AGS 2.56 Pre-final - Mittens edition

[Pumaman]

Wasn't this already added, or does this now work if you are using a bullet pic for dialogs? I remember asking awhile back if you could add the ability to just push a number to get the dialogs lines to work, and you did, so I'm guessing that it works with bullets now?

Scummbuddy: I think you're misunderstanding. What this new option does is to go through the game and add a "&1"-style thing to the start of every DisplaySpeech, dialog speech and speech message in the game. The idea is that once you finish making your game you can make it voice-compatible with one click (obviously then you have to record the voices, but I can't do that for you )


Terranrich: as yeknomten points out, the key word is "dialog".


Oh, one final thing. If anyone's trying out the RGB tint and wondering how it works, it converts the character to greyscale and then applies the specified colour levels to it. I'm considering adding an option for the tint style, if you'd like it to work a different way.

[Igor]

* Added RGB tint option for regions as an alternative to light level.
* Implemented multiple select for dragging and deleting sprites in the sprite manager.
* Added ability to delete sprite folders (USE WITH CARE!!)
* Added option for characters to turn to face their new direction when using FaceLocation/FaceCharacter.

Fantastic! Thanks a lot Chris!
Now... excuse me, while i'm going to sacrifice a few more chickens on AGS altar in my closet.

[Gilbert]

By the way, I forgot to tell ya CJ, that if you put a Wait()  function in Game_start() of the global script the engine will crash. This is no big deal, as you SHOULD NOT do that anyway, I was just doing something silly when I found this problem.

[Proskrito]

By the way, I forgot to tell ya CJ, that if you put a Wait()  function in Game_start() of the global script the engine will crash. This is no big deal, as you SHOULD NOT do that anyway, I was just doing something silly when I found this problem.

I got a similar problem, but instead of Wait, i got it with SetPlayerCharacter(), setting the current player character. (also in Game_start. but i dont know if it happened because i tried to set as player the  one that was the player yet, or if its really a bug. This is what i got anyway:

0xc0000005 occured in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x0041F40E;
preogram pointer is -42, ACI version 2.56.571, gtags (62,30);

[Archangel (aka SoupDragon)]

I'm guessing, prosc, that ags hasn't initialised the player character at the time you're trying to call that function. In any case, why would you want to SetPlayerCharacter at the start of a game, when you can do it in the editor?

[Proskrito]

Archangel, i have a custom function that, apart from setting the player character, sets other things up, so i put that function in the game_start for setting the "other" things.
I said that my problem was like Gilbot´s because he said:

This is no big deal, as you SHOULD NOT do that anyway, I was just doing something silly when I found this problem

So, no problem and thanks for the explanation

[edmundito]

Hmm... I just noticed something interesting... and I'll call it a glitch for now: When you're in a dialog conversation, every time there's a new line said the current cursor (before the dialog) flashes for like a frame, making it look kind of odd. It seems that it happens every time another character speasks. this has been around for a while, and I think I did a nasty workaround in my game, but I'm sure that everyone would benefit from an automatic system.

[TheYak]

Great. Does this mean I can use different coloured lighting effects such as a neon sign shining on the character?

That's my question too, is this implemented for characters also?  This could help tremendously when trying to do niftier graphics for games.  For example, stepping in front of a glowing red furnace highlights character red; or walking behind a green jar could be set to make the character green?  'twould be awesome. (I'm beginning to think I'll hafta reconsider a B&W only game)

[TerranRich]

CJ: Oh... I never pay attention, you know that.

netmonkey: I have that same glitch too. It does look...amateurish I DEMAND better from you, Jones!

YakSpit: I assume since the tinting was added to regions, that characters would be included. And a B&W game...has that ever been done, commercial or otherwise?

[TheYak]

The first couple commercial graphic adventures were black and white...   and the first time I played SQ3, it was in black and white due to its shoddy CGA support at the time.

[TerranRich]

Okay,  so no intentionally-B&W games barring techonological limitations. Hmm, so whoever made one would make history with teh first ever intentionally B&W adventure game.

