AGS 3.3 Wishlist

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think this is worth mentioning again since I know many people support the idea:


Make the concept of 'characters and objects' obsolete and instead think of the current character structure as a generic 'entity' that can be characters or objects at the users whim.  Objects are severely crippled characters with limited value so replacing them with all the functionality of a character is a meaningful step forward.    

To retain the usefulness objects currently possess as far as Room Edit goes, allow any 'entities' set to display in a specific  room to show up visually in Room Edit, be they characters or objects.  This not only makes objects more powerful but finally gets rid of their limitations while sacrificing no usability.  Further, allow users to create folders in the character section of the menu so they can break them up into characters/objects or in any way they like.  This also empowers users with the ability to see precisely where their characters and npcs will appear in rooms, something I've been looking forward to for a long time.  

Something else that might help with organizing the new object design would be to have any objects/characters in the entity (character) list that appear in the current room to be highlighted in some way in case the user didn't break them up into separate room folders -- or perhaps the engine could automatically create room folders in the character (entity) list on compile if there are characters or objects that are set to specific rooms and automatically arrange them.  This would probably be an option rather than a static behavior since some people would prefer to organize things themselves, but it could be 'on' by default.

[discordance]

^ I strongly support all of the above.

[suicidal pencil]

I agree with that. Also, I think that there should be no upper limit on those entities, or if CJ doesn't implement it, at least no limit on the amount of objects allowed in a room There's a ton of things that you can do with objects if you twist them juuust right, and a limit restricts what you can do.

[monkey0506]

TBH I don't really see any huge advantage of the current implementation of an Object vs. a Character anyway. If I needed a multi-room object I could just as easily use a character without any major grievances or disadvantages.

I understand:

• Objects can be visually seen in the Room Editor which can help with precise positioning.
  
• Object.MergeIntoBackground can perform the same task as Room.GetDrawingSurfaceForBackground+DrawingSurface.DrawImage without having to use a DrawingSurface which can help if the room background is very large.
  
• Objects technically save on memory consumption since they are only loaded into memory in the room in which they exist.
  
  However, none of these have ever been drastically impacting in my personal experience..times where they might be could be worked around simply enough.

[Crimson Wizard]

I wonder if this is possible to allow creating some kind of "entities" (or simply objects and/or characters) dynamically in game? Ofcourse, AGS is intended to be used for classic-style adventure creation, but let be honest, people are trying to make something different like arcade, strategy, etc every now and then. I don't know about AGS internal mechanics, though doubt it would be so difficult to implement... or would it?

[Crimson Wizard]

What about break/continue commands? Several times I met a need to skip the rest of the loop under certain condition; I had to invent clumsy "if/else" constructions to solve that.

[Wyz]

Are we still having a wish list here?
I was working on I game when I got this strange idea that might be useful. The usefulness aside, I'll just post it here.
My idea: spell checking for strings in dialog and scripts. Simply said, you type cEgo.Say("What a niec day!"); the 'niec' would get a red squiggly line underneath it. Hook it up with aspell or something. Well It has completely no priority, and there are different ways to do it, but I thought it would be nice if I 'd share it with you.

[Crimson Wizard]

My idea: spell checking for strings in dialog and scripts. Simply said, you type cEgo.Say("What a niec day!"); the 'niec' would get a red squiggly line underneath it. Hook it up with aspell or something. Well It has completely no priority, and there are different ways to do it, but I thought it would be nice if I 'd share it with you.

You can write your dialogs in text editor which supports spell checking

[subspark]

I strongly support Prog's suggestions. This also ties in well with an earlier suggestion of being able to manipulate characters in the room editor and view realtime feedback of walkable area scaling, tinting, walkbehinds and coordinates. So, yeah I can see a real use for this and I hope it becomes one of the higher priorities for the next version.

Edit: Also another suggestion - It would make sense if the room editor simply remembered the last bitmap import directory just as the sprite editor does.

Cheers,
Sparky.

[GarageGothic]

I was scripting a function that duplicates a GUI as a DynamicSprite, but found that a few important properties weren't accessible through script at runtime. So hence these suggestions (there are probably more, but these are my main obstacles):

* A read/writable TextAlignment property for Buttons and Labels.
* Read/writable GUI.BackgroundColor/GUI.BorderColor properties (also very handy for fade-to-any-color effects when using GUIs for nonblocking fades)

The TextAlignment property would probably mean a new enumerated type since Buttons/Labels have more options than the current eAlignment enum used for Character.LockViewAligned. BTW, is there any special reason that Labels can only align text along the top edge while Buttons can align top, middle and bottom?

