AGS 3.0 Final - it's been a long road

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

You're saying the new functions (i.e., hHotspot1_Look) aren't being created? They're supposed to be auto-generated (as they were in the previous alphas/betas).

Nope, they're not being created for imported games with unnamed hotspots/regions.  It was a simple test to import a game from 2.72 and open a room with a lot of hotspots in it.  The game compiled before I opened rooms, but once I started editing the rooms it auto-creates a hotspot name label and function name in the event list but didn't create the functions to go with them.  Normally it would create the new event functions and then call the old interaction function from it, but it's not doing it now.  Personally I think just renaming the hotspots and such to fit in with the created functions (like hotspot1_a, hotspot1_b) would be easier than creating a new naming convention like hHotspot1(hHotspot1_Look/Talk/Interact) and then casting to the older functions (or just renaming the hotspot1 stuff to the new names), but that's just me.  Either way it's not working now ;\.  And yeah, ctrl left click would be nice to select out-of-sequence frames as well.

[monkey0506]

Actually I'm not sure it was working with unnamed hotspots/regions...so don't quote me on that. But it should have been working

[movti]

Here is a first impression from a brand new user.

I`ve followed the developement of ags for about a year now but never brought myself to beginning a game. Yesterday I started working through the tutorial because I wanted it to be up to date for 2.8. It`s nice and easy to follow by the way. However the first thing which really bothered me was area painting in the room editor.

First I made the mistake that when I wanted to create a walkable area I accidentally clicked with the area select tool in the preview window without having created an area before. Because of that it always told me I was using the eraser and I didn`t seem to be able to create an area until i created a new room and switched back to my old one.

Then when I got to paint my areas and tested the game I realized that my walkable and walkbehing areas weren`t quite good so I wanted to correct them. But that became a really tough task because of the non transparent areas. I just didn`t know up to where I needed to delete my walkbehind area for example because I couldnt see whats behind it. I don`t know if semi-transparent areas are on the suggestion tracker for the tracker doesn`t seem to work.

The third thing which bothered me was that I was only able to undo one step but I know that more undo steps are already on the to do list.

I haven`t worked through the whole tutorial yet. Only the first 3 pages. I can post how I am getting along with the rest of the tutorial and where a new user like me is getting into trouble if that is wanted.
Sorry for complicated writing for german is my native language. 

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

First I made the mistake that when I wanted to create a walkable area I accidentally clicked with the area select tool in the preview window without having created an area before. Because of that it always told me I was using the eraser and I didn`t seem to be able to create an area until i created a new room and switched back to my old one.

Heh, it got stuck in "hotspot 0". You probably would have gotten it to work if you had chosen a different colour, therefore started colouring a different hotspot. Not a big problem, really, and makes sense.

As regards non-transparent areas, it's just a matter of practice. My favourite personal method consists of deleting, at a stroke, most of the borders of the walkable/walk-behind, leaving only the center, then doing the corrections I want, and then FILLing the space in-between. But of course you can use masks.

Basically, you just need to get used to AGS.

[InCreator]

Ouch! Old-style coding won't work anymore, such as

  // script for Room: Player enters screen (after fadein)
character[LADA].Walk(80, 107, eBlock, eAnywhere);

My game is a mix of old and new scripts (due long production that lasts over AGS versions).

Problem is, there's no way to replace text for quick converting.
So how about this feature?

Until this, I'll have to use notepad-copy-paste-replace...

ALSO, "use game default settings" for resolution etc doesn't seem to work from editor. It uses window mode, whatever is selected, basically because F5 excecutes game, but doesn't seem to build EXE file. Weird...

[Jeff Nyman]

Greetings all.

I'm trying the Beta 8 version of AGS and I consistently get an error message on two Windows XP machines (both are at Service Pack 2), one a laptop, the other a desktop. Both have .NET 2.0 (the SDK and the runtime). Both have all current critical updates installed from the Windows Update site. This error (which I reproduce at the end of this message) happens with the following steps:

(1) On the Welcome to AGS dialog, select the "Start a New Game" radio button. Click the "Continue" button.
(2) Click the "Next" button on the first "Start New Game" dialog.
(3) Click the "Default Game" option in the list view and click the "Next" button on the second "Start New Game" dialog.
(4) On the third "Start New Game" dialog, enter 'RogerAdventure' in the first text field and 'Roger's Adventure' in the second text field. (Without single quotes in both cases.)
(5) Click the "Finish" button.

