How to use AGS Part 11 (Animating Backgrounds) Video Lecture | Learn and Master: Adventure Game Studio (AGS) - Game Development

hi folks welcome back to the AES
tutorial in this video we're going to
create another room we're gonna create
the party hall from from Sammy's quest
and then I'm going to show you a feature
in Sammy's quest called animating
backgrounds I mean we're gonna use that
to actually animate things in the
background of the room without having to
use objects and I'll talk about why we
don't want to use objects as we do that
so the first thing that I want to do is
create a new room so I'm gonna expand
rooms up in the project tree right-click
on rooms and say new room and this gives
us gives us a wizard you're probably
only going to have one template here
blank room I have another one called
main hall that I was experimenting with
earlier but what we want to do is we
want to this is asking us what template
do we want to use for the room and we
want to create a blank room template
there's a checkbox down at the bottom
that says do not save State in this room
when the player leaves the room
everything will be reset back to its
initial State this is really for special
rooms if you want every single time the
player comes into the room if you want
certain objects in certain places
regardless of how they left them the
last time or what have you then you
would check this box we actually want
the room to safe state when the player
leaves and comes back into the room so
for example if I have an object in the
room that the player picks up I want
that object to to be gone the next time
the player comes I want I want all the
information about the room to stay
throughout the entire life of the game
so I'm gonna keep that unchecked the
room number is 2 that's fine
it says room numbers below 300 save room
state numbers above 300 do not so
basically if I check this this check box
it ought AGS automatically sets a room
number of above 300 but like I said we
want that check box unchecked room
number two is fine so I'll click OK now
I'm going to go into the room edit room
and I'm gonna change the properties of
the room first of all the description of
the room is party hall and the I guess
that's all I want to do for now now I
want to go back over to the the main
background and let's check change the
background to the party hall room the
same way we did before we have main
background selected I'm going to change
and go into my backgrounds and I
happen to have the party hall here I
have five of them which we'll discuss in
just a second but I have the party hall
here I'm gonna click open and so there's
the party hall from Sammy's quest but if
you remember Sammy's quest when you
walked into this room the disco ball up
here was sort of animating as well as
the the Duke box was animating and the
record was spinning on the inside and
everything like that so so the way that
we did that was with with actually five
different backgrounds that would sort of
toggle actually cycle through five
different backgrounds and each
background was slightly different in
respect to the disco ball and the
jukebox so the way that you would set up
those five backgrounds is I'm gonna
click on the background to display and I
say import new background and that's
going to bring up the the file dialog
box again and I'm gonna select the
second room background that I have and
click open now you can't really tell a
bunch of a difference but it did change
a little bit and then I'm gonna say that
do that again for all five of these
third one import new background select
the fourth one important your background
and select the fifth one so now we have
all five backgrounds here and when we
play the game we'll actually see them
animate let's go ahead and do that now
I'm gonna go back to the character of
Sammy which is our main player character
and I'm just gonna tell him instead of
starting in room one start in room two
that way the game in effect the game
will start in room two which is which is
the party hall room and I'm gonna click
run and so Sammy now starts in the party
hall and you can see that the the disco
ball is animating and the jukebox is
animating and so this is much more
efficient than having for example for
the disco ball to have five different
you know objects that would sort of
cycle through and and be able to
represent the disco ball or have five
different objects representing the
jukebox that would cycle through and
represent the different frames of
animation for that because for one thing
we don't have to create all those
objects and for another thing that slows
the game down the more
the more objects you have in a room the
slower the games performance will be in
that room and plus Asia s actually
limits the number of objects that can be
in a room so that's the reason that we
really that that animating backgrounds
is a good thing
so the next thing I want to do is set up
the walkable areas
I didn't demonstrate this but Sami
actually can't walk around in the room
right now because there's no walkable
areas defined so there's nothing there's
nowhere for him to walk he's just kind
of stuck in place as if he's sort of his
feet are stuck in cement or something so
let's change that by by drawing in some
walkable areas real quickly I've got the
walkable areas selected and then I'm
going to draw in the walkable areas here
again I'm just doing it through the
editor just by using line drawing it
first and then I'll go in and fill it in
with the fill tool later I don't want
him to be able to walk on the stage so
I'll keep that up out of limits
eventually he'll be able to walk through
this door up here this leads to the
Attic but I'll be able to right now I'm
just gonna have him walk up to the door
and that's it okay so that looks good
now let's fill that in test that out
very quickly okay so we see again the
screen is animating he's able to walk
around now he can't walk up on the stage
but he can walk over to the jukebox but
notice our walk behind problem here he's
actually behind the table so we need to
create a walk behind area for sort of
this corner of the table for when Sami
is over by the jukebox and everything
else I think is fine we actually I
didn't have the there's not one over
here for this table because I stopped
the walkable areas so that he can't walk
behind this on this table but I just
wanted to show the the walkable area is
just one more time just to sort of
reiterate that over here so very quickly
then I'm gonna go back to the editor
select the walk behind areas and I'm
just going to create a quick walk behind
area for this table
and this needs to unlike the the hot
spots the walk walk behind area needs to
conform very very closely to the outline
of the object that you're trying to
create a walk behind area for obvious
reasons I mean if we we're trying to
walk behind this table we don't want to
have part of the floor within that walk
behind area because then that will that
won't look right when we're finished so
just fill that in and don't forget to
set the baseline of the object which is
actually up here drag that down to the
base of the region basically the
lowermost pixel is typically what you'll
want to drag the the baseline to and
then let's just test that out to make
sure that works so now if Sami walks
over to the jukebox he's actually
walking behind the the table so that's
good that's exactly what we want
behaves the way we want it to okay
that's what I wanted to go over this is
a little bit of shorter video but that's
what I wanted to talk about in this one
is just setting up a new room and really
just creating an animating background
for the room so in the next video we'll
talk about the screen edges and we'll
link the two the two rooms together
using the screen edges of the room so
join us in the next video