SUGGESTION: Plain and simple GDI render; Also, games, plugins and Wine.

[FSi++]

1. Right now AGS engine supports 2 display modes: DirectX5 and DirectX9. It's not true actually, as it reverts to simple GDI if it runs windowed and a part of the window is off-screen.
2. I just found today that AGS games work fine in Wine (under Linux) in GDI mode, but not in any of DirectX ones (due to a lot of unimplemented stuff on Wine's DirectX emulation (or should I call it wrapping?) part). I.e. if you set up the game to run windowed and move its side a bit off-screen (couple of pixels would be enough) it stops generating errors and works just fine (at least for me, maybe that's because I'm so special). Even when plugin-using game started (and miraclously worked without Linux port of the engine).

Hence my suggestion:
Is it possible to have a "GDI" option along with DirectX5/9 ones? The engine already uses it, so it shouldn't be that much of a hassle.

[Pumaman]

GDI rendering is really slow compared to DX, therefore I wouldn't want to encourage people to use it. There is a separate Linux port of the engine to allow games to be run natively on that platform.

[Gilbert]

He has a point though, as:

Even when plugin-using game started (and miraclously worked without Linux port of the engine).

But I doubt if it's worth doing compared to the work needed to be done (especially when it's just for using the engine which in a system that the port is not designed for). Instead of using Wine that mimics windows behaviour, they may also try virtualization softwares like VirtualBox in which they can install genuine Windows (I know, I know, by genuine Windows it's not free), so hopefully should have better DirectX support.

[Radiant]

Out of curiosity - are there really all that many games using plugins?

The problem is, if there are, then a change in future AGS versions won't actually help for them. If there aren't, you might instead want to convince people presently working on games to make an alternative version without plugins (which is easy with a bunch of IFDEF).