Ben304's 'Awakener' - Now a Facebook App (XAGE)

Clarvalon · Mon 01/03/2010 23:00:53

Right then. About five months ago, Ben sent me the source code from his then latest game, Awakener. I've since been using it as a test case for my AGS to XAGE conversion tool.

Consequently, Awakener is now playable online in your web browser:
http://www.clarvalon.com/XAGE/games/Awakener/

It has also been released as a Facebook application:
http://apps.facebook.com/awakener

(plus it runs just fine on the Xbox360, though there are no plans to release to Xbox Live).

I've taken the liberty of pre-empting a handful of questions:

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How does it work?

Magic.

For a more detailed answer, see the following demonstration video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80sdyaJl_Ko

Will my AGS game convert?

Maybe. It depends on how complex the scripting is. Theoretically any game that uses the same (or a subset) of the functionality Awakener does should be up and running within minutes. In practice, however, it's more likely that there'll be missing functionality that is not yet correctly mapped to XAGE. There is still a long way to go.

When will XAGE v0.5 be out?

I had originally hoped to release it alongside this version of Awakener, but I've cut a few corners and the Editor inparticular is not nearly as robust as I'd like it to be. It will most likely be released in a month or two when I'm satisfied it is stable.
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A big thank you obviously goes to Ben, for sharing his source code and tolerating my incessant emails. Likewise thanks to everyone else who has sent me their source code over the last six months - every one has helped XAGE mature, and will continue to do so.

Cheers,
Dan

Privateer Puddin' · Mon 01/03/2010 23:05:13

Great work! Love watching your progress with this.

deadsuperhero · Mon 01/03/2010 23:05:41

Definitely a cool idea, although Moonlight seems to still be lacking in functionality. Will have to check this out from my brother's PC when I get a chance.

GarageGothic · Mon 01/03/2010 23:09:10

Wow! That's damn impressive. Congrats on the release!

Seems to work brilliantly. A question though: Seems like Silverlight suffers the same curse as Flash of not allowing right-clicking? That could really make me reconsider my GUI design strategies since being able to port my AGS game to the browser would be the coolest thing ever.

deadsuperhero · Mon 01/03/2010 23:12:47

QuoteA question though: Seems like Silverlight suffers the same curse as Flash of not allowing right-clicking?

Yeah, I've noticed that.

Which begs the question: if you have to work around right-clicking in both Silverlight AND Flash, would one be able to do it in embedded JavaScript?

Snake · Mon 01/03/2010 23:22:14

My GOD, this is insane! Great work! I can't express how excited I am

Amazing

Clarvalon · Mon 01/03/2010 23:34:51

I'm pretty sure the right mouse button events can be captured in Silverlight v4, though that won't come out of beta for a few months and I didn't fancy sitting on this for that long. I'll be sure to update it when the time comes as it should make for a more user-friendly experience (Silverlight performance currently isn't that great either, though this should also improve with v4).

Thanks for the nice comments. It's by no means perfect - the pathfinding is a bit iffy, and there were a few things I neglected to implement (TurnBeforeFacing, room transitions etc.) but I'd hazard it's about 95% the same experience as the original.

Matt Frith · Mon 01/03/2010 23:42:14

This is really great. Could this be the future? Shame about the right clicking problem though

Iliya · Tue 02/03/2010 14:49:40

Woow, this is great! I'd love to see my games online! Can games be exported to XAGE with older versions of AGS or just with the latest (my games are created with AGS 2.72)? I hope soon the right click to be captured

Chrille · Tue 02/03/2010 18:07:23

This is probably the most exciting AGS-related project in progress right now. Great job!

m0ds · Tue 02/03/2010 18:40:31

Very awesome! Out of curiosity, how big is the game Awakener in mb? It took about 2 minutes to load here via Silverlight, so I'm interested to know how some of my filesizes might affect a loading time

Clarvalon · Tue 02/03/2010 18:51:52

@Harg: Games need to be upgraded to AGS v3.x before they can be converted. I'm pretty sure this was the case for Pixel Hunt and a few others.

@Mods: The silverlight .xap file is about 5.3mb, which is a little bit smaller than the original AGS Awakener zip package. I'm not yet sure whether larger games with more assets will scale in the same way.

MrColossal · Tue 02/03/2010 21:07:44

This is really awesome Clarvalon and I can't wait to see where this ends up in the future. It's quite exciting.

Tuomas · Tue 02/03/2010 21:29:08

Basically the first application I played on Facebook, and it ran very well. This is a brilliant effort and a great idea. I've been a bit critical about publishing on Facebook but they say it's one of the best places to reach people. But with this type of product, I do agree. This is just... really awesome. I was able to just link my friends to it when before they were forced to download the stuff just by looking at a few pictures. Thumbs up!

monkey0506 · Tue 02/03/2010 21:37:53

This..is..amazing.

My computer is running stupidly right now (the game is slowing it down a lot) but you say the new version of Silverlight should improve performance issues when it comes out..so hopefully yes.

The right-click issue is also bothersome, but looking forward to that being fixed in the future and still in awe that I am playing an AGS game in a web browser.

One question, is this a direct conversion or did you add specific exceptions and modify/tweak things to make this game specifically work? For example, if I send you the source of my game could you put it online too?

Dave Gilbert · Tue 02/03/2010 22:05:00

This is incredible! One of the coolest developments for the engine I've seen in awhile. I did notice one issue though. How do you "unstick" inventory items from your mouse now that you can't right-click? I clicked on the salt in the player's inventory and now i can't get rid of it.

GarageGothic · Tue 02/03/2010 22:40:09

Dave: Ctrl+Left Click (it's actually written below the game window, but that also took me some time to figure out)

Dualnames · Tue 02/03/2010 22:55:55

Great, job, to be honest, I'm not at all surprised. I've been seeing the progress on this on the blog, so it rather felt natural, but it's a great step for AGS!!

Kweepa · Tue 02/03/2010 23:54:53

Awesome stuff!
12 thumbs up!

It's even more impressive given that you're reverse engineering the AGS engine... :o

Oddysseus · Wed 03/03/2010 04:56:09

Congratulations. Hard work does indeed pay off.

Ben304's 'Awakener' - Now a Facebook App (XAGE)

m0ds