AGS 2.71 Final 2 - Politically Correct Edition

[Scummbuddy]

1) Did you have Windows Media Player open? It doesn't need to be playing anything, but if I have it open, I get that same message.

2) You may have to join the exclusive AGS club that has to test their game by clicking on the game icon in the games folder, and no longer through the AGS menu. Congrats! 

[SSH]

Ironically, RC3 fixed your problem #2 for me. Check that your DirectX, video drivers, etc. are up-to-date.

[Pumaman]

SSH: The PNG probably had an alpha channel that was meaning the background got left at 32-bit. GIF's also get left at 8-bit.

These "features" were originally meant to allow for clever tricks so that you could use an 8-bit background in a 16-bit game for instance; however now I think they're just annoying and counter-intuitive, so I'll modify the editor to automatically convert all backgrounds to the game colour depth on import.

Heimdal: strange, it shouldn't have a problem with Windows 98, and in fact other people have said that the new version improved things for them on Win98. Are you sure you haven't got any other sound apps open, like Scummbuddy says?

[GarageGothic]

These "features" were originally meant to allow for clever tricks so that you could use an 8-bit background in a 16-bit game for instance; however now I think they're just annoying and counter-intuitive, so I'll modify the editor to automatically convert all backgrounds to the game colour depth on import.

But will you still be able to set the color depth to 16-bit, import your backgrounds and non-alpha sprites, then switch back to 32 and import the rest? I use this trick a lot to avoid wasting file size on 32-bit backgrounds.

[Pumaman]

Yes, when you import a background it will convert it to the current game colour depth.

[Pumaman]

Ok, Final 2 is now up.

"What's Final 2?!?!", I hear you ask. Well, a few things were found with the final so this is a new one. The main reason I'm releasing this is because of the numeric keypad problem, which is a regression over 2.7 so it really needs to be fixed.

Hopefully this should be it, asuming no big problems are found with this version.

[Kinoko]

Well, that's good enough for me so I've finally downloaded the new version and I'm playing around with it.

I have one problem which isn't a bug but I didn't feel it was worth starting a whole thread about.

I'm getting the error Type Mismatch: Cannot convert 'const string' o 'string' for the line ccCreateCommand(1, "MOVE:380,166; MOVE:360,186; GOTO:1;");


This is a function of the Character Control System plugin. Is it possible form me to fix this problem myself? Or do I have to try and get the plugin itself updated by Scorpiorus (who I havent seen here in a very long time)?

[SSH]

Two ways to work around it:

1) Use the Char Control module instead of plugin

2) Do this:

string x;
StrCopy(x, "WHAT I WNT TO SAY");
old_function(x);

Hack, but will work

[Kinoko]

Oh, I didn't even know there was a module. I'll take a look at it, thanks!

[GarageGothic]

This is seriously weird. Until now I've had no problem with the Snow/Rain plugin, but as of Final 2 it has stopped working. It works fine with a compiled game using v. 2.71.888 but not on 2.71.894.

Edit: Ah, now I know why I couldn't reproduce the rain plugin issue until now. It seems that if you have an old acwin.exe file in your game directory, the game will be compiled with an executable for that version rather than that of the current editor version. So for a couple of builds I've kept compiling the game using the old .exe. Sorry for the confusion Trisk.

[strazer]

Oh, I didn't even know there was a module.

Are you sure? 

I'm in the process of updating/rewriting the module for AGS v2.71 and there's still one bug I have to figure out.
If you have to upgrade to v2.71 now, you better work around using SSH's suggestion for now.

Edit: Module updated.

[SSH]

EDIT: I've been noticing that my GUIs are displayed wierdly in the editor. I say GUI is, say, 50x10 pixels with transparent BG in 320x200 res. But the editor draws a 100x20 magenta box for me to place my buttons, etc, in... very hard to position things in! This was pretty much straight after usign the empty template.

Also, I've used a SetRestartPoint() in room 3's before fadein (starting room) and then once in room 2, I do a RestartGame, but it just reinitialises Room 2... I'm still investigating this one. EDIT: Ah, just the old... "The game can't save while a script is running, so SetRestartPoint will actually wait until the first game loop when there isn't a blocking script running in the background. Is this likely to be the issue?" This should be added to the manual entry for SRP, btw... "Only creates a restart point once the game has stopped running scripts"


Just for more info on SnowRain. I tried using it and it didn't work for me. The plugin comes with the Allegro 4.0 DLL. I tried copying in the 4.1 and 4.2 DLLs to the compiled dir to see if that helped, but no such luck. I also tried JUST having newer versions, but that didn't help either. And renaming the 4.2 DLL to 4.0 just breaks things! So much for the DLL idea. Shame that Scorp seems to not be around for a while!

[Pumaman]

Fair point about the documnetation for SetRestartPoint, I'll do that.

As for the GUI editor, it's deliberately a bigger area than the GUI to allow you to easily move controls around -- but if your GUI background is transparent I can see how this could be confusing.

You can always turn on the border temporarily, then turn it off once your controls are placed.