weird! the ammo count and the skill meter are surfaces drawn onto the HUD. so why are they drawing perfectly fine? 

also let me know if i missed any place where the graphics glitch like that. i tried to get them all.

how come more people haven't downloaded this? this is looking very promising and it's a big leap forward from when it was last posted on here. i just downloaded and played it on a netbook and it didn't run very good, but i still played it for a good 40 minutes or so and will check it out on a better computer soon. when i do, i'll post a much more detailed reply.

there's a lot of stuff in the game, which made it a little confusing when introduced to new things, but overall there seems to be a lot going for the game. i am not sure how representative this demo is of the finished product but the systems in place and the content you have already should be enough to make a good game and the rest pretty much lies in the execution. so great stuff so far.

how come more people haven't downloaded this?

to answer this question: I hope this doesn't offend you (the developers) too much, but the screenshot thumbnails honestly looked like RMXP graphics to me. I do not play these kinds of games very often, but there was a time when I did, and it looked like a default forest RMXP chipset to my untrained eye. Sorry!!!

I just read your description in more detail now. Congratulations on releasing a group project like this with all-original material. I am going to try this.

Can't play it.

ERROR in action number 1 of Create Event for object sxms:
Error defining an external function.

Tried different compatibility modes but nothing worked. Google had no answers. Pretty sure it's because I'm on W7.

how come more people haven't downloaded this? this is looking very promising and it's a big leap forward from when it was last posted on here. i just downloaded and played it on a netbook and it didn't run very good, but i still played it for a good 40 minutes or so and will check it out on a better computer soon. when i do, i'll post a much more detailed reply.

there's a lot of stuff in the game, which made it a little confusing when introduced to new things, but overall there seems to be a lot going for the game. i am not sure how representative this demo is of the finished product but the systems in place and the content you have already should be enough to make a good game and the rest pretty much lies in the execution. so great stuff so far.

thanks for the comments.

this demo is pretty representative of the final game except that naturally, things that were referenced in the demo but not available for use (like the journey support project and the lismore chamber of commerce) will be implemented fully. the battle system is pretty much set in stone at this time. you won't see major features from this demo discarded. the closest thing you'll see is the changing of certain criteria for sociability, but nothing will go away completely, not like the leap from the first demo to this one. iirc, i axed the battle bar from the first demo sometime last year because i wanted to better align the gameplay with the story. i try to justify the vast majority of gameplay decisions in the story, and that may be for better or it may be for worse. we'll see.

you'll also see more areas and you'll see more of the story. as it is, this demo is scenes 8-19 out of a total of 104, so you're getting one-tenth of the total story content with this demo. i am always examining the characterization of the major and minor characters to see if i can find a way to bring the way they act in the game more in line with the target personality i have in my head; the effort is to avoid embarrassing gaffes like continuity errors or out-of-character actions/reactions.

to answer this question: I hope this doesn't offend you (the developers) too much, but the screenshot thumbnails honestly looked like RMXP graphics to me. I do not play these kinds of games very often, but there was a time when I did, and it looked like a default forest RMXP chipset to my untrained eye. Sorry!!!

I just read your description in more detail now. Congratulations on releasing a group project like this with all-original material. I am going to try this.

thanks, and there's really no offense taken. please let us know what you think - good and bad.

Can't play it.

ERROR in action number 1 of Create Event for object sxms:
Error defining an external function.

Tried different compatibility modes but nothing worked. Google had no answers. Pretty sure it's because I'm on W7.

hmm. did you download the full package or the stand-alone executable? if you downloaded the full package, did you extract it? to explain a little, SXMS is the game's sound middleware. the only time i've come across that error is when the SXMS dll is not in the same directory as the game executable. the SXMS object relies on the dll to reference functions and if the dll is absent, errors ensue. let me know, thanks.

I downloaded the full package and extracted it. The dll is in the same directory as well.

It's cool though, I've got XP as a backup OS so I'll try it on that.

