Suggestions for the next version of AGS

[naltimari]

And most importantly, since almost every animation I set up uses sequential sprites, it would really be useful to have a shortcut (either a button or a keystroke) to automatically make the next frame set as the next sprite.

At the sprite window, select multiple sprites and right-click, you should see an option 'assign to view' in the context menu. If this is what you're looking for, it's there since 2.72 I guess...

[Vince Twelve]

... wow.  I've wasted so much of my life.    Thanks naltimari!

[subspark]

... wow.  I've wasted so much of my life.

Ags 3.0 is full of handy little goodies now!

Cheers,
Paul.

[Snarky]

You create your fancy in-game setup options dialog. Mrs Player downloads your game, starts it up, and changes the resolution to 640x400 using your GUI. It turns out her monitor doesn't support that resolution, so now whenever she tries to start the game, she gets an error. She can't go into Setup to correct this error, because it's inside the game. End of story.

And, regardless of where the display configuration is, the 'mrs. player problem' could happen anyway, not because she decided to change the resolution, but because the default resolution, chosen by the game designer, did not work, for whatever reason.

But in that case, she could just run setup.exe and change it, no? With the configuration outside of the game, getting a setting wrong can never make it impossible to fix the configuration, like an in-game configuration system potentially could (especially if you leave it up to the game developers to put in safeguards).

[subspark]

But in that case, she could just run setup.exe and change it, no?

Thats quite true, but should we not consider the possibility of building games with a higher minimal requirement or should all our games always be defaulted back the the minimal standard established last decade? I don't think this has changed since anyway, has it?

Cheers,
Paul.

[lemmy101]

Just a thought:

What would be ultra fabby, would be the ability to multi select a bunch of frames in the sprite manager, and then be able to import over them all a list of gif files in the order of the file select order -> sprite numbers. If less were selected in the file window, it would only replace as many frames as were selected, if more were selected, it would add the remainder as new frames after replacing the selected frames.

This means you'd no longer have to import the sprites as new sprites, reassign to the view/views, then delete the original.

No biggie at all, just when any slight sprite edits happen with long animations (walk cycles etc) it's quite a cumbersome process to replace them at the moment.



Thanks!

lemmy

[subspark]

Well I was thinking that if AGS could store the filename and directory of a sprite on import, then you could right click a sprite folder in AGS Edit, and choose 'Update Sprites', or something?
Assuming of course that you saved over your original sprites in the directory from which you imported them from.

Cheers,
Paul.

[GarageGothic]

If the savegame compatibility issue was solved, and RunAGSGame was made to re-initialize the engine, as monkey_05_06 suggested here, it would be possible to do exactly what subspark is asking. Assuming these two changes were made to the engine, you could let the player change the graphics settings from an in-game options menu, write them to acsetup.cfg using File functions, save the game in progress, then restart the entire game using RunAGSGame (whereby the engine would re-initialize using the settings from the .cfg file) and then restore the savegame to resume gameplay.

[subspark]

Brilliant, sir! Brilliant.
Would this be too hard, CJ?

Cheers,
Paul.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Adding the ability to set the Visible flag of a gui from the editor would be nice, since most people don't want all their guis visible by default and have to disable them in game_start.  Having the flag accessible in the editor would avoid this.

[subspark]

Thats an interesting idea and seems to fit with the 'user friendly' trend we have going here with AGS 3.0 system so I agree; it would be rather convenient and this is something I would also like.

Paul.

[Dusk]

Scenario: I modify a script header.
I try to test the game, and the editor rebuilds all the rooms. Then, the parser spots an error in the script...

...would it be possibile/easy to check the script before the whole rebuild thing?

Bye

[Spire]

But please, please, please, for those of us who'd like to make use of the full screen area in either resolution, wouldn't it be possible to force a vertical cropping of a 640x480 screen as I suggested above?

I, myself, would prefer a horizontal cropping of the image on 4:3 monitors, with 16:10 monitors getting the full image.  In Garage's example, some nice touches, like a fire escape, the top of the paintings and the top of the kitchen archway, are cut off when vertically cropped.  Or, better yet, letterbox the 16:10 image in the 4:3 frame, as is already done.  This has worked for DVD's, so why not games?  The whole point of a widescreen monitor, in my mind, is to see more image, not less.

I should also point out that those of us with Nvidia graphics cards are unable to run our widescreen monitors in resolutions lower than 1024x768 without stretching, due to a bug that Nvidia refuses to fix.  Using the 2x and 3x filters sometimes gives me errors in games about using an invalid coordinate point or something.  Being able to play 4:3 AGS games without stretching would be a nice side effect of having higher max resolutions.

First post, anyway.  I love playing AGS games, and look forward to playing more in the future.

[GarageGothic]

In response to InSPIREd (welcome to the forums, btw!), the screenshots I posted weren't examples of how I wanted the cropping function to work, they're actual in-game screenshots showing how AGS due to a bug sort-of already supports (albeit flawed) cropping and repositioning of the GUIs.