[Igor]

YakSpit- yes, it works on characters (instead of light level, you select a RGB level and it will work).

[TerranRich]

Wasn't this already added, or does this now work if you are using a bullet pic for dialogs? I remember asking awhile back if you could add the ability to just push a number to get the dialogs lines to work, and you did, so I'm guessing that it works with bullets now?

Scummbuddy: I think you're misunderstanding. What this new option does is to go through the game and add a "&1"-style thing to the start of every DisplaySpeech, dialog speech and speech message in the game. The idea is that once you finish making your game you can make it voice-compatible with one click (obviously then you have to record the voices, but I can't do that for you )

...

Holy shit, I just read this...so you're saying that with ONE CLICK, I can add the appropriate &1, &2, ,etc. to the beginning of EVERY dialog line and DisplaySpeech line!?!? What about the narrator? And what about the Message Editor under the Interactions Editor?

[Snake]

* Increased max cursors to 20 (though the new ones will only activate the Any Click event at present).

YI.....PAAAAAAAAAY!!1

* Sprite manager now remembers which folder you were in before when selecting new item graphics.

Sweet! No more annoying switching of folders every time

GREAT work, CJ!

Keep it up!


--Snake

[Timosity]

sorry to be off topic

And a B&W game...has that ever been done, commercial or otherwise?

I think that "Cubert Badbone PI" the one that got "Best Game" in the TCN awards was in B&W, I haven't played the whole thing, It was made by the other Squinky.

Also in the June MAGS aussie's Casablanca game is in B&W, and I'm sure I've played others that I can't recall in B&W

It is a good look for a game if the style is right.



**Also I still can't believe CJ and his work ethic, Imagine if people worked that hard on there games. (I'm sure some people do, I know it's hard to judge progress on peoples games, I know I've been working hard on my latest project since end of Feb, and only cracking the surface, allthough it is long and what's been done is longer than most ags games already.
And I know others' have been working on projects much longer than me) but generally speaking, CJ works harder than anyone else here.

[Alex Lowes]

here is a very important bug.
with this version you cannot make a new game :o :
when you click new game there is No template to choose thos no next button to continue with the game making

[Spyros]

That's because it's a beta version. You can use the normal template from 2.55

[MHawk]

Hi, I'm new here and I actually haven't tried the new beta version, but I have a couple of comments/suggestions.  I hope this is a good place to post them...I couldn't find a better place.

* Implemented multiple select for dragging and deleting sprites in the sprite manager.
* Added ability to delete sprite folders (USE WITH CARE!!)

Will you also be able to Move Folders?  The would be a great help if you decide later to group all your character folders together, all your inventory item folders together, etc...

* Disabled auto-complete in the dialog script editor.

Can you also disable the Auto-complete when writing comments in the Script Editor?  It's a little annoying to have the box pop-up when just writing a comment about what the code is doing.

Side Note: With Auto-complete could you also do it for properties like character[EGO]. and have a list of all the variables.  It's not vital, but it would be nice.

Other Suggestions:
1) Can you have more tools for making masks in the Room Editor?  
A box tool would be very useful.  So would a circle/ellipse tool.
And maybe even a fill tool that relies on the background: so, if you have a solid object or an object with similar shades (have a tolerance level) of a certain color (in the background) you can flood fill only that part automatically.  Similar to the Magic Select/Fill in Photoshop.

2) Can you have the Mouse Position Label in the Room Editor still update while the script window is showing?
It's really annoying to have to close the window and save the script just to find the position I need to move a character too.  It would be nice to just move the window aside and be able to still get numbers.

3) In the Script Editor can you have a button or a menu item to open up the message dialog editor?
It would be useful when creating custom interactions with a script.  Rather then having to remember to create the message before hand or closing the Script Editor and going to the message editor...and so on.

4) Would it be possible to have an options for no transparency when importing sprites?

5) Could you also make importing tiled sprites easier?
Maybe by having two text boxes with the number of x and y tiles and automatically determing the tile size for the selector.
At least have the selector snap to the tile size rather then trying to line the selector up perfectly with the image before being able to drag a selection of tiles.  Is it just me or is it hard to click on the very left edge sometimes?

