Long ideas list of future AGS/plugins

[InCreator]

Following text isn't excact suggestions list, just ideas when looking at AGS today and in the future... Like - what could be there, when version 4.0 comes out or smthng... they could be just neat plugins, too.

1) NPC AI system

With definable paths for NPC characters, from room to room, with places where NPC stops, says something, maybe some other NPC says something too (NPC with NPC conversation), picks up things, performs some animations and so. There was something pretty close to that in a game "Lure of the Temptress". But full system to do that, instead sinking into millions of lines of scripts, would be cool. AGS character plugin did some of that...

2) Emotions in animations

This should mean first, that animations are separated into directions, not loops (up walking anim, not just loop, up talking anim, and so on), so we can make
several animations of character *easily*, like when characters walks right, he can be happy, woulded, crawling, sneaking and so on, which affects his animation then. And of course, fast script functions for that. Like "SetCharacterWalkHappy(CHAR);"
Talking gives even more us to this, angry speech, happy, bored, etc. "SetCharacterTalkBored(CHAR);"

But this can be done now, through lot of scripting and I think when such thing would be in AGS, whole program could be in two modes, Advanced and simple or something, because lot's of people see no use for this, or have to work enough to make even primary animations.

3) 3D-rooms with lights > Shadows.

This sounds really difficult. Only way I imagine such thing could be done is:

* Room itself is a plane at the center of a 3D-box
* Another two regions are included, which define "walls" and "ground", to which shadow is projected to
* Inside this 3D box (world), there's a directional light, which can be moved on 3 axis with definable light casting spot (target)
* Depending on angle light lightens the room plane, shadow will be drawn, which will be a character's sprite, streched to needed angle, all colors replaced with black and drawn with opacity that can be defined according this rooms light setting
overall picture would be something like that:



But then again, I may be terribly wrong and such thing could not work at all, since my knowledge of 3D is really non-existing.

4) View Manager... like there's a sprite manager

5) There were some other dreams about future AGS, but I forgot already... Oh yeah, animated inventory items, like there were some in some game, I can't remember... Kronolog?

[BOYD1981]

i don't think 3D rooms would work, because then people would ask for 3D model support, lighting and shadows aren't really that important either...
i like the idea of the NPC AI system though...
what i'd really like though is an animation previewer and perhaps a built-in font editor, and a better music playback routine, i know scotch was working on a BASS routine (nothing to do with beneath a steel sky) plugin but he ran into some problems...

[Kweepa]

Boyd, I think you misunderstood -
I think InCreator was just using the 3d picture to illustrate the method of generating the shadow for the character.
I'm tempted to work on that shadow plugin.

[Pau]

About the emotion system. Create a lot of functions like SetCharacterTalkBored(CHAR) could be confussing and not very flexible. Maybe defining a Character variable called mood is a better option. you can define the different moods and select one depending the situation. If mood="happy" the walk animation will be changed with thw walk-happy one.

The support for vector graphics, layers (in different dephts) or even bone system could be also very interesting features in the future, but maybe the effort for develop that is bigger than the required for other features more needed.

[InCreator]

As I said, It were ideas about FUTURE... Simply because AGS, hate to mention it, is too slow enough, right now. Bones animation? huh.

[Darth Mandarb]

I would like to see a Sounds Manager (like the Sprite Manager) where you could have folders/subfolders containing sounds.

Something like this:


Something like that would make it easier to keep track of all sounds/music you're using.

Picking them when scripting and/or designing rooms and interactions would be much easier too.

~ d

[Ryukage]

1) NPC AI system

With definable paths for NPC characters, from room to room, with places where NPC stops, says something, maybe some other NPC says something too (NPC with NPC conversation), picks up things, performs some animations and so. There was something pretty close to that in a game "Lure of the Temptress". But full system to do that, instead sinking into millions of lines of scripts, would be cool. AGS character plugin did some of that...

I think what you're really talking about here is a Finite State Machine plugin.  I know one already exists, but it isn't really worth much; you have to create each state in using script functions, and then change states from the script -- really, you could acheive the same effect just using globalints.

A proper FSM plugin would work more like the script engine used by MUGEN.  You'd write a file containing states, and each state would have a number of control blocks.  Each control block had a conditional statement to activate it, and a function to perform when activated.  Instead of the game script having to drive the state machine, the state machine would drive the game script.

I've been thinking about programming such a plugin myself, but to really be useful there'd need to be a feature in the plugin interface for calling user-defined script functions from the plugin.  There doesn't seem to be any such feature at the moment, so I haven't been very motivated to work on a plugin.

4) View Manager... like there's a sprite manager

And a sound manager, and a FLIC manager, and a music manager, and...

