Wintermute

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Food for thought.

Here are the stated reasons why the person I was talking about made the switch from AGS to Wintermute, and why it stated WM was more professional, powerful and versatile. It's the kind of comparison we don't get every day.

I was using AGS for 3 years until last summer. I know all the AGS features. Wintermute was a non free engine until 1.8 version, now Wintermute is free as AGS, for commercial and not commercial games. Last summer I decided to try Wintermute and learn it. Have you tried it? I don't said that Wintermute was more professional because I don't like AGS, I say it because I saw it.

Ok, you say that graphic resolution is not important, ok, but we had a lot of problems to center the images in the rooms in AGS because the resolutions higher than 320x240 are virtuals and if you make the game at 640x480 you need to divide the pixels per 2 and don't do the graphics of pixels odd if you want to make it center in game as your preview in room edit.

More things, Wintermute let you to modify the native methods of the engine, AGS no.

Wintermute let you to add scripts in each frame of animation, AGS no.

Wintermute have a native video format and it means that the player don't need to have any codec installed in their system to see the videos, AGS no.

Wintermute let you divide the game files in packages, distributing any file on the package you want also let you to make a patch packages to resolve or update some parts of the game when it is compiled and distributed before. Only need to install the patch to update the game. If you want to change any thing in AGS you have to distribute the entire game.

Wintermute let you to put voices in the game automaticaly with the String Table Manager. You can change the audio dialogs without editing any script.

When any characyer or object makes small in the room perspective in AGS, the resize method makes pixelate this, in Wintermute no, the resize is perfect.

You can make one region (or two or three, etc) on another, in AGS you cannot make more than one region in one place, it is very util, you can meke that one object or one character only takes the properties of one of each regions and other in the same place, takes another region properties, etc.

The regions and the hotspots in AGS must be assigned in 320x240 resolution, in Wintermute it have the real game resolution.

You don't need to compile the game to test it in Wintermute, in AGS yes, I made games so big in AGS and any time I need to test, it takes some minutes to compile.

Also you can place characters in scene edit to see how it seems with the lights or zooms of the room in Wintermute, in AGS you can't.

You can see all the animations in edit windows in Wintermute, in AGS you need to run the game to see the animations on the room or guys.

The folder structure of Wintermute is the same as the disk structure, it lets you to copy, move, edit, etc. all the files of the game directly from your explorer or any program you want, this is more flexible than AGS.

You can let part of the game in the CD or DVD (for example the videos, audios, all  you want) and it don't use many hard disk space if you want, in AGS, all the game must to be in HD.

In AGS the videos are outside the game package, any player can see the videos outside the game or delete it, in Wintermute you can compile the videos inside the game package files (or not).

In animations edit window (sprite edit) you can specify any alpha transparency for each frame, in AGS no. You can attach some graphic in each frame of the animation and detach it when you want (with the script code), in AGS no.

In Wintermute you can attach videos in any part of the room, for example if the room has a TV, you can play video on it. In AGS you can't. You can resize the video at size as you want, also you can use video transparecy. Wintermute have full video integration.

In Wintermute you can import external dll as AGS programmed in C++.

In Wintermute you can config the movement of the character in any frame, in AGS, all the character frames in the animation moves equaly.

Also in Wintermute you can assign some sound or event in any frame of any animation, in AGS you can't.

You can assign a sound at any object of the game and it automaticaly sound at right or left, depending of the object position (if you want, you can disable it). The same thing with the sound of the character walking from right to left.

The debug console of Wintermute is better than AGS, you can see the code, pause this, put beak points, see all variable contents, etc.

In room edit of Wintermute, you have the objects, walkable areas, hotspots, etc. in the same window, you can see all things together (or not, you can hidde all you want).

The dialogs in Wintermute are programmed as same as the rest of the game, you can write any code inside the dialog and make what you want, in AGS the dialogs script is different than the rest of the code and you must to call a global function if you want to make something diferent than talk.

In AGS you can't export a part of the script to another game (well, you can copy and paste ) in Wintermute you can move or copy all the files (including code script) directly from the file explorer).

