Messages

I made the suggestions in this section of the forum because I thought it covered them.

This section is more about developing the program itself. It's difficult to say where to post this suggestion, but I would try "Advanced Technical Forum" perhaps. On another hand, if you have an actual idea and plan of a template but need help to create one, you may also try "Recruitment" board to get more people in, like coders or artists.

In any case, I think, it's best to begin with setting up a template "specification". Write down what the template's purpose is, and which features should it include. Then it will become more clear what is necessary to make one, what code and which assets (graphics and others). Maybe someone will be able to help with coding in "Advanced Technical Forum".

[delegated to the users of AGS]

Hello!
I'd like to mentions several things.

1. Anyone can create game templates. "Game template" is simply a AGS project packed up in a file (name.agt), nothing else. In AGS editor you can do "File" -> "Make template from this game". You may do same thing using a stand-alone packing tool. After template is packed, the "name.agt" file may be copied to the Templates folder in the Editor, or "%APPDATA%\Local\AGS\Templates" folder, and it will appear for selection in the "New game" wizard.
There's a forum section for posting templates here: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/modules-plugins-tools/ (although I can barely remember couple of these posted in recent years).
Similar thing can be done to room templates. Yes, rooms may also have templates.
Distributing a new game template along with AGS is mostly a question of download and disk size. If it's a good template useful for many people then we may add one to official distribution. Alternatively, we may create a separate distribution for templates (to save on download size for those who do not need these). But at the same time, nothing prevents someone from creating a template collection of their own, and provide for download.

2. Another option is to make demo game(s), that would demonstrate the basic and advanced features of AGS. This was proposed many times in the past, and here's the most recent thread on this topic: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/adventure-related-talk-chat/crowd-sourced-of-an-open-sourced-ags-example-game-collaboration/

3. The development team of AGS is already quite busy with the AGS itself and short on collaborators; and this was always the case. There are only few people (1-4 depending on a moment) working on it in their spare time. This means that it would be most preferable that the task of creating new templates and demo games were delegated to the users of AGS (the game makers), since they already have good experience in making games, and also may know what the beginners need better.

This is why I believe that this suggestion should not be given to developers of AGS, but to AGS community. Let the community create templates and demo games, and then we may decide how to distribute these "officially", which is a less problem.

@Gilbert or @Dualnames , perhaps this may be stickied and replace the 2.2.0 sticky topic?

Updated version, built on top of the script performance fixes:
https://cirrus-ci.com/task/6166331867791360
New related comment on performance:
https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/pull/1923#issuecomment-1532781830

A small update, these performance fixes were merged into the dev master branch, and required few fixes already; so the latest version, if anybody wants to try, is this:
https://cirrus-ci.com/task/5080770293792768

(might be still building at the time of me posting this, so if no downloads are available, wait for 15-20 mins)

I also noticed a curious thing: the builds made by our CI server are little faster than the ones I build on my PC (maybe it uses a newer compiler), so final fps stats may be higher by 3-5 fps.


Here are the stats testing the aforementioned "3D space sim" game using the engine builds from CI:
v3.6.0: 65 fps
master branch (3.6.1 update in dev): 88-90 fps
ags4 branch, using classic compiler: 87-88 fps (got slightly slower)
ags4 branch, using new compiler by @fernewelten: 110-111 fps !! (it produces optimized bytecode)

Testing racing game is more difficult because the fps jumps all the time, so I chose the highest values:
v3.6.0: 150 fps
master branch: 210-215 fps
ags4 branch, using classic compiler: 200-210 fps
ags4 branch, using new compiler: 225-235 fps

[won't be a part of 3.6.0 patches]

I'd like to comment on this change:

- Fixed performance regression in the script related to long loops (regression in 3.6.0).

This only fixes a performance regression that happened during 3.6.0 development; this problem may be noticed mainly when doing long "while/for" loops in script.

There's a much more significant performance fix prepared, but it won't be a part of 3.6.0 patches: it modifies some critical parts of the engine and so may require further testing.

I think we might release a 3.6.1 update after some time, when we see that everything is stable again.

In "Perfect Tides" these chat windows were also causing a significant slowdown, seemingly because many dynamic sprites were recreated and/or redrawn, but I did not investigate whether this is caused by the module itself or its misuse in game script.

Released AGS 3.6.0 Patch 1.

