AGS 3.6.0 - Beta 15

[Crimson Wizard]

I believe it's better to design the API/behavior in a way that touch directly can be handled by the game developer, as in #1538 and later figure this other behavior, so that it doesn't conflict, as I believe it's more important to enable proper touch support.

But right now there's no proper touch API, as you point out, while the missing ability to simulate right click makes "AGS Player" unusable for a large list of games, which will defeat its purpose to a significant degree. The 3.6.0 version was supposed to keep the behavior as much as possible, while switching to SDL2. It's clear that touch API won't get in 3.6.0, and not known when it will be added; therefore in my opinion it is logical to add a right click emulation to 3.6.0 if there is a technical opportunity for that.

I may look into this too, if you don't want to hack around this emulation and focus on the future things. But I'll have to learn how touch events work, and how does "touch->mouse translation" in SDL work.

If, after the touch API is designed and integrated, it will be found that the emulated controls somehow conflict with it, then these emulated controls could be adjusted again, as touch API will have a priority.

[Crimson Wizard]

Updated to Beta 15
(use download links in the first post)

Editor:
- "Attach game data to exe" setting's default value is now "false". This is to encourage users to have separate exe and data. Binding data to exe may cause troubles, for instance anti-viruses do not like AGS games because of this.
- The TextWindow edges now have distinct names in the dropdown list of the property grid.
- Fixed in dialogs numbers inside names were incorrectly highlighted as numeric values.
- Fixed error in dialog scripts occurring when the digit is a part of a character name.
- Fixed in dialogs character's script name on a regular script line was styled like a character's dialog name.

Script API:
- Added Mouse.AutoLock property that toggles automatic mouse lock inside the game window.

Engine:
- Fixed pressing '`' key for showing console did not work if the "new key handling mode" was enabled.
- Fixed calling System.Log in script would cause previous log messages overwritten in the game console.
- Fixed Ctrl+Alt was not working for toggling mouse lock.



I think this may be the last Beta update. There are couple of minor things that are currently missing, like some Android config options are not doing anything anymore (perhaps they may be hidden temporarily). If no serious problems are found soon, I'll make this a "Release Candidate" version.

There are 2 known missing functionalities, but these are not often used, and at the same time difficult to fix because they depend on libraries. So, in my opinion, we may leave them for the future patches.
These functionalities are:
1) AudioChannel.Position and Seek are not working for MIDI and MOD clips. These are clip type specific commands that allow to position playback not by time but by beat/pattern. PositionMs and SeekMs are working though.
2) AVI videos were discontinued, because they were using Windows-only system feature to play. Today it's recommended to use OGV videos with AGS anyway.

[Pax Animo]

ALT+ENTER for full screen toggle has stopped working for me with this build.

[Crimson Wizard]

I made a typo, and it became Shift + Enter

[Crimson Wizard]

Okay, I reuploaded the fixed build again (same links).

[Pax Animo]

Okay, I reuploaded the fixed build again (same links).

Great, I'd never of gotten use to  "Shift + Enter" 

[Pax Animo]

Bit of a tricky one to explain, I'll add a screeny too,

It's a problem with the properties panel with GUI's, when switching between buttons and labels via the pull down menu it seems to get stuck in the wrong properties screen, my only way out of this is to restart the editor.



As you see just under properties i should be in the main GUI properties but I'm not, I'm in bEngineering properties.



Again I should be in button3 properties but I'm stuck in gTasks properties.

Note: only happens via the drop down menu, clicking the buttons and labels on the main editor screen correctly changes the properties window.

[eri0o]

erh, I tried this under VS debugger and propertyObjectCombo_SelectedIndexChanged is not firing at all for me. I don't understand why yet.

Edit: created an issue in the bug tracker to register this.

[Crimson Wizard]

So, apparently this only happens if you have some Color Theme enabled; does not happen with default theme.

[Pax Animo]

Hey,

Not sure if you're aware by now as i see your looking into this issue but there also seems to be a similar issue with hotspots pull down menu.

[Crimson Wizard]

There's a build with the property list fixed, and also couple of more unrelated fixes:
https://cirrus-ci.com/task/4682187336318976

[rongel]

I just updated to the latest 3.6.0, a big thanks to everyone who is involved in it!

I have one issue: The audio panning does not work anymore with stereo clips. There was some discussion about the topic earlier:

Yes, Panning is not working within the sound library again (not sure if it worked before).

EDIT: It's confirmed that with the new sound library the Panning does not work for stereo clips, only works for mono clips, allegedly according to the OpenAL specification.
We need to investigate of the available solutions.
Opened ticket: https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/issues/1637

EDIT2 According to the OpenAL specs:
https://openal.org/documentation/OpenAL_Programmers_Guide.pdf (page 21)

Buffers containing more than one channel of data will be played without 3D spatialization.

This basically means that stereo wave is not positioned by OpenAL in 3D space, only mono wave is.

