AGS 2.8 alpha 8 preview

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I'll keep writing these as new posts for as long as someone posts in-between, otherwise some edit may be overlooked... I know you may be aware of all these things I'm saying, but then again, you may not be, so I hope I'm doing the right thing by saying them.

So, I have a character/view/whatever. I double click on it, and the tab opens, and the properties window at the bottom-right fills up with info. But if I then click in ANY other item of the navigator panel at the top-right, the properties window blanks outs. Which makes sense. But if I click or double-click or whatever on the character/view/whatever whose tab is currently open, in order to edit/view said properties, the properties won't open. I have to open something else and THEN re-open the thing whose properties I want to see/edit. I can't see how this can have been intentional on your part, as it's unnecessary burden on the game maker, so I rather assume it just escaped your hawk-like vision for now.

EDIT - Ok, matter of preference now, but it's starting to bother me how much smaller all the graphics are... ok, maybe it's because the game is 800x600, but even at this res, the "old" AGS didn't give me as much eye-strain as I have now trying to pin-point the hotspot on the cursor.

And no, I'm not actually using it to actually work on the actual game, I'm just exploring it as much as I can while it's still being developed.

[Pumaman]

Er, naturally, you do plan to re-add the visible mouse coordinates when editing a room AND still right-click for getting the coordinates, especially now that it can be done when, say, objects are being displayed...

I see you've spotted my cunning trick of working out whether people use a feature by removing it and seeing if anyone complains that it's missing 

I played around, in the view editor, with clicking on "new loop" and "delete last loop" many times. Visually, it all got rather weird, like... heck, give it a go yourself - make a new view, add as many loops as you can, and see how weird the distances get. Then start deleting loops, and see what happens as you do.

Hmm yeah that is wierd, I'll have a look at it.

Naturally, not seeing a placeholder for "preview animation" in the view manager doesn't mean there won't be such a feature, ayuh?

Yeah, the problem is I can't see any obvious place to put the preview window on the View Editor (unlike the Character Editor, where it fits neatly). I don't really want it to be a popup window like in the old editor, because that'd seem rather out of keeping with the new design.

a feature that should be implemented in v2.8 is that you can make overlapping hotspots, regions, walkable areas and walkbehinds.

At the moment AGS stores these masks as a single bitmap, where each pixel can belong to one area; therefore it'd be a big job to change how this works and allow overlapping areas. As Rui says, when this situation does crop up, it's easy enough to create a third area where they intersect, and have the script behave appropriately.

All in all, this new alpha is looking great!!

Thanks, I hope people are starting to warm to the design of it now. Change is always scary, but in this case I think it'll make the editor more intuitive and easier to work with.

Another lil' issue, I opened up a (copied and backuped) copy of a project of mine, with a 800x600 GUI (it's one of those fullscreen panels, you know). I'm running WinXP at 1024x768, and it's a bit of a pain to edit that GUI. Previously, we saw the whole thing (if we didn't we could scroll) and we could move the "properties" window around. Now we can't scroll (which is unfortunate - but is it something you were going to look into anyway?) and the window isn't detacheable. Is it going to be the way it is now? Are you still going to change something?

I'm not sure whether the best solution here would be to make the GUI area scrollable, or whether to scrap the toolbox on the left hand side and move its functionality into the toolbar (like how the hotspot/region editing works). Any preferences?

Also - the game is 800x600, and there's text on the GUI I just mentioned. JUST AFTER opening the game on the new alpha, I took a look at the GUI and saw the letters quite small, as though I had told the game that I didn't want them to scale up at 640x480. Which I didn't, because right now I DO want them to scale up.

Interesting, I'll look into it.

I noticed the AGS Editor takes longer to load than before.
Is this just a side effect of the .NET framework? 

Probably, yes. .NET applications have to be compiled as well as loaded at runtime, so it will be a bit slower. As long as the performance within the editor is ok, I'm not too worried about it taking an extra second or two to load.

So, I have a character/view/whatever. I double click on it, and the tab opens, and the properties window at the bottom-right fills up with info. But if I then click in ANY other item of the navigator panel at the top-right, the properties window blanks outs. Which makes sense. But if I click or double-click or whatever on the character/view/whatever whose tab is currently open, in order to edit/view said properties, the properties won't open. I have to open something else and THEN re-open the thing whose properties I want to see/edit.