Expected: I should be taken, presumably, to the AGS Editor with my default game.

Actual: The following error occurs:

There was an error creating your game. The error was: String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.
Error details: System.FormatException: String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.
   at System.DateTimeParse.Parse(String s, DateTimeFormatInfo dtfi, DateTimeStyles styles)
   at System.DateTime.Parse(String s, IFormatProvider provider)
   at System.Convert.ToDateTime(String value)
   at AGS.Types.SerializeUtils.DeserializeFromXML(Object obj, XmlNode node)
   at AGS.Types.Settings.FromXml(XmlNode node)
   at AGS.Types.Game.FromXml(XmlNode node)
   at AGS.Editor.AGSEditor.LoadGameFile(String fileName)
   at AGS.Editor.Tasks.LoadGameFromDisk(String gameToLoad, Boolean interactive)
   at AGS.Editor.GUIController.ShowNewGameWizard()


- Jeff

[InCreator]

Converting caused even more problems:

Room script, event "Enters before fadein" looks like this in room script:

#sectionstart room_b  // DO NOT EDIT OR REMOVE THIS LINE
function room_b() {

In room editor, in room "events" properties window, for this event script "room_Load" is shown as default function instead... I didn't change anything.

Which leads to an error message:

prepare_script: error -18 (no such function or script) trying to run 'room_Load'  (Room 6)

I changed manually function to room_a in room events window and room proceeded to load.
Problem seems to be that new AGS doesn't rename functions according to new default naming when converting game from older AGS. Weirdly enough, they still work until smallest change in script is done... either this or when room is re-saved in new AGS.

Another example:



How to understand this? Strange, it works but when I even touch the script, it stops working?

[movti]

First I made the mistake that when I wanted to create a walkable area I accidentally clicked with the area select tool in the preview window without having created an area before. Because of that it always told me I was using the eraser and I didn`t seem to be able to create an area until i created a new room and switched back to my old one.

Heh, it got stuck in "hotspot 0". You probably would have gotten it to work if you had chosen a different colour, therefore started colouring a different hotspot. Not a big problem, really, and makes sense.

Ah, yes I see. But then I wouldn`t be able to use walkable/walkbehind area number 0 anymore. Or would I? Because there it still says i`m using the eraser.

e: Thanks for clearing this, Gilbot.

As regards non-transparent areas, it's just a matter of practice. My favourite personal method consists of deleting, at a stroke, most of the borders of the walkable/walk-behind, leaving only the center, then doing the corrections I want, and then FILLing the space in-between. But of course you can use masks.

That`s also the way I did it. But still I think you could do it much faster if you could delete right to the point you want to.

[Gilbert]

That's because what is called area 0 is actually THE eraser.
When a pixel doesn't belong to an area it's "area 0".

[Ghost]

I think what motiv talks about is one of those age old little quirks that we have grown accustomed to, and wouldn't even notice it.
Good to have some "fresh" feedback!

[Pumaman]

Thanks for all your feedback, guys. There's far too many posts for me to reply to everyone individually, but I've read all your comments and will look into issues raised.

There's a couple of things I didn't understand:

2.  Mousewheel support is a one-time thing:  if you click in a field and scroll down it will select the new item and then deselect the field control so you can't move up/down the list.  It would be nice if this was fixed to work like a normal mousewheel/arrow key selected field. 

What do you mean by this? In which field is this happening?

Ouch! Old-style coding won't work anymore, such as

  // script for Room: Player enters screen (after fadein)
character[LADA].Walk(80, 107, eBlock, eAnywhere);

Please can you clarify this, it should work fine. Is your character named "cLada"? If so the compiler should recognise the "character[LADA]" form of accessing it.

ALSO, "use game default settings" for resolution etc doesn't seem to work from editor. It uses window mode, whatever is selected, basically because F5 excecutes game, but doesn't seem to build EXE file. Weird...

It tells you this in the Preferences dialog, but perhaps it needs to be in bold or something. To run full screen, use Ctrl+F5 (but you won't be able to debug the game).

