Future AGS development

[deadsuperhero]

Why not just use Ren'py to create a visual novel??

Some people don't want to learn a new programming language to do that if they can just do it in AGS?

[Dualnames]

It's not a big fuss to create a "visual novel" module. In fact if getting AGS to work like a visual module, that means MORE CROWD, more JAPANESE, more chances I meet a Satsuki damn you!!

[Charity]

Excellent work these past years, Chris.

I'm a fan of open source on principle, but I'm not much of a coder, so I don't have anything to add that hasn't already been said.

At any rate, I can't wait to see what sort of new functionality people are able to add using whatever code you end up releasing.  It's rare I've found myself even theoretically limited by the current feature set, but I always get excited when I see lists of new functions.

[Spummy]

This may be a bit "doom and gloom"ish, and I don't really think this shall become of AGS in particular buuutttttttt.


In my 5 years of Linux usage, hundreds of hours playing FOSS games. Joining Opensource communities and getting involved. Meeting the devs, and making friends with some. I've seen a few projects in their starting days.


And so far, the huge majority of opensource projects that ignore portability and being cross-platform, ESPECIALLY Linux support, have been failures. Due to lack of interest and support. AGS already has it's own interested and enthusiastic fan base, so it could easily not meet the same fate. But with most projects, the majority or entirety of the developer base are Linux users. Because many Linux users look for and take notice of opensource projects and support them because they emphasize and believe in the Copyleft movement. And most Linux users are extremely technical and proficient in programming. Every Linux user I know knows at least one programming language. But most know around 3-5. I use C/C++ and Python and Lua myself.


You can talk about total usage figures and how "Linux and Mac are an insignificant minority." How about considering maybe not how many computer users out there use Mac/Linux/BSD. Try thinking about how many of them would be likely to contribute and work on a highly technical project, for free, compared to Windows users.

EDIT:

Adding this because I feel I may have come across the wrong way. I'm not trying to say Linux is superior. Nor that it turns it's users into a race of superhumans. It's just people who like to program, like Linux's focus towards developers, and people who like the opensource movement and process, are drawn towards projects that follow it, like Linux and BSD.

[Pumaman]

I disagree.  Do you think that Mac/Linux users only want to play AGS games and not create them themselves?

Of course there are some people that do want to do that. All I'm saying is that, with AGS having a user base of 2260 people, considering that 1% of desktops run Linux and 5% are Macs, a Linux port would only cater for 22 people and a Mac port for 113 people.

Therefore personally, I don't think it's worth spending time on (for example) a Linux port of the editor that only 22 people will use. You may well disagree.

I think your underestimating the adoption value of would-be handheld developers. It's the chicken or the egg.

I don't think handheld devices are really related to this debate -- nobody is going to try and run the AGS Editor on a handheld device. The actual games themselves, are another matter -- porting the engine is a worthy goal.

But with most projects, the majority or entirety of the developer base are Linux users. Because many Linux users look for and take notice of opensource projects and support them because they emphasize and believe in the Copyleft movement. And most Linux users are extremely technical and proficient in programming. Every Linux user I know knows at least one programming language. But most know around 3-5. I use C/C++ and Python and Lua myself.

This is probably true.

I should just point out that I'm not opposed to somebody porting the editor code to Linux if they want to, I'm just trying to explain why it's not a big factor in my decisions surrounding the AGS source code releases.

[xenogia]

This is probably true.

I should just point out that I'm not opposed to somebody porting the editor code to Linux if they want to, I'm just trying to explain why it's not a big factor in my decisions surrounding the AGS source code releases.

But wouldn't this be difficult with the fact the dll is closed off?

[deadsuperhero]

But wouldn't this be difficult with the fact the dll is closed off?

My understanding is that in theory one could swap in a new compiler for it if you absolutely had to. It's a shame that the Clang/LLVM compiler is currently a bit weak with C++, but it is a well-supported backend to compiling C# at the very least. So perhaps those would provide for a good starting point.

[subspark]

porting the engine is a worthy goal.

Oh dear, so sorry. I thought you were referring to the whole kit and kaboodle.

Of course, I see no use for an editor on anything other than a PC(win/linux)/Mac but I am convinced that surely runtime support would be of some interest to us.

Cheers,
Sparky.

[straydogstrut]

Personally I have no interest in seeing the editor on other platforms. The Mac/Linux voice always shouts very loud, but it is such a tiny proportion of real world users that in terms of the editor it's not something I think it's worth spending time on.