[Download AGS 3.6.0 Patch 1 installer]

AGS 3.6.0 - Patch 1

Full release number: 3.6.0.48

Download AGS 3.6.0 Patch 1 installer

Download AGS 3.6.0 Patch 1 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: 2nd May 2023

Previous stable version: AGS 3.5.1 P20 forum thread


This release is brought to you by:

- sonneveld (porting engine to SDL2)
- Alan v. Drake (improvements, fixes)
- Cameron Cawley [ccawley2011] (fixes, improvements to SpriteFont plugin)
- Crimson Wizard (stuff )
- Dominik Mierzejewski (fix)
- Donovan Watteau (fix)
- eri0o (updated Android port, Web port, Editor improvements, etc)
- fernewelten (new fonts outlining, improvements to script compiler, fixes)
- Francesco Ariis (fixes)
- Morgan Willcock (improving templates, help with CI)
- Pablo Navarro [panreyes] (fixes)
- ChamberOfFear (improvements)
- rofl0r (fixes, suggestions)
- Thierry Crozat (fixes, plugin update)
- vga256 (fixes)


Summary

AGS 3.6.0 is another big change to AGS.
First of all, this release presents a SDL2-based engine. For about 2 decades AGS engine was based on Allegro 4 graphic library, which was discontinued somewhere in the early 2010-ies (only received few patches since). There was an intent to move to to Allegro 5 or SDL since, but for various reasons this task was continuously postponed. Now it's done.
Secondly the Editor and Engine now have full Unicode support. This means that you may use any language whatsoever in scripts, object descriptions and custom properties, as well as translations; so long as you also provide proper unicode fonts.
Third, we have finally expanded a list of platforms that the Editor can build for: now this includes Android and Web (Emscripten) port.

There are much more changes and improvements in this release, check out the full list of changes below.
Also, please be sure to read "Upgrading to AGS 3.6" topic in the manual: https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/UpgradeTo36.html



Changes in the Patch 1:

Editor:
 - Fixed room's deprecated setting LegacyMusicVolumeAdjustment not applied correctly.

Engine:
 - Fixed Room Objects whose dynamic sprite was deleted in "leave room" event becoming invisible during fade-out transition. Logically this has to happen, but historically they kept displaying until the transition end, so we restored this behavior for compatibility, and simply because there's no "after fade-out" event in the engine yet to delete these sprites.
 - Fixed Game.StopAudio() fails to remove queued clips if no particular audio type id is requested.
 - Fixed performance regression in the script related to long loops (regression in 3.6.0).
 - Fixed memory leak occuring when printing text in Right-to-left mode (regression in 3.6.0).
 - Fixed rare mistake during text wrapping which may occur if a Unicode text is cut in the middle of the word.
 - Fixed playing certain WAVs caused game to freeze forever on exit.

Compatibility:
 - Fixed frame-linked sounds not playing in the games made before 3.6.0.
 - Allow game to call DynamicSprite.Create() with negative size, clamping it to 1x1.

Templates:
 - In Sierra-style template fixed "mouse over" graphic for the "Load" icon.



What is new in 3.6.0

Common features:
 - Full Unicode support for all game texts: game properties, scripts, translations, input.
   ASCII/ANSI mode is still working, for backwards compatibility. This may be configured in the game project.
 - Extended sprite compression options: lossless storage optimization for 16- and 32-bit sprites; LZW compression option for sprites in addition to existing RLE compression.
 - GUI controls may now be told to clip their contents, which means that nothing gets drawn outside of their borders (as defined by X, Y, Width, Height properties). The only exception is Sliders, which are more complicated.
 - The historical TTF fonts' "fixup" that altered their height and vertical offset is now optional and works only if backwards compatible option is set.
 - Max number of AudioChannels is now 16 (was 8).
 - Removed game Cursors hard limit (was 20).
 - Increased Room Objects limit to 256 (was 40).
 - Discontinued "Windows Game Explorer" support in both Editor and Engine.

