Topics

1

Engine Development / Linux Port and Lua Plugin

« on: 18 May 2013, 05:17 »

The Lua Plugin doesnt seem to work with the linux version. I've compiled it from the git and I get the following:

┌─[steve][archlaptop][~/evilhouse/Compiled]
└──╼ ags evilhouse.exe 
AGS: Adventure Game Studio v3.3 Interpreter
Copyright (c) 1999-2011 Chris Jones and 2011-20xx others
ACI version 3.3.0.1132

AGS: ***** ENGINE STARTUP
AGS: Reading config file
AGS: Initializing allegro
AGS: Setting up window
AGS: Initializing game data
AGS: Game data file: /home/steve/evilhouse/Compiled/evilhouse.exe

AGS: Initializing TTF renderer
AGS: Initializing mouse
AGS: Checking memory
ci_find_file: cannot change to directory: Compiled
ci_find_file: cannot change to directory: Compiled
AGS: Initializing keyboard
AGS: Install timer
Checking sound inits.
AGS: Initialize sound drivers
AGS: Install exit handler
AGS: Initialize path finder library
AGS: Initialize gfx
AGS: Load game data
AGS: Built library path: ./libagslua.so
AGS: dlopen returned: ./libagslua.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
AGS: Built library path: /home/steve/evilhouse/Compiled/libagslua.so
AGS: dlopen returned: /home/steve/evilhouse/Compiled/libagslua.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
AGS: Plugin loading failed, trying built-in plugins...
AGS: No built-in plugin found. Plugin loading failed!
AGS: No placeholder functions for the plugin found. The game might fail to load.
An internal error has occurred. Please note down the following information.
If the problem persists, post the details on the AGS Technical Forum.
(ACI version 3.3.0.1132)

Error: load room: unable to deserialize prop schema
AGS: ***** ENGINE HAS SHUTDOWN

I am using a x64 version of Arch Linux.

2

Editor Development / Building AGS Native

« on: 12 Apr 2013, 19:05 »

Ok, there are some things i want to fix in the AGS editor but I can't get AGS.Native to build. I get the following error:

Error   147   error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol __forceCRTManifestCUR   alfont_md_d.lib   AGS.Native

I assume its a library dependency or something since no one else seems to have reported the problem.

Can anyone help?

3

Engine Development / FileBasedAGSDebugger class

« on: 19 Mar 2013, 11:37 »

I noticed this in the repo but the history seems to indicate it was not added by the new engine team.

Are there plans to expand on a file based debugger as opposed to the pipes version? If not, would someone be willing to work with me (from the engine team) to implement a perpetual IPsocket based system?

4

Advanced Technical Forum / Intermittent Crash

« on: 17 Mar 2013, 19:21 »

I get the following crash every so often on room changes but i cant pin point the cause. Can one of the engine devs help?

---------------------------
Illegal exception
---------------------------
An exception 0xC0000005 occurred in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x004229AA ; program pointer is +72, ACI version 3.21.1115, gtags (4,0)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and post the details on the AGS Technical Forum.



Most versions of Windows allow you to press Ctrl+C now to copy this entire message to the clipboard for easy reporting.

An error file CrashInfo.dmp has been created. You may be asked to upload this file when reporting this problem on the AGS Forums. (code 0)
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

5

General Discussion / How about a new Background Blitz - Workshop Edition?

« on: 08 Mar 2013, 08:48 »

I only saw the previous one retrospectively but I think it was really cool. Would Zyndikate, Loominous, Misj and so on be willing to put on another one?

I recommend that it runs concurrently to the normal BGblitz tho since they tend to go on for a while.

6

Advanced Technical Forum / Vectorization of Raster Regions.

« on: 16 Feb 2013, 17:56 »

I want to convert an AGS region to a series of vertices. Does anyone have any ideas of how to do this?

I have googled it but all the responses seem to be beyond the scope of what i want to do.

A picture:



Basically I want to get the polygons' vertices marked in red, in order, around the shape. I also want to be able to tell which polygon matches which vertices.

Are there any accepted methods for doing this that i dont know about?

7

Site & Forum Reports / Filtering on the zoomable image tag.

« on: 05 Feb 2013, 21:38 »

Since the zoomable image tag is exclusively used for pixel art it might be a good idea to use css attribs which make the image resize with a nearest neighbour algorithm.

8

General Discussion / What's wrong with [your part of] the world? Is the future bright? 2050?

« on: 21 Jan 2013, 08:09 »

So, I'm on a day shift again so I thought I'd do one of those thread.

Where do you see humanity going? Are we doing ok? Are we getting better? Will capitalism destroy itself as predicted by marx or will it not matter because technology will make the notion of scarcity irrelevant (see Star Trek)? Will an ecological disaster destroy us? Will a new global war erupt as china makes a grab for russia's resources?

What are your predictions for the next 50-100 years?

9

Engine Development / Other Resolutions.

« on: 29 Dec 2012, 18:09 »

Would this be a good time to talk about the resolutions that AGS offers?

