System Limit Problems

[Miori]

Pumaman begged us to post the following in a forum. So do this.

We sent Pumaman a PM:

Dear Chris Jones,

we are programming a game (Steuk) with AGS Editor .NET (Build 3.0.2.44) v3.0.2, June 2008. The first Demo Game is already finished. We think it is a fantastic programm to build own adventures.

But now we reached the first system limit: the „controls on each GUI“. So we had a look on the system limits and we think the „script GlobalInts, the „script GlobalStrings“, the „imported sprites“ and the „controls on each GUI“ are a serious problem.

Our game is not just a click & point adventure but a mix of rpg and click & point adventure. You can also fight there and increase your level. All the game has a lot of animations, so 30.000 Sprites are very few. Our Demo Game takes just 5 Minutes with Walkthrough and it already needs about 600 imported sprites.

The finished game will have a play time of min. 6 hours without walkthrough. And because of the fighting system, we will need many more controls in a GUI and variables. So the limits are really a problem.

Our game works only with  AGS Editor .NET (Build 3.0.2.44) v3.0.2, June 2008. We tried higher versions, but then many things doesn't work anymore.

You can download our Demo Game at Specky-Online.de → Projekte → Steuk. It is in german language.

Now we beg you for incresing the limits, the best would be to unlimit it. We would be very thankfull if you could do this for us

Yours sincerly

Specky & Miori

Pumaman answered this:

Quote from: Miori on 22 Apr 2009, 21:55
But now we reached the first system limit: the „controls on each GUI“. So we had a look on the system limits and we think the „script GlobalInts, the „script GlobalStrings“, the „imported sprites“ and the „controls on each GUI“ are a serious problem.

Firstly, please don't PM me with Technical questions -- post them in the forum instead, where people can back you up and increase the importance of the suggestion.

GlobalInts and GlobalStrings are obsolete, and you should not be using them in new scripts. Use the Global Variables pane instead to create global variables -- this does not have a limit to how many you can create.

Thanks for your feedback about the Controls On Each GUI limit. I will look into it to see how easy it would be to remove.

Cheers,
CJ


Now our answer:

Thank you that you want to look after the „Controls On Each GUI limit“. But what is about the Sprite Limit of 30.000? Could you remove that too? If you could not we see  no possibility to continue our game

[Trent R]

I've run into the Control limit twice, once on two different games. The first (an RPG stats screen) was easily worked around by putting a unclickable, invisible-background Gui ontop of the another with clickable controls. Then match up the Visible calls so that both guis are seen at the same time. The other game's gui went through a redesign, since I realized I was being too stupid and didn't need that many controls.

My final verdict: Yeah, more controls would be nice. I think it's popped a few times in the Wishlist threads. But I don't think it's priority. I'd much rather have more features and capabilities.


~Trent
PS-

We tried higher versions, but then many things doesn't work anymore.

That means you probably got scripting problems. You should fix that, since you seem to be such a serious project.

[Hudders]

What is the limit of controls on a GUI?

[Trent R]

What is the limit of controls on a GUI?

30.

In case this turns into a discussion on raising other limits as well:

From the manual
      40  objects per room
     100  local messages per room (excluding script)
     299  state-saving rooms per game
     300  inventory items
   30000  imported sprites
      30  controls on each GUI
     500  dialog topics
    3000  dialog-script messages
      30  options per topic
      20  screen overlays at a time
     500  script GlobalInts (not including your own variables)
      50  script GlobalStrings (not including your own variables)
       5  background frames per room
      20  mouse cursors
unlimited characters
unlimited views
unlimited GUIs
unlimited loops per view
unlimited frames per loop

~Trent

[Pumaman]

But what is about the Sprite Limit of 30.000? Could you remove that too? If you could not we see  no possibility to continue our game

Are you sure that this would be a problem for you? So far I don't know of any game that has got close to the sprite limit, and that includes the full-length adventures that have been made with AGS.

[Miori]

Yes we are sure, because all characters, backgrounds,objects and so on will be full of animations and additional the fighting system, the many monsters that wanna be animated. We are really worried that 30.000 imported sprites won't be enough.

[monkey0506]

We are really worried

30 THOUSAND is quite a lot...unless you've actually reached the limit, I think it's a fair size...oh and just FYI, backgrounds don't count toward the sprite limit.

If it's really an issue, you could possibly even do some of your sprites dynamically.

[Trent R]

I'm not sure about this, but you could probably get an extra 20 Thousand (assuming you keep 10k the same) by using RunAGSGame(). You could create a template of your game, create a new project from it, and change what isn't needed in that section of the game.


~Trent

[JpSoft]

30,000 is enough to develop all the Adventure games i known (even comercial ones) Even Final Fantasy VI had around 24K sprites.

Jp

[Trent R]

If you're gonna be like most RPGs, a reuse enemy sprites, but rename and recolor, you could use the .Tint controls, which reduces the amount of 'duplicates' you'd have to import.


~Trent

[Miori]

30,000 is enough to develop all the Adventure games i known (even comercial ones) Even Final Fantasy VI had around 24K sprites.

Jp

It's no matter for us what other games have, but if you say FF6 has 24k sprites then i am sure we will need more. The most games i know a poor of animations and FF6 is one example for this. But that's okay. FF6 is from 1994.

But i think today's games should be more animated. For example if Specky should push a button that is over his head he jump to press it, not like Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion and all the old adventures where the character only stands and suddenly the button is pushed.

