For the record: My first game system was an Atari 800.

Yeah Ninja Gaiden and its parallax (back then it was quite a sight that) cutscenes was great, back then I was impressed. I guess it comes down to me having less and less time to spend on gaming, so I just want to squeeze every second out of it. I'm not saying they look ugly, I just feel it could be done better... I'm sure gaming will evolve in such a way that they're unneeded... these days it's cutscenes with quicktime events, who knows what's next.

How about using Custom movement instead of physics?

Of course, that's in the case you don't need realistic bounces. You can have decent bounces without physics, but not really really realistic.

http://octavoarte.cl/spacey_move_towards_mouse.cap

humm GTA was just an example. You could easily do the same style of "briefing" and story advancement in other kind of games.

As another example that is far, FAR away from GTA (besides HL2, I mean): Wing Commander advanced a good part of the story with radio chatter (though the main dish was lengthy cutscenes, sadly).

Another one: Mech Warrior 3 only did briefing during level loads, most of the story happened in-game via radio chatter and in-game events.

but the GridScrolling example doesn't seem to do anything.

I thought the same, and nothing grid-like happens until you jump down the hole at the far right.

I did look at ghost shooter, but now thinking... Probably should've taken a better look.

QFT. Please take heed.

Right when your game starts up, you should reserve channel 5. This means that autoplay won't choose it, ever, unless you.... un-reserve it. Or something.

If that doesn't fix it, well, no idea. Post a .cap then >_<

EDIT: Right above FPS there's a list with "framerate mode" (wasn't a checkbox at all, sorry), you have to set it to "fixed"

Windows icons have a bunch of different resolutions embedded in a single file. You probably changed one resolution and your desktop is showing another. You have to change them all.

Also, sometimes Windows' icon cache refuses to update. In those cases, it will look allright on the next reboot. Renaming the file sometimes forces a flush too.

Posted some wavy stuff, check it out... game is not really really defined yet, so starting to code right away is not a good idea. I laid out some guidelines.

Wooo I was useful!

*celebrates*

GameMaker and C++ as my main development languages

[quote:j3bds16s]My expertise lies in networking and writing client/server applications for what we used to call "MMO Games"

MMO plugin CONFIRMED???!??!?!

....just kidding, welcome =)

Put them in files, works then.

This is my kind of reply

_< no, really, it is!

I remember fixed framerate working in that build. Did you check the "Use fixed framerate" option? without that enabled, the FPS number has no effect.

About the sound: Autoplay chooses an unused channel, so sounds should never (up to 64 simultaneous, I think) block each other... are you playing any OTHER sounds WITHOUT autoplay? If so, that one could be canceling an autoplayed sound.