5) There were some other dreams about future AGS, but I forgot already... Oh yeah, animated inventory items, like there were some in some game, I can't remember... Kronolog?

While we're at it, how about mouseover effects for inventory items as well.  Possible to do it in script, but only if you do not use the "show multiple times" option.  It would also be cool if you could use animations for GUI button mouseover effects, instead of just replacing the whole button with the animation, so that buttons could pulsate or something when the mouse hovers over them.

[InCreator]

Hmm... talking about mouse... Every computer store is selling wheel-mice nowadays. How about putting mouse wheel into some use in AGS games? Like scrolling inventory or cursors? Haven't tested everything yet, but in some occasions, wheel even works in AGS games.

[Hinders]

THERE is mouse wheel support in general settings:/

[Nine Toes]

I like Darth's idea.

I was watching Tech TV the other day, and they had a Photoshop special on with this hippie-looking Photoshopt expert, Burt Monroy.  They were showing all of the clips where he comes on Call For Help (or is it the Screen Savers?  ... it's one of those shows with Leo LaPorte) and shows you cool things you can do in Photoshop.

Anyway, there was this one clip, where Burt was showcasing Photoshop CS, which apparently is Photoshop with all of the third party plugins included.

I think it would be kind of a cool idea to see a version of AGS with all of the plugins included.  So you could just open up AGS and in the Sidebar Menu, you could just click on the usual, Characters, Lip Sync, or Fonts, etc, as well as AI, or Calculator, or Credits, etc, or under the background editor, there was two more sub-pages, one for lighting and flashlight effects, and one for snow/rain.  I realize this would be a lot of work, and as far as I know, the plugins aren't officially supported by CJ.

Hmmm... I don't know... maybe this is a dumb idea after all...

[James Kay]

My wish list (though most of these have been talked about before):

1. Isometric turning angles (a character goes to his up-right walk cycle at 30 degrees in stead of 45).
2. Rotate-able baselines (or maybe a preset for iso games).
3. Unified scipt language (so everything makes more sense).
4. Packing of MP3s and video files into a data file.
5. The additon of FACE <direction> commands. Sometimes I want a character to use his LEFT facing view, but am then forced to use FaceLocation followed by a series of x, y positions. It would be great to be able to say FaceLocation(left);
6. A "dictionary" implemented in the Macromedia way. Script language, aspecially at the moment, is quite difficult to search, See the Macromedia Director Lingo HTML help files for what I mean,
7. The moon on a stick.  

[Kweepa]

James, about (5):

You know you can just put this in the script header:

#define left 0
#define down 1
#define right 2
#define up 3
import function FaceDirection(int c, int d);

And in the global script

function FaceDirection(int c, int d)
{
int x = character[c].x;
int y = character[c].y;
if (d == left) x--;
if (d == right) x++;
if (d == up) y--;
if (d == down) y++;
FaceLocation(c, x, y);
}

Sorry for going off topic.

I believe CJ is working on (7) though.

[jannar85]

This is the only thing I want........
The Flash Plugin

[dasjoe]

I really would like to see vector-based creation of Walkable-areas.
(i think the LA adventures were created using vectors for defining the character's walking paths)

So there would be a easy way to create a single, thin (1 px) line (which is not straight horizontal or vertical) on which a character can walk.

:

[Gregjazz]

I would like to see a Sounds Manager (like the Sprite Manager) where you could have folders/subfolders containing sounds.

Something like this:


Something like that would make it easier to keep track of all sounds/music you're using.

Picking them when scripting and/or designing rooms and interactions would be much easier too.

~ d

Sound/music manager -- brilliant idea. It would be extremely useful for talkie games for sorting the different dialog.

[Ryukage]

3. Unified scipt language (so everything makes more sense).

FYI, the technical term for that is "consistent naming conventions".  "Unified script language" kinda makes it sound like you want to combine dialog scripts, text scripts, and the interaction editor into one single script language.  Not that it make any difference, just thought I'd mention that.

[James Kay]

3. Unified scipt language (so everything makes more sense).

FYI, the technical term for that is "consistent naming conventions".  "Unified script language" kinda makes it sound like you want to combine dialog scripts, text scripts, and the interaction editor into one single script language.  Not that it make any difference, just thought I'd mention that.

Yeah, that works for me too.  

[Isegrim]

Wasn't there some talk about scaling sprites via script commands? What happened to that idea?

[Lafferty]

A Hook to a scripting language (I prefer Python) so we can dynamically issue commands to the engine. I am not sure that is possible with the engine, but it would be extremely useful since it would allow all kinds of Python packages to be used along with a game. Drawback: You'd need python and the needed packages installed.

[Pumaman]

Can you give an example of a Python package that would be useful in an adventure game?