Guidelines for making portable games

[simulacra]

I have a suggestions: let's write some guidelines for making an AGS game portable (Win, DOS, Linux - heck, why not even work out how to run AGS DOS games on OS X with a DOS emulator?).

Come on, let's list do's and don'ts.

[Gilbert]

Well I have no idea whether this post should be here or not. Anyways:

If you want your AGS game to be portable (or atleast executable by the three available engines), NEVER:
- use a plugin
- use PlayVideo()Ã,  Ã, (PlayFlic() is okay though)
- use long file names in your game files, you should use standard DOS 8.3 naming convention, so characters such as ' and spaces are not allowed.
- force the player to use the mouse wheel to play, not everyone has these mice
- distribute the game in formats other than standard ZIP, extractor for other archiving formats may not be available for all platforms.

[Radiant]

Also the extended CD commands do not work on all platforms. Not that I've ever seen anyone use them

[Gilbert]

Also the extended CD commands do not work on all platforms. Not that I've ever seen anyone use them

Heh, didn't notice that, but since only the DOS platform can access all the features (drives) of it, it doesn't matter much.