Gathering feature suggestions for the Engine

[Crimson Wizard]

LATER EDIT: THE NOW OFFICIAL ENGINE ISSUE TRACKER:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?project=3


Thanks for Khris for pushing me towards it (although he probably did not know about it )
Let's gather useful suggestions and problems that could be solved by adding features to the engine. Some were mentioned on forums already.

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EDIT: I have to do this :
Let me elaborate why I started this thread. We all have some things in mind for sure. However, there are things being mentioned around forums, that could miss our attention. I suggest to gather them, if you find something interesting just give a link and some commentary.
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My first contribution to this:
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http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=46344.0
Basically the guy wants his character's walking animation to have extra frames that play only once at start and never repeat (unless animation is reset).
I am thinking about "repeat from here" frame flag (or loop property). But there should also be a way to tell engine since it is walking anim, he should jump from one repeatable sequence to another if character turns into different direction without stopping.
Any thoughts on how to better design this? I mark "design" word, since it is question of one at the moment, rather than coding.

[Alan v.Drake]

The most viable choice that comes to mind would be giving the possibility to set an EaseInWalk and EaseOutWalk view to each character. The same could be done for a turning specific animation.

- Alan

[Joseph DiPerla]

Are we doing this one feature at a time or just popping in here and giving a list? If so, here is my list of suggestions that I have mentioned over the years that would make game development for *me* easy and *Possible*.

Editor:
*Point plotting for walkable area's, regions and hotspots. - Basically clicking a point on the screen at one location, then another and the editor would draw a line from that point to the next and continue doing so until the last point connects to the first and there you have your hotspot/region/walkable area, etc...
*A somewhat simple interaction editor. It doesn't need to be elaborate, but I would love to see this return even in minimum form to increase production time. Its a great little tool for those of us who can do AGS Script, but would rather do some minor stuff without scripting. Perhaps it can convert the interactions into AGS Script as a way to integrate this.
*Cross Packaging/Compilation. As I mentioned in another thread, AGS Seems to be just an EXE that loads up the AGS Data files, And single EXE's just seem to have the data appended to them at the end of the executable. If this is the case, The editor can be used to create cross platform packages to Linux and Mac. All that would be left to do is also include a way to compress it. The same would apply for Android (Maybe IOS? Do not have experience with IOS development). All a user would need to do is download the SDK/NDK and install it, tell The editor where the directories are that contain the compilers, put a couple of settings into the Editor and then let the editor do something to compile AGS, package the game with AGS in an APK with your own package name and key and you are set to go. Of course, this sounds simple in theory, but possibly not easy to do. However, when people see that AGS can be used not only to make games for other platforms, but also easily compile them, this would attract them more to it.

Engine:
*Particle effects. The Rain/Snow plugin is a great example of a particle engine, but something a bit more complete would be nice, particularly for fire and explosions and even things like Tornado's. This would simplify the process of drawing more graphics and coding the function into the game manually. A Particle engine could really spice up what AGS can do.
*Limits. Although I have no intention of using up the limits currently, I do want to see others that are using other engines also use AGS. I would like to see a big game developer use AGS for a commercial game (Think Runaway). I think that people do not realize that the limits are not unreasonable. They just see "What if I need more than that?" and they shy away from AGS. Its a shame because I really see AGS as the best Adventure Game Engine and the easiest to use. If others would look past some limitations, more would use it.
*Unlimited and Custom Resolutions. This has plagued AGS for a while. Its not a big deal as most developers would prefer to use the Resolutions that are already supported. But I have seen many complain about this and seen even some leave AGS for a different engine or custom engine (The Journey Down, is an example) so they can use a higher resolution. Anyone is free to do so, but it would be nice if AGS had gotten rid of this limitation as well. Since AGS is now 13 years old, I think its time that this feature was modernized a bit. The options I think should be included are either you input the custom resolution manually, or select it from a list. The list can give you idea's of what a good resolution would be based on the platform you are targeting.
*2.5D. Not necessary. I would use this, only if it supported MD2 files personally. However, having a 3D Animated object or character on screen nowadays is a lot simpler and faster for development than converting it to sprites. Well, in some cases I suppose. I wouldn't even know how to approach this or how to implement it. OpenGL would be one way, another one way that seems very good is Ogre 3D and/or irrlicht 3D. The file types I recommend for this, since it can support animated frames or bones are MD2, MD3, 3DS, .X.
*Playing across multiple discs. Although I heard many ask for this, with the release of DVD's and Blu Ray as well as more and more stuff being downloaded from the web, I do not see a big need for this. However, I have seen this being asked for and it probably should have been included years ago. But for some reason, I am starting to think this is already doable anyway.
*Translations for Movie voice overs and sprites.
*Sub Titles for Movies.
*Paralax Scrolling.

A much shorter list than what I have ever suggested, but I think its the essential ones for now.

[Crimson Wizard]

Dang, lol, I was afraid someone will do that

Ok, my bad. Let me elaborate why I started this thread. We all have some things in mind for sure. However, there are things being mentioned around forums, that could miss our attention. I suggest to gather them, if you find something interesting just give a link and some commentary.

As for those lengthy lists, well, I honestly don't know. I think it is better to start using the issue tracker, since it is practically ready.

