AGS 3.3.0 Release Candidate

[Joseph DiPerla]

Nice work as always!

[AGD2]

Testing with this new build, the "Send Error Report" crash I mentioned in my last post does still occur. Here is some additional information about the conditions of the crash:

-It occurs with both AGS games I'm testing (Al Emmo and Mage's Initiation)
-Only crashes when running in full-screen mode. In windowed mode, I can call QuitGame() or Alt+X and it exits without any rigmarole.
-Only crashes under the Direct3D driver.
-Only happens when I run the compiled game's exe. It doesn't occur when I use CTRL+F5 to test the game from the editor.

The crash message box contains some error details, but unfortunately they can't be copied and pasted to the clipboard (it doesn't seem to be functional while the crash error is on screen).

Also, here's a related quirk regarding ogg/mp3 music and timing. This is a rather annoying glitch that has been present ever since the new audio system was added. In our games, there's a few music pieces which have an introductory jingle that plays once only. The end of this jingle segues seamlessly into a 'main' piece. The main piece loops many times over and its end transitions perfectly back into its beginning (i.e. the loop point). Here are two example music pieces:

Combat Intro (Jingle)
Combat Main Loop

These have been split exactly at the right microsecond to make the segue/transition flawless. If you open Winamp's playlist and add battle_intro and then battle_loop, in that order, you will hear how smooth the transition is meant to sound during playback. Now, the problem in AGS is that this segue from one piece into the next isn't seamless. Here's how it has been set up in the script:

Spoiler

SetGameOption(OPT_CROSSFADEMUSIC, 0);
battle_intro.Play(eAudioPriorityHigh, eOnce);
battle_loop.PlayQueued(eAudioPriorityHigh, eRepeat);

[close]

Prior to the audio bug being addressed in the above build, the transition between the two pieces would always make the second piece start playing a bit too early. And using the above build, there is a short but noticeable gap when the second piece begins. Sidenote: When the battle_loop.ogg piece is set to eRepeat, the loop is seamless. The issue doesn't affect regular looping pieces - just pieces that lead into other pieces.

This one's been bugging me for a while now and CW's post above reminded me about it. Hopefully it's an easy fix!

[Radiant]

One of our testers reports,

When I quit the game in full screen mode, the game stops with an error report, and wants to notify Microsoft. The error shows:
AppName: hq3.exe  AppVer: 3.3.0.1148  ModName: unknown
ModVer: 0.0.0.0  Offset: 4fd35f8a

[Crimson Wizard]

Testing with this new build, the "Send Error Report" crash I mentioned in my last post does still occur. Here is some additional information about the conditions of the crash:

-It occurs with both AGS games I'm testing (Al Emmo and Mage's Initiation)
-Only crashes when running in full-screen mode. In windowed mode, I can call QuitGame() or Alt+X and it exits without any rigmarole.
-Only crashes under the Direct3D driver.
-Only happens when I run the compiled game's exe. It doesn't occur when I use CTRL+F5 to test the game from the editor.

When I quit the game in full screen mode, the game stops with an error report, and wants to notify Microsoft. The error shows:
AppName: hq3.exe  AppVer: 3.3.0.1148  ModName: unknown
ModVer: 0.0.0.0  Offset: 4fd35f8a

I know what causes this, but don't know why (yet).
I also know how to fix it, but don't know why the fix works .
I'll take some time to investigate more.

[Crimson Wizard]

Ok, d3d9 crash on exit should be fixed:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/04dbbg9tjjb4av8/acwin_fixed_d3d9_24dec2013.7z

[AGD2]

Thanks, this fixes it for me.

[Crimson Wizard]

AGS 3.3.0 BETA 11 released (engine version 3.3.0.1150)
-------------------------------------------------------
This summarizes all the minor engine updates since November 14th.

Known regression: SpeechCenter plugin is not working with 3.3.0 Editor, but this is going to be resolved very soon.
Known problems with new features: Threaded audio (optional feature) has still serious issue that result in audio becoming desync with the rest of the game under some conditions.

-------------------------------------------------------
Changes from BETA 10:

Features:
- The game automatically fallbacks to Software graphics driver if the Hardware one could not run or initialize gfx mode for any reason.
- Improved automatic "max" scaling filter selection to let it take letterbox/sideborders mode into account.
- Further improved threaded audio (fixing definitive stuttering problems observed on Windows 8 system).
- Game.ChangeTranslation() script function no longer causes game to quit if the translation file belongs to different game or has unknown format.
- Log file is now only written if told to. It is enabled either by setup file:

Code: text

[misc]
log=1

or "--log" to command line; also "--no-log" overrides acsetup.cfg and disables log file.
Log is saved in "Users\<Name>\Saved Games\.ags" on Vista, Win7 and Win8, and in "My Documents\My Saved Games\.ags" on WinXP.
Other platforms will have their respected paths, e.g. Linux will write to "$HOME/.ags".
- Added two "overriding" options for game config:

Code: text

[override]
multitasking=0/1
os=dos/win/linux/mac

* Multitasking - overrides game's multitasking mode. Useful if game has lengthy unskippable sequences. Keep in mind that this will lock game in the given mode and make it ignore script commands that change it.
* Os - overrides System.OperatingSystem return value. Useful for ports when game disables some feature for the system because it thinks it's not supported.
- For every "long" command line argument the traditional GNU form (--arg) is supported, for example "--windowed", "--letterbox", etc (by Scott Baker).
- Built-in stubs for Wadjet Eye's "agswadjetutil" plugin, which lets to run certain games (such as "The Shivah: Kosher Edition") without the plugin present (at least on desktop systems) (by Eric Torbjorn).


