Hmm, I had a look at AGI Studio the other day and, well, it really doesn't seem very user friendly - a lot of internal programs and strange glitches that were generally screwy. I was looking because I was a little interested in the idea of an old-school Sierra tribue with a parser and the basic graphics, but the experience got me thinking - how difficult would it be to make in AGS?
In a roundabout way, how hard is it to implement a limited palette and a text parser into an AGS game?
well i've not really dabbled with the parser in AGS, but I have dabbled with limited palettes and it's not really that difficult. i set myself up a palette to use in my paint app that has all the colours that AGS uses for the interface and stuff already loaded into it in the correct slots and i always add any new colours from the last slot and work my way backwards.
but you don't really have to use a limited palette in AGS, there's not really any need to unless you want to use some of the 8bit palette effects like colour cycling or changing a certain colour on the fly (which i actually plan on using to allow players to customise the character in a future game), so you could just use a limited palette in your paint app and leave the game in 16bit mode.
You don't really have to "implement" a limited palette, you just use a limited amount of colors when drawing your art and then import it as 8-bit sprites to cut down file size. AGS also has built-in text parser support (just look up "Text parser" in the manual), it's not very sophisticated so don't expect an Infocom level of interpretation without a lot of additional coding, but it's easily as good as the original AGI parser. You may also want to use scotch's AGI Graphics Emulation plugin (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=19601.0) that allows characters to move in a 160x200 grid to emulate AGI style pixel doubling.
Yeah, well, the palettes question is due to the fact that I'm a code person, not a graphics person. When I read through the AGS manual I don't 'get' any of the palette stuff at all or anything about how to use it. But I gather that if you specifically limit the palette then your filesize is smaller... and that's about it.
Anyway, thanks for your help. The Emulation Plug-In sounds like the kind of thing I wanted..
AGI Studio was superseded years ago by WinAGI GDS (http://www.winagi.com/)
You gotta remember AGI studio was written by a coder for coders. At the time the only people using it were those who were part of the original reverse engineering group. They already had an excellent understanding of the AGI system and didnt need the editor to be intuitive.
However, tell me more about your old-school tribute - it sounds interesting!
QuoteAGI Studio was superseded years ago by WinAGI GDS
Oh, wow. Somebody should put that on the AGI wiki page - I had no idea. Will check it out when I'm not downloading on my crappy dial-up connection.
QuoteHowever, tell me more about your old-school tribute - it sounds interesting!
It's just an idea at the moment, and quite vague - not a direct tribute to Sierra but a game based on a fairly obscure British sci-fi named Blakes 7 that was big in the early 80s. Because I came to the AGI games very late and really enjoyed the purity of their storytelling I thought that it would be fun to have a project to try and create a sort of AGI game-that-never-was - in this case the game that you would have gotten if they ever adapted B7 into a computer game at the time.
I'm making one. (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=36831.msg485566#msg485566)
It's okay using AGS, scotch has some useful things, the agi plugin ofcourse but also a module which handles parser stuff quite well. Art is no problem, I have the 16 colours set up in a swatch in Photoshop, with AGS in 16 bit palette mode because i've never used anything below that in AGS ¬¬
I love seeing new AGI games, so make one! :D
Quote from: Jared on Tue 17/03/2009 08:57:57
QuoteAGI Studio was superseded years ago by WinAGI GDS
Oh, wow. Somebody should put that on the AGI wiki page - I had no idea. Will check it out when I'm not downloading on my crappy dial-up connection.
yeah its been on the AGI Wiki like forever (years).
FWIW, I'm the moderator for the AGI wiki.
Thanks for resurrecting a thread just to make me sound foolish. The only link to the AGI Wiki I got was from the first page I found on Google, which was an obviously outdated one for the original AGIStudio. Nowhere was WinAGI mentioned on the original page or the Wiki link I got, which if anything accidentally implied that the project was dead anyway. The pages also had no links to anywhere suggesting that AGI wasn't dead. Take a wild guess what my initial assumption was?
Quote from: Jared on Tue 23/06/2009 05:57:34
Thanks for resurrecting a thread just to make me sound foolish.
sorry you fell that way - it wasnt my intention! I was going through my old posts, and saw that I hadnt replied to this. :)
Anyway, the page for the AGI Wiki is http://www.agigames.com/agiwiki/index.php/Main_Page sadly its not the first google result, but it does mention WinAGI on the front page! Just wondering what was the page you were referring to?
AGI is though actually dying a slow and painful death. There's just not enough interest, especially since AGS's rise in popularity. There's a forum which doesnt see a lot of action but still active at http://www.agigames.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=ca4ef3af30c31d0045ef057d065fa4d7&board=4.0
Anyway there you go, I'm finished with my AGI plug! :P