Messages

Hello! Bear with me while I ask some potentially daft questions but...

* Has the windows build benefitted from any of the changes/fixes from the port?
* Does the windows build have a list of useful fixes noted down anywhere (such as the music stuttering fix)?
* Will the OpenGL driver work on the windows build of the engine?

I'm basically hoping that some of my bugbears with AGS are possibly addressed in the Android port and have somehow made it back in to the windows build as a result of this!

Oh, and according to CJ short is actually slower than int, and should only be used in extreme cases where the actual difference in data size is relevant.

Oh. Whoops, time to change a bunch of things in my scripts!

Hello! I've been working on something similar with some gracious jibbling of the SayBackground overlay properties. Regarde:

Code: ags

// new module script

Overlay* ovSayNonBlocking;
short charid =-1;
bool BackgroundSpeaking = false;
int ovx, ovy;

function SayNonBlocking(this Character*,  String message) 
{
    ovSayNonBlocking = this.SayBackground(message);
    charid = this.ID;
    BackgroundSpeaking = true;
    ovx = ovSayNonBlocking.X;
    ovy = ovSayNonBlocking.Y;
    character[charid].LockView(character[charid].SpeechView);
    character[charid].Animate(character[charid].Loop, character[charid].SpeechAnimationDelay, eRepeat, eNoBlock);
}

function repeatedly_execute_always() 
{
  if(ovSayNonBlocking != null && ovSayNonBlocking.Valid == true)
  {
    ovSayNonBlocking.X = ovx;
    ovSayNonBlocking.Y = ovy;
    
    if( character[charid].View == character[charid].SpeechView && mouse.IsButtonDown(eMouseLeft) )
    {
        character[charid].UnlockView();
    }
    else if(character[charid].View == character[charid].NormalView && character[charid].Moving == false)
    {
      character[charid].LockView(character[charid].SpeechView);
      character[charid].Animate(character[charid].Loop, character[charid].SpeechAnimationDelay, eRepeat, eNoBlock);
    }
  }
  else 
  {
    if(charid > -1 && BackgroundSpeaking == true)
    {
      if(character[charid].Moving == false)
          character[charid].UnlockView();
      BackgroundSpeaking = false;
    }
  }
  
}

Code: ags

import function SayNonBlocking(this Character*,  String message);

And hey presto, just use cEgo.SayNonBlocking("Yeahnice") if you want it to non-block and stick to the spot! Plenty of modifications needed to make this track multiple characters and trigger VO and stuff, but it's a start. Oh and it might pan around weirdly in scrolling rooms, but I think there's an easy fix I'm overlooking there.


Edit: Hm, the code to swap back and forth between the Talking and Walking states when saying a background text isn't bulletproof, I've been able to get my character stuck in the 'speaking' view occasionally. It's close but maybe someone can spot the flaw?

I don't use the fadein/fadeout options, so I guess that's why I've never run in to this with my 320x240 game! Very nervous about the fact that it is an issue though, and I'd really like to see it get fixed if it's a buffer problem. Sounds... straightforward enough to do so in an intarim build

Generally agree with Snarky's list of things. Currently I can grab a couple of different branches that fix different problems for me (ie, the engine build with user-defined widescreen resolutions, the 'Draconian' edition that incorporates my long standing "Fixed Scaling on D3D (and now works fine with "Smooth scaled sprites" option)" wish, now the JJS windows build that helps with the music stuttering) but it would be rather wonderful for me (and quite selfish!) if some of these fixes could be united and some sort of AGS 3.2.2beta/alpha/whatever could be put out before major restructuring surgery goes on with the source code.

[Music skipping]

In addition, there is one longstanding bug that has become a major irritant and has to be eradicated in the next version, no excuses:
* Music skipping on room change.

Hello. Just out of curiosity, and mainly because I've never experienced this on my own computer(s) and have done a lot of buggering about with music in AGS, how wide-spread is this issue and what conditions make this happen? Is there a consistent reason or is it just happening here and there for some people?

It's a Cat!aclysm and no mistake.

Rorschach's Journal, 12 July 2009

Welp, I'm back in my flat now having departed from Becky's house this afternoon, so I guess Mittens is finally over for me. Boo!

