AGS v2.7 Final: Yet Another Edition

[rich]

I hate to do this with the harddrive crash and all (my drive crashed a little over a month ago, and it's always a bummer), but I've noticed a sort of bug in the text parser. In a very recent version, the ability to have words with a space in them has been added, which of course is great. So now you can use "pick up" as a synonym to "get". The error I have noticed is that if you have the word "pick" also, either as a synonym to this or as a seperate word, then "pick up" no longer works. It's problematic also if you want to have names "Roger" and "Roger Wilco". "Roger Wilco" will not work. Does this make sense? Thank you.

[MrColossal]

quick little thing:

I don't know if this is a feature or a bug or anything but if you hold control and scroll the mouse wheel it changes the font size of the autocomplete popup and there's no way to set it back quickly, just trial and error

I also have not checked other AGS versions...

[Pumaman]

Ok, I've now got things kind of back to normal, enough to have a think about these issues anyway:

Error: Operator cannot be applied to this type

What's probably happened here is I forgot to mark the floating-point < and > operators as returning a bool, so they're passing back 1.0 and 0.0 as the result of the evaluation. Should be a fairly easy fix.

I'm getting an editor crash if I edit a room script, exit/save, and then try to edit the script header.  It seems to be repeatable for me at this point.  I haven't rebooted windows and tried again yet, if that fixes it I'll be back and update this post. 

Hmm -- I just downloaded the pre-final and the zip file you posted, and I'm able to open it, edit room scripts and then the script header and global script without problems. Has it happened again since you rebooted? Rather strange.

In a very recent version, the ability to have words with a space in them has been added, which of course is great. So now you can use "pick up" as a synonym to "get". The error I have noticed is that if you have the word "pick" also, either as a synonym to this or as a seperate word, then "pick up" no longer works. It's problematic also if you want to have names "Roger" and "Roger Wilco". "Roger Wilco" will not work.

Thanks for the bug report, I'll look into that.

I don't know if this is a feature or a bug or anything but if you hold control and scroll the mouse wheel it changes the font size of the autocomplete popup and there's no way to set it back quickly, just trial and error

Hmm you're right, must be some sort of default behaviour of the text editor control. I'll see if I can switch it off.

[RickJ]

Hmm -- I just downloaded the pre-final and the zip file you posted, and I'm able to open it, edit room scripts and then the script header and global script without problems. Has it happened again since you rebooted? Rather strange.

It's was happening to me all the time until I went back to RC3.   I seemd to me that RC3 was able to open one that caused PreFinal to crash.   I'll give it a go again when I get  a chance.  I guess it could be because of the crappy WinME OS I am using.

Also I have noticed that the editor will allow 30 hotspots to be defined but a mask containing more than 16 colors can't be imported.    Is this a bug or a limitation of the mask import mechanism?

[Pumaman]

Ok, Pre-Final 2 is up. What on earth is a PF2, I hear you ask?

Well, since I've had to rebuild my system I can't be sure that AGS is still building properly, plus a few bugs were found so I've fixed them.

I also decided I'd may as well merge in a couple of additions that I was going to leave for 2.71, in the form of Character.Tint and Button.ClipImage.

Also I have noticed that the editor will allow 30 hotspots to be defined but a mask containing more than 16 colors can't be imported.    Is this a bug or a limitation of the mask import mechanism?

Hmm, I was unable to replicate this. Do you have an example mask bitmap that doesn't work?
Bear in mind it's not the total number of colours on the mask bitmap, rahter it's that they've got to be the first 30 palette slots.

[Sektor 13]

Hmm -- I just downloaded the pre-final and the zip file you posted, and I'm able to open it, edit room scripts and then the script header and global script without problems. Has it happened again since you rebooted? Rather strange.

It's was happening to me all the time until I went back to RC3. I seemd to me that RC3 was able to open one that caused PreFinal to crash. I'll give it a go again when I get a chance. I guess it could be because of the crappy WinME OS I am using.

Also I have noticed that the editor will allow 30 hotspots to be defined but a mask containing more than 16 colors can't be imported. Is this a bug or a limitation of the mask import mechanism?

maybe you used 16 color image 1??

[Pumaman]

Oops, I left in some debug code in Pre-final 2: basically, if you call SetGameSpeed it will un-cap the game frame rate rather than setting it to what you wanted. Apologies, I'll get it fixed up.

[strazer]

Does this Knowledge Base entry still apply? If so, it should be noted in the manual.

[SSH]

The max number of overlays mentioned in the help file still says 10. It's probably worth checking that those other limits are still valid, too.

[GarageGothic]

Thank you very much for the character tint function. This relieves me of much cheating with the AmbientTint command. Does this mean that region tints will also get luminance settings in the near future?

[Sektor 13]

oh another thing, will this version support 256 color ICONS for EXE file ?? And why older supports only 16 color??

[strazer]

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=12296.msg147022;topicseen#msg147022

Edit:

eEventGUIMouseUp/-Down are missing from the enum reference page.

[SSH]

The max number of overlays mentioned in the help file still says 10. It's probably worth checking that those other limits are still valid, too.

While you're fixing the manual, you coudl document character[].on, too!

