Messages

Some of the AGS games were creepy enough on their own.

Really, you put Vista or 7 on a computer from 2001?

Yeah, and -

But unfortunately, I downloaded/installed DirectX 9 and it still refuses to work. I think my computer may just be too old... (it's from 2001)

It is strange that although you think that it won't work with DirectX 9 because your computer is old, you still were trying to make it work with DirectX 11.

"The Booth".
Well, certainly it is one. This way or another.

Hey, Im wondering what the best way to incoporate full screen cutscenes would be? Ive thought of perhaps exporting each frame of an cutscene and setting them as alternating room backgrounds...

Although I never did anything like that, but basing on my personal experience with AGS I would not recommend you make it with room backgrounds unless there's no other option. There could be only 5 room backgrounds, and you won't make much of an animation with that.
I am not sure what you mean by "full screen" cutscene. I know "Full Throttle", but what exactly that term stand for?
If you mean complex animations, they could be done by playing a pre-rendered video. AGS can do that, although I am not a spec here.
If you mean close-ups, like in the FT intro where two guys are sitting in the car, talking, this is more simple, you just make a room which resembles insides of a car and place two characters resembling close-up people figures there.
If you mean you do not want player character be seen, you may simply hide him by setting room property "Show Player Character" to false.
If it is something else, please give more details.

I am yet to figure out a way to make the cutscene END rather than loop (ie. make the player automatically leave the room once the animation is over.

Again, I am not sure what you mean. Animations may be played only once, they do not need to loop all the time. Character may be moved from one room or another right after animation if you check Character.Animating or Object.Animating property, like in this basic example:

Code: ags

if (!SomeCutsceneCharacter.Animating)
{
   player.ChangeRoom(10);
}

Perhaps if you elaborate what exactly do you want to make we could give more concrete advice.

What is "Geronimo!" ?
EDIT: Whoops sorry, nevermind, found this out.

Wow, Julia Roberts looks really different! That must be one weird-ass Snow White movie...

I cannot be THAT "Mirror Mirror"... should be some different one.
Maybe this?: http://www.allmovie.com/movie/v32845

Is game maker anygood?

I honestly have no idea. I checked it several years ago. All I remember is that it allows to create scripts by use of GUI: actions and conditions resembled by icons, that sort of stuff. I never did anything finished with it though.

Game Maker.
RPG Maker.

I can't believe after all those weird movies you guys keep guessing you can't guess this one...

Ewww... hmm.
"Cocoon".

At this point, I would just up the total number of limits to numbers that are ridiculous, like 10,000 rooms and 100,000 inventory items. Really, no one would use that much in the first place anyway. Atleast that can be a work around for now. I do agree though that using dynamic arrays would be ideal, but since that would take some time, I guess we could do it my way for now

I disagree. There's definitely no point in adjusting those numbers, since no one has ever requested that AFAIK. By doing that we achieve literally nothing.
On other hand since we are planning to implement new class system and gradually rewrite the engine we will do change arrays naturally.
By the way, by increasing the number of state saving rooms we will break backwards compatibility, since the rooms that are non-state-saving in the previously made games will become state-saving and that might break game logic.

I tried the Editor out, I do like the colour scheme more, but there's this terrible blinking when I change from one pane to another (best noticeable when changing between two script files)! Hurts me.
It's like Editor paints the pane with white first and uses gray only after.

Call me naive (and CW will probably yell at me for saying this  ), but I'm still waiting for CJ giving permissions to people and Alan among them...

I won't yell. My intent was to push you towards releasing public beta, but that's what you just did.
I do believe there should be a message by CJ made in public, since it's kinda weird that he told he is not going to participate in development further only in PM.
(Well, I believe Calin knows about that too - he did mention that when we spoke few months ago).
On other hand, people change their plans all the time. Maybe he will reappear after a while to take the AGS back...

By the way, regarding Alan's Editor changes. How much work it would be to allow Editor users select a colour scheme? Personally I like the darker colours more (much better for my eyes) but that does not mean everyone will appreciate hard-coded scheme.

Eh, well, that's one a simple one. Perhaps too simple.

