AGS 3.0 Final - it's been a long road

[GarageGothic]

Did you install .NET framework 2.0 on the computer?

[Pumaman]

Is it intended that AGS2.8 will run on Win ME/98?  I got a error creating a default game when I tried the latest beta.   The error message mentions something about some NT thing not being present.  I'm on a linux computer at the moment so I can't quote the error exactly.   If it's supposed to run on ME/98 then I will gladly recreate the error message and post it here.

Hmm, it should work in Windows 98, but then I don't have a copy of that any more to test it with. As GarageGothic says, make sure you've got .NET 2.0 installed, and if that doesn't fix it please do post the error message here.

Has anyone else tried to run 2.8 on Windows 98?


Anyway, beta 8 is now up. This fixes up various things, and includes a new version of the tutorials that have been fully updated to reflect 2.8.

I'm getting the feeling that it's almost time to move onto Release Candidate stage. Just out of interest, is anyone actually using the 2.8 betas to properly work on a game, and if so how've you found it compared to 2.72?

[Misj']

Hmm, it should work in Windows 98, but then I don't have a copy of that any more to test it with. As GarageGothic says, make sure you've got .NET 2.0 installed, and if that doesn't fix it please do post the error message here.

Has anyone else tried to run 2.8 on Windows 98?

The only Win-ME computer I have at my disposel doesn't allow installation of .NET (yes, it should be possible, but trying to install .NET will crash te computer, and won't install it). So technically: no, I don't try it, because I couldn't.

Not really usefull to you, but worth mentioning (I thought)

Misj'

Ps. It's also the only computer I know that actually runs stable on ME (and more stable on ME than on 98)...so it's a weird computer anyway.

[ciborium]

Hmm, how did you make that happen? The pane should resize as you resize the main editor window, and it certainly does that for me...

I started a new game, changed the res to 800x600, created a new room and then loaded the background. 
I run the editor at fullscreen, and the room editor pane is not manually resizable.  It does resize itself if you close and re-open the room editor though.

At this point I consider it more a peculiarity than a bug, so no big deal.

I am starting to create my game with the new editor.  I had a bit done in 2.72, but decided to start new when 2.8 appeared stable.  (Besides, I had a bunch of poor scripting that I thought would be easier to correct by starting over than revising.)

I am downloading 2.8b8 now and will let you know how it goes.

[Pumaman]

Hmm, interesting. If you have the editor maximised, but then un-maximise it, does the pane adjust itself automatically?

[ciborium]

Yes it does.  But only after I load a background larger than the original black box.

[Ghost]

Just out of interest, is anyone actually using the 2.8 betas to properly work on a game, and if so how've you found it compared to 2.72?

After having sorted the savegames (it was actually my fault that they were not found) I have fully switched to 2.8 with my current WIP.
No crashes so far.

I must admit it took a while to get adjusted to the new look and feel, more than I'd have thought. I'm a user since, what, 4 years and have of course formed some habits that must now be overcome  . But I really appreciate the numerous IDE improvements and the general design. It's, as I said when one of the first betas came out, a pretty large step, but I think it was really worth it. After a mere four days or so I started to adapt to the new workflow, and by now, I wouldn't like to switch back.

I think the new look will appeal to more modern and jaded newcomers, while oldtimers will appreciate 2.8 since it removes some age-old limits (take the view frames) and adds a fresh taste.

A few tiny naggings, though:
1) When importing sprites, 2.7 used to remember the size of the selection, but 2.8 resets to 0. Could this be brought back?
2) Maybe I'm just too stupid to find it, but where can I set tried and tested preferences like the folder I like to start with when importing sprites?
3) Drawing a selection rectangle is oddly unprecise. The selection doesn't seem to align to the pixels, so that often enough I find myself guessing if I'm getting the selection I want to. Zooming doesn't help, there's always part of the selection covering only half of a pixel.
4) This is merely a suggestion, but I'd like to have the option to turn off the start screen. I really like it, and it is a great help for newcomers, but when loading a game I've already worked upon, I'd rather like, say, the General Setting pane open.

Still:
My tribe has a  tradition to build a statue out of any runny foodstuff to personal heroes of their choice. I've just bought a very large jar of butter, Mr. Jones.

[InCreator]

I love new editor!

But how to see objects? There should be a simpler way to find all objects. Like a list or automatic outlining of all of them. My objects are parts of the background and it's almost impossible to find one.