Editor:
 - Editor requires .NET Framework 4.6 to run.
 - Added Android build target support (requires "Android component" installed).
 - Added Web/Emscripten build target support (requires "Web build component" installed).
 - Expanded UI color theme format, support global color options and allow missing entries.
 - Script editor works in unicode mode.
 - Added "Text format" option in General Settings which lets switching between ASCII/ANSI and Unicode (UTF-8) modes. This defines which format the game texts will be written in, when saving the game project and compiling the game.
 - Added "Use old-style keyboard handling" option to the General Settings, which lets select between classic key press handling and new one meant for unicode chars support in scripts.
 - Supports compiling UTF-8 translations. TRS file now has "Encoding" setting that tells how to interpret this TRS text.
 - Added support for building multiple speech voxes, by taking files from the Speech subfolders.
 - Added support for adding custom files into the game package. This is done by assigning a list of directories to "Package custom data folder" option in General Settings.
 - Editor now copies a acsetup.cfg file from the project's root folder (if one is provided by) as a base for generating default config file. Settings from Default Setup will be written over, but other found options won't be removed.
 - Added "Sprite file compression" option in General Settings, replacing "Compress the sprite file" option. The new option allows a selection of compression algorithm used for sprites.
   Currently supported: None, RLE (old default compression) and LZW.
 - Added "Enable sprite storage optimization" option to the General Settings, that permits the editor to repack sprites in a different storage format, reducing their disk size whenever possible. This option may be used alongside with the sprite compression. Note that this does not change how the sprites work in game.
 - Added "GUI controls clip their contents" option to the General Settings.
 - Added "TTF fonts height used in the game logic" option to the General Settings, that makes your game use real font's pixel height when arranging text and text-based UI elements, as opposed to the nominal font's size.
 - Added "Touch to Mouse Emulation", "Touch to Mouse motion mode" and "Display FPS on Screen" to Default Setup. Removed few deprecated options.
 - Added "TTF font adjustment" property to Fonts, as well as to General Settings where it serves as a project default for the new fonts. This property lets you choose between "no changes" and backward compatible TTF fixup meant to keep fonts made for AGS displayed as they were meant to.
 - In the "Import TTF" dialog added a choice to import the size closest to the given pixel height.
 - Fonts now have Auto Outline Style and Auto Outline Thickness properties.
 - Fonts now have a readonly Family Name field, that lets user see the original name of a font they've imported (if available).
 - Added IdleDelay property to Characters that lets you set time needed to pass before IdleView is activated. This is equivalent to the Character.SetIdleView script function.
 - Added Character.IdleAnimationDelay property to let setup idle view's animation speed.
 - Added Cursor.AnimationDelay property to let setup cursor's animation speed.
 - The TextWindow edges now have distinct names in the dropdown list of the property grid.
 - Rooms created from a Blank template will now have default background of a game's resolution.
 - When creating new room objects they will now have their script names set to some default value.
 - Added Room.BackgroundAnimationEnabled property to let have disabled animation on room load.
 - Editor will now create an empty sprite file if one is missing in the game project. Any existing sprite descriptions in the project will be kept, letting user to reimport these from sources.
 - Added "File -> Restore all sprites from sources" menu command.
 - Added "Apply" button on editor's Preferences dialog.
 - In Preferences replaced "Import Color Theme" with a "Open Theme Folder", as a temporary solution for managing theme files.
 - Select script editor's font in the editor's Preferences.
 - Added "Help" option to the editor pane's tab context menu.
 - Upgraded script editor to Scintilla 3.21.1 and ScintillaNET 3.6.3.
 - Cursor's position in script is now displayed on the status bar.
 - Dialog scripts now too can open help topics for keywords or script functions under cursor on F1.
 - Added zoom controls for the Sprite Manager, Character, Cursor, Inventory and View panes.
 - Sprites may now be imported by drag'n'drop into the Sprite manager.
 - In sprite manager's context menu added command "Create source files for all sprites with missing / external sources..."
 - In sprite manager's context menu added (restored) command "Replace sprite using previous files".
   Also made "previous file" remembered consistently whenever a sprite is imported or replaced.
 - In sprite manager's "export all" dialog added "skip if inside project's folder" option.
 - In sprite manager's "export all" dialog added "reset tile settings" option.
 - On the View pane the frames having set delay and linked sound will be now indicated with icons.
 - Editor no longer errors and fails when opening a game project with some script files missing.
 - Editor no longer errors on empty translations when compiling the game.
 - Editor now exports values of the string type Custom Properties to translations.
 - Editor no longer prevents exporting string arguments from Get/SetTextProperty calls to TRS file.
 - Editor now cleanups spritefile on game load, identifying any data not referenced by the project and marking it for deletion.
 - Fixed editor silently enabling all available Build Targets when upgrading a pre-3.4.0 project. This could be very inconvenient as there are several of them supported now.
 - Fixed open folders in the Project Tree were collapsing whenever you create a new subfolder or change an object's name in properties.
 - Fixed editor was not preventing from entering Character's and AudioClip's ScriptName too long for the engine to handle.
 - Fixed Image and View properties in various objects were allowing negative values.
 - Fixed some of the object previews (at least GUI) could crash if user entered a non-existing sprite's number as an Image property.
 - Fixed editor displaying unhandled exception if the script which user is trying to open was missing. Instead it will now open a blank script.
 - Fixed room editor was suggesting to save the modified room even if no changes were made.
 - Fixed a recently imported sprite could be displayed incorrectly scaled up in the room editor for high-resolution games, if the "Allow relative asset resolutions" was enabled in General Settings, and the sprite 0 had "Resolution" property set to "Low".
 - Fixed program crash occuring on sprite's import if failed to open a source file for any reason.
 - Fixed View animation preview stopping at frame 100 (if loop contains over 100 frames).
 - Fixed going to a "find all" result in dialog script did not highlight the found text, and sometimes did not scroll down to it.
 - Fixed "Goto Definition" not working for Enums and Defines (macros).
 - Fixed script autocomplete sometimes was not updated right after opening a script.
 - Fixed script autocomplete for function calls was mistreating commas in strings and inline comments as if they were separating actual parameters.
 - Fixed script autocomplete was not displaying members of extended structs if the parent struct was declared in another header.
 - Fixed script autocomplete was not working for enum names.
 - Fixed structs and enums were not highlighted if declared inside a script's body.
 - Fixed in dialogs numbers inside names were incorrectly highlighted as numeric values.
 - Fixed matching or mismatching braces were not highlighted consistently at all times in regular and dialog scripts.
 - Fixed crash occuring when user was trying to set breakpoint on the very last line in script.
 - Fixed few editor panes were not opening correct help topics in F1.
 - (Possibly) fixed error message text in the runtime error popup could be drawn partially beyond the popup borders if the user's system has text scaling option enabled.

