Hi guys! My name is Mathias and I work with Theo at SLX Games. I'm new to these forums but have plenty of game programming experience and I've been playing around with AGS from time to time over the past couple of years.
There are a bunch of threads discussing new widescreen resolution features (for example here, here, here, here and here) and rather than reiterating the suggestions and proposals I'd like to present the problem, and a possible solution, from our point of view.
At SLX Games we're now busy working on the HD version of the first chapter of the Journey Down which is set for release in Q4 2011. In order to keep this commercially viable we need to target a wide range of platforms and resolutions. AGS has proven to be extremely powerful in placing creative control right at the fingertips of the main game designer (theo, that is) and thus cutting us coders out of the loop and freeing us up for other work. Hopefully, we can keep AGS at the center of the development process but in order to target more platforms and resolutions we have to consider other alternatives. Probably there's already a bunch of people and game studios on these forums who are stuck in the same dilemma when thinking about monetizing their AGS games. So how can we fix this?
Since AGS has freed some time for the programmers at SLX we have the capacity and expertise to extend AGS with new resolution modes and, in the long run, additional features that can open up for targeting more platforms. No matter what, we'll have to spend a lot of time and effort this year making the Journey Down run on different platforms but extending AGS is preferred since it allows us to keep our current production pipeline intact. In addition, if we contribute our work to the AGS community, it will also enable better ways for all AGS developers to capitalize on their work. This is only possible if the AGS source code (not just the editor) is released as open source, which has been discussed a lot recently. We're therefore hoping that CJ will decide to open source AGS so that we can join hands and implement further improvements that will benefit everyone. How has the development progressed since the 3.2 release, is there any new code in place for handling arbitrary resolutions? If possible, our company is willing to commit a great deal of 9-to-5 helping out and implementing new features.
Not a small request for a first post, I know
There are a bunch of threads discussing new widescreen resolution features (for example here, here, here, here and here) and rather than reiterating the suggestions and proposals I'd like to present the problem, and a possible solution, from our point of view.
At SLX Games we're now busy working on the HD version of the first chapter of the Journey Down which is set for release in Q4 2011. In order to keep this commercially viable we need to target a wide range of platforms and resolutions. AGS has proven to be extremely powerful in placing creative control right at the fingertips of the main game designer (theo, that is) and thus cutting us coders out of the loop and freeing us up for other work. Hopefully, we can keep AGS at the center of the development process but in order to target more platforms and resolutions we have to consider other alternatives. Probably there's already a bunch of people and game studios on these forums who are stuck in the same dilemma when thinking about monetizing their AGS games. So how can we fix this?
Since AGS has freed some time for the programmers at SLX we have the capacity and expertise to extend AGS with new resolution modes and, in the long run, additional features that can open up for targeting more platforms. No matter what, we'll have to spend a lot of time and effort this year making the Journey Down run on different platforms but extending AGS is preferred since it allows us to keep our current production pipeline intact. In addition, if we contribute our work to the AGS community, it will also enable better ways for all AGS developers to capitalize on their work. This is only possible if the AGS source code (not just the editor) is released as open source, which has been discussed a lot recently. We're therefore hoping that CJ will decide to open source AGS so that we can join hands and implement further improvements that will benefit everyone. How has the development progressed since the 3.2 release, is there any new code in place for handling arbitrary resolutions? If possible, our company is willing to commit a great deal of 9-to-5 helping out and implementing new features.
Not a small request for a first post, I know