Suggestions for the next version of AGS

[Gamer_V]

It's great that all the tabs open at the top of your screen, but I keep trying to re-order them as I do all the time in my firefox, but doing that just opens a different tab. Being able to order them would be a lot handier. Just a simple drag and drop, like Firefox. Or an auto sort by alfabet (or type) if a new tab is opened, perhaps?

[Dualnames]

CJ, i ;ve asked before but you seem to nevermind my post all the time..
Can you put a File.Delete() function so that we can internally delete all types of files put on the game's folder?

[NiksterG]

Not really a suggestion, more of a bug:

I like to have the room editor and room script editor open at the same time so I can toggle back and forth (for getting mouse coordinates, checking exactly where a hotspot begins, etc.)

However, it seems that whenever I test the game after editing the script in the room, the room editor closes and leaves me at the script editor. It kind of annoying to have to open the editor again every time I test the game.

[alisa_tana]

However, it seems that whenever I test the game after editing the script in the room, the room editor closes and leaves me at the script editor. It kind of annoying to have to open the editor again every time I test the game.

And here I thought I was going insane and forgetting that I'd closed the room.  I completely agree with this point.



Myself, I would like it if you could make the room script split into its different parts, like you had in the previous version.   For organizational purposes really, so I don't have to scroll through lots of script to get to what you need.

And maybe Double-clicking on an Object in the room editor brings up the dialog to choose an image.

[deltamatrix]

How about better tint screen support to deprecate the tint screen features of the aging flashlight plugin. In particular, support for tinting in 32-bit would be cool.

The current TintScreen function does not allow for negative tints which makes it impossible to apply night time effects to a screen. It also appears to be buggy as I noticed it prevents screen transitions.

My game currently uses a-v-o's flashlight plugin to simulate night-time effects using the simple tint screen features. It would be cool if AGS had native support for this because the MAD engine (used for Hero6) supported this.

The MAD engine had a function that was something like this:
SetScreenTint(red, green, blue, alpha)

which could deal with tint and darkness at the same time within the 32-bit domain, thus allowing for very fine tints.

Since we can already tint characters and object using regions, I don't see why Tinting the whole screen should be much of a problem. But support for fine 32-bit tinting would be excellent.

[Ishmael]

By default, the editor fills the SaveGameFolder in General Settings with the game's name. It means that by default my My Documents folder is gonna get seriously crowded as more games are released. Could the default behaviour be to leave it blank, like standard AGS behaviour so far?

Not really -- the reason for this defaulting as it does is because of Vista and its permission issues around Program Files. Therefore, if the default was to write save games to the same folder as the game EXE, it could fail on Vista systems.

I appreciate that this way could clutter up your My Docs folder though, I'm not sure what the best compromise is? I guess it could create a single "AGS Games" folder in My Documents and then create the game save directories under that, but people would probably think that didn't look very professional for their game.

My Documents\My Games That's where most games put their stuff nowdays anyway, with some annoying exceptions.

[Pumaman]

Well, I'm saying it would be nice to be able to rawdraw over sprites/objects through the regular drawing functions for convenience; take DrawLine, since I'm writing a rain module of my own that uses DrawLine and detects impact sites (solid characters/objects/and marked regions), but it cannot currently draw in front of them as well, which would be great.

The thing is that there's no image layer there to draw onto. You've got the room background, then the objects/characters/etc, then overlays and then GUIs. The only way to draw something onto an upper layer is to draw onto an overlay or GUI.

I`d love the ability to have semitransparent walkable areas and walkbehinds. I find drawing a bit painful not seeing the background under the area.

I agree this would be useful. Last time I tried it, it made the editor go painfully slowly but it's about time I re-visited the idea, I think.

Validation of GUI Dimensions - It appears that both height and width are validated if either height or width are changed.  It the GUI is initially purposely set larger than the screen dimensions to host dynamic controls, since both dimensions can't be set at the same time, a runtime error is generated when the GUI is resized

I don't see the big deal here -- as monkey says, just use GUI.SetSize instead.

