AGS 3.5.0 - RC 5
Current release number: 3.5.0.21
For Editor
For Android
For AGS developers
Released: 28th November 2019
Previous stable version:
AGS 3.4.3 P1 forum threadThis release is brought to you by:- Alan v. Drake
- BigMC (fixes to building on some Linux systems)
- ChamberOfFear (Editor's Color Themes)
- Crimson Wizard
- John Steele Scott (OpenGL support on Linux)
- Martin Sedlak (new pathfinding)
- Matthew Gambrell (better threaded audio support and bug fixes)
- monkey0506 (steam/gog plugin stubs)
- morganw
- rofl0r (bug fixes)
- scottchiefbaker (fixes to building on some Linux systems)
- sonneveld
- tzachs (new navigation bar for the Room Editor)
What is new in 3.5.0Common features: - Now using Allegro v4.4.3 library (previously v4.4.2).
- Support for large files: compiled game, sprite set, room files now may exceed 2 GB.
- Deprecated relative assets resolutions: now sprites, rooms and fonts are considered to match game's resolution by default and not resized, unless running in backwards-compatibility mode.
- Allow room size to be smaller than the game's resolution.
- Removed fonts count limit.
- Raised imported sprites count limit to 90000 and removed total sprite count limit (this means you may have around 2 billions of dynamic sprites).
- Removed length limit on the Button and TextBox text.
Editor: - Editor requires .NET Framework 4.5 to run.
Dropped Windows XP support. - Editor preferences are now stored using .NET configuration model, instead of the Windows registry.
- Added support for custom UI color themes.
- Game and room templates are now by default saved in AppData/Local/AGS folder. Editor finds them in both program folder and AppData.
- Allow to change IDs of most of the game items in the project tree by swapping two existing items. This is done by calling a context menu and choosing "Change ID".
- Added "Game file name" option to let users easily set compiled game file's name.
- Added "Custom Say/Narrate function in dialog scripts" options to General Settings which determine what functions are used when converting character lines in dialog scripts to real script.
- Added "Allow relative asset resolutions" option to "Backwards Compatibility" section. Disabled by default, it makes game treat all sprites and rooms resolution as real one.
- New revamped sprite import window.
- Sprites that were created using tiled import can now be properly reimported from source.
- Added context menu command to open sprite's source file location.
- Using Magick.NET library as a GIF loader. This should fix faulty GIF imports.
- New sprite export dialog that lets you configure some export preferences, including remapping sprite source paths.
- Sprites have "Real" resolution type by default. "Low" and "High resolution" are kept for backwards compatibility only. When importing older games resolution type will be promoted to "Real" whenever it matches the game.
- New navigation bar in the room editor, which allows to select any room object or region for editing, show/hide and lock room objects and regions in any combination.
These settings are saved in the special roomXXX.crm.user files.
- Improved how Room zoom slider works, now supports downscale.
- Added "Export mask to file" tool button to the Room Editor.
- Added MaskResolution property to Rooms. It ranges from 1:1 to 1:4 and lets you define the precision of Hotspot, Regions and Walkable Areas relative to room background.
- Added "Default room mask resolution" to General Settings, which value will be applied to any room opened for editing in this game for the first time.
- Added "Scale movement speed with room's mask resolution" to General Settings. This is a backward compatible option that supposed to be False by default.
- Removed Locked property from the Room Object, objects are now locked by the navbar.
- Split GUI's Visibility property into PopupStyle and Visible properties.
- Added Clickable, Enabled and Visible properties to GUI Controls.
- "Import over font" command now supports importing WFN fonts too.
- Removed "Fonts designed for high resolution" option from General Settings. Instead added individual SizeMultiplier property to Fonts.
- Alphabetically sort audio clips in the drop lists.
- Display audio clip length on the preview pane without starting playback.
- Sync variable type selector in Global Variables pane with the actual list of supported script types.
- In preferences added an option telling whether to automatically reload scripts changed externally.
- Added "Always"choice to "Popup message on compile" preference. Successful compilation popup will only be displayed if "Always" choice is selected.
- Added shortcut key combination (Shift + F5) for stopping a game's debug run.
- Don't display missing games in the "recent games" list.
- Build autocomplete table a little faster.
- Disabled sending crash reports and anonymous statistics, because of the AGS server issues.
- Corrected .NET version query for the anonymous statistics report.
- Disabled screenshot made when sending a crash report, for security reasons.
- Fixed "Script Compatibility Level" was not correctly set when importing projects made in AGS 3.4.* versions.
- Fixed crash and corruption of project data when writing to full disk.
- Fixed saving sprite file to not cancel completely if only an optional step has failed (such as copying a backup file).
