Adventure Game Studio

I've searched the forums and not been able to find anything to suggest this is possible, but thought it worth asking anyway - is there any way of using the AGS Editor to export a room (*.crm) to XML?  I notice that the main game content in the .agf file is XML, but the rooms are not.

The reason being is that I'm writing a tool to convert AGS projects to XAGE, to help reduce the amount of effort required in porting a completed AGS game to the Xbox360 (a quick video of Demo Quest 3-1 running in XAGE can be found: here (http://clarvalon.blogspot.com/2009/04/ags-xage-conversion.html)).  Without the room information the automated conversion can only go so far.

Wow, that's some damn impressive work, clarvalon. I personally see much more potential in your converter than in the recent discussion about a Nintendo DS or Wii compatible AGS version. You say that structural differences prevent a perfect automatic conversion, what areas in particular does this relate to? Is it just the art that needs to be exported manually, or does it limit any AGS script functions?

Unfortunately I can't answer your question, but keep up the good work, and please keep us posted!  :=

Thanks.  I've not spent a huge amount of time with AGS, but the main differences are to do with scripting.  AGS seems extremely versatile - the fact that people have made wolfenstein 3d clones, platformers et al is very impressive.  XAGE on the other hand is a lot less mature and much more focused on creating SCUMM-type games (for now), with the scripting limited to a small set of actions.  Simplicity vs Versatility.  Features of AGS will therefore not necessarily map to XAGE, and will have to be implemented by other means.

Converting the art assets is all handled automatically and is reasonably pain-free, thanks to AGS Editor's handy sprite export functionality.  There's a small problem in that 8bit sprites seem to be exported as 32bit, so the palette information is lost (hence why Cris has no hair in the video).  This shouldn't be an issue if people point XAGE to their original 8bit bitmaps.

Walkable areas in AGS are harder to port over automatically as XAGE uses geometric walkboxes rather than a mask.  This may be moot though, as this information is presumably stored in the aforementioned room.crm files which I can't get my mits on.

To ask of this slowly..can I complete a game and make it available for Xbox360?

Room data is stored in a proprietary binary file format, mainly because it includes a lot of graphics data which wouldn't be efficiently stored as XML.

It's something that I may change at some point, but there's no strong reason to do it at the moment.

And yes, that's some impressive initial work with your converter :)

DN:  No, not yet.  XAGE is still incomplete - the two main missing parts are Dialogue Trees and GUI customisation, both of which I've been putting off until I've fully thought through the design.  But what currently works in Windows also deploys and runs fine on the 360.  Linux/Mac support is MUCH flakier at the moment, but this is a lower priority (and dependant on third party technologies - Silverlight & Silversprite).

The AGS conversion is, at this stage, mostly superficial.  The basic game structure is ported (rooms, characters and associated textures) over but not a whole lot else. 

CJ:  Cheers - having the .crm data in XML would undoubtedly be extremely useful, but there's still plenty for me to get my teeth into.  Maybe when XAGE and the conversion is more mature I'll be able to put forward a stronger case for its inclusion. 

Oh, so it's mostly the effort of doing it as far as it is. Man I really hope you finish it..

Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't it be possible to create an AGS module that would act as a converter? (add the module to the game, run the game, the loads all its ressources , and the module saves everything into files)
What about the scripts? Are they still saved in the "rooms" files?

No, it's not possible, and even if it's possible, it's not practical.

What you can do in a module is just what you can do in AGS text scripting.

Quote from: Gilbet V7000a on Tue 21/04/2009 13:25:21
No, it's not possible, and even if it's possible, it's not practical.

What you can do in a module is just what you can do in AGS text scripting.

Yes, but what data exists in the room that is not accessible in the text scripting?
I said "module", but I might as well have said "plugin". My whole point is : if the structure of the files is not known, what prevents the developer to load the data using the available official tools and then save it in his own file format?

Wow great timing clarvalon! It's about time AGS covered other platforms.

I ask the same question as OUXX. Wouldn't it be easy to write a plugin for AGS that bridges the gap in the conversion process?

Cheers,
Sparky.

Quote from: Pumaman on Wed 15/04/2009 18:26:42Room data is stored in a proprietary binary file format

To answer OUXX and subspark, in short this means no.

The data is saved in a proprietary format. That means the only way to access the data would be to either load the AGS Editor or run the game itself and load the data via the AGS engine.

It would then be a timely and (system resource) costly operation to perform any type of conversion (having to save all room data from backgrounds, walkable areas, walkbehinds, objects, regions, hotspots, etc. to external files) and in the event that even the slightest change is made to the room, the entire process would have to be repeated.

