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I know the last reply on this thread is from a few years ago, but just wondered if we can easily grab the name of audio clips for debugging by now?

At the moment this may only be done in AGS 4, where I added ScriptName properties to everything which has them, as well as GetByName method.

I guess I could backport these to 3.6.1...

In regards to a custom solution, earlier I mentioned a switch, but perhaps array of Strings would be better.

[Editor:]

Updated to Alpha 4
(Please use download links in the first post)

This is AGS 4.0 Early Alpha 4.

Contains updates and fixes from 3.6.1 Beta 7 and 8.

Other changes:

Editor:
- Translation sources are now saved in PO format.
- Fixed room data xml was saved without linebreaks and indentation.
- Fixed all room images (backgrounds, masks) were rewritten on disk each time a room is saved, even if they are not modified.

Compiler:
- Fixed forward-declared but unresolved function not reported correctly.
- Fixed accessing dynamic arrays with a numeric literal index was not tested for "out of bounds" mistake.
- Fixed multidimensional array index delimiters (",") were confused with function parameter delimiters in call to a function.

Script API:
- Added Joystick struct, meant to work with joystics and gamepads in script.

Engine:
- Support joystick and gamepad input.
- Fixed DynamicSprite.CreateFromSaveGame producing invisible screenshot sprites.
- Fixed an attempt to read screenshot from a save with no screenshot could cause engine to crash.
- Fixed 16-bit sprites in 32-bit games turning completely transparent.


WARNINGS:

1. SpeechCenter plugin will stop working with this AGS 4 update. It won't crash, but won't see translated strings. This is because Translation storage had changed in the Editor. The plugin will have to be updated to work with AGS 4.

2. AGSJoy plugin will not compile with AGS 4, because its Joystick struct will conflict with the AGS own Joystick struct. The solution is to either disable newest script API level (by lowering to v3.6.1, but that will also disable anything else), or adjust the code to work with the new Joystick API. The API is relatively simple, so upgrading should not be a huge problem. The plugin is no longer needed after that.

[Common features:]

Updated to Beta 8
(Please use download links in the first post)

Changes in this update:

Common features:
- Implemented Deflate compression option for sprites. (This is an algorithm used in PNG and ZIP formats, and testing shows about x1.5-x2 compression improvement compared to LZW).

Editor:
- Fixed Line tool in the Room Editor triggering sometimes after a context menu was called with Shift + RMB.
- Fixed Autocomplete not treating certain struct members as "static" or "protected" if their declaration is too long.

Engine:
- Fixed Character's idle animation getting reset to frame 0 when the speech is played without a valid speech view (idle animation should continue playing in such case).
- Fixed idle animation sometimes not starting immediately after Character finishes walking.
- Fixed a crash occuring if script tries to get or set a custom property for a non-existing Room Object (this seem possible to do by iterating over `object[]` array).
- Fixed invalid gui could be interacted with if a previous interaction displayed a message box on screen, sometimes leading to engine crashes (regression since the previous Beta).

Compatibility:
- Implemented "dataver_for_legacysaves" override option in config, which lets to instruct the engine which game data version to assume when loading legacy (pre-3.5.0) saves. This "hack" appeared to be necessary because of a mistake done during development of the older engine versions, where the save format was changed, but engine was made to rely on the game data version instead of incrementing save format index.
- Fixed engine could try to load game data from game.exe without checking whether data is actually appended to it when restoring a legacy save in a game with a different file structure.
- Fixed number of GUI elements were not tested when loading a legacy save, which could lead to GUI data getting overwritten incorrectly without a warning if number of controls changed since.

Plugins:
 - Fixed potential "index out of bounds" exceptions in the built-in PalRender plugin.


Some of the fixes mentioned here will likely be also backported to 3.6.0 and released as a part of next patch.

I must clarify: there are two ways to count time in AGS.

First is using Timers. Timer counts game ticks, and depends on a game speed setting. Timers are considered to be a part of the game state, so their values may change when a game save is restored, for instance. They are also paused when the game is suspended, like when player alt+tabs from the game window.
For this reason they are best used for the in-game events.

Then, there's a DateTime struct which lets you use system time, when you need a "real" time, which does not depend on game speed or in-game events.
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/DateTime.html

This is totally a valid request, but some assumptions above are incorrect or outdated.

First of all, the "debug console" appearing on "~" key press is totally useless, as you stated, and seem to be ignored in general. There is a number of issues with it, starting with it relying on a game font and color settings, which may not be suitable for the console. Personally I'm fine in removing it or at least disabling temporarily before something better is implemented.

Now, in regards to logging, AGS uses what is known as "log sinks" or "outputs", meaning that same log messages can be sent into multiple "recipients". The in-game console is just one of them.
Which messages go where may be configured (with a few exceptions for hardcoded engine behavior). This is explained here in more detail:
https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/blob/master/OPTIONS.md
if you scroll down to "[log]" section.

