Help summ up AGS pros and cons

Started by Crimson Wizard, Wed 08/07/2015 19:46:22

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Crimson Wizard

#40
E: nevermind...

Crimson Wizard

#41
I do not know if I should mention this, for this is yet uncertain. But for the last half of year I was seriously considering leaving my current job. This was not only because of AGS, but because I was not doing what I would like to do in general; was feeling that my life goes into wrong direction.
It was about this spring when I decided that if it happens, I could dedicate first few months to AGS, before looking for another full time job (or something else). It went so far that I actually spoke to the department head about leaving. Now, problem is that I am doing the part of work that they cannot put anyone else on at the moment. So I chose to stay for little longer (For some reasons I feel obliged to the team I am working with).
The task I am working on right now will be complete (hopefully) somewhere in August-September. I am going to try again then... :-\

Dualnames

I would wholeheartedly donate monies your way.In fact I'm sure that the community could rally behind Snarky's suggestion.
Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

Crimson Wizard

#43
Quote from: Dualnames on Fri 31/07/2015 20:17:02
I would wholeheartedly donate monies your way.In fact I'm sure that the community could rally behind Snarky's suggestion.
Well, when I was making that decision I assumed that I will get no payment by default. In past years I have made savings that make it not very possible that I get into finanical troubles too fast.
I cannot make any plans on payment also because it is not obvious how good results will be. I cannot judge by current state, because until now I was working in an unregular schedule.
This will also depend on whether I will be working alone or not, because I will have to learn many new things if working alone on AGS (well I would have to do this anyway).

Snarky

Quote from: Dualnames on Fri 31/07/2015 20:17:02
I would wholeheartedly donate monies your way.In fact I'm sure that the community could rally behind Snarky's suggestion.

Wasn't really my suggestion, but if CW wants to devote a few months to AGS I would certainly chip in. Would be good news for the engine!

I understand your reluctance to "make any plans on payment", CW, but maybe if you think of it more as a stipend that would enable you to devote the time to it, not as a salary or contract that comes with an expectation of specific deliverables? No telling how much we'd raise, anyway, but it would be at least some compensation.

Dualnames

I don't mean to force a situation, but I know how hard it is to work on something and have no financial support, and what I'm trying to say, is I, personally, wouldn't mind sending money your way, whether you're opting for that or not, it's something I feel would be right, knowing you'd spend so much time working on this. I'm not saying you're a money kind of guy, or that you would do this only for money, i just feel in this case, money would work as a facilitator, making things easier. If it's pictures of cat you want instead, I would gladly take pictures of my kittens, if that helps you in your task.

I appreciate all your efforts so far, and you've given so much, and i'd like to give something back, whatever that is.
Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

m0ds

#46
Totally. Though don't quit your job to work on AGS for free, you need to eat...!

So my initial proposition is this: The website (loominus, Darth, AGA version) has served us well as things have been, I think the most recent version came about around 08/09? I may be wrong, some of the threads regarding the redesign seem to be gone or off limits. No matter, it still feels like some years since then. The homepage in particular, has done it's job, been a landing page mostly for new visitors. But it's old and relatively underworked. The blog has been abandoned making the top right a bit of a ghost town... JIM ;)

With Berian and communities permission, I'd like to re-work the AGS homepage, calling on the talents of certain people to make it a place even us forumites want to visit regularly. Or at least, semi-regularly. Without going into too much detail on the technical aspects, there would be things to see and do there and some active fundraising with the ability to split your donation to the AGS related cause you want to support (alongnside adding to a charity pot). Depending how CW and the other developers feel about it, the main 2 causes will be "AGS 4"... yes, a re-written AGS built with futureproofing in mind that exports to other OS' and you can change the resolution in-game ;) This fund will be ambitious, no less ambitious than AGS 4 would be itself.

The second fund would be "Community", this would include server costs, developer funds, and any other community/ags related items. How you slide your bundle style slider will determine which cause you add the most to. Maybe one day you have $10 and want to give 9 to AGS 4 and 1 to the community, and another day the opposite. That kind of thing, the full logistics and of course the actual dealing of finances behind the scenes are not concrete as of this post... If not AGS 4 then an AGS that is updated to the standard been discussed in posts in this thread. But AGS 4 is going to capture the attention of outsiders more than 3.6.1.2. In fact, let's go the whole mile and give it a gimmick to capture more media attention: AGS 4D. You decide what the D is for. For me, it means 4 Developers. But it can also mean an experience like the Back To The Future Ride ;) It's cheesy but cheesy sells, and people will remember charity X got such and such an amount because of AGS 4(D).. The shelf life of this particular homepage maybe 3 years? Maybe more. Though it'd be good to raise the necessary funds before then! (This would also require some discussion on the costs to be covered etc).

