Messages

This might have something to do with it:

    cEgo.ChangeRoom(5);
    Greed += 2;

Anything after ego changeroom will be ignored in a room script because you're not in that room any more.

When called for player ChangeRoom is not executed right away, but scheduled to be executed after the script finishes.
See a note in: https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Character.html#characterchangeroom

But for the purpose of clarity of the code, it's definitely best to have all actions done before ChangeRoom.

Hotspots have WalkToX and WalkToY properties, they are usually meant for character walking to hotspot, but you may utilize these for your purpose:

Code: ags

object[1].Move(hotspot[1].WalkToX, hotspot[1].WalkToY);

I was trying to see if I could be more efficient by giving the code a separate function and then calling that function from each of the AnyClicks.

That should also work, it's just another way of doing this. For example:

Code: ags

function RotatingObject_AnyClick(Object *theObject)
{
    DynamicSprite* spr = DynamicSprite.CreateFromExistingSprite(theObject.Graphic);
    spr.Rotate(90);
    ObjectSprites[theObject.ID] = spr;
    theObject.Graphic = spr.Graphic;
}


function oObject1_AnyClick(Object *theObject, CursorMode mode)
{
    RotatingObject_AnyClick(theObject);
}

function oObject2_AnyClick(Object *theObject, CursorMode mode)
{
    RotatingObject_AnyClick(theObject);
}

function oObject3_AnyClick(Object *theObject, CursorMode mode)
{
    RotatingObject_AnyClick(theObject);
}

// etc

Or, if this is an older version of AGS, where the interaction functions did not have objects passed as parameters:

Code: ags

function oObject1_AnyClick()
{
    RotatingObject_AnyClick(oObject1);
}

function oObject2_AnyClick()
{
    RotatingObject_AnyClick(oObject2);
}

function oObject3_AnyClick()
{
    RotatingObject_AnyClick(oObject3);
}

If I start a new game from scratch, make it 1280x800, and then use Display command to display a very long text in a box, then it displays normally, occupying 2/3 of the screen width, with no extra setup from my side.
Same happens with a player.Say command, if I set Speech to "Sierra style" and provide a valid speech view to character.

The only case when this strange behavior that you described occurs is with Think command.
You should have mentioned your game setup and commands you are using in your question, because there may be nuances for some of them.


In the manual "Game variables" page contains a number of game-wide settings, not all of them are exposed in the editor, and may only be adjusted in script. I recommend scanning these in cases like this, to see if there's a setting that might affect the command you are using.

Character.Think page has a link to "game.speech_bubble_width" in the "See Also" category. Unfortunately, it does not mention this setting in a more explicit way.


Why these settings are not exposed in a more visible manner in the Editor: to put it simply, that's because AGS is an ancient engine, started in 1997, many things have been added in different times and layers, changing naming style and design; many things were not thought through at their times, as the engine was primarily purposed for 320x200 games, and have weird defaults or limitations all around it.

"Think" is a rather less used command, that likely was not complained much about, and therefore was never addressed for improval.
For instance, I did not remember that it has a bubble box limiting variable until checking this now.


On another hand, it is always possible to script your own text display using Overlays and GUIs for speech and other situations. Many people switch to scripting custom speech, because that lets to fine tune the behavior. This does not take much time to do for all your cases, and after that you don't have to rely on built-in commands with their hidden strangeness.

Having trouble making this work in a single function for any Object, but if I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong I'll post again. I can at least get it to work for one object right now.

What is the trouble? I believe that the above code might work if you put "SomeObject_AnyClick" function in each relevant Object's "AnyClick" event.

Then within the function we're creating a temporary Dynamic Sprite to work with, and then copying that temporary DynamicSprite into the more permanent room DynamicSprite.

