Topics

Sorry it's taken me so long to get round to this, but the final missing piece of the puzzle is now added to SVN!

https://svn.adventuregamestudio.co.uk:7743/svn/ags/trunk/Editor

As the Native assembly is a VC++ mixed mode assembly, you need the full version of Visual Studio to compile it.
Therefore, the editor code has two solution files -- AGS.Editor.NoNative.sln, which doens't include the Native DLL. This will work on the free VC# Express editions, but will reference the pre-compiled Native assembly; and AGS.Editor.Full.sln, which includes everything if you have the proper Visual Studio.

Let me know if it compiles for you or if anything is missing

Finally, after 2 years of discussion, the new website has launched!

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk

Sorry it's taken so long, and thanks to everyone for your help designing and testing the new site.

In the process, I've finally cleaned up the domain names -- previously both adventuregamestudio.co.uk and bigbluecup.com were pointing to the same server but only bigbluecup.com would recognise forum logins.
Now, I've changed it so adventuregamestudio.co.uk is the official domain and bigbluecup.com just redirects to it. Hopefully this should simplify everything (also also help the google ranking of the games pages, as their ranking was divided amongst two domains before).

Let me know what you think!

[DO NOT]

Now that 3.2.1 has been released, AGS seems to be in a stable enough state to release the source code.

So, to that end I've added it to the SVN repository here:
https://svn.adventuregamestudio.co.uk:7743/svn/ags/trunk
you will need the Common, NativeLibs and Engine folders within this.

I know there's been a lot of interest in this, so if you're a C++ programmer then the code is now available for your perusal. It's released under the Artistic License 2.0, as with the editor code.

You will need Visual C++ Express 2008 (this is a free download from MS). Do NOT use the 2010 version, this will probably not work and let's not complicate things at this stage by trying to use it.

In the VC++ Options, you'll need to add the /Common and /Common/libinclude folders to the VC++ Include Directories list.

You will also need to install the DirectX SDK from Microsoft if you don't already have it.

DO NOT use this source code as a learning resource or a guide on best practice.
The state of the source code is VERY BAD and should in fact be considered an example of BAD PRACTICE.
Unlike the AGS Editor code which is relatively modern and a generally good standard, the engine code dates back 12 years to 1999, and has a severe case of the another-bit-being-bolted-onto-the-side disease. It also retains compatibility with old versions which means that some of the old and particularly dire code paths cannot yet be removed.
So just to be clear, YES I KNOW that the code is in a bad state. You don't need to tell me that.
I also know that AGS is used by thousands of games with thousands of combinations of game settings and script functions, and that any attempt to refactor the code into a better state is likely to inadvertently break something in someone's game, which is why I haven't attempted to do it yet.

The first important question is, does it compile for you? I'm not 100% sure that I've uploaded everything it needs into SVN, so let me know.

If you're thinking about making a change to the engine, make sure you always consider:
* How does the change affect existing games? Will it break any backwards compatibility?
* Does the change work with all colour modes (8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit)?
* Does it work with both "low-res" (320x200/320x240) and "hi-res" (640x400 upwards) co-ordinate systems?
* Does it work with both the DirectDraw and Direct3D graphics drivers?
* Is it cross-platform (ie. is there anything platform-specific that would break the Mac and Linux ports?)

If you're thinking about adding third-party libraries, remember that AGS must not use GPL libraries as the GPL license is too strict. Libraries licensed under the Lesser GPL (LGPL) are ok, however.
Always carefully read the license of any third-party libraries before proposing to use them in AGS.

It's been a long time, but AGS 3.2.1 is now officially released.

Changes in this version include:

* Added Find/Replace In All Files capability (Tzach Shabtay)
* Added GUI control snapping, alignment, grouping and locking to GUI editor (Steven Poulton)
* Added loop cut/copy/paste, Flip All Frames and Import From Sprite Folder options to Views in editor, to access this right-click to the right of the loop (Tzach Shabtay)
* Added RGB colour selector to the various colour properties (ProgZmax)
* Added Characters option to room editor to show all characters set to start in that room (ProgZmax)
* Added Find All Usages right-click option to script editor (Tzach Shabtay)
* Added current co-ordinates display while dragging objects/characters in room editor (Steven Poulton)
* Added syntax colouring to dialog scripts (Steven Poulton)
* Added Dialog.ShowTextParser script property (CJ)
* Upgraded to latest version of LEC template (abstauber)
* Middle mouse button now activates the "Copy co-ordinates to clipboard" option in all the room editor modes (ProgZmax)
* Fixed D3D tints not working properly (3.2 regression) (Nefasto)
* Fixed crash drawing GUIs with no background (3.2 regression) (CJ)
* Fixed crash restoring/restarting depending on state of crossfading (CJ)
* Fixed intermittent crash moving objects and using the Ctrl+A debug option (CJ)
* Fixed "crossfade buffer null attempting transition" if you restored a save game that had a different current transition type to the current game position (CJ)
* Fixed script editor tooltips getting stuck if they appeared over the tab bar at the top of the editor (Tzach Shabtay)
* Fixed editor error if you deleted a room that a character was set to start in (CJ)
* Fixed co-ordinates displayed in room editor not reflecting Low-Res Co-ordinates setting (ProgZmax)


If you're still using 3.1.2 SP1, then this release also includes the changes in 3.2 which never had a website release:

