AGS 2.72 Final 2 - World Cup Edition

[RickJ]

Hehe... I shouldn't even admit this as it's embarassing but I totally mis-read the manual about Format.   I did use the qualifer "apparent" in anticipation of my noobieness...

Thanks though.  Now I can stop worrying myself and go to sleep.   

Btw SSH, good luck in court if you decide to go through with suing the gardner.  Cheers.

[RickJ]

Apparent Memory or Resource Leak
After doing a number test games I get the following runtime error when trying to run a "Game Test".  Quitting and restarting the editor does no good.  I have to reboot my machine to correct the problem.


Unable to execute the game engine.  Make sure ACWIN.EXE is in the game folder and that you have write access to the compiled folder.

CreateProcess returned error 8


Note:  In the test game I am calling and returning from a minigame and exiting from the first game using crtl+alt+end.

P.S. I know I double posted but since the previous post is totally unreleated it seemed like the best way to document this behavior.

[Pumaman]

it's somewhat counterintuitive that, to select tile size, you have to right-click, hold and drag - yet to select a bunch of tiles, you have to left-click, release, don't drag, then left-click again.

It's a reasonable point, but since AGS has always worked this way, people are used to it, so it would only cause confusion to change it now.

it's tricky to get a tile starting at the top left pixel, because the gray area outside the actual bitmap is not responsive to mouse clicks, and on most resolutions or zooms moving the mouse cursor even one pixel to the right or bottom means you won't select the top left pixel

I see what you mean, but it's a relatively big job to change this compared with the benefit of doing so. I'll think about it though.

when task-swapping, sometimes the selected tile size changes of its own accord

I haven't managed to get this to happen myself, but I'll put the same fix in that I put in for the hotspot walk-to points getting moved when you alt+tabbed, which should hopefully resolve it.

if, while in the task to select a bunch of tiles, you click the right-mouse button, the editor gets confused about whether you're resizing or selecting

Thanks, I'll get that fixed.

importing multiple tiles into a folder gets progressively slower if there already are tiles in the folder; it seems as if the entire folder is rendered between any two sprite imports, and that can take as much as seconds on low-end systems.

Good point, there's no need for it to do that, I'll look into it.

speaking of sprites, it would be nice to be able to re-order sprite folders.

Would anyone else find this ability useful?

Also, the interpreter occasionally crashes with an internal error when deleting a sprite folder, even if it was empty. If this happens, game data is not saved, which is kind of annoying

Is this still happening? I was sure it had been fixed in 2.71...

The "current location" in the sprite manager (as well as the opened/closed status of individual sprite folders) sometimes resets when you switch between menus, and sometimes doesn't, for no apparent reason.

If you go to the Change Sprite option of the View Editor, Cursor Editor, etc, they use the sprite manager for you to select the sprite, and so the sprite manager will get "reset" to the location of the last thing you selected.

Also, when a dialogue picture shows up, the character will blink wrongly when the actual dialog is finished and his mouth stops moving. Specifically, the first frame of the blinking cycle is shown, but the rest are not.

Well spotted, I'll get it fixed.

When you right-click on the list of rooms, there's a menu with a "refresh" option. However, this option only works if you right-click on an existing room, i.e. if you click below the rooms but still on the list, the option appears but doesn't actually do anything.

Well spotted, I'll get that fixed too.

If you edit the room description of the current room, the room menu still shows the old description until you re-load the room.

Thanks, I'll fix it.

If you are setting baselines for objects, and you load a new room, you are still in "set baseline" mode, which is somewhat unexpected. This is not the case for walkbehind baselines.

That's a reasonable point, I'll change it.

Thanks for all your feedback, Radiant.

1.  String is not highlighted as a keyword (i.e. String) is this by design or an omission?

Yeah, I'm not sure about this one. In a way, it's not a keyword, since the String class is a class just like Character or Game is, it's no longer a special built-in thing. But on the other hand, maybe it should be highlighted as a keyword considering its importance.

4.  == Operator - Is there an explanation of how the == operator works with strings (equiv to CaseComp or Comp)?  I did not find it in the help document. 

It's case-sensitive (so equivalent to StrComp). I'll mention it in the StrComp section of the manual.