Compiler:
 - Support unicode character literals.
 - Support using float literals when defining default values for function arguments.
 - Support hexadecimal number literals (e.g. "0xABCDEF").
 - Removed 500-characters line limit.

Script API:
 - Expanded `on_key_press` callback, now supports two parameters: key code and key modifier flags.
 - In the new key handling mode `on_key_press` is called for each actual key press;
   e.g. combinations like Ctrl+Z will result in two `on_key_press` calls, one with eKeyCtrlLeft and second with eKeyZ; added support for "NEW_KEYINPUT_API" macro in scripts.
 - Implemented new `on_text_input(int ch)` callback which is called when the engine receives a printable character. This callback is essential for handling unicode chars in script.
 - Similarily, expanded `dialog_options_key_press` with the third `mod` argument, and implemented `dialog_options_text_input` callback for receiving unicode chars during the custom dialog options state.
 - Implemented `dialog_options_close` callback which is called when custom dialog options are removed from the screen. This allows to perform any required cleanup.
 - Added eEventEnterRoomAfterFadein event for `on_event` callback, which corresponds to "enter after fade-in" room event.
 - Added eKey constants for Shift, Control and Alt keys.
 - Added eKeyMod enum for key modifiers constants.
 - String.AppendChar(), ReplaceChar() functions and String.Chars[] property are now working with the unicode characters.
 - String.Format("%c") specifier will now be able to print unicode characters.
 - Extended Button.Animate() to have blocking style, direction and starting frame parameters, thus matching other Animate commands (of Character and Object).
 - Extended all Animate() commands by adding "volume" parameter, that defines volume of the frame-linked sounds for the duration of this animation.
 - Added Character.AnimationVolume, defining volume of the frame-linked sounds.
 - Added Character.IdleAnimationDelay to let control idle view's animation speed.
 - Character.Scaling is no longer limited by a range of 5-200 (now supports 1-32767).
 - Hotspot.Name and Object.Name may now be set in script.
 - Added Object.ManualScaling and Object.Scaling.
 - Deprecated Object.IgnoreScaling (use Object.ManualScaling instead).
 - Object.SetView default loop & frame values are now 0 (was -1 which retained loop and frame indexes from the previous view, often unexpected to the user).
 - DrawingSurface.DrawImage() and DrawSurface() now support optional source rect coordinates.
 - Added functions for getting DrawingSurface of room masks: GetDrawingSurfaceForWalkableArea(), GetDrawingSurfaceForWalkbehind(), Hotspot.GetDrawingSurface(), Region.GetDrawingSurface().
 - Added new delay parameter to Mouse.ChangeModeView() to let control cursor's animation speed.
 - Added Game.ChangeSpeechVox() and Game.SpeechVoxFilename, support switching the voice-over pack.
 - Added Mouse.AutoLock property that toggles automatic mouse lock inside the game window.
 - Added Room.Exists().
 - Added System.Log().
 - Added SkipWait() that skips any active Wait() function.
 - Added WaitMouse() to complement existing Wait functions.
 - Added InputType enum which defines input devices and lets create their sets as flags.
 - Added WaitInput(), a more generic and extendable function that accepts a combination of flags telling which input types to wait for.
 - All Wait* functions now may have infinite timeout if you pass a negative timeout parameter.
 - All Wait* functions now return the reason they were skipped: a combination of InputType flag and a respective key or button code.
 - Added GUIControl.Transparency property.
 - Added Overlay.CreateRoomGraphical and CreateRoomTextual. Use these two functions to create "room overlays": that is - overlays that display a sprite inside the room, sorted among other room objects, characters and walk-behinds.
 - Added readonly Overlay.InRoom property that tells if this is a room or screen overlay.
 - Extended Overlay.CreateGraphical() with a new "clone" parameter that tells whether to assign a sprite index, or make a sprite's copy owned exclusively by this overlay. The former will save program memory but make overlay update if the sprite is edited later. The latter is meant primarily for backwards compatibility.
   Overlay.CreateRoomGraphical has the same param.
 - Added Overlay.Graphic property that lets you change overlay's sprite after it's created.
 - Added Overlay.Width and Height properties, that let you freely scale existing Overlay.
 - Added readonly Overlay.GraphicWidth and GraphicHeight properties that let read original overlay's graphic size, as not all overlays hold a sprite reference (e.g. textual overlays).
 - Added Overlay.Transparency property.
 - Added Overlay.ZOrder property that lets you sort Overlays among themselves and other objects in the same "game layer": screen overlays are sorted among GUI, while room overlays are sorted among room objects, characters and walk-behinds.
 - Added Speech.TextOverlay and Speech.PortraitOverlay for accessing blocking speech overlay and portrait overlay respectively.
 - Added Game.BlockingWaitSkipped which tells the result of the last blocking wait skipping, also including result of the blocking speech skipping.
 - SkipSpeechStyle now supports eSkipNone mode; when used it will disable any kind of skipping, such speech can be only skipped by a direct command from script.
 - Extended Screen.ScreenToRoomPoint() with an optional "restrictToViewport" argument, which lets to choose whether tests over empty place result in conversion through the default viewport or a null pointer.
 - Added AudioClip.PlayOnChannel().
 - Added AudioChannel.Pause() and Resume() functions, and IsPaused property.
 - Added AudioChannel.SeekMs(), complementing PositionMs (as the Seek() function interprets position differently depending on the audio format).
 - PlayVideo() now supports an option to play both game's and video's audio track simultaneously.
 - Added File.WriteRawInt() to complement ReadRawInt().
 - File paths in script now support $DATA$ token, which tells to read files from the game package. This only works for read operations. Functions that support this token currently are:
   File.Open(), DynamicSprite.CreateFromFile(), ListBox.FillDirList().
 - Debug(2, 0) command that displayed walkable areas is superceded by Debug(2, n), where "n" is a mask type: 0 - none, 1 - hotspots, 2 - walkbehinds, 3 - walkable areas, 4 - regions. This command also works as a toggle switch, calling it with the same mask index will turn it off.
 - Debug(5, n) command that displayed character's walk paths now also works as a toggle switch.

