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I made recently some experiments with the DOS engine. As a result, I managed to play some Windows-only AGS games in DOSBox. (It only works for games made with AGS 2.62 and earlier, though.) Not very useful, but there are some neat differences when playing in DOS mode. And it's a nice way of getting a better retro experience.

A video of Trilby's Notes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYFL1Q8aeSk


Copypasted from my video description:

-Find out which version of AGS the game was made with and get it here: http://americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/AGS_Version_history
-Copypaste ACDOS.EXE to the game directory
-If you don't have CWSDPMI.EXE already, google for it and put it too in the game directory.
-Launch DOSBox and run the game with "ACDOS [game executable]" (or rename the game exe to AC2GAME.DAT and just run ACDOS.EXE).
-If you want to setup the game, type "ACDOS --SETUP". (That's TWO lines before the "setup", if you didn't notice.)

Some interesting things:
-Firstly, all the music is in AdLib! Whoah! AGS must have its own MIDI player that converts MIDI to AdLib. The soundtrack feels more eerie this way, doesn't it?
-The game lags noticeably. Apparently it can't play too many sound effects at once.
-Skipping cutscenes makes the game hang for a while.
-Configuring the game is completely different: It's an ASCII screen, like in many old DOS games.

[look at the apple]

After finding out, how primitive the Text Parser v2.0 template is, I have been trying to improve it. I've been successful so far; I've added a SCI-style pop-up parser GUI that turns on when you start typing, a text-based inventory list, a NoMatch() function etc. It's now almost at the level of the old Sierra SCI parser games. Almost.

The Sierra parser had a feature that made it possible to write look at the apple, then take it, and the parser would still understand it. This was too hard for me to pull off with AGS, so gave up and posted this thread.
I'm thinking that basically, you would have to do something like this:


if the command does not contain the word "it", save the last word as a string and continue normally
if the command does contain the word "it", replace it by the string* and parse it


The hard part is retrieving the last word of the command. Any hints?
NOTE: I'm using 2.72 for some reason.


*or have "it" as a "ignore" word and put the string at the end of the command. Does not work for throw it at the bird, though.