request: integrate setup with player

[hssh]

i see this may go two sides, so i propose for this to be taken by vote, my vote is for yes, but then of course the last word goes on ags designer, who chooses to do it or not at the end. the idea would be to include not all these things like running on a certain screen reslution, sound library and stuff to be inluded in a separate utility but via scripting (some properties may be able to be set only once, like choosing the sound library) either that or to be activated with a flag that the game designer sets in authoring time, or via a menu in windowed mode.

[stuh505]

why are you suggesting this?

you haven't even downloaded it and tried to make a game yet.

[LordHart]

You haven't downloaded it yet?! What the hell... download it and mess around with it... see if it is even the right engine for you, if not... then bloody stop whining and bitching about adding something new... god!

[Peter Thomas]

Download ags, look at what you're asking, come back and revise it later.

[hssh]

i am asking this because i plan to make a game, but if at the end i can not make the game as i want to, what would have been the point of downloading ags to make it in the first place. and would it make any sense to download it if i know before hand i can not do with it what i want to do with it? if there are other tools that are more complicated and you need ten lines to do what you do here with only one, well thats MY choice, or whoever is making the game, fact is they have certain capabilities ags does not. this is technical forum, so this is the place to ask requests. so i dont see how this is out of subject. now if you feel this is not a practical request, just vote no and explain how this is not practical, i have placed my point of view for why to take this one. first of them is that i can choose to run setup at start of the program without making a batch file that includes both the game and the setup, since this would be a very crude solution, the other is that with this i can check if a config file exists, and if it does not i run setup, and if not, y bypass that. another is that you can do this via scripting, i could just include an options screen in the game, making it as part of the game, and not as it is just now, setting up a player to run an ags documment, which does not feel like running a stand alone application

[Mr Jake]

I dont understand what you are saying???

That you want sounds and stuff do be intergrated into AGS?

[strazer]

check if a config file exists, and if it does not i run setup

Good idea, that would be nice if it were done automatically.

[Ishmael]

if the config file does not exist, I belive AGS uses the default setting fo the game... fullscreen, no letterbox, game resolution, default sound devices, digital packs used if present, no anti-aliasing of scaled spirtes, or something like that, and maybe even creates the config file with those settings in it... not sure though.

[Pumaman]

I believe it's important to keep the Setup as a seperate application. Since some people cannot run with the default settings on their computer, the external Setup allows them to try different settings until the game will run.

If it was all inside the game, they'd have to actually be able to run the game first before they could change the settings (and if they can run the game, they probably don't need to change the settings).

[hssh]

hi, as for the thing you say about the people that can not run the game at first, you are right. but for the matters of presentation, it would be preferible to have the scripting option. could you made the two options available, so the player can run the game at first, setup all things from within, and if he/she screws up or it did not work first time, setup with external, with a possible option to reset or even a flag for player (command line parameter, maybe a -s) to run 'safe mode', like min resolution, paletted mode and no sound.

[Isegrim]

I think you actually can handle this via global vars (see manual under 'global variables'), although it's not recommended (therefore never tried it myself)
But for the presentation argument: Most commercial computergames come with setup application and if you don't like the default one, you can always write one yourself with Visual Basic or so...

[Hollister Man]

hssh seems to be asking for a typical FPS "options" screen where you can do all the settings.  It wouldn't be too hard if AGS could modify files while running (wait...I *think* it can) then you could easily modify the config file from within the game.

The question of the day is...why?  What additional "goodness" does this add to the game?  Does it make the game better for the player?  Does it make it more fun?  no

If you refuse to download the engine, at least read the online manual and stop asking RTFM questions until you do.

[hssh]

i dont know, for that matters, why not do it all with just mario-like characters, and just put the name of the character above their heads to diferentiate them, and just use cga colors? after all argument is all that matters isnt it?so you tell me.
hmm.. lets change the flags of properties from inside the game, since that can be done, but since they wont take any effect in the game whatsoever, since if i change resolution in options screen, i wont be able to reflect that change in the game itself since there is no way to do it till now, yeah, lets do that, so the user changes properties in the options screen, then the user exits and then restarts again to see the changes. that would be nice
by the way, do you use to stop a fps in the middle of a game to change options?, so why to have an options screen on a fps? they must be stupid to put something like that in those games

[Gilbert]

Actually the setup programme itself is included in the engine already, not a separate application, what winsetup.exe does currently is just excuting "game.exe --setup", but it's important to remind the players how to setup the game, so that winsetup.exe should be included in a game's distribution and everything will be fine.

As for creating the config file automatically if it's absent I think it's a nice idea, but it's actually the game maker's responsibility to include a .CFG file with default settings and the setup launcher, which will help those who download the games.

Regarding the idea of scripting in some setup options in game, it depends on what options you want to provide for setting, some of the AGS settings can be changed in-game, but some of them cannot.

Things, especially the system settings, like game resolution, game cache size cannot be set in-game currently as these things are initialised when you start the game start.

That your idea of setting the game option in-game but will take effect only if you exit teh game and restart is actually possible already, as AGS can write to a text file, so all you need is to overwrite the acsetup.cfg file. But I won't recommend doing this, as it's just a dirty way of messing things up.
Moreover, if I have to launch the game, set options, quit and restart for them to take effects, why not launch the setup programme separately in the first place? In case you dislike the look and feel of the current setup programme, you may just make your own with whatever programming packages.

[modgeulator]

Well, it'd be kinda nifty to be able to change settings (especially toggle full-screen/windowed) in-game, but really it isn't terribly important.
You can't really compare AGS to a modern 3D game. In new games there's a lot more settings and you generally have to tweak things to get the best performance on your hardware. It would be a nightmare trying to tweak one of these games if you had to quit each time, run a config program, restart the game, repeat, etc. But with AGS games you normally don't need to touch the setup options. I think the AGS setup program is only really included for troubleshooting, just in case the default settings won't run on your computer. I think for most users it isn't intended to be needed or used.

[Pumaman]

I can see the advantage of being able to toggle windowed vs full screen at runtime, but other than that I can't see any real need to do it. AGS isn't like FPS games where you keep increasing the resolution as far as your computer can handle it - the game is designed for one particular resolution and you should only change it if you have real problems with it.

[Ishmael]

to run 'safe mode', like min resolution, paletted mode and no sound.

Min resolution, 320x200/240 -> possible "Unable to initialize video mode" error, not good.

I was wondering, related to this, does XP support .bat batch files like 98 and others do? I just had an idea...

[Gurok]

AFAIK it does, with a few enchancements (to if and set) even! What are you planning? A bit of...

@echo off
choice /c:fw [F]ullscreen or [W]indowed display?
if errorlevel 1 goto :full
if errorlevel 2 goto :window
:full
rem run fullscreen
goto :end
:window
rem run window
goto :end
:end

... perhaps?

[Pumaman]

Batch files in XP and 2000 have a rather serious problem, which is that their current directory starts in the Windows directory, rather than the location where the batch file is.

This is the reason I had to abandon a batch file to launch Setup, and write the winsetup.exe instead.

[Gurok]

Batch files in XP and 2000 have a rather serious problem, which is that their current directory starts in the Windows directory, rather than the location where the batch file is.

This is the reason I had to abandon a batch file to launch Setup, and write the winsetup.exe instead.

Really?

I just made a batch file, three lines:

@echo off
cd
pause

And it returned the current directory. I'm using Windows XP SP2.