Engine:
 - New SDL2-based backend for graphics, audio and input.
 - Hqx graphic filters discontinued (could be temporary).
 - Windows-only DirectMedia video playback discontinued (could be temporary).
   Only OGG/OGV videos are kept supported at this point.
 - Support resizing game window on desktop systems.
 - Support "borderless full-screen window" mode in addition to the real (exclusive) fullscreen.
 - Support for switching vertical sync at runtime with Direct3D/OpenGL renderers. Also enable vsync in windowed mode too.
 - Unicode (UTF-8) text support: engine can now switch between ASCII and UTF-8 text mode. This is controlled by both game's OPT_GAMETEXTENCODING setting and translation's "Encoding" setting: they tells whether to interpret game texts as UTF-8 or ASCII/ANSI.
 - Support optional translation's "GameEncoding" setting: it hints the original game's codepage to help with their conversion. This is mostly meant for translating existing older (ANSI) games.
 - Engine now supports using real pixel height of the TTF fonts when arranging text and UI elements on screen; using nominal import size of the font is used as a compatible mode for the old games.
 - Also supports separate "normal" and backward compatible "fixup" modes when initializing TTF fonts, letting to display both common TTFs and ones made specifically for AGS in the past to display as they were meant to be.
 - Supports scripts using functions and variables from any other scripts, regardless of the script module order in the project.
 - Removed limit of simultaneous Button animations.
 - Removed limit of Character followers.
 - Removed Overlay limit.
 - Character.SetWalkSpeed() is no longer restricted by an arbitrary limit of 50.
 - Process character's idle view based on real game speed, not hardcoded 40 fps.
 - Improved file writing times (e.g. when doing a game save) by using buffered file stream. Initial tests showed 50% faster file writing.
 - Engine now renders GUI controls as separate textures when using hardware accelerated renderers. This may significantly improve performance in the high-resolution games and games with large number of GUI elements on screen.
 - Engine now shares the video texture data for all game objects on screen sharing same sprite. This improves performance in case there are multiple objects which use same image.
 - Various performance optimizations for both raw drawing and texture updates (Direct3D/OpenGL).
 - Engine now ensures that in threaded audio mode the AudioChannel's state only changes once the game is updated, and not while the game script is running. This prevents situations when the clip could begin playing before all properties are set in script, or when AudioChannel's properties' values (such as Position) could change while running a game script.
 - 24-bit wav PCM support, comes with the new sound library.
 - File.ReadRawLineBack() now always reads full line, and not limited to 200 characters anymore.
 - Debug displays, such as showing room mask and character walk paths, are now implemented as non-blocking translucent overlays, allowing you to keep playing the game while they are on.
 - Implemented debug key controls for calling a built-in save and restore game dialogs. These controls have to be set in user config as "save_game_key" and "restore_game_key" in "[override]" category. These may be used by testers if the game is missing a save function or one is bugged.
 - Engine now supports loading compiled scripts as separate files packed along with the game, along with those embedded into the main game data or inside room files.
 - Engine no longer bails out with error if the chosen translation cannot be loaded on startup.
 - When reporting script errors, engine will print callstack for all the active script "threads": for example, if there's Wait() function called and error happened in repeatedly_execute_always, then it will print both actual error's location, and Wait() call's location.
 - Engine config now has graphic modes defined as a simplier string options: "[graphics] fullscreen" for the fullscreen mode setup, and "[graphics] window" for the windowed.
   Fullscreen option can explicitly define a "borderless full-screen window" mode.
 - Added "emul_mouse_mode" and "emul_mouse_relative" options to config in "[touch]" category.
 - Added "cache_size" and "stream_threshold" options to config in "[sound]" category, they setup the rules for sound caching and choosing whether to load a clip fully into mem or stream one.
 - Added "load_latest_save" and "show_fps" options to config in "[misc]" category.
 - Added "background" option to config in "[misc]" category, that defines the starting run-in-background (aka multitasking) mode (may later be changed by SetMultitaskingMode()).
   Added "--background" command line option for the same purpose.
 - Added "--sdl-log" command line option for setting up SDL2 library output verbosity. The engine log config now has a new "sdl" group meant for SDL2 messages.
 - Support "--user-conf-dir" command-line arg (and "user_conf_dir" config option) superceding "--localuserconf"; the new option directly tells the location of user config file.
 - Path related command-line and config options, - such as "shared_data_dir", "user_data_dir" and "user_conf_dir", now support $GAMENAME$ token in path which is resolved to the game's title.
 - Added "--clear-cache-on-room-change" command-line arg (and similar config option).
 - Don't error when DrawingSurface.DrawImage has bad transparency parameter (warning instead).
 - Don't error when detecting bad format in File.Read* functions (warning instead).
 - Added stubs for agsshell plugin (a contemporary cross-platform variant of ags_shell).
 - Added stubs for agsappopenurl plugin.
 - Fixed potential crashes if a room-related API function has been called in "game_start"; this is achieved by having a dummy room placeholder object. Still results of such calls are undefined and should not be relied upon.
 - Fixed potential crash on room load if the walkable area mask contained color values above the supported range.
 - Fixed dialog script's "goto-previous" command not working if used from the first sub-topic run using "goto-dialog" (a very-very old bug).
 - Fixed AGS_EngineInitGfx plugin callback was not called during OpenGL renderer initialization.
 - Fixed Direct3D/OpenGL renderers were displaying plugin's raw drawings in a wrong position in the scrolling rooms, if the drawing was done on AGSE_PRESCREENDRAW or AGSE_POSTROOMDRAW events.
 - Fixed overlay may fail to be created sometimes, if previously another overlay had been forcefully removed when changing rooms (this is an ancient bug which existed for many years).
 - Fixed ListBox.RowCount reporting 0 if called before the control was displayed once.
 - Fixed GetTextWidth would still return a size of an outline for an empty text string.
 - Fixed text may be misaligned in gui controls, as its outline thickness is not counted.
 - Fixed some TTF fonts could be cut at the bottom when the speech is displayed.
 - Fixed scheduled sound fadeout effect was not cancelled by skipping a cutscene.
 - Fixed OGV Theora videos positioned incorrectly if they have certain sizes or aspect ratios.
 - Fixed game fps sped up if SetGameSpeed() is called repeatedly in game script.
 - Fixed game not reacting to system close commands when stuck in script, which made it impossible
   to close the "hanging" game by usual means (other than terminating the process).