In Wintermute you can use the same script in some objects, rooms, characters, guys, etc.

In AGS the room script haven't visivility of other scripts, in Wintermute you can access to variables that you want from you want.

In Wintermute aren't limits of number of sprites, rooms, etc. You can have the quantity that you want.


I told you some of features that I see in Wintermute that AGS haven't, I didn't talk about 3D features because I want make the games in 2D, but what things can do AGS that Wintermute can't?

Try Wintermute and see it with your eyes. A game like Project Joe ( http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,433 ), this game was made with a early version of Wintermute (3 years ago), now Wintermute is better and have more features, but try to make some like this in AGS, it's imposible.

New versions of Wintermute are released every 2 or 3 months with new features.

You said that Wintermute hasn't games non adventure, this is false. The true is that AGS comunity is greater than Wintermute comunity (this is the best feature of AGS), but this is because AGS is older and popular and more people know this than Wintermute, also AGS allways was free and it make grow it's comunity. Since last year the Wintermute comunity are growing too, people like I that didn't use it before, now are trying it because it's free and can see all the features. Last month some users write a Wintermute learning book with a lot of examples ( http://res.dead-code.org/doku.php/wmebook:start)  and new good open source demos. See that game (the graphics aren't the best, but is an example of that Wintermute let you make non adventure games, like AGS and more), this is a tetris game open source, programed with Wintermute: http://offstudio.fabry.cz/mb/index.php?option=com_contentask=view&id=45&Itemid=41&lang=en

See this video: http://ru.akella.com/Files/Games/1800/video/TiB%20demo%204.avi is a commercial game, made with Wintermute, is impossible to do a game like that in AGS, in Wintermute it's easy.

The two screenshots published of new James Peris are in 640x480 but the game is at 1024x768. We can do a lot of thigs that AGS can't do.

I know how you feel, I was equal one year ago. It's hard change the usually of programme when one have used the same program since a lot of time, but I can teach you Wintermute and you will dicover all the shortages of AGS. I'm a professional programmer and I see Wintermute more flexible and more usefull, belive me.

And by the way, I did reply to the guy saying most/all the things he said that AGS couldn't do, it could now or it always could, and how, so any replies to this needn't touch that subject.

[woodz]

When i started my little remake of NOTH, i looked at 3 options, AGS, Wintermute and Lassie AS(flash)
TBH i dismissed AGS instantly for the simple fact the game used 3D rendered backgrounds and  in the past I've been slammed for using them by some members in the community.
The whole game apart from the main story and puzzles was radically changed, i just felt it would get ripped apart

In a way AGS is a victim of its own success, people expect the games to be old skool pixel art, and out side of the community they may not get the attention they deserve.

AGS is a lot more user friendly than Wintermute, TBH the reason I'd go with WM was the 3D support.. but i haven't looked at AGS3 yet!
Wintermute needs a lot more coding knowledge, I guess some people think that makes it more top end lol

I went with Lassie and Flash.. well till i scrapped the project lol

I'd hate to admit it but AGS is a lot better than Lassie, the only advantage is its easy to code and everything art wise looks as you drew it.. plus online playability

Edit
I've just checked out AGS v3...
What can i say.. I'm blown away! very impressed

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

There are a few key things wintermute allows that have been suggested to CJ and he's interested in implementing them in the future, such as viewing chars/objects in a room, a new dialog interface, etc.  He also didn't discuss the learning curve differences (probably for obvious reasons).

[Pumaman]

Sure, some of the things in that list are things that Wintermute can do and AGS can't. Others of them aren't.

But if AGS and Wintermute had identical feature sets, then there'd be no point having two seperate applications, and we'd may as well merge them into WinterAGS. There are some things that Wintermute does better and some things that AGS does better, and as long as both systems are always striving to improve then at the end of the day that benefits everyone.

[OneDollar]

You're just saying that so we'll suspect nothing when the Wintermute server gets hacked

I never really checked Wintermute out. I had a look in their forums which seemed dead, checked out some screenshots and decided that I couldn't be bothered to learn it when I already knew AGS. Most of that list can be overcome with a bit of scripting, or has already been added, and the community here's great anyway.