* Rewrote audio system. The old number-based sound and music are gone, replaced with new named audio clips. Added AudioClip.*, AudioChannel.*, Game.IsAudioPlaying, Game.SetAudioTypeVolume, Game.StopAudio, System.AudioChannels, System.AudioChannelCount, System.Volume, ViewFrame.LinkedAudio script commands.
* Added Game.IgnoreUserInputAfterTextTimeoutMs, Maths.Exp, Maths.Log, Maths.Log10, Maths.Cosh, Maths.Sinh, Maths.Tanh
* Added option to automatically add side borders when running 4:3 games on widescreen monitors
* The generated EXE version information is now set to your Game Name and Developer Name instead of "Adventure Game Studio" and "Chris Jones"
* Added new LEC-style template by abstauber
* Added Applies To feature to custom properties, so that you can have properties that only apply to Rooms or Characters, for example
* Added menu option to remove old Global Messages from the game, to stop them coming out in translation sources
* Added support for anti-aliased TTF fonts in all situations where they weren't previously supported.
* Added $APPDATADIR$ support to File.Open to allow you to write files to an accessible folder that is not the Save Games folder
* Added eMouseMiddleInv support to on_mouse_click
* Added editor plugin API methods IGUIController.ActivePane, IRoomController.PreSaveRoom
* Added plugin API events AGSE_PRESAVEGAME and AGSE_POSTRESTOREGAME
* Improved graphics mode detection so that the screen doesn't keep flickering when trying to start up a low-res game full screen
* Improved colour quality of mini-sprites displayed in sprite manager
* Improved the user-friendliness of some error messages, thanks to Error Reporting
* Improved editor robustness to recover if the Game.agf.user file was corrupt
* Winsetup now displays the game name in the title bar instead of "Adventure Game Studio"
* Disabled editor option to save changes whilst the game was running, since doing so  could cause sprite file corruption
* Editor property grid now displays a drop-down list instead of a text box when selecting a font or room
* Changed the pathfinder so that the character cannot get stuck if he ends up outside one of the room edges
* Removed limit on number of text parser words
* Renamed the "handle inventory clicks in script" general setting to better reflect what it does
* Removed room properties Play Music On Load, Music Volume and Save/Load Enabled since they are now obsolete
* Mouse.IsButtonDown now works with eMouseMiddle
* "Export all sprites in folder" command now exports 32-bit sprites as PNGs to prevent losing the alpha channel
* Improved error handling if you passed an int to a string argument in String.Format
* The Restart Point save file (AGSSAVE.999) is no longer deleted when you quit the game,  to fix a problem where RestartGame didn't work if you started the game by double-clicking an Enhanced Save Game file in explorer
* Disallowed accented characters like é in script names in the editor, because they wouldn't compile
* Dynamic sprite deletion warning is now only displayed on exit if Debug Mode is turned on
* Fixed sprite entry getting duplicated if you dragged a sprite to the end of the list
* Fixed crash with Hq2x and Hq3x graphics filters (3.1.2 regression)
* Fixed character/object tints and light levels in D3D not matching DX5
* Fixed TintScreen in D3D so that it looks the same as DX5
* Fixed Sierra-style speech box moving if the room was scrolled while it was displayed
* Fixed error running game and problems with save games if there were unicode characters in the folder path
* Fixed GUI controls not updating properly if the control moved under the mouse, but the mouse didn't move
* Fixed theora video being permanently muted after you played one video with muted audio
* Fixed Dynamic Sprites causing memory corruption if a mouse cursor was set to sprite 0
* Fixed Compress Sprites setting not taking effect until you next edited some sprites
* Fixed GUI AdditiveOpacity mode not working properly if you tried to have a non-alpha sprite on an alpha GUI
* Fixed light levels >100% not working with Direct3D driver
* Fixed Object.MergeIntoBackground not working with Direct3D driver
* Fixed IsKeyPressed not working with the following keys: [ ]  ; ' , . /
* Fixed struct member functions with more than 9 parameters giving run-time error
* Fixed File commands looking in the wrong directory if you launched the game by double-clicking a save game in explorer
* Fixed SetBackgroundFrame in Player Enters Screen event causing old frame to flash up briefly with D3D driver
* Fixed Make Default Language command crashing if two different source lines mapped to the same translated line
* Fixed run-time error if you returned a string from a function that was a member of a local dynamic array
* Fixed sprite cache corruption if you had a single sprite larger than 20 MB
* Fixed Room.GetDrawingSurfaceForBackground and Character.PlaceOnWalkableArea to give error message instead of crash if you called them from game_start
* Fixed GUI label text not being anti-aliased if there was a background image but the BGColor was set to 0
* Fixed editor crash creating new game if your Windows username had unicode characters in it
* Fixed Views tree collapsing after renaming or drag-dropping a view
* Fixed editor crash on startup if you made the editor window very small before closing it down last time
* Fixed editor crash if you set an object's image to -1
* Fixed character gliding if he bumped into another solid character and the character's MovementLinkedToAnimation property was false
* Fixed DynamicSprite.Rotate cropping 1 pixel off the left side when rotating an image with an odd width/height
* Fixed ShakeScreenBackground not clearing letterbox borders properly if you switched from a large to a small shake
* Fixed "Internal compiler error: table overflow" if there were a lot of imported functions/variables
* Fixed when importing an 8-bit image, if there was another palette slot in the image with the same colour as the transparent slot it got changed to black
* Fixed Game.SpriteWidth/SpriteHeight returning the size of the blue cup instead of 0 if you supplied an invalid sprite number
* Fixed script editor issue if you typed some text, switched to another tab, then came back and did Undo
* Fixed autocomplete editor crash if there was a line break inside an array indexer
* Fixed compiler crash if a dialog script just had a @ on a line on its own
* Fixed editor crash if you tried to use a non-icon file as TEMPLATE.ICO
* Fixed sprite import window crash if you right-clicked in the second stage of tiled import
* Fixed mouse cursor being drawn in dialog options in DX5 mode even when Mouse.Visible was set to false
* Fixed no line number provided when DynamicSprite.CreateFromDrawingSurface threw an error
* Fixed script editor crash if you saved the script while the final function was missing its closing brace
* Fixed the editor Preferences window only allowing you to type 5 characters in if you wanted to manually enter a path for the New Game Directory or Import Directory
* Fixed "Close all other tabs" crashing if a room editor with unsaved changes was one of the other tabs
* Fixed changing a walk-behind baseline not marking the room as modified
* Fixed editor crash XmlException: An error occurred while parsing EntityName.
* Fixed compilation errors if you named a character with only numeric digits, eg "c500"


http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/AGS-3.2.1.exe

(if you were using the betas, this is the same release as 3.2.1 Final 3).

If no major issues are reported in the next week or so, I'll create the RAR release and update the website.

So, I never got round to releasing 3.2 to the website. Then the editor code was open-sourced and people added cool stuff to it! So I thought, let's combine all those things, and a couple of bug fixes, into a new 3.2.1 release, and get it out there!

So my plan is for this to be a very short release cycle. I don't plan on adding anything else to 3.2.1, so please give this a test and see what you think.

Changes in 3.2.1 Final 3:
* Room list in Characters editor now refreshes if you change the name of a room (CJ)
* Fixed Replace In Files adding the replced word to the top of all files (tzachs)
* Fixed room editor property grid listing Objects when in Characters filter (CJ)


Changes in 3.2.1 Final 2:
* Added the new loop context menu options to right-clicking on a frame too (CJ)
* Added Dialog.ShowTextParser script property (CJ)
* Fixed crash restoring/restarting depending on state of crossfading (CJ)
* Fixed Paste Loop not working properly (Tzach Shabtay)


Changes in Final release:
* Upgraded to latest version of LEC template (abstauber)
* Fixed "crossfade buffer null attempting transition" if you restored a save game that had a different current transition type to the current game position (CJ)
* Fixed code folding to expand the fold if you double-clicked an error message that lead to the code (Steven Poulton)
* Disabled Find/Replace dialog autocomplete, because it wasn't case sensitive (CJ)


Changes since 3.2.1 beta 1:
* Fixed D3D tints not working properly (Nefasto)
* Fixed Find Next F3 option not working in script editor (CJ)
* Fixed Find dialog losing focus after finding one match (CJ)
* Fixed breakpoint markers and enabled setting them by clicking in margin (Calin)
* Fixed middle mouse button drawing lines in room editors when it should just display the menu (CJ)

Changes since 3.2:
* Added Find/Replace In All Files capability (Tzach Shabtay)
* Added GUI control snapping, alignment, grouping and locking to GUI editor (Steven Poulton)
* Added loop cut/copy/paste, Flip All Frames and Import From Sprite Folder options to Views in editor, to access this right-click to the right of the loop (Tzach Shabtay)
* Added RGB colour selector to the various colour properties (ProgZmax)
* Added Characters option to room editor to show all characters set to start in that room (ProgZmax)
* Added Find All Usages right-click option to script editor (Tzach Shabtay)
* Added current co-ordinates display while dragging objects/characters in room editor (Steven Poulton)
* Added syntax colouring to dialog scripts (Steven Poulton)
* Middle mouse button now activates the "Copy co-ordinates to clipboard" option in all the room editor modes (ProgZmax)
* Fixed crash drawing GUIs with no background (3.2 regression) (CJ)
* Fixed intermittent crash moving objects and using the Ctrl+A debug option (CJ)
* Fixed script editor tooltips getting stuck if they appeared over the tab bar at the top of the editor (Tzach Shabtay)
* Fixed editor error if you deleted a room that a character was set to start in (CJ)
* Fixed co-ordinates displayed in room editor not reflecting Low-Res Co-ordinates setting (ProgZmax)


http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/AGS-3.2.1-Final3.exe

[completely unsupported]

Following discussions in this previous thread, I have decided to go ahead and open up the source code for the AGS Editor.

It is released under the Artistic License 2.0; please read and understand the license before downloading the source code.

