What do you want from the next AGS update?

[SupSuper]

Delete buttons for Items, Characters, Views and Cursor Modes. I know there's no harm in leaving them blank when unused, but it just doesn't look tidy.

Oh and a customizable Sierra-style inventory. And maybe even a grid-based inventory (S&M Hit The Road, The Dig, etc.)

[jetxl]

Funny.
Most of the features (serious) asked are already possible, but might need some reading and scripting (or ask Strazer to do it for you). Changing the inventory grid is possible. RTFM!

And OOP, which I'm not a fan of, isn't essential. Monkey Island didn't use it, Doom didn't use it and neighter did Super Mario World. Why people worship it is beyond me. I think it's just an excuse for not making games.

Multyplayer online games? Why do you want that function when you don't even own a server? Oh, I get it. You want to PLAY it, not MAKE it.
Answer: Buy Uru, download Plane Shift or play WoW on an illegal server if you don't have money.

Why does AGS need  to be bigger in size by impementing functions only 3 or 4 people over the world have an intention of using?

[DoorKnobHandle]

And OOP, which I'm not a fan of, isn't essential. Monkey Island didn't use it, Doom didn't use it and neighter did Super Mario World. Why people worship it is beyond me. I think it's just an excuse for not making games.

Well, it's not essential, but it can save your butt a whole lot of work. Your statement about OOP clearly shows that you can't be quite used to normal programming in languages such as C++ (which is very close to the AGS script-language). There have been so many debates over OOP and why it is possibly the greatest strength of C++ over languages such as C, Java or even HTML, and I have yet to see one worthwhile argument against it. I don't know if you realize that AGS already uses OOP-elements such as structures? And this is the best example: there are so many technical things that wouldn't be possible to do in AGS in a comfortable way without using the struct-keyword (take my project "Troopers" as example, or my "Particle Engine"-Module, they wouldn't work without structures).
I also fail to see how OOP could possibly be an excuse for not making games, which makes me seriously wonder whether you really understood its principles. I don't want to offend you in any way, there may very well be a reason that I just never realized or something. In this case, I'd be grateful if you could share it with me.

Oh, and that games such as Doom or Monkey Island didn't use OOP really shouldn't be listed as argument why AGS shouldn't support OOP either. I agree that you won't need structures, classes, overloaded operators etc. when writing a simple adventure game in AGS, but as soon as you get any more technical (which is what a lot of advanced scripters like to do in AGS), you can't get around most of those OOP-helpers. Another example: you want a normal adventure game, but would like a realistical physics-simulation for one puzzle - you could use classes to build yourself a working vector class, which comes in VERY handy when implementing physical stuff.

[scotch]

Yes, you're right Jet, early 90s games tended to be written in C... the object oriented languages we use now mostly weren't standardised back then.  Just about every game written today will have been written in an OO language.  I know it can be hard to get for a beginner coder to see why, I certainly didn't get it for a while, but it makes programming most things a lot less painful.
Note that in the source for any big game written in C you'll probably start to notice hacky object oriented patterns, even though the language isn't tailored for them.
I think anyone that codes extensively with AGS would appreciate more along the lines CJ has introduced.  Those that don't like OO coding can always stick to plain old functions and variables.

[jetxl]

dkh: no offence taken. I personally encountered bad, emotionally experience with OOP.
(btw. although I remember my two years as a computer science student as a fast moving blur, isn't c++a 2nd generation language and java a 3rd generation (the OO) language?)

There are a few very talented programmers on the boards, created a test game but haven't made a propper game, yet do promote new features (nothing wrong with that, really. God knows I've done it and god knows I got them). Not directed at DKH, I know he worked on FOY, or Scotch who is working on his own engine.
There are also members who can't code very well. I think Kinoko said she hated scripting and Grundi didn't know there was a DisplaySpeech function.
It's like the programmers say they don't have the creative freedom or the propper tools to make a game, while the normal folks just make a popular game without those tools.

Please realize that the people who don't know anything about scripting are the base users of AGS. Do you think OOP would atract or scare away newbies? Be honest.

[SupSuper]

Funny.
Most of the features (serious) asked are already possible, but might need some reading and scripting (or ask Strazer to do it for you). Changing the inventory grid is possible. RTFM!

By grid-based inventory, I mean an inventory where you can place an item anywhere in the fixed-size inventory grid, taking an item (putting it in the cursor) automatically removes it from the inventory, etc, like in the games I referred. Currently the inventory GUI isn't very customizable, though I admit it's not something many would bother to customize, but it's just a suggestion.

[scotch]

I don't think it'd affect the ease of use of the script language for newbies very much, they don't use the OOish stuff as it is, except that I think Strings and new style Characters and so on are slightly easier to use, especially with the autocompletion. The main benefit I think new language features would have on newbies is in using modules written by other people. Ã, A few things I've tried to write in AGS script have become too much trouble, or effectively impossible, due to language limitations. Writing, for example, a custom dialog system, becomes so much easier if you can simply make a ConversationLine class with a dynamically sized list of suboptions, and subclass it for different scripted responses to lines.

I don't think these features are essential either, and if it's really difficult to implement in AGS script, well... ignore that request, but it'd rock for a lot of us I think.

