AGS 3.3 Wishlist

[Dualnames]

barefoot, why exactly do you dig up such an old thread instead of using the 'official' AGS wishlist? You know, it is on page one of the technical forum..

There's no reason attacking the guy, he searched, and probably this came up first, and he didn't see the date.

[subspark]

Yeah! Or perhaps the date *was* correct for barefoot because he was replying from the past.

Sparky.

[Jackpumpkinhead]

i didn't take the time to read all of the posts but my wishes are
a sayinbackgroud function that will animate characters
and
the ability to make characters visable or invisable

[SSH]

Didn't take the time to realise that these already exist, either.

[Stacy Davidson]

Kinda sad to see the widescreen issue hasn't gotten any more love.  I know AGS started as a tool for re-creating retro adventure games, but it's 2010 now and the fact is that most people are playing these games on widescreen monitors with computers that can eat 1920x1080 games for lunch.  I'd even settle for 1280x800.  I just want to be able to design a game that features high resolution graphics that utilize the full width of a widescreen monitor, because those are just about the only monitors on the market anymore.  As long as we keep making 4:3 games, we're just toying around with old school novelties that appear dated on modern computers (and I'm not bashing that in general, I just want to move forward a little more myself).

Thanks Chris,
-s

[subspark]

Yeah its unfortunate that the only widescreen support is LOW-res. 320x200 / 640x400 (16:10) I would also like to see widescreen support for higher resolutions.
Especially now that Monkey 2:SE was recently released. 8)

Cheers,
Sparky.

[Stacy Davidson]

Yeah, even without the fancy menu handling that has been bandied about.  Simple support for 1280x800 would be awesome, preferably with aspect ratio correction for those with 4:3 monitors.  Would be a world of difference for the project I'm working on now.

[GarageGothic]

I barely need to mention it again, but just for the record I still second the hi-res widescreen support request. Though ideally I'd prefer to see it implemented as total resolution independence (with a predefined virtual resolution being mapped to an arbitrary screen resolution) than just another pixelwidth-by-pixelheight choice on the list.

My real reason for posting, though, is to suggest a custom read-only resource file for storing data resources that aren't managed internally by AGS (think a .vox file that isn't restricted to audio files and can be accessed using File.Open). I imagine it as a subfolder in the game's source directory where the developer can put any data files that would normally have to be stored as plain or encrypted text in the game's distribution folder, e.g. map layout data, databases, custom dialog text.  Upon compile, these resources would be stored in a single file which could then be accessed through the File functions (read mode only) - possibly by pointing it to a "folder" specified as the resource file name surrounded by some kind of special character (similar to the current "$SAVEGAMEDIR$" use). Would definitely save me a lot of cut-n-pasting of Strings and auto-generated code to script.

Edit: Wouldn't have to be String data only, since you can't run harmful external code from within AGS anyway there's nothing preventing storing other kinds of data files (pcx or bmp files, though no sure why you would do that, but more relevant perhaps other file formats that could be accessed through a plugin - e.g. for jpg support).

[Chrille]

Said before, I'm sure, but I wish it'd be possible to use pointers for integers and strings.

[Calin Leafshade]

for what purpose?

[Chrille]

Just for keeping down the amount of code really.

[Dualnames]

i didn't take the time to read all of the posts but my wishes are
a sayinbackgroud function that will animate characters
and
the ability to make characters visable or invisable

I have to second that.

[PARENTHESIS]

YES SMARTASS. THERE ARE MODULES FOR THAT.

However it's important to state if somehow ags handled this within a non-blocking talk view, it'd be great. It's not much to ask for, it's a hell of a thing to code to sync with the plugin I'm using. That's all.

I haven't really looked on to that anyhow, but so far not a module that doesn't crash the plugin. It'd be great if it just played the talking view, or some other view would be even better like displayspeechbackground view.

Just ideas.

[Sadistyk]

It would be nice to have a little more zoom to edit the rooms. I'm a little myopic and sometimes when I'm defining the walk-behind areas I have to be very precise and the current maximum zoom gives me a hard time to focus on the pixels.

[Le Woltaire]

Here is my new proposal list:


Graphics & Animation:
- I remind on the subpixel rendering for scaled sprite movements with Direct3D support at 32-colordepth issue that I had started. This would be a gigantic improvement in AGS. The characters now look and move stutteringly when they are scaled at unequel levels.