So, there's not 3 levels, but more levels, and they may be printed anywhere, in theory.

Besides the above, there's also a output target missing in this document, it's the "IDE debugger", and it's currently activated by the 3.6.1+ Editor running game in a test mode. The messages are landing in the new Log Panel in the Editor, see 3.6.1 Beta post for details.

Spoiler

[close]

Finally, in regards to the suggestion of reducing number of game-stopping error cases. There's actually an opened ticket regarding this, which suggests a configurable behavior:
https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/issues/1488

This is my own proposal, based on some past conversations with other users, both game devs and players who used a standalone engine to play old games.
But of course this may be discussed further, here, or in the ticket.

Please tell, does this depend on the selected gfx driver, and if yes then which one has this?

If they were also able to run previous versions of this game, do they also have same result or no?

Does anyone else around has Windows 11, who can try this game, and if yes, do they have same effect?

@eri0o, you are confusing some things, gliding and non-gliding modes are related only to how movement and animation are synced, but pathfinding works exactly same, and depends only on the starting walking speed.

SetWalkSpeed does not work while character is moving, at all. This is mentioned in the manual, and I believe it should print this to the warnings.log.

So you should change your logic somehow. If you want to change the speed while moving, then probably you may remember Character.DestinationX,Y in variables before calling SetWalkSpeed, and then order to walk again after.

Code: ags

if (player.Moving)
{
    int dx = player.DestinationX;
    int dy = player.DesintationY;
    player.SetWalkSpeed(10, 10);
    player.Walk(dx, dy);
}
else
{
    player.SetWalkSpeed(10, 10);
}

Besides that you need to change the condition to make sure this is not called 40+ times per second, so only call this once if the walking speed is < max.

Code: ags

if (player.WalkSpeedX < 10 && (mouse.IsButtonDown(eMouseMiddle) || gamepad.IsButtonDown(3)))
{
    if (player.Moving)
    {
        int dx = player.DestinationX;
        int dy = player.DesintationY;
        player.SetWalkSpeed(10, 10);
        player.Walk(dx, dy);
    }
    else
    {
        player.SetWalkSpeed(10, 10);
    }
}

There is an open PR there that adds an extension to mojoAL that would make it possible to do it.

If it's this PR then it does a logically different effect, and personally I believe it should not be activated by "Panning" function in AGS.

I'm unsure where to ask this, but this code doesn't seem to get any result anymore in AGS 3.6..
It doesn't give me any error's or something like that. It just doesn't pan out to the side's anymore. It was a nice effect to use!

What kind of a sound file are you using for this?
There's a known issue that stereo sounds can no longer be panned in 3.6.0, only mono ones.
Mostly this is because the stereo panning was not really a "panning" in previous versions, but another effect which coincidentally worked as if it were panning.

The point of this suggestion is to have a tree-like object explorer, everything else stays the same.
But if you think the toolbar should be changed to something else, that would be a different task. I believe these two panels may be replaced separately and not depend on each others looks.

The properties pane is linked to the "selected" object. How the object is marked "selected" is a question of UI. Right now it's selected if it's clicked upon in a room with a selection tool, or selected in a navigation bar. If there's a tree explorer, then it will get selected by selecting an item in the tree. That's essentially same thing, except command comes from another kind of gui.

I don't know to break it apart, but in my Sandwalker project the biggest file size is in game28.dta which contains all the scripts.

It may be worth writing a tool that analyzes this, either picks things out, or just prints a table of contents. The reading code may be found in Common lib, entry point is in main_game_file.h/cpp.

There is still other code and things that have unknown relations on how it makes things so big.

If it's something serious, then perhaps setting up a test case may help to find out. Even if we just support compression, such investigation may help improving how AGS works in the future.

I am alright with the game script being duplicated in ram because of decompression if necessary, but my guess is this may either be a thing that matters or not depending on how heavily scripted is the game.

This will be only 1 script that is duplicated at a time when loading a game or a room (unless we make a multithreaded loader at some point...).
Also, it might be possible to implement a decompressing Stream type, that buffers up a fixed portion of compressed and decompressed data.

Could you give at least some specifics of this problem, how large are these compiled scripts? Is it size of bytecode, or size of text that makes them large on disk?
I think it's best to investigate the cause first, and make sure this is not because of mistakes or an inefficient functionality in AGS.

For instance, I should mention that the way AGS allocates global variables currently is that it writes their whole initialization to the script data. Of course that does not work for arrays, because AGS currently does not support syntax of initializing arrays at compile time, but global arrays are written to script data anyway.
What this means in practice, is that if you have a global array of 1000 ints in script, then script compiler will write 1000 ints into script data.
I recall a number of users had problem with this in the past, because they did not use dynamic arrays, and stored lots of stuff in fixed arrays, which increased the size of their compiled game by many megabytes.

