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About this... The game will be all-age or for mature audience, with profanity or gore?

It's for mature audiences, not R but probably what you might consider PG-13. That's why I mentioned that the picture posted by BunnyShoggoth wasn't the appropriate tone... it looks like a happy kid's Easter party invitation (I just noticed a moderator removed the image, so that might be the source of the confusion). This is a horror game about a practitioner of the occult hunting down the forces of darkness. There is a link to the playable teaser in the initial entry if you want to try it out.

There is some profanity, although like I said it's more PG-13 than R language, and there are some violent and disturbing scenes, but I tend to disdain using gore as a means to make it scary... I prefer psychological horror. That having been said, this is based on a true story about a guy dressing up in a bunny suit who survives in the woods by eating bunnies and attacking anyone who comes around with an axe, so there may be some, but it won't be pervasive.

Also, note that most games with "occult" in the title have to do with "the occult" meaning "evil" and the protagonist of the game working against it. This is not the proper definition of the word, and this game shows an anti-religious occultist as a good (although somewhat grumpy) guy and the main protagonist of the game... I only mention that because some people might find that more offensive than profanity or gore.

In fact, there was also a guy who jumped off a bridge in an Easter Bunny suit in 1996; perhaps it could also be inspiration for the story.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! And boy, that picture does not have the appropriate tone lol. It's almost like an invitation for kids to jump off a bridge!

Most of the ESPER and Occultist continuity is actually based on my own real-life experiences as a paranormal investigator. I actually brought a crew out to the Bunnyman Bridge in 2002, but as you might expect, the story in my game is much more interesting. We pretty much just hung out that night waiting for something to happen, and nobody got murdered. I did a lot of research to prepare, though, and it's a really neat urban legend that I've been looking forward to writing a game about for quite some time.

[Progress:]

Dr. Ian James McDermott returns in this sequel to The Occultist: Old Growth. For almost two decades, the Bunnyman Bridge has drawn a crowd with its sordid history and the creepy tales of an entity in a rabbit costume that attacks visitors with an axe. It's Halloween, October 31st, 1986, and you have decided to make sure it never happens again, but there is already a crowd gathering, along with some angry police officers intent on making your job impossible!

Please take a look at the playable teaser and improve the future of the series by telling me what you think!

Progress:
Graphics: 90%
SFX: 80%
Story: 90%
Scripting: 10%
Music: Technically 100%, but I'm using the royalty free music from the first game and I'd like to do a complete overhaul with my own stuff.

Screenshots:

Goodness gracious me. Yup, it was using the word "I'm" in the "What can you help with" section. I didn't try to change that because they were already typed that way so I didn't think it could be the problem since that's already the way it was and I didn't want to have to retype everything. That part is fixed, and my profile is updated now.

I still can't search the forums without being told I just did that 5 seconds ago, even if I haven't tried searching for anything for a week. It happens in Chrome and Opera. I'm not willing to try to use Edge (lol).

I thought the problem with Rich was going to be that I had used "Move" instead of "Walk" and just hadn't noticed it. Instead, it was the problem with the player. I can NOT believe I didn't notice that.

View 21 is Rich's "withdraw hand from spurned handshake" animation.

Also, thank you. That is the best explanation I've had of the LockView and UnlockView commands. I wasn't quite getting it from the documentation, even though it says it clear as day.

Oh, if you meant the player issue, it's in a different room's AfterFadeIn function.

Code: ags

function room_AfterFadeIn()
{
  player.Move(40, 185, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
}

That's all there is to it. At this point, the player's animations have never been changed or touched at all.

Not sure what causes that issue, but you could try to do some debugging, like having a label that shows the player's current view, walk speed etc.

Also where is this code located, which function is it in? Is there any code before or after that snippet that might cause some conflict?

It's in the room's AfterFadeIn function, with the conditional "if (metrich > 0 && metrich <= 4)" before it. Other than that, it's the first bit of code in the room.

The only other time Rich's animations are called, it's when you first Interact with him, which runs a switch statement to see how many times you've talked to him.

Code: ags

case 0:
      player.Walk(723, cRich.y, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
      cRich.FaceCharacter(cIan, eBlock);
      cRich.Say("Hey, there! I'm Rich.");
      cRich.LockView(20);
      cRich.Animate(0, 3, eOnce, eBlock, eForwards); 
      //(he reaches out for a handshake, but you don't respond)
      Wait(120);
      cRich.Say("Oh... okay.");
      cRich.Animate(0, 3, eOnce, eBlock, eBackwards);
      cRich.ChangeView(21);
      cRich.UnlockView();
      cRich.Say("...sorry, I guess.");
      metrich = 1;
      break;

For a second I thought that was it... I found a bit earlier where the character does an animation but I hadn't unlocked the view.

Unfortunately, it didn't fix the problem. He still doesn't animate. Somewhere along the line I changed something that makes him move at his normal speed, though. Also, the player character never gets locked and he still does the glide at one point, but that's less important because you can't see his feet in the scene. He still moves unusually quickly when he comes into view, though.

Okay, I fixed it by jumping through what I thought were some superfluous hoops, but now that I think about it I believe I understand what was wrong.