Engine Plugin API:
 - Added IAGSEngine::GetGameInfo() function which returns information about the game, such as its title and GUID.
 - Added new render callback AGSE_POSTROOMDRAW, for handling drawing inside the room above all room objects.
 - Added IAGSFontRenderer2 interface, expanding the original font renderer interface, improving font plugins support.
 - Added ReplaceFontRenderer2() and NotifyFontUpdated() functions.

Compatibility:
 - Fallback to the first loop with frames if current character's loop does not have any.
 - Use the dummy frame if current character's speech view loop does not have any.
 - Ignore character having view/loop with no frames while it's not in the current room.
 - Legacy behavior of MoveCharacterBlocking's return value.
 - Fixed walkable area's continuous scaling was broken for high-res rooms in old games.
 - In pre-3.* games force player to walkable area after changing rooms, this is to emulate an unintentional effect created by the old engines.
 - Fixed pre-3.4.1 anti-aliased TTF fonts display (their vertical position was broken).
 - For pre-3.5.0 games support old behavior of coincidental dynamic sprite replacement on GUI backgrounds (and few other places) without explicit assignment; that is - when the new DynamicSprite is created right after deleting an old one.
 - Support Label.TextAlignment with legacy alignment constants for pre-3.5.0 games made with the custom engine from "Clifftop Games".
 - Support native resolution hack for games made with "Clifftop Games" custom engine, where 640x400 games are run as 640x360.

Android:
 - Rewrote universal AGS game launcher/player using up-to-date Google guidelines. The former "launcher" is now called "AGS Player".
 - Implemented single game project template meant for building your own signed APK.
 - Implemented two touch-to-mouse control scheme (selectable in config), for one finger emulating LMB only, and for two fingers emulating LMB and RMB.
 - Support relative motion speed setting for touch-to-mouse emulation.
 - In AGS Player added "Browse" button to the game folder selection, which opens default system file picker.
 - AGS Player now searches for games recursively, in all the subfolders.
 - AGS Player now has preference button per each game, which opens individual game's settings.

OSX:
 - OpenGL renderer is now supported on MacOS.

Web / Emscripten:
 - Initial port release.

Windows:
 - Installer will create program links with three-digit version in the name.
 
Plugins:
 - Added SpriteFont plugin to the list of builtins, for ports that use ones.
   SpriteFont plugin is updated to support custom "Clifftop Games" font variants.

WinSetup:
 - Added "Fullscreen as borderless window" checkbox.
 - Remade sound options to reflect the move to the new audio system in the engine.




