Messages

The docs are a primary resource, they should be immediately visible on the menu bar (no submenus), or at least have a button in the homepage as the first thing one sees.



- Alan

Hey, thank you so much for your time and your work.

And please forgive me but I don't know if you're talking about the Github or the in-AGS manual...
To me it sounds like both but that might just be my own level of "english understanding"... 

I'm mostly asking about the website.

The local manual only received improved topic hierarchy and changed folder icons. (Not sure if the latter has been bundled yet)


- Alan

You probably noticed I've been giving the manual a makeover.
Use this thread for wishlists, broken functionality reports, etc.

It's been tested with Chrome and Firefox, but Safari may still have some quirks to iron out.

Last thing I had planned was adding a version selector, either on the top-right, or above the topics on the left, or both (desktop top-right and mobile on the expandable menu).

The ags4 manual is not yet fully documented, and there's still some work to do to deploy both ags3&4 on the website. But generating both chm and html for either versions has been proven to work, so it's just a matter of time.


- Alan

Check the DateTime api: https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/DateTime.html
You can compare if the current date/time is past a due date and quit to desktop.


- Alan

Nothing can do damage if you keep a backup.
Anyway, minor patches should be for fixing bugs, not changing game data, check the update notes if it may be worth upgrading.

3.5.1.11 should be this one


- Alan

This could be the use case for that eBlendReplace which was considered times ago. To simply overwrite destination without any actual blending operation.


- Alan

That is a question for "Beginners' Technical Questions".
Here you should report and discuss issues about the engine/editor. Also try to search manual and forum for examples.


- Alan

Hi,

 I don't know what exactly I'm talking about, but I was wondering if it's possible to have some commands to force the script into Block or NoBlock modes. [...]

Check this page on the manual: https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/RepExec.html

You can use the "_always" variants for things that should always be executed.


- Alan

For starters, we should remove the duplicated (and outdated) contents, and link instead to the relevant manual or github pages.
A mention to main resources, like themes, manual, etc.

I don't have any strong opinions about walkthroughs and game pages.

It's fine to document some of our history, but the old internet humor has not aged well. The list of AGS awards winner is always nice to have.
If it can't be salvaged, it's best be removed. New users don't need the extra confusion.

Would be nice if the main purpose of the wiki were to store useful articles and guides and avoid misleading users into walking through ancient cobwebs.


- Alan

Broken accents means encoding issues. Make sure the traslation file has the same encoding as specified in the metadata parameter "Encoding" (it can be either ASCII or UTF-8)


- Alan

Unfortunately, we don't have the manpower to implement and maintain such a feature. Accessibility works best when the engine is actually designed for it, and Adventure Game Studio was originally developed for DOS, a legacy we haven't yet managed to fully sever.

I don't know how in practice one would go to turn a graphical game to be accessible to those who cannot see, but perhaps it could be achieved by a plugin exposing the necessary API to meet those requirements.

My only experience with accessibility is restricted to the web, where all the necessary facilities are already exposed in modern browsers, but I know very little what these integrations would mean for the engine.


- Alan

Another question : it's said that AGS 4.0 will rework the translation system. Could somebody explain how it will work then ? How we can manage translations for both creators and translators ? In and out of the editor ? A program to help translators ? (better HUD that only a .txt file with 1 line for native language and 1 line for translation)

I already implemented the PO format which is an industry standard (you can manage it from Poedit and other major translation platforms).
What's missing is adding the secondary metadata features like source line references/context/comments, then possibly implementing native .mo compiled translations.


- Alan

I agree with Crimson. Reverting is not the way.
Though the current implementation might not be perfect, it solves even more aggravating issues. Hiding big objects and locking some elements has come in handy more than once.

Once we'll find time to traspose it to a tree view format it should be perfect.

In the meanwhile, the only addition worth the effort to the current system could be some keyboard shortcuts to quickly switch from edges/characters/objects/etc. Like CTRL+1 or ALT+1.


- Alan

I don't see how github is more of an obstacle than any other file hosting site for someone just looking to download a module.

Learning how to download the code from github is merely the first inconvenience. To contribute you need an account, install git, maybe a gui, you need to learn how to clone a forked repo, commit the code, and submit a PR, and pray the gods the repo owner is still active.

The other problem is that you're only finding a module's repo because someone made a post on the forum/wiki/erico's module list, because those are the likely search results.
You don't just search "ags modules" on github and get what you want, unfortunately.

Going on a hunt for modules is the wrong approach if we want something manageable, it's the modules that should come to us where we can manage them.

People having modules on github is completely fine, there are APIs to query that allow to obtain a list of tags or releases, so it's possible to integrate on a custom solution.
But what about the others? Maybe a dev downloads a module, fixes the old instances of SetViewport and few leftover errors, but he can't be bothered going through the hoops to submit the fix.
Or maybe he just hates git and wants to just upload the asc/ash contents. Maybe even saving on dropbox and sharing the link on the forums is too much effort.
In such a case, we have lost a potential module update submission.

If we want to receive help from the community we should find some way to make it easy to contribute.


- Alan

In Paintshop you can just copy into a paletted image and it will map to the closest colors.
You can also export the AGS palette and do a Shift+O to open the Load palette dialog.

Both ways will help matching palette colors exactly.


- Alan

Exactly, they are different things. Here I'm presenting the user side of things.

GIT is great for us developers, but for an average AGS user going through GIT to find things is an obstacle. Not to mention forking and sending a PR.

There's a reason the main platform for sharing modules continues to be the forums. I just think neither forums nor git are the best fit for managing them and showing them to users.

Not many in the community might have the drive to submit PRs to github for modules, but they might post code fixes on the forum thread. But the forums aren't particularly amazing for managing modules, they're just more accessible than git platforms, which is why I wonder if it isn't worth building a site to manage and upload modules with greater ease.



Plugins are a different matter, of course. They're not just a pair of ash/asc code snippets anyone can create or fix, and I fully agree they should be somewhere on github.


- Alan

I'm not sure git is the best way to store modules.

When looking for a module the first information should be which AGS version is compatible with, there should be filters, an easily accessible history from which you can download the right version, a way for users to submit a new version for an abandoned module, declaring a dependency to other modules, and perhaps a clear license.

Git is not for everyone, and expecting a maintainer to always be around to oversee modules is unrealistic.

The problem here is convenience, and the only solution I can think of is creating a platform that makes these actions convenient.
Basically what eri0o was doing with agsModuleList but more fleshed out.

I could do something simple with a bit of PHP.
At the moment I'm swamped with work, but I could work on it in 3-4 weeks from now. We can discuss the specifications in the meanwhile.


- Alan

It's mostly heuristics engines as far as I can tell. Some parts of code cause false positives sometimes, despite our efforts this keeps happening now and then.
I did find one factor, but there's at least one more that we haven't discovered yet.

Last time I uninstalled my antivirus to enable Defender it vexed me finding nothing... I wish it was easier to reproduce when I want to actively look into it.


- Alan

When I asked when it crashed, I meant the Editor, because it's possible something went wrong during upgrade and the upgraded project was never saved (you have to save manually in any case). If the project is recognized as "not upgraded" the Editor will retry again to upgrade from the CRM files, but this time there wont be the scripts, and this is how these problems arise.

We should probably force a save after an upgrade, or ask for confirmation before proceeding.

- Alan

Depending on when it crashed, either the scripts didn't get copied over to the new room format folders, or the Editor is retrying to upgrade the old rooms to the new format and can't find the scripts because they were moved to the new folders.

- Alan