Room Object Limit

[lemmy101]

Hullo all!

I'm just wondering if the max objects per room limit is fixed at 20 for a particular reason, only we're using invisible blue cups for waypoints for characters to walk to in cutscenes etc, to allow us to reposition characters positions throughout cutscenes without editing the code (and for other reasons relating to our conversation engine)

This means, in the first room for example, I have hit the 20 object limit even though I've only got 4 actual visible objects in the room... the rest being start positions for characters, where characters move to in the room etc.

I could probably get around this for this particular room, but can imagine some larger, scrolling rooms I may simply not have enough objects to put the waypoints I require and the visible objects I require.

Is there any way around this? Would it break stuff or slow down if this limit was increased?

Thanks!

lemmy

[GarageGothic]

CJ explained the limits like this:

The reason for limits is to speed up data loading and saving, since the data structures are a fixed size. It would be possible to remove most of the limits, but this would probably make save game and game loading times slower.

But do you really need objects to specify waypoints? If you set up a large struct containing x and y coordinates, you could have a virtually infinite number of waypoints, and they could be displayed for debug purposes using RawDraw functions.

[lemmy101]

I'm accessing them through a C++ plugin, therefore they need to be objects really:-\

Will have a think about it though... might be a solution around this...

Of course it means I can't drag them around and fine tune cutscenes, and it's back to editing X, Y coords again either way...

Cheers,

lemmy

[GarageGothic]

Using the method I mentioned above, you could at least position the waypoints in-game and export the coordinates to an external text file for cut-n-pasting into code. Depending on how your cutscenes are set up I would even think it possible to watch the cutscene, edit the positions without quitting the game and the restart the cutscene.

[CaptainBinky]

It's probably worth pointing out, that these "cutscenes" are not just the odd one or two actual cutsceney-cutscenes, but literally every complex sequence of events.

Since we will be releasing the Conversation Engine when it is finished to the AGS community, what we're after is a nice friendly way of specifying walk-to locations without the user having to type numbers into boxes, and hence using objects (which can be dragged around in AGS) to drive this.

Cheers,

CaptainBinky

[Pumaman]

There's no particular reason why it couldn't be raised from 20; it's really to make people think about using other features such as animated backgrounds if they really need 20 objects in one room.

[lemmy101]

Awesome! If you would be able to raise it at some point, that would be much appreciated! Tho it's by no means urgent or anything.

Thanks again CJ!

[strazer]

Tracker'd: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=582

[Radiant]

You might try using invisible characters for additional points. Or, of course, use arrays.

[CaptainBinky]

Yeah but like I said, this is for a tool, not just for the game. If it were just for the game, we would do any work around neccessary, but for a tool you don't want to have to have the user start using invisible characters once they run out of objects, you want one single system. We could do arrays, but again like I said, we would prefer the user to be able to drag things things around rather than having to type numbers into boxes.

We're just trying to make it as easy to use as possible.