Messages

Not sure why but i upgraded to AGS 3.3.0 and.. problem solved (lol).
I was using 3.2.1. version.
I've confirmed this since i ran on same laptop both compiled versions, 3.2.1. one run with speed issues, 3.3.0 runs as it should.
So a million thank you guys for the new version!

e.g.: though I am really curious about why this happens, but anyway

Ok more news (lol..)
Works as it should on an old pentium M, 512 RAM windows XP laptop...

So as far as i can tell, it is either a windows 8.1/windows 8 issue OR has to do with x64 operating systems (since the 2 desktops and 1 laptop on which tested and worked have 32 bit OS).

Does anyone else face an issue like this? It can be very annoying and ruin the game's experience.

I do not use any dynamic sprites or dynamic drawing, as far as i am aware these things cause the biggest performance loss. Resolution is 800x600 but this shouldn't be a problem. The only "heavy" i can think of is that i use .bmp files for everything, instead of a lesser size format like jpeg or png.

Changing the profile to "high performance" didn't help. Do your games Krhis run at the same speed both on laptop and desktop?

The weird stuff it is that both laptops are able to run games smoothly, provided that game speed is increased. So it's not a matter of a less powerful computer. They just can not for some reason calculate the speed value properly

I wish i could do something like "if runs on desktop set game speed X, if on laptop set game speed Y"

More news... another friend's desktop (windows 7, 2 cores) runs it with the desirable speed.
What's wrong with laptops? :-/ Or windows 8 and 8.1 perhaps..

Ok some extra info I've found running some tests.
I wrote this code in function FirstLoad() of the first room, to manually count the number of cycles per second

Code: ags

SetGameSpeed(40);
int count=0;
DateTime *dt=DateTime.Now;
int a=dt.Second;
while(a==dt.Second) { //in order to start from a "clean" second with zero milliseconds
  dt=DateTime.Now;
}
a=dt.Second;
while(a==dt.Second) {
  dt=DateTime.Now;
  Wait(1);
  count++;
}
Display("%d",count);

Running my game using the desktop computer, the results are always 42 (close to 40 value).
But when i run it using the laptop computer, results vary from 26 to 29 (seems to override the 40 value for whatever reason).

Next step was to modify the code to gradually increase game speed value in order to achieve the 40 frames per second value (count=42, as desktop's result). So i added this:

Code: ags

int b=40;
while (count<42) {
  count=0;
  b++;
  SetGameSpeed(b);
  a=dt.Second;
  while(a==dt.Second) {
    dt=DateTime.Now;
  }
  a=dt.Second;
  while(a==dt.Second) {
    dt=DateTime.Now;
    Wait(1);
    count++;
  }
}

It might takes from some seconds up to a couple of minutes but it produces the result "42". But then the surprising fact is that it runs too fast.. surely more than 40 frames per seconds.

I am a bit lost right now.

If anyone interested, some ideas or workarounds would be appreciated.

Sorry if it's somethings it's been answered before, I searched for an answer but game speed related issues that have already been posted seemed kind of irrelevant.
So, i've created a game in my Quad CPU computer using the default 40 cycles per second and, as far as i can tell, there is consistency (4o cycles equal to 1 second). It is very important for me because i have some scenes in game that need to be in sync with the music played in background.
The problem occured when i tested my game using my laptop (i3 core) and a friend's of mine laptop as well (i3 core too). Game was running slower and music was out of sync. It is not a performance issue, since increasing game speed had the desirable effect (music in sync at laptop but out of sync at desktop since it was running very fast). To sum up, it seems to me that when using laptop the "40" value of SetGameSpeed is interpreted differently for some reason :/ OS is windows 8.1, while desktop's is windows 7. Game used direct 3d, not direct draw.
I've seen similar questions posted here, but in my case we are talking just for the default, normal game speed that shouldn't be a problem for any computer.
So any ideas guys?
Thank you and sorry for my long post

e.g.: for example, while playing the game in my laptop, i noticed that the transition effect (dissolve) takes longer to be completed.

btw, SpeechCenter, you have right. The corrupted game.agf contained just zeros, i checked with a hex editor. Also, restoring to previous versions found 3-4 previous versions of the file, though judging from the date i considered safer to just replace it with the game.agf of my backup files.

I am so happy!!! It seems i had kept a somewhat decent backup, not very recent but it saved me a LOT of trouble.. i followed these steps:

1. Replaced the corrupted game.agf with backup's one.

2. Deleted all rooms and imported them again, one by one (luckily rooms are stored seperately from game.agf! )

Scripts, hotspots, objects e.t.c., everything were there (though i had to reconfigure/reimport the more recent objects' images)

3. Replaced with previous sprite cache, since new one was useless and reimported sprites. Fortunately enough, i keep anything that has to do with images, music e.t.c. so it was an affordable task, hadn't to redraw -almost- anything.

4. Recreated some global variables, imported some audio files, did some checks and reconfiguring...

Everything now is back to normal!

This incident teached me a valuable lesson.. BACKUP... BACKUP... BACKUP. Let this be the moral of the story.