At one point pressing ctrl-1 to edit the first module brought up the editor'swindow frame and menu but did not display the text.  Instead the previous graphics were visible in the background of the window.  The menu was functional and could be used to exit the editor.   

When this occured I had previously ran "game test" several times

Apparent Memory or Resource Leak
After doing a number test games I get the following runtime error when trying to run a "Game Test".  Quitting and restarting the editor does no good.  I have to reboot my machine to correct the problem.

Has anyone else seen this sort of behaviour? I'm wondering if it might be a problem specific to RunAGSGame.

Which version of Windows are you running?

[strazer]

speaking of sprites, it would be nice to be able to re-order sprite folders.

Would anyone else find this ability useful?

Yes, I'd use it. I like to keep (digital ) things neatly organized so I use sprite folders a lot. I think especially in larger game projects there's no way around it. Being able to move those folders about would simplify things. But it's obviously not a priority.

[Scummbuddy]

I also would find it a good move to add. Us animators who like everything meticulously correct are adamant about neatness and being able to organize everything best, would keep us just that little bit more saner.

[SSH]

it's tricky to get a tile starting at the top left pixel, because the gray area outside the actual bitmap is not responsive to mouse clicks, and on most resolutions or zooms moving the mouse cursor even one pixel to the right or bottom means you won't select the top left pixel

I see what you mean, but it's a relatively big job to change this compared with the benefit of doing so. I'll think about it though.

I always thought it would be handy to be able to enetr the numbers for the size and origin of the sprite grabbing manually....

[Scummbuddy]

Do'h!

[RickJ]

Has anyone else seen this sort of behaviour? I'm wondering if it might be a problem specific to RunAGSGame.

Which version of Windows are you running?

I am running WinME (arghhh!). 

[Radiant]

it's tricky to get a tile starting at the top left pixel, because the gray area outside the actual bitmap is not responsive to mouse clicks, and on most resolutions or zooms moving the mouse cursor even one pixel to the right or bottom means you won't select the top left pixel

I see what you mean, but it's a relatively big job to change this compared with the benefit of doing so. I'll think about it though.

It would help if you changed the "rounding"... if you zoom the sprite, each pixel of the sprite is mapped to 3x3 pixels on screen, yes? If you click on 1,1 on-screen it should map to (1 / 3), (1 / 3) = 0,0 in the sprite. But it doesn't.


By the way feature request - in the "characters" panel, could you show the sprite from the talk view, as well as from the character's walk view? Would be nice.

Also feature request - the ability to name dialogs (not for any in-game use, but to make the menu with 50+ dialogs more accessible)

[Kinoko]

speaking of sprites, it would be nice to be able to re-order sprite folders.

Would anyone else find this ability useful?

Yes, I have a large game which equals many folders that I'd like to keep organised. But yeah, it's not a pressing issue, it would simply be nice.

[Radiant]

When a speech portrait is displayed, after all text is "read", the character's mouth will stop moving. At this point, the character will also stop blinking! Please fix that. In some cases, the first frame of the blinking loop is displayed, but not the entire loop.

If you change a character's BlinkInterval, the first time the character blinks will still use the old interval.

If a character has only two loops (for moving left and right), if the character moves diagonally to the upper right, the loop for moving left is displayed. If the character moves diagonally to the lower left, the loop for moving right is displayed.

In spite of what the documentation says, LockView does not prevent a character's loop number (within that view) from being changed. For instance, if a character is given "LockView" and "AnimateCharacter" commands (e.g. to set loop 4 which is a falling animation), then moves, the character's animation will change to loop 0-3 depending on the direction. Of course a walkaround exists by creating a new view with the falling animation in loop 0, 1, 2 and 3, but it's a bit weird.

[SSH]

Any chance of Ctrl-Shift-1, Ctrl-Shift-2, etc. opening the module HEADERS?

[Radiant]

Any chance of Ctrl-Shift-1, Ctrl-Shift-2, etc. opening the module HEADERS?

I'll second that.

[SSH]

Help file still has 2.71 as its title, btw

[Pumaman]

Yes, I'd use it. I like to keep (digital  ) things neatly organized so I use sprite folders a lot. I think especially in larger game projects there's no way around it. Being able to move those folders about would simplify things. But it's obviously not a priority.

