Text bug?

[Edward Becket]

First of all i wonna tell you that i am a boy 19 years old from Italy... so sorry for my bad english. :

I have found on internet your site and instantly downloaded your AGS-Tool. This is a dream! My BIGGEST dream that came true! I love you all!

I'm trying to understand which are the functions of this program, so i'm doing a little little game using most simple features.

I have a problem when a try to display a message after the action LOOK TO referred to a background area and generally for all kind of text.
When a string of text is visualized (or should be visualized) on the screen I have the following error text:

An errror has occurred. Please contact the game author for support, as this problem is caused by the game rather than the interpreter.
(ACI version 2.54.522)

(Global script line 32)
Error: Cannot display message with extended characters in SCI font.

Sorry for my total incompetency in programming... I hope you will help me... thanks!

[Ishmael]

Error: Cannot display message with extended characters in SCI font.

Thats the problem... no bug... you have a character that is not in the the font, in the text. Go to the AGS fonts pane and see what charatcers are in the fonts... Font 0 is the default text font, like in the Display() command text boxes, font 1 is the speech font and font 2 is the outline font for font 1...

[Gilbert]

Actually this is a common problem, I was just too lazy to reply to it earlier because I don't want to search for links. :p

The reason is that currently AGS supports SCI fonts only up to #127, and if you use an accented character (which usually used a slot >127) the game will crash, that's the limitation.

You have 2 choices:
1. Edit the SCI font set with a programme (eg. SCI studio) and replace some of the unused characters within the first 128  range with the accented characters you want, eg you replace "#" with an "a" with a funny dot on top of it, so when you want that funny "a" you type "#" instead.
2. Import a true type font into your game, that way you can use the whole 256 characters range in the font set.

[Pumaman]

Yep you've probably just used an accented character without even thinking about it as you're Italian, but this actually causes a problem for AGS. You'll have to either manually edit the font as Gilbert suggests, or import a TTF font of your own.

By default, you can only use the standard English alphabet A-Z in game messages.

[Edward Becket]

I want to thank you all for yours help.  In fact i tried to eliminate all the accented characters and it wark very well now... except for the accented characters which I can't use!
Even if you exlain me very well what i have to do to solve my problem (not bug!  ), cause on the one hand the english language (hostile to me ) and on the other hand my total incompetency on this arguments... i don't understand the solution.

Between the two options that Gilbot post to me i think that the most probable is the second one. But: what I have to do?!?

Please... try to help me. I hope that you dont' leave me alone!
I am decided to learn to use this great AGS program... but i never understand very well any incompatibility problems (in this case is a font incompatibility).
Thanks !