On C++ being an OO language or not... it's designed for writing very object oriented programs, that's good enough for me. Ã, Java is a bit more of a pure OO language. Ã, You could say that Ruby is purer OO still. Doesn't really matter to me, I just like having the features there to write understandable and extendable programs.

Also I didn't take offense at you saying it was an excuse for not making games, I didn't quite know what you meant.  You're right in some ways, a lot of the tech forum module authors probably won't make games... it's not a big problem, as long as they're producing something others can use, I think My work with AGS is mostly as an artist anyway.  Should have something out this year...

[HeirOfNorton]

Of the things mentioned so far, what I'd most like to see are:
- further OO options (nested structs and pointers to structs especially)
- Dynamic data structures, like vectors and maps.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned that I'd really like are callback functions. Heck, as long as we're listing unrealistic wants, it'd rule if AGS had higher-order functions like Lua and Squirrel do. (Realistically, this is probably impossible without completely refactoring the way AGS handles functions, but it would be cool.)  Barring that, regular callback functions would be cool, too.

HoN

[Steel Drummer]

Delete buttons for Items, Characters, Views and Cursor Modes. I know there's no harm in leaving them blank when unused, but it just doesn't look tidy.

Yeah, that ticks me off too. I think it also makes the game take up extra space, doesn't it?

[Gilbert]

Not much as far as I know.
Also, read this, especially the WARNING part, which is one large reason you can't delete most stuff.

[InCreator]

* Proper scaling of TTF fonts at low res.

* Also, though I'm not sure could and how would it work -- direct animations as video files. Like, instead of frames, I could import .avi or .mpeg file into sprite editor and use it as an object (animated texture/whatever) without need to make it animate by script. i.e -- draw a bg with tv on it and put .avi sprite over the place where screen is...

I don't know how it's called. A dynamic sprite?

* Transclusent area editing. Like, when drawing a walk-behinds in AGS, (optional) transclusent color would make it much easier (I know CJ-s "area editing tools" upgrade policy, but I've never been fond of doing this in paint programs).

* Highly improved and more flexible GUI making. To make cool GUIs more easily, instead of using somewhat predefined templates (like a text window, for example).

[Chingon]

a better support for special characters, so that u dont have to work with translation files all the time to create your game... so u can write the dialogues in your native language and an english native speaker could translate it into his language...

[LimpingFish]

Did I mention I REALLY would like proper TTF font rendering? 

[Babar]

By grid-based inventory, I mean an inventory where you can place an item anywhere in the fixed-size inventory grid, taking an item (putting it in the cursor) automatically removes it from the inventory, etc, like in the games I referred. Currently the inventory GUI isn't very customizable, though I admit it's not something many would bother to customize, but it's just a suggestion.

But it can be done easily by scripting: Griddy Inventidorry

[Reko]

As someone who has only played AGS games to date, I'd like to see improved multiplatform support. Allowing plugins to be ported (or maybe allowing plugins to be developed in some sort of multiplatform language?), etc. One of the reasons I think it'd be so desirable to make games for SCUMM, were it possible (even though it would be very hard) is simply the number of platforms ScummVM has been ported to.

I also think multiplayer would be interesting, either via some sort of access to a TCP/UDP/IP stack or by some sort of higher-level multiplayer abstraction which would automatically sync characters walking, and so forth. I think it would be quite possible to make well designed multiplayer adventure games, just so long as they've been designed for multiplayer in the beginning.

But what would be more immediately useful and interesting network-communications wise is some sort of HTTP facility, which could allow for high score tables and so forth.

[Esseb]

Excellent idea. No-one can beat my highscore in Novo Mestro though.

[Akumayo]

Speaking of structs within structs, it seems it's possible with some types of C++, and it's also possible to declare struct types in the struct declaration, instead of in the global script:

Code: ags

struct movies_t {  //declare struct
  string title;  //string value
  int year;  //int value
} Matrix, Donnie_Darko;  //declare objects using struct (Matrix.title)

struct friends_t {  //declare another struct
  string name;  //string value
  string email;  //string value
  movies_t favorite_movie;  //nest movies_t in data known as 'favorite_movie'
} charlie, maria;  //declare objects using struct

Now we can:

Code: ags

marie.favorite_movie.title = "Donnie_Darko";

Would this be possible to implement in AGS?  (It gives an error if you do it presently.)

-Regards, Akumayo

[monkey0506]

Not much as far as I know.
Also, read this, especially the WARNING part, which is one large reason you can't delete most stuff.

I understand some of the concerns about deleting stuff, however most of that is gone now that AGS has gone OO.  There is still the possibility that your scripts could access the wrong thing, and debugging that could potentially be difficult to spot right away, but still I think being able to remove Cursors, Characters, Fonts, and things would be really cool. (Especially considering that I have, in the past added several inventory items (around 20 - 30) that were only for testing purposes. Sure, I could have ended up editing some of them and making use of them, but I personally like to start that kind of thing from scratch.)

[PsychicHeart]

Or, if not a form of proper online play, at least some kind of online scoreboard/highscore list implemented into the game. That is, if Billy in Florida gets the 4th highest score of the game and inputs his details, Willy in New York can see that score and know that Billy has that score.

[Hammerite]

or you could give them an web address with a scoreboard in it to input your scores into. probably be easier to do as well.