My point wasn't that 16:10 monitors should show less of the artwork - I doubt any background artist would like that - but that we should be able to use the full screen area in either resolution. Many games have large GUI/text displays that cover part of the screen. By allowing us to customize those to either resolution, we could make the best of both aspect ratios.
Your comparison to DVDs is pretty apt, but let me flip it around. When viewing a subtitled DVD on a 16:10 monitor, I'm fine with the subtitles covering part of the image, because there's no other place to put them. But if I watch a widescreen DVD on a 4:3 television with large letterbox borders, it'd better give me the option of displaying the subtitles in the huge black area underneath the image instead of covering the bottom third of the movie image. Unfortunately that's rarely the case.

Edit: Are you saying that Nvidia doesn't support 640x400 resolution? Or just that it doesn't add black bars on the side for 4:3 games running in resolutions lower than 1024x768?

[subspark]

By allowing us to customize those to either resolution, we could make the best of both aspect ratios.

GarageGothic is right and as I have suggested a few times already I think we need to be able to control 'screen layout' in the editor along with the other features found in the default game setup exe.

And I'll say it again to be just to be super clear, I don't believe we need to break compatibility of older games or remove what has already been established by adding these new features. 

Cheers,
Paul.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I should also point out that those of us with Nvidia graphics cards are unable to run our widescreen monitors in resolutions lower than 1024x768 without stretching, due to a bug that Nvidia refuses to fix.

I have an NVIDIA Geforce 6600 gt.  I have a Samsung SyncMaster 22" widescreen monitor.  I do not have this problem.  Perhaps you need a different driver version for your video card, monitor, or to check some sites about this.

Using the 2x and 3x filters sometimes gives me errors in games about using an invalid coordinate point or something.

This pretty much tells me you have an issue with your video card drivers, since I've never had any errors whatsoever when choosing filters (any filters).

I honestly think that some of you people with widescreen monitors should check and see if there are drivers you can get to correct your problems, since it doesn't seem to be a universal issue with widescreen monitors -- or maybe mine is just hyper fantastic, I don't know!  8)

[subspark]

I'm in love with my two 30" Apple Cinema Displays but agree entirely with ProgZmax in that support should continue for 4:3 in all areas of the computer software industry until 4:3 hardware is phased out. I don't think this will happen for a further half decade yet.

So...With a little hope, we beloved AGS developers may finally gain control over both 4:3 and 16:10 aspect ratios.
At the end of the day of course, this lies very much in CJ's capable hands. 

Cheers!
Paul.

[Spire]

I have an NVIDIA Geforce 6600 gt.  I have a Samsung SyncMaster 22" widescreen monitor.  I do not have this problem.  Perhaps you need a different driver version for your video card, monitor, or to check some sites about this.

I have a Geforce 7600 GT and a Samsung SyncMaster 19" widescreen monitor.  The "flat panel scaling" option in the Nvidia control panel did not work, no matter what settings I tweaked  So I updated my drivers, which made things worse.  Whereas before, my monitor's native resolution of 1440x900 worked perfectly, the updated drivers treated 1440x900 as a 4:3 resolution, stretching it off the sides of the monitor.  I was able to fix this and subsequently get windowboxed 4:3 resolutions as low as 1024x768 through some registry tweaks and an older version of the Nvidia control panel (but not older drivers).  However, this method does not work for resolutions lower than 1024x768.  Things below that res do run, but they are scaled and stretched into a very blurry result that is not pleasant to look at.  I have since checked the release notes of every single driver release since, but nothing about fixing it.

This pretty much tells me you have an issue with your video card drivers, since I've never had any errors whatsoever when choosing filters (any filters).

It was an internal AGS error, actually.  Oh well, I can't seem to replicate it now!    But now there's a new problem.  The game I was trying to run, La Croix Pan, will not run in a window for me.  I have it set to run at 1280x800 in a window with 2x scaling, but it instead forces my monitor to a letterboxed 640x480 fullscreen mode, even though I have "Force alternate letterbox resolution" turned off.

I honestly think that some of you people with widescreen monitors should check and see if there are drivers you can get to correct your problems, since it doesn't seem to be a universal issue with widescreen monitors -- or maybe mine is just hyper fantastic, I don't know!  8)

Your monitor is hyper fantastic.    Googling "Nvidia Flat Panel Scaling" turns up a lot of people having my problem.  And even on Nvidia's own forums has it been brought up: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=16588.

I'm getting off topic.  In short, I'd still love to see higher resolutions and different (or better, as the case may be) aspect ratio support in AGS.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Things below that res do run, but they are scaled and stretched into a very blurry result that is not pleasant to look at.

I don't know about the stretching, but try using the Analog output from your monitor rather than DVI to get rid of the blur.  The blurring at low resolutions (for me only below 640x400) occurs due to refresh rate issues that widescreen monitors don't bother with.  When I switched from DVI to Analog the blurriness was completely gone.  It's worth a look if you haven't yet.

[subspark]

What do you mean by blurriness? The interpolation between scaled pixels or is it an artifact created through the a/d conversion? All graphics tech here in my studio is digital except for my third monitor which is a 4:3 Samsung SyncMaster 913v LCD but I don't know what I'm looking for so I can't hunt for a comparison.

Cheers,
Paul.

SUGGESTION: I think an 'Add Walkable Area/Region' function coupled with a color picker would be ideal for those of us who require a little more than 16 seperate areas. This of course would still be restrained by a hard coded limit but not that of 16.