The backgrounds will be very animated too. And if you are in a city and a fight starts then the room doesn't change. Only the people you see in the background will react to the fight and they stay in background. And there will be many people on the streets of Cocoyo (capital of the planet spooly). If you play our demo game you will see that Specky has already there many sprites. Everything he does has many animations and this will stay so all over the game and Specky will change his outfits several times and all other charakters too. And like i said very much background animations like birds in the forest, the flying clouds, rain, snow and so on... + many fighting animations

30k imported sprites are definitive to little for our game „Steuk“.  :o

If you're gonna be like most RPGs, a reuse enemy sprites, but rename and recolor, you could use the .Tint controls, which reduces the amount of 'duplicates' you'd have to import.


~Trent

Thank you for that tip, but our monsters all look different. We don't like this clichéd  recolored monsters. Only 'cause it looks like a retro game it doesn't has to be like a retro game


Our game should not be so inanimately it should live   

I hope Chris Jones (Pumaman) can help us 

[GarageGothic]

I suggest you notify CJ again, once you've reached 29,000 sprites. I'm sure increasing the limit shouldn't take any longer than it will you to draw another thousand sprites.

[Vince Twelve]

Our game works only with  AGS Editor .NET (Build 3.0.2.44) v3.0.2, June 2008. We tried higher versions, but then many things doesn't work anymore.

You should know that any changes to limits that go into AGS will only be applied to new versions, and not to 3.0.2.  So, if you want to take advantage of them, you're going to have to get your game working in the new version.

I can feel your pain on this as my game is also stuck in 3.0.2 because I was taking advantage of a bug that allowed high-res fonts in low-res games.  And there are a number of new features that I would love to be using, but I just make do.

But i think today's games should be more animated. For example if Specky should push a button that is over his head he jump to press it, not like Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion and all the old adventures where the character only stands and suddenly the button is pushed.

I feel the same way, and am putting in animations for nearly every action in my full-length game as well as tons of sprites for room animations.  I have one room with 511 sprites of background animation.  The room seen in this video uses only 161.  Plus, four playable characters = lots of sprites.  And still, I don't think I'm going to wind up knocking on thirty thousand's door.  I might hit half that, but I doubt it.

I took a look at your demo, and I don't see anything that would indicate to me that this game would be any more likely to hit the upper limit than any other AGS game.  Of course it is just a demo.  If you do hit 30,000, though... more power to you!  Hopefully, you can get updated to a new version with a higher limit.

[Pumaman]

30k imported sprites are definitive to little for our game „Steuk“.  :o

I hope Chris Jones (Pumaman) can help us 

I won't be doing anything with it right now, but let me know if your game reaches 20000 sprites and at that point I will look into what would be involved in increasing the sprite limit further.

[Miori]

@ Vince Twelve

The “high-res fonts in low-res games“ was also our problem. We tried a newer version but it didn't work but now we took the newest version (3.1.2.82) and it adjusted all graphics we just had to adjust the font size

511 sprites in one room that's impressive and we watched the video. It looks very beautiful. Our Demo is really very short and shows max. 0.1% of the game. We also know that if we develop a game in the end the finished version will look much different than the demo game. So we are tight just as the other people how the game will be in the end.

@ Pumaman

That's okay, we just wanted to know wether you can do this, if we will need it. The only problem at the time is the control on each GUI limit. It is the reason we can't continue the fighting system. If we reach 20.000 sprites we will contact you again

[JpSoft]

30 controls per GUI is a limit than can be easily solved. You can just add as many GUI´s as you need. Actually, the minimap in the RTS im working have 3 GUIs in the same position of the screen, and the main GUI to control the game have 4 different GUIs. In mi opinion, there are some limits more difficult to solve (for example, objects per room)

Jp

[Trent R]

I wouldn't mind an extra 10, if it can be added. But surely it can be worked around very easily... not that hard to do Miori.

~Trent

[monkey0506]

Another possibility would even be to use virtual (rectangular) bounding boxes for your controls. You could then check the mouse (X, Y) position to determine what interaction to run. But realistically, especially now that there's no longer a limit to the number of GUIs, it shouldn't even be a problem to just spread the controls across multiple GUIs if 30 controls is too few.

[Ghost]

Yes we are sure, because all characters, backgrounds,objects and so on will be full of animations and additional the fighting system, the many monsters that wanna be animated. We are really worried that 30.000 imported sprites won't be enough.

Holy ***. There are commercial games that don't use that many sprites for all their animations- Diablo 2 can cope with far less, and that's a full length game with a not too small cast of beasts and characters! I'd relax, 30.000 IS a lot of sprites...

For animations in backgrounds you could resort to using "cycling backgrounds", they don't count against the sprite limit. So for some flickering candles and the like, no custom views, but five backgrounds.

[edit]
Checked your site and had a look at your spritework... With that style you *could* simply decide to make a paletted game and use palette cycling to change the colour swatch of a certain character, couldn't you? That way you could have one "piggy merc" in x colour swatches, representing "different" monsters. (Again, a trick done to death by Diablo 2). Faster than "tint" and mabe with a few more possibilities...

BTW, I totally dig those pigs. Reminds me of S.W.I.N.E. for some reason... 

[Dualnames]

To quote SSH, not even Quest for glory didn't reach that limit.., but I guess sprites don't have to do with what people want to do. Wondering how come only 6 hours with so many sprites..