I also would find it a good move to add. Us animators who like everything meticulously correct are adamant about neatness and being able to organize everything best, would keep us just that little bit more saner.

Ok, it's certainly worth considering then.

It would help if you changed the "rounding"... if you zoom the sprite, each pixel of the sprite is mapped to 3x3 pixels on screen, yes? If you click on 1,1 on-screen it should map to (1 / 3), (1 / 3) = 0,0 in the sprite. But it doesn't.

I just tried this, but it does seem to do as you suggest, where at a zoom level, the top-left block of pixels all map to 0,0...

By the way feature request - in the "characters" panel, could you show the sprite from the talk view, as well as from the character's walk view? Would be nice.

That wouldn't be hard to do, I'll look into it.

Also feature request - the ability to name dialogs (not for any in-game use, but to make the menu with 50+ dialogs more accessible)

Yes, this has come up before, along with fonts they are the last purely number-based bits of AGS, so it's something I should address at some point.

When a speech portrait is displayed, after all text is "read", the character's mouth will stop moving. At this point, the character will also stop blinking! Please fix that. In some cases, the first frame of the blinking loop is displayed, but not the entire loop.

It seems ok to me ... the first-frame thing is related to the other bug you pointed out earlier in the thread.

If you change a character's BlinkInterval, the first time the character blinks will still use the old interval.

This is because the current "blink countdown" continues and only gets reset when he next blinks. If the opposite behaviour was used, where changing the blink interval also reset the blink, some people would probably complain about that, too.

If a character has only two loops (for moving left and right), if the character moves diagonally to the upper right, the loop for moving left is displayed. If the character moves diagonally to the lower left, the loop for moving right is displayed.

Does this definitely still happen with 2.72 beta 2? It's something I thought I addressed in the beta.

In spite of what the documentation says, LockView does not prevent a character's loop number (within that view) from being changed. For instance, if a character is given "LockView" and "AnimateCharacter" commands (e.g. to set loop 4 which is a falling animation), then moves, the character's animation will change to loop 0-3 depending on the direction

This is a very long-standing issue, basically it's been like this for so long that if I fixed it now, it would probably break a lot of people's games. Therefore, there's not much that can be done about it at this point ... I'll leave the documentation though, because that *should* be how people use the LockView function.

Any chance of Ctrl-Shift-1, Ctrl-Shift-2, etc. opening the module HEADERS?

I thought about this, but decided that module headers were edited so rarely that it wasn't worth a shortcut key ... however since you both seem keen on it I'll see what I can do.

Help file still has 2.71 as its title, btw

Hehe yes ta, I noticed this earlier in the week too

[Kweepa]

Any chance of Ctrl-Shift-1, Ctrl-Shift-2, etc. opening the module HEADERS?

I thought about this, but decided that module headers were edited so rarely that it wasn't worth a shortcut key ... however since you both seem keen on it I'll see what I can do.

You must plan ahead a lot more than I do!
(I would love to be able to have both open at once and toggle between them with a shortcut key.)

[monkey0506]

Definitely.  Once the modules have been produced the headers might not get edited much...but during production. :o  I love the fact there's a shortcut to open the scripts...That's awesome.  But if I want to change the parameter lists for the global functions...as I've been doing quite a bit lately for this next version of the QueuedSpeech module...

I'm sure it couldn't be that hard to manage what with already having implemented shortcuts to edit the scripts.  And I can't tell you how much I would love being able to have quick access to those!

[edmundito]

Oi! bug: I'm used to pressing Ctrl+S to save on other script editors (like Scite?  ), but when I do that on the AGS script editor, it works kind of like an undo for me. I found this on 2.71, but it must be on 2.72 as well... right?

[monkey0506]

It's always worked that way.  The AGS Editor uses Ctrl+W for saving.  You can use other script editors (I'm not sure which ones work with it) if you want though.

[edmundito]

It's always worked that way.  The AGS Editor uses Ctrl+W for saving.  You can use other script editors (I'm not sure which ones work with it) if you want though.

Ah, you don't understand... the bug is that Ctrl+S does something that is not supposed to. Pressing Ctrl+S should do nothing at all.