[Ghost]

The Wintermute community is small, and there are very few games. I had a look at the engine a while ago, so I cannot say anything about this "new and better" Wintermute, but what I saw back then, well, was a bunch of people so very proud about the cool features there engine had that there was no time to actually do something with them. We have our share of eternal GiPs, true, but we also have a huge database of finished games, and some of them are very good. There is STUFF being MADE.

Choices choices- these days there truly is more than one good adventure game maker out there, sure, but I do not rate a toolkit on its features alone. That's what puzzles me when I read that list Rui provided as a quote. Technical features, very special little tricks, no mention at all how good the community is.
I need people who share my interest and say "Hooray" when I make a game, and "I know how to do that!" when I need help, and "Oi, Ghost, go and GET a life" when I post something at 2 am.

The tool AGS is only half of the AGS community!
... which doesn't make any sense because without AGS there couldn't be, as it is, an AGS community... but even so, you get my point.

[monkey0506]

The tool AGS is only half of the AGS community!

Wait...so you're telling me now that AGS is actually a game development engine...not just an online community? :o All these years I could have been making games....

8)

But Chris is right here: AGS and Wintermute are different programs with different abilities, and they're popular (to their own respective degrees) for different reasons. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses...[sarcasm]just AGS has more strengths than Wintermute does and AGS's weakest weakness is still stronger than Wintermute's strongest strength.*[/sarcasm]** Or at least that's what Larry tells me.

*WARNING: May or may not be propaganda. Chris Jones is in no way affiliated or associated with, nor does he endorse such statements. Chris Jones may not be held liable for such claims made by himself or anyone else, especially including those made by members of his cult-like following.
**This statement was made in a sarcastic and satirical manner and under no circumstances should be taken as literal.

[Snarky]

I do not rate a toolkit on its features alone. That's what puzzles me when I read that list Rui provided as a quote. Technical features, very special little tricks, no mention at all how good the community is.
I need people who share my interest and say "Hooray" when I make a game, and "I know how to do that!" when I need help, and "Oi, Ghost, go and GET a life" when I post something at 2 am.

The tool AGS is only half of the AGS community!

However, you could argue... in fact, I am going to argue... that a community should not be constrained by the choice of engine. Is there some reason other than chauvinism that we should say "Hooray!" when someone finishes a game in AGS, but not if they finish it in WME? No.

I think anyone who'd take a fair, unbiased look at AGS and Wintermute would conclude that both are excellent applications. (Certainly far better than the tools the workers at LucasArts and Sierra had available to them back in the day.) 90% of the process of creating a game is going to be more or less the same whichever engine you choose. Which one is right for you comes down to your specific requirements and your individual preferences--which for most people probably comes down to what they're used to.

Splitting adventure game creators into engine ghettos is not a good idea. The AGS Forums is probably the biggest and most active community there is, so we should be welcoming of those who've chosen another engine. Don't you think having the guys who are making Once Upon a Time in Japan hanging out in the Critics Lounge would be a Good Thing? Arguing all the ways in which AGS is better than WME, and this community is better than the Wintermute community, is not particularly welcoming.

One of the main criticisms I've seen against AGS by outsiders is that it's a fairly closed community, and not all that tolerant or supportive of (or interested in) other engines and the games made with them. Kind of like the way America is often seen as ignorant and dismissive of the rest of the world. I don't think it's really true, but there is that perception. Slamming other engines doesn't help with that.

[Ghost]

@ Snarky
I'm mostly with you. I am all for games, no matter what toolkit was used to make them. One extremely good game I'm playing right now, "What Makes You Tick", was made in Lassie, another adventure game maker. And I really likes Chivalry Is Not Dead. I still actively write IF with Inform. I even tried out the PACDk, though this one really wasn't to my taste.

But: A community is a group that's connected by one certain shared interest, I think. So the most abstract shared interest would be the genre of adventure games- regardless of anything like an engine. But then this wouldn't be the AGS community, would it? You are dead right that no-one here should scoff at other peoples engines and games, and I think I've never been elite enough to think of A being superior to W- but it's not my community. We may share the interest in a genre, but not the engine.