The way it stands clarvalon is reading the primary game data directly from the available plaintext files (such as Game.agf which is written in XML). This means that it can interpret the data directly, any changes would be automatically handled.

Since the rooms are saved to a proprietary format it's simply not reasonable to have to go through every room and export the data (especially in games with high numbers of rooms!).

Unfortunately at this point the best solution here would simply be for clarvalon to work around it, and if/when the time comes, he can negotiate rights with CJ to try and write some type of interpreter for the CRM files.

Great job so far by the way clarvalon, it's looking very impressive and I definitely wish you the best of luck. AGS games on the Xbox 360 would be one of the best possible things to ever happen in the history of mankind. :=

 :o

This is brilliant! I've tinkered with XNA a little bit as part of a course I was doing. Its good to see people starting to develop useful tools with it. Its a shame M$ are so arsey about publish XBLA stuff. I guess the solution would be that everyone would have to invest in a CC subscription to run on 360, which isn't a terrible thing.

Good Luck!

Many thanks the positive comments.  As a result of the interest, I'm continuing to work on the AGS -> XAGE project conversion.  I've started work on a simple parser to pull out the basic information from the scripts associated with the dialogue options, so hopefully I'll have something new to show in the next week or two.

Due to my general lack of knowledge of AGS, I'm not sure whether exporting the room information in-game is viable.  Likewise, interpreting the .crm file seems like the long way around.  Having the room information in XML format would be ideal - if AGS stores rooms as individual objects then it should be trivial to serialize it, minus the textures, via the editor into XML.   Whether CJ ever implements this however is completely his prerogative - I certainly won't gripe if it never happens.

I don't see how making an XAGE room editor would be so hard? Granted, if you had tons of rooms it'd be a pain to go through and recreate each of them, but I'm gonna guess that games like that will have scripted features that XAGE (at this point at least) would be unable to replicate.

I don't mean to put XAGE down at all with this post, rather the contrary, I would love to port AGS games to the Zune :) (not an Xbox fan)


~Trent

Essentially XAGE already is one big room editor, as that is how it is structured internally.  You can already do all the important things - create room objects, walkable areas, create scripts etc. 

The reason for requesting the room XML is to minimise duplication of effort.  Anything that can be automated should be automated.  The rest is down to the game's developer to work around, re-engineer or drop as they see fit.

I've been making some further progress on the AGS to XAGE converter.  Ben304 very generously sent me a copy of the source to his latest game, Awakener (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=1208).  It has helped me iron out a lot of issues and also has proven to be a prime candidate for conversion for three reasons: 
  1)  The code is simple, clean and doesn't rely on modules.
  2)  It is light on GUIs.
  3)  It is predominately character driven, as opposed to room object-driven (as previously mentioned in the thread, XAGE is currently incapable of of accessing most room and object data due to the custom *.crm file format).

Youtube video:  Awakener running on the Xbox360 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMzc59VaJJ4).

There are various things yet to do and work on the converter is ongoing, but it is possible to recreate the above from scratch in around about thirty minutes:
  1)  Some minor pre-preparation (exporting sprites to specific folders, manually converting audio etc.) - approx 20 minutes.
  2)  Automatic AGS to XAGE conversion - approx 3 minutes.
  3)  Five manual changes to the XAGE version of the game - approx 5 minutes.

The five manual changes required to get Awakener running: (& reason why)
  1)  Change Fadi's starting room (unable to use intro screen as it uses objects - *.crm)
  2)  Add action to invoke room_Load (unable to get room events from *.crm)
  3)  Add action to invoke room_AfterFadeIn (unable to get room events from *.crm)
  4)  Add action to focus camera on cFadi (XAGE scripts not yet stacking)
  5)  Add action to play music (unable to get PlayMusicOnRoomLoad event from *.crm)

Not being able to access to room and room object data remains a major obstacle.  Hopefully the above demonstrates the potential in preparing AGS games for new audiences.  It would be incredibly useful to have either:

• A button in AGS editor that allows for exporting room data in XML format (preferable).
• A spec/file format/codesnippet detailing how to read *.crm files.

Massive thanks to Ben Chandler, and for putting up with my inane questions!

Hi clarvalon, I've created an editor plugin that dumps room information for you. I'm afraid I have no idea how good the performance is on a large game, because I don't have the source files for one to try it out on. I made it quite quickly and wouldn't be surprised if it has problems, but I hope it is of some help to you.