I'd say that new editor is extremely complex, compared to old one. But it possibly takes some time to re-orientate and I will like it more.

EDIT: Ah, stupid me. But auto-outlines (with selected one outlined different color) would be neat anyway.
EDIT2: Compilation errors tell the faulty line number, but I'm not a masochist enough to count dialog lines manually... how about a status bar/something to show current line number? In DIALOG editor? Other script editors show numbers.

[Ishmael]

I'm getting the feeling that it's almost time to move onto Release Candidate stage. Just out of interest, is anyone actually using the 2.8 betas to properly work on a game, and if so how've you found it compared to 2.72?

Go for it, says I. Seems ready and stable enough. And for me getting used to the new feel was rather easy. I already feel like my working with 2.8 is as efficient as it was with 2.72.

A few things that have come to mind, however:
- Start page. It's sure useful for newcomers and people hopping over from 2.72, but as it is it turns rather useless after a few starts. I was thinking if you could add some information on it, like some vital statistics (current exe size, if one is built, number of rooms, number of this and that, whatever seems important), maybe a summary of the most crucial general settings (name, game resolution, colour depth, states of sprite compression, save game screenshots, enhanced save games, etc.)
- I'd much more prefer the treeview categories closed (or collapsed?) when the game loads, as they now seem to load open
- Would it be possible to make the treeview and property grid movable to the left side of the main window?

[RickJ]

Here is the error I get using beta-7 on a WinME machine.  Yes, .NET, was installed downloaded directly from M$ and then installed.   

When I start the editor and select "default game" from the new game wizard.   The "Start"  page is displayed and then the error box pops up displaying the following text.  If I click the OK button I am returned to the open game dialog box.  If I click continue there then the editor exits.

There was an eror creating your game.  The error was: Feature requires Windows NT

Error Details: System.PlatformNotSupportedException: Feature requires Windows NT
   at System.IO.FileSystemWatcher.StartRaisingEvents)_
   at System.IO.FileSystemWatcher.set_EnableRaisingEvents(Boolean value)
   at AGS.Editor.EngineCommunication.ResetWithCurrentPath()
   at AGS.Editor.RefreshEditorAfterGameLoad(Game newGame)
   at AGS.Editor.TasksLoadgameFromDisk(String gameToLoad, Boolean interactive)
   at AGS.Editor.GUIController.ShowNewGameWizzard()

==============

On another note, I was wondering since there are a lot of changes, perhaps a "paths configuration" feature could be added so that we could specify different default directories for different types of items such as fonts, sprites, modules, etc.   This would be handy for folks who work on or maintain multiple games.  It would also be nice to have the option of separating the AGSEditor's executable from the game directory(s).  Yeah, I know it's probably too late for feature requests this go round but hopefully there's no harm in asking.   

[deadsuperhero]

Is it possible to choose to set it to the old-layout, if you want?
It's not a big deal, but I wasn't quite entirely comfortable with the new editor yet, and I was wondering whether this would actually give some users problems with finding things.
If not, no big deal, I can learn the new interface, or use the older one. Whatever gets the job done. 

[Reaper]

I'm getting the feeling that it's almost time to move onto Release Candidate stage. Just out of interest, is anyone actually using the 2.8 betas to properly work on a game, and if so how've you found it compared to 2.72?

I almost completed a game with 2.72, then converted to 2.8 Beta and finished it there. I just began a new one only with 2.8 Beta. Especially the scripting with the new version is great, it feels more like an IDE.

Is the tabbing in the properties box working as intended? It always goes from left to right in the same line, I expected it to go down to the next property.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I've been using 2.8 with Boyd Quest! but it's not quite as convenient as 2.7 when it comes to previewing animations for proper frames/speed/etc so I'm holding out until there's some kind of animation viewer integrated into the views list. 

Some issues:

1.  Ghost is right in that once a rectangle is drawn it alters size to be somewhat larger than the shape selected.

2.  Mousewheel support is a one-time thing:  if you click in a field and scroll down it will select the new item and then deselect the field control so you can't move up/down the list.  It would be nice if this was fixed to work like a normal mousewheel/arrow key selected field. 

