AGS: Let's start over?

[Crimson Wizard]

I was keep thinking in the past few days, and I want to tell that I probably will be able to maintain existing engine some more, just spending less time. The work on 3.3.1 is still going on (Gurok making some additions), and since I know some quirks of AGS better, I will have to help sometimes anyway.
This way you guys will hopefully may focus on new development (if that is really what you are planning to do).

[bicilotti]

I was keep thinking in the past few days, and I want to tell that I probably will be able to maintain existing engine some more, just spending less time.

This is extremely welcome news!

edit: and kind of falls into what Wyz was planning

[Atavismus]

I was keep thinking in the past few days, and I want to tell that I probably will be able to maintain existing engine some more, just spending less time.

Awesome news CW!
Thx again for your past and future work

I'm also glad to read this abondant discussion about the future of AGS in order to make it still attractive and competitive.

Btw, I was wondering: could a (small) Kickstarter campaign be a way to propose a kind of indemnity (not salary) to our courageous coders and our great leader project (CW)?
Without questioning the do-cracy nor the open source side, it could unite and expand the community and motivate coders.
AGS won't become a greedy money whore business, it's just a way to thx coders and speed up the development.
So AGS 4.0 could become true before 2020

[Crimson Wizard]

Btw, I was wondering: could a (small) Kickstarter campaign be a way to propose a kind of indemnity (not salary) to our courageous coders and our great leader project (CW)?

Lol, no, please don't do that (speaking for myself) . I find myself almost not encouraged by money, quite contrary, I see money as a contract which just adds obligations, which I don't really like .

[Atavismus]

Lol, no, please don't do that (speaking for myself) . I find myself almost not encouraged by money, quite contrary, I see money as a contract which just adds obligations, which I don't really like .

Lol, ok, no problem, do it for free so
I'm sure some coders will need your part
More seriously, I totally understand your point (I share it myself), but maybe it could be useful for some other people (temporary unemployed people for example, or student, or freelancer in period of under-occupation, etc.).
Also, as I said, no "democracy" or "accountability", you people stays in do-cracy

[Radiant]

Lol, no, please don't do that (speaking for myself) . I find myself almost not encouraged by money, quite contrary, I see money as a contract which just adds obligations, which I don't really like .

Spoken like a true CJ!

[miguel]

Yes, I believe CW is the second incarnation of God. Ags will arrive to the holy land.

[Crimson Wizard]

Yes, I believe CW is the second incarnation of God. Ags will arrive to the holy land.

Err... can you please stop doing this

[Adeel]

Yes, I believe CW is the second incarnation of God. Ags will arrive to the holy land.

Err... can you please stop doing this

There are wizards who are dying to be worshiped and here are you, Crimson Wizard, refusing your worshiping even when the people are willingly doing it.

[Joseph DiPerla]

I totally get CW. There's praise and then there is too much. But the point is we appreciate all the work that CW, CJ, JJS, and everyone else's name is not abbreviated

[Stacy Davidson]

I'll just add my $0.2 from the perspective of the (very) small commercial studio demographic.

Toward the continued development of AGS 3: I have seen the newest builds make leaps and bounds toward the engine I desperately need and want for Jack Houston and the Necronauts. Running the game for the first time in 1920x1080 using CW's CustomRes branch was nothing short of a religious experience. I feel that if vsync can be added back in for D3D, the engine will be exactly where I need it for now. I can get around the speed limitations. I would love to see the engine receive more tweaks and bug fixes for a while, because I can see myself using 3.x for the next year or two if need be.

As for the possibilities with a new AGS 4: I have to agree with Snarky that I don't think anyone wants to see the fundamentals of the AGS development environment change, with the exception of perhaps a more 21st century OO scripting language. I love the editor, and I think the features and the way they work have been refined so sharply over the years that they have become the major draw for me with AGS. I would pay for a better engine if there were one, but when it comes to the structure of AGS, the features it has and the ease of implementation, money cannot buy a better environment for making adventure games. If I jumped ship tomorrow for Unity (which I am currently looking at as a possibility for the long run) or one of those other "adventure makers", a major disadvantage is it would mean losing all the years of refinement that has made AGS a joy to use. This is why I think it's imperative that the basic structure of the AGS editor and development features remain spiritually in tact.

And this brings me to my final point. Although I can understand, in theory, the idea of a generic AGS 4 aimed at making "any kind of game", I think this would be absolutely detrimental to AGS. It is, after all, ADVENTURE game studio. Unity is designed to accommodate any kind of game. AGS remains a light and streamlined system because it is aimed at doing a particular thing, and it does it EXTREMELY well. I don't really think there would be anything to gain by putting in the extra work to accommodate other game genres. In fact I think it would greatly damage the usefulness of AGS for doing what it was designed to do: emulate Sierra & LucasArts adventure games. Just think of the editor and how it's laid out: text parser, lip sync, dialogs, rooms, translations, all these things were developed specifically for creating adventure games. Although it is possible to hack AGS a bit and create other kinds of games, which is perfectly cool, I do enjoy the fact that it is tailor made specifically for adventure games. I think everyone does.