To clarify, this does not copy "temporary" DynamicSprite into a "permanent" DynamicSprite, this saves a pointer to DynamicSprite into the array. Array contains not sprites themselves, but pointers to them.
By saving a pointer to DynamicSprite into array, you are sort of making it permanent, as AGS will keep it in memory for so long as something "references" it.

array looks something like this:

Code: ags

    array                     somewhere else in memory
       [ 0 ]  pointer      ->  dynamic sprite 0
       [ 1 ]  pointer      ->  dynamic sprite 1
       [ 2 ]  nothing
       [ 3 ]  nothing
       [ 4 ]  nothing

One question, though--why is the last line of SomeObject_AnyClick "theObject.Graphic = spr.Graphic?" Shouldn't it be "theObject.Graphic = ObjectSprites[theObject.ID"? If I assign the object's graphic to spr, which was declared within the function, won't spr (and therefore the sprite the object is using) disappear at the end of the function?

That's because Object.Graphic property is integer, and is meant to store the sprite's number, not a pointer. DynamicSprite.Graphic tells the number (ID), under which this dynamic sprite is registered in the game. You may assign this Graphic number to anything, even to multiple things at once, similar to how you assign regular sprite numbers.

The DynamicSprite won't disappear after existing this function, because its pointer is already stored in the array. That's why you need an array in the first place.

If you need this only in one room, then declare the array in a room script, outside of any functions:

Code: ags

DynamicSprite* ObjectSprites[];

The above is just a pointer to array, initialized with null, (as with any dynamic objects in ags). So you must first create the array in memory.
Creation of an object is a operation, and in AGS script you cannot do that outside of a function. Therefore you need to use some function.
A good option is to do this on room's "Before fade-in" event:

Code: ags

function room_Load()
{
    ObjectSprites = new DynamicSprite[Room.ObjectCount];
}

This creates an array of N slots, each of which is initialized with a null (again), but may be filled with a DynamicSprite object.
Note, that you may want to also delete this array with all the sprites when leaving the room, to save the memory. This may be done, let's say, in "Leave after fade-out":

Code: ags

function room_Unload()
{
    // this is enough to delete array and all sprites contained within,
    // as AGS automatically deletes a dynamic object, when there's no pointer variable referencing it;
    // so assigning an array with "null" will leave no reference to array, and array will get cleaned up.
    // so long as you do not assign DynamicSprite's pointers to other non-local variables,
    // all the sprites within will get deleted as well!
    ObjectSprites = null;
}

From now on you may add DynamicSprites into this array slots, whenever you need to

Code: ags

function SomeObject_AnyClick(Object *theObject, CursorMode mode)
{
    DynamicSprite* spr = DynamicSprite.CreateFromExistingSprite(theObject.Graphic);
    spr.Rotate(90);
    ObjectSprites[theObject.ID] = spr;
    theObject.Graphic = spr.Graphic;
}

Above are trivial examples, and the code should be adjusted for your needs.

PS. I might add that is said above is not exclusive to DynamicSprites, but to any dynamic array of anything.

Right, the new compiler is more strict in terms of syntax, and KeyListener was written at the times when the static extenders were "hacked" into the ags script.

All the static struct's extender functions must have "static StructName" as their first argument,
that is instead of

Code: ags

bool get_Enabled(this KeyListener*, ...)

you should have

Code: ags

bool get_Enabled(static KeyListener, ...)

(notice there's no * in the second variant)

[Have the scripts of the templates been updated?]

Which brings me to my question : Have the scripts of the templates been updated?

No, the templates were not updated, but they should be. Nobody bothered yet. I think it's a matter of fixing few deprecated things in script. They also must be ensured to work with the new compiler (it's called "Use extended compiler" in General Settings), and new compiler must also be set as default in all the templates.

If you like, you may do this yourself and make a PR. I think we just need to make a "ags4" branch in the template sources and compiled templates repository.

I'm asking because I remember that some 3.x template scripts had to do some backflips to work around the limitations of "struct", keeping track of indices -- instead of just putting structs inside structs (was it Tumbleweed? Can't remember. I think tween does that too).

So, at minimal the templates must compile, that has to be step one. But of course they may be updated further to take advantage of the new script syntax.

