Messages

I'm pretty sure existing games don't do this, because it would cause the game to hang

I mean - they could run animation prior to enabling object. That does not make games to hang per se (only checking IsAnimating in the loop when object is disabled does).

Hmm, well, I can add a fork in code (if game version >= 3.3.0, then...)
The question is, what's the proper behavior? In my personal opinion, animation sequence is not directly bound with object visibility. I.e.: you could start animation and then show/hide object repeatedly for the sake of achieving some effect (something that AGS does not seem to allow right now?).

If you drag-and-drop any dialog topic to change the order, and then compile and run the game, when clicked in-game, every topic option will point to completely unrelated topics' options in different trees. In addition, if you double-click on one of the dialog topics you dragged to a new position, the dialog script opens, but the font will look entirely different; it will appear smaller (plain arial) and without any of the color-coded formatting that the editor normally adds to scripts.

Yes, that's true.
This seem to occur only with dialogs that are put into folders. Also, I think I see certain logic pattern in what's happening: dialog #1 options become binded with the answers from the very first dialog in the very first folder, dialog #2 options are binded to the second dialog in the folders, etc (the dialogs in the root are counted first, then the dialogs in folders).

[driver available on the system]

No matter if a cd audio is inserted or not, your code tells the CD is detected.

I wonder if this code detects if a computer has a cd drive installed unstead if a cd-audio is insereted or not.

But this is all is in the manual:

eCDIsDriverPresent - checks if there is a CD-ROM driver available on
   the system. Returns 1 if there is, and 0 if there is not.

3. Water.

Here's more... err.. standard-looking Stalin vs Hitler comic.

Spoiler

[close]

Something weird I found other time :
comic strip series about Hare Ptz (sic) and his imaginary friends.





- No, really, you expect me to say something?

EDIT: whoops, disregard this, I confused this with newer function.

Yes, I can confirm this: if object is not visible it simply does not update animation, yet allows to set up one.


//----------------------------------------------------------------

Not sure how to solve this.
Changing any behavior here will break backwards compatibility. While issuing a warning don't seem to be a very good solution, because on some occasions user may want to apply animation to invisible object, then show it after some delay, and this is perfectly valid sequence, IMO (for example, animation could be set in a separate script function with generic behavior, which does not care if object is shown or not).

[exactly]

Well, this looks exactly like "Whole screen" speech style.
Notice, that not only screen is black, but your character's speaking view is at the left side of the screen (that's how "Whole screen" style works).

Are you absolutely sure you don't have it set as a speech style in Global Settings?
If not, what about script? Maybe you have something like this somewhere:

Code: ags

SetSpeechStyle(eSpeechFullScreen);

[really messy]

Okay, here's another updated acwin.exe:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/6kb9e1x19nq9xpi/acwin.exe

- Fixed old strings assignment to new ones (and also when using in equality operators).
- Fixed RawDrawImageTransparent to work like it did.
BTW, things are really messy here. Quote from CJ found in code:

Transparency is a bit counter-intuitive
0 = not transparent, 100 = invisible, 1..99 barely visible .. mostly visible

Same goes for Object and Character.Transparency.

No multithreaded audio in this one.

Also added extra info to error messages, as was asked.


EDIT: As a note to other devs: I did not push these changes to repository yet. I want to be sure this works first (some tricky changes there).

Oh, I see. I was afraid that might be too problematic for AGS, but I thought some other software does that. Apparently not.

Well, maybe some do... at least some may use different scaling levels for different layers. Like game world rendered with one scale, but guis rendered with another scale as a separate process. I don't know. This all depends on how game image is constructed.

Ali, what about this plugin by Calin?

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=44359.0

Could that be the better alternative?

BTW, I was considering to implement sprite fonts as a native capability of AGS. Maybe we will at some point. WFN fonts are, essentially, sprite fonts, just with limited functionality.

What I meant is, if it would be possible to have a non-scaled font over a scaled image of everything else.

No, definitely not. (Unless using hacks so terrible  that I refuse to even imagine them ).

Text is usually not a separate image, but integrated with something else, like gui surface, overlay, even room background. It may have several additional post-effects applied (like something being drawn over). It may be printed on an object/character view frames, which, in turn could get tinted or drawn with partial transparency, etc, etc.

