Messages

The guide says that you're supposed to double-click the list box and add code there, but yours appear to be working on a text box. I would double-check that you're working on the correct GUI control, I followed the same example in my game and to me the function looks like this

Code: ags

function lstSaveGames_OnSelectionChange(GUIControl *control)
{
  txtSaveName.Text = lstSaveGames.Items[lstSaveGames.SelectedIndex];
}

Incidentally the combo boxes still have a white frame around them, if anyone knows how to remove this I would be grateful.

I finally found a fix for this


This is a good time to re upload the gallery and the executable build if anyone wants to see my latest changes in its entirety.

Gallery

Test Build

[Main Editor Window:]

<annoying message>I strongly advise not to create any custom GUI controls, especially "standard" ones like scrollbars. 99% of the time they are much, much more complex to implement than they seem, and it does nothing else than introducing bugs.</annoying message>

Don't worry, I completely agree with you. I've made it a priority to only extend with new code and not to tamper/modify with already existing code unless it was extremely minor and absolutely necessary. Replacing old GUI components with new custom ones goes far beyond the scope of a color re-skin. The custom scroll bar was only reviewed because the default one annoys me a little bit.

Re: scrollbars
simply take the scrollbar control and override OnPaint

Would you care to elaborate a little? How do I "take" the scroll bar control? The closest looking Properties I've found are HScroll and VScroll which are bools for if the scroll bars should be visible or not, or VerticalScroll and HorizontalScroll which makes simple behavior stuff like positioning of the bar happen.

Re: the theme
The reason I linked the Visual Studio one is to demonstrate the contrast. In your version the dividing lines are essentially white and so the contrast is high. The point of a dark theme is generally to reduce contrast.

Ahh, that's fair. Just to be clear, you're speaking now of how the layout looked when you posted the image or how it is now? I think it is somewhat more pleasing to the eyes after I reworked the output panels and the combo boxes. I feel like I'm running out of non-hack ways to make the dark theme even better, nevertheless your post inspired me to give several of the components a second third fourth fifth look. I probably wouldn't have thought to make these changes if you didn't make the post, so big thanks to you

Main Editor Window:
The key difference here is the tool bar, it used to have a white line under it, but I finally figured out how to remove it.


Tree Views:
I removed the white line that showed indentation in the tree structure. It now looks more like the tree structure in Visual Studio.


Menu:
Separator lines are now gray instead of white.


Text Boxes:
The borders of the text boxes are no longer thick white and is replaced with a thin gray/white solution. I was only able to set border style and not coloring so the color "choice" will likely remain as it is. Incidentally the combo boxes still have a white frame around them, if anyone knows how to remove this I would be grateful.

Thanks Crimson. I'll give your suggestions a thorough read through once Christmas Eve has ended and post the result for review again.

you can use a custom scrollbar to replace the default one.

Thank you for the suggestion, but I was unable to make it work properly. I'm not sure exactly why but there might be a conflict with the AGS docking mechanism and associated auto-size functions, as the solution in the link you provided doesn't actually replace anything, it just hides the windows component and puts its own GUI component on top. I might have been able to figure out a solution for it eventually, however I'm afraid my attention span for this little project is starting to run out.

But still, let me wish the AGS community a merry Christmas and show off my work so far.

Gallery

Test Build

Source code

I will probably just leave this lying around for a couple of days, if there is no specific feedback I'll ask for a pull request.

[Drop down menus:]

Looking cool already. If you manage to darken the scrollbars and dropdown menues too then it should be done I guess (not seeing other editor parts...)

Drop down menus:
Already taken care of.

Scroll bars:
That's a no-go I'm afraid. Since Windows forms components acts as containers that are sent out to Windows to deal with. Windows will receive those components and wrap its stuff around them, including scroll bars, I have no control of that one and it annoys me endlessly.

Other editor parts:
I haven't dealt with those yet. I will be be moving on to each individual tool in the project tree once I'm satisfied with everything in the main editor.

Here's visual studio's dark theme as a guide.

Thank you, but I have Visual Studio with Dark Theme installed on my computer It is in fact what I'm using while I'm doing these changes. I've literally been color picking from VS Dark Theme when I've chosen dark colors for AGS. Did you post the picture because because you were thinking of something specific?

Guess I've progressed far enough now to show off what I have at this point.

[#1 Preferences extension]

Why don't you just do this in a way that the theme can be switched and send the patch (or pull request) to the others to review and include?

Hmm, I might just do that.

I can think of a third skin. If the default is the Windows Visual Studio standard, it would be nice to have a theme that mimicked the blue-backed DOS editors (e.g. Turbo C++).

Ultimately, it would be nice to have external skin files with colour schemes in them.

Ahh, you mean the blue background with the bright neon-like coloring for code. Not my cup of tea I have to admit, but still I might look into it.

I agree that having external skin files for custom coloring is ideal, but I imagine it would increase the workload of this project a great deal. I think that dividing the implementation into steps would be a good way to go. If I ever finish step #1, me or maybe someone else will be inspired into looking into resolving step #2 later, where the steps would be:

• Implement a color theme switcher between light and dark for the Code Editor.
• Implement a color theme switcher between light and dark for the whole AGS Editor. After all, this, looks better than this.
• Implement a custom color chooser which store user choices in a file, and lets them load it into the editor, share them online, etc.

Couple of things I need to figure out though.

#1 Preferences extension
Is it okay if I extend the Preferences GUI with another option for color theme like this? I've noticed that there already is a group box for the script editor. But keeping in mind that I might want to test and see if I can make similar color swaps with the rest of the AGS editor GUI components.