New Game From Template - When creating a game from a template a dialog pops up displaying the template.txt file.  If the template.txt file is too long the OK button that closes this dialog is in accessible and off screen.   I believe in the previous version of AGS, display of the template.txt file was truncated so that the complete dialog box fit on screen.

As I said before, I don't consider this an issue. When a template author tests out their template, they will see this and correct it. The template.txt file is only supposed to be a brief intro to what the template is, not a manual full of instructions.

The installer could ask for a location where new games are to be created.  MyDocuments could be the default so the uninitiated could just click through

This should be addressed by the new Preferences option in 3.0.1 beta 1.

Module Script Order - Currently when new modules/scripts are created or imported they are prepended to the script list so that the global script remains at the end of the list as it should be.  This however, makes it difficult to manage module dependencies.

As monkey says, why not just right-click Move Up or Move Down as appropriate to re-order things? Or are you just saying that by default new modules should appear at the bottom rather than the top?

Script Editor Search - When searching in the forward direction the found text is displayed in the last line in the window and searching in the reverse direction the found text is displayed in the first line of the window.   For me this seems backwards in that when searching forward I would prefer to have the found text displayed near the top of the window.

Hmm, I'm not sure about this one. To me, it seems more intuitive that when searching forwards, the text would display at the bottom of the screen, which also gives a better illusion of moving forwards whilst going through the find result matches...

_blank.crm - This was really useful and is sorely missed.  However, I would be willing to wait if a NewRoom/NewModule templating system is on the books.

Yes, something like that is a good idea, thanks for reminding me.

Tab Update Feature -  Someone mentioned in another thread that if a lot of changes have been made to a script file and the bookmark and auto complete features are a bit out of synch with the current file, they can be updated by switching to another tab and then back.  Perhaps the update could also be performed just by clicking on the currently open tab, eliminating the need to switch back and forth.  

Interesting idea -- but it seems like a bit of a hack. I really need to sort this out properly.

Combine "edit room"  with the node  so that clicking on the node text does the same thing that clicking on "edit room" does now.   The property grid is displayed and the room background is displayed and the area editor is active.  Clicking on the
[ + ] box would then reveal only the "room script" branch.

That's a possibility, but double-click having different behvaiour to clicking the + could start to get confusing. I'll have a think about it.

Dialogue options on a GUI in a text-box, allowing for nicer customisation of topic selection without having to write an entire custom system.

Hehe yes, the whole dialog system needs a bit of TLC, I think. Can't promise it'll happen for 3.0.1 though.

the ability to place the main character on the screen like an object and the coordinates are automatically placed in the character section.It's complicated to get a xy position with the mouse and remember(or write it down on a piece of paper^^) it in the character section.

Well, you can right-click on the room background and do "Copy co-ordinates to clipboard" but some way of previewing them on the room background would be useful, I agree.

*When you change the description of a room, it doesn't update the list

As I said in the other thread, I can't replicate this. Can you provide more details?

*When you create new subfolder in sprites or views you can't move the existents views into the new folder, some kind of copy/cut/paste would be nice

Drag and drop is now in 3.0.1 beta 1.

*When you are editing a room, and you change to do some walkeable areas or walk behinds all the objects hide and you can't see where they are, it'd be nice if there were a checkbox where you could hide or show them.
*Add 5 Ctrl+Z level (I made doble click and I lost all because I fill the screen twice) it should have a few more undo levels

These sound reasonable to me.

*Add windowed mode the posibility of zoom like 1x, 2x or 3x I have a 1280 resolution and I work with windowed because it's easier but.. it's really small and I can hardly recognaize the things

Use the DX5 driver and enable a graphics filter in Setup, as I said in the other thread.

* (I don't know if you are working on it but...) I don't know what is the use of the break point in AGS it should allow you to see a value when you stop the code at least that is what I do when I program in VB.NET and It helps a lot when you are looking for an error or just seeing what a function return in a easier way.

