Little things the manual doesn't mention

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I'd like to ask for some things to be added to the manual, maybe as an appendix. No rush, accourse (unlike my previous requests  : ).

What am I talking about? Things like %c, of which I found one (count 'em, one) mention in the manual, in an example for a file i/o function. And oficcialy unsupported stuff that nevertheless exists, like a game. property that wqas brought up in a thread a looong time ago that had to do with skipping the cutscene (I think it's name was rewind, or something). And also stuff like that Record Game thingie, which is not properly documented, if at all. And the fact that you can have 300+ rooms, but any room bigger than 300 won't have their status saved (whatever this means, I never really understood that)...

I know there's sites that list these - I believe Strazer has made one such compilation, but am not sure - and I also know that ATM AGS is going through too big changes to pay attention to these small things... but what the hey. The suggestion is made.

[Mr Flibble]

Sounds like a good idea, and one that would be very useful.
If such a thing is to be made, I think it should clarify the dialog_request function. To my knowledge it doesn't explain it very well. I don't have the manual here, so I can't check.

[monkey0506]

In your main global script file, there are some functions which are automatically added when you create the game. These are "events", and the function is called when a particular event happens. There are also some other events which you can add if you want to.
The available event functions are:

dialog_request (int parameter)
Called when a dialog script line "run-script" is processed. PARAMETER is the value of the number following the "run-script" on that line of the dialog script.

To me, that means that, functions such as dialog_request aren't already in your global script, but can be added, and is used to run scripts which can't be run from the dialog... You know, you're right Flibble. That makes no sense at all. Actually, reading back over it if I didn't know what run-script was for I might not understand it. And you can't search for that (it gets parsed it as 2 different words), so I don't know if it's in the manual... But the appendix thing might be nice. Maybe...

EDIT: Found it. It's under "Setting up the game"->"Conversations":

run-script X
Runs global text script function "dialog_request", with X passed as the single parameter. This allows you to do more advanced things in a dialog that are not supported as part of the dialog script. The "dialog_request" function should be placed in your game's global script file, as follows:

  function dialog_request (int xvalue) {
    // your code here
  }

[Pumaman]

One thing I have been wanting to do is create a wiki-manual on the website, where people can add comments to manual pages. These sorts of little additions could be best added that way, although of course any larger errors/omissions in the manual should be corrected properly.

[Alynn]

And the fact that you can have 300+ rooms, but any room bigger than 300 won't have their status saved (whatever this means, I never really understood that)...

What this basically means, all your object offs, room vars and things of that nature are stored and kept the same after you leave the room, however this isn't the case for rooms 300+, after you leave the room everything resets back to the defaults because its status isn't saved (which can be worked around with global ints of course)

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but thats how I understand it.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Oh, I see. Thanks.

[Radiant]

One thing I have been wanting to do is create a wiki-manual on the website, where people can add comments to manual pages. These sorts of little additions could be best added that way, although of course any larger errors/omissions in the manual should be corrected properly.

I think that's an excellent idea! The www guide to PHP does the same, and all sorts of users add helpful comments and sample code and everything. Whenever forum members answer a tech question, it would be easy for them to copy/paste the answer to WIKI for future reference.

[Janik]

One thing I have been wanting to do is create a wiki-manual on the website, where people can add comments to manual pages. These sorts of little additions could be best added that way, although of course any larger errors/omissions in the manual should be corrected properly.

Brilliant! But would there be a way for you to easily convert the website manual to the .CHM file used with the program? If not, it would be painful to maintain both versions of the manual...

[Pumaman]

Well, that's the thing. It's something I've been considering off and on in the background -- basically I'd need a tool to convert the manual to webpages for display. In theory this is easy because a CHM file is just an archive of html files, in practice there are various things with the way the AGS manual is written that need to be considered.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

One thing I have been wanting to do is create a wiki-manual on the website, where people can add comments to manual pages. These sorts of little additions could be best added that way, although of course any larger errors/omissions in the manual should be corrected properly.

Draggin up an old thread because we now have an AGS wiki...

[Pumaman]

We also now have an online manual:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/manual/

In terms of getting tidbits added to the manual, I think enabling the User Comments system on this online manual is a better idea than trying to use the AGS Wiki -- for one thing it means mischevious people can't change the manual pages and also, the manual is already uploaded and split into pages here, but it isn't on the wiki.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Ahhh. Right-o. Sorry, hadn't noticed the manual...

[Gilbert]

That online manual had been there for ages, but seems that few people noticed it...

[monkey0506]

Shh...the online manual is a secret!  No one is supposed ot know about it!!!

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I did seem to remember it existed, but I couldn't find a link in the main page, and assumed if it did exist it would have a visible link - at least as visible as the games page, and the download page *hint, hint*

[Elliott Hird]

And playspeech()
but the rooms >300 is documented well.

[Pumaman]

The online manual isn't yet "official" until I get round to implementing the user comments thing 

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

the rooms >300 is documented well.

Yeah well, it wasn't when I started the thread on 25 Nov 2004.

[Ashen]

That online manual had been there for ages, but seems that few people noticed it...

I nearly always link to it in Beginner's Tech, instead of just saying RTFM.