That was, overly complicated, the point I wanted to make.

[woodz]

Lassie Director that was used to make "What Makes You Tick" has no where near the amount of features AGS and Wintermute have, but it is still possible to turn out decent games, John Green's "Nearly Departed demo" was also done with it. WMYT is in the top 20 adventure games of 2007 which is quite an achievement

if you wanted to compare AGS and WM against Lassie AS, the big let down is control over walkable areas and doesn't have walk on hotspots to trigger events and generally its still a Beta version, your tied to the the inventory system and verb disc, animation however is a doddle to do, the conversation system is simple to use (all be it a bit buggy) the games are cross plateform (assuming the web browser has a flash plugin) The big advantage is Flash and action script can be used to expand the game

Once the AS3 version comes out it'll be very powerful, the big disadvantage it'll need Flash CS3 along with the engine to make the game

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Who has been slamming Wintermute specifically, Snarky?  I've seen people voice their opinions that they prefer one to another, or that they found wintermute difficult to use in comparison, but I haven't seen anyone say it's a horrible engine that no one should use.  Also, while CJ has maintained that non-ags games should not be discussed/posted in GiP or the completed games forum, he's never had a problem with them being discussed in General.  As far as the CL goes, I don't really have anything against people working on other engines posting their art, and there's no actual rule against it anyway.

[Oliwerko]

I think the fact that WME came out won't change anything. It is an another story. Different world. Even if the software thing is better, people don't just switch from AGS to WME just because of this. I've got one example: Transport tycoon. There are a few "branches" of it with separate communities (OpenTTD, TTDPatch,..). Did people switch from TTDPatch to OTTD when it came out? No. Same with AGS, I think. AGS is a legend because of the number of games created with it, it is like playing old games when there are new available, watching old movies, it is a separate "life". I am not saying what is better. Even if WME is better, the question is: who cares?

[Radiant]

Food for thought.

Many of those reasons don't stand up to closer scrutiny.

Ok, you say that graphic resolution is not important, ok, but we had a lot of problems to center the images in the rooms in AGS because the resolutions higher than 320x240 are virtuals

This really isn't such a big deal, you can center anything as long as it's an even size.

More things, Wintermute let you to modify the native methods of the engine, AGS no.

Why on earth would you ever want to do that?

Wintermute let you to add scripts in each frame of animation, AGS no.

False - repeatedly_execute (_always) does exactly that.

Wintermute have a native video format and it means that the player don't need to have any codec installed in their system to see the videos, AGS no.

You don't want a native video format because other applications won't support that (for the same reason you want to use BMP/PNG/JPG rather than inventing your own graphics format). There's plenty of standard video codexes that are found on all contemporary computers.

Wintermute let you divide the game files in packages,

Completely irrelevant with contemporary hard drive sizes. The "easier to distribute patches" idea would be nice for AGS, but (1) most games don't patch a lot, and (2) it can easily be done with any kind of DIFF tool.

Et cetera et cetera et cetera.

People have the right to their opinion, of course, but backing your opinion with "facts" that are in fact misconceptions or made up entirely is very bad form.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Well, if Wintermute was better in every significant way I think that's pretty important, and I would certainly use it instead.  Based on my personal use of wintermute, however, I would say there's a fair bit of give and take between the engines, with AGS being the easier to pick up and use of the two.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Radiant - I know, and I answered the guy pretty much what you answered me.

Nevertheless, he'd been using AGS for 3 years, and then he switched to WME, and these were his arguments. That's the food for thought bit. Even if he was mis-informed about some things, that's also food.

[monkey0506]

@Snarky:

I just wanted to point out here that my comments were meant in a satirical manner. Personally I don't play many adventure games, including ones made with AGS. Most of the games I do play (which is actually relatively few) are more action-based and I tend to quickly lose interest these days. But the point is that in the end the tools used make absolutely no difference as to the quality of the finished product. If the same procedure can be done two different ways with similar or identical results, the actual method used doesn't make a difference. This isn't always true in real-life situations per se, but at least in the realm of game development it holds some validity.

