Messages

PP = 200 means room load has started.
What is your room size and number of backgrounds?

You were speaking of the offsets as actually being offsets, yes? Like whatever AGS currently automatically assigns as the position for the Portrait, the offset just adds to that? Otherwise it isn't an offset, it's strictly an X,Y position.

Well, I added that as a response to Radiant's request. We discussed this a bit and came to a conclusion that setting offsets from screen border would be enough.
Currently it works in such a way that the manual offsets fully override automatic placement. Y offset explicitly defines the Y coordinate of the portrait's top line on screen, while the X offset is relative to the left or right screen border, depending on whether the portrait is displayed as "left-side" or "right-side".
In other words, X offset is a distance from screen border to nearest portrait side.

BUT, there should still be a manual X,Y so that you don't have to adjust via math or anything.

Uh, can you elaborate?

I'll redo that to a property.

What do you mean by that? (I'm not too knowledgeable with programming terms)

I mean something like

Code: ags

boolean Game.EnableSpeechPortraitOffsets;
int     Game.SpeechPortraitOffsetX;
int     Game.SpeechPortraitOffsetY;

On other hand I can be brave and introduce whole new class:

Code: ags

bool SierraSpeechStyle.ManualPortraitPosition;

The drawback of the latter will be that it will stand out as a unique example of "speech style" class in whole AGS scripting language.

Pirates of Carribean 3.

Yes, I was wrong... I'll redo that to a property.

Hmm, I remember last time he was saying he is a Russian immigrant in USA who had some psychiatric problems and was about to be extradicted back to Russia...

Well, those videos he shows, they are crazy, that's for sure . But I have to admit that they have some kind of... attractive power in them. Like David Lynch's surreal movies.

Also, if he is a troll, what is the purpose of the trolling?

[IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT]

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
I found a nasty bug in the Beta 4 (text messages were displayed with wrong text color), fixed it and re-uploaded the build. Please, download again.

I also provided a zip archive, as Ghost requested. If you have any previous AGS installed (even 3.2.1), you can copy the archive contents over:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/betas/AGS-3.3.0-beta4.zip


@ProgZMax, unfortunately I was unable to reproduce the bug you mentioned.
I took the joystick demo game, and put this in the GlobalScript.asc:

Code: ags

Joystick *joy2;
export joy2;

(I had to name it joy2, because room scripts alredy use "joy" variable)
Then I put this in GlobalScript.ash:

Code: ags

import Joystick *joy2;

Everything compiled fine.
Can you give more details about your script?
E: Maybe you simply forgot to put agsjoy.dll into the editor folder? This is only thing that comes to mind at the moment.

I'm getting an error when trying to import wiz's agsjoy.dll functions into this version:

expected variable or function after import, not 'Joystick'

for line: import Joystick* joy;

This was compiling just fine previously.

That's... very strange. I don't recall any changes in the script compiler.
I am going to check what causes the problem right away.

Making a 'Splash Screen' / 'Credits Screen'

Actually, people have asked how to create Main Menu couple of times last year (that's what I remember).

Thing is, that there is "fundamental", "lower-level" knowledge (how to make character move to other room, how to set up button click event, etc), and there are practical problems, and sometimes people stumble at "high-level" tasks like that. Perhaps that's because they learnt about tools but did not yet grasp how to use them in combination.

[AGS 3.3.0 BETA 4 released (engine version 3.3.0.1134)]

AGS 3.3.0 BETA 4 released (engine version 3.3.0.1134)
-------------------------------------------------------
Changes from BETA 3:

Features:
- Custom speech portrait screen offsets for Sierra-style speech (requested by Radiant):

Code: ags

   game.speech_portrait_placement = 1; // enable custom offsets
   game.speech_portrait_x = 10; // set custom x offset from corresponding screen border (in pixels)
   game.speech_portrait_y = 20; // set custom y offset from the screen top border (in pixels)
   game.speech_portrait_placement = 0; // disable custom offsets

- Added a "browse" ("...") button to the "Create in folder" field in the Start New Game wizard.

Bug fixes:
- Improved engine perfomance (actually - restored it to about the level of AGS 3.2, so this may be considered a bug fix).
- Fixed bug in the game compilation (regression) that assigned wrong IDs to game objects if their order was changed in the project tree.
- Repositioned number of context menu items (usability fix): "New Folder" items are now positioned after "New item" and "Import existing..."; "Replace sprite(s) from source" now positioned in proper option group.
- Resized "Editor Preferences" dialog to fix label text overlapping issue.

Download links (also updated at first page):
Official: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/betas/AGS-3.3.0-beta4.exe


Unless more bugs are found, all is left is to correct the manual text to reflect new changes. Then the Release Candidate may be released.
E: Oh, right, I am also thinking about adding BASS template: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=48441.0

[not against]

And you, Crimson, you said: "...although I'd advise not to stop writing it(...) It should of course be checked and corrected before releasing officially."