Therefor, I would think that writing up a wiki to outline the desired goals for an AGS 4 would need to start with outlining all the things AGS does right (which is, above the hood -- I.E. to the end user -- , 90% of it IMO). Then creating a road map for getting to those results by way of more modern and efficient means, on a technical level, so that when you do reach the complexity level of, say, resolution, you don't hit any roadblocks.

I can't comment to much beyond this as I'm not a contributing programmer, but that is how I'm seeing it from my particular side of the fence.

[amateurhour]

As someone who just uses the engine for hobby purposes but has considered selling a few small games in the next year or so...

I've played with Construct 2, Stencyl, Unity, AGS, and Game Maker 8 and I can say without a doubt that for point and click games AGS is by and large the easiest to use and most enjoyable to work with. Even with the limitations it supposedly has, I've seen people make metal gear style stealth games, straight up bullet hell games, fighting games, GTA clones, and one of the coolest platformers I've played in the last three years (Art of Dying) with what is claimed to be a dated engine, and most of those games mentioned with the exception of AoD were done two years ago or more.

I'd be sad if AGS went the way of Unity or other game design tools and didn't keep it's simple to use interface. (not that it's necessarily being discussed, I'm just giving my .02)

As for free vs pay, I have zero problems paying for something I use regularly. My only, ONLY gripe with AGS is that it doesn't easily or perfectly port your games to Linux/OSX without some serious help. If that one issue was resolved I'd pay for a licensed version in a heartbeat. I don't personally care about android/ios integration but that's just me.

Whatever happens, I wish all the devs the best of luck and if there's a cost associated I've got no problem throwing some cash at the finished product.

[Dropped Monocle Games]

I can't programme, so I'm not sure if my input is needed but I 100% agree with Stacy.

Running the game for the first time in 1920x1080 using CW's CustomRes branch was nothing short of a religious experience. I feel that if vsync can be added back in for D3D, the engine will be exactly where I need it for now. I can get around the speed limitations. I would love to see the engine receive more tweaks and bug fixes for a while, because I can see myself using 3.x for the next year or two if need be.

I tested out some of our latest game in 1080 and it blew me away!
I love the CustomRes version, and with with Vsync already in the 3.3.1 test build! both of this together would make me so happy for a couple of years to come
the reason I picked AGS to work with to make adventure games is that within a short time you can learn the basics and make a game very easily and I hope that is something that wont change!
Edit: oh yer.. and its free not that I'm not willing to pay for some software.. I am

[Stupot]

the reason I picked AGS to work with to make adventure games is that within a short time you can learn the basics and make a game very easily and I hope that is something that wont change!

This to me is the most important thing of all. AGS simply must remain accessible to newcomers. I'm sure everyone already knows this, 'dont scare away potential newcomers' has to be the single most important mantra to bear in mind at every single stage of development of any new version of AGS, whatever form that may take.

[TheBitPriest]

Great discussion.

One of the things that sets AGS apart in my mileage is its ability to easily and accurately emulate the 320x200 classic adventure. I have taken almost every other game making tool for a test drive, and only AGS fits the bill. While more modern adventures are a "patch and hack" for AGS, the opposite is true for most of the other engines. In my mind, this is the default, narrow genre of the tool. We're partying like it's 1991! :-)

Just one man's opinion, obviously.

But in my mind, this is more than a mere technical decision to support low resolution pixel art. It's been the core focus of the tool. I would suggest the following mission statement based solely on my perception of our use of the tool:

AGS is a tool that exists to give technically able artists the ability to keep the Golden Era of adventure games alive with new content, contests, and community.

[Sslaxx]

AGS must look forward, not back. If 320x2x0 can be implemented without holding back AGS, then keep it. Otherwise, it should stay with the existing versions and be dropped going forwards. While yes, a "do it all" tool from VGA resolution up to (and beyond) 1080p would be nice, it shouldn't be at the cost of functionality.

Whatever, whoever, decides the future path of AGS isn't going to please everyone - and they definitely shouldn't try to.

[Snarky]

AGS must look forward, not back. If 320x2x0 can be implemented without holding back AGS, then keep it. Otherwise, it should stay with the existing versions and be dropped going forwards.

Strongly disagree.  320x200/240 is an essential feature, as demonstrated by the large number of AGS games released in this format (it's more popular, I daresay, than any of the other resolutions available). Plus as TheBitPriest says, it's one of the things that sets AGS apart from any of the other available alternatives.

[Calin Leafshade]

Theres no reason 320x2x0 should be dropped. The new system just needs to be resolution agnostic and allow the game maker to choose the filter used for scaling. We already have this to some degree.

[Daniel Eakins]

Is there any real reason to even use full screen nowadays? "Borderless windowed" (as in adapting the game's resolution to the desktop as opposed to adapting the desktop resolution to the game's resolution) is so much better.

[unixfan2001]

Interesting talk.

I actually ceased all work on my engine (based on HTML5 and Node Webkit with some Haskell glue code) due to re-discovering AGS and finding out that the editor works well under Linux.

Is the situation really this bad? I mean, I'm all for efficiency. But hardware is evolving all the time, so shouldn't we be able to get away with some inefficiencies in the stack?

@Daniel Eakins

It's kind of a design choice, I assume. Borderless windows eat up more resources, but fullscreen is less responsive during the process of switching to another application.