In 3.5.1 version stereo clips worked fine when panning. I can change the clips that require panning to mono, but ofcourse it would be great to have that functionality back again. Any news about this issue? Should I just go with the mono versions?

+ One small extra gripe, but I also miss the yellow auto brace highlight when writing code. Other than that, everything seems great!

[Crimson Wizard]

In 3.5.1 version stereo clips worked fine when panning. I can change the clips that require panning to mono, but ofcourse it would be great to have that functionality back again. Any news about this issue? Should I just go with the mono versions?

Overall, the stereo sounds and panning seem to contradict each other, because stereo already defines by itself which track to play from which direction.
The panning of stereo clips that was implemented in the old engines was not a real "panning", technically, but a balance shift, which is a different kind of effect. This may be proved by making a stereo clip that has two different tracks in two channels: when panning in 3.5.1 (and earlier) you will notice that one track will loose the volume while other will gain it, instead of moving whole combined clip in the 2D space.

I don't think that this will be restored in this version; it may be restored in the later updates (patches) if it's found that this is necessary for backward compatibility when running old games. Additionally this "balance" effect may also be implemented properly on its own, with respective command, at some point in the future.

As for properly panning the stereo sounds, this may only be achieved by converting them to mono, either when you create assets, or by the engine itself; although in the latter case the problem is that engine will need to know when the sound is supposed to be panned. If there's no such indication, then it might have to do so dynamically when the clip is commanded to pan, which might add to the program's CPU load.

+ One small extra gripe, but I also miss the yellow auto brace highlight when writing code. Other than that, everything seems great!

Can you clarify this? We've upgraded the library behind the script editor, and some things may still not be fully restored, but I think it's a matter of adding a fix or two.

[rongel]

Ok, thanks for the detailed answer CW!

I'll switch to mono sounds when there's panning involved. There could be a mention of stereo sounds not working with panning in the Upgrading to AGS 3.6 page: https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/UpgradeTo36.html. Also, there could be a mention of this in the manual in the AudioChannel.Panning section. At first I thought that the panning was broken, when my sounds stopped working.

Can you clarify this? We've upgraded the library behind the script editor, and some things may still not be fully restored, but I think it's a matter of adding a fix or two.

This issue was mentioned before by greg, I think he explained it quite well:

2. The editor no longer automatically highlights matching braces as I type.  Instead, after typing the brace, I need to press Ctrl+B to highlight the corresponding brace.  Is that intended?

So the editor used to highlight the matching brace as yellow automatically when typing. If there was too many braces, the editor highlighted the extra brace red. This made it easy to see if the braces match or not. Hope this makes it more clear!

[eri0o]

Can you point me to a version that had this said brace highlighting? I just tested the latest 3.5.1 and it doesn't have it afaict.

[Crimson Wizard]

Can you point me to a version that had this said brace highlighting? I just tested the latest 3.5.1 and it doesn't have it afaict.

It works for me in 3.5.1. EDIT: to clarify, this works with the round braces around function parameters, not curved braces around a block of code.

For example, if you type "func(asd)" the braces will be highlighted yellow the moment you place second brace. If you type "func(asd))" the third brace will be highlighted with red.

[eri0o]

@rongel, can you tell me if this version of braces highlighting works for you? (you can get the AGS compressed archive by clicking in Archive)

[rongel]

Ok, here's more testing results. And by the way, I'm using Windows 7 at the moment (working on my older laptop for a awhile). Normally I use Win 10 (I believe it behaved in a similiar way). Also the highlighting works in the dialog editor, but not in the script editor.

AGS 3.5.1.21

Script editor:
- Round braces working
- Curvy braces NOT working

Dialog editor:
- Round braces working
- Curvy braces working

AGS 3.6.0.35

Script editor:
- Round braces NOT working
- Curvy braces NOT working

Dialog editor:
- Round braces working
- Curvy braces working

eri0o's version

Script editor:
- Round braces kind of working: Works only when typing the brace, then typing another item next to it and deleting it by backspace
- Curvy braces kind of working: Works only when typing the brace, then typing another item next to it and deleting it by backspace

Dialog editor:
- Round braces kind of working: When typing the first brace, it gets instantly highlighted as red, typing the second brace highlights them yellow
- Curvy braces kind of working: When typing the first brace, it gets instantly highlighted as red, typing the second brace highlights them yellow

[eri0o]

I made so that it doesn't require typing, whenever the cursor is near a brace it will highlight a pair, matching is yellow, non-matching is red, typing or not. Need to check why this is not the observed behavior.

Edit: Manage to find and fix the difference between script editor and dialog editor in my version, a build is here, under archive.

Edit2: Made a new version here that skips the brace matching when typing the first { or ( character, so it's only red when later you place the typing cursor on an unmatched brace, but not while typing, to be more similar to the previous behavior.

[rongel]

Thanks for the new versions eri0o! The checking of the braces (cliking next to them) is a handy feature. I still miss the automatic highlighting when typing in the script editor, now it works only in the dialog editor. To make them behave in a same way would be logical.