If a game can be made in AGS and WME with no major differences to gameplay or user experience, what difference does it actually make which engine was used? None.

AGS does tend to have somewhat of a bit of a "close-mindedness" about them when it comes to authoring adventure games because clearly, for us, AGS is our editor/engine of choice. But this trend isn't exclusive to the AGS community. If you mention AGS in the WME forums you're likely to see similar feelings rise.

Admittedly I personally have found myself thinking "Oh well that game's being made with WME. It could be way better if it was made with AGS," but in the end this isn't necessarily true. I've never used WME myself, but I think providing reasonable exception for technical restrictions, the end product can be as high quality or as crap as the author wants it to be. Provided time and effort, it is possible to yield high quality results with both engines. In the end it simply boils down the the author's desire to "find that hidden trick to work around XX" where XX can be any of millions of possible problems one may encounter in developing a game.

I chose AGS because for me it offered the best and easiest method to achieve my goal. Of course as I have yet to release a single game of my own accord (the Palette Quest "games" aside of course 8)), but realistically I doubt I would have been more likely to have done so using WME or any of the several other engines available. The 4 years I've been here I have taught myself scripting. I have taught myself how to use the editor. I've released a few script modules and developed a whole slew of others that for one reason or another have yet to see the light of day beyond my own HDD. But all of this has been done by choice, and not due to any restrictions or limitations of AGS.

So at the end of the day, maybe we all need to just take a step back and realize that the tools used are never what makes an adventure game great. The passion and dedication of the author are what brings us to where we are now, fans of the classics both old and new. AGS, WME, Lassie, and more...the engines have all been written not to induce animosity toward our brothers (and sisters ) in fandom, but to bring us together in a world where the game authors aren't some huge corporation, but ourselves.

[Snarky]

But: A community is a group that's connected by one certain shared interest, I think. So the most abstract shared interest would be the genre of adventure games- regardless of anything like an engine. But then this wouldn't be the AGS community, would it? You are dead right that no-one here should scoff at other peoples engines and games, and I think I've never been elite enough to think of A being superior to W- but it's not my community. We may share the interest in a genre, but not the engine.

In my Utopian scenario, there would be one community for making adventure games, with sub-forums for the different engines and for technical questions. To me, the games and the process of making them are the main thing, and the tools only a means to an end.

If people are actually hanging out in the AGS community because they love the AGS application and engine, I guess that's fine. But I suspect that for many the real interest is in the things people make with AGS, and that's where I think being more engaged with the rest of the homebrew-adventure universe would be a good thing. Maybe, like the Oscars, have a "best foreign film game" category in the AGS Awards to honor games made in other engines?

Who has been slamming Wintermute specifically, Snarky?  I've seen people voice their opinions that they prefer one to another, or that they found wintermute difficult to use in comparison, but I haven't seen anyone say it's a horrible engine that no one should use.

Well, voh for one. I agree that people should be free to share their impressions and experiences, and given the selection bias of posters, that's obviously going to come out in AGS's favor. But stuff like auriond commenting on WME's ease-of-use just based on screenshots seems unnecessary to me, and monkey's joke cuts a little close to what some people perceive as AGSers' prejudice.

Ok, you say that graphic resolution is not important, ok, but we had a lot of problems to center the images in the rooms in AGS because the resolutions higher than 320x240 are virtuals

This really isn't such a big deal, you can center anything as long as it's an even size.

I think they're talking about having to align objects on a 320x200 grid even in high-resolution games. Didn't this use to involve modifying the graphic with a one-pixel transparent edge in order to position things on odd pixel numbers?

More things, Wintermute let you to modify the native methods of the engine, AGS no.

Why on earth would you ever want to do that?

What are extender functions for? Sometimes the engine doesn't do exactly what you want. Often it'd be easier to make a small modification to a native method than write a massive workaround. Also, it makes it easier to port games to other hardware platforms.

Wintermute let you to add scripts in each frame of animation, AGS no.

False - repeatedly_execute (_always) does exactly that.

I think they mean associating a script with a particular frame of a particular animation, the way AGS lets you assign a sound.

Wintermute have a native video format and it means that the player don't need to have any codec installed in their system to see the videos, AGS no.