Ideally this is my goal, however it's not an easy task so it won't happen for 3.0.1.

* "Assign to view..." doesn't remember previous view used. This means that if you for example want to add a couple of sprites to the down, left, right and up loop of some view (other than 1) you have to reenter the number between each assignment. And if you forget you might end up overwriting some of the loops of view 1. Very irritating and should be an easy fix!

Sounds easy enough to fix, I'll look into it.

* When doing tiled import and selecting the area for import (right mousebutton) the selection  can go outside of the image. This makes the whole procedure more time consuming.
* Moreover, the import area is not remembered as it was in 2.72, so you have to define the area for each animation you import even if it quite often can be the same.

I'll look into this.

It's great that all the tabs open at the top of your screen, but I keep trying to re-order them as I do all the time in my firefox, but doing that just opens a different tab. Being able to order them would be a lot handier. Just a simple drag and drop, like Firefox. Or an auto sort by alfabet (or type) if a new tab is opened, perhaps?

Is this something anyone else would find useful?

Can you put a File.Delete() function so that we can internally delete all types of files put on the game's folder?

Yeah sorry I keep meaning to do this, I'll look into it.

However, it seems that whenever I test the game after editing the script in the room, the room editor closes and leaves me at the script editor. It kind of annoying to have to open the editor again every time I test the game.

Thanks for this, it's fixed in 3.0.1 beta 1.

Myself, I would like it if you could make the room script split into its different parts, like you had in the previous version.   For organizational purposes really, so I don't have to scroll through lots of script to get to what you need.

I don't think this will be changing back -- but there is the drop-down list of functions at the top of the script editor that you can use now to quickly get to the right place.

And maybe Double-clicking on an Object in the room editor brings up the dialog to choose an image.

Sounds reasonable to me.

The current TintScreen function does not allow for negative tints which makes it impossible to apply night time effects to a screen. It also appears to be buggy as I noticed it prevents screen transitions.

Tinting the whole screen is extremely slow in software mode, so I don't think it's worth expanding this feature. You can get good day/night effects by storing a secondary night background, and using SetAmbientTint to tint the characters and objects appropriately.


Thanks for all your suggestions, guys!  

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The thing is that there's no image layer there to draw onto. You've got the room background, then the objects/characters/etc, then overlays and then GUIs. The only way to draw something onto an upper layer is to draw onto an overlay or GUI.

Well fudge.  I'd ask you to redo how the drawing system works but that would be unfair, so I will simply have my rain module use both Drawline AND sprite overlays instead !  My plan of forcing people to upgrade their pc's to play my games is almost complete.  8)


Edit:  Thanks for adding moving views in folders.  Could you add the ability to move the folders themselves as well in the next release (even if it's a right-click menu with move up/move down/move to top/move to bottom)?  This would be especially helpful for me since I've got a ton of views to relocate and the folder creation places new folders at the bottom.  The ability to use the scroll-wheel while you're dragging an item to move up/down the pane would be helpful also, for the same reason.  Moving folders in-out of other folders and folder deletion would also be great.

[deltamatrix]

Tinting the whole screen is extremely slow in software mode, so I don't think it's worth expanding this feature. You can get good day/night effects by storing a secondary night background, and using SetAmbientTint to tint the characters and objects appropriately.

Thats how the AGDs do it. I was hoping to avoid that due to the extra strain on the art team and the increased game size. That does suck that you don't think its worth it.

[RickJ]

This should be addressed by the new Preferences option in 3.0.1 beta 1.

I don't see the big deal here -- as monkey says, just use GUI.SetSize instead.

Using GUI.SetSize is an adequate solution for myself.   I don't mean to make a big deal of it an but the resulting error is confusing because the statement that causes it is perfectly valid.  IMHO, it's something that people will get hung up on in the future.  I suppose time will tell.