So it (homepage) would still have clear links to the games database, the engine info page and the forums. But the space would be more thoroughly used and more regularly updated, including realtime stuff, like retaining the "latest forum threads" bit, game showcase and of course, realtime funds. The art will be more fun, animated pixel art (think: Mr Frith) with occasional subtle changes to spot. Plenty of space for bake sale stuff if necessary. Also a feature spot for AGS commercial games or such, it only need be small like 1 showcase spot. I'd hope to work (and support financially if necessary out my own pocket) Peder to implement these features which I think he nearly had cracked for his bundlit system. Or anyone capable, interested and willing if Peder is not. If Peder can crack the technicalities, someone else can handle the graphic design.

All that changes is the homepage though, the landing page, index.html, adventuregamestudio.co.uk page. Nothing else needs to change. The current color scheme would be kept as much as possible. But random people will want to start looking at it let alone AGS members, and more people may be tempted by the call of an epic new version of AGS (that suitably caters for the commercial devs and freeware ones).

I'm happy to give this a go, put my time, energy and some funds if necessary to try and enthuse the right people for it to exist. I'm not looking to get into a community-back-and-forth about what it should and shouldn't be though, as mentioned before, just go with an attempt, and if it doesn't work, it can easily be pulled and put back to what it is now. If there's support then I'd want to just get on with it and try and make it happen and ask that people have a little faith and wait for an unveiling. This is pretty much where I wanted to take things back in 2012 when we had "that vote" though, remember? AGS is an engine, a legacy, a community, yes! But it's also a brand, an under-served and marginally tainted brand, by its own admission of being "lol a hobby trinket here and there". But it can be more than that and can stand for more than that, everyone on this board can benefit from it and it's nothing to be ashamed of.

That's about my capacity round here. I can't do what AGA does (server side), nor what CW does and many others, but I'm pretty good at keeping websites in check and theoretically, driving people toward the site with kooky and contemporary features and making them part with their hard earned bitcoin. Or your 1 euro if you ares JIM :=

So that's my idea on the plate. And that idea is a summation of my previous points in this thread. Rather than pushing money at an individual, having an "AGS kickstarter" etc the above idea caters for interactivity & a fund that can cover a few things at once. I'm more in support of a ground up remake of AGS than a "try and fix CJ's AGS" so personally think its worth being that little bit more ambitious about how we achieve that. Take the best bits, refresh, make it so people can do maintanence to the engine easily in the future, update the libraries or whatnot so developers have more to work with and ultimately, the people who develop it nowadays, have a real tie/connection to it.

To sum up, a more maintained and fun homepage can lead to more funding which can lead to a better AGS... perhaps?

Feel free to discuss ;)

Dualnames

I'm no longer part of the AGS Blog, btw, I left in December, and I have absolutely no intention of coming back to it. Reasons concerning my leave, I'd rather keep personal. So concerning the blog, since I'm no longer affiliated with it, perhaps you should bug SSH about it.
Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

Snarky

#48
No offense to Mods, but I have a few concerns about the home page plans.

1. If it means making the AGS site design more like the Screen 7 design in some ways, I'm not convinced that's a step forward.
2. If we want to make fundraising more central to the site (and I'm not convinced that's a good idea in the first place, since I think it makes more sense to raise money within the community, and therefore on the forums), we really need to clarify who will be managing the money, distributing it, and how they will be held accountable for it. (Of course, we should do that anyway, if we start raising significant sums.)
3. I think a redesign of the AGS homepage should only be undertaken along with a redesign of the whole site. Whether this is a good idea depends on a) the visual redesign, b) the information structure redesign, and c) the quality of implementation. To approve a redesign without knowing any of these things seems precipitate.
4. Various disagreements about the plans for the engine, and with tying the webpage so closely to a not-yet-existing version rather than to all AGS actually has to offer.

Adding more "live" refreshes of the home page is a good idea in principle. Of course, part of the problem with it has typically been that people for various reasons stop updating (whether it's a blog or game of the month or whatever), and then you need to find someone to take it over, or you're stuck with outdated "live" content that makes the site seem abandoned. Perhaps Mods is the right person to ensure this doesn't happen. But it might also be good to rely more on auto-updating stuff, like e.g. displaying recent tweets with "adventuregamestudio" in them.

Crimson Wizard

On a side note, I would like to point out that this thread was completely derailed from original topic... where is mods looking... (roll).

