SUGGESTIONS

[lemmy101]

Hello, my first post here. 1st off wanted to say how cool AGS is. Just happened upon it a couple of weeks ago and was quite gobsmacked. I work in the game industry and a lot of tool programmers in the industry could take some important lessons from how AGS has been approached... Congrats, I'm now officially hooked!

Anyway, since I do not yet have a solution to someone else's problem, have a problem of my own, or have some screen caps from our AGS game ready to post, I'll start with a few things I've noticed that could be improved. Sorry if some have been suggested before, or if they are already implemented and I've missed them...

* Views and other non-deletable main types referencable by string instead of the explicit index? e.g.:

cEgo.ChangeView("walk1");

Might be some speed issues doing a string compare each time, but then how often do you change the view of a character? Not every frame hopefully, so should be ok? As well as making the script more readable, and specific views easier to find, this would allow them to be deleted without nerfing the scripts I assume?

* A drawable null area around the rooms in room hotspot editor etc. Allow the user to put down a point in this border to make it easier to draw a line that goes through the entire screen. At present you have to aim precisely at the edge pixel.

* Walk-behinds "Set Walkable area", a walk-behind can be told to only affect only one walkable area. This would allow for walking over hill brows unless there's something I've not thought of...

* Walk-behinds "Set peak-line", only a base-line OR a peak-line could be specified for a walk-behind. A "peak-line" would do the reverse, and hide the character only if they're below it. This would be useful for the above hill brow thing (tho it could be worked around without this by setting the base line to be at the bottom of the screen thus on that walkable area ALWAYS walk behind.

* Test Game to automatically ask to close the script window, and then run the game. Having to close the script window manually, and then reclick test-game is very irritating, and the time adds up when retesting regularly...

* Support for sprite pages please!!! Sprite pages would be completely awesome, save a lot of time importing sprites into the editor.

* A quicker way of adding frames to loops. Selecting a range of sprites and it filling out the loop would be great.

* Support for externally accessed sprites. Being able to replace sprites on the HD and re-run the game would be well funky.

* Setting origin point on views. Being able to set the point on the sprite that you consider 0,0 would be great for easier lining up sprite interactions and such.

Some others that are doable as modules, and so are less important, but would be cool for newer users nevertheless:

* Linking objects to characters - I've wrote a module for this but only supports 1 char and one object at the moment. May redo it with 2.71 assuming I can now have an array of pointers in a struct, but being able, for example to allow for someone new and non-programmer savvy to be able to, for e.g. push a step-ladder across the screen, would be very handy. (As a side note, I found I had to do a linking system was because the character movement and object movement speeds didn't seem to tally as the help suggested... tho I may have being missing something)

The way I have it set up:

ELM_BindObjectToCharacter(cEgo, oTrolley, 10/*xOff*/, 0/*yOff*/);
ELM_UnbindCharacter(cEgo);

-------

That all aside, AGS is great stuff and it looks like it's realizing your ambition to bring back point-and-click games to the masses. thanks for this wonderful tool, and thanks for keeping it free!

I'll be sure to release all my modules and plug-ins once they've been tested in our game enough.

Oh and hello everyone

lemmy101

[Mason]

Just out of curiosity you wouldn't be Nemu64-Lemmy would you?Ã,  :o Oh and good luck with your game sorry I can't comment your suggestions but I'm sure someone will soon...

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

1 - You can actually name views and use things like

cEgo.ChangeView(WALK1);

2 - The whole "drawing" system is very simplified, and that's been remarked on. Mostly, everything stays as it is because you can also import a mask and/or use a magnifier program for fine-tuning.

3 - While it's not a bad idea, it can be easily arranged by having more than one walkable area/region and a couple of Walkbehind.Enable/Disable commands.

4 - Again, not a bad idea, but as you say, not that hard to work around.

5 - You could get used to Ctrl-T. Less time-comsuming, and it doesn't work unless the window is closed.

6 - I don't know what "sprite pages" are, but you do know you can import GIF files and also tiled sprites, right?

7 - You mean like selecting the sprites and right-clicking and "Assign frames to loop"? It's there.

8 - That's more advanced, but possible. Check out "dynamic sprites" on the manual.

9 - Dunno what that means... hopefully someone else does.

10 - Again, I don't really see what you mean, but I'm curious.

And hya.

[lemmy101]

Woah, well turns out a fair few of my gripes have work arounds  anyway cheers for the response:

1 - You can actually name views and use things like

cEgo.ChangeView(WALK1);

-- Cool stuff, I'll definitely use that. However that's an enumeration, is it not? if so, it still means that views cannot be deleted due to the indexes changing (am I understanding that right?)

