Future AGS development

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I was talking about his dismissal of the value of porting it to other platforms, my comment about windows was just a--to borrow a user--snarky way of suggesting I shouldn't bother making games at all under such a draconian concept since someone could just as easily say 'well developing on anything other than Linux is a waste of time, or dos, etc'.  Bear in mind that these 'emulated' ports tend to have compatibility issues as well so there's clearly merit in making actual cross-platform builds .  Hell, I'd love being able to use the ags editor on a portable device and be able to test and share quick builds of a game, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.  Also, I'm sure mac users would love regular, up-to-date builds of the editor.  Sure it's work, but to call it silly?


Also, Calintroll is trolling.

[Monsieur OUXX]

[Porting the Editor to other platforms].  Sure it's work, but to call it silly?

Well simply write a long list of correspondance between Java and .NET classes, and good luck to you! ;-)
(this is not a troll, this is not a critics, this is not an apology for Java, etc.)

[Snarky]

I was talking about his dismissal of the value of porting it to other platforms, my comment about windows was just a--to borrow a user--snarky way of suggesting I shouldn't bother making games at all under such a draconian concept since someone could just as easily say 'well developing on anything other than Linux is a waste of time, or dos, etc'.

OK; it came across as nonsensical though, since you were using your experience creating your games on Windows to refute his argument that people who are serious about making games can run Windows.

Sure, having the editor on multiple platforms would be nice, but I think (and seem to remember from earlier discussions that it was generally agreed) that it's a lower priority than getting the engine running on different platforms.

[Monsieur OUXX]

having the editor on multiple platforms would be nice, but (...) that it's a lower priority than getting the engine running on different platforms.

+1

[dbuske]

Maybe AGS would benefit from a true visual style editor.
Like for a particular room you could drag and drop the characters where they should start.
Maybe it could do a dry-run of what the character is to do.
Adventure Maker style highly modified still using scripting.
Just throwing out an idea here.
Maybe plan movements right in the editor with points in the room for the character to hit.

[monkey0506]

In AGS 3.2.1 you can visually position the characters' starting positions via the editor.

[dbuske]

I noticed that there is no place to store videos in the editor.
I had to put them in the compiled sub-directory.
Maybe put it next right after sound on the right side of the editor.

[Grim]

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but I would really like if AGS had better support for high resolution graphics. I sure understand the majority of people here make games in low res, and there is nothing wrong with that- as many great games have proved- but I think as developers we shouldn't have to compromise as it's often the case with anything  800x600 and above. I suppose it might be also a major turn-off for anyone wanting to use AGS to make commercial games.

  My point is, that i REALLY love AGS and I think I finally managed to get my head around the scripting to do it on a decent level and I think it is a fantastic platform. But the way the sprites are handled is causing massive slowdowns and I often find myself cutting down on stuff because I simply can't expect everyone who plays my games to own a very powerful pc....

  Is there no way to improve that? How is Wintermute dealing with this problem? I am no expert at these things but surely a better hardware acceleration would make everything run faster....

  If it wasn't for the performance issues, I couldn't imagine myself ever needing another engine. But as it stands now... it's just so painfully slow sometimes it breaks my heart when I have to remove all those alpha channeled lights and cut out frames of animation....

[Pumaman]

I've heard the possibility that the file format won't be open-sourced to make it harder to decompile people's games, and I've got some questions and an idea about that.

I've already said that this is no longer an issue, I'm happy to release the full source code. I will do this once 3.2.1 has been formally released so that there is a stable code version to base the first release on.

  My point is, that i REALLY love AGS and I think I finally managed to get my head around the scripting to do it on a decent level and I think it is a fantastic platform. But the way the sprites are handled is causing massive slowdowns and I often find myself cutting down on stuff because I simply can't expect everyone who plays my games to own a very powerful pc....

  Is there no way to improve that? How is Wintermute dealing with this problem? I am no expert at these things but surely a better hardware acceleration would make everything run faster....

