Messages

Thanks for the explanation. Had a feeling the TTF issue might have been something different.

Anyhow, I've PM'd you with a demonstration project which illustrates all of the graphical issues I mentioned in my posts above.

I can upload a demonstration project for you if you still need to see it.

And yes, this glitch happened in 3.2.1 and earlier. It has never worked properly in AGS, but as I mentioned above, I wasn't sure if the recent improvements you made to alpha blended graphics and GUIs were meant to fix this issue too (considering it's also GUI and alpha-channel related).

--EDIT--

Ah, another bug I found:  If you have a script open and type something into it and test/compile the game (CTRL+F5, F7, or whatnot), if you receive a compile error in the editor's output window and the game fails to run, it seems you can  no longer use CTRL-Z to undo any of your script changes in the still opened script (which was possible in 3.2.1).

Another thing I just realized is that in the last image I posted above, all of the inventory items displayed in the window have jagged outer edges, despite the sprites having anti-aliased edges. In 3.3.0 beta 8, I selected these settings:

GUI alpha rendering style: Multiplied Translucence, Blend Source Color
Sprite alpha rendering style: Proper Alpha Blending

But as you can see in the above screenshot, the inventory items still have jagged pixels surrounding them when displayed in the inventory box. They're being displayed over a 32-bit GUI background image which doesn't have an alpha channel.

Excellent work, CW! This just keeps getting better. Thanks a lot for the improved character walking at 60%-80% scaling addition, too.

Here's a short list of things I've noticed with beta 8. With issues 1 and 2 below, I'm not sure if they relate to the recent GUI alpha blending fixes, or whether they're a different issue all together. But I thought I'd post them here regardless.

1) When a TTF font with anti-aliased edges is displayed (on a label or otherwise) over a 32-bit alpha-blended GUI background graphic, which has transparent areas of varying levels of opacity -- the TTF font becomes jagged where it's drawn over areas of the GUI graphic that are closer to fully transparent. The more transparency in an area of the graphic, the more jagged the font looks. See the image below for example:



This tooltip GUI image fades towards transparency at the left and right edges. As you can see, the sections of the TTF font at the left and right sides have no anti-aliasing around the edges.

Here's a png of the tooltip GUI graphic if you want to test it out yourself:




2) Using DrawingSurface / DrawString to draw an anti-aliased TTF font over an inventory item graphic in the inventory window causes the parts of the font that are drawn over 'solid' areas of the sprite to be drawn correctly, while parts of the TTF font that are displayed over a transparent/semi-transparent area of the inventory graphic appear jagged and aliased.




3) I noticed that SetCharacterIdle seems to be ignored and character idle animations do not play.


--EDIT--

4) Character animations also seem to be broken. Whenever EGO tries to perform a blocking animation, the game flicks up his start and end frame from the animation's loop (as if StartCutscene() had been called), and all the frames in-between seem to be skipped.

I'm getting this crash when I try to run 3.4.0 Alpha on Windows XP SP3:

An unexpected error occurred trying to start up the AGS Editor. Please consult the details below and post the error to the AGS Technical Forum.

AGS.Types.InvalidDataException: Native initialization failed.
   at AGS.Native.NativeMethods.Initialize()
   at AGS.Editor.NativeProxy..ctor()
   at AGS.Editor.NativeProxy.get_Instance()
   at AGS.Editor.ApplicationController..ctor()
   at AGS.Editor.Program.startupTimer_Tick(Object sender, EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Timer.OnTick(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Timer.TimerNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

The AGS splash screen displays prior to the above error message appearing, and it remains on-screen permanently after clicking the error message away.

We've used this section to disable filters in several of our games (i.e. remove the option from winsetup.exe completely). The reason is because certain filters resulted in significant slowdown (such as the DirectDraw5/2x filter), to the point that it threw off the timing of some game events which were timed to music.

Another reason was that the blending modes of certain filters destroyed the pixel art of the characters, making them look as if someone applied a Photoshop filter over the game. There's also the fact that many of these filters (3x, 4x etc.) cause "unsupported resolution" error messages upon start-up. For commercial games or titles that otherwise attract a large number of players, this increases the amount of error reports coming in and thus, the amount of time needing to be invested in technical support. So in this case it's better to disable some of these options to keep things manageable.

I was also thinking about this issue. Don't know if it's possible to do, but it would be useful if the engine allowed mouse sensitivity/speed to be adjusted. When you're using a 2x (or greater) filter, it seems the mouse also moves slower since it has more screen area to cross. This way, you could set up an in-game slider and the player could adjust the mouse speed to their liking.

Ah, thanks, Mods. No worries, I'll just ask an admin to edit the first post and add the latest entry to the top when there's a significant update.

[SlotA]

Here's a small test project I made with 3.3.0 beta 7 to demonstrate the issue.

Download Here

Open it in the editor and look in the Sprite Manager. You'll see I have created 3 new folders: SlotA, SlotB, and SlotA (again).

Go to the Views section and open the view called vTestView. There are two loops, each with 3 frames. Loop 0/frame 0 displays sprite slot 10 (from the first SlotA folder). And Loop 1/frame 0 displays sprite slot 11 (from the second SlotA folder).