As monkey says, why not just right-click Move Up or Move Down as appropriate to re-order things? Or are you just saying that by default new modules should appear at the bottom rather than the top?

Sorry, I wasn't aware of the Move Up/Dn functions already built in.   Changing the default to insert at end of list (just ahead of the global script) would satisfy the remainder of my request/comment.

Hmm, I'm not sure about this one. To me, it seems more intuitive that when searching forwards, the text would display at the bottom of the screen, which also gives a better illusion of moving forwards whilst going through the find result matches...

IMHO, most people would like to see the context of each occurance of the found text (i.e. a few lines before and after).  That's why I suggested that the better solution would be to have a user settable preferences that specifies how many lines the found text should be above/below the bottom/top of the screen.   

That's a possibility, but double-click having different behvaiour to clicking the + could start to get confusing. I'll have a think about it.

The current behavior is fine with me.  I would also like to remind you of previous semi-related comments about using single inistead of double clicks here.   With regard to the latter, perhaps single clicks could just select the corresponding tab and bring that page to the front, if the file has already been opened.  Double clicking would then just do what it does now open the file in a new tab and display it. 

Default GFX Driver DirectDraw/Direct3D
When I tried the demo that is part of the installation I got an error because my little computer does not have Direct 3d.  Ok, so I just went and ran winsetup easily enough but what about brand new users?   I don't know if this is just the demo game or it new game also creates a similar default setup.  It's kind of a trival point but something I thought that may be of some interest.

Font Identification
This may not make it in this edition but I would find it handy if the font name, font file, and point size were retained when fonts are imported.  For example if a particular true type font was imported at one point size and later there was a need to reimport it at a larger size, for some other usage, then it would be possible to know which file to import and the prevuious point size would be the basis for guessing what the new point size ought to be.  Perhaps this info could be displayed in the property grid.

... thanks for reminding me...

CJ, thanks for all your hard work.   I'm sure you are well aware of this, but for those who haven't had the experience,  every software project of any size eventually gets to a point where it's more difficult to determine what's left to do than it is to do it.   Threads such as this one are very helpful in this respect, so even if a comment or suggestion isn't  adopted this time round doesn't mean that it wasn't helpful or that it lacked merit.   CJ is a very good listener and even though we don't always get what we want, we almost always get what we need.   

Hmmm, that last line is kind of catchy, maybe somebody will make it into a song one of these days ...   

[deltamatrix]

Has anyone suggested native support for OGG Theora? That would be cool as the linux port can start to support video playback.

[Charity]

I apologize in advance if a function request is beyond the scope of this thread, but it seems to me the drawing functions could use a color getter.  Something like:

Code: ags

function DrawingSurface.GetColor(int x, int y)

Which would return the slot number of the color at (x, y) in a 256 color game or the AGS Colour Number, otherwise.  I know I personally would find it useful if it isn't too complicated to implement.

[SSH]

I apologize in advance if a function request is beyond the scope of this thread, but it seems to me the drawing functions could use a color getter.  Something like:

Code: ags

function DrawingSurface.GetColor(int x, int y)

Which would return the slot number of the color at (x, y) in a 256 color game or the AGS Colour Number, otherwise.  I know I personally would find it useful if it isn't too complicated to implement.

Hear hear, although also working in 16 and 32-bit, please... and a DrawingSurface.FloodFill(int x, int y, int colour), too!

[scotch]

Theora support has been suggested over the years, I think it's a good time to suggest it again though. Wintermute has it, and it's certainly a useful thing. Even if we ignore other platforms, it saves all the codec hassle you have if you want resonably compressed videos. Ideally it'd be able to play theora videos onto dynamic sprites or backgrounds, but fullscreen alone would be an improvement. Since I last saw it discussed the library came out of alpha testing and it has been stable for quite some time now, even if it's officially still beta. I will write a plugin for it for my game if it's not added any time soon, but I think it'd be best off as a core engine feature.

[SSH]

If its not too hard, OGG Speex might be handy for the music ...