3.6.1 Patch 4 is released:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/ags-engine-editor-releases/ags-3-6-1-patch-4/

[Download AGS 3.6.1 Patch 4 installer]

AGS 3.6.1 - Patch 4

Full release number: 3.6.1.26

Download AGS 3.6.1 Patch 4 installer

Download AGS 3.6.1 Patch 4 as a .zip archive

For Editor

Spoiler

VC 2015 redistributable needed for AGS Editor on Windows

Download Color Themes for the Editor

[close]

For Android

Spoiler

AGS Player, suitable for running any compatible AGS game

NOTE: the Editor now includes Android build component letting you prepare your own games for Android

[close]

For Engine/Editor developers

Spoiler

AGS source code central repository

Debug symbols database (for analysing crash dumps)

[close]

Released: 7th July 2024

Previous stable version: AGS 3.6.0 P11 forum thread


This release is brought to you by:

- Alan v.Drake (fixes, improvements)
- Crimson Wizard
- edmundito (iOS fixes)
- eri0o
- mausimus (Text Parser fixes)
- Walter Agazzi (fixes)



Summary

3.6.1 update focuses mainly on improving performance and usability of existing features, in both Editor and Engine.

The noteable addition to the Editor is a "Log Panel", which lets you read game logs right in the editor's window. "Goto definition" now works on game object script names and opens their respective panels. Room editor features better panning and zoom controls. Views allow to select and modify multiple frames at once.

In the engine, there's a significant improvement to script performance, which may make script-heavy games run 30-40% faster compared to AGS 3.6.0 (these were real test results on a certain game with 3D simulation). There's a big improvement to the speed of manipulating Overlays, and general speed improvement of graphics rendering primarily useful for high resolution games.

There are other fixes and improvements to various parts of the program too.
Please be sure to read "Upgrading to AGS 3.6.1" topic in the manual: https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/UpgradeTo361.html



Changes in the Patch 4:

Editor:
 - Fixed extracting templates with very large files inside would cause "Out of memory" error.
 - Fixed crash occuring when trying to import a non-existant GIF frame during Sprite Import.
 - Fixed potential mistake with sprite transparency occuring when importing a 8-bit sprite into 16/32-bit game.

Compiler:
 - Fixed "\t" (and few other less common escaped chars) not handled properly when they are inside string literals.
 - Fixed a crash in compiler occuring if user script defined a variadic function.
   (User-defined variadic functions are not properly usable at the moment, but this at least prevents an unhandled exception.)

Scripting:
 - Declare "UNICODE" macro for scripts if game is made in unicode mode.

Script API:
 - Added a number of missing OPT_* constants used with Get/SetGameOption functions.

Engine:
 - Fixed setting Screen.AutoSizeViewportOnRoomLoad to false in "game_start" could cause primary viewport and camera become initialized with zero width and height.
 - Fixed setting camera's size in "game_start" would unexpectedly get camera clamped to 320x200.
 - Fixed number of mistakes in Text Parser occuring when handling "multiwords".


Changes in the Patch 3:

Editor:
 - Fixed that after deleting a View's frame editor did not select next frame (regression in 3.6.1).
 - Fixed "Delete last loop" button not appearing in the View Editor if the view is filled using "Assign sprites to view" command from the Sprite Manager.

Engine:
 - Implemented an alternate solution for rendering "bad" TTF fonts that does not increase their loading times (after previous patch 2).
 - Allow scene render during "load room" event if the last room transition was "Instant".
   This has to be done because number of games used this event for custom transitions.
 - For games compiled in "Debug" mode "warnings.log" file will be written in "savegame dir" on platforms where modifying game directory is forbidden in principle (OSX, iOS, Android, Web).
 - Fixed System.Log() was registered for plugins using a wrong argument list.

Compatibility:
 - Fixed loading of 3.5.0 saves (broken in 3.6.1).

Windows:
 - Fixed disk space check was testing space in the current directory instead of the save game location.


Changes in the Patch 2:

Editor:
 - Fixed few potential program errors for "Generate Keystore" in Android preferences.
 - Fixed external processes (such as test game runs) were started using ShellExecute, which could theoretically lead to unintended results.