Just a minor graphics layers bug:


This is in the office of the guy with whom you have an appointment, I think


I'm a little confused with this battle system. Val isn't allowed to kill anything EVER if he wants to keep his healing power, right? Why is it that when I promote Angela to party leader and hit "c" to attack something, Val will occasionally help out and swing his weapon? Is there a way to prevent him from attacking the target when Angela is leader?

Also, what exactly is the difference between this manual battling and going to the menu, choosing the crosshair icon and a target and letting your character auto-target and kill? This is very annoying to do but seems to be much more effective and powerful???

Anyways, I like couch's music a lot and the graphics are pretty nice (especially little indoor details like the clothesracks and stuff). Dialogue is alright. I'll admit I cringed a bit during the intro when I saw "was that a pun?" "It was unintentional" - imo this is very unnatural and people don't say that! That was just a minor thing I noticed that didn't really reoccur.

Oh, and I don't like the fact that pressing "c" during a tutorial box will exit the tutorial without any opportunity to reread it, especially when there are more pages to scroll through...

Just a minor graphics layers bug:

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/5827/acbug.png

noted. since there's no way to correct this without making the tables into an object, and since that's time-consuming, i haven't gotten around to everywhere yet.

I'm a little confused with this battle system. Val isn't allowed to kill anything EVER if he wants to keep his healing power, right? Why is it that when I promote Angela to party leader and hit "c" to attack something, Val will occasionally help out and swing his weapon? Is there a way to prevent him from attacking the target when Angela is leader?

val can attack, yes. this is because his weapon doesn't do damage; it inflicts the 'stun' status effect instead. in this way there is no way to kill with corvallis unless he uses an offensive skill (something i might limit or do something else with, not sure yet). this also presents the problem of limiting his ability to kill completely - if val can't kill anyway, what's the point of pointing out that he'll lose his healing skill if he kills something? i need to find a good balance with val.

Also, what exactly is the difference between this manual battling and going to the menu, choosing the crosshair icon and a target and letting your character auto-target and kill? This is very annoying to do but seems to be much more effective and powerful???

i think you can chalk that up to bad/unbalanced ai code. targeting's a little spacey in this demo; i wanted everyone in the party to join in if the party leader attacks something, but i don't think that's working too well in its current implementation. i'll have to go over that again. ai counterparts won't attack targets without the party leader's consent because the vast majority of targets are skippable and it would be REALLY annoying if your ai got you into a fight you didn't want to be in. maybe being able to set a default action would solve this. i don't know what i'll do yet.

Anyways, I like couch's music a lot and the graphics are pretty nice (especially little indoor details like the clothesracks and stuff). Dialogue is alright. I'll admit I cringed a bit during the intro when I saw "was that a pun?" "It was unintentional" - imo this is very unnatural and people don't say that! That was just a minor thing I noticed that didn't really reoccur.

Oh, and I don't like the fact that pressing "c" during a tutorial box will exit the tutorial without any opportunity to reread it, especially when there are more pages to scroll through...

also noted. i've got an idea to bring an accessed tutorial tile up again without being obtrusive to the players that are done with them so you'll probably see it in the final game.

couch and ocean will probably be pretty happy to hear your praise! it's been a long journey and this project has been in development over three years with little to no player exposure so yeah thanks for this. i always appreciate an outside perspective.

I downloaded the full package and extracted it. The dll is in the same directory as well.

It's cool though, I've got XP as a backup OS so I'll try it on that.

i'm not getting a fatal error on my windows 7 installation but i am getting some nasty cutting and echoing. anyone else get this? it seems to lessen (or at least change) when i go into the sound properties and mess around with the output bitrate/frequencies.

i'll have to look into this some more.

I'm running Windows 7 Enterprise without any problems, btw

edit: I spoke too soon

ERROR in
action number 1
of  Step Event
for object objEnemy:

In script scrDestroyEnemy:
Error in code at line 18:
   if(lastAttackBy > 0)
      ^
at position 5: Unknown variable lastAttackBy



This was on the screen where the 2 Maned Wolves are hiding among the trees. This happened after I killed the wolf on the left and right when Angela began shooting at the wolf on the left.