Help regarding a hint system
hi,
I am new to MMF2 and am working through the tutorials provided in the clickteam web-site. I really liked and learned a lot from "The Mystery of Paris" by Koobare. Now I am wondering if there is a way to add a hint system to a game like that. I am still new at this but I am hoping that I have gotten a grasp of the basics. A few pointers would be greatly appreciated. :)
Re: Help regarding a hint system
I never played Mystery of Paris but a hint system should be easy to implement although tedious to pull off if I'm thinking of the same thing you want to pull off. Could you elaborate more on what this game did? Since I never played it.
Re: Help regarding a hint system
"Mystery of Paris" is a hidden object game tutorial on this web-site. The basic structure concerns with finding different objects which are cleverly hidden within the graphics. Usually at the start the player is asked to find 10-12 objects on a list. If the player clicks on the right objects, it disappears off the screen and its name is struck off.
My objective is to make a hint system to help the process. When the player is stuck, the hint-system can be clicked and it will highlight one of the remaining objects on the list.
Re: Help regarding a hint system
I am thinking you want to display text - either on mouseover or click?
You could use either SpeechBubble (my choice) or TextBlitter.
There are various ways you could do this and with only 10-12 per level it shouldn't be too tedious.
Re: Help regarding a hint system
Basically just have a string with paragraphs that contain the hint text and have the above commenter's idea to use a SpeechBubble or TextBlitter to call the paragraphs from the string based on what objects are still there or not there.
Re: Help regarding a hint system
No if I'm understanding correctly he's not wanting text. Hidden object games I've played, when you click the hint button, it darkened the screen a little and had a spotlight on the general location of the object in the scenery.
That would be easy enough in HWA with shaders, but if it's going to be Flash or something you'd have to just use a circle or something and move it to the objects coordinates.
Re: Help regarding a hint system
Even if you want flash or such, you could use an object with an effect from Flash FX.
Re: Help regarding a hint system
Well whatever he's wanting to do, you just check the objects that are there and aren't there carefully and set up conditions accordingly.
Re: Help regarding a hint system
Thnaks guys for taking an interest in my problem
The graphics part is not the problem. I could create a nice animation in photoshop/gimp and import in into MMF2. My problem is how to code it.
Shawn is right in assuming what I am looking for. Now I want to build it so that it asks for different list of objects every time it is player. The list would random and accordingly, the hints will have to different each time. And this is where I am stuck. Any ideas, please?
Re: Help regarding a hint system
If I'm understanding correctly, just make it check for which item the player is currently looking for and display the hint accordingly.
Re: Help regarding a hint system
I agree with Corlen. It is basically not that difficult. It could be made more complex with random hinting on remaining objects, points deduction with each hint, screen darkening... etc.
A list of remaining objects is maintained - numbers would be easiest. A corresponding list of coordinates to position hint graphic.
click hint button = select one of those numbers/coordinates and place arrow, pulsing ball of light, smiling face...