Yes, I've noticed this too. You have to find a bit of background of the pane to click on, then the properties will come back (eg. in a View pane it's quite easy to get them back, with Characters it's harder).
There's a bug somewhere here, I need to look into it.

Ok, matter of preference now, but it's starting to bother me how much smaller all the graphics are... ok, maybe it's because the game is 800x600, but even at this res, the "old" AGS didn't give me as much eye-strain as I have now trying to pin-point the hotspot on the cursor.

Are you referring to any particular part of the editor or just generally? The hotspot editor displays the room background at the same size as the old editor did.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

I see you've spotted my cunning trick of working out whether people use a feature by removing it and seeing if anyone complains that it's missing

There's only so much we can let you get away with!

Yeah, the problem is I can't see any obvious place to put the preview window on the View Editor (unlike the Character Editor, where it fits neatly). I don't really want it to be a popup window like in the old editor, because that'd seem rather out of keeping with the new design.

To be honest, if you want to avoid a pop-up window I can't really think of a better place either (and I agree that it's fabulous on the Characters pane, are you planning on adding Idle previews for completeness' sake?). I suppose opening up a whole new tab especifically for previewing would be silly, but I can't think of a better solution... but I'd be sorry to see the feature go, really. Heh, it's been coming and going for years, really!

I'm not sure whether the best solution here would be to make the GUI area scrollable, or whether to scrap the toolbox on the left hand side and move its functionality into the toolbar (like how the hotspot/region editing works). Any preferences?

Well, because I'm used to the way AGS currently works, I tend to preffer scrollability. But I have to say that moving them to the toolbar also seems like a good decision. That left-hand bar is a bit too empty for its height.

On the subject of GUIs, I noticed we can now create a text-window GUI from the word go, as it were - create it already as such. But apart from the layout of the newly created GUI, I didn't really spot anything that marked that difference once it was done. Did I miss something, or did you not think it was enough of a deal (seeing as the GUIs will probably get aptly named)?

Are you referring to any particular part of the editor or just generally? The hotspot editor displays the room background at the same size as the old editor did.

Well, generally it looks like the sprite graphics are a bit smaller (GUIs, inv, everything but the room graphics) - and less blocky, obviously) - but generally it doesn't bother me. But I did like double-clicking on an item in the sprite manager and seeing a close-up... and specifically, and the reason I posted this, the images in the "cursors" pane - walk, look, examine, whatever - all look smaller. Now, when I want to pin-point the hotspot on the cursor, it's a bit of an eye strain, whereas AGS used to give me a rather magnified image of the cursor, making it much easier and more comfortable.

Now for an unrelated question - you've said this version will eliminate some limits. I don't suppose that includes the little pixel-accuracy problem when dealing with 640+ res? Just curious. Mind you, I'm also curious as to whether it will make it easier to change room/object/whatever custom properties at runtime, and as to whether it will... I'll shut up now, I think I'm starting to drool in antecipation.

Re everything else you said - glad to hear I'm being helpful, as opposed to nagging.

And of course, how could I forget to say - great work, nay, extraordinary. Congrafatabulations.

[SSH]

When I try the "add to source control" option, I get a clearcase errror... can you throw some light on the source control support?

I can't fathom how this is related to Rui's error, though...

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

CJ and SSH - the error SSH reported seems related to the first error I reported in this thread. And it seems that it only happens when on a new GUI, if you load a GUI and try and create a control it'll all be allright. Hope you didn't think you had fixed that...

[voh]

It would be great, by the way, if it were possible to zoom in when drawing hotspots - and to have the cursor actually draw where you're holding it. Now, I get mixed results because it's usually a line lower than what I'm aiming at, and it's hard to make well-fitting hotspots without being able to zoom in on my tiny 320x240 backgrounds

[Pumaman]

On the subject of GUIs, I noticed we can now create a text-window GUI from the word go, as it were - create it already as such. But apart from the layout of the newly created GUI, I didn't really spot anything that marked that difference once it was done. Did I miss something, or did you not think it was enough of a deal (seeing as the GUIs will probably get aptly named)?

That's a fair point, I guess it should probably say "TextWindow GUI" as the property window title at least.

Well, generally it looks like the sprite graphics are a bit smaller (GUIs, inv, everything but the room graphics) - and less blocky, obviously) - but generally it doesn't bother me.

The GUI and room graphics are definitely the same size; however it's possible that the cursor graphics are not as magnified as they were in the previous editor, I'll check it.