I think that's all for now!  Thanks a lot.  AGS is great!

[petaglair]

when i upgrade my game to another ags version(not this beta in particular)
how can i make sure that all my pasts works will be ok in the new exe. Will the game simply crash or will i have to test everything in my game...

i have a game in progress in version 2.52 can i upgrade safely to 2.55 or 2.56, will i have to re-edit somethings

I say that because i started this game longtime ago on an old ags version and when i upgraded to 2.5x everything was messed up the new compiled exe so i had to re-start all from scratch

anyway good job CJ

[bspeersismyfather]

Hi, I'm new here and I actually haven't tried the new beta version, but I have a couple of comments/suggestions.  I hope this is a good place to post them...I couldn't find a better place.

Okay, but suggestions usually go in a specific suggestions thread.  Also, It's a good idea to read up old posts, FAQs, the knowledge base, etc first, because in this case, most of your suggestions have been addressed.

* Disabled auto-complete in the dialog script editor.

Can you also disable the Auto-complete when writing comments in the Script Editor?  It's a little annoying to have the box pop-up when just writing a comment about what the code is doing.

This is up to Chris, but I doubt it would be worth the effort.  Adding comments is not the same as dialog--dialog is a completely different section, so blocking auto-complete from it is relatively straight forward.  Adding comments is actually done within the script file and only blocks the program recognizing the script when the room is compiled or run.  Since that step is not taken during scripting, it's unlikely that cancelling auto-complete here would be easy enough.

Side Note: With Auto-complete could you also do it for properties like character[EGO]. and have a list of all the variables.  It's not vital, but it would be nice.

This might cause confusion and actually more annoyance as there are many other uses for the word "character" than character[EGO].  Though it's ultimately a good suggestion, I'm just not sure if it would work without getting in the way.  But that's up to Chris, obviously.

Other Suggestions:
1) Can you have more tools for making masks in the Room Editor?  
A box tool would be very useful.  So would a circle/ellipse tool.
And maybe even a fill tool that relies on the background: so, if you have a solid object or an object with similar shades (have a tolerance level) of a certain color (in the background) you can flood fill only that part automatically.  Similar to the Magic Select/Fill in Photoshop.

Hey, guess what!  Photoshop already has these abilities.

Okay, so there's no need for my pointless sarcasm, but you should know that these have been asked for many times, and it just isn't feasible.  It would increase the run-time to something approaching that of a graphics program, with little net reward.

The simplest way to accomplish this is just to import a mask.  It's one of the options in the area editor.  Simply take your original image, do exactly what you described to it in a graphics program and import the file as a mask.  Basically it's using a program actually designed for that purpose rather than re-inventing the mouse-wheel.  Import mask.  The simple way.

2) Can you have the Mouse Position Label in the Room Editor still update while the script window is showing?
It's really annoying to have to close the window and save the script just to find the position I need to move a character too.  It would be nice to just move the window aside and be able to still get numbers.

Do you mean update or not update?  If the mouse position updated, it would be different as you clicked through the script file.  You want it not to update, I believe.

I'm not sure if that is feasible, but if it is, I agree it would be a good idea.  I would go one step further and suggest the ability to copy and paste co-ordinates, saving time when leaping from room to room.  THough this could be avoided by simply writing down the numbers in a note-pad document. Still, suggestions should be posted separate from this thread, which is just for 2.55 info.

4) Would it be possible to have an options for no transparency when importing sprites?

While this is not possible right now, it should be easily possible to just put a dot of an unused colour in the top left-hand corner and make that colour transparant.  That way there would be no extra coding needed into the engine, and would only take the artist about 15 seconds.

Is it just me or is it hard to click on the very left edge sometimes?

Yes.  I often have this problem as well.

But for future reference, please make suggestions in another thread.  Generally speaking it isn't preferred to change technical discussions from one topic to another (though oldbies and newbies sometimes do it anyway).

Thanks!