#2 Git branch
Which branch should I base my work on? develop-3.4.0?

#3 Color themes
The vanilla theme is cemented as far as I'm concerned. However since the vanilla theme follows the Visual Studio coloring, should I try to do the same for the dark theme for AGS? So that it follows the same coloring that Visual Studio uses for its dark theme?

[Sample:]

This isn't really neither a Module or a Plugin, but it seemed the best related place to put it.

Couple of years ago I briefly tried the AGS Draconian Edition, and I was a big fan of the slick dark colors in the code editor. Since I didn't see a dark theme making its way into the official AGS anytime soon I took the matters into my own hands and built a modified .exe file which does a color swap exactly like the one in the Draconian Edition. I'll share it here for others with similar interests to enjoy.

Sample:



Instructions:
Unzip the file "AGSEditorDraconian.exe" into your "Adventure Game Studio 3.3.2" folder, run that instead of the original "AGSEditor.exe".

Note:

• This is only tested on, AGS 3.3.2.0, which is the version of the source code that I modified.
• This should not change any project settings or similar. It only does a color re skin, to my knowledge it should work exactly the same as vanilla would.

Credits:
Based on the code of Alan v.Drake for color reskin.

Download.

Off-topic:
I was thinking I could have a fun holiday project with building an AGS plugin which changes the color theme of the AGS editor. Is this at all possible with the current AGS Editor plugin API? In order to do color swaps on the code editor I had to fork the project and do my own modification in "ScintillaWrapper.cs" by changing code lines like this

Code: ags

this.scintillaControl1.StyleSetBack(Cpp.Default, DefaultBackColor);

Is it possible to access "scintillaControl" from the Editor Plugin API? Is there any other way I could attack this problem to customize colors?

By default I think an IDE or similar should provide at least two color skins, a light one, which would be the vanilla theme, and a dark one, which in this case would be the Draconian theme.

Just for information. When I go to the download page it says "Subscription Expired". No downloads available.

While I'm here I might as well mention this. We've been spending the entire year doing resource gathering from previous project iterations, organizing and planning a development structure that would work well with open-source development, fixing bugs and doing a major cleanup in the source code.

We feel as if we're ready to start doing major work in moving the game forward now. At first we need to deal with the great behemoth that specifically for this game has always been a major hurdle, the plot. Currently the expertise field of the development team has a 100% shift towards programming, and thus we urge anyone who would be interested in writing to take a look. More info here.

[ChamberOfFear:]

ChamberOfFear:
Thank you so much for collecting all the Hero6 demos and source files. It has been a struggle for me to keep active links to them all on my Hero6 page over the years so now I've updated my page to take people to your sourceforge page. And well done on locating the 2002 forest demo, I requested that here in the game request thread and people told me it didn't exist lol! Even Delta couldn't find it when we talked but I knew it existed and sure enough you got it!!

No problem, Robert should have tried to contact you right now regarding several other demos that will be uploaded at Sourceforge at some point.

Radiant:
YES!!! You read my mind! It broke my heart a few years back when I built my Destiny & Nightfall tribute pages and just couldn't get the demos. Found their websites in the internet archive, found the download links but the files they linked to were not backed up. There's gotta be some fan out there who eagerly tried their demos and still has a copy laying around. A few owners of long dead QFG fan projects have contacted me over the years and given me new stuff but sadly I've never heard from the people behind these 2 projects. Wish we could get in touch with them. PS I know you've been at me for ages to split the Heroine Quest pages but I haven't really worked on my QFG page much over the last few years but I'm doing a big overhaul atm and I've finished splitting the Heroine pages and they'll hopefully be to your liking, will upload them very soon.

Again, Robert should have tried to contact you as I'm writing this post. Check you PMs and mail account and whatnot.

Did you remove the function GetRoomProperty(string property)? Compiling outputs the error "Error (line xxx): undefined symbol 'GetRoomProperty'".

I would be interested to see if you can also locate the demo of Nightfall: Hero Of Odarin, or of Destiny: The Lost Soul. Both games have released a demo either to a small group of friends or to the devteam themselves, and both demos appear to be lost to history. It would be nice if someone could find them

You ask the impossible

Interesting though.. It never occurred to me try and find stuff Hero6 members worked on before they started Hero6. I see that several of the project members of those two projects are familiar names of the old Hero6 development team. Pretty much all of them has disappeared from the radar, except Gronagor who has visited our forums. I've messaged him and we'll cross our fingers for a miracle.

If anyone else would happen to have them available, please send them to me and I'll make sure they're uploaded to Sourceforge.

[Never mind, found it.]

The Hero6 - Greenleef Demo from 2001 is uploaded to Sourceforge.

If anyone has the Hero6 - Forest Demo from 2002 we would be interested in getting a hold of it.
Never mind, found it.

If anyone is interested, I believe I've found all the demos that were ever made of Hero6. They are available on the Hero6 Sourceforge page, as well as the current prototype. The following demos are available:

• 2001 Greenleaf Demo
• 2002 Forest Demo
• 2006 MAD Demo Alpha 14
• 2009 AGS Demo

So if you feel nostalgic and want to look at old stuff, help yourselves.

[Hero 6]

Has anybody Hero 6? (old & new demos)

The most updated executable is available in the "Files" tab on Sourceforge, as well as the demo that was posted by deltamatrix in this thread.
If you wanted to try the demo made in the MAD engine it should be available on Blake's Sanctum in the Hero6 page.