Engine:
 - Fixed String.Replace crashing the engine if the resulting string exceeds 3000 bytes.
 - Fixed releasing a mouse button could cause double "on_event" call (with eEventGUIMouseUp).
 - Improved rendering of TTF fonts which have glyph sizes surpassing declared font's height.
   This fixes the look of text on gui controls, and automatic outlining on these fonts.
 - Fixed a dialog shown with InputBox() function drawing typed text beyond text box'es border.
 - Fixed custom dialog options in the "old mode" not triggering redraw when the active option changes.


Changes in the Patch 1:

Editor:
- Fixed View's frame preview sometimes drawn incorrectly, in case of certain panel sizes.
- Fixed folding in the script editor not working correctly if there's a commented closing bracket ("//}") inside this code section.
- Fixed Editor sometimes failing to update game exe's file information and/or icons, if user was importing any sprites during this working session.

Engine:
- Fixed room objects not updating under Direct3D/OpenGL renderer, if they were assigned a dynamic sprite, then that sprite was deleted, and a new one assigned with coincidentally same ID.
- Fixed room objects not updating under Software renderer, if they were assigned a dynamic sprite, and that sprite was modified while object was not visible on screen.
- Fixed inventory cursor's crosshair not displayed (when enabled in game settings).



What is new in 3.6.1

Common features:
- Implemented Deflate compression option for sprites.
- Removed length limits for: Game name, savegame folder, Character's script name and regular name (description), Inventory item's name (description), Mouse cursor's script name, Audioclip's script name.

Editor:
- Discontinued Source control integration functionality, removed "Put sound and sprite files in source control" option from General Settings.
- In General Settings moved few properties to different groups for better consistency.
- Added "Scale Character sprite offsets" property to General Settings. This property refers to scaling of Character.z and sprite offsets added by LockViewOffset script command.
- Added TextureCacheSize and SoundCacheSize properties to Default Setup. These let configure the sizes of runtime texture and sound cache sizes respectively.
- Added "Leave room after fade-out" event to Rooms (called "Unload" by default).
- Added Translated property to all GUI Controls (was available only in ListBox). Translated property tells whether this control's text has to be translated, and applied text direction (in right-to-left text mode).
- Support '\n' linebreak character in the Label's Text and potentially other text properties.
- Improved Room Editor controls:
  Added free panning mode done by holding the middle mouse button, or alternatively - by holding Space + LMB.
  Mouse Wheel without key modifiers scrolls the room vertically; Shift + Mouse Wheel scrolls the room horizontally.
  Zoom is done by Ctrl + Mouse Wheel and room now zooms towards or outwards the cursor position.
- In Room Editor the context menu is now displayed by RMB or Shift + RMB while editing masks.
  The individual room mode menu is merged with the "copy coordinates" command when shown.
- In Room Editor the hint with coordinates is now also displayed when moving Objects or Characters with keyboard.
- In Dialog Script editor support most Edit menu and context menu commands from the regular Script editor, with a few exceptions.
- In Sprite Manager added command "View" -> "Show filenames" which toggles display of a sprite's source filename under the sprites.
- Adjust sprites' import settings after "Crop sprite edges" command; this would ensure that these sprites are restored from source file keeping their cropped sizes.
- During sprite export Editor will display a proper progress dialog.
- Zoom controls in Character and View panes now allow downscaling too. View editor displays the preview sprite stretched to fill the parent panel.
- View editor now allows to select multiple frames at once, across multiple loops too, using standard Shift + LMB and Ctrl + LMB combinations. Properties panel lets modify properties for all the selected frames at once.
- Added "Replace with all sprites from folder" command to the View editor's context menu.
- For Audio Clips in the project tree added "Force Reimport", "Force reimport all file(s)" and "Replace Source File" context menu commands.
- For Output Panel added "Copy selection" context menu command.
- Implemented Log Panel that lets you see the engine and game logs right in the Editor.
- Improved LipSync panel looks in case user's system has display scaling option enabled.
- "Goto Definition" command in script will now work for most of the game entities too, such as Characters, GUIs, and so forth. In that case it will find a game's entity and open a respective editor panel for it. This still does not work for some types, such as Room objects, and Views.
- Added main menu commands for opening a Project folder and Compiled folder.
- Added "Export Global Messages to script" menu command. This command is meant for upgraded pre-3.2 game projects, and will generate a script with a String array, moving global messages texts there.
- For script's tabs added a context menu command for opening this script's location.
- When run with "/compile" argument Editor will print all messages to the console (stdout), instead of displaying modal message windows.
- For Android build target Editor now supports a directory to place plugins in.
- When building a game for Android and Linux the Editor will now be more tolerant to missing plugins and only issue a warning instead of stopping with error.
- Config will now be saved in UTF-8, letting to support setup program's title text in unicode.
- For non-Windows build targets Editor will fix config containing Direct3D graphics driver option and set OpenGL instead.
- For Color Themes: implemented character literal, braces match and braces error settings.
- Made Editor be somewhat more tolerate to missing XML nodes in Game.agf, in many cases it will still let open a game.
- When upgrading older game projects, Editor will insert a call to SetRestartPoint() in the end of the 'game_start' function in GlobalScript.asc. This is done to complement removal of an automatic restart point in the engine. This inserted command is safe to remove.
- When upgrading pre-3.2 rooms with disabled SaveLoadEnabled property the Editor will reset this property and insert a comment with a warning into the corresponding room's script. This is done because this property is deprecated as is no longer accessible.
- Fixed Editor refusing to open a game if one of the translation files is missing.
- Fixed General Settings and Default Setup not working correctly right after importing a pre-3.* game project.
- Fixed importing GIFs or 8-bit PNGs may lose transparent pixels if source images used other palette index than 0 for transparency.
- Fixed Project Explorer's folders collapsing after certain user actions, such as dragging items or renaming things.
- Fixed deleting collapsed "region" in script would sometimes lead to portion of the script undeleted but staying invisible.
- (Possibly) Fixed a "Index out of range" exception in Script editor, related to the "script location" drop-down list, which could occur at random circumstances while
  working with the script, and any Color Theme is enabled.
- Fixed Editor could miss some of the files when cleaning up old compiled files after the Game's Filename property is changed.