I would say this about everything else, even my own work, because that is how things are done: first we write something, then we test it. I didn't imply that your work must be put into strict control, or something like that.
E: To elaborate more, the last sentence was addressed rather to Khris.

I am not against, and I will use some of your words Crimson: "learning more through comments and discussion" or "being corrected" for my mistakes. I look again and again at the words of the first reply of this post and I cannot see the beginning of a discussion or a hand offered to help making something better.
<...>
Obviously you may raise question marks about this idea of inferiority, while to me it is clear that I was not invited to a discussion, meant to improve my attempt of a tutorial, on the basis of my inadequacy to the task.

Well, perhaps Khris did not invite you to discussion, and did not offered his help right away (and being no telepath I can't tell if he would agree), but that does not mean other people won't do that if you'd suggested to, doesn't it?
There are many people around who could give you advice.

There is a big problem with cases like this: free projects are done in a free time (and with a free will). You can never be sure who will have time and will to help you. This is why it is usually better to keep such things public: this way you get more chance to find collaborators.
My own opinion about this is that any kind of article or tutorial meant to help beginners is a good thing, and happens not often, therefore it is a pity if it is abandoned removed because of first mistakes or occasional harsh criticism. Your tutorial was WIP, which implies it may have errors, and by simply stating it is WIP and that it is being written by beginner too, you would give a warning enough to make less experienced people wary of the "danger".

Another thing is that when more experienced person decides to share his thoughts and knowledge, he usually addresses to similarly more-or-less experienced readers and discusses more advanced problems. It is not so easy to write a good tutorial for beginner.
That's why I think that it could be an interesting project.
(I see that I may have a disagreement with Khris on this part)

[springthoughts]

The content of my AGS Tutorial was met with disapproval by an authority in the field. Since no second opinion of equal weight was available, I removed the Tutorial from the Internet.

A good way to show what my opinion's weight is.

Seriously, springthoughts, you are referring to "authority" too much, I think. Khris did not deny you to post your tutorial (nor he has a legal right to do this, anyway, since he is not a moderator), he just pointed out that you need to work on your knowledge. But isn't writing your own tutorial a good way to learn more through comments and discussion?

What kind of confusion led you to the thought that anyone could think that you are up to take someones "place"? And what "place" is it? There's no "authorized" position as a forum guru here. People just trying to help others with what they can. Sometimes they make mistakes doing so, and being corrected by others. But isn't it what forums are for?

What furthermore surprised me is that although you provided a list of arguments to support your work, you still ended up with quitting. This kind of behavior always saddens me. It looks like slamming a door after a long speech.

What? Blasphemy! That's against pirate code!

Characters are not saved in room, they are global objects.

d) the sprites assigned to the characters that are in the new room (as long as they weren't travelling with you, AGS has to load their sprites into memory).

If I remember correctly, their sprites are loaded after the room has changed, because that's when they are first referenced by the engine.
Thinking more, this probably refers to room object sprites too.
But, well, I do not remember this precisely right now.

RestartGame is your friend .

To elaborate more: when the game starts, it sets a "restart point" by making a special savegame (slot 999). You can manually control it with SetRestartPoint.
This may also be used as an autosave/quick-restore feature.
If you need more than one special save, use SaveGameSlot and RestoreGameSlot with a high save number, like 998, 997 etc (this way you will likely not interfere with actual player saves).

Pointer is like an arrow sign on the road with city name on it. It points to something (like a city), but it is not a city itself.

You can change same pointer to point to different objects whenever you want. But when the program uses the pointer it does not care what object exactly it points to, it just takes whatever is there. This allows to run same commands with different objects.

Thank you very much Phemar, it works great. Just one question: what is the '*' before the variable name for?

That's pointer.
Related manual article, strongly recommended for reading:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/wiki/Pointers_in_AGS

[door hinge]

We'll surely avoid scurvy if we all eat an orange.[/b]

Your insults are about as harmful as porridge.

It's door hinge! Argh!

I can tell you now that when the next room Loads there are no objects or anything of the like but there are 2 characters that begin a speech after Fadein.

The room is 2000 x 480 that may be the problem perhaps?

Characters are not saved in room, they are global objects.
Room load time depends on:
a) primarily on backgrounds (size and color depth matters) and walkable/hotspot/walkbehind/region masks (again, size matters);
b) secondly on the sprites assigned to objects: if you enter the room for the first time these sprites have to be cached first.
c) lastly on script length (if it is a really large script).
Other data takes much less time to load.

I can't tell anything for certain, I've never done any tests, so I have no idea how much does it take to load 2000 x 480 background. Only practical experiment will show (see my first answer).