If you double-click on Loop 0/Frame 0, it will open up the sprite manager and highlight the correct sprite in slot 11 (first SlotA folder). However, if you double-click on Loop 1/Frame 0, the Sprite Manager will open up the first SlotA folder instead of the second one, and no sprites will be highlighted.

In room 1, I also added an object with sprite slot 13 (from the second SlotA folder) to object 0. If you click to change the sprite number, it will make the Sprite Manager open the first SlotA folder and no sprites will be highlighted.

--EDIT--

Improved walking at 60%-80% zoom when using AdjustSpeedWithScaling and MovementLinkedToAnimation;

Also, was this feature from the Draconian edition, ever implemented into 3.3.0 ? If not, any chance of including that in the RC? Thanks!

Yeah, I can't find the agsnative.log file or directory either. In any event, nice job on tracking this down! It's exactly the same crash I experienced many times over. I've been able to consistently replicate it by following cat's method above. The project I was working on had me adding new objects between rooms frequently so I ran into it quite a bit.

By the way, any chance of addressing that issue I mentioned in my previous post? The quirk where having two identically-named sprite folders in the Sprite Manager will always cause AGS to jump to the first folder instance when trying to change a sprite via GUI, room object, View frame etc. (Meaning that when the Sprite Manager opens, it highlights a different sprite/folder than the one it should.)

Hi folks, we're looking for a handful of beta testers for Al Emmo v4.0 on Windows & Android!

New features needing testing include a new voice actor for the main character, new 2D cutscene movies to replace the old 3D ones, an Achievements system, a tooltip bar displaying which hotspot your mouse is hovering over, and a newly-added score system with 500 points. We've also included a multitude of smaller improvements to assist in fine-tuning the game.

Please drop a message here or e-mail beta@himalayastudios.com if interested. Android testers should be familar with copying and installing files to their phone via the JJS Port.

Cheers!

P.S. I'm unable to edit the first post of this thread. Erpy's no longer around, so if anyone with Admin access is able to give me access to the top post, it'd be appreciated.

Just wanted to drop this here. I frequently get the following crash in 3.3.0 beta when double-clicking to open a room file. It typically happens only after the editor has already been open for a while and I have been editing scripts, importing sprites, and so forth. If you need any more info, let me know.

A problem has occured, and AGS does not know how to deal with it. Please help us to improve AGS by using the "Send Error Report" button to send this error information to the AGS website for investigation.

Error: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
Version: AGS 3.3.0.1140

System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
   at load_room_file(SByte* )
   at load_crm_file(UnloadedRoom roomToLoad)
   at AGS.Native.NativeMethods.LoadRoomFile(UnloadedRoom roomToLoad)
   at AGS.Editor.Components.RoomsComponent.LoadNewRoomIntoMemory(UnloadedRoom newRoom, CompileMessages errors)
   at AGS.Editor.Components.RoomsComponent.LoadDifferentRoom(UnloadedRoom newRoom)
   at AGS.Editor.Components.RoomsComponent.LoadRoom(String controlID)
   at AGS.Editor.Components.RoomsComponent.ItemCommandClick(String controlID)
   at AGS.Editor.Components.BaseComponentWithFolders`2.CommandClick(String controlID)
   at AGS.Editor.ProjectTree.ProcessClickOnNode(String nodeID, MouseButtons button)
   at AGS.Editor.ProjectTree.projectTree_NodeMouseDoubleClick(Object sender, TreeNodeMouseClickEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.TreeView.OnNodeMouseDoubleClick(TreeNodeMouseClickEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.TreeView.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

Another bug I have noticed: Create two separate folders in the Sprite Manager and give them identical names (let's call both folders "GFX"). Import images into sprite slots 1, 2, and 3 in the first folder and into slots 4, 5, and 6 in the second folder. Next, create a view/loop in the "Views" editor and for frames 0, 1, and 2, use sprite slots 4, 5, and 6 from the second folder.

Now, double-click on any frame in that loop to open the Sprite Manager. Instead of opening in the second "GFX" folder and highlighting the relevant sprite, as it should, it instead opens the first "GFX" folder and highlights nothing. It actually doesn't matter if the identical folder name is a sub-folder - AGS will always find the first instance of the folder name and open it, regardless of whether it's the right one. (The same bug also occurs when clicking the "Image" button for a room object sprite or on GUIs).

Hmmm, that didn't seem to work for me. When I followed those steps, all the sprites still showed up as blue cups in the Sprite Manager. I guess I compiled the source and played around with the settings too many times before I tried what you said (although the timestamp on my backup_acsprset.spr was from 2 days ago - before his happened).

At any rate, I downloaded the latest AGS 3.3 beta and noticed the new option to "Replace Sprites From Source". Let me say that whoever added that feature is an angel! It allowed me to recover all of the sprites from the folders on my hard drive and set them back up in the source, as intended. A few stragglers that had been copied and pasted from the clipboard needed to be tracked down manually, and I had to tweak a few things here and there, but I have now brought it back from the dead and MADE A BACKUP. Thanks for the tips.