The engine is a different matter, and having Mac/Linux ports of the engine is a good thing so that the maximum number of people possible can play games that are created with AGS.

As a (switched to)Mac user, this is disheartening but understandable. While I would love to see a Mac version of the Editor, I can appreciate it would be a massive undertaking. Anyway, it hasn't put me off AGS so far: It is THE choice for adventure game development IMO, both as a software package, and as a community.

I still have to use Windows for gaming anyway. At the very least though, I hope the Engine can be made cross platform so that the games themselves can be played easily on Mac/Linux. This is more than just an OS preference for me, it's an accessibility issue. I strongly believe games are for everyone, and I don't think OS/Hardware choices should get in the way of that.

Open sourcing some of the code is probably a positive move in this respect, but I would hope that any steps towards portability would be incorporated into the 'standard' version without being met by any kind of platform bias.

Again, I appreciate that portability is a big ask and, while I consider myself something of a coder, this is way out of my depth. I'm willing to wait for it and help out however I can. Anyway, thank you, Chris, for the huge amount of work you've put into AGS. I hope, with the community's efforts, it will continue to grow for a long time.

[monkey0506]

I don't think CJ is saying he doesn't ever want the editor to run on other platforms so much as he just doesn't think that it's as high of a priority as other things.

[Sslaxx]

I don't think CJ is saying he doesn't ever want the editor to run on other platforms so much as he just doesn't think that it's as high of a priority as other things.

Indeed so.

I should just point out that I'm not opposed to somebody porting the editor code to Linux if they want to, I'm just trying to explain why it's not a big factor in my decisions surrounding the AGS source code releases.

[Layabout]

I disagree.  Do you think that Mac/Linux users only want to play AGS games and not create them themselves?

Of course there are some people that do want to do that. All I'm saying is that, with AGS having a user base of 2260 people, considering that 1% of desktops run Linux and 5% are Macs, a Linux port would only cater for 22 people and a Mac port for 113 people.

I think those figures might be slightly off due to business computers primarily being Windows XP or 7. And there are a lot of business computers in the world. I'm very doubtful people willingly buy Dell computers for personal use.

Also, with the Mac App store, there will be a lot of developer interest in making cross platform Windows/Mac games. If with opening the runtime code someone is able to produce a stable Mac release, you might find a lot more interest in AGS. And with that, someone will properly port to iPhone and Android. With that you have the potential to have a large number of sales of a commercial game.

I'd like to add that I am in agreement with Eric over the 'proprietary' format issues and the possibility of having a decompiler. This really hasn't been an issue for a long time in the games industry, what with most developers releasing their own tools.

[Dave Gilbert]

I have to agree with Layabout.  If I was able to compile a stable Mac executable (or a Linux executable, even) in AGS, I'd never bother using another engine ever again.

[edmundito]

Yeah I agree with everything Dave Gilbert says. ¬¬

Actually I think it's fine the way it's done now to setup the mac/linux builds out of the windows build... no need for a specific mac or linux editor. I've done it with a few old 2.71-built games as a test and it isn't too much of a hassle. I think the bigger problem we've got in finding the right guy to make the mac version of the runtime... that's been the biggest issue all along. :\

[ddq]

I will say that the Mac community is very supportive of indie developers, game devs and otherwise. As someone who uses Windows, Mac, and Linux and who know several Mac users, my desires for stable executables for these other operating systems aligns with Layabout and Dave's.

[ReAgs]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post on these forums, please forgive me if this isn't the best place to post this. Here's my story:

I'm both an adventure games fan and a software developer. My main area of interest in game development is on the engine side, not that much on scripting. So, being a GNU/Linux user it was discouraging to see this great software piece (AGS) being closed source, which limited the platforms where I could play the games (I'm not that interested in the editor myself). I read a long time ago that Chris didn't want to open source AGS, so I thought the only option would be to write an engine reimplementation myself, and that's what I started to do a few weeks ago. Of course I haven't made lots of progress (AGS is really large), but I keep progressing every day.

But now I've read Chris' first post on this thread and it seems there's some possibility things are going to change:

Another option is to open-source all the code, and hope that some sort of open source community takes over. But then I would completely lose control of it, and it's not certain that any open-source developers would want to continue developing it or taking it in the right direction anyway.