Now for an unrelated question - you've said this version will eliminate some limits. I don't suppose that includes the little pixel-accuracy problem when dealing with 640+ res? Just curious. Mind you, I'm also curious as to whether it will make it easier to change room/object/whatever custom properties at runtime, and as to whether it will..

Please don't twist my words -- when I said limits, I meant limits like "Thou shalt only have 500 views" and "Thou shalt only have 100 sprites per folder". Not just random feature requests

Please bear in mind I'm basically aiming not to change the engine at all for this release, to go for as low-risk approach as possible. So any changes that would require the game engine to be updated are unlikely to be put into this release.

When I try the "add to source control" option, I get a clearcase errror... can you throw some light on the source control support?

The source control support is not yet fully implemented, so it won't actually add any files to source control at the moment (though it will create a folder).
AGS uses your PC's default source control provider, so if you have visual studio installed this will probably be SourceSafe, it sounds like you have the Rational suite installed so you're getting ClearCase.

AGS will use it in the same way that Visual Studio does, ie. allow you to check in/out the various files that make up your game. But obviously, in order to take advantage of this feature, you'd need a source control repository set up on your PC. This is fairly easy to do with SourceSafe, I don't know about ClearCase but I imagine it's more involved.

CJ and SSH - the error SSH reported seems related to the first error I reported in this thread. And it seems that it only happens when on a new GUI, if you load a GUI and try and create a control it'll all be allright. Hope you didn't think you had fixed that...

The crash you posted when creating a button/label/etc happens if there are no fonts in the game (it tries to draw the "New Button" text and dies). I won't be fixing it, because for the final version you'll have to go through a "new game/load game" welcome screen which will ensure that a game will always be loaded with some fonts in it.

It would be great, by the way, if it were possible to zoom in when drawing hotspots - and to have the cursor actually draw where you're holding it. Now, I get mixed results because it's usually a line lower than what I'm aiming at, and it's hard to make well-fitting hotspots without being able to zoom in on my tiny 320x240 backgrounds

I can appreciate this -- but as I said, please hold off with feature requests for now. Once I get everything implemented to be on a par with the 2.72 editor then we can consider adding new editor features that were too difficult to do with the previous version.

[Kweepa]

The source control support is not yet fully implemented, so it won't actually add any files to source control at the moment (though it will create a folder).

It pops up a perforce connection window here. So that part seems to work.

[voh]

I can appreciate this -- but as I said, please hold off with feature requests for now. Once I get everything implemented to be on a par with the 2.72 editor then we can consider adding new editor features that were too difficult to do with the previous version.

A thousand times sorry, I had missed that request. I will keep my piehole neatly shut, and revel in the knowledge that I made a fairly semi-decent point, which was simply badly timed 

[subspark]

One request I have is the ability to resize boxes and text windows from every corner. Not just from the bottom right.

Also, when positioning for example an inventory box in the GUI editor, on the left hand side, the borders of the item jump a pixel when trying to stretch it evenly on both sides to the edge of the window space.

EDIT: To reiterate with more clarity, I noticed this phenominon presents itself when dragging 'anything' around. Items seems to jump a pixel no matter where you drag them. I beleive a 2 pixel drag grid is unecissary.

Cheers,
Paul W.

PS: Don't worry, not only programmers get RSI. Artists too. Your not alone in the world of computer entertainment.

[Gilbert]

EDIT: To reiterate with more clarity, I noticed this phenominon presents itself when dragging 'anything' around. Items seems to jump a pixel no matter where you drag them. I beleive a 2 pixel drag grid is unecissary.

Are your game in hi-res (640/800) ? In that case that "jump" is necessary since it's how hi-res stuff placement is handled at the moment.

[LimpingFish]

Am I alone in thinking that the editor is sufficent as is, and that the engine would benefit more from some tweaking?

All this extra work on the editor is great, but it's not really going to have much impact on finished games (apart from a change in the creation workflow), and we're still left with people moaning about the niggling little problems with the engine.

I realise this makes me sound awfully ungrateful for CJ's hard work, and I'm sure he's planning to get to the engine, so I'll stop now.

[monkey0506]

Am I alone in thinking that the editor is sufficent as is, and that the engine would benefit more from some tweaking?

All this extra work on the editor is great, but it's not really going to have much impact on finished games (apart from a change in the creation workflow), and we're still left with people moaning about the niggling little problems with the engine.

I realise this makes me sound awfully ungrateful for CJ's hard work, and I'm sure he's planning to get to the engine, so I'll stop now.