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Being able to right click on a frame (or a selection of frames) in the view editor and choose flip would be nice.  A keyboard shortcut like 'f' would be even faster!

[naltimari]

Along with the suggestion to group the header and the script under a parent node on the 'Scripts' tab, I would find very useful to know which of the 'global' functions (i.e. game_start(), rep_ex(), on_event(), etc) are in use in each module.

Example:

...
[-] Fonts
[-] Scripts
   [-] ParticleEngine
      - repeatedly_execute
   [-] KeyboardMovement
      - repeatedly_execute
   [-] MyCoolModule
      - repeatedly_execute
      - on_mouse_click
      - on_event
   [] AnotherModule (closed node does not show children)
   [-] GlobalScript
      - game_start
      - on_mouse_click
      - repeatedly_execute
...

One click on each of the child nodes would take you right into the module, inside the function.

The motivation is that sometimes one has to open many scripts to see exactly what is being executed every game cycle (in rep_ex ou rep_ex_always, for instance), or to see how the mouse clicks and keypresses are being handled throughout the game.

[Dave Gilbert]

Loving 3.0 so far!  Just made the switch.

I do miss being able to right-click on the room editor to copy x/y coordinates to the clipboard, so you can paste them into the code.  Is there a reason why that was removed?

-Dave

[Pumaman]

Could you add the ability to move the folders themselves as well in the next release

Sounds reasonable to me.

Thats how the AGDs do it. I was hoping to avoid that due to the extra strain on the art team and the increased game size. That does suck that you don't think its worth it.

There's no point adding a feature that's so slow that nobody will use it. However, a potential improvement would be some sort of RawDrawImageTinted function to allow you to tint the room background. Rather than running every frame this could just be done once to avoid the slowness.

Default GFX Driver DirectDraw/Direct3D
When I tried the demo that is part of the installation I got an error because my little computer does not have Direct 3d.  Ok, so I just went and ran winsetup easily enough but what about brand new users?   I don't know if this is just the demo game or it new game also creates a similar default setup.  It's kind of a trival point but something I thought that may be of some interest.

I agree that this shouldn't be the case, I'll change it to have DirectDraw as the default.

This may not make it in this edition but I would find it handy if the font name, font file, and point size were retained when fonts are imported.

Sounds fair to me.

CJ, thanks for all your hard work

It's a pleasure 

Has anyone suggested native support for OGG Theora? That would be cool as the linux port can start to support video playback.

I looked into it a couple of years ago, and at the time Theora was still in a beta state so I didn't want to use it. Hopefully now it's been officially released, so it's probably time to look into it again.

I apologize in advance if a function request is beyond the scope of this thread, but it seems to me the drawing functions could use a color getter.

and a DrawingSurface.FloodFill(int x, int y, int colour), too

Being able to right click on a frame (or a selection of frames) in the view editor and choose flip would be nice.  A keyboard shortcut like 'f' would be even faster

These sound reasonable to me.

Along with the suggestion to group the header and the script under a parent node on the 'Scripts' tab, I would find very useful to know which of the 'global' functions (i.e. game_start(), rep_ex(), on_event(), etc) are in use in each module.

Interesting idea. I'll have a think about this one.

I do miss being able to right-click on the room editor to copy x/y coordinates to the clipboard, so you can paste them into the code.  Is there a reason why that was removed?

It's still there, but only works when the room editor is in "Nothing" mode -- if you're viewing walkable areas/objects/etc you can't do this. It's because in the drawing modes right-click is used to erase, therefore it would a conflict of the right mouse button.

[Ryan Timothy B]

Only thing I can think of since I'm new to 3.0 is the ability to sort sprites by number.
I am constantly adding sprites in different orders (depending on the order i make them) and changing the number so I don't get confused as to what group they belong to. eg: sprites for my ego are numbered 2000-2200 - also in a separate folder anyway).  Call me weird, but I like to be organized.