Is AGS significantly slower than any other engine at the same resolution with the same quantity of graphics, when running in D3D mode? I've seen occasional posts from people commenting on how slow AGS is, but is this actually a fact or are people just making assumptions?

If there is a significant performance problem then this is something that should be investigated and improved, but this has never been formally reported as a problem, as far as I know.

[Grim]

  My point is, that i REALLY love AGS and I think I finally managed to get my head around the scripting to do it on a decent level and I think it is a fantastic platform. But the way the sprites are handled is causing massive slowdowns and I often find myself cutting down on stuff because I simply can't expect everyone who plays my games to own a very powerful pc....

  Is there no way to improve that? How is Wintermute dealing with this problem? I am no expert at these things but surely a better hardware acceleration would make everything run faster....

Is AGS significantly slower than any other engine at the same resolution with the same quantity of graphics, when running in D3D mode? I've seen occasional posts from people commenting on how slow AGS is, but is this actually a fact or are people just making assumptions?

If there is a significant performance problem then this is something that should be investigated and improved, but this has never been formally reported as a problem, as far as I know.

  I've only heard that other engines are faster and never really tried them myself... Perhaps I'm being unreasonable, but recently testing my game on my girlfriend's laptop (in D3D mode) some rooms that work great on my desktop were really choppy and slow. These were of course rooms with a large number of animated sprites in them. It's quite a good laptop, too- not top of the range maybe but not old crap either.

Anyway, it seems that a room a size of 2000x600 pixels with one large parallax object in the background, a same size layer of alpha channel light/shadow object, a rain animated object sized 1000x600 px, 2 characters, each 21 frames walking animation, and flopping curtains sized 200x500, and few small other objects caused a massive slowdown.
..
And now, that I've typed all that, I think I realize I'd probably gone beyond a reasonable amount of stuff that can be placed in one room........

   But another issue is that D3D doesn't work on some computers. I remember Calin explaining it to me once... but I forgot what he said. Still, it would be great if it worked on 100% of machines.

[Calin Leafshade]

Well the drawing surfaces are inherently slow because you are drawing on DD surfaces and then those surfaces are drawn into video memory.

AGS does draw regular sprites (characters, objects, etc) natively in D3D though so it shouldn't be particularly slow.

It would be nice if there was some way to kinda queue sprites on a surface for rendering via D3D. Things like particles and stuff which are currently essentially impossible at high resolutions.

Not sure how that would work logistically though.

[redspark]

Also, I'm sure mac users would love regular, up-to-date builds of the editor.  Sure it's work, but to call it silly?

I would love this!  But as was already said by others, I would be happy even with a runtime engine for Mac.  Just as long as either option is kept up-to-date with the main editor.

[dbuske]

Does AGS support multiple cpu's?
Performance wouldn't be an issue if AGS was multitheaded.
Maybe someone could make the DirectX driver better, or add opengl support.
Or, improve the caching scheme...

[CRxTRDude]

Well, what AGS needs is to reduce the cross-compatibility stuff...

Maybe the too much crossing would make you drop dead at the other side of the road.

Almost majority of the people today are running their comps on the infamous Windows XP, Vista and 7. And some use macs, linux and ubuntu. Maybe there would be some kind of "Publish to..." menu that chooses what build of AGS would be compiled.

And it would be nice if it supports integrated graphics well too! I'm happy to beta test! I use the most infamous Vaio VGN-N320E with that infamous Intel 945GM. So if it works on mine, it might work on others. How bout that?

EDIT: On second thought maybe it's still nice to have crossing to older systems, but just to be safe, more on Win XP up.

[monkey0506]

Well, what AGS needs is to reduce the cross-compatibility stuff...

Maybe the too much crossing would make you drop dead at the other side of the road.