Yes. You are *very* alone. For you see, the rest of us have read what CJ actually had to say about this Editor update:

Well, there have been various requests for features in the editor that simply weren't possible because of the editor's design, and its code was so messy that I was having trouble understanding it whenever I had to make updates.

Not to mention the fact that he said it would remove most of the system limits.

On a side note...I've only for the first time realized the word "not" in the posts regarding my previous posts about the script auto-complete. Interesting the way sometimes those words just disappear somewhere between my eyes and brain.

[pcj]

Actually, I think both the editor and the engine could use some work.  Let's hope the engine is next.

[Pumaman]

Partly it's psychological. Re-writing the editor can be done gradually, adding more functionality bit by bit and seeing it work. Also, there's quite a bit of freedom when designing the new version since it doesn't have to work identically to the old one.

A rewrite of the engine would be harder for two main reasons:
1. It would have to behave identically to the current version, for backwards compatibility. Even the most minor difference could lead to games not working properly, so it would need a lot of effort to make sure it ran as expected.
2. It's more of a big-bang approach. You pretty much need to implement the entire thing before you can see tangiable benefits.

Having said that, this re-write of the editor should ease the process of re-writing the engine, should that happen in future. The 2.72 editor is quite strictly tied to the engine file formats, whereas the 2.8 editor uses its own data structures and will then 'compile' them into the engine formats when you save the game. Therefore this process could easily be replaced with a different 'compiler' to save the game differently for a new engine.

But please don't take this as a promise to re-write the engine, let's take things one step at a time.

[Ghost]

You should never forget that it's YOUR program, and we're just the spoiled brats that nag all the time 

Honestly, I'm still 100% sure that the AGS engine is without peer when it comes to sheer amount of features, and the new editor looks as if it's to increase the acceptance of more recent designers by adding a nice look, consistent gui and other cosmetical stuff. So what could we ask more?

[pcj]

Does the new engine HAVE to be able to run old games?  I mean, even Microsoft eventually realized that backwards-compatibility was limiting forward progress.

[LimpingFish]

Roll on AGS 3.0!

Yes, the reason for rewriting the editor before the engine is clearer to me now. So I'll just be in this corner. Over here. For now. Here. Um...

LimpingFish runs.

[pmprog]

Some bugs, if you're not aware of them...

1)

After loading, if you right click on Fonts, and add a new font, then double-click on "0: Font 0", I get the following exception-

System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory was corrupt.
  at drawFontAt(Int32, Int32, Int32, Int32)
  at AGS.Native.NativeMethods.DrawFont(Int32 hDC, Int32 x, Int32 y, Int32 fontNum)
  at AGS.Editor.FontEditor.imagePanel_Paint(Object sender, PaintEventArgs e)
...
...


2)
Right click Views, and select New View. Double click "1: View 1", click the "Create New Loop" 8 times. The last loop erm, "row" is offsetted wrong, and the spacing between rows get progressively further apart as more are added.


Looking good! Keep up the good work!

[Pumaman]

After loading, if you right click on Fonts, and add a new font, then double-click on "0: Font 0", I get the following exception-

There are various problems if you try to use the empty game that is loaded at startup. Please test it out by making a copy of a game that you have, and importing that.


Alpha 3 is now out; it adds and fixes various things:
* Script compiler added, along with a new "Build" option
* Autocomplete added to script editor
* Interactions for inventory and characters are conveted to script
* Initial source control implementation, should be able to check in and out the main game files
* New icons by Klaus
* Removed the toolbox in the GUI editor and moved the icons to the toolbar
* Fixed view editor going wierd when adding enough loops that the screen needed to scroll
* Fixed the "fonts designed for 640x480" setting not being properly respected in the GUI Editor
* The GUI editor property grid now has "(TextWindowGUI)" as the title for text windows.
* You can now edit multiple room scripts at the same time
* Renaming rooms now works

Things that I'd like you guys to test:
1. Does the script compiler still work? Can you import and successfully compile your game?
2. How is autocomplete looking? There are probably some bits of it that I've forgotten, so let me know of any situations where it used to work but doesn't now.
3. Interactions for inventory and characters will be converted to script functions. (There is no interaction editor now; instead, the "Events" pane of the property window is where you'll find the relevant bits). Do the generated scripts look reasonable?
4. Source control -- if anyone does have any source control software installed on their PC, I'd appreciate it if you'd give the feature a quick try.