Obsoleting CDAudio and Room-specific view

[Pumaman]

Ok, in order to try and reduce bloat a bit, and clear up some confusion, I'm proposing to remove two things from AGS:

1. CDAudio support. I don't think anybody has ever used it, and indeed it'd be a waste of a CD to use CD Audio rather than OGG music.
2. The "Player character view" option on the Room Settings pane. It's confusing, doesn't always work properly and a better effect can be achieved using ChangeCharacterView or the walkable area views.

So, does anyone have any opinions on these? Is anybody using either of these features and would find it really annoying if they were removed?

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Well, I think we can safely drop 2, although it IS a nice feature for newcomers...

...but leave 1 on. It's a nice feature, and I've toyed with it sometimes. I've considered using it some times for some purposes, ended up not doing it, but it's always a nice feature to have. Better to have too many than not enough.

[Holls_Unplugged]

Like CJ said, though, why not use barely-compressed OGG or MP3?  CD Audio was only originally used because it worked, but they stopped doing that fairly quickly.

As for 2, I must not know what view setting you mean.

[strazer]

I wouldn't mind if these were removed.
CD-Audio is a nice feature but hardly practical for a game. I never had any use for no. 2.

[Moox]

I didnt even know that number two existed, as you stated that there is an easy work around there isnt use for it. Number one doesnt affect me so whatever you pick I am cool with.

[jetlag]

I used the cd functions in my first game. Since there wasn't any music, you could play an audio cd by pressing P.

You could remove flipscreen. They look handy, but are useless when you try to do something with it. I think no one ever used it.

[Gilbert]

I'll say 1 can be useful if you use it but yeah it doesn't hurt without it, so I don't have problem without that.
2 is an outdated feature (yeah) and it'll just cause confusions now, so I'll say it should definitely be out.

[YOke]

1. More and more people make non-adventuregames in AGS and then it can be nice to be able to play your favourite CD while you are mindlessly blasting monsters or whatever. It's a feature I miss in many such games and will surely put it in there if/when I make one.

2. Die!

[Pumaman]

Well, if people are using CD Audio then there's no harm in leaving it in.

It's just that I've never actually seen a game be released with CD Audio (for obvious reasons, since most games are downloadable).

If people are using the facility to add some sort of "play my CD" function to their games then that's fine and I'll leave it in ... it just seemed like something that was probably not getting used and so bloating the engine for no good reason.

[Ishmael]

I've for a long time been thinking of setting my game so that if you have an audio CD in the CD drive when you start the game, the normal game music is dropped and random track numbers are assigned into these slots (Or they are assigned in order, whatever the player chooses, and that they could also modify the playlist) and played respectively.

I'd like to do this eventually, so I vote to leave the CD-audio support in.

[SSH]

Or you could just turn off the music in setup and use your favourite media player... actually, I dunno how doable it is, but it would be nice if you could turn on and off large features that might appear in your compiled game... ie. turn of MP3 player, CD Audio, and even configure yourself the number of objects, hotspots per room (up to a hard max of 250, say)... would this be doable if they were DLLs?

[Scorpiorus]

would this be doable if they were DLLs?

Dos and Linux users won't tolerate this I think

I too for removing "Player character view" feature since it seems obsolete.

As for CDAudio support - I don't really know. A nice additional feature to have but I think, it depends no how much kbytes libcda code takes in a binary form.

[Joseph DiPerla]

I was gonna vote to take off both, but I can see why the CD audio thing might be useful.

But yeah, I vote for taking off the player character view.

[YOke]

While on this note...
What would be the problems with moving stuff like this into add-on modules? An optional plugin?
Would it require rewriting all the code, or is it pretty much cut and paste? What systems won't plugins work under if any?

[Ishmael]

While on this note...
What would be the problems with moving stuff like this into add-on modules? An optional plugin?
Would it require rewriting all the code, or is it pretty much cut and paste? What systems won't plugins work under if any?

hmmm.... maybe:

would this be doable if they were DLLs?

Dos and Linux users won't tolerate this I think

[SSH]

Except Linux has a thing called shared object files

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

And DOS... does anyone still use DOS at all? Especially people who use AGS? I mean, what is really the use of making a DOS game with AGS anymore?

[Ishmael]

I'm not thinking about the other platforms here, I'm thinking about if I need to pack an extra DLL into the game zip or rar file just if I want to give the player the possibility to play their favourirte music while playing the game without them having to start a cd player program and setting up the options and whatever.

[YOke]

Well. For that function alone it would be useless, but over time a greater number of functions will be more or less obsolete.
Could be nice to place all those functions in a separate plugin for those specially interested in it.

[Ishmael]

Well. For that function alone it would be useless, but over time a greater number of functions will be more or less obsolete.
Could be nice to place all those functions in a separate plugin for those specially interested in it.

...in case they start to clutter the engine load up.

IMO