Curious as to why AGS doesn't just "rotate" a sprite

[MSNBrianC]

Hey all, not sure this is allowed but I would LOVE an explanation as to why AGS doesn't allow rotating a sprite similarly to moving a sprite.

I do know about creating a dynamic sprite, I'm just intrigued by why in programming one has to go through such a complicated process of rotating.

Thanks!

[eri0o]

It can do in ags4.

It's not in ags3.

[Snarky]

1) Because rotating is more complicated than moving, since the sprite becomes different.

2) Because rotating sprites isn't usually necessary for adventure games.

In any case, AGS4 adds rotation to objects, characters and GUIs.

[Crimson Wizard]

I think the real honest answer is that AGS was designed in very old-fashioned way and relying on obsolete tech (software rendering), and engine code was ugly so adding more features properly was difficult. That's why it was not done earlier.

I am not sure if it matters that it's not used much in adventure games. This may be the case of people not using something because it's not easily available.

But in any case it's already available in AGS 4.0 for a while now (as well as some other things).
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/ags-engine-editor-releases/ags-4-0-early-alpha-for-public-test/

[Snarky]

I am not sure if it matters that it's not used much in adventure games. This may be the case of people not using something because it's not easily available.

Isn't it obvious? AGS is, primarily, an engine for making adventure games. Features that are commonly used in adventure games are well supported (e.g. inventories, dialog), while features that are not commonly used are not reliably supported, or require more work by game developers.

And I'm willing to bet that most adventure games not made in AGS don't use rotation either.

I guess we'll see how many games make extensive use of the rotation capabilities in AGS4.

[Crimson Wizard]

Isn't it obvious? AGS is, primarily, an engine for making adventure games. Features that are commonly used in adventure games are well supported (e.g. inventories, dialog), while features that are not commonly used are not reliably supported

In contemporary engines all transformations are handled by matrixes, that covers both drawing and interacting with (click detection). Would the engine be written in a modern way, there's high chance that rotation would be supported from the start simply because it's a part of a standard transformation matrix, and it would not require much additional effort. There would be little reason to skip it, regardless of which game genre this engine prioritizes.