It's going to be hard going back to work after the sheer wonder and whimsy of the week we spent hanging out in Miami, making ridiculous fight scenes for films, tourturing each other with candy, swimming in the pool at night, playing hide and seek in the spooky mansion ("Jess: What was that noise?!" "Me: ...my stomach."), playing videos games, placing balls in Mills' hand, rekindling an obsession with water balloons, playing with fireworks, burning the queen, and most enjoyably of all, just talking and laughing with folks you'd never normally get to talk and laugh with face to face. There was just so much going on it felt like the week went by much too quickly, and I'm greatly missing the atmosphere and company... even nearly one week after it's formal ending.

So to all of you there I'd like to re-iterate that you're all awesome people and it was a pleasure to spend time with you all. I hope to see every last one of you at Mittens 2010!

(Which should be in Italy!)

Oh hey, I'm awake! And alive, after hobbling back through London.

Still groggy and trying to caption an impossible amount of photograhps, so full reminiscing will occur later. All I can say is that I laughed so hard I got a sore throat, and then laughed so hard in the pool I swallowed gallons of water and got the other part of my throat infected, and then laughed some more until my lungs seized up. Illness can be fun!

Thanks to Francisco for hosting the whole massive, amazing event, and for driving us around everywhere in the Deathcar. It was great to finally meet Pete and Sylpher who I've known online for ages, as well as Snarky who's also a forum veteran. It was 100% fun times and I really will make it my goal to not leave it another 5 years before seeing the folks who were at Mittens 2004 again!

Photos will be arriving later today, no doubt.

I'm curious, Adamski - how did you get your employer's attention in the first place?  Just a combination of good grades, the right degree, hard work, and a little luck?

I pretty much emailed my CV to every single company I could find the contact details for, and followed up every relevent job advertised on places like gamesindustry.biz, datascope, aardvark swift, etc. It was a combination of brute force, sheer luck and timing that got me an interview eventually... and once you have experience under your belt the whole thing becomes a lot easier! Basically you'll want to be on the lookout for Junior or Graduate positions, and as a programmer you'll find quite a lot of them... designer positions less so.

Oh, the other good advice would be to be prepared to move to the other end of the country! It makes the difference between breaking in to the industry and... well, not.

I'd hazard that the best way of getting your foot in the door is having a good and varied portfolio of completed projects, as this is the next best thing to actual commercial experience.  There are plenty of open source game projects you can get involved in.  It also wouldn't hurt to have a few other side projects, web development etc. as proof of technical competence if nothing else.

C/C++ seems to be the defacto industry standard for game development...

The advice above is probably the most useful, a good porfolio is a necessity these days. When I got my first job I basically demoed a couple of indie games that I was working on at the time and bits and pieces of University work.

It is astonishingly hard to get in to the industry if you don't have any previous experience, but it is possible. Some companies are more friendly towards graduates and juniors than others, but usually you end up having to grab anything that comes your way, even if it means slumming it with a less than desirabe development company for a bit. I got incredibly lucky, but most people don't!

It's absolutely crucial though that you have a very well written CV, because I've seen so many bad ones come my way and it's just so darn competitive there isn't time to give a second thought to the ones that haven't had the time spent on them that they should have! I'd be very surprised if you can get a job without a relevent degree in the field you're going for, especially if you have no previous experience... I'm pretty confident that my degree and grade contributed a large amount to me getting my first job too.

Also, I'm not a programmer but everyone seems to use C++ as a standard, so you'll need to know that. Never seen any professional use of Java, but it varies from company to company.

The buffer size depends on the audio type (I think it's 16 KB for OGG, for example) so it depends on the frequency of the audio file as to how many milliseconds of sound is buffered. For beta 2, I updated the PositionMs property on OGG audio to interrogate the buffer and return a more accurate position, whereas in beta 1 it was returning a position rounded to the nearest buffer size.

Aha, this would explain a lot!

There still seems to be a large amount of inaccuracy when seeking in a streaming channel that's currently playing. If I do the following:

Code: ags

track1 = aMusic1.Play();

...and then any time later in the script/game:

Code: ags

track2 = aMusic2.PlayFrom(track1.PositionMs);

...then track2 will sync to track1's position exactly (which is what we want!). However if do the following.

Code: ags

track1 = aMusic1.Play();
track2 = aMusic2.Play();

...and then any time later in the script/game:

Code: ags

track2.Seek(track1.PositionMs)

...track2 is out of sync with track 1 by a very large number of milliseconds (250 at the very least!).