Currently AGS only offers 4:3 resolutions but the vast majorities of form factors that we deal with now are actually 16:10 or 16:9. Phones, laptops and monitors are almost all not 4:3.

Is this something we could discuss? I think we need a better way of relating the screen to the game res.

10

Adventure Related Talk & Chat / AGS-Lua Evangelism

« on: 24 Dec 2012, 13:23 »

Hello everyone,

Wasn't sure where to put this.. its sort of technical but not technical enough to warrant the tech forum.

Anyway, I have come to the conclusion that everyone should stop using AGS script and move over to Lua for a wealth of reasons. it seems like a no brainer to me and yet I have seen a lot of resistance. I would like to know why that is and I would like to help wherever I can.

Are there modules you need for lua that I can code for you?
Are you just not sure how to link ags and lua together?
Are you afraid of putting in the effort of learning a new language?
Do you not see the benefits?

Tell me why, AGS forumers and I will do my best to help and ease the transition because I think it is a wasted opportunity for all you cavemen still languishing in AGSScript land.

11

The Rumpus Room / N33D H3LP!!

« on: 20 Dec 2012, 00:32 »

WHAT PAINT PROGRAMZ SHOULD I USE TO MAKE MY NEW RPG?

I HERD PHOTOSHOP IS GOOD BUT SOME THINK MY ART MAIN PROGRAM DO.

HOW DO I DO SCRIPTING? CAN SOMEON POST A SCRIPT TO MAKE MY CHARACTER LOOK LIKE GAYBRUSH

I NEED A WRITER AND A BACKGROUND ARTIST AND A CHARACTER ARTIST AND A LEAD DESIGNER FOR MY GAME IDEA. IT WILL BE COMMERCIAL AND BASED ON INDIANANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOMM.
INDIANAANNA GOES INTO THE TEMPLE AND GETS THE TRIFORCE I CAN DO THE TRIFORCE GRAPHIC BECAUSE ITS ON THE INTERNET

PLEASE EMAIL ME ON THIS PM FORUM SYSTEM AND REPLY TO MY THREAD FOR MY DESIGN DOCUMENT ABOUT GAYBRUSH AND BANANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF BUMS. IT IS VERY SHORT.

YOUR CINSERELY

CALIN LEAFSHADE.

12

General Discussion / Ethics - How ethical are you and how ethical is everyone else?

« on: 01 Oct 2012, 08:48 »

Ok so, it's one of those threads I start when I'm at work on a day shift and have nothing to do.

There are three(maybe four) main ethical positions. I will summarise as briefly as I can and then you can choose which you think is most reasonable and maybe we'll get some kind of discussion going.

Virtue Ethics

Virtue ethics is the belief that there are no inherently wrong *actions* but that the morality of a situation is derived from the agents. For instance, a virtue ethicist would not say that murder is wrong but rather that those who commit murder lack virtue. They might say that in some circumstances killing another human being is perfectly justified providing the agent doing the killing is doing so because they are acting for (their own) virtuous reasons.

Virtue theorists say that it is better that we foster good virtues in people (Honesty, Wisdom, Fairness, things like that) rather than focus on individual moral problems. They argue that those kinds of things actually don't matter and if everyone is virtuous then everyone will be happy.

Virtue Ethics can basically be summed up as "Try and be a good person and then do what feels right." It is an emotive position rather than a rational one.

Deontology

Deontology deals with ethics as a duty (Deon means duty). It is characterised as following a strict set of guidelines and never deviating. For instance, if a nazi officer askes you if there are any Jews hiding in you house, you must tell him the truth regardless of the consequences because lying is *always* wrong. Deonists argue that concerning oneself with the consequences of that action is futile because a human agent can never fully know the consequences. Even if the Nazi officer takes the jews and kills them, the deonist can be secure in the knowledge that they did not lie and did not actively cause harm. For instance, they might argue that the nazi officer was in fact a symapthiser and if you told him there *were* jews in your house he would've walked away quietly to avoid catching them. However since you told him no, he puts on a show and searches the house, thus finding the Jews and then he must execute them or his superiors would catch him.

Deontology is the root of Divine Command theory which is basically "God said it, so I'm going to do it without question because it is my duty to do God's will."

Deontology can be summed up as "Follow the rules and do your duty. Do not waver because you cannot know the consequences."

Consequentialism

Consequentialism is basically the thought that ones morality should be based upon the consequences of the actions. If a train is travelling along a track and there are 5 people in it's path but you could throw a switch and divert the train to kill only 1 person (who would be safe if you did nothign) then the consequentialist would throw the switch. They argue that 5 people dying is worse than 1 person dying even if that 1 person was not on the track in danger.

Pragmatism

Pragmatism is a possible fourth category which I'm dubious to include because it tends to describe what people *actually* do rather than what they *should* do.

Pragmatism tries to frame morality in a scientific kind of way in that it describes what we should "move towards" but acknowledges that it might not be appropriate to apply that morality at the current time. It's similar to consequentialism in that it deals with consequences but if differs in that it deals with *current* consequences that do not apply universally.