- Fixed changing character's starting room did not update list of characters on property pane of a room editor until user switches editing mode or reloads the room.
- Fixed room editor kept displaying selection box over character after its starting room has changed.
- Fixed room editor not suggesting user to save the room after changing object's sprite by double-clicking on it.
- Fixed sprite folders collapsing after assigning sprite to a View frame or an object.
- Fixed view loops displayed with offset if the view panel area was scrolled horizontally prior to their creation.
- Fixed Audio folders were displaying internal "AllItemsFlat" property on property grid.
- Fixed MIDI audio preview was resetting all instruments to default (piano) after pausing and resuming playback.
- Fixed MIDI audio preview had wrong control states set when pausing a playback.
- Fixed autocomplete not showing up correctly if user has multiple monitors.
- Fixed autocomplete crashing with empty /// comments.
- Fixed script compiler could leave extra padding inside the compiled scripts filled with random garbage if script strings contained escaped sequences like "\n" (this was not good for source control).
- Fixed crash when editor was updating file version in compiled EXE but failed and tried to report about that.
Scripting: - Fixed compiler was not allowing to access regular properties after type's static properties in a sequence (for example: DateTime.Now.Hour).
Script API: - Introduced new managed struct Point describing (x,y) coordinates.
- Introduced StringCompareStyle enum and replaced "caseSensitive" argument in String functions with argument of StringCompareStyle type.
- Implemented Dictionary and Set script classes supporting storage and lookup of strings and key/value pairs in sorted or unsorted way. Added SortStyle enum for use with them.
- Implemented Viewport and Camera script classes which control how room is displayed on screen.
- Implemented Screen struct with a number of static functions and properties, which notably features references to the existing Viewports. Deprecated System's ScreenWidth, ScreenHeight, ViewportWidth and ViewportHeight in favor of Screen's properties.
- Added Game.Camera, Game.Cameras and Game.CameraCount properties.
- All functions that find room objects under screen coordinates are now being clipped by the viewport (fail if there's no room viewport at these coordinates).
This refers to: GetLocationName, GetLocationType, IsInteractionAvailable, Room.ProcessClick, GetWalkableAreaAt and all of the GetAtScreenXY functions (and corresponding deprecated functions).
- Added Character.GetAtRoomXY, Hotspot.GetAtRoomXY, Object.GetAtRoomXY, Region.GetAtScreenXY, replaced GetWalkableAreaAt with GetWalkableAreaAtScreen and added GetWalkableAreaAtRoom.
- Replaced Alignment enum with a new one which has eight values from TopLeft to BottomRight.
- Renamed old Alignment enum to HorizontalAlignment, intended for parameters that are only allowed to be Left, Center or Right.
- Added new script class TextWindowGUI, which extends GUI class and is meant to access text-window specific properties: TextColor and TextPadding.
- Added new properties to GUI class: AsTextWindow (readonly), BackgroundColor, BorderColor, PopupStyle (readonly), PopupYPos.
- Added Button.TextAlignment and Label.TextAlignment.
- Added missing properties for ListBox: SelectedBackColor, SelectedTextColor, TextAlignment, TextColor.
- Replaced ListBox.HideBorder and HideArrows with ShowBorder and ShowArrows.
- Added TextBox.ShowBorder.
- Added AudioClip.ID which corresponds to clip's position in Game.AudioClips array.
- Added Game.PlayVoiceClip() for playing non-blocking voice.
- Added SkipCutscene() and eSkipScriptOnly cutscene mode.
- Allowed to change Mouse.ControlEnabled property value at runtime.
- Added Game.SimulateKeyPress().
- Added optional "frame" parameter to Character.Animate and Object.Animate, letting you begin animation from any frame in the loop.
- Try to create all subdirectories when calling File.Open() for writing, DynamicSprite.SaveToFile() and Game.SetSaveGameDirectory().
- Deprecated "system" object (not System struct!).
- Deprecated Character.IgnoreWalkbehinds and Object.IgnoreWalkbehinds.
- Deprecated DrawingSurface.UseHighResCoordinates. Also, assigning it will be ignored if game's "Allow relative asset resolutions" option is disabled.
Engine: - New pathfinder based on the A* jump point search.
- Implemented new savegame format. Much cleaner than the old one, and easier to extend, it should also reduce the size of the save files.
The engine is still capable of loading older saves, temporarily.
- Implemented support for sprite batch transformations.
- Implemented support for multiple custom room viewports and cameras.
- Removed limits on built-in text wrapping (was 50 lines of 200 chars max each).
- Removed 200 chars limit for DoOnceOnly token length.
- Reimplemented threaded audio, should now work correctly on all platforms.
