[SOLVED] Plugin template appears to be corrupt.

[Nickenstien]

Hi

The draw order of some things seems to have changed since V2.7 (or I made some kind of error back then, and have only just spotted it when using latest AGS3.02.44 build. Or maybe the DLL template project I was using with 2.7 is now out of sync with the latest AGS build (integer constants for Pre/Post/Sprite/Gui draw interupts/events have possibly changed values since then)?).

All of my 'bits' now get rendered before the game-sprites do, so I am assuming that the following values defined in the header file:

AGSE_PREGUIDRAW
&
AGSE_POSTSCREENDRAW

Have since changed to use new values, and I am now using an out-of-date template, which is no longer compatible with AGS3.02.44.



So to rectify this and update my stuff to be compatible with the latest AGS release, I am trying to grab the latest Plug-in template project and rebuild all of my DLL code into that. However the file can't be extracted and reports a corruption error.
(Error: "The archive is either an unkown format or the file is damaged").

file : http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/agsplugin119.zip

EDIT - Some extra info: I have tried with WinZip, WinRAR & 7-Zip. (All to no avail.)

Maybe it's just the server having a bad day.  

[Nickenstien]

In the meantime, does anybody know where else I may be able to find a working version of the latest plugin-template?

I have had a search about on the net but couldn't find one anywhere.

Cheers,
Nick

[LimpingFish]

There's actually no file at that link. Through some weird glitch, if you right click the link and save file, you get the error message itself zipped under the file name "agsplugin119.zip"! Open the zip file in notepad and you'll see what I mean.

I though the Bicycle for Slugs server might have had some plug-ins and such, but it doesn't.

I'm sure CJ has a working version somewhere, but I don't think anyone is hosting one.

[Nickenstien]

Through some weird glitch, if you right click the link and save file, you get the error message itself zipped under the file name "agsplugin119.zip"! Open the zip file in notepad and you'll see what I mean.

How odd. I've never seen that happen before.

Yeah, I had good dig around but couldn't find it anywhere.

[Pumaman]

How strange, for some reason the server had the older agsplugin118 file. Anyway, I've uploaded the new file now so that link should now work. Sorry about that!!

All of my 'bits' now get rendered before the game-sprites do, so I am assuming that the following values defined in the header file:

AGSE_PREGUIDRAW
&
AGSE_POSTSCREENDRAW

These haven't changed as such, but the way the screen rendering is done in AGS 3 has changed in order to handle the D3D driver. See the Screen Draw Order table in the RequestEventHook section of the Plugin API for details.

Whether the change affects you depends on what type of drawing you're trying to do.

[Nickenstien]

Great stuff, download working fine.

Thanks!


I haven't had chance to rebuild with this, but if the eventhook values are the same then it's strange that my bits are all being drawn behind the sprites, as I was using D3D with the 2.7Beta.  Have the Z-depths of the Backround/Sprites/GUI rendering been changed since 2.7Beta? If so, what Z values should I now be using to interweave between them? (all of my layers are rendered at z-0, maybe this is a problem if you are using different/higher z values for each of your render stages?)


EDIT: I have now rebuilt everything using the latest DLL template as the framework. Everything works perfectly!

Many thanks!

[Khris]

Through some weird glitch, if you right click the link and save file, you get the error message itself zipped under the file name "agsplugin119.zip"! Open the zip file in notepad and you'll see what I mean.

How odd. I've never seen that happen before.

I have, that's actually quite common. If you open a link to a non-existent file, the server will send the 'file not found' page to the browser, so right-click-save-as will save the next received file, said page.