It would be rather nice if AGS, with all of those fantastic templates for beginners and avid game developers, could look for .agt files in a Template Subfolder in the AGS root directory.
The same goes for Plugins. Theres nothing like a spring clean especially when dealing with hundreds and hundreds of files.
Cheers!
I think that's a good idea!
Wow Strazer your fast! I just typed that 30 seconds ago. You people are mind boggelingly prompt.
You got me thinking. How about a 'Projects' subfolder for all games.
Call me excessivly neat and overly logical but the Editor deserves it's own domain seperate from it's output. Make sense?
Cheers to you!
I'll say that's a good idea for folder cleanups.
This now looks like a feature request.
/me waits for the moderators' action to move this thread to tech forum.
I like this idea very much too, since I'm always having troubles with finding the files I'm looking for from my AGS folder. :)
The ideal AGS Directory Structure:Ã, 8)
(http://www.neoshockmod.net/images/Sparx_Paul_Wilkinson/FOY/2D/AGS-Dir.gif)
What are your current thoughts on this?
I think the Templates subfolder is enough.
I have my games in separate directories somewhere else, so I don't care about a Projects sub-folder.
Sure. I was affraid it may be a little to pie in the sky.
Good going.
PS: What exactly is the most convenient way to work with projects. You mentioned you store them seperately to the engine. Won't this cause the need to constantly ruvvage through folders in search of your .ags file at load? Or have you set up a windows variable so that you can double click the .ags file and it will open up in the editor with all the folders remembered from last time?
You may have noticed that AGS stores the last few games you edited, so once you have opened a game from somewhere else via "Load an existing game", it gets added to the "Load a recently edited game" list. So no need to browse through folders all the time.
Also, you can associate the "Edit this .AGSGame" file with the AGS Editor so when you double-click it, the game gets opened with the editor:
Quote from: Pumaman on Mon 10/05/2004 21:54:42
Quote from: strazer on Mon 10/05/2004 01:18:58Btw, I've always wondered what the "Edit this .AGSGame" file is for?
In the version of AGS that was distributed as a windows installer, it created an association for ".AGSGame" files so that you could double-click the "Edit this AGSGame" file to open the game in the editor.
You can create this association manually if you like, just set up .AGSGame files so that their association is:
c:\path\to\ags\agsedit.exe -shelllaunch "%1"
Thanks Strazer. Could you be a bit more specific perhaps. I am using Windows XP and it has turned out to be a little more complicated than I would have liked. I found myself in "Folder Options -> File Types. I then Added a new file association with the DTA extension. Once added I then had the option of editing the filetype further. It came up with a list of properties such as Change Icon and Actions. Naturally I chose Add action and chose agsedit.exe as the 'Application used to perform action". Then I added -shelllaunch "%1" as the action. When I double click my agsgame.dta file it opens AGS as expected but the Welcome to AGS screen pops up as my game hasnt actually loaded.
Any clues?
I don't use Windows (Linux user) so I can't check at the moment, but you have to associate it with "Edit this .AGSGame" (.AGSGame) files, not ac2game.dta (.DTA) files.
Can anyone else shed some light on this?
I don't think its working correctly. It opens AGS but am I to expect it to open the game or just start the editor? The latter seems almost pointless.
As strazer said: have you associsated it with the .AGSGame files yet?
This is for Windows 2000:
- Open Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer)
- Menu "Extras" -> "Folder Options..."
- Tab "File Types"
(- If there is already a file type named "AGSGAME", delete it)
- "New" button
- Extension: Type "AGSGAME" -> "OK"
- Select AGSGAME entry
- "Advanced" button
- "New.." button
- Action: Type "Open"
- Application used to perform action: "Browse..." for your agsedit.exe
- Append -shelllaunch "%1", i.e.
"c:\path\to\ags\agsedit.exe" -shelllaunch "%1"
Note the three l's in shelllaunch
- "OK", "OK", "Close" etc.
Now you can double-click the "Edit this .AGSGame" file to open your games.
What you're really talking about here is being able to set default paths for different resources. Fonts for example are generally kept in their own sub-directory tree so it would be convienient to configure AGS to have a default path to this directory when trying to import fonts. The same could be said for templates, modules, plugins' etc.
There would need to be a method of specifying absolute paths and paths relative to the game directory and to the AGS executable directory.
So, yeah, I would be in favor of something like this. Anyone else have any thoughts about this or of what might be required?
Thanks Strazer. Got it working now. I got wound up in all the unessicary windows spits at you.
Cheers again.
I usually create a separate resource directory with extra subfolders for sprites, backgrounds, fonts, etc. Then set the Editor Preferences' import directory setting to point to it.
It works fine for me, but I like Rick's idea to be able to specify it on a per resource type basis.
By the way, there is a suggestion on the tracker for the *editor* plugins to have their own subfolder: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=312
To be honest, I'm not convinced.
At the moment the AGS Editor folder itself only contains a few files -- the editor, the engine and a couple of data files. Even if you also had a few templates and a few plugins in the folder, there would still only be about 25 files there at most, which doesn't strike me as a particular problem.
Sure its not really a problem. But a tidy working directory would be a preference for the majority of AGS users.