Joseph DiPerla

Should a new topic be created for this then?? Quick question CW... Based on all the "Bringing the engine into a more modern state", etc... Would having AGS ported to Allegro 5 help tremendously in that? It seems a lot of these modern limitations may be in part due to AGS still using Allegro 4. If that is the case, perhaps we can then raise funding to hire an outside developer to port AGS to Allegro 5 and then the community could take it from there. Don't know, just wondering and thinking out loud...
Joseph DiPerla--- http://www.adventurestockpile.com
Play my Star Wars MMORPG: http://sw-bfs.com
See my Fiverr page for translation and other services: https://www.fiverr.com/josephdiperla
Google Plus Adventure Community: https://plus.google.com/communities/116504865864458899575

Crimson Wizard

Sorry, I have no intention to discuss fundraising or bringing AGS to Allegro 5 now. As I said, this thread was derailed. I kepts answering by inertia. I did not want to participate in another instance of "lets upgrade AGS quick" thread.

Joseph DiPerla

Hi CW,

I completely understand your point of view and would like respect that. So I ask this, to make sure we all respect your choice here, but do you not want to discuss this in this thread? Or do you not want to discuss this at all? Because if it is something that the community is allowed to discuss, then lets go ahead and create a new thread and bring this one back on topic.
Joseph DiPerla--- http://www.adventurestockpile.com
Play my Star Wars MMORPG: http://sw-bfs.com
See my Fiverr page for translation and other services: https://www.fiverr.com/josephdiperla
Google Plus Adventure Community: https://plus.google.com/communities/116504865864458899575

Crimson Wizard

Quote from: Joseph DiPerla on Sat 01/08/2015 14:54:58
I completely understand your point of view and would like respect that. So I ask this, to make sure we all respect your choice here, but do you not want to discuss this in this thread? Or do you not want to discuss this at all? Because if it is something that the community is allowed to discuss, then lets go ahead and create a new thread and bring this one back on topic.
How could I not allow the community to discuss something??! I do not own this thread, the community, nor AGS. You also are not oblidged to respect my choice.
You were asking me a question, and I answered that I do not want to discuss this now. That is all. I am leaving this thread, because its purpose was fullfilled a week ago.

MiteWiseacreLives!

I'm prob not qualified to weigh in on this, but I've been kicking around here for a while and I didn't know there was a donate button  (wtf) I knew about Bakesale.. Although I was inactive during the last one.
So from over here in casual-land, a little redesign of the home page wouldn't hurt.
I know this thread is way off topic, but we were done with pros and cons weren't we?? And good conversation always come about naturally anyways  :-D

Joseph DiPerla

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Sat 01/08/2015 15:09:39
Quote from: Joseph DiPerla on Sat 01/08/2015 14:54:58
I completely understand your point of view and would like respect that. So I ask this, to make sure we all respect your choice here, but do you not want to discuss this in this thread? Or do you not want to discuss this at all? Because if it is something that the community is allowed to discuss, then lets go ahead and create a new thread and bring this one back on topic.
How could I not allow the community to discuss something??! I do not own this thread, the community, nor AGS. You also are not oblidged to respect my choice.
You were asking me a question, and I answered that I do not want to discuss this now. That is all. I am leaving this thread, because its purpose was fullfilled a week ago.

You are absolutely right. But even though I am not obliged, I would still like to show respect to a community member, developer and we all appreciate what you do for AGS. But you are also right, we are a community and need to discuss things we have on our mind. I ported the off topic talk to this thread here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=52504.0
Joseph DiPerla--- http://www.adventurestockpile.com
Play my Star Wars MMORPG: http://sw-bfs.com
See my Fiverr page for translation and other services: https://www.fiverr.com/josephdiperla
Google Plus Adventure Community: https://plus.google.com/communities/116504865864458899575

Snarky

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Sat 01/08/2015 14:29:44
On a side note, I would like to point out that this thread was completely derailed from original topic... where is mods looking... (roll).

I think we mods tend to deal with thread derailment differently depending on context. Sometimes we shut it down, sometimes split it off into a new thread, and sometimes just allow the conversation to take whatever turn it takes. There's no hard-and-fast rule, just what seems best on a case-by-case basis. In this case the original topic seemed to be more or less concluded, but if you as the thread starter don't like the drift in topic, we can split off the later posts.

Crimson Wizard

#57
Quote from: Klytos on Wed 29/07/2015 13:21:36
* The ability to switch between full screen / windowed mode and change resolution from within the game. This isn't even a new idea, it's been standard in games for over a decade.

I made a small experiment, and was able to make AGS switch between fullscreen and windowed successfully several times in a row.
By "successfully" I mean that it did not crash...
However, there are couple of noticable issues, one of which makes game barely playable after switch.

To clarify the situation, the main issue here is not the change of display mode on its own, but that AGS was written in such a way that never suggested that something of graphics mode may change at runtime. Data and game objects initialization is spread across multitude of functions inside AGS code, and it will take time to pick out ones that depend on resolution.

Main work is to untangle the code.

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