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AGS Support => Advanced Technical Forum => Topic started by: Ginny on Sat 03/04/2004 22:00:47

Title: Suggestions: importing masks, color selection, character control
Post by: Ginny on Sat 03/04/2004 22:00:47
3 Suggestions:

1) Could the mask imports for walkable areas and hotspots be imported in 640X400 aswell? Also, is it possible to import them in their actual colors, that is so that they automatically get values for hotspot1, 2, 3, 4, etc, or do they have to have grey tones(higher numbers)? I imported a mask for walkbehinds once with something that I wanted to draw in PS casue it would take too long and would look bad in AGS, but it's lots of little dots of colour that I didn't want to fill in again.

2) The RGB colour setting for colours in the palette or when selecting colors in hi-color mode are not up to 256 as is usual, but rather to 60. Why is this and can it be changed for better color selection for GUIs and talking colors? When it's a palette I can just import a palette but not in hi-color games. There seem to be a few problems with palette importing from a .pcx file also, is there a particular setting to be used when saving the file?

3) Could it be made possible to control character's movements and actions within other rooms? This would greatly increase the illusion of real time in a game, non linearlity, and general liveliness. The game would seem more like a world than a game, increasing immerssion, etc..

If you could take a look at these, that would be great :).
Thanks again for AGS btw ;D
Title: Re:Suggestions: importing masks, color selection, character control
Post by: Kweepa on Sun 04/04/2004 10:46:40
In 1), do you mean the imported mask was dithered? That could be because you drew it in RGB colour, then converted it to 256 colour (with a fixed palette) to export it. When you do the conversion, you should make sure the dithering is OFF. Of course, if that's not what you mean feel free to tell me to shut up.

2) The palette RGB numbers go up to 31 in hi-colour because there are 32 possible values for each primary colour in hi-colour (some graphics cards have 64 values for green, but presumably AGS works to the lowest common denominator so it will look the same on all machines). If it was changed to 256 it would be frustrating because you would try to change a colour slightly and it might not make any difference, depending on where the actual threshold in value was.

3) You could try the character control plugin.

Thread hijack time!
A) About area importing: I'd like to be able to import 24/32 bit (I forget which they are) PCXs (so I can just save a layer in my paint package), and have the game choose the nearest area colour - so I can paint in dark blue and it comes out as area 1, green comes out as 2, &c.

B) I'd also like to be able to export areas.

C) It would be nice to be able to copy and paste backgrounds and areas too, but...

D) I noticed that if I copy a sprite to the clipboard it comes out wrong when pasted in photoshop 7, as if the header is the wrong size or the offset to the colour data is wrong - the right hand side of the image is on the left. But it works fine in MS Paint, so I guess it's photoshop's fault. Anyone know anything about that?

Oops, that came out more than I intended.
Please give GinnyW's your attention first, folks.
Title: Re:Suggestions: importing masks, color selection, character control
Post by: Ginny on Sun 04/04/2004 12:44:52
1) ;D Hehe, actually no, what I meant in 1 is exactly what you meants in A, except you probably explained it better :). What I did was actually export the palette from AGS before changing to hi-color, and then took the exact color for area 1 (blue), area 2 (green) etc and used them for the mask, and despite this, the mask appeared as grey tones, which is apparantly for very high area numbers.

2) Hmm, I see, so this probably can't be fixed? Well, in that case I'll just use backgrounds for flat colours if I need to (like in the messagebox, I wanted just a flat color in the BG, but use a background the size of 320X200 or 640X400, depending on the resolution.
And when it's the other way around (sometimes I find great colors in the hi-color selector), I'll just do a printscreen and paste in PS.

3) Yes, I'm aware of this plugin, but:
a) I'd like to do it without a plugin, using scripting, as it would really be a lot of fun in my opinion, aswell as good practise, and
b) I'm not sure if the character control system allows the NPCs to just walk, or can it have them doing all sorts of actions, interacting with the environment,
picking up objects (at this point I'd find a custom function AddInventoryEx very useful, thanks for whoever it was who seggested it somewhere), interacting with other NPCs, etc, changing global ints, making random decisions, or decisions based on mood and personality, etc.. This is quite ambitious and I don't plan to have this complexity any time soon, but I would like to try out some random usage of character control between rooms, if possible.