Scripting:
- Support "#else" preprocessor directive.

Script API:
- Implemented Room's "After fade-out" event.
- Added eEventLeaveRoomAfterFadeout event for the global "on_event".
- Added eEventGameSaved event which runs after game was saved.
- Expanded interaction functions for Character, Object, InventoryItem, Hotspot and Region types: now they all receive respective object's pointer as a parameter, similar to GUI event functions, as well as a cursor mode this interaction was run with, if applicable.
- Added Game.ResetDoOnceOnly(), which completely resets all DoOnceOnly instances.
- Added Game.PrecacheSprite() and Game.PrecacheView(), which preload certain sprites and linked frame sounds into the engine's sprite cache memory.
- Added ScriptName property to AudioClip, Character, Dialog, GUI, GUIObject, Hotspot, InventoryItem, Object.
- Added static GetByName() function to AudioClip, Character, Dialog, GUI, GUIObject, Hotspot, InventoryItem, Object.
- Added Object.AnimationVolume property, which works similar to Character.AnimationVolume.
- Added static File.ResolvePath() and File.Path attribute.
- Added support for a text formatting to a number of functions: DisplayAtY(), Character.SayAt(), Character.SayBackground(), DrawingSurface.DrawStringWrapped().

Engine:
- Updated to SDL 2.28.5 and SDL_Sound 2.0.3+.
- Significant performance improvement to scripts. Script running speed restored to a level close to AGS 3.2.1. Testing few "script-heavy" games showed fps raise by up to 30-40% compared with 3.6.0 engine.
- Improved performance of String objects in script.
  For instance, appending a character to a String is now roughly x2 times faster, *sequential* iteration of String.Chars[] in Unicode mode is about x12 (!) times faster (Strings in ASCII mode have relatively less improvement, because they have been faster than Unicode mode already).
- Improved performance when creating, deleting and manipulating Overlays; allows the game to have thousands of those with much less slowing down.
- Improved performance when updating and deleting dynamic sprites, and notifying any objects that have to redraw themselves. Engine no longer resets Graphic properties of objects referencing deleted dynamic sprite to 0.
- Implemented "texture cache", in addition to the existing "sprite cache". The texture cache keeps textures generated from raw sprites and lets reusing them, improving performance and reducing CPU workload. The actual impact is proportional to the game's resolution and amount of simultaneously animated objects on screen.
- WFN font renderer now too supports unicode mode and renders texts in utf-8, so long as the font contains glyphs of corresponding indexes.
- Buttons, ListBoxes and TextBoxes now support Right-to-left text direction.
- DrawingSurface.DrawString now supports Right-to-left text direction.
- All the script File functions now treat paths in case-insensitive way (including subdirs), which makes them platform-independent.
- Removed an automatic SetRestartPoint() call at startup. This is done in case user does not want to use default "restart" save slot, or has a custom save system.
- Support handling multiple mouse clicks per game frame, similar to how multiple key presses were supported since 3.6.0.
- When starting up, engine will now precache only first 4 or 8 loops of the starting player character's View. This is done to avoid filling sprite cache with too much sprites at once in case when the player's View contains lots of additional animations.
- Characters will now have their graphic offsets, set by Character.z property and LockViewOffset() function, scaled along with the character's own scaling. This is done so long as the respective game option is enabled in the General Settings.