Some important points about this release:
* The AGS Editor source code is C#, built with Visual Studio 2008 and targetted to .NET 2.0. You should be able to compile it with the free Visual C# Express edition, but I haven't tried this.
* This source release does not include the source code to the AGS.Native DLL. This assembly is a mixed-mode managed and native C++ assembly, which has dependencies on various other libraries such as Allegro, ALFONT and Scintilla, which makes it relatively complex to compile. I will consider releasing the source code for this in the future.
* The editor uses irrKlang for audio previews, you may need to download this separately if you can't build the editor.
* The AGS.CScript.Compiler assembly has a half-finished re-write of the script compiler. Only the Preprocessor part of this assembly actually currently used; the rest of it is only half finished.
* This release is completely unsupported. Additionally, I will not provide support for any bugs or problems you have with a version of the AGS Editor that you built yourself, or problems with any games that you create with such a version.

Contributing changes:
* The "Standard Version" of the AGS Editor will still be controlled by me. This will be the version available for download on the website. However, I am looking forward to receiving fixes and improvements to incorporate into it.
* I may set up some sort of CVS at some point. For now, if you make any bug fixes or add any cool new features, please post your updated source code in this thread so that we can discuss adding it to the Standard version of AGS.
* I would prefer for the Plugin API to be enhanced so that minimal changes are actually required to the Core AGS Code, and that more functionality can be implemented by plugins.

Source code download:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/AGSEditor-Source-3.2.0.103.zip

Have fun! Let me know how you get on, or if you have any problems compiling the code.

So, over the last year or so it has been becoming increasingly clear that I no longer have the time to maintain and improve AGS like I did back in the good old days.

I feel particularly guilty about the bug reports that are filed here in the Tech Forum but I no longer actually have time to go away and investigate them and fix them.

So I've been trying to work out what to do about this; and I'm still not totally sure what the right answer is.
I certainly don't want to just give up and say "AGS is cancelled", because that would be throwing away 10 years of hard work, and would betray everyone who's developing games here.
On the other hand, I can't continue to pretend that nothing has changed, because it's evident that new versions and patches just aren't being released within any sort of reasonable timescale any more.

So, what are the options?

Well, ideally I'd like to recruit an assistant, somebody to help with development of AGS. But it would probably be practically impossible to find anyone with the skills and dedication to do it (after all, it's my baby, so it would be very hard to find anyone else who would have the same level of dedication to it).

Another option is to open-source all the code, and hope that some sort of open source community takes over. But then I would completely lose control of it, and it's not certain that any open-source developers would want to continue developing it or taking it in the right direction anyway.

So considering the lack of any obvious way forward, my current thinking is this:
As a first step, open up the .NET source code of the AGS Editor.
Whilst ideally I would like to see AGS Editor enhancements done as plugins, I appreciate that the current plugin API doesn't provide all the functionality that would be needed for this. So preferably I'd like to see somebody take the editor and enhance the plugin API, so that plugins become more powerful and the need to actually modify the core editor code is reduced.
I would still have control of official AGS Editor versions and releases, but other people could go and add features and fix bugs, and then submit these code changes back to be incorporated into the core.

If this works out well, then go on and open up the majority of the AGS Engine source code. I'm still not sure what to do about the code that handles the AGS file formats, because opening that up would make decompilers very easy to write. But that's a small amount of code in the grand scheme of things, and something we can discuss later on.

So, I'm curious to hear your feedback. Would anybody actually want to make their own changes to the AGS Editor, if the code was available? Do you think this would work as a process going forward?

Well, it's been a long wait (18 months in fact) but version 3.2 of AGS is finally here!

The main change is that the audio system has been rewritten to get rid of the number-based sound and music, and replace it with a more modern, easy-to-use system based on sounds having names.

Changes since 3.1.2:

* Rewrote audio system. The old number-based sound and music are gone, replaced with new named audio clips. Added AudioClip.*, AudioChannel.*, Game.IsAudioPlaying, Game.SetAudioTypeVolume, Game.StopAudio, System.AudioChannels, System.AudioChannelCount, System.Volume, ViewFrame.LinkedAudio script commands.
* Added Game.IgnoreUserInputAfterTextTimeoutMs, Maths.Exp, Maths.Log, Maths.Log10, Maths.Cosh, Maths.Sinh, Maths.Tanh
* Added option to automatically add side borders when running 4:3 games on widescreen monitors
* The generated EXE version information is now set to your Game Name and Developer Name instead of "Adventure Game Studio" and "Chris Jones"
* Added new LEC-style template by abstauber
* Added Applies To feature to custom properties, so that you can have properties that only apply to Rooms or Characters, for example
* Added menu option to remove old Global Messages from the game, to stop them coming out in translation sources
* Added support for anti-aliased TTF fonts in all situations where they weren't previously supported.
* Added $APPDATADIR$ support to File.Open to allow you to write files to an accessible folder that is not the Save Games folder
* Added eMouseMiddleInv support to on_mouse_click
* Added editor plugin API methods IGUIController.ActivePane, IRoomController.PreSaveRoom
* Added plugin API events AGSE_PRESAVEGAME and AGSE_POSTRESTOREGAME
* Improved graphics mode detection so that the screen doesn't keep flickering when trying to start up a low-res game full screen
* Improved colour quality of mini-sprites displayed in sprite manager
* Improved the user-friendliness of some error messages, thanks to Error Reporting
* Improved editor robustness to recover if the Game.agf.user file was corrupt
* Winsetup now displays the game name in the title bar instead of "Adventure Game Studio"
* Disabled editor option to save changes whilst the game was running, since doing so  could cause sprite file corruption
* Editor property grid now displays a drop-down list instead of a text box when selecting a font or room
* Changed the pathfinder so that the character cannot get stuck if he ends up outside one of the room edges
* Removed limit on number of text parser words
* Renamed the "handle inventory clicks in script" general setting to better reflect what it does
* Removed room properties Play Music On Load, Music Volume and Save/Load Enabled since they are now obsolete
* Mouse.IsButtonDown now works with eMouseMiddle
* "Export all sprites in folder" command now exports 32-bit sprites as PNGs to prevent losing the alpha channel
* Improved error handling if you passed an int to a string argument in String.Format
* The Restart Point save file (AGSSAVE.999) is no longer deleted when you quit the game,  to fix a problem where RestartGame didn't work if you started the game by double-clicking an Enhanced Save Game file in explorer
* Disallowed accented characters like é in script names in the editor, because they wouldn't compile
* Dynamic sprite deletion warning is now only displayed on exit if Debug Mode is turned on
* Fixed sprite entry getting duplicated if you dragged a sprite to the end of the list
* Fixed crash with Hq2x and Hq3x graphics filters (3.1.2 regression)
* Fixed character/object tints and light levels in D3D not matching DX5
* Fixed TintScreen in D3D so that it looks the same as DX5
* Fixed Sierra-style speech box moving if the room was scrolled while it was displayed
* Fixed error running game and problems with save games if there were unicode characters in the folder path
* Fixed GUI controls not updating properly if the control moved under the mouse, but the mouse didn't move
* Fixed theora video being permanently muted after you played one video with muted audio
* Fixed Dynamic Sprites causing memory corruption if a mouse cursor was set to sprite 0
* Fixed Compress Sprites setting not taking effect until you next edited some sprites
* Fixed GUI AdditiveOpacity mode not working properly if you tried to have a non-alpha sprite on an alpha GUI
* Fixed light levels >100% not working with Direct3D driver
* Fixed Object.MergeIntoBackground not working with Direct3D driver
* Fixed IsKeyPressed not working with the following keys: [ ]  ; ' , . /
* Fixed struct member functions with more than 9 parameters giving run-time error
* Fixed File commands looking in the wrong directory if you launched the game by double-clicking a save game in explorer
* Fixed SetBackgroundFrame in Player Enters Screen event causing old frame to flash up briefly with D3D driver
* Fixed Make Default Language command crashing if two different source lines mapped to the same translated line
* Fixed run-time error if you returned a string from a function that was a member of a local dynamic array
* Fixed sprite cache corruption if you had a single sprite larger than 20 MB
* Fixed Room.GetDrawingSurfaceForBackground and Character.PlaceOnWalkableArea to give error message instead of crash if you called them from game_start
* Fixed GUI label text not being anti-aliased if there was a background image but the BGColor was set to 0
* Fixed editor crash creating new game if your Windows username had unicode characters in it
* Fixed Views tree collapsing after renaming or drag-dropping a view
* Fixed editor crash on startup if you made the editor window very small before closing it down last time
* Fixed editor crash if you set an object's image to -1
* Fixed character gliding if he bumped into another solid character and the character's MovementLinkedToAnimation property was false
* Fixed DynamicSprite.Rotate cropping 1 pixel off the left side when rotating an image with an odd width/height
* Fixed ShakeScreenBackground not clearing letterbox borders properly if you switched from a large to a small shake
* Fixed "Internal compiler error: table overflow" if there were a lot of imported functions/variables
* Fixed when importing an 8-bit image, if there was another palette slot in the image with the same colour as the transparent slot it got changed to black
* Fixed Game.SpriteWidth/SpriteHeight returning the size of the blue cup instead of 0 if you supplied an invalid sprite number
* Fixed script editor issue if you typed some text, switched to another tab, then came back and did Undo
* Fixed autocomplete editor crash if there was a line break inside an array indexer
* Fixed compiler crash if a dialog script just had a @ on a line on its own
* Fixed editor crash if you tried to use a non-icon file as TEMPLATE.ICO
* Fixed sprite import window crash if you right-clicked in the second stage of tiled import
* Fixed mouse cursor being drawn in dialog options in DX5 mode even when Mouse.Visible was set to false
* Fixed no line number provided when DynamicSprite.CreateFromDrawingSurface threw an error
* Fixed script editor crash if you saved the script while the final function was missing its closing brace
* Fixed the editor Preferences window only allowing you to type 5 characters in if you wanted to manually enter a path for the New Game Directory or Import Directory
* Fixed "Close all other tabs" crashing if a room editor with unsaved changes was one of the other tabs
* Fixed changing a walk-behind baseline not marking the room as modified
* Fixed editor crash XmlException: An error occurred while parsing EntityName.
* Fixed compilation errors if you named a character with only numeric digits, eg "c500"