And I also agree with all your other suggestions Steve, though I don't usually use copy from clipboard. :)
Title: Re:Suggestions: importing masks, color selection, character control
Post by: Pumaman on Sun 04/04/2004 18:43:26
3) Controlling characters in other rooms is not really possible since only the current room is loaded in memory. You could script things to a certain extent, but you won't be able to make them move within walkable areas, pick up objects, and so forth without extensive scripting.
It depends what you're aiming for, really.

A) Interesting idea, I'll add it to my list.

B) I can't see any reason why not, I'll add it to my list if people would find this useful.

C) the problem with masks and the clipboard is the 8-bit nature of the masks, which doesn't really work with the clipboard which is always hi-colour. I guess it could be done combined with (A)

D) not sure I can do much about that - as you say, it works in most applications.
Title: Re:Suggestions: importing masks, color selection, character control
Post by: Ginny on Mon 05/04/2004 03:05:28
By extensive scripting do you mean scripting event flags to be triggered in the global script at certain times to "pretend" NPCs have performed actions in other rooms? This could work, not that I plan it for the near future.

Anyway, thanks! :)
Title: Re:Suggestions: importing masks, color selection, character control
Post by: InCreator on Mon 05/04/2004 04:04:54
About pasting sprites out from AGS - yes, I've noticed wrong color outcome too. colors seem somewhat replaced with blue and green tones. The way I use is to paste sprite into MSPaint first, then Copy it into clipboard from paint and then to my drawing program. Works fine, only disadvantage is that it takes extra few seconds... but that's not a mentionworthy problem.
Title: Re:Suggestions: importing masks, color selection, character control
Post by: Pumaman on Mon 05/04/2004 20:26:29
Ginny: yep, that sort of thing is what I meant.

InCreator: hmm, strange - I haven't noticed this problem myself. Odd that it works in some applications and not in others.
Title: Re:Suggestions: importing masks, color selection, character control
Post by: RickJ on Mon 05/04/2004 22:36:42
 3) Controlling characters in other rooms - CJ does the engine still crash if you attempt moving a character around in another room (i.e. one not loaded)?  If so perhaps a different behavior would be more apporpiate.  Ginny, Scropious made some script functions for this awhile back.  

Title: Re:Suggestions: importing masks, color selection, character control
Post by: Hollister Man on Mon 05/04/2004 23:39:20
I think it was already mentioned, but is the main thing with the area masks that they do NOT "map to game palette" and instead rely on the file's own palette?  What you'd need to do is to import the AGS palette file, not as an image but as the palette, then paint the image using that palette.  AGS defines what color you were using (on masks) by the palette index, not based on the actual color values of the image, unlike backgrounds and images.  These, unless you choose exact palette, will map themselves to the current game palette.
Title: Re:Suggestions: importing masks, color selection, character control
Post by: Pumaman on Tue 06/04/2004 20:47:07
Quote from: RickJ on Mon 05/04/2004 22:36:42
3) Controlling characters in other rooms - CJ does the engine still crash if you attempt moving a character around in another room (i.e. one not loaded)?  If so perhaps a different behavior would be more apporpiate.

Yes, it exits if you do that. This is because the walkable areas aren't loaded, so it wouldn't be able to calculate a path for the character.
Title: Re:Suggestions: importing masks, color selection, character control
Post by: Bryan on Tue 06/04/2004 21:12:12
Quote from: SteveMcCrea on Sun 04/04/2004 10:46:40
B) I'd also like to be able to export areas.
Quote from: Pumaman on Sun 04/04/2004 18:43:26
B) I can't see any reason why not, I'll add it to my list if people would find this useful.

This would be incredibly useful as I keep "masters" of rooms as layered images but often make little tweaks in the AGS editor.  That goes for everything (areas, regions, hotspots...)