[rich]

I love the enum variable type. Thank you, it makes my code so much easier to read. A question I have about it though, is that I noticed I cannot create different enum types that utilize the same parameter names.

i.e.

enum Death {fell, hurt, murdered};
enum Status {happy, hurt, angry};

will not work because both contain "hurt". must it be this way, or is it a bug?
In fact, any name already used anywhere else cannot be used as an enum parameter (i.e. Script-O names, or whatever)

thank you!
Rich

btw, thank you for fixing the parser bug with single and two-word words. works like a charm!

[Pumaman]

Does this Knowledge Base entry still apply? If so, it should be noted in the manual.

Good point, I'll document it in the SetIdleVIew section.

The max number of overlays mentioned in the help file still says 10. It's probably worth checking that those other limits are still valid, too.

Well spotted, I'll get it corrected.

Thank you very much for the character tint function. This relieves me of much cheating with the AmbientTint command. Does this mean that region tints will also get luminance settings in the near future?

The lack of luminance in the region tints is a bit of an oversight -- it happened because region tints were the first type to be implemented, and weren't done as thoroughly as the ambient and object tints which came later. This would be a worthwhile addition to a future version, I agree.

eEventGUIMouseUp/-Down are missing from the enum reference page.

Good point, I'll fix it.

While you're fixing the manual, you coudl document character[].on, too!

I'm not sure about this one, actually -- I haven't yet had time to verify that the .on setting works properly and doesn't cause any strange side effects, so I'd rather it stayed as an unofficial feature for now.

enum Death {fell, hurt, murdered};
enum Status {happy, hurt, angry};

will not work because both contain "hurt". must it be this way, or is it a bug?

This is the way in which enums are implemented -- it's the same as C/C++. They are not created within a namespace for the enum, because that would mean you'd have to type things like Death.fell and Status.angry to access them, which I had a feeling would prove unpopular.

The solution is to use your own prefixes -- you could do this for example:
enum Death {DeathFell, DeathHurt, DeathMurdered};
enum Status {StatusHappy, StatusHurt, StatusAngry};

btw, thank you for fixing the parser bug with single and two-word words. works like a charm!

Glad to hear it

[strazer]

Thank you very much for the character tint function. This relieves me of much cheating with the AmbientTint command. Does this mean that region tints will also get luminance settings in the near future?

The lack of luminance in the region tints is a bit of an oversight -- it happened because region tints were the first type to be implemented, and weren't done as thoroughly as the ambient and object tints which came later. This would be a worthwhile addition to a future version, I agree.

Tracker'd: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=520

Edit:

Is there a chance you could slip in a GetGameParameter option to return the actual number of inventory items used in the game?

Edit 2:

I noticed this in earlier versions too, maybe even v2.62, can't remember:
Using the "Black box out" transition, if I enter a certain room in my game, the room's background displays for a split second before going black and fading in.
Strangely, it does only seem to affect this particular room and I haven't been able to find out why. Besides a big object and a large walkbehind, there's nothing special in there.

Edit 3:

Okay, that last one seems to be related to the slightly slower frame rate in my Windows emulator, making the whole transition look kind of wrong.
I've taken a video in Windows, analysed it and everything is fine.

[dasjoe]

i encountered a strange bug in pre-final 2.
no idea whether it's my system or ags. but happens to no other programs.

ags disappears from my taskbar when i test my game and quit it by pressing ctrl + q.
it still works perfectly, but it's button isn't there anymore. it reappears when i alt-tab into ags or activate a window.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Dasjoe - I've also had that problem, but not only with AGS - eMule does that sometimes too. So I guess it's not a problem in the program, exactly... maybe something it does is a bit iffy with Windows?

[Pumaman]

Right, Pre-Final 3 is now up.

What's a pre-final 3, I hear you say?

Well, there's some sort of script editor crash doing the rounds, and I'd like to get it fixed before releasing 2.7. This new PF3 version has a fix for a potential script editor problem, so could the people who were experiencing the crash try it out with this version and see if it's still a problem.

Is there a chance you could slip in a GetGameParameter option to return the actual number of inventory items used in the game?

Done in PF3.

I noticed this in earlier versions too, maybe even v2.62, can't remember:
Using the "Black box out" transition, if I enter a certain room in my game, the room's background displays for a split second before going black and fading in.
Strangely, it does only seem to affect this particular room and I haven't been able to find out why. Besides a big object and a large walkbehind, there's nothing special in there.

Strange, I haven't seen this myself ... if you'd like to upload the specific room or something that demonstrates the problem I'll take a look at it.

i encountered a strange bug in pre-final 2.
no idea whether it's my system or ags. but happens to no other programs.

ags disappears from my taskbar when i test my game and quit it by pressing ctrl + q.
it still works perfectly, but it's button isn't there anymore. it reappears when i alt-tab into ags or activate a window.

Is that specific to Pre-Final 2, or has it always happened? arg, the test game feature is the bane of my life

[Privateer Puddin']

i encountered a strange bug in pre-final 2.
no idea whether it's my system or ags. but happens to no other programs.

ags disappears from my taskbar when i test my game and quit it by pressing ctrl + q.
it still works perfectly, but it's button isn't there anymore. it reappears when i alt-tab into ags or activate a window.

Is that specific to Pre-Final 2, or has it always happened? arg, the test game feature is the bane of my life

i think it happened to me before 2.7, but it doesn't happen as much as it not shutting down properly (almost every time )