http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/AGS-3.2.exe

(if you were using the betas, this is the same release as 3.2 Final 5).

If no major issues are reported in the next week or so, I'll create the RAR release and update the website.

So the situation is this:

The Character.IgnoreWalkbehinds and Object.IgnoreWalkbehinds properties don't work properly with the Direct3D driver.

It may not be possible to get them to work due to the hardware acceleration that D3D uses.

My question is, then, if these properties were removed, what would be the impact on you guys? What do you use them for?

The most common use of these properties that I'm aware of, is for simply making something appear in front of a walk-behind ... but you could also do that by setting the object's baseline to 99999.

So are there any situations in which you use this property, but just setting the object/character's baseline wouldn't do the trick? Any situations where you want the object to appear in front of a walk-behind but behind a character with the same baseline?

So, I've had a problem reported whereby the results of TintScreen are different in DX5 and D3D modes.

In DX5 mode (and this is the way AGS has always done it), it applies a 50%-transparent "film" over the screen, tinted to the specified colour.

In D3D mode it re-colourises the entire screen to the colour you specify.

This means that the results look different, significantly so in many cases.

So, my question is -- how many people actually use TintScreen? And which of these results is the "correct" look that you're trying to accomplish?

[New Audio System]

With the world mired in recession, the only way out must surely be to make games!

Changes in 3.2 Final 5:
* Fixed memory leak with sound playing
* Fixed editor crash XmlException: An error occurred while parsing EntityName.
* Fixed GUI anti-aliasing not working if it had no background color or image


Changes in 3.2 Final 4:

* Added $APPDATADIR$ support to File.Open to allow you to write files to an accessible folder that is not the Save Games folder
* Fixed AudioClip.Play crash if No Digital Sound was selected
* Fixed Game.StopAudio() crashing
* Fixed DX5 driver not always clearing side borders correctly when returning from alt+tab
* Fixed legacy SetSoundVolume command not affecting viewframe-linked sounds or score sound
* Fixed GUI button clicks not working until you move the mouse if a GUI appeared just under the mouse and there was a Wait() just before the code that made the GUI visible
* Fixed editor crash if you set an object's image to -1

Changes in 3.2 Final 3:

* Fixed legacy SetSoundVolume command changing the music as well as the sound volume
* Fixed anti-aliased TTF rendering giving pink edges in 16-bit games (though it is recommended that you only use anti-aliased TTFs in 32-bit games, they don't look very good in 16-bit).

Changes in 3.2 Final 2:

* Added support for anti-aliased TTF fonts in all situations where they weren't previously supported.
* Updated 9-verb template from Abstauber
* Improved widescreen side border detection with 320x200 games
* Legacy compatibility: updated SetGameOption(OPT_CROSSFADE) to also update the new-style Music audio clip crossfade setting
* Fixed mouse not detecting GUI controls if one became visible just under where the mouse was
* Fixed Game.StopAudio stopping rather than fading out track if crossfade was enabled for one of the playing audio clips

Changes in 3.2 Final:

* Added Game.SetAudioTypeSpeechVolumeDrop to provide a new-style equivalent to game.speech_music_drop
* Improved editor robustness to recover if the Game.agf.user file was corrupt
* "Export all sprites in folder" command now exports 32-bit sprites as PNGs to prevent losing alpha channel
* Updated to latest 9-verb template (thanks Abstauber!)
* Fixed GUI controls not updating properly if the control moved under the mouse, but the mouse didn't move
* Fixed problem restoring a game if the music was crossfading when the game was saved
* Fixed offset of currently playing audio not always being restored correctly when restoring a game with OGG audio clips
* Fixed "Close all other tabs" crashing if a room editor with unsaved changes was one of the other tabs
* Fixed the editor Preferences window only allowing you to type 5 characters in if you wanted to manually enter a path for the New Game Directory or Import Directory
* Fixed changing a walk-behind baseline not marking the room as modified
* Fixed compilation errors if you named a character with only numeric digits, eg "c500"


Changes in 3.2 RC 3:

* Added Game.SetAudioTypeVolume command
* When upgrading a game from a previous version, fixed a problem if sound/music files had upper case letters in their file names (eg. MUSIC5.OGG)
* Mouse.IsButtonDown now works with eMouseMiddle
* Importing a 2.72 game now sets Enforce New Audio Scripting to false by default
* Fixed crash with AudioClip.Play if the AUDIO.VOX file was missing
* Fixed crash restoring a game if you saved the game while music was crossfading
* Fixed SetSoundVolume not affecting frame-linked or score sound
* Fixed IsSoundPlaying not working properly if sound was disabled in setup
* Fixed issues with audio when skipping a cutscene
* Fixed music position not being restored properly when you restored a save game
* Fixed problem with characters getting stuck when colliding, introduced by RC2
* Fixed widescreen borders not working with 800x600 games
* Fixed old-style SetFrameSound command not working properly
* Fixed Character.PlaceOnWalkableArea crash if called from game_start


Changes in 3.2 RC 2:

* Updated 9-verb template to include the documentation PDF file (thanks abstauber!)
* Added manual page describing rep_exec and rep_exec_always, since these were not really properly documented
* Moved "Developer Name" into the main top section of General Settings now that it is displayed on the game exe
* Global Variables editor now allows you to create AudioChannel* variables
* Changed D3D LightLevel rendering to properly match DX5
* Fixed D3D Tint with luminance of 0 rendering as luminance of 100%
* Fixed bug with script dirty flags not being updated properly, introduced in RC1
* Fixed some compatibility issues with old-style PlayMusic/GetCurrentMusic and save games
* Fixed score sound and frame-linked sounds sometimes playing instead of the sound you wanted, when using old-style PlaySound command
* Fixed screenshots not working properly if widescreen side borders were enabled
* Fixed IsKeyPressed not working with the following keys: [ ]  ; ' , . /
* Fixed character gliding if he bumped into another solid character and MovementLinkedToAnimation was false
* Fixed script editor crash if you saved the script while the final function was missing its closing brace
* Fixed editor crash creating new game if the template was from a previous version with Sound/Music folders
* Fixed editor crash if you tried to preview an audio clip but had deleted the file
* Fixed GUI label text not being anti-aliased if there was a background image but the BGColor was set to 0
* Fixed old-style ViewFrame.Sound property throwing error if you tried to set it to 0

Changes in 3.2 RC 1:

* Added abstauber's LEC-style template
* Updated demo game to use new audio commands
* Added plugin API event IRoomController.PreSaveRoom; events AGSE_PRESAVEGAME and AGSE_POSTRESTOREGAME
* Wrote the "Upgrading to AGS 3.2" page in the manual. Please let me know if this answers initial questions about the new audio system, or if there's anything else it should cover
* The Restart Point save file (AGSSAVE.999) is no longer deleted when you quit the game, to fix a problem where RestartGame didn't work if you started the game by double-clicking an Enhanced Save Game file in explorer
* Winsetup now displays the game name in the title bar instead of "Adventure Game Studio"
* Fixed character/object tints in D3D not matching DX5
* Fixed TintScreen in D3D so that it looks the same as DX5
* Fixed GUI AdditiveOpacity mode not working properly if you tried to have a non-alpha sprite on an alpha GUI (eg. a save game screenshot)
* Fixed SetBackgroundFrame in Player Enters Screen event causing old frame to flash up briefly with D3D driver

Changes in 3.2 beta 5:

* AudioClip.Play now removes any queued audio clips of that type, like PlayMusic used to do
* Added editor plugin API method IGUIController.ActivePane
* Fixed beta 4 crash the second time you compiled the game
* Fixed DynamicSprite.Rotate cropping 1 pixel off the left side when rotating an image with an odd width/height
* Fixed Game.SpriteWidth/SpriteHeight returning the size of the blue cup instead of 0 if you supplied an invalid sprite number
* Fixed script editor issue if you typed some text, switched to another tab, then came back and did Undo
* Fixed crossfade problem with old-style PlayMusic commands, introduced by beta 3
* Fixed editor crash if you tried to use a non-icon file as TEMPLATE.ICO
* Fixed mouse cursor being drawn in dialog options in DX5 mode even when Mouse.Visible was set to false
* Fixed IsMusicVoxAvailable always returning 0 with 3.2 betas

Changes in 3.2 beta 4:

* Added option to automatically add side borders when running 4:3 games on widescreen monitors
* The generated EXE version information is now set to your Game Name and Developer Name instead of "Adventure Game Studio" and "Chris Jones"
* Improved graphics mode detection so that the screen doesn't keep flickering when trying to start up a low-res game full screen
* Changed the pathfinder so that the character cannot get stuck if he ends up outside one of the room edges
* Improved error handling if you passed an int to a string argument in String.Format
* Fixed light levels >100% not working with Direct3D driver
* Fixed theora video being permanently muted after you played one video with muted audio
* Fixed Object.MergeIntoBackground not working with Direct3D driver
* Fixed String.Format to give error instead of crash if you try to format a string longer than 3000 chars
* Fixed Room.GetDrawingSurfaceForBackground to give error instead of crash if you call it from game_Start

Changes in 3.2 beta 3:

* Added crossfading support to new audio system.
* Added eMouseMiddleInv support to on_mouse_click
* Editor now automatically converts any old Play Music On Room Load setting into a line of script in the room's Player Enters Screen event
* Editor property grid now displays a drop-down list instead of a text box when selecting a font or room
* Removed limit on number of text parser words
* Updated Default Game template to use new audio system
* New menu option to remove old Global Messages from the game, to stop them coming out in translation sources
* Disallowed accented characters like é in script names in the editor, because they wouldn't compile
* Fixed Seek for OGG audio clips to have the same accuracy as PlayFrom
* Fixed error running game and problems with save games if there were unicode characters in the folder path
* Fixed error compiling the game if the game had no Music folder
* Fixed ShakeScreenBackground not clearing letterbox borders properly if you switched from a large to a small shake
* Fixed "Internal compiler error: table overflow" if there were a lot of imported functions/variables
* Fixed compiler crash if a dialog script just had a @ on a line on its own
* Fixed autocomplete editor crash if there was a line break inside an array indexer
* Fixed sprite import window crash if you right-clicked in the second stage of tiled import


Changes in 3.2 beta 2:

* Implemented Audio Types editor
* Score Sound and ViewFrame-linked sound updated to work with Audio Clips; script ViewFrame.Sound property replaced with new ViewFrame.LinkedAudio property
* Added AudioChannel.SetRoomLocation function to emulate the facility provided by directional ambient sounds
* Added AudioChannel.LengthMs property
* Implemented the speech volume drop setting for Audio Types
* Improved accuracy of Position property with OGG audio
* Removed room properties Play Music On Load, Music Volume and Save/Load Enabled since they are now obsolete
* Dynamic sprite deletion warning is now only displayed on exit if Debug Mode is turned on
* Changes to improve music glitching when changing rooms in D3D mode
* Fixed editor crash if you tried to delete an audio clip when a preview of it was playing
* Fixed Sierra-style speech box moving if the room was scrolled around while it was displayed
* Fixed Dynamic Sprites causing memory corruption if a mouse cursor was set to sprite 0
* Fixed Make Default Language command crashing if two different source lines mapped to the same translated line
* Fixed crash importing old game if there was no Sound or Music folder
* Fixed intermittent crash when playing WAV/MOD in beta 1
* Fixed keypresses and mouse clicks being ignored after restoring a save game in beta 1

Changes in 3.2 beta 1:

* Rewrote audio system. The old number-based sound and music are gone, replaced with new named audio clips. Added AudioClip.*, AudioChannel.*, Game.IsAudioPlaying, Game.StopAudio, System.AudioChannels, System.AudioChannelCount, System.Volume script commands.
* Added Game.IgnoreUserInputAfterTextTimeoutMs, Maths.Exp, Maths.Log, Maths.Log10, Maths.Cosh, Maths.Sinh, Maths.Tanh
* Added Applies To feature to custom properties, so that you can have properties that only apply to Rooms or Characters, for example
* Improved colour quality of mini-sprites displayed in sprite manager
* Improved the user-friendliness of some error messages, thanks to Error Reporting
* Disabled editor option to save changes whilst the game was running, since doing so could cause sprite file corruption
* Renamed the "handle inventory clicks in script" general setting to better reflect what it does
* Fixed sprite entry getting duplicated if you dragged a sprite to the end of the list
* Fixed crash with Hq2x and Hq3x graphics filters (3.1.2 regression)
* Fixed Compress Sprites setting not taking effect until you next edited some sprites
* Fixed struct member functions with more than 9 parameters giving run-time error
* Fixed File commands looking in the wrong directory if you launched the game by double-clicking a save game in explorer
* Fixed run-time error if you returned a string from a function that was a member of a local dynamic array
* Fixed sprite cache corruption if you had a single sprite larger than 20 MB
* Fixed editor crash creating new game if your Windows username had unicode characters in it
* Fixed Views tree collapsing after renaming or drag-dropping a view
* Fixed editor crash on startup if you made the editor window very small before closing it down last time
* Fixed when importing an 8-bit image, if there was another palette slot in the image with the same colour as the transparent slot it got changed to black
* Fixed no line number provided when DynamicSprite.CreateFromDrawingSurface threw an error

New Audio System

The main change in this release is the re-written audio system.