- Ensure that character and object scaling is updated even when the game is not drawn. This fixes rare issues when their scale property did not update in time whilst the game was completely fadeout, and similar cases.
- Allow to change Character's move speed while its moving.
- When Character is ordered a new move command while already moving, the engine will try to make a smooth transition between old and new moving without a delay.
- Ensure that when Overlays have identical ZOrder they will be sorted in the order of their creation. Besides convenience, this is also meant to restore historical behavior from before Overlay.ZOrder property was introduced.
- Allow game to call DynamicSprite.CreateFromDrawingSurface() and CreateFromBackground() with zero or negative size, clamping it to 1x1, in consistency with Create().
- Engine will now log a warning for the most incorrect parameters to Animate function instead of quitting the game.
- Engine will now skip blocking Character.Say commands instantly while skipping a cutscene.
- Object.SetView now lets invalid loop and frame values, and fallbacks to using loop 0, frame 0, printing a warning. This is also consistent with backwards-compatble SetObjectFrame() behavior.
- Changed Object.SetView() to not play a frame's sound, which could lead to a duplicated sound play if Object.Animate is run right after.
- Text Overlays internal images are now registered as dynamic sprites, and their IDs may be read from Overlay.Graphic. This lets find out their sizes using Game.SpriteWidth/SpriteHeight and optionally draw them somewhere using DrawingSurface.DrawImage.
- Ensure all the script API is now correctly available for the plugins.
- Engine will now safeguard plugin's reading and writing of game saves, so that any mistakes done by plugins won't affect other parts of a save.
- Engine will disable vsync in a "infinite fps" mode, because vsync prevents getting more fps.
- Engine will force any in-game debug messages to be displayed in message boxes, disregarding game's "Display all messages as speech" option.
- Display critical alerts as system modal messages on all platforms that support that (unless engine is run with "--no-message-box" parameter).
- Print some info about memory usage when reporting a "Out of memory" error.
- Deprecated in-game "console", as practically useless.
- Added new config settings in "graphics" section: "sprite_cache_size" (which replaces deprecated "cachemax" in "misc") and "texture_cache_size".
- Fixed Characters may be seemingly "walking in place" for some time when arriving at destination.
- Fixed Display and Say commands treating the second met "&" sign as a voice-over token too (they must only check the first one in string).
- Fixed PlayMP3File() function limiting filename argument by an arbitrary number of characters.
- Fixed speechlines were adjusting their Y position while trying to not overlap GUIs even when these GUIs are completely offscreen.
- Fixed first Sierra-style speechline in a sequence was adjusting its Y position without need when GUIs are set to be hidden during game pause (this includes blocking speech). Normally, the speechlines are adjusting their Y position in order to not overlap GUIs, but when GUIs are hiding during speech there should not be any need to do so.
- Fixed script behavior in case a local variable was assigned a value without being initialized with a zero memory by compiler's intruction beforehand. This is not a problem with the standard compiler, but technically could be an issue with any custom implementation.
- Fixed old-style letterbox viewport getting broken after loading an old pre-3.5.0 save.

