AGS 3.01 wishlist

[proximity]

I wish:

  - x,y,z coordinates system like OpenGL.
  - Advanced shading
  - Unlimited dialogs, unlimited rooms
  - Better font outline controls. E.g.  change of size-color of outline
  - import 3d objects
  - import 3d scenes
  - Up to 1600*1200 resolutions
  - Support for surround sound
  - Full support for alpha channel images
 
  I think my 3d wishes is later maybe in AGS 4.0

[monkey0506]

It would be wonderful if the room's repeatedly execute function (Room Events pane) could default to the function: repeatedly_execute. This just caused me a good bit of frustration trying to figure out why it wasn't running until I realized, d'oh! it's a room script!

Another thing I would like is for the 'Find and Replace' dialog to work a bit more like it does in Firefox. I'm referring specifically to two points: a) it could appear as a static pane at the bottom of the window such as the 'Output Window' pane does, which would allow us to navigate the scripts while the dialog was open, and b) a 'match case' option for finding case-sensitive items (which ordinarily might not be a problem, but since AGS is case-sensitive, could be relevant; for example, searching for 'string' vs. 'String'). This is a much more minor request than my first (about the room's rep_ex), though I would find it quite beneficial.

[Electroshokker]

What AGS needs to become a better engine, in my humble opinion, without massive code changes:

- better support for the higher resolutions (640x480, 800x600)

Right now, all room coördinates are scaled down to 320x240 (or 320x200)

=> prevents me from placing alpha-transparent objects on the EXACT pixel position I want.
=> imported masks always need to be at this lower level resolution, so I can't have exact walkbehinds and regions


- a better/quicker way to load sprites into loops.

=> I want to be able to select a whole series of sprites and go "import into loop x", rather then having to enter the sprite number for each frame seperatly. This is a time-killer if you got a rather large animation.

=> I want to be able to drag and drop frames once loaded in the view, so I can rearrange them easily (or a "move" button when right-clicking, that would help too.


- drag and drop of views into folders, the ability to easily rearrange views into logic groups


- dialogs:

=> add a "set-speech-loop NAME X" function. This is for fixed-position characters which have different expressions in different loops. (I don't want to have to create a new view for each single facial expression)

=> the character reverts to his normal view when other characters are talking. I would like to have the option to make him stay in his current view. (otherwise the character would change facial expressions suddenly when another character speaks. In order to prevent this I have to do a run-script and change his normal view every time. Rather annoying.)



/* Note: all of these problems can be 'bypassed' but it takes a LOT of time that I don't believe is needed to spend on this. If these issues are adressed a lot less time is needed for the game programmer on 'cosmetics', and there's more time to go into the actual coding. */

[VK Dan]

- a better/quicker way to load sprites into loops.

=> I want to be able to select a whole series of sprites and go "import into loop x", rather then having to enter the sprite number for each frame seperatly. This is a time-killer if you got a rather large animation.

This already exists. Select more than one sprite in the editor and right click. In the context menu there should be an "Assign to View" item. Click on that and you can choose which view to stick the selected sprites in.

[Electroshokker]

- a better/quicker way to load sprites into loops.

=> I want to be able to select a whole series of sprites and go "import into loop x", rather then having to enter the sprite number for each frame seperatly. This is a time-killer if you got a rather large animation.

This already exists. Select more than one sprite in the editor and right click. In the context menu there should be an "Assign to View" item. Click on that and you can choose which view to stick the selected sprites in.

Allright! 

How 'bout having a button in the views panel which enables you to do the same? I think it would be a logical place, and makes it harder to overlook this feature.

[El_Yind]

I posted it twice because it'd be nice if the staff read it.

*When you change the description of a room, it doesn't update the list
*When you create new subfolder in sprites or views you can't move the existents views into the new folder, some kind of copy/cut/paste would be nice
*When you are editing a room, and you change to do some walkeable areas or walk behinds all the objects hide and you can't see where they are, it'd be nice if there were a checkbox where you could hide or show them.
*Add 5 Ctrl+Z level (I made doble click and I lost all because I fill the screen twice) it should have a few more undo levels
*Add windowed mode the posibility of zoom like 1x, 2x or 3x I have a 1280 resolution and I work with windowed because it's easier but.. it's really small and I can hardly recognaize the things
*Add editing room zoom, it can't be so hard, just a + button and a - button.
* (I don't know if you are working on it but...) I don't know what is the use of the break point in AGS it should allow you to see a value when you stop the code at least that is what I do when I program in VB.NET and It helps a lot when you are looking for an error or just seeing what a function return in a easier way.


Well that's all for now. If I figure out something else I will tell you.

Thanks for the great new version!

[Galen]

  - Better font outline controls. E.g.  change of size-color of outline
  - Support for surround sound
  - Full support for alpha channel images

Removed absolutely stupid suggestions.

[deadsuperhero]

This is more geared towards a 4.0.1 release, but hey, suggestions are always good!

-SVG support for Vector sprites. Then the images wouldn't lose quality when resized.
-Possibly use the Qt 4.4 toolkit? It supports complete cross-platform, and the underlying technologies (Plasma, Solid, Decibel, Phonon, Oxygen) would make some excellent solutions for frustrated game developers. I'll go into this later on in the post.

