AGS v2.7 Final: Yet Another Edition

[Sektor 13]

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 got the same problem in 2.62 for 2 weeks, but now it is ok, i don't know why, i didnt installl any new AGS or anything...

[Balaam]

I think this is a great progam! It's obviously taken a lot of work and has cool and large community. I've played around in the creator and would like to offer some thoughts.

I know you probably have lots and lots to work on but these are mere idle wishes nothing more

I think the area that would be easiest to work on and yet give the best returns - is the work flow for the would be game creator.

Streamlining and improving the GUI can be done by reducing the number of mouse clicks needed where ever possible.

I assume a newbie to the program would work his way through the GUI tools avaliable first rather than jumping in to scripting. Some controls are a little odd there's an if-global-variable statement you can choose on interactions with objects, characters and the like.

In this you choose:
1. The Global Variables Name
-A drop down box would be cool here listing all the variables so far
2. It's value

Choosing to edit the contents of either brings up the same dialog.

It's has two radio buttons and I think is defaulted to "value".
Really this should create two seperate dialogs one specific to each choice. (or it shouldn't come up at all and should be handled one layer down)

Or if you fill both enteries in the pop-up dialog then both enteries should be updated rather than the one that is currently selected by the radio button.
Currently it's a bit inconsistant.

Sorry this is a little hard to describe but there are a few tiny things like this scattered through out the program that might cause a hang-up for a person new to the program.

I think minor changes to GUI would encourage far more people to stick with the creator and also allow others to develop game faster. The downside is, you have more people like me - always wanting more and bugging you

[Pumaman]

I assume a newbie to the program would work his way through the GUI tools avaliable first rather than jumping in to scripting. Some controls are a little odd there's an if-global-variable statement you can choose on interactions with objects, characters and the like.

There is always a bit of a debate to be had around this. Basically, most people when they first use AGS will use the interaction editor, but quite quickly will switch to just using scripting. Because the vast majority of people just use the scripting system, it's difficult to justify spending too much time on the interaction editor side of things.
But as you note, it is important that it works intuitively for people new to the program.

In this you choose:
1. The Global Variables Name
-A drop down box would be cool here listing all the variables so far
2. It's value
Choosing to edit the contents of either brings up the same dialog.

Perhaps this dialog needs to be better explained in the tutorial ... the purpose of it is that for each side of the expression you can choose either a variable from the drop-down list, or a specific value. So you could select two different variables and compare them, or select a variable on one side and a value on the other.

Looking at it again, I can see how it could be a bit confusing though, because it looks like there is just one pop-up dialog that is brought up by both the Change buttons.

[Ghost]

i got the pre-final the day before yesterday- a long time i had refused to even look at the new version because i thought it would be too much of an effort to learn ags again anew.
big mistake.
all things changed really hit the spot. it really makes sense to have an object
based language and learning the new commands is made simple both by the autocomplete and the rewritten help file. ags is as good as ever, and two days later i feel completely at home with 2.7.

chris, it has to be said again, your work really makes it possible for a large comunity to have fun making games. my humble thanks!

[strazer]

In order not to bump the other, older thread:

If I place 'addinventory' and 'newroom' one after the other in a script, then on_event only gets called for the newroom event. A warning might be in order.
Same thing with two consecutive 'addinventory's.

Yeah - I'm thinking about adding some sort of  on_event_always  to deal with this. A warning wouldn't go amiss, though.

Tracker'd: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=521

(How about that warning?)

[Fribbi AGDI joker]

I have been testing the latest version now and there is always one thing wich bother me. In every time I try to press "preview the view" It doesn't work then. So what it wrong with this thing?

[strazer]

When using the special "narrator" character in dialog scripts to pop up a message box, the mouse cursor used to initiate the dialog is being displayed.
Shouldn't it be hidden or at least be the Wait or Pointer cursor?

Edit:

Manual -> Tutorial -> Advanced room features -> Character scaling: "The scaling settings effect all CHARACTERS in the game, but not objects."

Edit 2:

According to the manual, UpdateInventory only affects the player's inventory. Since we can now use InvWindows with other characters, shouldn't each InvWindow control have some kind of Update function too?