Yes, AGS Engine hardcodes the limits, and yes it sets them by use of defines. To be honest I did not check that through, I am assuming that you made everything correct (at least not far from correct). Frankly I just do not see much interest in checking how program will behave if we raise those numbers.

You probably may know that in C++ there are two types of built-in arrays: static arrays and dynamic arrays. Static arrays may never change their size, dynamic arrays technically may, but it is not necessarily done in the program.
An example of static array is:
(Engine/ac/game.cpp)

Code: cpp

int spritewidth[MAX_SPRITES],spriteheight[MAX_SPRITES];

Those arrays' sizes are defined at compile time and you may sure they stay the same all the time through a program execution. That's the cause of a limit.

An example of dynamic array is:
(Engine/ac/game.cpp)

Code: cpp

GUIMain*guis;

Well, that declaration is not actually array itself, it is a pointer, as you may be aware of, we just know that it is used as a pointer to array:
(Engine/main/game_file.cpp)

Code: cpp

read_gui(iii,guis,&game, &guis);

(Common/gui/guimain.cpp)

Code: cpp

void read_gui(FILE * iii, GUIMain * guiread, GameSetupStruct * gss, GUIMain** allocate)
{
...
  if (allocate != NULL)
  {
    *allocate = (GUIMain*)malloc(sizeof(GUIMain) * gss->numgui);
    guiread = *allocate;
  }

Well, perhaps not the best example, since there's a lot of extra stuff going on here, but the main point is the "malloc" line, it is basically an old, C-style way to create something in the heap, nowadays done mostly by C++-style "new" operator; that would be almost the same if it was

Code: cpp

*allocate = new GUIMain[gss->numgui];

.
The array created this way is not "final", we may delete it and remake with totally new size and contents.
While it is technically possible, that is never done in AGS engine. But what makes GUI array not limited is the fact that its size is not hard-coded, but read from game data, hence may be theoretically of any number.


I guess it is quite possible to remove the limits we know once and for all by replacing the static arrays with dynamic ones. Interesting thing is that although static arrays's sizes are hard-coded, the number of items is still read from game data. Well, that's obvious - we must know how much actual items are there.
For example, inventory items:
(Common/ac/gamesetupstructbase.cpp, reading number of inventory items)

Code: cpp

numinvitems = getshort(fp);

(Common/ac/gamesetupstruct.cpp, reading inventory items of known count into array of hard-coded size)

Code: cpp

fread(&invinfo[0], sizeof(InventoryItemInfo), numinvitems, f);

The problem is, however, that there is more then one array affected by the size number. For example, for inventory items there are:
in GameSetupStruct:

Code: cpp

InventoryItemInfo invinfo[MAX_INV];
NewInteraction   *intrInv[MAX_INV];
CustomProperties  invProps[MAX_INV];
char              invScriptNames[MAX_INV][MAX_SCRIPT_NAME_LEN];

in CharacterInfo:

Code: cpp

short inv[MAX_INV];

In other words, it is not that it would be hard technically, it will just take some time to rewrite how those arrays are managed (created, deleted, etc).
That would be easier and safer to achieve if we use array classes (which manage underlying dynamic array on its own).

Do we have any psychologists in the house?

Any rapists maybe?

Yeah, I am still waiting for more examples of rape jokes. So far I've only seen one posted by stu. 

The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.

Difficulty setting? 
Pros: a reason to replay the game facing higher challenges.
Cons: more scripting.

By the way, I was wondering, what took most of the time in the production of "Resonance"? Was it scripting, or art, or maybe voice recording?

EDIT2: And ags32bitosdriver has nothing to do with 32 bit. That's 32 bit as opposed to DOS. I mean, since there is no DOS support anymore, the contents should go into other files outside of 'platform'.

I thought it's 32-bit as opposed to 16-bit .
If you think that's not that or should not be emphasized, it should go to platform/base.
On other hand, what if there will be ags64bitosdriver one day?

You know, I could reproduce this if I save slot number -1... don't know if that's anyway related to your problem.

Hmm, okay, I assume this is your game? How do you save the game exactly (script-wise)? Unlikely, but could there be anything wrong with it?
Also does it happen on other systems/computers?