AGS 3.4.0.6 (Alpha) - Builder Patch

Started by Crimson Wizard, Sat 27/09/2014 17:25:18

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raulpuro

Hi,

Great job, the new Winsetup, even works with compiled projects on older versions. Congratulations.

Greetings.

Calin Leafshade

Am I correct in thinking that one needs admin permissions to compile a game now? That is totally mental.

Whats the purpose of the hard linking anyway? Can't you just pass a folder to the exe which contains the data files or alternatively just use the working directory.

Crimson Wizard

Quote from: Calin Leafshade on Sun 21/12/2014 22:12:07
Am I correct in thinking that one needs admin permissions to compile a game now? That is totally mental.
I believe monkey_05_06 is looking for the proper fix now.

monkey0506

Quote from: Calin Leafshade on Sun 21/12/2014 22:12:07Whats the purpose of the hard linking anyway?

I've brought this up several times, but in order to have each platform build to a separate deployable folder instead of stupidly throwing all of the files into some horrific conglomerate mess, the editor has to either a) copy every game resource file or b) hard link those resource files. When your game resource files reach into the gigabytes, copying them for each individual platform is, as you say, mental. Hard linking these files is the most sensible way of approaching this problem.

And to quell your fears, I've gotten it working just fine from a non-administrator account.

.rhavin

#104
Damn, i just stumpled upon this game-studio and you're just implementing basic functionallity i'd need without the restrictions they currently have, e.g. i'd need your 'managed structs' with the ability to hold a dynamic array of structs. :-((

that  of course â€" doesnt mean that i dont appreciate all the work you already have done!

Crimson Wizard

#105
Quote from: .rhavin on Mon 22/12/2014 21:26:49
Damn, i just stumpled upon this game-studio and you're just implementing basic functionallity i'd need without the restrictions they currently have, e.g. i'd need your 'managed structs' with the ability to hold a dynamic array of structs. :-((

that  of course â€" doesnt mean that i dont appreciate all the work you already have done!

.rhavin, the AGS is a 16 years old program, which started as a DOS engine. Its author has recently made it open source.
The program is very old and quite outdated in particular features.
What we do here, is trying to improve it where possible. We mainly aim to support the old community that has a grasp on the studio and can deal with its limitations.
There's no guarantee it will suit your needs. Also, there's no guarantee it will approach or surpass more modern engines and game studios in its functionality.

Regarding the script feature you mention, we have its improvement planned.

monkey0506

Besides, people have made adventure games without that feature for decades. Not to mention you can effectively work around it in code (with some obvious speed penalties, if you're accessing them hundreds or thousands of times per second).

Crimson Wizard

Quote from: monkey_05_06 on Tue 23/12/2014 19:57:23
Besides, people have made adventure games without that feature for decades. Not to mention you can effectively work around it in code (with some obvious speed penalties, if you're accessing them hundreds or thousands of times per second).
Well... it is not really a reason not to implement it :).

I just meant to say that AGS may unfortunately have surprizes like this, because its rather old.

monkey0506

I meant that it's hardly a justification (in itself) for not using AGS. ;)

proximity

#109
Wohhaaaa ! Excellent work ! I am especially tempted by modern resolutions. Can we expect unlimited number of sprites ?

Chris told me that : "The limit could easily be increased to 32767 sprites, but the problem is that the AGS Engine internally uses a 16-bit int in various places when dealing with sprite numbers. So to raise it higher than that or remove it completely, would require the engine to be changed to use 32-bit ints for sprite numbers.

So basically, yes it can be done, but it's a non-trivial change."

Is that possible to you ? Thanks.
Proximity Entertainment

Crimson Wizard

Quote from: proximity on Sun 28/12/2014 17:36:43
Wohhaaaa ! Excellent work ! I am especially tempted by modern resolutions. Can we expect unlimited number of sprites ?

Chris told me that : "The limit could easily be increased to 32767 sprites, but the problem is that the AGS Engine internally uses a 16-bit int in various places when dealing with sprite numbers. So to raise it higher than that or remove it completely, would require the engine to be changed to use 32-bit ints for sprite numbers.

So basically, yes it can be done, but it's a non-trivial change."

Is that possible to you ? Thanks.

Well, what Chris told is how it is; I had some changes planned, but it's difficult to tell when this will happen. I have few more important changes I need to do first.