Regarding compression,
Script objects must be read completely before creating them in memory, otherwise the operations on addresses won't work. Looking from this perspective, does it make sense to compress only text when we may compress it a whole?

In regards to the text,
there are also translations. Each translation currently holds a full duplicate of all the game texts as keys (at least unless we change how translation keys work), and translated items to 99% of that text. If game text is a culprit, then the translations should also be compressed?

In the past we discussed moving towards game data packaged simply in ZIP files (they don't have to have zip extension). I know that engines often do a similar thing. The advantage to this is compression and ease of working, as zip package may be read and modified by any suitable tool. The disadvantage of course is that it's easier to view the contents of the game, if that matters.

This is a standard control of a UI framework, and it does not provide direct way of configuring these sizes.

I found that it's possible to override drawing of this control's elements:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.windows.forms.toolstriprenderer?view=netframework-4.6

Alternatively, it may be replaced with a custom control which implements these arrows, or other scrolling controls, as configurable elements.
But then we also would have to code the menu scrolling.

Many years ago, when the open source stage of AGS has just began, people were discussing means to improve it. Perhaps I was not the only one, but once I suggested to make a room contents explorer panel, similar to the Project Explorer, with a tree-like structure. I had Project Explorer as an example, but I recall that others also were suggesting art software as a reference (like Photoshop, with its groups and layers).

Unfortunately, tzachs, who was intending to work on this, had an opinion that another explorer-like panel would take too much extra space on screen. Somehow his idea was that the AGS UI is already too clogged. This is why he went the direction of Navigation bar, that we have today.

But this navigation bar turned to have a number of usability issues, and is difficult to customize too.

My suggestion is to revive the topic of a proper room explorer, and design one at least "on paper", defining which would be more convenient.

The extended compiler is not too happy with all my legacy stuff going on, especially the tween module seems to need an update.

I do recommend upgrading eventually, the new compiler provides much more useful syntax features, and possibly old one will be dropped at some point.

EDIT: Hm, actually, I notice that it compiles fine the project that you sent me. It prints warnings, some of them may be ignored (ones regarding default values), but others point to actual logical mistakes.

My testgame draws almost everything directly on a room surface and is quite heavy on the scripting side. In AGS 3.6.1b7 I get around 517 FPS, whereas in AGS4a3 it's 'just' around 310 FPS.

This is a serious difference, and is quite unexpected. Could you send us your test game for analysis?

Also, were you using old or new script compiler? We still support both, and old one is chosen in General Settings by default when you import old game, because the new one has stricter syntax rules. But new compiler is known to produce more efficient compiled script.

It's General Settings -> Compiler -> Use extended script compiler

The workaround is perhaps to move them to Sounds type and play as regular AudioClip.
The only problem would be to make playback consistent with voice settings in your game (volume etc).

Sorry for bumping this again, but I thought I should do this after receiving notifications that my answers here were "liked".

The information here is obsolete. Since AGS 3.5.0 (released about a year after this thread) there's Game.PlayVoiceClip() that lets you play a voice clip freely whenever you like, and adjust its playback properties just like with regular clips:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Game.html#gameplayvoiceclip

No, unfortunately, this is not what I experience if I try to test this.
I created a small dummy game in AGS 2.72, with 2 rooms, each having only 1 bg.
Imported this game to AGS 3.6.0. Started the game, went to room 2 and saved in there.
Quit, added more bg frames to the room 2. Started the game and loaded the save. Room 2 was animating.

Possibly there could be other factors, but I am not sure this is worth testing further, since the problem seem to have been solved.

[unless]

I suspect this may be because of misunderstanding of how channels work in AGS. This is a common problem...

AGS has a fixed total number of channels, and each audio type may reserve a number of them, or don't reserve any in which case it will use any of the free ones.

If you go to your Audio Types, and look for "MaxChannels" setting - that's the number of reserved channels. if it's 0, then the sound may play on any of the free channels remaining after counting out all the reserved for other types.

When you assign your AudioChannel pointer to the result of Clip.Play, you receive a reference to channel where this particular instance of a clip played right now. But this does not guarantee you that other clips will play on the same channel, unless you restrict their audio type to only 1 channel.

Yes, I thought so too - but the SFX label goes from 0 to 100% when a SFX that I set in a given frame is playing... So globalChannelSFX does change from null - that what I expected to happen as I've set my SFX assets in advanced as 'SFX' type, and it appears like this is what makes it work

This makes no sense, globalChannelSFX is a name of a variable and it has no connection to the name of the audio type. You could call your variable "abc", that would not have any impact on what is happening.
Your script variables don't get set automatically by the engine, unless you explicitly assign them to something in script.

The thing that drives me crazy is that the debugging labels work only if I test my game from the the 'main menu' room.

Do you assign globalChannelSFX  to something in the main menu room script perhaps? Or in some global functions that gets called from main menu room?