AGS 2.6 Final - it's that time of year

[scotch]

the < 128=transparent >128=opaque sounds good to me, you could at least design your game with that in mind.  It might sometimes look a bit odd but it's the best way suggested so far I think.

[Scorpiorus]

That's a possibility - another option would be for it to check the alpha on each pixel as part of the downscaling process, and remove the pixel completely if alpha <128. That could end up with some strange looking results though I guess.

Yeah, making it on sprite loading would keep the game speed. So, will there be some options to choose from or AGS will round the transparency automatically, using 50% bound to distinguish?

[Pumaman]

Well, I'm not sure how far to go with this. Very few people will need to invoke the downscale option, so I don't think it's worth spending too much time worrying about it, so I'll probably just hardcode the 50% thing in.

[Scorpiorus]

oh, I understand. I just worried about people outlining their characters with the alpha channel with different opacity (thus it has both <128 and >= 128 values)and then wondering why do the character's edges look that uneven. I see however that's not a big problem if it will be stated in the manual.

~Cheers

[Pumaman]

Yeah, and since most people will run at 32-bit and thus have the alpha blending, it's not too important.

Anyway, here's an experimental engine:
http://www.agsforums.com/acwin.zip

which has the 50% feature, and it seems to work ok with scotch's alpha demo, so try it out and let me know if it seems acceptable.

[Scorpiorus]

Have tried it with scotch's test game. Works fine for me.

Later I'll give it go and draw some alpha with gradients in Photoshop and report if I find something.

[Joseph DiPerla]

Wow, another great release. Especially with AnimateButton!!!

Chris, your are an adventure game God. There should be an adventure game holiday dedicated to you. OK, I may have gone to far.

JD

[.VonCarrigan]

Hey there!

I downloaded the beta today, and I had two problems. One, I can't get the auto-outlining to work. Is there anything special I have to do? I just selected the option button "Automatic outline" in font 1, which is suposed to be the speech one.

And the other problem (and much worse) is that the character sprite leaves trails in the screen. It seems to be related to the fact that now the screen is not always refreshed every frame.

In every other aspect, the new beta is great. I like the fact that hi-res stuff now shows fine in the editor.

[TheYak]

Hmm, have you been able to run any other DirectX games on that PC?

Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Space cadet pinball, some tetris-clone & dxdraw diag runs fine.  Hmm..  maybe I'll just have to AGS at home.. dammit.

[Pumaman]

I can't get the auto-outlining to work. Is there anything special I have to do? I just selected the option button "Automatic outline" in font 1, which is suposed to be the speech one.

It should just work. Are you not getting any outline then?

And the other problem (and much worse) is that the character sprite leaves trails in the screen. It seems to be related to the fact that now the screen is not always refreshed every frame.

Hmm, I haven't seen that problem in any of the games I tested the new version with. Could you upload a game that demonstrates the problem?

Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Space cadet pinball, some tetris-clone & dxdraw diag runs fine.

Good god man, do you ever do any work?

[.VonCarrigan]

I knew it! I'm the only one who gets this kind of bug. Buaaaaahhhhh (snif)  

(And I seem to be the only one who can't log in to the forums, too. )

Well, I'll make my game exe, and try to upload it somewhere. When it's ready I'll post here letting you know.

Thanks, bye!

[.VonCarrigan]

OK, this is my game just the way it was when I last worked on it.

http://voncarrigan.tripod.com/illudeon.zip

I looked at it again and it seems that not only the character, but several other things are not being refreshed. For example, dialog texts won't go away, and new dialog texts are printed on top of old ones, and it all becomes a mess. These artifacts clear out while scrolling (cause the engine does redraw the whole thing while scrolling, I guess).

Well, check it out. OH, and if someone else wants to check my exe out just to see the graphics/music or whatever, they're welcome.

Thanks again!

[Inkoddi]

I don't get those kinds problems...   ...maybe it's your computer that messes things up?

[SSH]

These kinds of things might be fixed if you re-install DirectX and/or graphics drivers.

[Pumaman]

I looked at it again and it seems that not only the character, but several other things are not being refreshed. For example, dialog texts won't go away, and new dialog texts are printed on top of old ones, and it all becomes a mess. These artifacts clear out while scrolling (cause the engine does redraw the whole thing while scrolling, I guess).

Aha! It's a 15-bit problem, which is why it doesn't happen to most people (it'll only happen if your graphics card doesn't support 16-bit). Thanks for pointing it out, I'll get it fixed.

[Scorpiorus]

Don't want to create a separate thread on that. Seems like the system.screen_height never returns 240 or 480.

[Pumaman]

Hmm good point, that's set to the game resolution rather than the actual screen resolution. It's fixed in RC3a.

[RickJ]

I noticed something strange with RC3a.  When using 8 bit color and 320x240 resolution the pallette gets screwed up during testing.  I run Test from the menu.  The game compiles and boots up and everything is fine.  Make the character walk around and the pallette gets trashed.   Exit the game and try again get same result.  Exit AGSEDIT and try again and everything is OK.  

I am not exactly sure what's different betwen first and second session.  But I think I re-imported the background pic the first time and don't think I made anyother changes.

I suppose there could be something wrong with my machine.  I'll continue to make observations and if I notice anything else that may be of use I'll come bacjk and let you know.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Robert Eric]

CJ, in the next version, can you add a parameter in the DisplayTopBar() function that lets you specify which font to use?

P.S. Thanks for that function, by the way.

[Pumaman]

I noticed something strange with RC3a.  When using 8 bit color and 320x240 resolution the pallette gets screwed up during testing.  I run Test from the menu.  The game compiles and boots up and everything is fine.  Make the character walk around and the pallette gets trashed.   Exit the game and try again get same result.  Exit AGSEDIT and try again and everything is OK.  

Strange. Does this not happen with older versions? What about if you use 320x200? Are you running windowed or full-screen?

CJ, in the next version, can you add a parameter in the DisplayTopBar() function that lets you specify which font to use?

It uses the normal font, so SetNormalFont can change it.