It is still a bit rough round the edges and is not claiming to be complete, but I thought it was a good time to get some feedback on it from you guys.

When you load (A BACKUP COPY!!!!) of your game into this beta editor, you'll notice that you now see all the sound and music imported into the project tree. They will initially be given names like aMusic50 and aSound16. If you want the old commands like PlaySound and PlayMusic to continue working, you must leave them with these names.

To play an audio clip, just do:
aAudioName.Play();

If you want to be able to fiddle with the audio once it is playing, you can do this:
AudioChannel *channel = aAudioName.Play();
and then later:
channel.Volume = 60;  (for example)

The new audio system has a concept called audio types, which are the way that sound and music are split up.

The only difference between them is that the Music audio type is limited to 1 audio channel, whereas the Sound audio type is unlimited (within the overall 8 channels that is). This is for ease-of-use, so that when you play a new Music it will automatically stop any existing one that is playing; whereas this won't be the case with sounds.


http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/AGS-3.2-Final5.exe

Ok, so after the previous thread was *ahem* accidentally deleted *ahem*, it's time for a new one.

So, here is the current mockup site:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/newsite/Home.aspx
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/newsite/AGS.aspx
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/newsite/AGS.aspx/Forums
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/newsite/News.aspx

Current discussion was mainly about the top banner image and proposals for replacement images.

Current status:
* Need replacement "Help and Support" graphic for the right-hand column on hte About page
* Need replacement "On the forums" image for the right-hand column of the main page, to replace the cogs with something more forum-related
* Need to decide what to put in the right hand pane on the News page

[Please don't suggest extra file formats.]

Ok, so these days the sound and music system in AGS stands out as being the last main part of AGS that you can tell was written back in the dark ages and hasn't really changed much since then.

You have to access all sounds and music by numbers (though the Media Manager Plugin does help with this), setting the volume correctly is a bit of a mystical art form, and relating sound channels to the sounds playing on them is not easy.

But rather than me just diving in and changing it all, I'd like to hear from you guys who work with it on a daily basis, how you think it should work.

Please don't suggest extra file formats. AGS will continue to support OGG/MP3/WAV/MIDI/MOD/XM/etc as it does at the moment, and I'm not planning to change that.

What I do want to change is the way that the sound and music is controlled from the script. Here are a couple of ideas:

1. Channel-based audio system

You'd do commands like:

channel[1].PlaySound(sExplosion);
channel[1].Stop();
channel[1].SetVolume(60);

2. Sound-based audio system

You'd do commands like:

sExplosion.Play(optional channelID);
sExplosion.Stop();
sExplosion.SetVolume(60);


Those are just two possible options I'm considering. While they eventually lead back to the same thing, which approach is most useful depends on how you like to script and control the audio. Other suggestions on how it should work are welcome.

Should you even have to worry about channels at all? Maybe you would give each sound a priority from 1-100, and AGS would automatically cut off a lower priority sound if all the channels were full?

On the Great Snow Day of 2009, it gives me great pleasure to announce the release of AGS 3.1.2.

Changes in SP1:
* The Editor will now not allow you to open the same game in two different copies of the editor
* Fixed translations and [ tag not working on GUIs (regression from 3.1.1)
* Fixed crash with custom dialog options if you saved the game before running any dialogs
* Fixed editor crash with tiled sprite import if you dragged out an invisible selection area
* Fixed editor crash if the Game.agf.user file was read-only
* Fixed auto-number speech lines to not number "..." lines
* Fixed TintScreen not working properly in some situations with DX5 driver


Changes since 3.1.1 are as follows:

* Added support for using Transparency properties with alpha-channel sprites
* Added inventory item CursorImage property to allow you to set a different image for the mouse cursor to the inventory window
* Added F4 hotkey to jump straight to the Events grid to edit interactions
* Editor now remembers which item in the property grid was selected as you switch between tabs
* Added Character.SpeechAnimationDelay property which replaces the old game.talkanim_speed setting and also works with Sierra-style speech. A new General Settings option is provided to enable/disable backwards compatibility.
* Added Game.TextReadingSpeed and Game.MinimumTextDisplayTime properties; obsoleted game.text_speed
* Added plugin API event AGS_EngineInitGfx and methods GetDirectInputKeyboard, GetDirectInputMouse and ReplaceFontRenderer.
* Added Error Reporting feature to editor, to send error information to AGS website if the editor crashes
* Added eKey* enum for use with on_key_press and IsKeyPressed, to make script more readable
* Added Show Start Page option to Help menu to allow you to access Tips if you have the start page disabled at startup
* When changing the game resolution, the editor will now offer to automatically resize all your GUIs to compensate.
* Improved performance of Theora video playing
* Templates are now stored in a "Templates" sub-folder to satisfy Vista permissions
* "Letterbox Mode" option in General Settings is now only shown if the game resolution is 320x200 or 640x400
* Moved the character SpeechColor property from the Movement to the Appearance section in the editor, where it belongs!
* Moved the "You are currently using the eraser" tooltip further away from the cursor  so it doesn't obscure what you're doing
* Improved rendering of View Editor at 120 DPI
* DynamicSprite.Resize now won't allow new image to be over 25 MB to help spot mistakes in size calculations
* Mouse.ChangeModeGraphic now won't allow you to change the graphic of the Inventory  cursor if "Use selected inventory graphic for cursor" is enabled
* Translations are now automatically recompiled if you change the game name, to ensure that they still work
* Made some stability improvements to how the editor handles the sprite file
* Improved the editor error message if the game folder had unicode characters in it
* Fixed option-off-forever being treated as option-off.
* Fixed compile error if you created a Bool in the Global Variables editor with default value set to upper case "TRUE" or "FALSE"
* Fixed editor crash in Vista creating a new game
* Fixed intermittent editor crash that could occur when shutting down the game
* Fixed ChangeRoomAutoPosition not working properly in hi-res games with hi-res co-ordinates
* Fixed dynamic sprites sometimes being discarded by the sprite cache
* Fixed Vista Game Explorer integration appearing as "Play" in the start menu recent list
* Fixed save games not persisting the walking state of the highest-numbered character
* Fixed editor's room area undo buffer not being cleared when a different room was loaded
* Fixed custom dialog options not working properly when using transparent background
* Fixed Dialog.GetOptionText returning original English text when a translation was in use
* Fixed button ClipImage property clipping 1 pixel too many in high-res games
* Fixed PlayVideo not working properly when DX5 graphics filter was in use
* Fixed PlayAmbientSound screwing up audio if it was used on a channel where a normal PlaySound command was still playing
* Fixed DX5 driver problem switching a GUI background graphic from one with to one without an alpha channel
* Fixed DisplayAtY, GUI.SetSize and Mouse.SetPosition not checking Y co-ordinate correctly in 320x240 and 640x480 games when using native co-ordinates
* Fixed colour corruption if you imported an 8-bit sprite into a hi-color game and palette slot 0 of the sprite was not black
* Fixed dialog script compiler bug if you used "this" in a string within a normal scripting command
* Fixed script editor crash if you deleted a block of code, then hovered the mouse over a script variable.
* Fixed GUI button being set to wrong size if you changed its image in the editor to a low-res sprite in a hi-res game
* Fixed game.screenshot_height not allowing 240/480 in games of those resolutions
* Fixed potential crash on fadeout with DX5 Nearest Neighbour filters
* Fixed object positions getting messed up when importing a hi-res game from AGS 2.72
* Fixed editor not allowing you to rename a script to a different capitalization of the same name
* Fixed editor crash if you tried to rename a script file to contain  or :


Get it from the Download page!