Incidentally, is this the type of thing that could be prevented if AGS made a backup of the sprindex.dat file when you compile? If so, any plans to do that?

Okay, I've run into a big problem here and I'm wondering if anybody knows of a solution.

I was working on a game in AGS and I used the test game without debugger (CTRL+F5). The game launched and about 5 seconds later, the power went out. It came on again so I rebooted and reloaded the game into the editor. I used CTRL+F5 again and then jumped to a specific room with CTRL+X. The room in question had been open in AGS at the time of the power failure and AGS gave a fatal error that the file was badly packed. I visited a few other rooms and they looked fine. The sprites all displayed and animated in those rooms correctly.

Thinking it may have been an issue with the acsprset.spr file, I made a duplicate copy and put it in a safe place. Then I renamed the backup_acsprset.spr file to acsprset.spr file. Compiling the game and using CTRL+F5 at this point gave a fatal error upon loading that "There was an error drawing object 0. Its current sprite, 1281, is invalid."  No biggie, I thought. It must have been an issue with that particular room file being corrupt and not the sprite file. So, I simply renamed reverted back to my original acsprset.spr file. Whenever AGS has corrupted the sprite file in the past, I have been able to do this without issues.

However, this time, when I used CTRL+F5 again, the game kept giving the same error message above. Upon looking in the Sprite Manager, I noticed that all the sprites were displaying as blue cups, and a quick glance at the game folder revealed that my sprindex.dat was completely gone. The sprindex.dat seems to store the data for which sprites are which, but doesn't get backed up between compiles like the other crucial sprite files do.

So, now I have no way to get the sprites in the sprite manager back to their original versions. When looking in the game.agf file, it appears that all of the sprites' source folders and filenames are stored. I'm going to lose significant progress if I can't get around this issue. Does anybody know if it's possible to rebuild the sprindex.dat file somehow by reading the data contained in the game.agf and current acsprset.spr files?

Thanks for any insight!

Just gave Nelly Cootalot a plug in our latest Kickstarter newsletter update. Sorry, I would have done it sooner but had to wait on something before we could make a new post. Anyhow, hope it helps -- game's looking great!

Frodo: We've been talking to GOG about accepting the game, and they'd like to see a working demo once it's further along. Chances are pretty high that they'll accept it when the time comes, though.

Mati256: Greenlight is a strange process (not to mention an atrocious mess of a system). Sometimes you've got to fight strange with strange.

[1)]

We're running a giveaway to help promote Mage's Initiation on Steam Greenlight.

For the chance to win a huge bundle of collectible items valued at over $450 USD, just follow these simple steps:

   1) Visit the Mage's Initiation Greenlight page and click the "Yes" button to upvote the game.

   2) Click the "Favorite" and "Follow" buttons (under the screenshots).

   3) Leave a comment (This step is necessary so that we can choose winners from the list of usernames assigned to the comments).


And that's it! Three entries will be randomly chosen when Mage's Initiation gets greenlit and this contest will remain open until that time. Comments/votes that existed before the contest was announced will also be eligible to win.

Second Prize: Two runners-up will each be gifted one game of their choice (of any value) to their Steam account.

First Prize: One lucky winner will receive all if the items below:

- 4 Game boxes (Fire, Earth, Air, and Water) containing game and soundtrack CDs
- 1 Standard DVD Case/copy of the “Mages Initiation" game
- 4 D'arc Polyresin figures - Fire, Earth, Air, and Water (4" x 3" x 3")
- 3 Digital Copies of the "Mage's Initiation" game
- 1 Digital Copy of the "Al Emmo & the Lost Dutchman's Mine" game
- 1 Digital "Al Emmo & the Lost Dutchman's Mine" soundtrack (53 Tracks)
- 1 "Mage's Initiation" Poster (18" x 24")
- 1 "Mage's Initiation" 50-page Hardcover Art book
- 2 Bronze "Severed Circle" Pendants
- 3 Complete sets of character trading cards (15 foil packs, 120 cards total)
- 1 Art Lithograph, Signed by JP Selwood (8.5" x 11")
- 2 Cloth Maps of the Land of Iginor (11" x 17")
- 2 T-shirts (Mens or Ladies sizes)

Thanks!

No worries.   The PayPal option will probably be up for quite a while yet. We're actually considering leaving it up until just before the game launches. That way, any new pledges can contribute towards the additional stretch goals that didn't get reached during the Kickstarter.

And it's all over! Finished up with a grand total of $127,765 including PayPal pledges. And we still have the PayPal option open for "slacker backers".

Thanks again to all you pledgers out there.

Thanks guys, glad you enjoyed it!

We're counting down the final hours of our Kickstarter now. Thanks a TON to everyone who has pledged! We've knocked six stretch goals out of the way and still have 8 hours remaining on the clock as I type this.

If anyone wants to throw in an 11th hour pledge and get their hands on the resin character figures or other neat swag, now's the time. Thanks again.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2112639455/mages-initiation-a-classic-sierra-style-adventure