Besides, scaling inconsistency may (will) break proportions and constraints.
It will be hard (if not impossible) to properly calculate the size of text windows, and other objects, which usually depend on text size.

You know, it is actually possible to substitute game font by placing a font file with identical name in the game folder ?
I think I mentioned that somewhere already, but AGS first seeks for its files on disk, and then in the game package.
That's not very convenient, but may be used as a workaround.

Well, I am glad this one at least works .
I'll be merging latest 3.3.0 fixes and additions here some time later.

Would it be complicated to separate the font rendering from the rest of the image? So that we can e.g. have specific font sizes preloaded for specific screen resolutions.

You mean different fonts, depending on scaling? Hmm, there's nothing like that in AGS right now. But, hypothetically, I think, it is possible to make one fonts substitute others in font array after resolution has been established. Question is, what would be a better approach to this, from editor's perspective. Should we define "font aliases", that are not real fonts, but just a placeholders, filled in at runtime? Or should there be a property per each font, like "substitute by"/"override which font"? This idea may seem trivial at first, but really, there's much to think about.

It seems the suggestions so far have been mostly the obvious choices - games that people are likely to download and play anyway. I'd like people to use this opportunity to bring up the hidden gems of the database.

I wanted to suggest "Emily Enough: Imprisoned" for Pick of the month.
Played it long ago though, probably it is worth to replay and see if I still like it... ummm... enough (heh).
(But it has a pretty high rating anyway)

• Array out of bounds. It's great to know the allowed range, but what I'd really like to see is the name of the array.

Name of variables are never stored in game, only addresses in memory. This would require rewriting the agsscript compiler, at least.
Array size can be added to the error message, indeed. Right.

2.

Spoiler

Faith (heh)

[close]

lol.
Ok, I fixed my post to prevent misunderstanding.

[2%]

You know... It looks like it is previous versions of AGS that had a bug...

Let me explain.
If you read a 2.72 manual, it states:

Code: ags

RawDrawImageTransparent(int x, int y, int slot, int transparency)

Draws image SLOT from the sprite manager onto the screen at location (X,Y), with a translucency of TRANSPARENCY percent.
TRANSPARENCY is from 0-100; passing a TRANSPARENCY of 50 will draw the image semi-transparent; passing 0 is equivalent to just calling the normal RawDrawImage command.

<...>
RawDrawImageTransparent(100, 100, 134, 75);

will draw sprite 134 at (100, 100) on the screen, with 75 percent transparency.

Now, you call this:

Code: ags

 RawDrawImageTransparent (0, 0, d1.Graphic, 100 - i);

starting with i = 98, that is with transparency = 100 - 98 = 2.
That are 2% of transparency.
Yet 3.2.1 (and probably earlier) AGS draws image 98% transparent (2% opaque)!

Basically, this function acts opposite to how it is explained in the manual.
This is because there is (was) a mistake in the code, which used transparency argument in reverse way... and I occasionally fixed that mistake some time ago.

Umm... no. Because then the text gets a pink outline. When drawing it on a DrawingSurface (NOT A GUI). Unless you expressly fixed that.

Just tested this in AGS 3.2.1,"Anti-alias TTF fonts" = True, font is Arial.

Code: ags

// room script file
Overlay *o;
DynamicSprite *s;
function room_AfterFadeIn()
{
  s = DynamicSprite.Create(300, 50, true); // <-- if this is 'false' there's no AA (all text pixels are opaque)
  DrawingSurface *ds = s.GetDrawingSurface();
  ds.Clear(COLOR_TRANSPARENT);
  ds.DrawingColor = Game.GetColorFromRGB(128, 128, 0);
  ds.DrawString(2, 2, eFontFont3, "This line is drawn with TTF");
  ds.Release();
  o = Overlay.CreateGraphical(100, 100, s.Graphic, false); // <-- this can be 'true', result is the same
}

Result:


Do I miss anything?


Things went bad when I added outline though, automatic outline made some letters transparent where they should not be... or maybe it overlapped with wrong offset, hard to say for sure. But still I do not see any pink pixels.