By popular request, the For Your Consideration thread is back!

If you made a game in 2008 and want people to nominate and vote for it, why not post a bit of information and screenshots to remind people about the game, and maybe get them to play it if they haven't yet?

And whether you made a game or not, have a look at this thread to see if there are any games that you've missed, and give them a try!

[THIS IS A BETA. MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR GAME BEFORE TRYING IT OUT. DO NOT RELY ON A BETA FOR DISTRIBUTING YOUR GAME.]

What better way to celebrate the start of Obama's 6 months to save the world than with this new beta:

Because of the Vista new game crashing bug in 3.1.1, I'll try to make this release on a fairly short cycle to get the fixes out there.

Changes in 3.1.2 Final:

* Improved performance of Theora video playing
* Changed error to warning if you use Mouse.ChangeModeGraphic on the inventory cursor, to assist backwards compatibility
* Fixed object positions getting corrupted when importing a hi-res game from AGS 2.72 (bug introduced by 3.1)
* Fixed editor's room area undo buffer not being cleared when a different room was loaded


Changes in 3.1.2 RC 2:

* When changing the game resolution, the editor will now offer to automatically resize all your GUIs to compensate.
* "Letterbox Mode" option in General Settings is now only shown if the game resolution is 320x200 or 640x400
* Added plugin API event AGS_EngineInitGfx and methods GetDirectInputKeyboard, GetDirectInputMouse and ReplaceFontRenderer.
* Improved rendering of View Editor at 120 DPI
* Fixed DisplayAtY, GUI.SetSize and Mouse.SetPosition not checking Y co-ordinate correctly in 320x240 and 640x480 games when using native co-ordinates
* Fixed DX5 driver problem switching a GUI background graphic from one with to one without alpha channel
* Fixed potential crash on fadeout with DX5 Nearest Neighbour filters

Changes in 3.1.2 RC 1:

* Added support for using Transparency properties with alpha-channel sprites
* Added Error Reporting feature to editor, to send error information to AGS website if the editor crashes
* Added eKey* enum for use with on_key_press and IsKeyPressed, to make script more readable
* Added Show Start Page option to Help menu to allow you to access Tips if you have the start page disabled at startup
* Made some stability improvements to how the editor handles the sprite file
* Translations are now automatically recompiled if you change the game name, to ensure that they still work
* Moved the "You are currently using the eraser" tooltip further away from the cursor so it doesn't obscure what you're doing
* Improved the editor error message if the game folder had unicode characters in it
* Fixed game.screenshot_height not allowing 240/480 in games of those resolutions
* Fixed Vista Game Explorer integration appearing as "Play" in the start menu recent list
* Fixed GUI button being set to wrong size if you changed its image in the editor to a low-res sprite in a hi-res game



Changes in 3.1.2 beta 1:

* Added inventory item CursorImage property to allow you to set a different image for the mouse cursor to the inventory window
* Added Character.SpeechAnimationDelay property which replaces the old game.talkanim_speed setting and also works with Sierra-style speech. A new General Settings option is provided to enable/disable backwards compatibility.
* Added Game.TextReadingSpeed and Game.MinimumTextDisplayTime properties; obsoleted game.text_speed
* Templates are now stored in a "Templates" sub-folder to satisfy Vista permissions
* Moved the character SpeechColor property from the Movement to the Appearance section in the editor, where it belongs!
* DynamicSprite.Resize now won't allow new image to be over 25 MB to help spot mistakes in size calculations
* Mouse.ChangeModeGraphic now won't allow you to change the graphic of the Inventory cursor if "Use selected inventory graphic for cursor" is enabled
* Fixed crash in Vista creating a new game in the editor
* Fixed dynamic sprites sometimes being discarded by the sprite cache
* Fixed dialog script compiler bug if you used "this" in a string within a normal scripting command
* Fixed custom dialog options not working properly when using transparent background
* Fixed colour corruption if you imported an 8-bit sprite into a hi-color game and palette slot 0 of the sprite was not black
* Fixed save games not persisting the walking state of the highest-numbered character
* Fixed Dialog.GetOptionText returning original English text when a translation was in use
* Fixed PlayAmbientSound screwing up audio if it was used on a channel where a normal PlaySound command was still playing
* Fixed PlayVideo not working properly when DX5 graphics filter was in use
* Fixed button ClipImage property clipping 1 pixel too many in high-res games
* Fixed script editor crash if you deleted a block of code, then hovered the mouse over a script variable.
* Fixed editor not allowing you to rename a script to a different capitalization of the same name
* Fixed editor crash if you tried to rename a script file to contain  or :


THIS IS A BETA. MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR GAME BEFORE TRYING IT OUT. DO NOT RELY ON A BETA FOR DISTRIBUTING YOUR GAME.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/AGS-3.1.2-Final.exe

[What are the AGS Awards?]

Well, according to SSH's blog I was supposed to announce the AGS Awards since he is on holiday.

Therefore, it gives me great pleasure to announce that nominations are now open for the AGS Awards 2008!

What are the AGS Awards?

The AGS Awards are an annual event where you vote on the best AGS games of the year.

The process has two stages -- nominations, and voting.

So what happened for the nominations?

The Nominations stage is now complete. This is where you nominate games for awards that you think they deserve to win. This year, you could nominate as many games in as many categories as you like.

The nominations page listed all the games of 2008 in alphabetical order. Have a look down the list, and when you see a game you played and think is deserving of an award, click the "I want to nominate this game" link. This will open up a list of awards that you can nominate it for. Rinse and repeat.

Can I nominate for my own game?

Of course, if you think it's deserving! You'd be silly not to!

What about the voting?

With all the nominations are all in, the 5 games that have the most nominations in each category go forward to the voting stage.

Which games were nominated this year?

Visit SSH's blog or open the Voting page to see the nominated games in each category.

Which games won this year?

You can now download the Awards Ceremony to see the winners, or if you're impatient just go straight to SSH's blog.

On this merry Christmas Eve, it gives me great pleasure to announce the release of AGS 3.1.1.

