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I've experienced something of a paradigm shift with regards to indie game development over the last year or so.

I used to be very much into heavily structured languages/frameworks like XNA and libgdx. They seemed elegant to me and I really appreciated the structure they provided.

However, a few years ago Jon Blow did a GDC talk in which he basically said "Just get it done". He opined that making games is not like other coding. There is simply too much to get done in a short time period. Usually game code does not need to be maintainable for any length of time and often there is only a single programmer, maybe two. That, in my mind at least, eliminates the need for the heavy structural architecture of frameworks like libgdx and xna and the languages that accompany them.

That's not to say I dislike Java (I do) or C# (I don't). I'm just saying that I don't personally find the rigidity of those environments to be helpful when making a game. I need to do it fast and i need to be flexible in my approach.

With that in mind I recommend some of the more agile game dev tools available.

Remember my SpriteFont plugin. It means you can draw your own predictable font in full 32bit colour. So you can have very predictable AA.

The plugin is supported by all the ports too.

I think part of the readability issue is the fact that the text is all uppercase. We tend to find it easier to read properly cased words.

Some time ago I made this little game with 1024x768 resolution (currently the maximum possible afaik)

The custom resolution build of the engine supports any resolution.. I don't think it has any upper bound (although I imagine it would fail at anything above 2048x2048)

I think thats a little beyond scope at the moment.

If you need that then I suggest the AGS Lua plugin.

Err yea, sorry. I forgot that without the context of the original thread this makes literally no sense.

what i mean is that there is a floating hotspot *label* that follows the cursor when the mouse is over a hotspot/object/character.

I will update the OP.

4 spaces the most common now I think.

Most editors have 4 spaces as the default tab width.

Yea, I meant to mention this. Using software scaling is not the right solution.

A better solution would be to have a RenderTarget of the native game resolution, do *all* drawing to that and then draw that RT to the back buffer.
That way you can still utilise filtering of various kinds and it still make sense with regards to the native res.

All looks excellent and extra kudos for providing actual implementation and not just whining like the rest of us.

I think the thing that almost everyone is most interested in is struct parameter passing.
My suggestion for actual object creation can be found here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=46157.msg620208#msg620208

I made a little module a while ago and lots of people have PMed me because the link went dead.

It shows a label next to the mouse cursor whenever the player hovers over an interactive space (hotspot/object/character).

I found it in Murder on the Titania so here it is: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27247158/Modules/FloatingHotspot.scm

Here's the header. It's fair self explanatory.

SetSlideIn sets whether the hotspot should do the sexy slide in animation. On by default.
SetSpring sets whether or not the hotspot label should dampen the mouse movement. On by default.
I forget exactly what SetVerticalOffset does but I assumes its how much lower than the mouse the label should display. -5 by default.

Code: ags

managed struct FloatingHotspot 
{
  import static void SetMaxWidth(int width);
  import static void SetFont(FontType font);
  import static void SetColor(int color);
  import static void SetSlideIn(bool on);
  import static void SetSpring(bool on);
  import static void SetVerticalOffset(int offset);
  import static void UseGui(GUI *toUse);
  import static void UseOverlay();
};

I coded the snapping and locking because moving GUI controls around used to suck and usually gui controls align to some kind of grid (especially buttons and labels).
I also added the gui control movement with arrow keys thing.

If you need to move controls very accurately then, as Ryan says, hold CTRL while moving them.

Really stuff like this should be in some kind of user preferences system but no easily extensible system exists yet.

The most recent version of the engine has alpha blending built in so the plugin is totally unneeded now.

Fix my sprite font rendering issue!

It's an engine fault! The plugin makes no distinction between normal guis and text windows.

On my local repository, I added for, break and continue statements. I am thinking of proposing these as additions to AGS script too.

You added these to the script language?

HOLY WAR!

I have lost the source for the D3DVSync plugin but it was a single line in the initialisation of the graphics engine that enabled VSync. I'd argue that VSync should be enable by default anyway on D3D.

(Actually i'd argue that directX should be removed entirely in favour of opengl but whatever)

I think I've released the source for all my plugins that are in use.

Am I missing any?

The problem is almost certainly graphics gale.

AFAIK GG doesnt support alpha channels of any kind and it flattens images on export.

In this case though you could just raise the transparency of the object.

Scintilla.net is old, slow and not very portable.  I propose we change to this:

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/161871/Fast-Colored-TextBox-for-syntax-highlighting

It's a pure .net(I think) syntax highlighted text box. It's also just a normal winforms control so we can do away with the weird scintilla wrappers.

Thoughts?

A non-commercial license for an AGS module is a bit odd. Of course it is entirely Dualnames prerogative.