[Bernie]

Nice work on the new release, works like a charm!

A little bug I've found: My player character guy only walks around solid characters if he himself is set to solid. If I deactivate solid for him, he walks through other solid characters.

[strazer]

I don't think that's a bug. That behaviour seems perfectly reasonable to me.

[Pumaman]

i got the pre-final the day before yesterday- a long time i had refused to even look at the new version because i thought it would be too much of an effort to learn ags again anew.
big mistake.
all things changed really hit the spot. it really makes sense to have an object
based language and learning the new commands is made simple both by the autocomplete and the rewritten help file. ags is as good as ever, and two days later i feel completely at home with 2.7.

Thanks for the input -- it's good to see that people who haven't touched the OO stuff before are adapting to it nicely

I have been testing the latest version now and there is always one thing wich bother me. In every time I try to press "preview the view" It doesn't work then. So what it wrong with this thing?

I don't know, what is wrong with it? What doesn't work?

The problem is, I either need a pointer to a custom struct type, or I have to make duplicate copies of the same data.

Edit by strazer: Topic has been split: New thread here

Rather than using a pointer to a custom struct, you can create an array of structs and just store the array index. It's a bit messy compared to having a pointer, but you don't need to duplicate any data.

When using the special "narrator" character in dialog scripts to pop up a message box, the mouse cursor used to initiate the dialog is being displayed.
Shouldn't it be hidden or at least be the Wait or Pointer cursor?

Well, this is normal behaviour for Display() boxes, so I would say for consistency it should stay as is.

Manual -> Tutorial -> Advanced room features -> Character scaling: "The scaling settings effect all CHARACTERS in the game, but not objects."

Well spotted thanks, I'll fix it.

According to the manual, UpdateInventory only affects the player's inventory. Since we can now use InvWindows with other characters, shouldn't each InvWindow control have some kind of Update function too?

I'll amend the docs, UpdateInventory does actually affect all inventory windows.

A little bug I've found: My player character guy only walks around solid characters if he himself is set to solid. If I deactivate solid for him, he walks through other solid characters.

As strazer says, this is by design. Both characters must be solid in order for them to block each other.

[strazer]

Well, this is normal behaviour for Display() boxes, so I would say for consistency it should stay as is.

But in dialogs, the mouse cursor switches to the pointer mode (at least when the dialog options are displayed) so in my opinion the consistent thing would be to display the pointer cursor.

[edmundito]

Glitch in the manual

I couldn't find where unhandled_event an other functions like that were, so I looked at it on the index, and when I clicked on locate to learn when it is, it points me to "Understanding blocking scripts".

[strazer]

I use a Linux program to view the chm file and there's no "Locate" button, but if I click on "unhandled_event" from the Index, it takes me to the correct page (Reference -> Scripting event reference). Strange.

Edit:

Speaking of the manual, I've found a few things regarding v2.7 when I read through it (again) the other day:

Tutorial -> Setting up the game -> Inventory:

"All inventory commands always operate on the current player character."

Tutorial -> Setting up the game -> Importing your own sprite graphics:

"Go to the Sprite Manager pane, under Visual Settings."

"At present you cannot move sprites between folders so they are stuck in the folder in which you create them. (...) Also, you cannot delete folders."

Tutorial -> Setting up the game -> Animations:

"Go to the "Views" pane, under Visual Settings."

Tutorial -> Setting up the game -> Characters:

"The "No interaction" checkbox..." (=> "Clickable")

"(...) the script name may only contain letters A-Z."

Missing:

- "Ignore room area lighting"
- "Do not turn before walking"
- "Diagonal loops"
- "Adjust speed with scaling"
- "Solid"

Tutorial -> Setting up the game -> Conversations:

"You can have as many lines like this as you want within the script." (Dialog script message limit is 3000?)

Tutorial -> Setting up the game -> Game options:

"Conversation on GUI" (=> "Dialog options on GUI")

"Player can't skip speech text" (=> "Skip speech" dropdown menu)

"Buttons off when disabled" (=> "When interface disabled" dropdown menu?)