Engine Plugin API:
- Added IAGSStream interface, IAGSEngine.OpenFileStream() and GetFileStreamByHandle().
- Added IAGSEngine.ResolveFilePath() method, which resolves a script path (with location tokens) into a proper system filepath.
- Fixed IAGSEngine.GetFontType() incorrectly reporting TTF font type for WFN fonts with more than 128 characters.

Compatibility:
- In Editor, restored all the Character's variables available in "backward-compatible" mode. This is primarily to make it easier to import very old games.
- Allow to run an animation over a loop with zero frames, by using the placeholder frame. This lets particular old games to continue running instead of crashing with error.
- Fixed slower character walking speeds in pre-3.1 upscaled and high-resolution games.
- Fixed Object.SetView() and SetObjectFrame() not treating -1 for loop and frame as "keep previous values" in older games.
- Fixed inventory window not updated after game.top_inv_item is assigned a new value.
- Fixed a "New Room" command in old-style dialog scripts was preventing "First time Enter room" event to be called.

Windows:
- 32-bit Windows engine is now built as "large address aware" program, which will allow it to use up to 3 GB of RAM on 32-bit systems and 4 GB of RAM on 64-bit systems (was 2 GB previously).

iOS:
- Updated port for 3.6.*.

Web / Emscripten:
- Fixed Safari cannot switch the game into fullscreen mode.

WinSetup:
- Added options for setting texture cache and sound cache size.
- Added options to disable particular graphic drivers and graphic driver selection, and fullscreen mode selection.




Thanks to everyone who contributed to and tested this version!

1. It depends on the inventory GUI's visibility. For instance "Pause Game When Shown" pauses the game while it's visible, "Normal" doesn't.
The regular room_RepExec only runs while the game isn't paused, correct.

Sorry, this is wrong, and I found that this is a quite a common misconception, being a natural expectation (I had it too once).

This may seem strange, but room_RepExec DOES run if game is in "paused" mode set with PauseGame. PauseGame pauses only particular things in game.
I once amended documentation with the precise list, please refer to:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Globalfunctions_General.html#pausegame

If you need to prevent a part of code from executing during pause, use IsGamePaused, for example:

Code: ags

function room_RepExec()
{
    if (IsGamePaused())
        return;
}

LSS, from what I found when I searched this topic, there's no way to declare an array of structs. Like in my mud days the skill list would be such an array, with things like spell name, text shown when casting, level you get it, damage type, mana cost, etc, and there's be a big long entry declaring every skill in the game.

Ah, but you are speaking of initialization, not declaration.

But this is true, AGS script does not support initializing a struct instance with a list of values, similar to C. This makes things less convenient, but arrays of structs may still be done and used in code.

About initialization, this is something that you have to either live with, or find another solution, similar to what Snarky posted above. With regular structs you can make a function that initializes certain entry in a global array by an index.
Then, when it comes to managed structs, the usual solution is to write a "factory" function that allocates an instance, initializes its fields, and returns a pointer to the new instance.

If it's necessary to have a proof that AGS can have and work with structs and arrays of structs I may refer to my own game project which I made some years ago:
https://github.com/ivan-mogilko/ags-lastfurious
Although, I suppose, many people here could post their own code with arrays of structs.


EDIT: @Snarky your example is not suitable for AGS 3, because you have a managed struct with dynamic Strings in it. It may be better to have an example of regular structs.

Finally a real split screen game, I've been waiting for someone to make one!

If we had the ability to declare structs properly you could set up a universal NPC-go-place function and feed it data and who is doing what and where and handle it all in the globals. Could even have an array of structs with NPC movement data and run through all of them.

Could you elaborate, which problems did you have with structs?
AGS v3.* is known to have certain limitations (upcoming AGS v4 version has a new better script compiler), but it's quite possible to have arrays of structs. If you like to be able to pass them into a function (or return from a function) you would need to define a "managed" struct and possibly dynamic array - these may be passed as a pointer.