- Made debug overlay (console and fps counter) display above any game effects (tint, fade, etc)
- Made fps display more stable and timing correct when framerate is maxed out for test purposes.
- Print debug overlay text using Game.NormalFont (was hard-coded to default speech font).
- Improved performance of hardware-accelerated renderers by not preparing a stage bitmap for plugins unless any plugin hooked for the particular drawing events.
- Reimplemented FRead and FWrite plugin API functions, should now work in 64-bit mode too.
- Support "--gfxdriver" command line argument that overrides graphics driver in config.
- Implemented "--tell" set of commands that print certain engine and/or game data to stdout.
- Use "digiid" and "midiid" config options to be used on all platforms alike and allow these to represent driver ID as a plain string and encoded as an integer value (for compatibility).
- Completely removed old and unsupported record/replay functionality.
- Replaced number of fatal errors reported for incorrectly called script functions with a warning to the warnings.log instead. This is done either when arguments may be fixed automatically, or script command simply cannot be executed under current circumstances.
- Expanded some of the error messages providing more information to end-user and developers.
- Fixed engine could not locate game data if relative path was passed in command line.
- Fixed potential bug which could cause DoOnceOnly tokens to be read incorrectly from a savedgame.
- Fixed engine crashing with "division by zero" error if user set InventoryWindow's ItemWidth or ItemHeight to 0.
- Fixed engine crashing if Object.SetView is called with a view that does not have any loops.
- Fixed old walk-behind cut-outs could be displayed on first update in a room if the room's background was modified using raw drawing commands before fade-in.
This happened only when running Direct3D or OpenGL renderer. Note that this bug was probably never noticed by players for a certain barely related reason.
- Fixed BlackBox-in transition done by software renderer could have wrong aspect ratio.
- Fixed Direct3D and OpenGL displayed pink (255, 0, 255) fade as transparent.
- Fixed Direct3D was slightly distorting game image in pixel perfect mode.
- Fixed Direct3D was not clearing black borders in fullscreen, which could cause graphical artifacts remaining after the Steam overlay, for example.
- Fixed potential crash that could happen when switching between fullscreen and windowed mode, or switching back into game window (only observed on Linux for some reason).
- Fixed IsMusicVoxAvailable() not working correctly in old games which use 'music.vox'.
- Fixed a bug in mp3/ogg decoder where it assumed creating an audiostream succeeded without actually testing one.
- Restored support for running games made with experimental 3.3.0 CR version.
- Fixed character's blinking frames drawn incorrectly when legacy sprite blending mode was on.
- Fixed increased CPU load when displaying built-in dialogs (save, restore etc).
- Restored legacy InventoryScreen() behavior which picked sprites 0, 1, 2 for inventory dialog buttons when predefined 2041, 2042 and 2043 were not available.
- Added Scavenger's palgorithms plugin to the list of builtins, for ports that use ones.
- Added stubs for monkey0506's Steam and GoG plugins to let run games on systems that do not have Steam/GoG installed (all related functionality will be disabled though).
- Added stubs for SpriteFont plugin.
- Added missing stubs for agswadjetutil plugin.
Linux: - Support for OpenGL renderer.
- Use same FreeType library sources as Windows version, which suppose to fix TTF font glitches.
- Re-enabled threaded audio setting.
- $APPDATADIR$ script paths are now mapped to "$XDG_DATA_HOME/ags-common", making sure it is a writeable location.
Windows: - Windows version of AGS is now built with MSVS 2015 and higher.
- Engine is marked as a DPI-aware application that supposed to prevent window scaling by system.
On color themesAfter launching the Editor, go to File - Preferences. In the "Editor Appearance" group box you will find "Color Theme" setting. If you haven't installed any themes yet the selection list will be empty. Press "Import Color Theme" and select appropriate JSON file, containing theme configuration.
Sample color theme:
Dark UI Theme.
There is no specification on theme creation yet, but I hope there will be one at some point. For now you may copy and modify existing one. Themes are in JSON format, which you may edit in most simple text editors. If the theme is broken, the editor will report an error and reset to Default theme on startup.
ChamberOfFear also suggested creating a repository for the themes to let people upload their own and improve existing ones, which we may do in a future.
On new navigation bar in the room editorThis was made by tzachs back in 2014, but got into the editor only now. The feature is working, but may need polishing.
Screenshots (warning - big size):
Quoting tzachs (from his old thread) -
- Room Layers
This feature allows you to view (and edit) walkable areas/walk-behinds/hotspots/regions/characters/objects/edges in the same time (as opposed to only seeing one of them at a time, like we've seen before).