Regarding sprites, the sprite cache might need to be rewritten to use different kind of storage. Currently it uses plain array, we might want to change to hash map to also allow larger non-sequential sprite IDs.

Crimson Wizard

Regarding current task at hand, is there any quick changes someone wants to put into 3.4.0?
I am thinking about making a 3.4.0.3 alpha release soon.

Adeel

Tried checking "Run in a window instead of full-screen" checkbox and got a fatal error:

Spoiler
---------------------------
Illegal exception
---------------------------
An exception 0xC0000094 occurred in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x0049C0E5 ; program pointer is -196, ACI version 3.4.0.2, gtags (0,0)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and post the details on the AGS Technical Forum.



Most versions of Windows allow you to press Ctrl+C now to copy this entire message to the clipboard for easy reporting.

An error file CrashInfo.dmp has been created. You may be asked to upload this file when reporting this problem on the AGS Forums. (code 0)
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------
[close]

I get the same fatal error whenever I try to check it. Here's the Crash Dump. Rebuilding the files didn't help. Game's resolution is 1280 x 1024 (which happens to be my desktop resolution as well). Game runs fine in Windowed mode within the editor or if you edit the acsetup.cfg manually, btw.

I'll be using this version from now on so expect lots of feedback. :tongue:

proximity

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Sun 28/12/2014 18:15:16
Quote from: proximity on Sun 28/12/2014 17:36:43
Wohhaaaa ! Excellent work ! I am especially tempted by modern resolutions. Can we expect unlimited number of sprites ?

Chris told me that : "The limit could easily be increased to 32767 sprites, but the problem is that the AGS Engine internally uses a 16-bit int in various places when dealing with sprite numbers. So to raise it higher than that or remove it completely, would require the engine to be changed to use 32-bit ints for sprite numbers.

So basically, yes it can be done, but it's a non-trivial change."

Is that possible to you ? Thanks.

Well, what Chris told is how it is; I had some changes planned, but it's difficult to tell when this will happen. I have few more important changes I need to do first.

Regarding sprites, the sprite cache might need to be rewritten to use different kind of storage. Currently it uses plain array, we might want to change to hash map to also allow larger non-sequential sprite IDs.

Thanks. I will be waiting for it. Just don't rush ;)
Proximity Entertainment

Knox

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Sun 28/12/2014 18:19:18
Regarding current task at hand, is there any quick changes someone wants to put into 3.4.0?
I am thinking about making a 3.4.0.3 alpha release soon.

Hi Crimson, we already have limits removed for gui controls (yay!)...but I was wondering if adding the limit removal of custom properties is a "quick change" so it can make it to 3.4.0.3 alpha?
--All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Crimson Wizard

Quote from: Knox on Mon 29/12/2014 03:11:12
Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Sun 28/12/2014 18:19:18
Regarding current task at hand, is there any quick changes someone wants to put into 3.4.0?
I am thinking about making a 3.4.0.3 alpha release soon.

Hi Crimson, we already have limits removed for gui controls (yay!)...but I was wondering if adding the limit removal of custom properties is a "quick change" so it can make it to 3.4.0.3 alpha?

IIRC that should be pretty simple, but I'll double check later today.

Calin Leafshade

The new build system seems to not work at all.

My game works when i debug it but when doing a full compile it creates two files a mygame.exe in the Compiled folder which windows complains is a 16-bit exe and a mygame.exe in the windows folder which says "Cant find game files."

How is this supposed to work? Am i doing somethign wrong?

monkey0506

There were some last minute changes which weren't thoroughly tested before they were committed into this version. That's my fault, and has been fixed for the next alpha release (which should be out soon).

Knox

Quote from: Crimson Wizard on Mon 29/12/2014 08:38:07
IIRC that should be pretty simple, but I'll double check later today.
Awesome, thanks!
--All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Calin Leafshade

#119
There seems to a problem with sound in the new version. It seems to randomly cut off sounds for no reason. Some times it works and other times it doesnt. The same seems to happen for MP3 and OGG.

EDIT: Also, winsetup doesn't seem to exit properly on close.

EDIT EDIT: Seems the sound issue persists in 3.3.0 (custom res)

EDIT X 3: It seems that AGS is not properly releasing audio channels.

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