[Joseph DiPerla]

Ah ok. Gotcha. Sorry CW.

[AGA]

The Project pages have an option to add feature suggestions, with each suggestion having its own discussion thread.  That would probably be a much better way of keeping track, rather than having dozens of overlapping threads in this forum?

[Crimson Wizard]

The Project pages have an option to add feature suggestions, with each suggestion having its own discussion thread.  That would probably be a much better way of keeping track, rather than having dozens of overlapping threads in this forum?

Hmm... I am starting to think I did stupid thing here
Alright, I will post this to Project page, as well anything else I find.

EDIT: However, I still think we should encourage people to notice such things as they read forums and write them down somehere (Project pages or elsewhere).

[Snarky]

Stuff I think should be in the next release, copy/pasted from an old post (with some new edits):

* Mac and Linux ports (and Android and iOS if possible, PSP if available)
* Fix DirectDraw/Direct3D issues so AGS runs reliably on Windows
* Support for widescreen and HD resolutions
* Fix music stuttering on room change bug
* Savegames breaking on basically any game update (if possible to fix without major rewrite)
* Support switching fullscreen/windowed mode during gameplay
* Fix winsetup crash on games installed under Program Files (Win 7, possibly Win XP), probably by putting config files in a different folder

I think the various dev branches actually have fixes for most of these issues, so it's primarily a matter of merging them into the main branch and putting out a release.

[Calin Leafshade]

The Project pages have an option to add feature suggestions, with each suggestion having its own discussion thread.  That would probably be a much better way of keeping track, rather than having dozens of overlapping threads in this forum?

The bugs on the project page probably should be just purged. A lot of them are simply not relevant any more.

[JanetC]

* Support switching fullscreen/windowed mode during gameplay

This would be awesome.

[BigMc]

* Support switching fullscreen/windowed mode during gameplay

As far as I know Allegro 4 doesn't support this. This might require porting to Allegro 5.

[monkey0506]

Regarding toggling fullscreen in-game...I haven't specifically looked at the comparable Allegro functions, but this is actually quite easy in SDL, so I imagine it wouldn't be at all difficult. That and custom resolutions (which there's already a branch for that floating around somewhere). These are two things that are presently hard-coded, but it doesn't really make much sense for it to be that way.

Calin has made a fair point that a lot of the bugs currently in the issue tracker aren't relevant, but I don't think we should just purge everything. I started trying to clean it up and close out some of them, but I didn't have the changelog file readily available, and some of the issues actually predate these forums. I have the changelog file now...and some free time. monkey, away!

Edit: BigMc posted whilst I was typing. And...that's ridiculous what he said. We will do what's necessary though. Whatever it takes.

[BigMc]

It's possible to add support for this to Allegro 4, ASEPRITE did this, but the patch is not included in upstream Allegro. You could try to get the patch included into Allegro, but please don't rely on patched versions of libraries.

There might be other ways to support this, don't know. Porting to Allegro 5 might be a good idea in the long run anyway.

[Alan v.Drake]

It's possible to add support for this to Allegro 4, ASEPRITE did this, but the patch is not included in upstream Allegro. You could try to get the patch included into Allegro, but please don't rely on patched versions of libraries.

There might be other ways to support this, don't know. Porting to Allegro 5 might be a good idea in the long run anyway.

I think that someone willing enough could already do the fullscreen/windowed for direct3d, if I recall correctly there's no allegro stuff involved into the initialization of the graphic mode. Then of course I don't know much about that stuff and who knows what devious trickery may lay down that road.

Of the same importance there's the matter of monitor resolutions (I'm not speaking about game resolutions which were already addressed by skygoblin's build), there's really no reason at all we can't stretch the surface to whatever resolution one chooses, both software and d3d mode have ways of doing so. It's just a matter of adding a listbox with the available system resolutions and retouching some code about mouse position, I think.
I also tried in DD5 to draw fullscreen in windowed mode and it seemed to work just fine (there were no window borders by default in that case).

- Alan

[Crimson Wizard]

The bugs on the project page probably should be just purged. A lot of them are simply not relevant any more.

There are feature requests made in 2004 that were implemented either in dev.3.2.2, or Draconian Edition

BTW, what issue Categories should we have? Like, "Engine" and "Editor", or else?

[AGA]

I would have separate projects for engine and editor myself, to remove clutter and confusion.  If not a separate project for every separate branch of the engine.

[Crimson Wizard]

I would have separate projects for engine and editor myself, to remove clutter and confusion.  If not a separate project for every separate branch of the engine.

What about this for starters:
- Engine
- Engine Ports
- Editor
- Editor Ports (why not )
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- Modules & Plugins requests and bugs
- Documentation (Manual/Tutorials issues)

[AGA]

Admins actually have the option to create projects now.  I see someone has already made a test project.  I've added those four though, since that seems a good start.

[Crimson Wizard]

Admins actually have the option to create projects now.  I see someone has already made a test project.

That was me

I wonder if monkey agree to copy all the versions he put in the original project...

[monkey0506]

I originally added every AGS (and AC) version because I thought I was cool. It made the formatting of the pages horrible though (check boxes for every single version for which versions it applies to and which version(s) it's fixed in?? ugh!). So I purged the insanity.