3.  If you delete a script or font with their tab open the tab is not closed.  All the other sections do this.

And finally, a couple of suggestions for the future:

1.  Shift+left click support for selecting a sequence of frames in a view pane.

2.  Cut/Copy/paste support for view frames (will work nicely with the above) between tabbed views.

3.  I agree with InCreator's suggestion that a toggle button for outlining objects in a room would be most useful.

4.  Bringing back objects that can be locked in place would be useful.

5.  Folders for Dialogs.  I know I'm the Folder King (tm) but this would really be useful for organizing dialogs by character/event.

6.  Display the information from multiple tabs at once with a vertical/horizontal tiling scheme and scrollbars.  This is probably difficult to implement with the current properties pane being where it is but it's worth a thought.

7.  Better support for dialog window GUI borders.  The way it's been for a long time is that if you vary too much from small, square shapes for the border pieces the result is edges that don't match up or overlap.  Some check to prevent the overlap would fix this, though the minimum size of the window would then be determined by those shapes and not the text. 

8.  Different handling of dialog window GUI backgrounds.  The current scheme essentially requires you to make a massive image as large as the dialog window could ever be.  Some kind of tile scheme (or auto stretching) would fix this.

9.  Return the functionality of the old view tab to the new one.  I didn't particularly use some of the old options, but I'm sure a lot of people liked being able to set sounds to play on certain frames and preview their animation right there so they could adjust the playback speed or see if they missed any frames when importing.

Again, most of these are suggestions for the future but I think a good deal of them would be improvements overall.  You're doing a great job CJ, and once I can preview my animations in the view tab I'll switch over!

[SupSuper]

Here is the error I get using beta-7 on a WinME machine.  Yes, .NET, was installed downloaded directly from M$ and then installed.   

When I start the editor and select "default game" from the new game wizard.   The "Start"  page is displayed and then the error box pops up displaying the following text.  If I click the OK button I am returned to the open game dialog box.  If I click continue there then the editor exits.

There was an eror creating your game.  The error was: Feature requires Windows NT

Error Details: System.PlatformNotSupportedException: Feature requires Windows NT
   at System.IO.FileSystemWatcher.StartRaisingEvents)_
   at System.IO.FileSystemWatcher.set_EnableRaisingEvents(Boolean value)
   at AGS.Editor.EngineCommunication.ResetWithCurrentPath()
   at AGS.Editor.RefreshEditorAfterGameLoad(Game newGame)
   at AGS.Editor.TasksLoadgameFromDisk(String gameToLoad, Boolean interactive)
   at AGS.Editor.GUIController.ShowNewGameWizzard()

Hmm, it seems like AGS is trying to check file attributes only available in NT systems (eg. the LastAccess date).
Maybe CJ is being secretly paid by Microsoft to subliminally convince people to upgrade their systems?

[smiley]

1)
Got this one, after I tried to add a 31st control to a gui:

Code: ags

Error: GUIMain: rebuild array failed (invalid object index)
Version: AGS 2.8.0.8

AGS.Types.AGSEditorException: GUIMain: rebuild array failed (invalid object index)
   bei ThrowManagedException(SByte* message)
   bei GUIMain.rebuild_array(GUIMain* )
   bei ConvertGUIToBinaryFormat(GUI guiObj, GUIMain* gui)
   bei drawGUI(Int32 hdc, Int32 x, Int32 y, GUI guiObj, Int32 scaleFactor, Int32 selectedControl)
   bei AGS.Native.NativeMethods.DrawGUI(Int32 hDC, Int32 x, Int32 y, GUI gui, Int32 scaleFactor, Int32 selectedControl)
   bei AGS.Editor.GUIEditor.bgPanel_Paint(Object sender, PaintEventArgs e)
   bei System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e)
   bei System.Windows.Forms.Control.PaintWithErrorHandling(PaintEventArgs e, Int16 layer, Boolean disposeEventArgs)
   bei System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmPaint(Message& m)
   bei System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   bei System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   bei System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   bei System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   bei System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

2)
When I start my game with F5, it seems that the working directory for "PlayVideo" is "_Debug", but for "File.Open" and "PlayMP3File" it's the game folder.

[Ghost]

Another small "naggie": If you create a GUI button in 2.7 and then assign an image to it, the button resizes itself. In 2.8 this is no longer the case.
I just discovered this now because, frankly, I had not created new GUIs for my WIP with 2.8 up till now.

But I still have my jar of dirt... er, butter.

