999 room... but i need 500 more :o

[Mystère Poe]

Hello. Is it possible with mods or code to have more than 999 rooms in ags? Because I have already reached 999 and I still need 500. I am currently making a French port of the game Cassandra Galerie and there are a lot of rooms.

[eri0o]

This game? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rP2TyQX9u1Y

[Mystère Poe]

Yes . The game was made by Canadians for a US company. It was never translated into French so I was making it on AGS but an hour ago AGS told me that I had reached the maximum number of rooms allowed, 999. There is surely a way to bypass this limitation... otherwise I will have to start all over again on another engine.

[eri0o]

I think in theory it shouldn't be hard to change the engine to support more rooms, save for checking how this should interact with backwards compatibility.

AGS doesn't save the state on rooms higher than 300, so you get 300 rooms that save state and the rest you have to manage yourself. I guess it could in theory be some build time property but not really sure how this would work. But my guess is right now for a simple extension it would just up from 999 to 2048 and leave at that.

I am curious, looking at the game it seems most rooms are rather empty, couldn't you just do the more complex rooms and have a few rooms that could be repurposed by changing graphics or something to do the simpler rooms?

But yeah, I think you are the first person to hit the limit in 25 years.

[Khris]

Yeah, this sounds kind of weird to me; I'll go out on a limb and claim that you can easily work around this limit.

[Crimson Wizard]

You should have really checked the engine limitations, and looked for a more optimal ways of making 1000+ scenes before making a new room per each "walking position". Not every straightforward solution is the efficient one.

Increasing the max number of rooms in the engine is probably not difficult to do, but there's still a question: how optimal it is to have that many rooms, and how optimal it is to have a separate room file per each small step in a game.

Now, I do not know all the specifics of this original game, and which behavior does it have. But looking at the video quickly, do I understand correctly, that majority of these scenes are just places where you choose which direction to move to, and do not have any other interactive hotspots?

If that's the case, then I think you could try having 1 room for all of such "walking" places and just replace the background with different images as the player walks around. Of course, that would require a script that reconfigures the room as the player makes a step, but that alone is doable fairly easily.

Similar method was used in many games, both made in AGS and other engines. Classic quest games used 1 room to represent many generic locations when character is travelling around, or walking through a "labyrinth": they would change the decorations by moving and toggling room objects, enable and disable walkable areas, and make it seem like a different place, while it's the same room.

The "closeups" (like books) can be done by displaying an object or GUI on top of the background (idk if you've already done that or not).

[Mystère Poe]

In fact, I tried to respect as possible the original game and rebuild it identically. One view, one room. One step, one room. Even removing some unnecessary "animation," I'm still need at least 200 more rooms. I'll think about your solution of only changing the backgrounds in certain cases.
Here's the link to the game in English: compatible with Windows. Choose the "Automatique Version."

abandonware-france.org/ltf_abandon/ltf_jeu.php?id=1791&fic=liens

[Crimson Wizard]

In fact, I tried to respect as possible the original game and rebuild it identically. One view, one room. One step, one room.

The thing is, a "view" in that game does not necessarily equal a "room" in AGS. They may be technically different. AGS room contains more things, because it's meant for a more complicated scene, with walkable areas, walk-behinds, and so forth. By creating over 1000 rooms you likely create a lot of "material" which will take disk space, and occupy game memory, but won't be useful. That's why it's not optimal to do that.

[Mystère Poe]

But yeah, I think you are the first person to hit the limit in 25 years.

I know. I'm a genius 

[Khris]

In fact, I tried to respect as possible the original game and rebuild it identically. One view, one room. One step, one room.

I don't think the original game used 1500+ rooms. They most likely did exactly what CW was describing. So even if respecting the original meant you also replicate everything identically that isn't visible to the player (doesn't really make sense) this approach is probably still the correct one.
To be clear: we aren't suggesting you don't do a faithful remake. We're saying you can do it without using over 9000 rooms.

[Mystère Poe]

I've started implementing your solution. I've dropped below 600 rooms, and I think I'll eventually reach 500. Maybe a little less if I replace certain screens with objects. Thank you for your information. It will save me a lot of time.