Messages

I have a couple of questions:
Is there a version of the docs with the updated scripting API?

Do I need to put the .crm files in source control or are they re-built by the editor?

[It does not provide auto-complete of AGS globals (rooms, characters, etc).]

This extension for Visual Studio Code (https://code.visualstudio.com) allows you to edit AGS scripts directly from there with syntax, taking advantage of editing features that may be lacking in the AGS editor.

It does not provide auto-complete of AGS globals (rooms, characters, etc). The extension is unaware of the AGS scripting API or what is in your game. It may autocomplete with existing items it can find in the project, but it will not be as robust as what the Editor provides.

Download, release notes, and install instructions here:
https://github.com/clickpulp/vscode-ags-script/releases/tag/v1.0.0-alpha.0

THIS IS AN ALPHA VERSION, HELP ME TEST AND REPORT BUGS 
I'm looking for people to test it out and report any bugs or give feedback in this thread or the Github issues for the project: https://github.com/clickpulp/vscode-ags-script/issues

Hello! I'm working with a few AGS developers to get their games onto new, exciting gaming platforms, and I am looking for an experienced programmer to help me during the testing phase for about 5 hours per week to fix the incoming number of bugs. I have several games on the list, so there will be work for the foreseeable future.

You can read the formal job details and apply here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RS6-mQLbxO2Fsazai6WRreakVQuzpVrdg1ZMM23XuAM/edit?usp=sharing

Also happy to answer any questions in this thread!

[Modules, Plugins, Tools, Templates, etc. authors: I NEED YOUR HELP!]

I've started a list of free/libre projects for AGS using the awesome guidelines. Many other projects use this, and it increases visibility for developers looking for add-ons and the goal is to provide visibility for public AGS projects.

https://github.com/agscommunity/awesome-ags

Modules, Plugins, Tools, Templates, etc. authors: I NEED YOUR HELP! If you want to share your projects on the list, please create a pull request, and I'd be happy to merge it in.

I was reading through the changelist, and I'm very impressed with all the changes in this version, despite the focus on 4.0. I want to thank all the contributors who made this possible. Great job, y'all!

I created an event in the AGS Community Discord to join the General voice channel and watch/talk during the awards ceremony. For anyone interested, you can click "I'm interested" in the calendar event here:

https://discord.gg/fqzPJEeN?event=1350462034738942062

Hello! As some of you know, I've been improving the AGS Community Discord server over the past couple of years. I'd love to integrate the forums more and encourage Discord users to participate here!

One of the things I experimented with was posting some new topics into Discord so that people there are in the know and can easily participate. I was going to use a bot to read the RSS feed. But what I need from both the forum and the games database is the ability to read only new posts instead of updates. That way, the posts for some boards (or new games released) can be automatically posted in some of the Discord channels.

Would it be possible to introduce this?

I don't have much experience designing good puzzles, but as I was working on a small game recently, I researched how to approach it. Essentially, I think of two types of mysteries: Riddles and Puzzles.

- A riddle is something mysterious where the player does not know the solution at first, but works towards it.
- Puzzles are situations where the player knows the solution (e.g., open the door, jigsaw puzzle) and works towards finding a solution.

To offer a good puzzle, the player needs to understand the goal first, and then work their way towards it. Often, I notice that the design ends up being a riddle with the player not exactly sure what they are solving, which can make it difficult. You have to be deliberate on what it is, and the player needs to know if they're solving a riddle or a puzzle.

Here's some notes that I wrote based on The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses (Schell, 2008) chapter on puzzles (chapter 12):

- Make the goal easily understood: Right away the player needs to understand the end-result by looking at it
- Make it easy to get started: Player should be able to start moving pieces right away
- Give a sense of progress: Reveal changes slowly, instead of one big answer at the end. That would be a riddle instead of a puzzle.
- Give a sense of solvability: Make sure that it feels like it can be solved.
- Increase difficulty gradually: Make first solution an easy steps, then add more steps as it gets more complex.
- Parallelism lets the player rest: Give parallel challenges to take breaks in between, like crosswords
- Pyramid structure extends interest: A series of small puzzles that give a clue to a larger puzzle
- Hints extend interest: Well timed hints. What Ben (Chandler) told me once: give some kind of clue when the player gets stuck
- Give the answer! Give out the solution in some way. Show the final product.
- Perceptual shifts are a double-edged sword: "either you get it or don't is hard" - example. monkey wrench - changing perception to make it work.