Download it from:

If all goes well the plugin in that folder should add an "Export" menu to the AGS editor with a "Room Data" option. I developed this plugin against version 3.1.2SP1, I don't know whether it works on other versions.

The backgrounds are dumped as Base64 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64)-encoded PNG image data blocks in the XML.

I've included the C# project source code as well as the DLL in the zip in case you or anyone else want to take a look at it.

Wow, that's excellent to see Awakener on the 360.
I'm hoping this playing around works out, and we can get any AGS games to work on the 360. :P

Its a marvellous movement towards crossplatforming ags. Spectacular plugin, denzil! Youll make clarvalon really happy with that!

Cheers,
Sparky

Can I beg? Man, would I love to see HHGTG on Xbox or anything! ;D

That or sektor13's infinity string!

Sparky

@Denzil:  Brillliant - I'm blown away with how quickly you produced the plugin.  It's exactly what I was looking for.  I've had a few minutes to play with it and these are my initial thoughts:

• It doesn't export the xml unless you export it to the same directory as the *.crm files.
• It would be preferable to have the background images exported as .png files as opposed to embedded in the xml.
• Is it possible to also export the walkable areas, hotspots etc. as .pngs?

Do you have any objection to me playing around with the source code to overcome these minor issues?  The thought occurs that using the Plugin I could automate a whole lot more of the pre-conversion preparation, which would make things even simpler/quicker.  Many thanks for your help!

@DN:  Whilst it would be possible to convert your Hitchhikers game to the Xbox, and to distribute the *.ccgame to others with the Creator's Club membership, you will almost certainly be prevented from releasing it to Xbox Live due to copyright issues.  However, nothing would stop you from creating a Silverlight version for playing online.

Quote from: clarvalon on Fri 09/10/2009 10:36:29

• It doesn't export the xml unless you export it to the same directory as the *.crm files.

That's odd. I can't think of any reason why. Maybe a permissions thing?

Quote

• It would be preferable to have the background images exported as .png files as opposed to embedded in the xml.

Sure. Change this bit:
for (int j = 0; j < room.BackgroundCount; j++)
{
using (Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(room.Width, room.Height))
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bmp))
{
editor.RoomController.DrawRoomBackground(g, 0, 0, j, 1);
using (MemoryStream pngStream = new MemoryStream())
{
bmp.Save(pngStream, ImageFormat.Png);
output.WriteStartElement("Background");
output.WriteAttributeString("ID", j.ToString());
byte[] buf = pngStream.ToArray();
output.WriteBase64(buf, 0, buf.Length);
output.WriteEndElement();
}
}
}
...to something like this (untested):
for (int j = 0; j < room.BackgroundCount; j++)
{
using (Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(room.Width, room.Height))
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bmp))
{
editor.RoomController.DrawRoomBackground(g, 0, 0, j, 1);
bmp.Save("room" + room.Number + "-bg" + j + ".png", ImageFormat.Png);
}
}

Quote

• Is it possible to also export the walkable areas, hotspots etc. as .pngs?

Oh, I forgot about those. Hmm. Yes, but with a bit of a complication - that function I'm using above to draw the room background (editor.RoomController.DrawRoomBackground) has some optional parameters at the end I'm not using that add those things - but unfortunately it looks like you can only have them drawn on top of a background image, not just on a black background, so you would have to manually separate the background, which gets even more complicated if your background happens to use the exact same colour as one of the regions...

QuoteDo you have any objection to me playing around with the source code to overcome these minor issues?  The thought occurs that using the Plugin I could automate a whole lot more of the pre-conversion preparation, which would make things even simpler/quicker.  Many thanks for your help!

Please, feel free. I hereby release that export plugin source code as public domain.

Awesome, you've really helped me out.  I'm not too concerned about WalkableAreas at the moment, as I may just try to use the plugin to export them in an XAGE friendly format (XAGE uses geometric walkboxes rather than masks).

Cheers for releasing the source.  One thing - is there any way of actually debugging the plugin in Visual Studio, or do I have to just keep copying the updated dll to the AGS folder and hope for the best?   

If you have the full version of Visual Studio, you should have an "Attach to Process..." option in the Debug menu. If you compile a Debug version of the DLL, drop that to the editor folder, run the editor then use "Attach to Process..." to attach to AGSEditor.exe, that should let you set breakpoints and stuff. (On the other hand if you're like me and only have the free "Express" edition, you don't have that "Attach" option.)

Geeze, this is absolutely amazing!

