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Here's an updated, cleanely written version.
New PR: https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/pull/2430
Download:
https://cirrus-ci.com/task/4820306265636864
updated 3rd June 2024

Functionally this should act the same as before.
I would appreciate any testing of this feature.

Turns out .Speaking is only true if the character has a SpeechView assigned. I guess I can see the reasoning behind that but it should also be true while they're the subject of a .Say() call imo.

This is one of those historical quirks in AGS, which nobody remembers by heart.
At least it's noted in the manual here:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Character.html#characterspeaking

Another thing that could have been added is a "Speech.SpeakingCharacter", which would be more reliable than checking "Speech.TextOverlay" for instance, as text is not shown if speech mode is "Voice only".

Edit: using Regions for the exits makes more sense I guess since there's no walking anyway.

I think hotspots are better for this, because they have custom properties and can react to clicking, unlike Regions.

I'm not sure about what exactly do you want, but following method will make gAction invisible if there's any blocking action at all:

Code: ags

gAction.Visible = IsInterfaceEnabled();

I've added a seperate button that opens up the Save gui, in said gui I can write the name of a save but pressing 'enter' or clicking the 'save' button does nothing. The gui just disappears and when I re-open it I see what I typed in the writing box but not as a saved slot.

Did the save files appear in the saves folder? It's in "C:\Users\<username>\Saved Games\<your game name>"

Even if saving itself worked, maybe the existing saves were not filled in the list.

Please tell how do you expect this to work, and what exactly does not work?

Is it that gui do not appear, buttons don't trigger actions, saves are not saved, saved written into wrong slots, else? there is a lot that may happen wrong, so it's essential to be elaborate when describing the problem.


EDIT:
Also, I might mention that I recently updated BASS and Verb Coin templates to have same menu functionality as Sierra template does, maybe it will be easier to start with. The updated templates may be downloaded here:
https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags-templates/tree/master/Templates
Or their project source:
https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags-template-source

Just checked this, though the multiple deletion occurs too fast; I hitted the Delete key only once and it deleted 2-3 frames from the sequence. The first press on the Delete key should have a delay of about half a second I think before it keeps deleting further frames. And I think that even on the repeatedly deletion there should be a small delay as the deletion is happening too fast.

Is this a new behavior, or does it happen similarly fast in 3.6.0 version (the last which did not have new multi-frame selection)?

The test build with fixes may be downloaded here:
https://cirrus-ci.com/task/5667463642218496

based on 3.6.1

To outline the problem.

On the Editor's side:

It's not particularily difficult to make Room and GUI previews scaled to a given ratio. As Editor already has preview scaling and all necessary code for both converting display and interactions (clicks in display resolution to logical resolution), then it's a matter of separating X and Y scale factors.

The missing part is a project setting, and applying this setting everywhere.

Then, some previews are probably coded to have previews stretched with certain proportion (like Views, or Sprite preview), so can't tell if more work will have to be done to achieve custom ratio there.

On the Engine's side:

For automatic behavior, engine has to support whole "GUI layer" transformation (both in terms of display and interaction) and/or whole Game screen transformation. This is similar to how Room Viewports are done.

[logical]

I think if we take this quote from your original post:

Resampling the sprites and backgrounds may statically look good, but the overall gameplay experience would still behave in a 1:1 manner, meaning that when the character moves it would move 1 pixel instead of 2 when walking to the sides, breaking the feel of an AGI style game.

If you want characters and other objects to stick strictly to 2:1 pixels, that means that you must have a logical resolution of 160x200. That's like a physical world is 160x200, but visually stretched to 320x200.
If so, then all rooms, masks, and all script commands must natively be in 160x200.

The way I see this problem, is that game resources should not be stretched individually neither in Editor nor in the Engine as in - their pixels in memory should not be duplicated. Only the final image on screen should be stretched at runtime, and previews should be visually stretched in the Editor.

But I do not know how AGI games ran logically.