Sadly, the manual is lacking in organizing this information, but here's some relevant topics:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/ScriptKeywords.html#managed
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/DynamicArrays.html
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Pointers.html

OTOH sometimes people don't bother and just make global fixed-size array of regular structs, and pass its indexes as arguments.

a check in each room's load to set him up properly if the player walked into a room where he already was.

You dont have to add this to each room though, there's on_event for doing something on common events like room load:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Globalfunctions_Event.html#on_event

I doubt if it's necessary to put something in each room's rep-exec either, if it's a common action then likely you may have everything in the global rep-exec under some condition (such as aforementioned "if (cNPC.Room == player.Room)").

[EDIT] @Crimson Wizard @Snarky sorry for bothering once again, I know this is outside of AGS's expertise but I wonder to ask this technical question. It's true that if you want to play a video you should have the file inside the compiled folder (unlike the audio files) but is there a way to 'hide' these videos so people won't see them but only inside the game? like having a 'secret' folder?

You do not have to put video file inside the compiled folder, on opposite by default AGS packs ogv videos inside the game data if you place it in your project folder root.

Additionally, you may pack any kind of data using "Package custom data folder(s)" in General Settings:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/GeneralSettings.html

Alternatively, you may place videos in the game folder, but rename them to something else.


Returning to the previous discussion, I forgot to mention, that displaying a video on a GUI Button may be slower than on Overlay, because of how GUI is drawn in AGS.

You should not be calling Video.Open in repeatedly_execute, at least no without any conditions. Call it only once the video should start. I don't know your case. Is it on room enter, or on button press, or else?

Like I said, this is exactly same case as with non blocking animation, non blocking walking, etc. Same kind of logic should be applied.

Hello

Althought I directly set the variable video.Looping = true; and opening the video with the repeat style set to eRepeat when the video ends it get black[/s]

There was a mistake in Video.Looping variable, it should be fixed in the latest ags 4 update:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/ags-engine-editor-releases/ags-4-0-early-alpha-for-public-test/msg636663912/#msg636663912

Is there a chance to play the video on a button graphic?

Video provides a Graphic property that you may assign to anything. In your code you are assigning it to overlay, but similarly you may assign it to the button:

Code: ags

MyButton.NormalGraphic = video.Graphic;

Because now im playing the video on an overlay but the overlay is below the gui and I would like it to play the video in front of the gui

This may also be done by changing Overlay.ZOrder to a higher value. Overlays are now sorted among GUIs on screen, so it's a matter of setting ZOrder higher than the topmost GUI.

Code: ags

  VideoPlayer *video = VideoPlayer.Open("VideoProva.ogv", true, eRepeat);
  video.Looping = true;
  if (video)
  {
    Overlay *over = Overlay.CreateGraphical(0, 0, video.Graphic);
    Wait(100);
    //over = null;
    //video = null;
  }

ps: I see that if I remove the Wait(100) the video won't start which I think it make sense but how do I avoid having the wait so while the video is playing I can interact with some other things?

This is exactly same problem as with any other non-blocking actions. If you want to have a animation running while player interacts with other things, then you start it with eNoBlock and exit the function. Then check for animation completion in repeatedly_execute.

Same thing is true with the video. You declare VideoPlayer* variable outside of the function, assign new videoplayer to it in the function, and exit the function. Video will be playing while the rest of the game continues to run. Use this variable to check video's state in repeatedly_execute, and stop it when necessary.

I was not sure which volume it is in this question, but if it's footsteps volume, then there's a Character.AnimationVolume property since AGS 3.6.0, purposed specifically for the frame sounds, as you cannot access their audio channels directly (at least not without workarounds).

On another hand, if you have a AudioChannel, there's a AudioChannel.SetRoomLocation() function that adjust the volume depending on the distance between the location and player character. I'd mention this just for the reference.

Somehow I cannot remember if it's possible to make frame sounds act like that automatically. But it's possible to script a similar thing with Character.AnimationVolume.