Once this is done, will the AGS community be able to use this? I really really am interested :)

A DS port would be great also...lots of adventure games are being developped on the DS I believe.
:)

I do know, due to copyright it won't be apossible,but I jsut want to see it on another platform.. :D

@Denzil:  Thanks for the clarification.  Unfortunately I've been using Express, though I'll figure something out.  You've given me a lot to work with.

@Knox:  Yes, XAGE will be freely available and completely free to use for non-commercial games, most likely requiring a small license fee for commercial products (or alternatively some sort of profit-share).  As for the DS, I don't know a huge amount about it.  I can understand the appeal of a DS port, but given the legality issues of the homebrew scene and the lack of c#/xna support it's extremely unlikely to happen.

@DN:  I'm happy to try a conversion on one of your Hitchhiker's demos, if you were happy to send me the source.  It might be a while before I get a chance, but I could similarly capture a quick vid of it on the xbox and send you a link to the Silverlight version (as I have done with Ben).  The same goes to anyone else - each conversion improves the process and provides new insights, although the quality of the conversion may vary substantially from game to game.

Quote from: clarvalon on Fri 09/10/2009 15:56:24
@DN:  I'm happy to try a conversion on one of your Hitchhiker's demos, if you were happy to send me the source.  It might be a while before I get a chance, but I could similarly capture a quick vid of it on the xbox and send you a link to the Silverlight version (as I have done with Ben).  The same goes to anyone else - each conversion improves the process and provides new insights, although the quality of the conversion may vary substantially from game to game.

If you can convert it, you can convert about anything in AGS.(NoI'm not bragging about it,it's that it has so many modules and various stuff, and it's a rather large game, that it contains mostly more than the basic AGS script.

Quote from: Dualnames on Fri 09/10/2009 16:30:09If you can convert it, you can convert about anything in AGS.(NoI'm not bragging about it,it's that it has so many modules and various stuff, and it's a rather large game, that it contains mostly more than the basic AGS script.

In that case, it sounds like it would be a good candidate in a month or two, when XAGE is a bit more mature. 

What about support for third party plugins?

Will they easily port since they are just windows DLLs?

Also I'd be happy to send you the source to McCarthy if you'd like it.

Third party plugins are a problem in so far that they are specific to AGS (I'm guessing).  Also Xna has some pretty strict requirements regarding managed code, so it doesn't like anything that isn't written in C#.  Modules should be ok however.

At this stage I've a lot to be getting on with, and I'd like to focus on getting Awakener as robust as possible.  Having said this, I'll be very keen to try out other AGS games in the near future.  To anyone who is interested - feel free to drop me an email clarvalon@live.co.uk and I'll be in touch when I'm in a position to do so.

Quote[..]I may just try to use the plugin to export them in an XAGE friendly format (XAGE uses geometric walkboxes rather than masks).

I sometimes wonder if geometric walkboxes would be better for ags than masks.  Less information loaded, and probably much easier to calculate walking areas.  It would also be easier for 'us', as the game makers, to readjust the walkable areas if the geometric vertices were movable.

This project sounds just fantastic. It's going to be very interesting to see the progress. Good luck!

Quote from: clarvalon on Fri 09/10/2009 18:22:48
Also Xna has some pretty strict requirements regarding managed code, so it doesn't like anything that isn't written in C#. 

Does that mean that plugins written in C# are okay?

Probably not, no, come to think of it.  The Xbox360 and Silverlight builds require that all libraries are compiled specific to their platform.  I honestly haven't put a great deal of thought into plugins for XAGE, though it's something I plan on looking at more closely when v1.0 is (finally) out.

Sorry to hijack the thread - a little bit ;)  But I just came across a thing called RAGE, Ruby Adventure Game Engine that I thought may be of some interest to folks interested in this thread.  It seems to be an abandoned open source project.   

It's interesting in that if Clavaron is successful with XAGE then it may be possible to do the same or similar thing using Ruby which is cross platform and runs on web servers. I haven't had a chance to download and look at it yet but there is a demo game also.   I don't know if RAGE runs only on the desktop, from a web server, or both?    Anyway her is the link in case anyone is interested.

http://rubyforge.org/projects/librage/

It looks to me like it must be desktop-only, because it says that it uses SDL for graphics and that is not something that works over the Web. (The Ruby language has actually been around since 1995 as an obscure general-purpose scripting language, it's only in the last couple of years that someone said "hey, we could use this to power web applications" and that shot it to fame.)