Changes since v3.1 are as follows:

* Added support for running normal scripts as part of dialog scripts,  and thus obsoleted the run-script, dialog_request business
* Added OGG Theora video support to PlayVideo, and enabled theora videos to be compiled into the game EXE
* Added right-click "Find Sprite By Number" option to Sprite Manager
* Added Dialog.HasOptionBeenChosen script function.
* Added basic save and load GUIs to the Default Game template
* Replaced Anti-Glide mode with a per-character setting MovementLinkedToAnimation.
* Improved auto-dedent of } in script editor to make it more useful and less annoying
* Improved performance of pathfinder when calculating a route.
* Added list of editor keyboard shortcuts to manual
* When changing between room area mask types, the current tool will be set back to the Select tool to assist the most common workflow
* Cursor mode now sets back to Select after adding a GUI control
* Discontinued support for Windows 98 due to upgrading compiler from VC6 to VC2008.
* Improved editor error messages if an error occurred reading/writing the sprite file
* Workaround for Windows error getting file list on Linux network shares
* Assign To View dialog now remembers the loop assigned to last time as well as view
* Improved editor error handling if it was unable to start the game for testing
* Fixed GetLocationName/GetLocationType not returning anything if the mouse cursor was over a GUI, but a different X/Y was being checked
* Fixed GetLocationName returning a space if a nameless object was at the location
* Fixed clicking in the corner of the screen taking you back to the desktop when using D3D driver
* Fixed D3D driver drawing an extra game loop before the room faded out
* Fixed transparent sprites not rendering correctly with D3D driver
* Fixed object "ignore walk-behinds" setting not working with D3D driver
* Fixed PlayVideo failing to play some WMV files with D3D driver
* Fixed editor crash debugging if the call stack had more than 6 lines
* Fixed call stack window not appearing if the project tree was on the left hand side
* Fixed crash if you manually set Character.Loop and the current Frame was invalid for the new loop
* Fixed crash in DisplayAt/SayAt if you passed the width in as 0
* Fixed text box stealing up/down arrow key presses (AGS 3.1 regression)
* Fixed debug console showing low-res co-ordinates for Character.Walk
* Fixed autocomplete not always correctly selecting entries containing an underscore
* Fixed a couple of potential crashes if characters had an invalid view/loop/frame
* Fixed potential crash displaying text in voice-only mode

Go to the Download page on the website to grab it.

(NOTE: If you were using the betas, this is the same as the Final 3 release).

We all like to moan and complain when things go wrong, but we rarely give praise when things go right.

Therefore, I would just like to say a special note of Christmas thanks to the following people:
1. The moderators here at the AGS Forums, for tirelessly working to delete spam and keep the forums bubbling along nicely
2. The Rating Panel, for their continuing work to catalog and rate all the games that are being released
3. Everyone who helps out in the forums. From those of you who help out newbies in the Beginners Tech Forum, to those of you who give constructive feedback in the Critics Lounge. You help people out and usually get nothing in return, but it is appreciated!
4. Everyone who has made, or is making, a game. Your games are what make all this worthwhile, so thanks for all your efforts in giving us entertainment.
5. Hajo and his minions, for keeping the unofficial AGS server running and hosting lots of peoples websites
6. And of course, thanks to you all for coming.

Have a great festive season and a happy new year!

[How do I use the new dialog scripts?]

Well, it's that time of the year once more when we must drink mulled wine, punch santa squarely in the nuts and get embarassingly drunk at the office christmas party. But there might be some spare time to make games:

Changes in 3.1.1 Final 3:

* Fixed short small MP3 files failing to play (regression from AGS 3.1)

Changes in 3.1.1 Final 2:

* Fixed compile error if there was an indented blank line in a dialog script

Changes in 3.1.1 Final:

* Fixed object "ignore walk-behinds" setting not working with D3D driver
* Fixed MP3 and MOD/XM music not playing (bug introduced by previous 3.1.1 beta)


Changes in 3.1.1 RC 2:

* Assign To View dialog now remembers the loop assigned to last time as well as the view
* Added editor keyboard shortcuts list to manual
* Removed some remaining references to the interaction editor from the help file
* Improved editor error handling if it was unable to start the game for testing
* Fixed PlayVideo failing to play some WMV files with D3D driver
* Fixed PlayVideo skip setting eVideoSkipAnyKeyOrMouse not allowing keypresses to skip Theora video
* Fixed corruption in letterbox borders when drawing non-fullscreen Theora video
* Fixed Theora video being 1 pixel too small
* Fixed new dialog script compiler not allowing commas with set-globalint or set-speech-view
* Fixed a couple of potential crashes if characters had an invalid view/loop/frame
* Fixed potential crash displaying text in voice-only mode


Changes in 3.1.1 RC 1:

* Added basic save and load GUIs to the Default Game template
* Cursor mode now sets back to Select after adding a GUI control to assist the most common workflow
* Workaround for Windows error getting file list on Linux network shares
* Fixed clicking in the corner of the screen taking you back to the desktop when using D3D driver
* Fixed text box stealing up/down arrow key presses (AGS 3.1 regression)
* Fixed save game list not working, broken in beta 1
* Fixed OGG Theora player to preserve aspect ratio when stretching to full screen
* Fixed dialog script compiler to re-build all dialog scripts if a dialog is renamed/deleted
* Fixed error running the game if you didn't have a dialog_request function
* Fixed D3D driver drawing an extra game loop before the room faded out
* Fixed autocomplete not always correctly selecting entries containing an underscore
* Fixed engine hanging if you tried to move the character while he was on a non-walkable area (3.1.1 beta 1 bug)


Changes in 3.1.1 beta 1:

* Added support for running normal scripts as part of dialog scripts, and thus obsoleted the run-script, dialog_request business
* Added OGG Theora video support to PlayVideo, and enabled theora videos to be compiled into the game EXE
* Added right-click "Find Sprite By Number" option to Sprite Manager
* Added Dialog.HasOptionBeenChosen script function.
* Replaced Anti-Glide mode with a per-character setting MovementLinkedToAnimation.
* Improved auto-dedent of } in script editor to make it more useful and less annoying
* Improved performance of pathfinder when calculating a route.
* When changing between room area mask types, the current tool will be set back to the Select tool to assist the most common workflow
* Discontinued support for Windows 98 due to upgrading compiler from VC6 to VC2008.
* Improved editor error messages if an error occurred reading/writing the sprite file
* Fixed transparent sprites not rendering correctly with D3D
* Fixed GetLocationName/GetLocationType not returning anything if the mouse cursor was over a GUI, but a different X/Y was being checked
* Fixed GetLocationName returning a single space if a name-less object was at the location
* Fixed editor crash debugging if the call stack had more than 6 lines
* Fixed call stack window not appearing if the project tree was on the left hand side
* Fixed crash if you manually set Character.Loop and the current Frame was invalid for the new loop
* Fixed crash in DisplayAt/SayAt if you passed the width in as 0
* Fixed debug console showing low-res co-ordinates for Character.Walk

How do I use the new dialog scripts?

The dialog script can now contain normal scripting commands. The way that AGS differentiates is that if there is no space at the start of the line it assumes it's a Dialog Scripting command, and if there are spaces/tabs at the start of the line it interprets it as a Normal Scripting command. For example:

@1  // option 1 clicked
bman: &3 "Please help me. I've been standing here for ages trying to get through that door."
Narrator: &1 What a sad man!!
  Display("This is being displayed from the normal script");
  GiveScore(5);
  player.Walk(player.x - 20, player.y, eBlock);
bman: &5 "And it's getting pretty boring, I can tell you."
return

How do I use OGG Theora video?

Simple. Just make sure the file has an .OGV extension (some converters create them as .OGG but you'll need to name it .OGV for AGS to work), put the file in the game folder (NOT the Compiled folder, because it will get built into the game EXE). Then just use a PlayVideo command with the .OGV's filename.

What do you want me to check?

The dialog script compiler has been scrapped and instead AGS now converts the dialog scripts into normal scripts. So there's quite a lot of scope for error -- please make sure your dialogs still work correctly.

Also, I've had to fiddle around with the D3D driver quite a bit, as it turns out that adding the anti-aliasing filters in 3.1 broke transparent sprites. This should now be fixed but please make sure your game looks right with the D3D driver.


THIS IS A BETA VERSION. BACK UP YOUR GAME BEFORE USING IT. ONCE YOUR GAME HAS BEEN LOADED INTO THIS BETA YOU CANNOT LOAD IT BACK INTO PREVIOUS VERSIONS.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/AGS-3.1.1.exe?final3

Installer only, as this is the final release candidate. If no problems are found, I hope to release it to the website in a week or so, followed by a RAR version.