You don't want a native video format because other applications won't support that (for the same reason you want to use BMP/PNG/JPG rather than inventing your own graphics format). There's plenty of standard video codexes that are found on all contemporary computers.

CJ often uses the argument against decompiling games against open-sourcing the engine. You could make a similar one in favor of proprietary video formats. However, WME actually uses Ogg Theora, and has support for some kind of AVI files, so the whole argument is irrelevant. The point is that support is included in the engine and doesn't rely on external codecs. While some codecs are found on all computers, most are not very good, are they?

Wintermute let you divide the game files in packages,

Completely irrelevant with contemporary hard drive sizes. The "easier to distribute patches" idea would be nice for AGS, but (1) most games don't patch a lot, and (2) it can easily be done with any kind of DIFF tool.

May be irrelevant for hard drive sizes, but not for download. Even today, not everyone has broadband (less than 20% of all households in the OECD, in fact). A game like Fate by Numbers (I'm not sure whether it uses WME, but it easily could do) is as much as 1.2 GB in size.

There are a lot of things AGS lets you do if you try hard enough, but that doesn't mean that it's the best way to achieve the thing, or that another engine can't offer a much simpler solution.

If I may do my own generalizing, from what I've seen the two groups that reject AGS in favor of WME are, first, people who plan high-resolution or graphically fancy games, and believe that AGS suffers from poor support/performance for their needs. This has some basis in reality: in games like Mind's Eye, Linus Bruckman, Reactor 09 (the intro) and Nelly Cootalot you can see problems.

The other group is experienced programmers, who don't worry about having to script things, but don't like aspects of AGS that they consider inelegant. This is stuff like static limits for various things, no "for" loop, a separate dialog script format, (again) having to work in 320x200 resolution internally, etc.

Obviously, a lot of these things have been fixed in recent versions of AGS, and especially in 3.0. But perceptions lag behind. Just like people here are commenting based on their experiences with WME years ago, others who gave AGS a try back in 2.6 days or so still have those impressions.

[auriond]

Who has been slamming Wintermute specifically, Snarky?  I've seen people voice their opinions that they prefer one to another, or that they found wintermute difficult to use in comparison, but I haven't seen anyone say it's a horrible engine that no one should use.

Well, voh for one. I agree that people should be free to share their impressions and experiences, and given the selection bias of posters, that's obviously going to come out in AGS's favor. But stuff like auriond commenting on WME's ease-of-use just based on screenshots seems unnecessary to me, and monkey's joke cuts a little close to what some people perceive as AGSers' prejudice.

Just to clarify why I said what I did: I did not have any intention to bash Wintermute at all, in fact quite the opposite. The original post asked for opinions on Wintermute. I went and surfed around, saw the screenshots, and the first thing that struck me was that they used layers for their objects and backgrounds - something that seems quite intuitive to me, and I thought it would be one of the things I would like if I had the time to download it and try it out. So I said as much - and in the process wandered off into commenting about their website design and community...

Unneccesary? Perhaps so, but I am not a technical person, and I'm fairly new to game development in general. My look at Wintermute was based from a newbie's pov - hence judgement based on screenshots (that's what they're there for).

I think AGS can learn from this discussion. If nothing else I'm getting a better view of where AGS stands in the game-making scene.

[Ghost]

In my Utopian scenario, there would be one community for making adventure games, with sub-forums for the different engines and for technical questions. To me, the games and the process of making them are the main thing, and the tools only a means to an end.

Just as I said. Games matter. And maybe your scenario is not exactly far-fetched too- look at Adventure Gamers, they're pretty cross-platform.

[Pumaman]

In my Utopian scenario, there would be one community for making adventure games, with sub-forums for the different engines and for technical questions. To me, the games and the process of making them are the main thing, and the tools only a means to an end.

I agree that this would be the ideal situation. The adventure game creation scene isn't really that big, so it would make sense to bring together the communities of the different engines, and in a sense that's what Adventure Developers are trying to achieve.

But in reality it'll never work since somebody has to manage the running of the community, and it's unlikely that everyone would agree on who that should be and who pays for it.