@Terran: Some updates for the beginners' FAQ 1/4

[Gilbert]

Okay, I start this thread because of the discussions from this thread, I had read the FAQ a bit (I didn't read it thoroughly, just read the parts that I thought may be outdated and compared them with changes.txt and the latest stable version V2.6sp1), seeing that some of the infos there are already outdated, and I don't want to continue the discussions there as it's a bit offtopic.

NOTE: I'll post multiple posts here in this thread divided according to sections in the FAQ, to avoid each of the posts being too long to read.

AGS EDITOR & USER INTERFACE

Point 4

(a) Near the end of the current text:
"...Just set the GUI so that it never appears (Set it to "Script only"), or simply never refer to the inventory item. If you can't delete it, ignore it."
Note that in current version of AGS, the mode "Script only" had its name change to "Popup Modal" (actually I think there're some changes in behaviour too), so update the text there.

(b) Moreover, actually you can delete GUIs and GUI objects in AGSEDIT now, I suggest adding the following text (or incorporate it into the original contents):
You can now delete GUIs in the editor, just click the "Delete this GUI" button. WARNING: You must be VERY CAREFUL in doing this, as items in AGS are referenced by number, if you delete a GUI which is not the last in the list, it will cause a re-numbering on the ids of teh remaining GUIs, as a result, it is possible that your game's script will refer to the wrong GUIs or even a non-existing GUI, causing hard-to-track crashes. Fortunately you have a name for each of the GUIs, if you only refer to them with their script names (ie, you didn't type in the EXACT GUI ids in your scripts), this can be fixed just by recompiling all the rooms (Game --> Rebuild all room files) and then re-saving the game.

You can also delete GUI objects in the editor, just select the object and hit the DEL key.
WARNING: You must be EVEN MORE CAREFUL in doing this, because of the same reason mentioned in the "delete GUI" part. UNFORTUNATELY, currently you can't set a name for the GUI objects, so you have to fix your script MANUALLY if you really want to delete a button or a label, etc.

Room objects can also be deleted by right-clicking now.
WARNING: I'm too lazy to type, this point is essentially the same as in the "deleting GUI objects" part.

For fonts, characters, views, etc., just reuse them as advised above or just leave them alone, they don't contribute much to file size anyways.

Note that deleting stuffs is only meant to be used by experienced users, and remember to BACKUP your game before doing any of such hazardous acts!


Point 5

Add this:
You can now revert to the default fonts quickly by clicking the "Revert to defaults" button in the editor, it will revert Font 0, 1 and 2 back to their original stage, and DELETE ALL THE OTHER FONTS.
WARNING: As Fonts with #>2 will be deleted using this function, make sure you didn't refer to fonts other than 0, 1 and 2 in your game, or else you may need to fix hard-to-track crashes yourself.


Point 7

Add this:
Heh just kidding, actually the winsetup.exe is useful, as most people just playing AGS games may not know the "game.exe --setup" trick, and because the batch file method won't work for some WIN-NT based systems, and the shortcut method is not practical as you shouldn't force the player to install your game in some fixed folder. So, please include winsetup.exe (or whatever it's renamed) when you distribute your game.

(I'm still typing, more to continue...)

[Gilbert]

GRAPHICS & CHARACTERS

Point 2

(a) Near the beginning of the current answer:
"Okay, okay, I'll help you. The most common circumstances in this case are that the image being imported was usually saved in high-color (24-bit)..."
Well that "hign-color" is obviously "true-colour"...

(b) Add:
Starting from V2.6, AGS now supports 24 or 32 bit true-colour graphics natively, if you REALLY want to keep the excellency of your killer graphics, you may try this new feature by changing the colour-depth to 32-bit in the Palette tab of the editor. Be warned that using true-colour graphics can increase file-size drastically and is more resource hungry, so your game may run slow on lower end computers.


Point 3

Okay, I think you can now display characters with ASCII code>128 for TTFs (but not for SCI fonts) after that "international" release of AGS, but I'm too lazy to check, you may think of updating this point.

(More to come...)

[Gilbert]

SCRIPTING & CODE

Point 5

Add:
Also, the change in character direction will only be visible when the screen is refresh (ie when a gameloop is advanced), if you want the character to change his direction simultaneously and quickly (eg. making a turning-around movement) and place several FaceLocation() lines in a row (or use it within a while() loop, etc.) , make sure you put a Wait(1); line after each of such lines to ensure the screen got updated after each turn.

(One more...)

[Gilbert]

GUI'S

Point 1

Near the end (This had been reported in that other thread already):
"...Choose the property whose value is "Persistent" and change it to "Script only". This way, it will only appear when called by a script..."
Just change "Script only" to "Popup Modal".


(Okay that's all for now, hope it helps. )

[Gilbert]

Sorry, but I have to bump this.

Terran, I didn't re-checked your Beginners' FAQ until recently, and found that some of the the infos are still outdated, so you probably should check this thread and incorporate some of the changes.

[TerranRich]

Huh. I never saw this thread until now. I will update the BFAQ right after I eat my dinner. Thanks, Gilbert!