Known issues

* Although Unicode text is supported overall, some languages may still not be printed correctly automatically. Firstly, those that require "letter linking", such as Arabic or Persian, do not have the proper linking on its own. This may be worked around using special text converters and fonts. Another issue is that texts printed right-to-left in the source (where print direction is done using Unicode's control characters) are not wrapped correctly and may require manual placement of line breaks, or scripting their split in game.
* MIDI no longer plays on its own on Windows. For MIDI you (and your players) must install "sound banks" (also known as "sound font"). Please refer to this article: https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/MIDI-playback.html
* AudioChannel.Position and AudioChannel.Seek do not work for MIDI and MOD sounds. Try sticking to PositionMs and SeekMs for now.
* There are reports about Direct3D not being able to restore the fullscreen mode after alt+tabbing occasionaly.





Thanks to everyone who contributed to and tested this version!

What it means if the objects had Parents if I might ask?

You can connect objects together as Parent - Child, and then children's position and transformation becomes relative to the parent's.
The full explanation may be found in the docs, see the "SetParent" description:
https://github.com/ivan-mogilko/ags-spritevideo/wiki/SpriteVideo-API

[EDIT]

Today there have been a new breakthrough.
After @eri0o gave me an interesting idea on improving something, I had a "eureka" moment, and pushed that change further, which in accumulation gave around 15% of more improvement.

Here's the test build:
https://cirrus-ci.com/task/4504035709943808

My tests currently are:
1. A 3D space sim (https://github.com/ivan-mogilko/ags-wcproto)
improved from 65 fps to 84 fps
2. A racing game (https://github.com/ivan-mogilko/ags-lastfurious)
improved from 150 fps to 210 fps

So, if my math is correct, that gives around 30% improvement? hmm or even 40% for the second game.

EDIT
Panorama3D demo now runs in 42 fps for me, compared to ~33 fps it had with original engine...

@LimpingFish, could you try it if you have spare moment?

For the reference, Dave Gilbert is making a 1920x1080 game in AGS 3.6.0:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/ags-games-in-production/old-skies-time-travel-adventure-by-wadjet-eye!-demo-available!/

AGS may still not be a perfect engine for that res, but it became somewhat better in the latest versions. You just have to be careful about amount of animating objects you put on screen simultaneously.

If full-HD is not a priority for you, 1280x720 seems a good alternative, as Khris mentioned. And yes, there's a problem with downscaling to a lower monitor size: downscaling a pixel game works horribly (it makes text barely readable too, because AGS currently scales whole game image in the window, also text is a part of the GUI images and is not rendered separately at the moment).

Final version of a performance fix (for now, probably):
https://cirrus-ci.com/task/6713476341563392

Bumps game fps by 15-20% in the test games with lots of array manipulations.

No, unfortunately AGS does not support non-blocking non-fullscreen videos at this time.

There's a plugin that can do this though:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/modules-plugins-tools/plugin-spritevideo-v0-9-3-sprite-and-video-render-based-on-direct3d-plugin/
The caveat is that it does not play any sounds in its current version.

For low-res games it may be worth doing a sprite animation instead, especially if it's just a emulation of video with limited number of frames, such as for a theater screen like in your question, or TV screen on background, and so forth..

[- Original exe (made in AGS 3.12):]

I'm way out of my depth here, but I'd just like to point out that Kweepa's Panorama modules run considerably slower in post 3.21 versions of AGS.

I could imagine it's slower, but do you have any data on this?

For the reference, I tried a demo game from this thread:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/modules-plugins-tools/module-panorama3d-v1-3/msg636644446/#msg636644446

Results on my system were:
- Original exe (made in AGS 3.12): 31-33 fps with Software renderer (was called Allegro/DX5); 27-28 fps with Direct3D.
- 3.6.0 engine: ~30 fps when using Software renderer; 25-26 fps with Direct3D/OpenGL.

(I have a medium level 8 years old PC, if that matters)

My first assumption is that the main culprit is inefficient Get/SetPixel command in AGS. EDIT: Ah, not, instead it seems to do this by repeatedly creating dynamic sprites and rotating them each time in "redraw" function.
Of course, if AGS script had some kind of a 3D polygon API, and engine did the main calculation/drawing internally, then things could be done much more efficiently.


UPDATE
I've been experimenting with speed fixes for script lately, and surprisingly my last attempt runs the Panorama Demo faster than original by about couple fps:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q3ga78b09vo09m6/acwin-361-perffixes.zip?dl=0

Of course I don't assume I made script run faster than 3.1, so my explanation is that this module or older engine had more performance problems elsewhere than the script itself, and newer engines improved that.

This is old... things always progress slow in AGS.

For the reference, after RTTI feature was merged in AGS, it might be possible to similarly generate a table of variables with names and write along the compiled script, as an optional block of data (which may be enabled or disabled).

If this data is accessible by the engine, then the engine may return an information about variable and its current state.