Code: ags

player.Say("Well... here it is... let's see what's up.");
    player.Walk(124, 179, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
    cRich.Say("Hey! Hey, mister!");
    cRich.ChangeRoom(3, 207, 198, eDirectionLeft);
    cRich.Say("Hey, I wanted to talk to you.");
    player.FaceCharacter(cRich);
    --->cRich.ChangeView(16);
    cRich.UnlockView();<---
    cRich.Walk(142, 179, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
    player.Say("Oh, great.");

I did that just to cover all my bases, but I think I was misjudging how AGS handles views. When I had him do the animation earlier, I locked the view, animated him, and later added "UnlockView," but I think he wasn't animating because he was still stuck on the other view of him shaking hands rather than his normal view, and he wasn't animating at all becauses the other animation didn't have an Up-Left loop. I supposed that "Walk" would force the walk view, but I was mistaken, and it cost me a full day of work.

That still doesn't explain why my player character isn't animating and is sliding quickly, but like I said... you can't see his feet anyway in that scene. I will take this win and be done for now.

I thought I was going to be quite chagrined, but no, I am indeed using Walk.

Code: ags

player.Say("Well... here it is... let's see what's up.");
    player.Walk(124, 179, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
    cRich.Say("Hey! Hey, mister!");
    cRich.ChangeRoom(3, 207, 198, eDirectionLeft);
    cRich.Say("Hey, I wanted to talk to you.");
    player.FaceCharacter(cRich);
    cRich.Walk(142, 179, eBlock, eWalkableAreas);
    player.Say("Oh, great.");

Here, the character is walking correctly, but not the NPC. I've checked them both with each other and they have all the same settings... and then later the player does it as well.

Not a beginner, but this issue is making me feel like one. Sorry if there's already a post about this, but I'm also having an issue where the site won't let me search posts.

I'm having an issue where an NPC is supposed to come on the screen, introduce himself, walk toward the character, talk to him for a while, then walk away. For some reason, the walk animation doesn't play, and they glide very quickly into place. The same issue happens when I have a cutscene where the player character enters the room and is supposed to walk at their regular speed a few feet into the room and stop, but instead of walking they slide quickly to their destination. They are both standing on walkable areas.

I'm having two annoying issues on the site. First is that I can't search for anything at all at any given time without the engine giving me the error "Your last search was less than five seconds ago."

The second is that I cannot update my profile page without having it tell me "You can't use HTML tags," even when I have deleted everything on the profile and tried to save the profile completely free of tags or anything else.

I'm sorry if these have already been discussed, but like I said, I can't search.

AI art has literally changed my life in a very unique way.

I have aphantasia. If you don't know what this is, it means I am completely incapable of visualization. Whenever I heard people talking about picturing things in their minds, I thought it was just a figure of speech. Whenever I "picture" something in my mind, I actually describe it to myself in my head. I don't even see images when I dream, I just wake up knowing that I had one and what it was about.

I'm also an artist. I'm not the best visual artist, but I do a lot of different mediums. Whenever I draw a face, it's almost impossible for me to draw a face that doesn't look almost exactly like the last face I drew without using a reference.

AI art has changed my world. I don't understand why it has become such a problem where artists think it infringes on their intellectual property, because there is not a professional artist in the world that doesn't use reference images. In film school, we were taught to make "mood boards" with art that we liked and wanted to try to make the film look similar to. Every piece of art is referenced from somewhere, in the exact same way a computer creates AI art, even if you aren't using a reference image, because you are using your memory of other images you have seen in order to create a cohesive picture.

According to King Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

If they were to make AI art equivalent to intellectual property theft, it would take away a large part of my ability to create. My very odd and rare disability makes it absolutely impossible for me to create images in my head, which makes it very difficult to put images on paper or on a screen. I also have been homeless most of my life and have not had much of an opportunity to interact with other artists to work with or obtain decent equipment. I was able to afford a graphics tablet a few years ago, but I was living in an RV in Tucson, and it melted. I got a new one last year, but I'm staying in the basement of an old house in New England now and it got so cold over the winter it doesn't work properly anymore. Game design is my primary art, and not being able to create visual art for them greatly reduces my ability to create anything at all.

AI art allows me to make art, and make it quickly, to function as cover images and concept art for my games. I have been able to make my first $20.00 (not much, I know, but I tend to give my work away for free because I don't believe art should be sold... it's for everyone and everyone deserves to have access to it...) in the past year because software like Midjourney and Leonardo AI have allowed me to make images for my work so I can focus on my real art.

It makes me nervous that there have been so many legal struggles with AI art recently, as it would mean I would have to take down the one item I have up for sale because it utilizes AI-generated images, and it would mean a great hit to my ability to produce work in the future.

"What's a Devil to Do," by Harley Poe. I love everything by this artist, but this song is like a snapshot of my own life. The artist and I have very similar life experiences.

Hey everyone, I'm The Wandering Wizard! I used to be known as 'esper' around these parts, because that was the name of the game series I was working on. I started here 20 years ago! If Nikolas is still around, he was my best friend in these forums, and even composed the music for a Christmas cantata I wrote and put on in the real world. Now I'm back (from outer space!), and I had settled on using Unity and C# for game production, but I wanted to get back into making adventure games and decided there was no reason to reinvent the wheel when there's already a perfect engine for making adventure games already available. I've rebranded the ESPER series as 'The Occultist,' and recently released my first entry in the series (The Occultist - Old Growth) as part of a game jam on itch.io. I've found it still a great place here, and I think I'll stick around!

I'm actually looking for a pixel artist and a musician who are fond of the horror genre to help me work on new games and revamp the old ones. I can and have been doing it myself all this time as a solo developer, but my skills are very limited. If anyone is interested, please hit me up! Besides that, I always loved being part of this community (until life, times, trouble, homelessness, marriage, and tragedy took it from me), and would really like to be part of it once more.