Well, not entirely though: walkable areas/walk-behinds/hotspots/regions still can't be seen together (as they use masks and is part of the natives dll so I skipped it for now) but they can be seen along objects, characters, and edges.
- Visibility
Each layer can be made visible/hidden by the push of a button. In addition, for the objects/characters/edges layers each item in the layer can also be made visible/hidden by the push of a button.
This will only affect the editor, not the actual game.- Locking
Each layer can be locked/unlocked by the push of a button. In addition, for each layer, each item in the layer can also be locked/unlocked by the push of a button.
A locked item cannot be moved until it is unlocked, useful to prevent mistakes when designing the room.
This will only affect the editor, not the actual game.On Dictionary and Set script typesAGS 3.5.0 introduces two new script classes Dictionary and Set. Both are containers (like special kinds of a list) that store Strings in them. Unfortunately AGS script does not support "generic" code which would allow to create these container classes for any type, so we decided to make ones with String support for the time being, and because Strings are pretty universal type that may store many things in itself.
Dictionary is a container that stores key/value pairs. The existing analogue is "custom properties". It lets you define a name for some value and attach value in it, then later read or change that value using same key.
Dictionary *dict = Dictionary.Create();
dict.Set("name", "Roger");
dict.Set("health", String.Format("%d", 10));
...
int health = dict.Get("health").AsInt;
Set is a container that stores just lone strings, and it mainly has a use of describing a list of unique items. The existing analogue is "Game.DoOnceOnly" function.
Set *myTasks = Set.Create();
myTasks.Add("bought milk");
myTasks.Add("pressed button");
myTasks.Add("locked door");
myTasks.Remove("pressed button");
...
if (myTasks.Contains("bought milk"))
{ // do something
}
Both Dictionary and Set may be created in 4 different forms, combining two properties: a) sorted/unsorted mode and b) case-sensitive/case-insensitive mode. Note you cannot change their behavior after creation, but you may copy their contents to another Dictionary or Set. Both classes provide GetItemsAsArray() method which lets you get their current contents in same order as they store it (sorted or not).
On new room viewport and camera commandsThis release changes the way AGS handles room viewport. Originally room view was covering whole screen and always drawn 1:1. 3.5.0 separates old viewport into
viewport and
camera, also changing the meaning of viewport term. Additionally, 3.5.0 now supports
multiple viewports and cameras.
In 3.5.0:
Viewport is a
place on screen where room is drawn, defined in game coordinates (e.g. 0,0 - 320x200).
Camera is a
place in room which is being drawn, defined in room coordinates.
The part of the room "seen" by camera is being copied to the viewport on screen, scaled up or down if necessary.
For example, if you set camera's size twice as small than the viewport, then room will appear zoomed in x2. If you set camera's size twice as big than the viewport, room will appear zoomed out x2.
NOTE: you cannot set camera size larger than the room's background.
To access viewport and camera use new properties: Screen.Viewport and Game.Camera. These are primary viewport and primary camera that are always present and cannot be removed.
Screen.AutoSizeViewportOnLoad boolean value turns automatic viewport adjustment on room load. It is ON by default which corresponds to normal room view you are used to.
As extra, there are Screen.Viewports array and Screen.ViewportCount property that tells that array's size, as well as Game.Cameras array and Game.CameraCount. These arrays may come useful when working with multiple viewports/cameras.
In regards to viewports/cameras, note that they currently are belong to the global Game state and automatically transit to a new room along with player. You would have to remember to clean unnecessary ones up either in "room leave" or "room enter before fade-in" events.
Since the relation between screen and room is now more complicated new functions were added to help convert between screen and room coordinates: Screen.ScreenToRoomPoint(), Viewport.ScreenToRoomPoint() and Viewport.RoomToScreenPoint(). These functions return an object of Point type containing (x,y) coordinates.
Screen.ScreenToRoomPoint() returns null if there is no Viewport on screen under these coordinates. This is because if there will be multiple viewports supported in the future then engine simply won't know which to choose having none under these coords.
Both Viewport.ScreenToRoomPoint() and Viewport.RoomToScreenPoint() have 'clipViewport' parameter which tells whether they should return null if the coordinates lie outside of the visible part of the room.
Old viewport functions are now deprecated, they may still be enabled if you set "Script compatibility level" to v3.4.1 or lower.
Here's correspondence between old and new functions:
| Old command | New command(s) |
| SetViewport(x, y); | Game.Camera.SetAt(x, y); |
| ReleaseViewport(); | Game.Camera.AutoTracking = true; |
| GetViewportX(); | Game.Camera.X; |
| GetViewportY(); | Game.Camera.Y; |
As you may see, what was known as "viewport" earlier is now called "camera", and "new viewport" is something that was never supported before.
