Topics

Dunno if this is an editor thing, or an engine thing. Apologies if this is in the wrong place.

A much bemoaned problem with AGS is the lack of save compatibility between updates. We've gotten pretty savvy about future-proofing out games to avoid most of the pitfalls, but for my current game Old skies there's one scenerio where it's unavoidable. The demo version of the game was set to put its savefiles in the same folder as the main game. So I envision a number of players loading up their demo saves, getting a crash, and getting annoyed. I know hindsight, 20/20, etc but I need to figure out a way to deal with or miitgate that.

Is there a way to check if a savefile is compatible BEFORE it loads and inevitably crashes? That way I can just display a "Demo savefile not compatible with the retail version Old Skies." message and the game won't crash.

Thanks in advance!

-Dave

For buttons, AGS has 9 options for text alignment:



Whereas for text labels you only have these three options:



Is is possible for text labels to include all nine alignment options that buttons do?

So my game has an autosave, but it's only one file. I am trying to create a system that creates 4 autosave files, but I am having trouble.

I've earmarked 4 slots for autosaves: slots 96,97,98 and 99. After four autosaves, the savelist looks like this;

Slot 99: Autosave4
Slot 98: Autosave3
Slot 97: Autosave2
Slot 96: Autosave1

So far, it works perfectly. When the game autosaves for a fifth time, I want to delete slot 96 and move the rest down one slot so I can place the new save in the now empty slot 99. So it will now look like this:

Slot 99: Autosave5
Slot 98: Autosave4
Slot 97: Autosave3
Slot 96: Autosave2

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to move a savefile to a different slot. Is there? Or is there a better way to handle this?

Any light-shedding apprecaited!

-Dave

Currently, the text on buttons doesn't word wrap. If I want to wordwrap text on a button, I have to use a text label and place it on top of the button. Normally, no big deal. But this can be a bit annoying when I want to add a lot of buttons like this:



For each of those buttons, I had to create individual text labels and place them on top of each button. Very time consuming and a bit of a faff to keep track of which label is on top of which button. If the text on the button could word-wrap, that would save a lot of time and effort.

Thanks!

-Dave

Hello! Currently if you make a "facecharacter" command and one of the characters isn't in the room, you get this error:



This error doesn't give me the script name or line number where the command was called, nor which character that is not in the room. Could those be added to the error message? It would save a lot of hassle. 

Hi powers that be. I was wondering if it was possible to have the room name included on the room tabs the same way dialogs are? For example:



As you can see, the dialog tab says "Dialog: dLocker" while the room tab just says "room26".



And as you can see here, the room has a name associated with it called "Jump room".

What I'm hoping for is that the tab could say "Room: Jump room" instead of "room26." I often have a lot of room tabs open and it's hard to tell which is the one I need.

Hi all! Basically as the subject says. Is there a way to calculate the length of time a character animation will take to play (based on the character's animation speed, the speed you play the animation, delays on frames, the game's framerate, etc) before you play it? Preferably in seconds or milliseconds?

Basically what I want to do is to run a tween that finishes exactly when the character's animation stops. The only way to do that is to determine how long the animation takes to play.

Any light-shedding appreciated!

-Dave

Hi all. I love the feature to "Add all sprites from folder" when adding an animation to a loop, but it has one small issue that makes it a tiny bit annoying to use.



It always leaves a blank sprite at the start of the loop which I then have to delete. Could there be a "REPLACE all sprites from folder" option that replaces all the frames in a loop, as opposed to just tacking them onto the end?

Hello all. Right now we have commands like control-G to bring up the global script, but would it be possible to create custom keyboard shortcuts to bring up additional module scripts? There are a few that I have to open up a lot, and being able to open it with a quick keyboard shortcut would be handy. Especially since I have a lot of them buried in folders.

And while I'm here, a shortcut to automatically open the sprite or global variable tabs would be nice as well!

Hello! So I've been getting a lot of "Out of memory" errors when testing my game lately. Like this:



They are easy enough to fix once I narrow down where in the script the error occurs, but the error message doesn't give the script and line number where the crash occured. So finding that spot can take much longer than it would for a traditional crash. Is it possible for these error messages to spit out where in the script the crash happened?

Thanks!

-Dave

[Trailer]

Been working on this for a year so figured an In Production thread was due!

Wadjet Eye is super proud to present: Old Skies!



Trailer

Story
Time travel is real and history is up for grabs! Playing as Fia Quinn, a time agent for the ChronoZen agency, your job is to keep close watch on seven travelers who have the desire (and the bank accounts) to sightsee in the past. Some are simply curious. Others have unfinished business to resolve. And they've all put down a lot of money for the trip, so it's vital that you keep them happy while ensuring they follow the rules. But what could go wrong? It's only time travel, after all.

Written & Programmed by: Dave Gilbert
Backgrounds and sprites: Ben Chandler
Music: Thomas Regin

Features
•    Seven time periods to explore, from the speakeasies of the Prohibition era to the vicious gangs of the Gilded Age to the World Trade Center on September 10, 2001.
•    High resolution 1920x1080 graphics. (That's three times higher than Unavowed!)
•    Puzzles that require temporal thinking to solve.
•    Death! You CAN die in this adventure game, but time travel means you can try again. And again. And again.
•    Musical score by Thomas Regin, the composer for Unavowed and the Blackwell series.
•    Professional voice acting with Wadjet Eye's largest cast yet.