In order to define whether that's true or false, consider following question: which coordinates are you planning to use in script, for example, when ordering Walk()? Would that be 160x200 or 320x200 resolution?
Suppose you want to modify a sprite at runtime, in script, using DynamicSprite and DrawingSurface. Which resolution will that DrawingSurface relate to, 160x200 or 320x200?

Tweaking camera settings shouldn't be necessary to achieve this

When looking on it from a point of view of 1:1 aspect ratio, this may look like a 160x200 resolution game that is stretched up twice as big to its sides by the editor and engine, making it look a 320x200 game in an aspect ratio of 2:1.

If logically it is 160x200 game which only looks 320x200, then everything should stay in 160x200, and only displayed 320x200. This is what cameras are for.

But given you also want this for GUI and texts, then we need a Camera-like effect for the whole game screen.

I noticed that this was initially a planned behavior in the editor's code, but there's a mistake because of which it does not actually set a selection again.

EDIT: looks like this is broken after "multiple selection" was added. So this has to be patched in 3.6.1.

Opened a bug report:
https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/issues/2428

[whole]

I was more thinking about something that the entire editor could show the resources (and the room) in the 2:1 aspect ratio, so it would be easy to view and edit things in the editor.

I guess that's also an option; since there's already a "scaling" setting in Room editor (and few other panes), it is technically possible to do separate scaling by x and y.

The questions remaining are:
- how to configure this to keep saved in the project;
- which previews (editor panes) to apply this scaling to;
- how (or whether) to connect to the runtime viewport/camera setup.

EDIT: No, actually, if the whole game has to be rescaled, then Camera won't be enough. There's also a need to scale GUI, and texts... or is there?

If the whole game has to be displayed in 2:1, then engine would have to support full game screen transformation option.

EDIT2: In other words, it's essential to clearly specify, which parts of the game have to be visually rescaled to a different ratio.
After this, it will have to be decided:
- how to achieve this at runtime;
- how to achieve this in the Editor preview.

I believe that you can easily achieve this, and many other similar effects, with the Room Viewport / Camera settings:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Camera.html
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Viewport.html


For example, you create everything 1:1, and then stretch the Camera's size to have double width.

EDIT: I said it wrong here, it is Viewport that should be stretched to double width, compared to Camera's size. This will have a effect of stretching room twice horizontally.

Is it better to use "void" or "function" before it, in this scenario?

This is mostly irrelevant.
"function" is a traditional type of functions in AGS.
"void" is a way to explicitly tell that the function returns no result.

More information about repeatedly execute functions:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/RepExec.html

@Crimson Wizard I don't have links, but i made sure when downloading that the sounds I used were all Public Domain (CC0).

Ah, that's a pity, but I guess they may be found later, using the names of authors.

Anyway, I amended contributors list, and also uploaded palette.png into Assets, for the future artist reference.

Thank you, but there's something else:

Public Domain sounds by Freesound.org users egomassive, kyles, maodin204, and splicesound.

So, I am reading here:
https://freesound.org/help/faq/#what-do-i-need-to-do-to-legally-use-the-files-on-freesound

and it sais that you must tell a license these sounds are distributed under.
They refer to this example of attribution from Minecraft:
https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/attribution/sound

Do you still have links to each sound?

Alright, I went ahead and added LICENSE and COPYRIGHT files. Please check them out here:
https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags-demo-game

@RootBound,
I did not follow the asset discussion; could you make a list of people participating in their creation? I suppose this may go without specifying exact sprites, as I will simply add everyone under "AGSQuest Contributors".

But also, I noticed that the game features sounds by different authors, likely downloaded from somewhere. Please tell their sources and if they require any attribution? Ideally there should be a list
 - asset - by X (url or email).
 - asset - by Y (url or email).
etc

Also, does anyone know, who is the actual author of the Roger sprites that the wizard character(s) are based on, and cursor icons? I know these come from our default templates, but these templates mention a list of authors without specifying who did what.