If this works out well, then go on and open up the majority of the AGS Engine source code. I'm still not sure what to do about the code that handles the AGS file formats, because opening that up would make decompilers very easy to write. But that's a small amount of code in the grand scheme of things, and something we can discuss later on.

Things are starting to get interesting here. I support what Sslaxx said:

I'm surprised decompilers do not already exist for the file formats. Nothing's going to stop a committed cracker. Consider the effort it took, for example, to reverse-engineer the Z Machine (the Zip interpreter), or Ultima VII (or any of the others - projects like Exult and Pentagram). Frankly, you're probably just lucky.

I don't consider myself a cracker since I don't want to do anything wrong with the game data: I just want to be able to play those games wherever I want

Just to give you a rough idea:
- I decoded/decrypted CLIB volumes versions 0xA to 0x15 and extracted their contents. (I haven't looked into .VOX files yet, but I think they are pretty similar)
- I have decoded the sprite sets (versions 4 to 6, including the compressed sprites) and the sprite index (versions 1 and 2).
- Right now I'm working on the room formats, hotspots, interactions and soon I'll have to start with scripts, since these parts are very dependent on each other.
- I have decoded some simpler things like the .WFN fonts and .TRA translations.

All of this has been done in about 3 weeks looking exclusively freeware games using AGS versions 2.3 to 3.1.2.

So the only reasons for keeping this code closed is to "protect" the game assets and disallow script decompilers? Why? Just so people can't reuse the assets on a new game and players can't find the puzzles' solutions? I think common sense should tell anyone not to use someone else's work without permission (and the copyright laws say so), and looking at the disassembled scripts just to solve puzzles is like using walkthroughs... it takes the fun away from the game.

Here's my suggestion: Remove those artificial complications from the base file formats and define a plugin API to create custom encryption/decryption methods (an alternative could be plugins for custom input/output wrapping of data, so one could use password-protected standard ZIP files or whatever he wants).

With that, there would be no more reasons to keep any part of the engine closed and it could be ported to every platform (not depending on one person having access to that platform), by default every game would be available on every platform (and I think that's what most fans want), and companies selling their games or people just not caring about others being able to play their game on "strange" platforms could add any obscure system to make the data unreadable.

In fact, if the engine and the editor were completely open-sourced, everyone could modify it to their needs, adding their custom encryption as deep as they want into the engine, or even changing the file formats. It would remove the need for the additional "encryption plugins".


All in all, my point is that open-sourcing the whole engine wouldn't necessarily be bad for any type of user, and keeping any part of the engine closed prevents the main advantage (for users, players) of it being open source: portability.

I think I'm talking about a different matter here, though. I'm talking about maintainability of already made releases, not about development of new releases, new features, etc. I wouldn't mind about a small team being the only ones with access to the development code until a release is made if you want to keep control over the engine direction.


I'd like to get an answer about this, because my work would be a waste of time if you later decide to open everything. I hope we can collaborate from now on

See you!

PS: Oh, and I'd REALLY love to see all possible versions open-sourced, not just the last one It would even be fun if the first release you open-source is 1.0

[Alan v.Drake]

Well, VOX aren't even encrypted or I wouldn't have stripped out a mp3 from them, I guess the other formats aren't that hard to figure out. Heh.


- Alan

[Dave Gilbert]

Ooh ohh!  Here's something that would be very useful for those using voice speech.

Speex format integration!

Seriously, this stuff is like magic.  It's an audio format specifically geared for voice speech.  We used it for ECC and it turned 800mb of raw .wav files into about 30mb when we converted it to .spx format.

The downloadable for Blackwell Legacy was about 180MB, and only 30 of that was for the game.  Being able to shrink the size of the audio would be a huge boon.

[xenogia]

Ooh ohh!  Here's something that would be very useful for those using voice speech.

Speex format integration!

Seriously, this stuff is like magic.  It's an audio format specifically geared for voice speech.  We used it for ECC and it turned 800mb of raw .wav files into about 30mb when we converted it to .spx format.

The downloadable for Blackwell Legacy was about 180MB, and only 30 of that was for the game.  Being able to shrink the size of the audio would be a huge boon.

What bitrate are you putting your speech at?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Looks to me like speex just applies a couple filters for noise/empty space reduction and then encodes the audio as a single VBR ogg,  I'm guessing it saves a file somewhere that has the positions and names of each individual file as well.  If so, AGS should be able to support this format with a plugin?