[Prozail]

Don't know if this is the place to post bug-reports but here goes.

got following error when trying to create a blank new game using beta 8.
I'm running Vista Ultimate with Swedish Language-settings.
Error is "String not valid DateTime-string" prob due to parsing swedish date-format.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Something else I noticed is that importing gif animations works a bit differently in that I can't save images with transparent backgrounds and import them properly if I am using solid black as a color.  The color is mistaken as transparent and removed as well.  If I change the background color from transparent to a real color I'm not using it works fine, though.  The delete key no longer brings up the prompt to delete a sprite, either.  I notice it doesn't store the previous folder you used for loading images from.  It would be nice to be able to set an image folder to seek to in the game preferences so when you went to open image files it would always start in that folder.  Similarly, selecting sprites from the view area used to take you to the last visited location in the sprite manager but no longer does.  Oh, and am I right in assuming you can't move existing views/etc into folders right now?  I couldn't get it to work.  I can't seem to delete the folders either.  Or views.

Edit:  Another problem.  When I open the room of an imported game and save it and run the game all the hotspots/regions in that room crash AGS because the events functions created with the new hotspot/region names don't exist in the script editor and don't seek to the proper functions.  Example:  I have an unnamed hotspot 1 that was renamed hHotspot1 after being imported.  The look event was renamed hhotspot1_Look but doesn't exist in the editor.  As a result the game crashes instead of finding the proper function (function hotspot1_b()).  Instead of renaming these differently couldn't you just give them the same name convention (hotspot1,hotspot2,etc) and tag the _a, _b,_c that already exists in the function names for look, interact and such rather than giving them new function names and routing to the old functions?

Instead of function hHotspot1_Look(){  hotspot1_b();}  couldn't you just have it route to hotspot1_b{ }?

[Recluse]

I just tried to save a room whilst loading another and I got the following error:

Code: ags

Error: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
Version: AGS 2.8.0.8

System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
   at load_room_file(SByte* )
   at load_crm_file(UnloadedRoom roomToLoad)
   at AGS.Native.NativeMethods.LoadRoomFile(UnloadedRoom roomToLoad)
   at AGS.Editor.Components.RoomsComponent.LoadNewRoomIntoMemory(UnloadedRoom newRoom, List`1 errors)
   at AGS.Editor.Components.RoomsComponent.LoadDifferentRoom(UnloadedRoom newRoom)
   at AGS.Editor.Components.RoomsComponent.LoadRoom(String controlID)
   at AGS.Editor.Components.RoomsComponent.CommandClick(String controlID)
   at AGS.Editor.ProjectTree.ProcessClickOnNode(String nodeID, MouseButtons button)
   at AGS.Editor.ProjectTree.projectTree_NodeMouseDoubleClick(Object sender, TreeNodeMouseClickEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.TreeView.OnNodeMouseDoubleClick(TreeNodeMouseClickEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.TreeView.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

So I'm being a good little beta-tester and posting it. Have fun!


Also, could we at some point have an option to open AGS with all the nodes on the right closed? It's kind of annoying to have to scroll through everything, I'd much rather open up to what I need.

... And another thing... could we possibly have the limit to the number of room backgrounds allowed in an animation removed? I've got several backgrounds that could look a LOT better without this limitation.

[monkey0506]

3.  If you delete a script or font with their tab open the tab is not closed.  All the other sections do this.

Yes also the actual ASC and ASH files aren't deleted either. This caused some concern (on my part) about compiling the game while the files still existed (with their tabs opened). Would the scripts be re-added to the game if the tabs were open and the files existed in the game folder? I don't know. But I did think about it.

1.  Shift+left click support for selecting a sequence of frames in a view pane.

Yes, for selecting a series...we'd also need Ctrl+left-click for selecting multiple frames regardless (irregardless :) of their order.

When I open the room of an imported game and save it and run the game all the hotspots/regions in that room crash AGS because the events functions created with the new hotspot/region names don't exist in the script editor and don't seek to the proper functions.

You're saying the new functions (i.e., hHotspot1_Look) aren't being created? They're supposed to be auto-generated (as they were in the previous alphas/betas).

... And another thing... could we possibly have the limit to the number of room backgrounds allowed in an animation removed? I've got several backgrounds that could look a LOT better without this limitation.

This has been discussed several times before. One of the major problems is that animating something that large could lead to slow-downs in your game. You can use Objects/Characters to provide animation, or you could even use the RawDraw functions if you really need to.