An alternate approach is still viable too (as was years ago):

There is yet another way this may be solved.
If Editor will write down table of variables when compiling scripts, remembering names of variable and their addresses for the debugging times, then it may ask engine not about certain names, but certain memory addresses, which engine does know.

The meaning of this is to ask engine to return a data at offset X of size N from a script memory.

I'm sorry for the question, but I thought there was some kind of log or something similar that could show the value of the variables.

Unfortunately AGS does not support displaying variable values in a way that other game engines may do (like for example, a table of variables or objects existing at runtime). It's a general problem with it, as it currently does not store variable information withing a game, such as variable names for instance, only raw data.

The only way to display a variable's value is to command to print it explicitly in script, using standard text displaying or printing methods mentioned above.

There's a log (System.Log), as noted above, it displays all kinds of things, but you may configure it to display only your prints too, if necessary.
Or you may write your own file the way you prefer.

Commonly people use a GUI with a set of labels, or a ListBox though, for diagnosing things at runtime.

I'm sorry, but have you tried reading the manual?
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Scripting.html
As Khris suggested in the previous thread:

You should really read it from top to bottom at least once.

At least read the list of possible script commands: that will give you an idea of what AGS provides.
Testing out every basic feature will also help in the future, at least you will know what you may use.

Searching on forums may also help. 90% of questions are asked over again all the time. Sometimes even randomly reading the topic titles, like 5-6 forum pages back, may give you a hint.



Answering the question though, methods of displaying the text in non-blocking way are:

1. Since you are working with custom options, you may draw your variable values right there on the surface even. The way to print values is String.Format - it converts a sequence of text, ints and floats into a single string.
2. GUI Labels.
3. Textual Overlays.
4. Character.SayBackground - is a non-blocking speech, using textual Overlays internally.
5. Actually, graphical Overlays too, where you may assign your own DynamicSprite with anything drawn on it, and display on screen.
6. Drawing right on the room background (dirty, but may be useful sometimes). See Room.GetDrawingSurfaceForBackground.
7. Writing to a file (see "File" in the manual)
8. Writing to the engine log with System.Log. You will have to enable log when running your game, this is done either by editing a config file or passing a parameter from command line, as explained here:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/EngineConfigFile.html
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/RuntimeEngine.html#command-line
unfortunately there's currently no way to display this log in the editor at runtime, but you may open the file with a good text editor and set "auto reload" mode (I know that some text editors support this).

[95-98]

I've been testing a couple of script-heavy games with a Nick Sonneveld's script interpreter's rewrite
https://github.com/sonneveld/ags/commits/ags--script
using "infinite fps mode" (where the game runs as fast as possible without frame delays) and depending on a game and situation it gives about 20-25% improvement in fps, compared to the 3.5.0 engine it was based on. In one game it raised from 70 fps to around 84 fps, in another - from 330 to 400+ fps.

For more experiments, I downported the one "script heavy" game mentioned above to AGS 3.2.1. The results combining several versions of AGS are these:

1. AGS 3.2.1: 95-98 fps
2. AGS 3.4.3: 75 fps
3. AGS 3.5.0: 70-73 fps
4. AGS 3.5.1: 69-70 fps
5. AGS 3.6.0: 65-66 fps (with certain fixes was able to increase to around 68.5 fps so far; UPD: 72 fps now)
6. Nick Sonneveld's interpreter rewrite: 85-89 fps (85 when running a game made in 3.4.3, and 89 when running a game made in 3.2.1 for some reason).

This is just to illustrate the results of me editing the script interpreter in 2012-13 when trying to make it work on 64-bit systems and the engine to have better compatibility with the old games. Basically, starting since AGS 3.3 the script execution lost about 1/3 of its potential speed.

Guess this also answers @Monsieur OUXX 's original question to some degree.

Of course, the above "only" matters when you're doing a huge amount of calculations, and manipulations with data in your game, like 3D matrix math and physics. This may also be related to the way data is stored, and how often do you create and delete dynamic objects (dynamic arrays, managed structs). Although I do not have an assessment on what impact, relatively, managed objects have in this. It might be curious to reimplement this test game I've been using here, and maybe another my game (car racing), relying strictly on non-managed variables, and record the difference, for statistics.

In all the other cases the performance issues would likely be caused by unoptimized graphics, etc.

It's a compiling issue. The output reads "Error (line 77): Parse error: unexpected 'if'".

This likely means that you put this code outside of any function.
All the script commands in AGS must be inside some function to compile and work.

Normally, for the repeated actions, the function "repeatedly execute" is used. In rooms you need to register a function for corresponding event, events are marked on this screenshot:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/images/acintro3_05.png

Press ... button to let the editor create a function and link to event for you, the put this code inside.

By the way, I just realized that the script is wrong, condition should say

"if (!cPopper.Moving)"

instead, as the NPC should start Walking into new destination only after it finished previous walk.


EDIT: I found another forum thread which contained this code: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/beginners-technical-questions/making-a-npc-walk-form-one-spot-to-another/msg636654915/#msg636654915
it's only few days old.

Perhaps moderators could merge these two threads together?