Bug fixes:
- Fixed division by zero which occured if there was a 1px tall walkable area (a precisely straight horizontal line) with vector scaling applied.
- Fixed OGG speech ending prematurely if the audio file size is a multiple of 32 KB.
- Fixed crash related to forced x2 scaling (applied in case 320x200/240 resolution is not supported) (regression).
- Fixed potential crash that could sometimes occur on program abortion due logic error in the engine (regression).


Compatibility:
- Properly fixed drawing of the GUIs with transparent backgrounds in pre-3.2 games (previous fix made many months ago was incorrect and caused extra problem).


Download links (also updated at first page):
EXE:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/betas/AGS-3.3.0-beta11.exe
ZIP:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/betas/AGS-3.3.0-beta11.zip

[AGD2]

Just wanted to mention that the person who noticed the threaded audio lagging 20 seconds behind in the Al Emmo cutscene videos (and 2-3 seconds behind during gameplay) was actually using Windows 7 or 8, not XP.

Is the queued music glitch that I posted above related to this? Or is that a separate issue entirely?

[Radiant]

I'm curious if it's possible to either detect what type of keyboard the player is using, or to get scancodes for physical keys instead of the character. I'm asking because Heroine's Quest uses Q/W/E, A/D, Z/X/C as a control pad (at least on laptops that don't have a Home/Up/Pgup number pad); and this doesn't work on a German or French keyboard since they use QWERTZ and AZERTY respectively.

[DoorKnobHandle]

As a workaround, what I did in The Art of Dying (which is open source) is allow people to simply define their own keys in an ingame options menu. Seems like the best solution for everybody!

[Crimson Wizard]

AGS 3.3.0 BETA 12 released (engine version 3.3.0.1152)
-------------------------------------------------------
The last release in this year (unless there's some terrible bug that will need instant fixing).
Couple of fixes and addition to Editor Plugin API.

-------------------------------------------------------
Changes from BETA 11:

Editor Plugin API (by Gilad Shaham aka SpeechCenter):
- Added property for getting playable character.
- Added property for getting ScriptsAndHeaders collection.
- Added methods for refreshing project's tree.
- Added method for refreshing property grid.
- Added methods for controlling output panel.

Bug fixes:
- Fixed broken compatibility with existing Editor plugins that prevented from using game scripts (namely Speech Center plugin) (regression).
- Fixed bug that caused loss of precision when using DynamicSprite.Rotate() function (regression).

Compatibility:
- Fixed < 2.72 games not fully displaying label text sometimes.


Also updated CHANGELOG document to match current build state and added few missing names to credits.

Download links (also updated at first page):
EXE:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/betas/AGS-3.3.0-beta12.exe
ZIP:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/betas/AGS-3.3.0-beta12.zip

[Snarky]

Nice work, CW!

Can I make a suggestion? Release it! Unless there is a hideous bug (that isn't also present in the last official AGS release... 2.2.1 is it?), take this and put it out as AGS 3.3. Any further improvements can go into 3.3.1. But it's time we had a new official release, and this seems to be ready now.

Do it!

[Crimson Wizard]

Nice work, CW!

Can I make a suggestion? Release it! Unless there is a hideous bug (that isn't also present in the last official AGS release... 2.2.1 is it?), take this and put it out as AGS 3.3. Any further improvements can go into 3.3.1. But it's time we had a new official release, and this seems to be ready now.

Do it!

Heh
I'd do that, but there are two things to do, one of which is mandatory, and another would be rather nice to have if it's finished in time:
1. Update manual (my priority 1 now).
2. Fix threaded audio (still unstable in some case); this includes the fix made by monkey_05_06, which is still kept in his personal code storage.

Of course additional fixes can be moved to 3.3.1.

[Knox]

Can 3.3.1 have the custom resolution build integrated so there is no longer 2 versions?

[Crimson Wizard]

Can 3.3.1 have the custom resolution build integrated so there is no longer 2 versions?

I do not think it should be called 3.3.1, it is a major change, and 3.3.1 is only for improving and fixing 3.3.0.

[Joseph DiPerla]

I was going to post something like that. I really think this is a 3.4.0 release. If you did implement the custom resolutions and the limit removal, I would go as far 4.0.0.

[Radiant]

Can I make a suggestion? Release it! Unless there is a hideous bug (that isn't also present in the last official AGS release... 2.2.1 is it?), take this and put it out as AGS 3.3. Any further improvements can go into 3.3.1. But it's time we had a new official release, and this seems to be ready now.

I second that. I should note that there are a lot of people playing HQ now, which is a 3.3 beta build, so that should tell us something about its overall stability.

[cat]

Just don't forget to update the text in the license agreement:

Copyright (c) 1999-2011 Chris Jones and 2011-2013 various contributors.

[selmiak]

Just don't forget to update the text in the license agreement:

Copyright (c) 1999-2011 Chris Jones and 2011-2013 various contributors.

posted in January 2014...

[cat]

Exactly, that's why he should change the year. I just installed the new beta and noticed the old date.