[TEST] Building game data file from editor (based on AGS 3.4.0.1)

[monkey0506]

NOTE: This is NOT a stable build intended for making or releasing games! You probably should not even attempt to run games created with this build.

This build is designed as a diagnostic to help me track down any lingering issues with building the game data file from the editor's managed C# code, as a step toward building multiple target platforms from within the editor (building for Linux is on its way soon!). While this produces a Windows EXE, let me reiterate that you should NOT use or distribute this file, as it's not stable and could cause major runtime issues.

I need your help!

What I need is for several people to build your projects with this editor (MAKE A COPY FIRST!) and then verify that the game28.main.dta and the game28.dta files (in your project folder) are identical files. These are binary files, so you can't just open them in a text editor, and the bare minimum size is about 92 KB. Huge games (such as The Cat Lady) produce DTA files that are around 3-4 MB. There are several ways to verify that the binary files are identical - there are tools that can do this automatically, you can use a tool to check the SHA1 hash, or you can do what I've been doing and feed the output from a hex editor into a text diff tool (slightly tedious, but it lets me see exactly where the divergence took place).

I would like to go ahead and submit a pull request to merge this process (sans the messy debug stuff, of course) into the AGS 3.4.0 codebase, but I'd feel more comfortable if other people test it out first since it is such a huge change. I have tested it against several projects myself and all features seem to be properly accounted for in the newly output data files (as compared to the existing file format, meaning the engine should have no problem reading them).


Thanks!

Download

[Crimson Wizard]

I do not have a good game project to test building, so I'll have to go and look at the code instead . Just need to find some free time.

[monkey0506]

That's perfectly fine, too. This is slightly modified from my editor_make_dat branch, to clear out junk data and write two data files (native and managed).

I would like to have at least one or two people verify that it works for them (or even just send me the DTA files and I'll check them) before submitting the pull request.