I haven`t worked through the whole tutorial yet. Only the first 3 pages. I can post how I am getting along with the rest of the tutorial and where a new user like me is getting into trouble if that is wanted.

Thanks for your feedback, it's definitely useful to hear from first-time users. As Ghost says, most current users will have got used to any quirks in the editor, so it's good to see these revealed by a fresh pair of eyes.


Finally, just to clarify the main reported bugs so that they don't get reported again:
* Start New Game crashes if you don't have DD/MM/YYYY Regional Settings
* A problem with importing interactions from 2.72 games
* Windows 98/ME crash editor on startup

Thanks for reporting these, I will be looking into them so there's no need to report them again.

[InCreator]

Please can you clarify this, it should work fine. Is your character named "cLada"? If so the compiler should recognise the "character[LADA]" form of accessing it.

Nah, it this works fine I guess. Atleast with objects used same old way it does.

It simply led me to converting/wrong room function names I reported in 2 posts below.

Which was probably why this old-style coding didn't work, so it's function problem, not old style coding problem. But character name was cLada indeed.

[monkey0506]

I know it's a pretty major (as in big, not important ) feature request but I was thinking today: will the new editor make it possible for future implementation of associative arrays. I'm know this isn't the place for requests, but I'm simply curious if the editor rewrite would make this feasible.

[Ishmael]

I have one more little suggestion. Could the focus upon loading or creating a room be on something non-scrollable? If I now turn the scrollwheel down after doing so I get presented a dialog to choose a background frame to import...

[joelphilippage]

Ive got a strange problem. Some of the dialog voice acting in my game cuts off at the end and then the character keeps talking until you click. The mode is on timer or skip but the timer won't stop it. Is this a problem with the beta version or is it because of something else.

[Recluse]

I'm having humongous issues with the sprite importer. I like to use tiled sprites in my games (they're much easier to animate) When I go to import a sprite, the yellow overlay rectangle is off, it often seems to cover half a pixel, but never a whole one. It's very difficult to get the exact portion of an image because of this.

I think it may be an issue with the rectangle snapping to the edges of the pixel in the zoomed and imported bitmap, there may also be some fuzzy math involved in the conversion from the rectangle on screen to the pixels taken from the bitmap after it's imported.

On a side note, I would much rather have the negative rectangle we had before. It's much easier to tell when you haven't selected exactly what you wanted.

[Snarky]

These half-pixel issues are pretty common when doing drawing in Java or .NET. Basically, the coordinate system is aligned to the corners of the pixels rather than to the center of them. The math to make everything look right is sensitive, and it's easy to end up with something that cuts pixels in half instead of marking the whole thing when you're zoomed in.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

What do you mean by this? In which field is this happening?

Every pull-down tab I've tried will only let me move up or down one entry before deselecting the pull-down tab altogether, CJ.  I'd make a screenshot but I doubt it would be useful, basically the pull-down tabs respond to one mousewheel (or arrow key) press, move down or up one field and then the tab deselects and you must then click again in the tab and use the mousewheel or arrow key to go down or up another entry, etc.  Hopefully that was a bit clearer.

[Recluse]

Here's another suggestion, while you're mucking about with another new release.

Currently in order to run real "script" from the dialog editor we have to pass a parameter down into the global script. I find it rather annoying and troublesome to have to send an integer to the script, as the integers are hard to keep track of.

Is it possible that we could get rid of the run-script dialog function, and instead simply have some sort of escape sequence that tells the compiler to "run this as AGS script, not dialog script" like the following:

Code: ags

@S  // Dialog startup entry point
return

@1
PLAYER: Why don't I have my barnacles?
CAPTAINBLACKBEARD: Oh, sorry, I have them right here.
<script>
   cCaptain.Walk(cEgo.x - 10, cEgo. y, eBlock, eAnywhere);
   cEgo.AddInventory(iBarnacle);
   cCaptain.Walk(cEgo.x - 15, cEgo.y, eBlock, eAnywhere);
   cCaptain.FaceCharacter(cEgo);
</script>
PLAYER: Thank you very much!
return

I feel that something like this would really help make the whole dialog process much simpler to use.

In lieu of this, perhaps we could pass a String to the global script instead of an int, this way we could have some sort of a logical identifier to what dialog the following code goes to.

[Ishmael]

You could always use #defines or eNums for it...