Thanks for reading this, CJ!

[subspark]

SUGGESTION:
Speech translation support.
Whenever a translation is picked in Config.exe, it could automatically swap in the spoken lines in the specified language.

Perhaps a special speech pack (*.tvox) that will replace the default language if placed in the game folder and if the associated translation is chosen.

Cheers,
Sparky.

[Ryan Timothy B]

I've got one tiny yet great suggestion that I'd really love to have.
I don't use AGS's own editor for walkbehinds or walkable areas, mostly because it's very tedious.  The only time I really use it is if it's a quick demo build until I get the real graphics.

If you could add the Space Bar support that Photoshop uses, which is actually used to pan images.  It's such a pain having to use the scroll bars.

It would also be quite cool if the zoom feature on the tablet could also be used to zoom in and out with the new AGS feature.

[TM]

Hello.

- In the sprite manager, I would like to be able to select previously imported sprites and click "update sprites" to load in newer versions like in Flash, instead of having to tediously replace each single one.

- It would be cool if idle animation had its own delay setting with 5 as default value, so it doesn't mess up old games (because idel has a super secret hidden delay). Or, as Mr Crimson Wizard and Xenogia requested, selecting multiple frames. That would work just as well.

- When you move a background image around by a few pixels, all the hotspots and areas are off. Would be nice if we could just mark and drag areas.


Here be nitpicky stuff:
- I understand that there has to be a standard font, but why can't we delete fonts 2 (speech default) and 3 (outline)?
- Overboard with all the structs, global variables and stuff! Let's get some true OOP rolling with classes and inheritance!!!

[deadsuperhero]

Time for me to step in and demand the ridiculous and expect the impossible.

-Bundled Mac and Linux runtimes so that a game developer can "Build for Linux" and "Build for Mac" (The runtimes would have to be up to date, of course, but this would make this a lot easier than the current methods of setting up the runtime individually for each game. I can also imagine that packaging up a .dmg or a .deb file wouldn't be too hard)

-Along with said runtimes, a way for each runtime to save to a logical native location in order for the binary to be installed system-wide.

-An OpenGL backend for hardware graphics acceleration. You currently have DX acceleration, but us Linux and Mac users don't really get to use it with our runtimes.

And of course, the currently probably impossible:

-Build a cross-platform editor frontend using Qt or GTK. There are Mono bindings for GTK# and Qt#. Furthermore, Qt uses a lot of C++ and is capable of integrating into either Gnome or KDE environments.

[Calin Leafshade]

I actually really have only one (possibly 2 ) serious requests.

Full alpha blending on drawing surfaces (I know alot of people support this, I WANT THIS SO BADLY, MORE THAN SEX.)

and also Additive blending would be nice.. you can make some very nice effects with additive blending.

The only other things Id request are things i'd 'like but wouldnt be too bothered if they never arrived'.

A watch pane for the editor.
reverb for audio.. which should be really quite easy to implement if you use freeverb.
Sprite deformation (theres a module for this but its not all that efficient I dont think.)
Full screen post process pixel shaders. (this would be so so pretty, Hyper low res pixel shading is not something that has ever been done and this is so powerful in terms of graphical effects.)

[Snarky]

Unicode string support. Only that.

(May already have been mentioned in this thread, I didn't look.)

[xenogia]

I'd definetly have to agree with both Alliance and Calin.

Linux support for the editor would be amazing without using virtualization.  This would make me go back to Linux permanently.  And all of Calin's ideas would be great also.

Here is my input

I would love 720p support, so I can have games run at 1280x800.  As this resolution would higher the calibre for future games.

[SpacePaw]

This may have been mentioned before but it should be really easy to change:

Make custom properties editable through the script. It would give GREAT possibilities when it comes to extending characters, objects, hotspots etc.

[Chrille]

It seems it's been discussed before, but the option to start an animation from a specified frame would extremely useful to me. Right now I'm at a point where my only options would be to add alot of extra views with less frames. Either that or script my own animation system which would seem like a total waste considering the default one works so well already.

Perhaps adding another parameter at the end of the Animate function or have the animation start from whatever frame a character or object has been set to. For example
character.Lockview(#);
character.Frame = #; 
character.Animate(bla bla bla);

[xenogia]

I would love an option to add custom properties in the AGS setup executable.  An example would be "Turn Filter On/Off" rather than doing it in-game.