I'm not sure if you're trying to be sarcastic here..but the rest of what you said seems to be very much in opposition to this. By "cross-compatibility" I guess you mean "cross-platform compatibility" which is directly indicative of the Mac/Linux ports of the engine. The engine ports are not fully up-to-date with the latest AGS, but Windows 98 has not been officially supported (by AGS) for quite a while (only XP and up are officially supported for running AGS).

And I'm not sure what you mean by "support[ing] integrated graphics".."integrated graphics" just means that your graphics card uses RAM for processing graphics data instead of using its own dedicated memory (such as an on-board graphics chip might do). This wouldn't affect whether or not AGS can run..it would just mean that AGS would probably be more resource-heavy on your system (because of your hardware). This isn't really something that can be dealt with very simply from a software aspect (if indeed at all).

[SuperDre]

Well, there are 2 things here, there is the editor and there is the engine..

for crossplatforming the editor you need to make sure the .NET code isn't going beyond what's possible with Mono OR you should change the code so it's silverlight based and doesn't go beyong what's possible with moonlight (which current builds already supports a lot of Silverlight 4 and already has multiplaform support (MacOS/Linux/iOS/Android), which would be enough to create a multiplatform editor).

On the engine side I would suggest at least incorperating it into ScummVM (which already has a very good reputation on commitment), and let them first get the old/current engines running multiplatform which will continue into the newer engines. I guess the ScummVM team won't mind having CJ as an overseeer for changes to new versions of the engine.. porting AGS to ScummVM will almost be the only way to keep AGS really multiplatform. Only problem with ScummVM for me is their unwillingness to even consider adding 2.5D type of games if other developers are willing to add it, so that might halter the advancement of AGS in that direction if it was something AGS was looking at.. But then again, look at some of the marvelous stuff people do here with 2D looking like real disney animation, so I personally don't care if 2.5D games aren't on the map.. LOL..

Personally I love AGS and it's my favorite place to look for games to play when I have hollidays, also I would love to play older dosbased ags games, but these days I can't be bothered anymore with all the hassle of setting up dosbox and trying to run the old games (yes I'm getting older and lazier too), also the new games that are created are very good, and the AGS community seems to be growing..
Personally I can't be bothered with playing AGS or any adventure on mobile phones, they're too small anyway for me, but with the advancement of tablets and sizes of 10" and larger I'm looking at more in that direction for playing adventures..

[subspark]

By "cross-compatibility" I guess you mean "cross-platform compatibility"

Nope. He means backwards compatibility, Monkey.

[monkey0506]

From the entire rest of his post I have absolutely no idea where you're getting that idea from, unless you know something that I don't.

And other than the fact that part of the reason the engine source is somewhat unorganized is in part due to backwards compatibility efforts, I don't see why backwards compatibility would be considered a bad thing. As a matter of fact, in the ScummVM forums they were specifically arguing that an AGS->ScummVM port wouldn't work because AGS doesn't have backwards compatibility, which is largely untrue.

I'm not really aware of anyone arguing against backwards compatibility other than those trying to clean up the source code. And then it's just because it would be simpler than maintaining it. Of course, that's sort of like saying it's simpler to amputate a broken arm.

[subspark]

From the entire rest of his post I have absolutely no idea where you're getting that idea from, unless you know something that I don't.

Nah. I'm just good at reading between the lines. Also he metioned the following clues which I keyed off.

Almost majority of the people today are running their comps on the infamous Windows XP, Vista and 7

I don't see why backwards compatibility would be considered a bad thing

Yeah beats me too. I'm just the voluntary translator for these kinds of things.  

Of course, that's sort of like saying it's simpler to amputate a broken arm.

Well... that would depend on who's arm it is.   Sorry.

[Proper hat back on]

[monkey0506]

The "clues" which tipped you off would really to me be indicative more of a desire to drop cross-platform compatibility instead of backwards compatibility of the engine..but in any case, I've responded to both interpretations with my opinion on the matter, so let's not get off topic here.