Little humble request

[Piter]

This is for Chris. You said if I found AGS-Limitations not enough for me, I should ask you via e-mail to increase them ... (num. of rooms, objects and so forth). I did, but it seems that your e-mail is abadoned because I recived return-to-sender reply So I ask you via forums  : Can You increase the limitations (num. of rooms, dialog lines, message linesand so on?) Please  
Thanks

[Scummbuddy]

A) you can use the private message service on the forums next time.
B) since youre unregistered, this is the place to put it, but I'll move it to the tech forum now. All suggestions go there.

And you can't just say "and so on" you need to be specific with all these properties, like which ones, and to how much. Have you started this game, and just anticipate that large of a game, or are you on the brink of going over in dialog lines and such? I don't think he'll up the amounts if you haven't even begun work on the game, because if you don't finish it, then it was all in vein.

[Phemar]

I would like to see an increase in the amount of animating backgrounds...

The rest is fine and I don't think it likely anyone bypass the limitations...

[Gilbert]

I think if you have such a request, please give a suggestion on how large each of the limitations you want to be lifted, CJ cant determine how large they should be changed to without info for those who requested. And also give good reasons on why you need it.

[Piter]

Ok. Thnaks for little help.
Now I should explain which features I want to get increased and why :
1) Number of rooms. 300 for massive project are running out fast... since for every menu. close-up, panel, intro, outro, cutscenes I need separate room.
2) Number of dialog topics... 500 hundred seems to bie enough, but I don't know if it'd be enough, so for this feature i'll ask later.
3) Dialog script-lines. 2000 well, nice, but I wonder if you could double or even tripple it... since i've got only one dialog and used 20 lines.
4) Not-yet-implemented but it wolud be nice to see background picutres in jpg format, 'cos my backgrounds in PNG takes 1,1Mb each...
Thanks in advance.
PS
If I find any other  feature not enough, I'll ask for upgrade.

[SSH]

1) Number of rooms. 300 for massive project are running out fast... since for every menu. close-up, panel, intro, outro, cutscenes I need separate room.
3) Dialog script-lines. 2000 well, nice, but I wonder if you could double or even tripple it... since i've got only one dialog and used 20 lines.

300 rooms and only one dialog... well, I think that gives us an indication of how close you are to hitting the limits.  :

There are always creative ways of working around these things. For example, dialog lines can be increased by using run-script as scripting has no limit on it. Rooms can be doubled up by using non- animating background frames. Menus, panels, etc. can be done with GUIs (and doing them with GUIs make transaltions easier, too)

[Ashen]

4) Not-yet-implemented but it wolud be nice to see background picutres in jpg format, 'cos my backgrounds in PNG takes 1,1Mb each...

Well, once you've importred them into AGS, you can store them on your hardrive as jpegs, or in a zip, if you're worried about drive space.

[DragonRose]

You mentioned that you are using backgrounds for menus.  Just so we can understand, are you making your GUI's as rooms? Or are they menus along the lines of  an intro screen on another game.

Also, about point 4: AGS has it's own file compression format for backgrounds, making them smaller than what you import them as.  JPG's wouldn't be good for backgrounds anyways, because it is a lossy format.  You shouldn't be saving them as PNG's anyways.  I thought that you could only import BMP's and PCX's.

[SSH]

You shouldn't be saving them as PNG's anyways.  I thought that you could only import BMP's and PCX's.

PNG import came in at the same time as 32-bit with v2.6. I dunno, these oldbies who don't keep up!  :

[DragonRose]

Oops. I actually did miss that.  Ummm... carry on.

[Piter]

Geee. It seems I've hit a vital spot. Apart this I noticed a messy misunderstanding... Well I said That 300 rooms are running out quickly, but I doesn't mean they have run out totally .  
About rooms.. well GUI is one thing, but when You wish to make a Starting screeen You'd use Room with background, rather than GUI, it looks better.
Then when ypu want to use cutsecene You'd use another room, and so on. The most dreaded thing... close-ups when You see a let say a "slot-machine" after using a interaction module it should bring close-up. When Looking on billboard with closer examination, yet another reason for using close ups (another room).  Any, letter, Diary, book, newspaper and so on requires a some text messages or graphical edition. As you probably know, implementing newspaper reading with in-game messages is rather impossible. Well its better to use rooms (newspaper looking) with hotspots but its drains total amount of rooms.
About PNG well PCX even if support 16bit graphics, would be very large with room 1024X726 resolution. BMP is similar... so PNG is only reasonable file format.
Thanks...  even with misunderstanding it helps me

[Ben]

About the room limit: I think you can actually have up to 1000 rooms, it's just that only 1-300 are remembered in saved games. So you can still use rooms above 300 for static menus and cutscenes that only appear once.. As long as you don't need to remember the variables and objects defined in those rooms.

[Pumaman]

Once you are actually nearing a limit and it is posing you a problem, feel free to ask specifically and I'll see what I can do.

But you have to understand that massive projects have been created with AGS, such as King's Quest II VGA, which have come well within the current limits.

About the rooms, Ben's point is important. You can have extra rooms up to 1000, but their state is not saved when you leave. So, for menus, GUIs, etc, you can simply use high-numbered rooms that don't need to remember their state.

[SSH]

The room's state is saved? I thought it got destroyed when you left the room. I used global variables to store the state and re-set it on my Before Fadein. Is it just script variables that get lost, then? Object states, sprites and positions and background frames are kept?
:o

[Gilbert]

Most stuffs, those room variables, object on/off/positions, palette state, bg frame, etc., at least, were memorized (unless the room number is >300, in such case they're not memorized).
I think there're something which aren't memorized though, I'm not sure, but probably something like stuffs you raw drawn to bg, overlays (I think they're destroyed upon exitting a room), etc.

[Pumaman]

Yep, Gilbot's correct

When you leave a room, all the script variables, object states, and so forth are saved. Generally, if something is lost when you exit a room then it will say so in the manual for the script function that creates it (eg. PlayAmbientSound; RawClearScreen documents it for Raw functions, etc)

[Piter]

Thanks for help... oh, one more thing. If room number excedes 300 does hotspot information remain saved? You know, I want to create map. With locations... (something like Discworld...)
Thanks.

[Ishmael]

Just to crash one of your examples, I've made menus with GUIs, they look good enough for me, and a book with GUI. You don't need 10 rooms for a 20 paged book... you need 20 global messages and a GUI.

[Pumaman]

Thanks for help... oh, one more thing. If room number excedes 300 does hotspot information remain saved? You know, I want to create map. With locations... (something like Discworld...)
Thanks.

Anything you set in the editor remains saved. With rooms >300, it just means that any changes you make at run-time via the script won't be saved when you leave the room.