3 - While it's not a bad idea, it can be easily arranged by having more than one walkable area/region and a couple of Walkbehind.Enable/Disable commands.

--Excellent stuff, I'll have a play with those commands. thanks!

6 - I don't know what "sprite pages" are, but you do know you can import GIF files and also tiled sprites, right?

--tiled sprites, as in you can have a single image which each frame on, and use that in-game?

9 - Dunno what that means... hopefully someone else does.

-- Sometimes you need to make a sprite area bigger than the actual image. For e.g. if a few frames of the anim extend quite a distance (e.g. where a character/object travels within the sprite animation). Thus sometimes you end up with a lot of blank space around the sprites, or inconsistant spacing around the sprites. Being able to set your own specific offset, for e.g. setting pixel 16,31 on a view would define that as the point the character can be truly said to be in. char.x, + char.y would take these into account, and would give/set a location relating to a part of the sprite you specify (bottom of feet for a character, end of cable on a dangling light) instead of them all being (i think) the centre bottom of the sprite by default.

So on a lightbulb, for eg, I'd set the origin to the end of the wire it's hanging off. Then by setting the x, y I am setting it to the exact point the wire connects, making it easier to place, and also to allow easier lining up of another sprite, for e.g. a character wanting to grab hold of it (not that they would want to grab a lightbulb, but you get my point).

10 - Again, I don't really see what you mean, but I'm curious.

I was trying to get a character to push a trolley object in a room. I tried:

cChar.Walk(x, y, eNoBlock, eWalkableAreas); // speed is 4
oTrolley.Move(x, y, 4, eBlock, eWalkableAreas)

and...

oTrolley.Move(x, y, 4, eNoBlock, eWalkableAreas)
cChar.Walk(x, y, eBlock, eWalkableAreas); // speed is 4

however the object would dart along really fast ahead of the character. Best I could do was putting the object speed to 1, which was close, but not exact.

As I said, Iv'e wrote a module to allow you to link an object, with an offset, to a character, and that object will move along with the character. It's not perfect yet, and I want to make sure it's bug free, and at that point I'll post it here.

Cheers for the replies!
And hya.

[lemmy101]

Just out of curiosity you wouldn't be Nemu64-Lemmy would you? 

Nope sorry

[Pumaman]

Hello, and welcome to the AGS forums!

1 - You can actually name views and use things like

cEgo.ChangeView(WALK1);

-- Cool stuff, I'll definitely use that. However that's an enumeration, is it not? if so, it still means that views cannot be deleted due to the indexes changing (am I understanding that right?)

Effectively, yes. This is one reason why there is no option to delete views.

3 - While it's not a bad idea, it can be easily arranged by having more than one walkable area/region and a couple of Walkbehind.Enable/Disable commands.

Dealing with hill brows is more complicated than your suggestion anyway, because once they are over the summit, the character actually walks back down on the same walkable area as they walked up on -- therefore some manual fiddling with disabling the walk-behinds is required.

Just to clarify, the way to enable/disable a walk-behind is to use SetWalkBehindBase; there are no WalkBehind.Enable/Disable methods.

--tiled sprites, as in you can have a single image which each frame on, and use that in-game?

Yes, when the sprite import window is open, after you select the file to import from, a "tiled sprite import" checkbox appears -- tick it, then you can import several sprites based on the one image.

So on a lightbulb, for eg, I'd set the origin to the end of the wire it's hanging off. Then by setting the x, y I am setting it to the exact point the wire connects, making it easier to place, and also to allow easier lining up of another sprite, for e.g. a character wanting to grab hold of it (not that they would want to grab a lightbulb, but you get my point).

Yes, I can see the usefulness of a suggestion like this, it's something that may well be added at some point.

I was trying to get a character to push a trolley object in a room. I tried:

cChar.Walk(x, y, eNoBlock, eWalkableAreas); // speed is 4
oTrolley.Move(x, y, 4, eBlock, eWalkableAreas)

These will move at different speeds because of the anti-glide mode for characters, where they only move when the animation frame updates. This does not happen with objects.

Your suggestion for some sort of AttachObject feature is a good one. A temporary workaround is to put some code in your repeatedly_execute_always function to continually adjust the object's co-ordinates based on the character's.

Thanks for all your suggestions and input

[Wretched]

7. I don't use test game anymore it's way too slow. Copy acwin.exe into the game folder, then set up a shortcut to acwin.exe in the windows quick launch part of the tool bar. And you have instant testing without waiting for sprites/game etc to save.