I'm not sure if this is a bug or something else, but it's not a HUGE problem as I think that every case where I'll need to sync tracks together I'll always use the PlayFrom command... but it's there for your information anyway

I've been playing around with the new audio functions in my lunchbreak and the possibilities are very exciting. I'll have a play around further in the evening but I think it'll be possible to have transition cues and crossfading that's synced to the tempo of your music, so you could actually do something as complex as Woodtick from Monkey Island 2 but with streamed audio!

One question though Ceej, how large is the buffer in samples for music and streamed audio? There's going to be some lag compensation necessary I think on the scripting side, and if the time it takes to buffer music tracks is known then it'll make this a lot easier!

Cheers,
Adam

Does Beta 2 remove the 1 music channel limit from Beta 1? Lots of music channels would be extremely useful!

I think it's pretty dangerous to be all wolly about the BNP by saying "it's not racial hatred, it's just free speech even though it's pretty appaling free speech", it sort of gives them a certain degree of validation that they shouldn't be getting. No matter how they try and spin it they represent everything that is rephrensible about British (or any) culture, and even the tiniest hint that they're gaining momentum should worry every single clear minded person currently living in the UK.

Back when I still lived in london, there were Indians who were voting BNP, too.  Mostly as they were sick of my Borough's efforts to take in as many Kosovan Refugees as possible.

This is both hilarious and kind of sad, because these are the kind of people that would vote the BNP in to power and then, as made evident by Nick Griffin's comments this very morning, find themselves being shut out by the very party they wanted in government because of their ethnicity and skin colour.

Telltale, you beautiful bastards. It looks like they've also managed to get Michael Land back on board, who is pretty much my idol and one of the reasons I got in to video game audio in the first place. The Monkey Island 2 and 3 soundtracks really have yet to be beaten in terms of depth and complexity in the video game world, and they're well over a decade old!

It's all terribly exciting, and yet at the same time a bit deflating for me... I'm still working on and off on Oswyn and this is probably not going to help the potential sigmata that at first glance, the game seems very similar to a certain series set deep in the Caribbean. Even though both series of games are going to be totally and completely different in tone and atmosphere... hopefully!

But yes, I'll be first in line to play this. Make it better than Escape, please!

Flights are booked, payment will be within the next month or so, hooray for all!

Going from the Zoom pedal and then directly in to the Line In port on your computer would also be a big help as a stop-gap if you don't want to invest in new hardware just yet... if it's a multi-effects pedal then it'll have some pre-amp action going on and act as your impedance-matching-device. It'll give you a useable signal and also provide you with your effects, so you won't have to waste precious processing cycles doing it in software!

Of course it'll still give you a crummier sound quality than if you were using an interface with higher quality A/D converters to get the sound in to your computer, and if you do go for an external audio interface then you'll be plugging in to the 1/4" jack inputs (using the same cable you'd use to plug in to your guitar), which will be the inputs with the high-impedance switch. The 'other ones' are XLR inputs which are mostly used for Microphones of the non-desktop-computer variety.

Snake asked the same question a while ago, and I think the same advice will be true here:

-----

*I'm recording through the sound input jack - not the microphone jack.

This is the exact point in the chain where the sound is being crappened, so to speak As a general rule, consumer soundcards are not built with recording instruments in mind, and as Eldkatt has mentioned the cheap A/D converters (the electronics that looks at an analogue signal and converts it in to zeros and ones for the computer to understand) will be doing a bad job of preserving the original signal.

However, the biggest issue you have using the line-in is going to be mismatched impedances. A guitar pickup has a very high impedance, while the input (be it line-in or mic) on a computer soundcard is expecting a low impedance signal, and without getting in to the mind-numbing technicalities this is why you're getting a very unhappy sound. This is not a problem limited to sound cards, as the same issue arises when trying to plug a guitar directly in to even the world's most expensive mixing desk.

If you're serious or even semi-serious about recording guitars then you will need to get yourself a Direct Injection unit, or more conveniantly an external audio interface that has this as a built in feature such as this: http://www.tascam.com/products/us-122l.html

It's nice and cheap and I've used the previous model extensivly, and it should intergrate with Audition Fruity Loops without any hassle at all.

Hope this helps!

Set the bitrate to 16.

I was going to post this earlier, but got too involved in actually reading it! Much more awesome than the design docs I usually get to see