When I use this and click somewhere, nothing happens in the game but I see an exception in the output window:
Exception thrown: 'System.IndexOutOfRangeException' in AGS.Engine.dll
I can't reproduce this, so I need more information.
Is this the entire error message, no additional stack trace? Also, where did you put this code? And can you also write the code you used to add the walkable area? Or alternatively, can you send me your project again (with the error reproducing)?
I used Bitmap.SetPixels() with a list I built using nested loops. Is there a better way?
...
I want a rectangle that doesn't cover the whole screen, only a small part.
Not necessarily better, but you can get an empty bitmap as I said before, and then add a translate component which gives you the ability to "move" an area on the screen.
It will look something like this, for example:
var bitmap = factory.Graphics.GetBitmap(1000, 1000);
var mask = factory.Masks.Load("walkablemask1", bitmap, true);
var area = factory.Room.GetArea("walkablearea1", mask, _room, true);
area.AddComponent<ITranslateComponent>().X = 2000f;
Sorry I have to correct you, but at least with version a4b22 the default pivot point for objects is 0.5, 0. I looked at it via debugger and when I reset the pivot to 0,0 the object is moved to the correct position.
I agree about the character pivot point and reasoning, though.
Ah, right, I think I changed it to all images after realizing the same logic applies, you can have multiple animations with different widths and it makes it easier to align by default (and also it's more consistent). I don't necessarily have too strong opinions on this, willing to discuss if you have a better suggestion.
I think in the end it may be worth to not rely on engine's defaults and have a set of utility functions that init objects of different kinds. For example in the racing game I've referenced above I had function that setup a racing car object and it sets pivot to (0.5, 0.5), because it lets you to trivially apply rotation around sprite center.
This makes sense for a racing game, but I wouldn't want the average user to have to create utility functions for a point&click game. The engine should be geared with defaults that apply to the most common use-cases for point&click (or in the future, like we discussed, we might have templates with different defaults, geared to that specific template use case).
I think cat's struggle here stems for the fact that she's porting an existing game, I don't think she'd encounter this issue when creating a new game (we'll see when people actually create new games, though).
Also, the Y axis pointing up makes it inconvenient to work with GUI, since you have to position, for example, menu items vertically in opposite direction (first item having largest Y). I wrote a class for the game menu that does calculations internally to simplify things for myself:
https://github.com/ivan-mogilko/MonoAGSGames/blob/master/Games/LastAndFurious/GameMenuComponent.cs#L169
Check out the built in
Stack layout component which solves this problem (at least for laying out menu items). You add your buttons to a panel, then you add the layout component to the panel and it automatically lays them out for you (and you can set the spacing between the items).
This reminds me, when I last saw (several months ago) both alignment and rotation was performed around pivot, and there was a suggestion to split properties into one determining position alignment and another for object's own transform operations:
https://github.com/tzachshabtay/MonoAGS/issues/284
Right, the jury is still out on this one. I'm keeping the issue open, but as I said, I'm not sure the added flexibility here is worth the added complexity.
I think I was asking if it's possible to implement a surface with custom axis direction, but don't remember what was tzach's decision on that.
Same here, it can be done and it adds flexibility, but I'm again not sure the added flexibility is worth the added complexity.