"Always display as speech" (=> "Always display text as speech")

"Speech style" (QFG4-style not explained)

"No special walk-mode processing" (=> "Don't automatically move character in Walk mode" (Wouldn't "player" be more precise?))

"Use 320x240 letter-box mode" (=> "Use letterbox (320x240 / 640x480) resolution")

"Don't modify inventory cursor" (=> "Don't use inventory graphics as cursors")

"Don't automatically lose inventory" (=> removed)

"Don't scale up fonts" (=> "Don't scale up fonts at 640x400")

"Split resource files" (=> "Resources split every Mb")

"(...) clicking an inventory item will call your on_mouse_click function with LEFTINV or RIGHTINV (...)" (=> eMouseLeftInv / -RightInv)

"(...) WHEELNORTH and WHEELSOUTH (...)" (=> eMouseWheelNorth / -South)

Missing:

- "Use anti-glide mode"
- "Room transition style"
- "Save screenshots in save games"
- "Enforce object-based scripting"
- "Left-to-right operator precedence"
- "Maximum possible score"

Tutorial -> Advanced room features -> Character scaling:

"(...) by checking the "ignore scaling" box in that character's properties." (=> "Ignore room area scaling")

Tutorial -> Advanced room features -> Scrolling:

"(...) the picture could either be a scrolling room at 320x200, or a single non-scrolling screen at 640x480."
(Couldn't that be determined automatically depending on the game resolution, to avoid confusion? Am I missing something here?)

Tutorial -> Advanced room features -> Animating background scenes:

"There is a limit of 15 objects per screen, (...)" (=> I say get rid of the number and just say there's a limit so you won't have to update that part again later)

Tutorial -> Advanced room features -> Lighting effects:

"(...) depending on the individual character "Ignore lighting" and object "Use lighting" settings (...)" (=> "Ignore room area lighting" & "Use region tints and lighting")

That's it for now.

[Gilbert]

Hmmm works for me in windows too, try again, it's possibly you just clicked  a bit off the item, the item just above 'unhandled_event' is 'Understanding blocking scripts'.

[RickJ]

Feedback on Porting Old Code to New -

So far it's pretty painless.  The one thing that comes to mind though is the lack of the old function prototypes.  The "(Formerly known as MoveObject, which is now obsolete)" type info would be much more helpful if it included the parameter list.  I know that generally they are the same as the new function but not in all cases (I think).   Having the former parameter list available would inspire confidence in the  porting process, IMHO.   Just my two cents worth. 

[Gilbert]

Hmmm I think the manual is for general users (correct me if I'm wrong), for users who start up their games with V2.7 wouldn't need these info. If you're upgrading the scripts you can always open up 2 AGS help files of the 2 versions to make a comparison yourself.
I know these kind of info. can help those upgrading their games, however adding more stuff to the manual can just make it large and more difficult to read, which doesn't help for people who start from this version.
Moreover, when time passes all people would have to move to new format when they start their games anyway, those info. would just become more obsolete by that time.

[RickJ]

I don't think replacing this

"(Formerly known as MoveObject, which is now obsolete)"

with this

"(Formerly known as MoveObject (object,  x, y, speed), which is now obsolete)"

would bulk up the manual very much.   I know it would be a bit of work to go back and add the information and that it may or may not be worth the effort.   I'll leave that determination to CJ or whomever. Cheers.

[strazer]

It turns out it was caused by a (possible?) gui editor bug in abbreviating long function names.

My textbox names were quite long to begin with ("txtReplaceDescription" was one), and when the editor autocreated the script, the function was abbreviated as "txtReplaceDescription_Activa". However, in the "Run Script" selection, it had been titled "txtReplaceDescription_Activat". So the correct script was never run. This also explains why one textbox, with the shorter name txtSaveDescription, worked while the others didn't.

[Spyros]

I haven't checked AGS for long time and now I see that all the script commands I knew are deleted 
Anyway that was a great work again Chris. Congrats , and I'll try to take a look at the latest version soon

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Bug: if you change a gui button's graphic at runtime the button will always display the whole graphic, regardless of whether the actual button is smaller than the image and ClipImage is on. In effect, from the moment you change the graphic at runtime, ClipImage seems to be disabled.