More news as it comes!

Another day another weird feature request from me. But since you all have responded to all my other weird requests, why not make another. 

Pressing the print screen button usually (but not always) advances dialog before the screen is captured.  This is a problem when you want to take a screenshot of a particular piece of dialog. Usually you can't! Also, it creates a bit of weirdness for games with Sierra-style portraits (like most of mine) where the screen is captured after the dialog advances, but BEFORE the portrait disappears. So you end up with a screenshot containing a dialog-less portrait.

Is there any way to have the engine/editor ignore the print screen button for advancing dialog (while still letting you take screenshots with it)?  I get complaints about this *constantly*. And I admit it kind of annoys me too.  I've installed Fraps for the sole purpose of taking screenshots but it's a bit of a faff to use sometimes.

Thanks!

-Dave

Hello! Another day another feature request from me.

Often when I'm coding, I want to zap myself to the definition of a function I created. To do this, I right-click the function name and select "Go to Definition of XXX".

In most circumstances, this works fine. Like from this room script here:



But if I want to do the same thing from the dialog editor, I see this instead:



Would it be possible to enable this feature from the dialog editor?

Thanks in advance!

-Dave

Sooo I'm having a weird autocomplete issue and I can't make heads or tails of it. I have a custom say function called "GSay", which takes two enums I declared called "eGesture" and "eExpression." It looks like this:

Code: ags

import function GSay(this Character *, String sayThis, eExpression myExp=ex_none, eGesture myGest=eGestureNone); 

and works like this:

Code: ags

cJoe.GSay("Hello!",exSmile, eGestureWave);

It works just fine, but if I write a line a dialog that includes a comma, the autocomplete skips the "Expression" parameter and goes right to the "Gesture."

For example, the line below (which has no comma) behaves properly when autocompleting:



But this one (which includes a comma in the string) does not.



Am I doing something wrong here or is this something internal?

Any help appreciated!

-Dave

Would it be possible to include the character and view number on this error message? It would save a *ton* of time.

Thanks!

-Dave

Hi AGS Powers That Be!

I have an issue that barely qualifies as a nitpick, but rather a small annoyance that I wonder if anything could be done about. I've been organizing all my sprites into folders and subfolders. This means I have to increase the window size to accommodate the expanded folder trees in the "select a sprite to use" window. Normally that's no big deal, but the window size resets to the original (too small) size every time I want to select a sprite. Is there any way the size of this window can be "saved" so I don't need to do that every time? See the image below to see what I mean.

Hi all! Dave again coming into this forum to ask for stuff!

My game is 1920x1080 resolution, so my graphics are on the large side. Here is a sprite of one of my characters, Lisa:



When I try to view her graphics on the sprite tab or on the viewframe tab, the images are so tiny and pixellated that they are almost unviewable:





Is there any way to view these at actual size? Or at least make them bigger? It would reduce my squinting by a lot.

Thanks in advance!

-Dave

I have a character (lisa) who I want to walk over and sit at the computer.



While it's useful that I see her within the room editor, and I can move her around and see her x/y position, it would be nice to also be able to view a specific loop and frame number from within the room editor. That way, to use this as an example, I can view Lisa in her "sitting down" frame, position her accordingly, and see the x and y position that I need to use in the script. Right now, I have go into loop 0 of Lisa's view and change the frame graphic to her "sitting at computer" sprite. It does the job, but it's easy to forget to revert it back. Being able to make this change from within the editor would be a big time saver!

Howdy folks! Long time no see.

So Unavowed is slated to join the Xbox Windows gamepass service. We had a devil of a time getting their client to recognize it. There's only one hurdle we are trying to overcome.

The game launches with the error message: "Unable to initialize your audio hardware. [Problem: ]"
Usually when I see this error, an actual problem is listed but this one is blank.

When we press "okay" to click through the error window , the game starts up perfectly normally with all the sound intact.

I tried playing around with the audio settings (setting it to Default Waveout, etc) but the same thing happens.

The game was compiled using AGS version 3.4.1.14, and is being run from within their Xbox-for-windows client, which has layers upon layers of security and things on it. I'm sure these security measures are conflicting somehow, but I'm not sure what sort of questions I should ask my rep there. Any ideas of where to start troubleshooting? Or is there a way to suppress the error message since the game plays normally anyway?

Thanks in advance!

[Story]

After three years of development, I am SUPER proud to announce that Unavowed has been released!

Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-MMqOakEIs

Story
For six months, you were possessed by a demon. For six months, you unwillingly tore a trail of bloodshed through New York City. Now, finally, you are rescued by the Unavowed - an ancient society dedicated to stopping evil.

You are free, but your world is in tatters. You have no home, no friends, and you are wanted by the police. You can not return to your old life, but perhaps you can start a new one. Join the Unavowed, and learn to fight against the oncoming darkness.

Written & Programmed by: Dave Gilbert
Backgrounds and sprites: Ben Chandler
Music: Thomas Regin
Portraits (not pictured yet): Ivan Ulyanov

Features:
   -Choose a male or female protagonist
   -Choose one of three playable origin stories
   -branching storyline
   -A total of four companion characters to choose from. Each with their own talents and abilities.
   -Double the resolution of a typical Wadjet Eye Game!
   -All the usual guff - voice acting, commentary, original music, etc

Price: $14.99

Buy it: HERE!

Screenshots: