Gathering feature suggestions for the Engine

[Crimson Wizard]

Alright, I made whole bunch of them. I suppose 7 projects would be enough for anyone .

[Joseph DiPerla]

Is there anyway to add a +1 to the bug tracker for the bugs and features we want most worked on? Just a thought. I guess this could complicate things a bit as there might be some who would +1 everything. Perhaps also adding a -1? I guess not really %100 necessary or urgent, but would be nice.

[suicidal pencil]

it would be really great if the engine could handle Regular Expressions

[Vince Twelve]

Engine portability is definitely the biggest factor in my decision for whether or not to use AGS for my next project.  I love AGS, but if you're trying to make some money, it no longer makes commercial sense to work in an engine that only works (reliably) on Windows, unfortunately.

Please prioritize official engine ports for Mac/Linux (and maybe Android and iOS)!

[Joseph DiPerla]

First off!!!! Resonance is pure genius! Originality at its best! My brother bought it for me, and I cannot stop raving about it. Now, as far as portability goes... JJS already said that the ports to the other os and mobile are pretty much as done as could be. Now its just a matter of keeping the ports up to date with each update of the engine, which seems to be happening. So, I think you are good to go V12.

[RickJ]

I have a couple suggestions:

1.  Display runtime errors so that the error test can be selected, copied to the clipboard, and pasted into a forum post or email.

2.  Make command line arguments available to the script.  Probably needs some editor work as well to accomplish.

[Crimson Wizard]

1.  Display runtime errors so that the error test can be selected, copied to the clipboard, and pasted into a forum post or email.

I've started writing new output system for that purpose:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=46290.0
It's a preliminary draft yet. Also I've started drafting error handling system, but don't know who will implement that and when.
Basically, idea is to customize where errors and warnings are being printed (log file, window, etc).

2.  Make command line arguments available to the script.  Probably needs some editor work as well to accomplish.

I don't think it is a difficult task. Engine already stores cmdline args, although they are used only during initialization. New script commands could simply create script objects of String type, that contain command argument, like:

Code: ags

int i = CmdArgs.GetCount();
String s = CmdArgs.Get(0);

I seriously think this is one day of work.

[RickJ]

I don't think it is a difficult task. Engine already stores cmdline args, although they are used only during initialization. New script commands could simply create script objects of String type, that contain command argument, like:

Thats exactly what I had in mind.  I know you are doing a lot at the moment but please put it on your to do list.  Perhaps someday when you are bored you can get around to doing this.

Your hard work is greatly appreciated.
Rick

[RickJ]

I would also like to suggest that the engine include PNG support so that screen shots could be captured as PNG or so that PNG images could be read into dynamic sprites at runtime.  BMP is such a pain to drag around everywhere. 

[geork]

I dunno how viable these suggestions are, being not very familiar with the internal working of AGS (I should start one day), they are to do with arrays

.2d arrays. so like

Code: AGS

int myArray[5][5]

.being able to create the number of array slots based on existing variables. so

Code: AGS

int myArray[myVar];

[abstauber]

I hope this is the right place to ask for this humble feature (and I hope it's not too trivial).
Currently it's not possible to control dialogs by keyboard. All it needs to do that is a method like this:

Code: AGS

Mouse.Click (MouseButton button, int x, int y)

I can haz that?


Or without the usage of custom dialog rendering, simple commands like this would also work:

Code: AGS

Dialog.SetActiveTopic(int option)
Dialog.StartTopic(int option)

[Scavenger]

I'm not sure how doable these suggestions are or if they're already implemented, but personally I would find these really useful!:

- Per channel volume for MOD file playing (plus tempo, speed, etc). I did a really simple one with Mikmod, but the volume control didn't actually work, so it just ended up muting certain channels. This'll be useful for more dynamic music playing. I could just try to remake the plugin though, if I'm the only one that wants it. If it comes to that... is it possible to pipe data from the .vox files to plugins? Could be useful for putting effects on speech, for instance, so you don't have to record a version of "That doesn't work" in a normal room, in an echoey cave, and as a robot. x3

- The ability to turn off the outline of a text input box in a dialog. It's possible in GUIs, so for consistency's sake should be doable in dialogues.

- Nonblocking speech, and playing speech files as audio clips. I'm... not actually sure why this wasn't possible before.

[SSH]

Can I suggest that this thread, as it links to the tracker, should be a sticky? Similarly, there should be sticky links to the trackers relevant to other forums.

[SSH]

Also, the bug tracker link on the right sidebar here goes to the old one and should be updated: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/AGS.aspx links to http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/BugTracker.aspx

[Snarky]

IIRC, AGA has said that all the ASP stuff is out of his control, it remains editable by CJ only. Would certainly be nice to get it fixed, but it might take a little while.

[Snarky]

Double post because these are completely unrelated.

there's no way I know of of reading the hotspot coordinates of a mouse mode.

There should be.

[AGA]

Isn't that mouse.x and mouse.y?  Although it's been a long time since I used AGS regularly...

[Crimson Wizard]

Isn't that mouse.x and mouse.y?  Although it's been a long time since I used AGS regularly...

That's position of mouse cursor on screen, what Snarky means is hotspot point on mouse sprite, that is - coordinates of cursor's active point related to sprite's 0,0.

[selmiak]

As I use .ogg for sounds already and just stumbled across opus I'd like to request support for this open source audio format in AGS for smaller filesizes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_format)

[dbuske]

What is the caching scheme for AGS?
Maybe updating it to modern specifications?