For example, slavery. Jefferson argued in his writings that slavery was ultimately wrong in a universal sense but that it could not be abolished immediately because the social framework in america at the time could not take it and the consequences would be dire (a civil war maybe?). A pragmatist argues that although some things may be morally wrong in an ideal world we shouldnt necessarily abolish them immediately because bad things would happen elsewhere were we to do so.

----------------------------

So what do you think? Where do you stand? Or rather, which do you most identify with?

I have more to say on my perceived pros and cons but I think I'll let people throw their hat into the arena first and see the general feeling of the AGS community then I'll stimulate conversation by playing devils advocate.

13

Advanced Technical Forum / [Idea] A generic storage plugin.

« on: 14 Sep 2012, 17:34 »

One thing that AGS does fairly poorly is user data storage. The Lua plugin alleviates this to some degree but I think a non-lua solution would be useful.

So how about a generic XML reader where users can add xml files to a project which get compiled and obfuscated at compile time and then AGS deserialises them at runtime. Something like this.

Code: XML

1. <Items>
2.     <Item>
3.         <Name>Potion</Name>
4.         <LongName>Potion Of AGS Mastery</LongName>
5.     </Item>
6.     <Item>
7.         <Name>Poison</Name>
8.         <LongName>Poison of Unfinished Games</LongName>
9.     </Item>
10. </Items>
11.  

Code: Adventure Game Studio

1. XmlFile *xml = XML.LoadFile("MyFile.XML");
2. XmlNodeList *list = xml.SelectNodes("/Items/Item");
3. int i = 0;
4. while (i < list.Count)
5. {    
6.     XmlElement *ele = list.Item[i].GetElement("Name");
7.     Display(ele.InnerText);
8.     i++;
9. }
10.  

Thoughts? Useful? Not useful?

14

Critics' Lounge / RPG Characters

« on: 28 Aug 2012, 04:50 »

I've been trying to pixel some RPG characters for a few days and this is what i've come up with:



Any tips on how to improve?

Also, I'd be interested if anyone has a way to make them less animey while maintaining some degree of character. I have tried and I always come back to that facial structure.

15

Advanced Technical Forum / [Lua] Non-blocking questions and coroutines

« on: 24 Aug 2012, 10:37 »

Ok, so imagine the following scenario:

You want to ask a question of the user and blocking the returning script without actually blocking the engine. Now, I know this can probably be done with coroutines in Lua but im not sure exactly how to structure my code.

Can anyone help?

EDIT: Ok this seems to work, I seem to have solved my own problem but its a little messy i think

Code: Lua

1.         co = coroutine.create(function()
2.                 logmsg("run")
3.                 QuestionScreen:Ask(co, "Yes", "No") -- this pops up a GUI asking a question
4.                 coroutine.yield() -- this waits until the GUI input function gets its answer but does not block the engine.
5.                 if QuestionScreen.Selected == 1 then
6.                         PlayerAvatar:Say("Lol")
7.                 else
8.                         PlayerAvatar:Say("Not Lol")
9.                 end
10.         end)
11.         coroutine.resume(co)
12.  

16

Critics' Lounge / RPG Tileset

« on: 22 Aug 2012, 03:05 »

I have been working on this for a few days:

x1 x2 x3 x4

What do you think? I think some of my colours are not quite harmonising properly.

(Some of the tile were done by Alan V. Drake, mostly the indoor ones)

17

Advanced Technical Forum / Check if game is runnig under the debugger

« on: 17 Aug 2012, 18:42 »

Is there a way to see if AGS is running under the debugger? I know that you can check if its in debug mode but thats not the same thing.

18

Adventure Related Talk & Chat / Calin Leafshade's Big Source Dump

« on: 09 Aug 2012, 16:26 »

Hello AGS people.

Here is the source code to alot of my games, both released and not. Bear in mind that these were never intended to be seen by the general public so the source probably contains examples of terrible programming and very rude comments. You have been warned.

They are all released under the Creative Commons Attribution license which basically means you can do what you like providing to give credit to 304 and myself.

The files are here: http://www.sanctuary-interactive.com/~steve/toshare/

DistortionMapping.zip 4.3M   
This is some distortion mapping stuff I did a while ago for a game. It never got made.

EBTsrc.zip 22M   
The source for The Ever Beginning Tale

EUsrc.zip 360M   
Eternally Us. This is a massive file because *all* the source files are included. This includes voice over files, sprites, old backgrounds, everything.

HopeSrc.zip 3.1M   
This is Hope Actually ignore these. They are very unfinished and out of date.. I'll try and find the proper version.

Pixelformer.zip 2.6M   
This is a platforming engine using AGS rooms and regions. You can draw the platforms in using the regions. It's unfinished and a bit buggy but works fairly well.

19

General Discussion / The scariest monster

« on: 07 Aug 2012, 13:07 »

What do you think the scariest monster is from horror films? I'm mostly talking in a visual sense but the character too.

I propose that, visually, the things from fright night are pretty bad.



any others you can think of?

20

The Rumpus Room / I WANNA KNOW WHAT LOVE IS!

« on: 05 Aug 2012, 21:18 »

I WANT YOU TO SHOW ME!