Congratulations on the release. It's a mini mental achievement and it's great to see it live!

Couple of things I wanted to point out lol:

- the showcase says hundreds of games but we have thousands
- it's a bit difficult navigating to the community areas. I'd like to have a shortcut to the forums, discord, etc through the nav bar

Hey game authors, sorry if this sounds ranty:

Over the past year, I have noticed that in-game credits for AGS continue to be credited solely to Chris Jones. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to CJ, who worked on the project for approximately fifteen years. But since 2011 (fourteen years ago!), several authors have maintained and improved the code, with most of the contributions by @Crimson Wizard, @eri0o, @JJS, @sonneveld, and @morganw. We have the most robust engine today thanks to much of their work.

In any case, the full credits are available in the manual:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Credits.html

I would recommend crediting in a couple of ways:

The short and brief way by using the copyright notice:

Created with Adventure Game Studio (AGS)
Copyright (c) 1999-2011 Chris Jones and 2011-2025 various contributors

Remember when Photoshop used to credit everyone on the splash screen? Go to the credits page in the AGS manual, copy everyone's name, and put them in the credits. Example:

Created with
Adventure Game Studio (AGS)
Alan Van Drake, Benjamin Penney, Benoit Pierre, Bernhard Rosenkraenzer,
Cameron Cawley, Chris Jones, Cristian Morales Vega, Dominik Mierzejewski
Donovan Watteau, Edmundo Ruiz Ghanem, Edward Rudd, Erico Vieira Porto,
Ferdinand Thiessen, Francesco Ariis, Gilad Shaham, HomeLight Games,
Ivan Mogilko, James Duong, Janet Gilbert, Jochen Schleu, Joe Lee,
John Steele Scott, Martin Sedlak, Matthew Gambrell, mausimus,
Michael Rittenhouse, Morgan Willcock, Nick Sonneveld, Ori Avtalion,
Pablo Navarro, Paul Wilkinson, Per Olav Flaten, Peter Bouillon,
Piotr Wieczorek, rofl0r, Ryan O'Connor, Scott Baker, Shane Stevens,
Shawn R. Walker, Stefano Collavini, Steve McCrea, Steven Poulton,
Sunit Das, Thierry Crozat, Tobias Hansen, Tom Vandepoele,
Tzach Shabtay, and Walter Agazzi

Up to you!

Finally, give special thanks to those in the community who helped with your game's development.

I think Tween module can make parallax in zoom in/out too. @edmundito

Not exactly. Changing the camera/pos size does not look well at the moment. The problem is documented here:

https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/issues/2612


I'd love to see parallax support configurable in the room settings, but in the meantime, isn't there a parallax module out there?

I'm going to be biased and recommend some locations near me in the US in hopes that I can attend:

1. If you're interested in the country and want to see Amish/Mennonite riders in buggies and historic ride trains, go somewhere near Lancaster, Pennsylvania! However, several of us also live near the PA/NY area.
2. Washington, DC: "So this is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause." - But to be serious, there are museums, monuments, and all kinds of exciting things to see.
3. I'm going to Disney World/Cape Canaveral! - Somewhere near Orlando, FL
4. Colorado in the summer - Great for outdoor activities like hiking, mountain biking, etc., and it's sort of in the middle of the country, so it's equidistant from anyone coming from either side. Someone suggested this on @Grundislav's stream, and I thought it was a great idea.

@heltenjon Thanks for playing!

Indeed, life happened, and I didn't get the game to the level of polish that I wanted it to be, but I'm hoping to make some fixes when the jam voting ends.

