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Online illustrated tutorial for beginners

PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 8:38 am
by Mystery
I've received some questions from new users of AM, and decided - instead of replying on an individual basis - to create a step-by-step tutorial with a lot of images to illustrate each action.
These might help some users to get started, and maybe to better understand the written tutorials in the Help Files in the Getting Started chapter.
The online tutorial also contains links to the Help Files and the forums at the end.

The 4 topics are:

    How can I let the player go to another frame when he/she clicks on a hotspot?
    How can I let the player pick up, and use items?
    How can I prevent the player from entering another screen, until he/she has picked up a certain item?
    How can I hide a hotspot until certain items have been picked up?


CLICK HERE (Only for Internet Explorer!)
You can click at the bottom right to view the presentation in full size.

or

CLICK HERE (Less good quality, but support for different browsers)

PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 5:01 pm
by GM-Support
Wow, great stuff!

I can confirm that it works on IE only. I have tested it on:
- IE6: works great
- Firefox 2: does't work
- Opera 9: doesn't work
- Safari 3 for Mac: doesn't work
- Firefox 2 for Mac: doesn't work

Again, very nice tutorial!

PostPosted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 10:20 pm
by Mystery
Thanks GM! :D

(If I manage to make it compatible with other browsers, or to find another way to make it available for a broader public, I'll post here an update...)

psp

PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 1:41 am
by Crazygamemaker
Works on PSP Browser. :D

PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 1:59 am
by Mystery
Thanks for the info Crazy :D

cool

PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:44 am
by Crazygamemaker
Wow!
Great Job Mystery.I could see everything better with IE.I'ts nice being able to use the PSP but it looks much better with IE. :D
Seems like a well done job.It looks so helpful.I will use this whenever I need help.Thanks for these tutorials! :D
-Crazy

PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 3:18 am
by Mystery
Thank you :D


An update:
I have used the HTML export feature of AM to create an alternative version of my tutorial. The image quality is unfortunately worse in this version, but it should be compatible to different browsers :D (The reason for the loss of quality is of course not AM, but because I have converted my original frames to image files)
I've added the link to the first post.

And I'm happy to get positive feedback from new users who told me that this tutorial helped them to better understand the Getting Started Tutorial in the Help Files, and to better understand variables :D

PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:44 am
by GM-Support
The cross-browser version works nice too!

Thanks!

PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:48 pm
by alala777
It's great I'm pretty sure it'll help the new people... :)

PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 2:56 pm
by Mystery
Thanks! :D

PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 3:01 pm
by Candle
looks good. should help a lot.

PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:52 am
by Mystery
Thanks Candle for the nice comment :D

PostPosted: Mon Apr 13, 2009 11:05 pm
by drummerac
This is an excellent tutorial it really helped me get up to speed on the inventory and variables.

Thanks alot Mystery!

PostPosted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 8:12 am
by Lyberodoggy
You can also read BytebyBite, our magazine, where there's a series of articles (5 of them) with the very first steps in programming

PostPosted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 2:37 pm
by Mystery
Thank you very much for your nice words drummerac, I appreciate your feedback very much :D

PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 3:26 pm
by jarrow-lad
Just looked at your tutorial and realy liked it, are you going to make any more

PostPosted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 6:15 pm
by Kat12
Wonderful tutorial! Thank you!
Kat

Great tutorial for beginners to AM

PostPosted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 10:47 pm
by arienram
Hi Mystery. Just want to say that your tutorial is a great help for anyone, (includes myself) building games with Adventure Maker. Well laid out, easy to follow. Intend to make good use of it. It also will begin to help me understand just how the variables option in the hot spots should work. I come from a game creation zone where we used flags 1-225 to control sounds, goto's and delays, (Timed Events in AM) and confess as not making any use of this aspect of the creator. I'm sure once I get my head around it, I'll be able to enhanse my efforts considerably. Would be very grateful for any clearly written instruction on the subject. IE: terms in the help files like 'My Variable1' or '2' mean very little to me.
Anyway thanks for the great tutorial and I'll scout around the site for more, (hopefully) of the same.
PS: I am using Adventure Maker V4.3.0 Full version.
Thanks. :)

PostPosted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 12:57 am
by Mystery
Welcome to the forums arienram :)
Thank you (and also the two previous posters) very much for your kind feedback, I appreciate it very much :D
I know how difficult it can be for new users without scripting or programming knowledge to understand variables, this is why I have included them in the tutorial. It's great to hear that it is used.

To your question:
myvariable is just a generic name of the variable that you are going to use. Basically you can choose any name you want within some conventions (and be sure to use names that you will remember later on as well, so that if you need to fix something in the game, you know where to look).

Just to give you an idea what variable names I am using:
key1_used (when the player has dragged and dropped key1 to the correct lock)
girl_talked (player has talked to the girl)
With such variables you can control how far the player is, and grand him/her access to new locations for example :)

If you have specific questions, don't hesitate to ask here if you don't find the answer in other topics :)

PostPosted: Sun May 16, 2010 12:37 pm
by mortelini
Hi Mystery
Nice and simple layout for a tut.
I hit one snag though.
ico files.
The key icon is presumably not supplied, (fair enough) so I went to find (any)one on my pc.
Unfortunately, AM didn't like it at all.
It said it should be a true ico file (shrug)
PS to my surprised doesn't seem to have a way of creating or saving icons.
So, is there a free proggy that can create ico files?
I also seemed to struggle (embarrassingly) with creating a gif with transparency. My key has a white border.

cheers
Mort

PostPosted: Sun May 16, 2010 1:01 pm
by Mystery
Yup, AM is a bit picky with .ico files depending on the software that created them.
I'm usually using Irfanview to convert image files to .ico as AM usually likes those :lol:

Irfanview is free and small:
http://www.irfanview.com/

(and I checked the compatibility with 64-bit computers, and it is compatible)

EDIT
Btw, you can also save with Irfanview transparency, e.g. if you want to save a .gif with transparency, just check the box "Save transparent color" :)

PostPosted: Sun May 16, 2010 9:28 pm
by mortelini
Thanks Myst
I downloaded it.
btw I also downloaded Dreamstate. It says it isn't a valid win32 proggy.
Vista Home premium. 64bit

regards

Mort

PostPosted: Mon May 17, 2010 12:12 am
by Mystery
For which one does it say that?
For Irfanview? Or Dreamstate (the game?)?