- I continue to propose the import of vector sprites with solid fillings. This developement exists in the adventure culture since "Another World" and could help developers to make small sized unique games with fluid animations. The handeling scripts could be similar as the ones for Adobe Flash actionscript. It would be a really powerful tool for the whole scene.


Text Parser:
- Is it possible to export/import the content of the text parser word list into a single txt or xls file with all the word group and type info, so that it can be better distributed to translators and proofreaders?

- Can the parser words be left out of the translation files? It doesn't matter anything for the game if you translate them there from my experience. (If I'm wrong correct me.) Instead of this they have to be added in the parser list as additional translated synonymes.

- Is it possible to have multiple text parser lists. With more than 5000 words in a list it becomes very difficult to handle this. Instead one could define another list and call the list depending on the topic or function, or Language.

- In order to make lists shorter could the synonymes get + tags or folders at the side and open on click then show all the synonymes. I have four different languages in some of my games that are partially parser driven. In such a case tha parser words have to be added in another language and create lot's of word material on every word. All languages get mixed up, this is very confusing for me.

- Every time a parser word gets added all rooms get recompiled when the game is tested. Is this neccessary?

- German umlaut accents like ä ü ö and other foreign signs do not get understood by the parser. I think it's a pitty.


Rooms:
- Folders for room organization or a sort rooms by name option would be useful. There exist so many games now with more than 100 rooms. Room names can be easily changed. But if room numbers change it's a lot of confusion because the scripts don't update automatically...
In my case I am naming the rooms after the following system:
LOCATION_SUBLOCATION_TYPE_NUMBER
Example: PALACE_HALL_ZOOM_1
Sorting them by name is more useful...

- When the x,y coordinates are copied or displayed could the 320x240 coordinates be used if the script is controlled by low resolution coordinates (general setting) ? Currently always the real coordinates are displayed and have to be recalculated by head in such a case.

- An "export room maps" option would be great that exports hotspot, walk behind, regions and walkable areas to four different PNG files with the rooms name and content. This helps to remake games in higher resolutions. Otherwise when importing a new screen resolution the maps are lost... Alternative: When a new screenshot gets imported the current areas get automatically scaled by AGS on the new screens size on demand.

- Can the "fix object in postition" option be reinstalled? This was very useful when objects overlapped.

- Can selected objects in a room be positioned with the arrow keys in a pixel perfect way?


System:
- Mac users keep mailing me about mac versions for my games. Is there really no voluntary team to work out a new mac compiler?

- Can there be something like a switch between windows and full screen mode?

- Can the setup dialogue be styled in the games style?


Postproduction:
- Can there be an internal screen cast plugin for AGS that is there to generate an AVI or MOV or OGG file from the returned material in AGS? I got the experience that on high resolution games it is difficult to capture game sceenes from AGS with screen cast software. In general many times they are not able to get fluid game sceene videos.

- Can a game runner be compiled with the game on demand? Something like a small additive programm that ags spits out where setup, game start and manual or other files get accessible on a table. (I know it`s possible to script this alone and some developers did this, but it could become an intern optional part of the engine like the setup tool.)

[NSM]

For me, it would be a major help if VSync was introduced for Direct3D to prevent tearing.

[Calin Leafshade]

For me, it would be a major help if VSync was introduced for Direct3D to prevent tearing.

Give this a try http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=41669.msg551426#msg551426

[cat]

I'd love to modify properties during execution, and also translate the values of stringproperties in the translation file.

[Dualnames]

I'd love a GetTint character command. It can perhaps be used like this. cEgo.Tint(cyogurt.GetTint());

That would make me happy. It can always return the HTML color code, but that'd require lots of scripting from CJ's part, so that's more than understandable.

[markbilly]

If someone has said this before, I'm seconding it. If not:

Transparency for dialog option guis, please!

Until that is implemented, TLG isn't getting released, basically.

[Calin Leafshade]

@markbilly

This is possible with scripting if you are clever about it.

make the dialog option gui back color magic pink
everytime you display the dialog options (i.e before a dialog starts or after the number of options has changed):
iterate through the dialog options counting which are on and which are off
using this count you can calculate how much space the dialog gui will take up.
put a new gui being the dialog options gui with your transparency or alpha channeled image or whatever and position it relative to the space the dialog gui is taking up.
switch this gui on/off everytime you display dialog options/dont display them.
DONE!

this does work since its in Infinite Grace's next game ^_^