This project hasn't been updated in some time, but it's one of those essential projects for the community. I made a fork of the source code here, part of a new project to enable the community to openly contribute to stale modules/plugins/etc: https://github.com/agscommunity/agsteam

If you've been working on improving the plugin with more recent changes, feel free to contribute to the fork.

I'm excited to see this come through!

Here's my feedback so far:

- I find the progress bar on the carousel gallery a bit distracting. I'd either go without it or make it more subtle (like a little circle in a corner with a more muted color)
- The login panel could be wider
- Not keen on that "Create / Play / Join" section in the main page. I would get rid of it and make the section "Create your Own Games" should be first
- The navigation should have more focus on using the editor (manual, etc.) - I really like the format for Docusaurus (https://docusaurus.io) or vite (https://vitejs.dev)
- Join on the navigation should be "Community", that's the most common thing I see in other sites
- Discord is missing from the Join page
- The History section could use some updating

Bugs:
- Is the "latest from our forums" correct? The posts are from 9 months ago
- The cookie notice looks very small from a mobile device (too much left and right margin)
- The links in "top creators and contributors" has an extra space inside the hyperlink tag
- When switching to dark mode the logo shifts (maybe because the font outline goes away?)

Here's my redraw of features.png!



I can give the full quality image file if approved!

Looks great! My only feedback is to put {} instead of </> in the laptop because the </> feels more towards website and AGS script use lots of braces.

I just finished it! It was a great way to start my mornings: Drinking coffee and getting spooked to get my brain going.

This is another great game by you all, along with Nightmare Frames. It piqued my curiosity about the Victorian era and its morbidities. I loved how you saved the best for last; the more I kept going, the more surprising and visually striking it became. It was a great payoff for putting in all the effort to play through it. I'd love to know more about how you made it... How did you make the time for all the characters with walk cycles, and how did you create those visual effects? Should we add a best visual effects category to the AGS awards?

If you're reading this, I highly recommend it! One of those must-play AGS games.

Someone recommended me this mod for moving chars or objects in a smooth arc and I don't understand how I would make it do that. Any help?

Can you explain the "arc" you are trying to create?

What you need to do is have two tweens. One that moves the X and the other the Y. Here's an example of how to do a circular arc:

Code: ags

player.TweenX(0.5, player.x + 100, eEaseLinearTween, eNoBlockTween);
player.TweenY(0.5, player.y + 100, eEaseOutQuadTween, eBlockTween);

The movement would be similar to this: https://easings.net/#easeOutQuad

If you want the object to go up and then down, then you write the code in two parts:

Code: ags

player.TweenX(0.5, player.x + 50, eEaseLinearTween, eNoBlockTween);
player.TweenY(0.5, player.y + 100, eEaseOutQuadTween, eBlockTween);
player.TweenX(0.5, player.x + 50, eEaseLinearTween, eNoBlockTween);
player.TweenY(0.5, player.y - 100, eEaseOutQuadTween, eBlockTween);

I created an organization here and invited some core AGS engine/editor development members.

https://github.com/orgs/agscommunity/

I'll make a more official post later to see what I'm looking for, but if you're reading this and would like to join to create/fork repos, you can DM me and I'll add you.

If this is primarily intended as an archive of old modules (I believe there are very few plugins that are open-source), I think we need to consider what we can do without explicit permission from the original developers.

You're on point: Any outdated module that people are having trouble with can be forked or added to the repo and updated so that people can have a stable version.

Many modules have been released without any defined license, and although one can probably argue that the act of posting them grants implicit permission to download and use them in a game, is rehosting them OK? Is modifying them OK? Is sharing the modified versions OK? By strict IP rules, probably not.

I was not aware of this. I guess there the tricky part is that if the module has no specified license, we cannot fork it due to IP rights?

In that case, then it would be for modules or plugins with a license where the author is no longer available to make updates, for whatever reason.

@Crimson Wizard I can take ownership and make it available to the community so that it can be used.