Honestly, a bunch of thank you guys for the support. It was really helpful! You gave me the courage to try and deal with the problem, instead of abandoning it, full of dissapointment. Cheers!

If i try to open it like this, it just shows me an empty file, though it obviously contains information, acoording to its size. How can it be possible?

Is there any way to open/edit the Game.agf file and see what's missing and if i can do something to restore it manually? I tried with a XML editor but it doesn't recognise it. Shouldn't be a way since the file's size is not zero? I mean, it contains a considerable amount of information. Isn't any way to extract them? With a good hex editor perhaps?

Guys I can't believe it..

I pressed "run without a dubugger" option, and suddenly my computer crashed Black screen, keyboard wasn't responding. I reboot and entered Windows normally.
And then I was terrified to realise that when i couldn't load my game from AGS editor.. it shows this error..

"Unable to read the user preferences file. You may lose some of your Preferences settings and may not be able to access Source Control.

The error was: Root element is missing"

I pressed OK and then this error occured:

"An error occured whilst trying to load your game. The error was:

Root element is missing.

If you cannot resolve the error, please post on the AGS Technical Forum for assistance.

Error details: System.Xml.XmlException: Root element is missing
at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e)
at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ThrowWithoutLineInfo(String res)
at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseDocumentContent()
at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Read()
at System.Xml.XmlLoader.Load(XmlDocument doc, XmlReader reader, Boolean preserveWhitespace)
atSystem.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(XmlReader reader)
at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(XmlReader reader)
at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(String filename)
at AGS.Editor.AGSEditor.LoadGameFile(String fileName)
at AGS.Editor.Tasks.LoadGameFromDisk(String gameToLoad, Boolean interactive)
at AGS.Editor.InteractiveTasks.LoadGameFromDisk(String gameToLoad)"

Then i just can't load my game.

It means so much to me this game.. i wanted to give it as a present... I am so frustrated i hadn't kept any recent backup... days and countless hours of work seem to be wasted Is there any way to fix this? Anything that could be done? I can't describe how much grateful i would be.

Sorry for whining... and thank you guys for your time.

Sorry, didn't have internet for a couple of days.
I mdon't think it has to do with animation speed or anything character related, because even the objects seem to be "blurring". Even windowed.
Perhaps it's just me :/
I will upload an object going from one corner of the room to the other

Hello guyz, it's been a while..
I encounter a problem when a character moves or an object.. doesn't take place a "smooth" movement, it seems a bit "shaky" and the image of object/character gets blurred.. i haven't any animations, just a single image for "view" of each character. Has it to do with display frequency and am I able somehow to adjust this within the game? In general settings i've set 32bit true colour and 800x600 but i doubt this creates a problem, given the advanced technological improvement of today's computers (quad processor, good video card)
Sorry if that's a noob question, i haven't used AGS for a while..

Thanks in advance, anyway

Keep in mind that you can also create an "english" background. So, if player selects spanish, then in the other room (before fade in) you can have the script commands:
  if(player_option==0) {
    SetBackground(1);
  else
    SetBackground(2);
    }

(I am not sure it is SetAckground, check it in AGS' help).

Or you can have different objects (some with english words and some with spanish, but if player selects e.g. spanish, then the english one will be turned off --- object

• .visible=false;)

I noticed that every setup.exe file matches with all AGS game. So, create a game and to its compile folder, copy the setup.exe that it will be created, paste it to the game's file folder that you want to play, run it (setup.exe file) and i suppose it will work.

Look, about the walk-behing stuff, first off all make sure that you have checked the baseline is in correct place. Secondly, are you sure that you don't have any walk-able area that "fills" all the tree by mistake? Ah, and maybe you have to make smaller the area of walk-behind, to fill only the tree-ground-level area (not the entire tree).

About the old and new message, are you sure that you don't have any script command like "DisplayMessage"..."" Check it out.

It'w pretty simple. Just create a room which will have as image the image of your main menu (you can paint it with MS Paint for windows. Above the painting you have to write your option "New Game", e.t.c. with a good and clear font, or you can draw the letters). Then make a hotspot to the place that it is located the image-text "New Game". This hospot, let's say when the player makes any click on it, it will have the command in the interaction editor "Go to a different room" and whatever else you like. Do this and for the other options. A, don't forget to check the option "Hide player Character"

As in 'White Magician', you mean SilverWizard_OTF, then yes.

I am a Wizard bare of wizardry...

Steel Drummer (by the way, your signature indeed is a bit annoying :o ), well i ma not sure if i got what you want to make, but you can try Cubase music program, it is very good and it gives you the option to combine MIDI sounds with WAV music.

A christian did white magic and stoled your information from your mind.

That's the most stupid answer i have ever heard. Why? Because... i didn't know my IP adress, since it's random and surely not useful to know it

A, and something else: White Mage<>Christian and Christian<>White Mage. With another symbols, White Mage => NOT Christian and Christian=>NOT White Mage. If you can't understand that, then your mind isn't better than the mind of the cat that you have put as the image of your avatar (ok, that was mostly a joke, no misunderstanding please ).

Oh... well, nice to hear it thanks!  :o
I got scared because the ISP that was written was the true one. I wonder, how is this happening?