[strazer]

1.) Just to clarify: When you give a view a name in the view editor, AGS makes this name a defined term that you can use instead of the view number. Each time you use this term in script, it is later automatically replaced by the actual number of the view when the game is compiled.

So if you name a view FLYING, for example, you can use
  player.ChangeView(FLYING);
instead of directly supplying the number of the view.

The name can contain numbers, but that has nothing to do with the actual index of the view.

[R4L]

Could AGS ever have a GoSub command or DIM arrays?

[Elliott Hird]

^ AND I ROFL'D.

that WAS a joke, yes?

[strazer]

Elliott, instead of mocking him, you could explain to him why you think they are not needed.

[lemmy101]

Could AGS ever have a GoSub command or DIM arrays?

GoSub and DIM arrays are methods of calling functions and declaring variables in Basic languages. AGS already has this functionality, but they handled differently. I'll assume you've seen these on Visual Basic 6 for example purposes.

Calling a subroutine (function):

VB:

Sub HelloWorld()

     Console.WriteLine("Hello World!")

End Sub

Sub Main()
   
    GoSub HelloWorld

End Sub

AGS: (edit: cheers khrismuc)

function HelloWorld()
{
     Display("Hello World!");
}

function Main()
{
   HelloWorld();
}

DIM array:

VB:

Dim   MyArray(50) As Integer;

AGS:

int MyArray[50];

-----

So as you can see, you don't need those two keywords in AGS.

Hope this helps...

Cheers,

lemmy101

PS: Love the background art on your site. They yours?

[Khris]

Here's the correct AGS code:

Code: ags

function HelloWorld() {
Ã, Ã, Display("Hello World!");
}

function Main() {
 Ã, HelloWorld();
}

PS: It's not his homepage, afaik this domain belongs to Neole.

[lemmy101]

Here's the correct AGS code:

Code: ags

function HelloWorld() {
  Display("Hello World!");
}

function Main() {
  HelloWorld();
}

PS: It's not his homepage, afaik this domain belongs to Neole.

my head hurts. The dangers of having a net connection on a different computer to what you're commenting on.  Yeah that's C/C++ code I gave you there, sorry.

I know loads me, honest!

[Gilbert]

I think in AGS void is also supported, but if there're not any real reasons just use function (same as using int).

[R4L]

I thought GoSub commands move from the script to another part of the script and then jump back to where it was?

[lemmy101]

I thought GoSub commands move from the script to another part of the script and then jump back to where it was?

That's what GoSub does in BASIC, AGS is based on C/C++ syntax which has NO GoSub. Instead that's what a function call does in AGS.

AGS and BASIC are two different languages...

It's like saying "I thought Bonjour was English for hello?" It does mean hello, but it doesn't mean hello in English, it means hello in French.

In AGS you don't need to GoSub, it is implied by you typing the name of the function (i.e. the other part of the script) that you want to go there, and that after it has run jump back to where it was.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

lemmy-
* Support for sprite pages please!!! Sprite pages would be completely awesome, save a lot of time importing sprites into the editor.

I used to do things this way too (the hard way) and then I realized that making your animations as gifs is INFINITELY easier to deal with.  If you don't have built-in animated gif support in your program just use microsoft gif creator or another freeware app.  In the long run it saves time since you don't have to put each frame side by side (or vertically). 

[MrColossal]

I think what he means by sprite pages is what some game companies do is, you give them a sprite sheet and through code the program grabs portions of it to make an animation. Usually they look like film strips

Instead of me having to split it up. the program does.

It's handy if you want to do a quick colour replace or something but personally I think GIF import is the single best feature ever for things like this.

[CaptainBinky]

I think what he means by sprite pages is what some game companies do is, you give them a sprite sheet and through code the program grabs portions of it to make an animation. Usually they look like film strips

Yeah, I definately think this comes down to personal preference and/or the software you're using to draw your sprites. For example, all my sprites are done in DPaint Animation, so having to save out my frames as an image sequence, and run an action on them in Photoshop to crop them and then perhaps compile them into a GIF animation is a bit of chew on when I could just give a single page (which I tend to have anyway as I'm working) and be able to type in the X and Y dimensions of the sprite when I import and have it automatically cut the frames out.

However, I have to agree with Lemmy that being able to store your frames externally and have them compile in at the point you test would be amazing as it would free me up to make small changes to my animations without having to bother the person putting them in. I just update the files I want and wait for the next test.

Oh - and hello everyone