-Ports to Linux and Mac OSX? I always push for this. Hey, at least we get a runtime, which runs most games pretty well.

-OpenGL acceleration/rendering.

-Backends allowing for Blender imports?

-Compatibility for reading older game templates (mainly so developers can upconvert their games to a latest release, thus making a packaged runtime for crossplatform support)

-Plasma technologies use widgets as parts of a window, the desktop, whatever you want. So, lets say the editor could be rearranged by simply clicking, dragging, and dropping? That way, a user who doesn't like everything about the layout can rearrange it to resemble whatever works for them.

-Phonon is an open-source media framework that allows for a simple, streamlined media runtime. Using only 4 lines of code, one could build a simple music player. So, utilizing this would allow for media tricks in AGS. Ever had a problem playing an MP3 in-game? Ever wanted it to give a certain feedback when that MP3 is played? With Phonon, this is possible.

-Decibel is built on the Telepathy framework, which calls forth technologies allowing the user to simply set up a multiplayer/internet script. Theoretically, it could be used to solve the "AGS Multiplayer" option.

-Solid is a hardware API. It interacts with Decibel and Phonon to tell the game about the system it's being played on. What graphics card is running? What network card? Sound card? Is it multithreaded?

-Oxygen is not a technology per se.  It's a standard for artwork.. Not game artwork, but the editor interface. Using Oxygen artwork, AGS could change from looking just functional to amazingly beautiful.

[Ishmael]

And how many redistribution packages, runtimes, plugins, extra .dlls or other junk would the end user have to install to play a game or use the editor with all that in it?

[deadsuperhero]

And how many redistribution packages, runtimes, plugins, extra .dlls or other junk would the end user have to install to play a game or use the editor with all that in it?

Very little, surprisingly. It ports extremely well between platforms.
As far as I'm aware, to port the editor (if it were theoretically using this technology)
-Write it in a common language, such as C++, Java, Python, or pretty much any other language, using the Qt toolkit as a guide.
-Correct a few errors here and there for cross-compatibility.
-Add in a few OS-dependent features, such as the universal menu and Cocoa/Carbon for Mac OSX, CMake for Linux, and whatever the hell Windows uses for Windows.

As for redistribution packages, there could be a lot, judging by how many Linux OS'es there are. Luckily, the easy way is to just release a tarball for Linux users to compile, and somebody will package it for their particular OS. Oh, and there'd be one for Windows, and one for Mac.

As for .dlls, I don't know. However, I've seen a lot of KDE (K Desktop Environment) apps being ported to Windows and OSX, and they seem to develop easily enough. It takes time, and effort, but interoperability is a fantastic feature, and Qt 4.4 (soon to be officially released, currently it's on 4.3) is capable of easily porting. Don't ask me the specifics on how, I'm not quite entirely sure. However, I can pull up a bunch of Wikipedia articles that give some insight, and so I will at the end of this post.

That said, it could all be packaged together with the editor, the runtime, everything. Meaning all one would have to do to use the editor is to install it. As for an individual game, perhaps it could ship with a runtime specifically for that game. Like I said, not entirely sure how Windows programs compare to Mac or Linux ones.

As promised, here are some articles on everything I've talked about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28toolkit%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cmake

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel_%28KDE%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kross_%28KDE%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_Project

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonon_%28KDE%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_%28KDE%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_%28KDE%29

[Khris]

[mchammer]

Would be nice if you could change dialog option texts in-game.
Something like Dialog.SetOptionText

[Khris]

I'm not sure when you'd need something like that. The dialog script is set in stone, so changing just the options doesn't make sense (unless you're talking about slight variations in phrasing or handle everything using dialog_script).
As a workaround, put the different lines directly after one another (say options 3-5), uncheck say of 4&5 and turn them on/off one after another.

[SupSuper]

- Double-clicking on an event editbox doing the same thing as the "..." button (it's just faster )
- Properties panel not getting reset whenever you edit an event

[mchammer]

unless you're talking about slight variations in phrasing

Yes, slight variations would be easier to do by scripting, but it would also make possible to add things like player's name, or something player has written to a textbox, into dialog option texts.

[parazythum]

Hi, if it's not too late I'd like to see higher resolutions supported (more than 800x600) : ALL monitors support at least 1024x768 nowadays, and the use of hardware acceleration in the new version could improve the rendering speed.

I have a project and consider WinterMute a serious challenger, even if it's not adventure-game oriented. A friend is doing a comparison between WM and AGS. Resolution is a big point for me.

[twin-moon]

Since there already is a game.speech_music_drop, why not something like game.sound_music_drop which lowers the volume of background music whenever you use playsound?

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

That doesn't make much sense, though, does it? The purpose of lowering speech volume is to hear it better. A sound effect needs to be integrated within the game's music/sound system/settings/whatever.

[twin-moon]

(Sorry about the late reply.)

Hm, you got a point there.
However, in my game I'd like to emphasize the scoresound and lowering the background volume really gives you the feeling something special happens.
It's not difficult to code, so it really isn't necessary, I just thought it would be easy to implement.

[alisa_tana]

I don't care as much about larger resolutions, but how about being able to specify window size up to the resolution size... like if I want to make a game in widescreen, say to match the PSP 480x272, or smaller like the DS 256x192...
or even if I want a game window that's vertical.