AGS engine-compability questions

[am7]

Hi people, this is my first post here at AGS. I'm in a team that's making a professional looking adventure game. Our coder have already started on a own engine using C++ and DirectX, but as we've later looked into AGS we've found it very usable, and it covers most of our needs. Only issue is the functionallity!.

My questions are:
1.What limitations has the AGS engine?

2.Is it possible to write plugins for including additional effects ingame?
  IE:
  - radial blur
  - particles with spline-movements & rotation(animated particles)
  - brightness-contrast(at specified areas of the playfield) etc.

3.Is it possible to include full-screen animation scenes by coding a plugin that allows playback of .avi files or similar?

4.And last but not least, is it possible to improve the interpolation (scaling) of a character? (the ones included in the engine now, makes big "gap-scale-jumps" that doesn't look so pretty).

We appreciate any response we can get on theese issues.
*EDIT* Game resolution is 640x480 @ 16bit depth.

[Ishmael]

Hi people, this is my first post here at AGS. I'm in a team that's making a professional looking adventure game. Our coder have already started on a own engine using C++ and DirectX, but as we've later looked into AGS we've found it very usable, and it covers most of our needs. Only issue is the functionallity!.

Welcome to AGS. AGS is very capable, have a look around...

All you're technical questions will surely get answered, just be sure to read the manual first.

1.What limitations has the AGS engine?

They're in the manual. I don't have one here, so I can't copy directly to here. If you find a limit too small, it can probably be raised, just as CJ about it in this board.

2.Is it possible to write plugins for including additional effects ingame?
Ã,  IE:
Ã,  - radial blur
Ã,  - particles with spline-movements & rotation(animated particles)
Ã,  - brightness-contrast(at specified areas of the playfield) etc.

Yes, most likely.

Go to the "games" page of the main AGS page, and to the plugins category (btw. Where is the plugins category nowdays??2? I can't find it myself to provide a link...), and see what is already done. There are templates for new plugins (I'm not a plugin coder, so I don't know much) which you can sure get and make a plugin that suits your needs.

3.Is it possible to include full-screen animation scenes by coding a plugin that allows playback of .avi files or similar?

See manual Text Script Functions -> Multimedia -> PlayVidoe for starts...

4.And last but not least, is it possible to improve the interpolation (scaling) of a character? (the ones included in the engine now, makes big "gap-scale-jumps" that doesn't look so pretty).

There is a anti-aliasing for scaled sprites in the game setup... I'm not so sure bout the rest.

[Gankkizz]

Hi, and welcome to the Ags forums!

1. You should read the manual... It's under Reference-->System Limits

2. - radial blur: it's possible (I think) if you know how to script it
Ã,  Ã,  - I don't really know... IF it's possible, it would be a lot of scripting
Ã,  Ã,  - this can be done in fullscreen without any plugins, but I'm not sure about a speciefied area

3. Can be done without a plugin

4. Personally, I don't think that it looks so bad, but it could be better...

-EDIT-
TK was faster... 

[TerranRich]

Every question you asked could be found in the manual. Why don't people ever read the entier manual, from the beginning? It's not a big task, I did it when I first started with AGS and I asked about three beginners' questions before I became compeltely familiar with AGS.

[Pumaman]

4.And last but not least, is it possible to improve the interpolation (scaling) of a character? (the ones included in the engine now, makes big "gap-scale-jumps" that doesn't look so pretty).

Have you tried using continuous scaling and anti-aliasing? There are no current plans to improve character scaling.

[Ishmael]

Every question you asked could be found in the manual. Why don't people ever read the entier manual, from the beginning? It's not a big task, I did it when I first started with AGS and I asked about three beginners' questions before I became compeltely familiar with AGS.

I had used AGS for like three months before coming to the forums... and I asked questions regarding my problems with my games, and I don't recall being ever RTMFed...

[sorry for offtopic]

[am7]

Thanks for the serious replies from you guys, I guess we'll have our programmer looking more into theese issues. To you "read the manual" guys, we'll do that when we actually start USING the engine. Theese questions was intended as some "pre-questions" of what AGS was capable of.

[AJA]

Every question you asked could be found in the manual. Why don't people ever read the entier manual, from the beginning? It's not a big task, I did it when I first started with AGS and I asked about three beginners' questions before I became compeltely familiar with AGS.

I've never read the manual completely But I got a bit too familiar with the functions section when I was copying the function descriptions to ScriptEditor.

[jannar85]

Speaking of ScriptEditor.. Is there any progress on it at all?

[AJA]

Well... no
Something wrong with delphi. I'd have to rewrite it completely if I wanted to continue working on it. And that's something I'm not planning to do. I'm more interested in film making at the moment. And I haven't even opened AGS for quite a while.

** this off-topic message is sponsored by Serpent Pictures (.com) ** : (sorry)