AGE (http://www.twilightsoftware.com/age/), DAGE (http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/forum/index.php?topic=5608.0), J-AGE (http://www.agigames.com/forum/index.php?topic=10595.0), XAGE (http://www.clarvalon.blogspot.com/) and now RAGE.  We seem to have hit upon a popular naming convention.

In essence, yes, the Export to XAGE plugin could be used to convert the AGS sources to any adventure game engine that was capable of mapping some/all of the functionality.  It pulls the required info from the proprietary formats and stores it in lovely xml & png.  And whilst Silverlight v3.0 isn't quite ubiquitous (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Silverlight#Compatibility) it allows XAGE to go some way to provide cross-platform browser-based play.

Quote from: Denzil Quixode on Fri 09/10/2009 11:44:04Oh, I forgot about those. Hmm. Yes, but with a bit of a complication - that function I'm using above to draw the room background (editor.RoomController.DrawRoomBackground) has some optional parameters at the end I'm not using that add those things - but unfortunately it looks like you can only have them drawn on top of a background image, not just on a black background, so you would have to manually separate the background, which gets even more complicated if your background happens to use the exact same colour as one of the regions...

I've been looking  at this and have encountered RoomController.GetAreaMaskPixel(), which looks like it will help me pull out hotspots etc., although it will not be able to indicate when hotspots overlap.  I'm not yet sure whether this is ever likely to be a problem.  A more thorough way would be to compare the background bitmap with the background + hotspot bitmap, as you mentioned, though it's a rather expensive.  I'll see how I get on.

Quote from: clarvalon on Tue 13/10/2009 14:14:10I've been looking  at this and have encountered RoomController.GetAreaMaskPixel(), which looks like it will help me pull out hotspots etc., although it will not be able to indicate when hotspots overlap.

Just so you know clarvalon currently in AGS all of the hotspots, walkable areas, regions, etc. are assigned to a single bitmap per room (that is one bitmap per room 1's hotspots, another for room 1's walkable areas, etc.). This means that none of the areas are ever (until such time in the future as this behavior may be replaced within the engine and editor) going to overlap.

So there should never be an instance where the cursor is over two hotspots, or the player character is stood on two distinct regions/walkable areas?  If yes, that's good.  Certainly makes my job easier.

Right. AGS determines where the character is standing based on his (X,Y) co-ordinates. The Z index allows for displacing the character's graphical position (i.e., to make them appear to "float") but the events are always triggered by the actual (X,Y). Therefore since there's no overlapping, there can only be one possible event shooting off at a time that you would have to worry about.

Thanks for the clarification.  I'm starting to amass a large amount of high-level questions about AGS, so I should perhaps spend more time in the beginner's forum.  

Due to the help provided in this thread I've been able to make Awakener convert with much greater functionality, and it is now (almost) visually pixel-perfect under XAGE.  I've posted a short update here (http://clarvalon.blogspot.com/2009/10/awakener-update.html).  Thanks guys!

Quote from: Dualnames on Fri 09/10/2009 16:30:09

Quote from: clarvalon on Fri 09/10/2009 15:56:24
@DN:  I'm happy to try a conversion on one of your Hitchhiker's demos, if you were happy to send me the source.  It might be a while before I get a chance, but I could similarly capture a quick vid of it on the xbox and send you a link to the Silverlight version (as I have done with Ben).  The same goes to anyone else - each conversion improves the process and provides new insights, although the quality of the conversion may vary substantially from game to game.

If you can convert it, you can convert about anything in AGS.(NoI'm not bragging about it,it's that it has so many modules and various stuff, and it's a rather large game, that it contains mostly more than the basic AGS script.

I send the files to Clarvalon and I got this really funny reply, proving my point...

Quote
   Thanks.  I still haven't quite wrapped my head around the problem but I'll look at it again when I've got the time.

To give you an idea of where HitchHikers is compared to Awakener, the former has 9814 unhandled scripting errors (NOT including modules) whilst the latter currently has 263.  Obviously while I work on Awakener's 263 errors the Hitchhiker number will start to fall too.

As of this morning the number has dropped to 9779, and Arthur has stopped walking backwards.  Getting there  :)

Let us know when it's down to... 42

Quote from: clarvalon on Fri 23/10/2009 09:49:53
As of this morning the number has dropped to 9779, and Arthur has stopped walking backwards.  Getting there  :)

Not really..eh..Arthur initially spins around and walks backwards as that;s how it's indicated he's dizzy, then when you eat the pill it reverts to his normal view and should walk normally..