Messages

I have this unusual usability problem, likely because I have mod rights in certain threads, "Quick edit" button also shows for me on other peoples posts, and I keep clicking on it occasionally when trying to reply... Good thing I was able to notice what i do wrong before saving the post.
Is there a way to make it more distinct when it's not on my own posts perhaps? I don't want to remove someones text by mistake...

I don't know why, but in this version (3.5.1.22) I can't access to debug via keyboard (for example, ctrl + x for teleport to any room). Obviously the option is setted True in General Settings. Anyway I made some gui buttons with "(Debug, x, x)" to solve this so it's not a big issue.

Someone else has the same problem?

It works for me. Could you post a script you were using for keyboard controls?

Unfortunately, it is using the Ogg Theora video, considering it has become an obsolete codec since VP8 and VP9.   Is it difficult to integrate more modern open-source codecs into AGS?

The video playback is fully implemented inside the plugin, it's not using AGS own functionality to play them. So there are two separate questions:
* video support in this plugin,
* video support in AGS itself.

I guess it's easier to do in plugin first, since it already has a non-blocking playback. AGS would require to reimplement video controls, and add more sophisticated playback script API to support the same thing.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what codecs VP8 and VP9 are, what are they played with. I understand the principles of programming video, but do not know alot about formats and codecs.

[AGS 3.6.0.35]

AGS 3.6.0.35

Script editor:
- Round braces NOT working
- Curvy braces NOT working

It's interesting, that I found that braces highlighting does work in 3.6.0.35, but it depends on some circumstances.
For instance, if you have curved braces after round ones, the round ones are not highlighted (if you retype them).

I don't remember what happened when I tried this last time (where round braces did not work at all, or so it seemed), but this is all quite confusing.

and here i'd thought all i needed to add was a bool == false in the if statement and it would work, but unfortunaly that does not work. This is how i did it, but it's not the right way of course.

It's hard to tell why it did not work without seeing the exact code you used.

But besides a bool variable, you could also use DoOnceOnly here.

Anyway, without dockerfile i think it will be tedious to grab all pieces needed to run AGS4

Which pieces do you need? The Editor is fully available in 1 zip archive in the "windows_packaging" task.
Inside it has everything necessary for building a game for Linux too (with precompiled binaries for Debian/Ubuntu system).

[Download AGS 3.5.1 installer]

AGS 3.5.1 - Patch 15

Full release number: 3.5.1.22

Download AGS 3.5.1 installer

Download AGS 3.5.1 as a .zip archive

For Editor

Spoiler

VC 2015 redistributable needed for AGS Editor on Windows

Download Dark UI Theme for the editor

[close]

For Android

Spoiler

Android launcher (APK signed with Debug key), suitable for running any compatible AGS game

Native engine libraries, for making your own signed APKs

[close]

For Engine/Editor developers

Spoiler

AGS source code central repository

Debug symbols database (for analysing crash dumps)

[close]

Released: 2nd October 2022

Previous stable version: AGS 3.5.0 P10 forum thread


This release is brought to you by:

- Alan v. Drake
- Crimson Wizard
- eri0o
- fernewelten (fixes)
- James Duong (implemented "--console-attach" option for Windows)
- Morgan Willcock
- Nick Sonneveld
- rofl0r
- Pablo Navarro (fixes)
- Thierry Crozat (bug fixing)
- vga256 (bug fixing)



Summary

3.5.1 is a minor update after 3.5.0, which contains mostly utility additions, fixes and perfomance improvements.

Changes in the Patch 15:

Editor:
- Fixed crash that could occur when changing View's ID to an unused number in the middle.
- Fixed comments and string literals were styled incorrectly in dialog scripts.
- Fixed unterminated string literals in script were not considered as errors when processing scripts for translation update and autonumbering of speech lines, leading to wrong results.
- Fixed Editor was updating translation file even if errors were found while scanning the scripts, which could cause a TRS corruption.
- Fixed Editor could overwrite changes done manually to TRS while the editor is open and if you run a translation update right after.
- Fixed potential program crash on exit in case an editor's plugin has mistakes in "shutdown" callback. Instead editor will report a component's error, but still close properly after.

Script API:
- Removed a rule that Viewport and Camera with ID 0 can't be deleted.


Changes in the Patch 14:

Editor:
- Do not error when compiling a 256 colors game if Direct3D or OpenGL are selected as a default graphics driver (display a warning instead).
- Fixed crash when trying to import pre-2.60 game projects.


Changes in the Patch 13:

Engine:
- Fixed room object does not update its texture if it had a dynamic sprite assigned to it, and that sprite was unassigned, modified or recreated with same ID, and then reassigned again, - all within the same game frame.
- Fixed normal font renderer is not reinitialized correctly in the engine if a plugin uses IAGSEngine::ReplaceFontRenderer(), passing original renderer's pointer (which it received from the previous ReplaceFontRenderer call).


Changes in the Patch 12:

Engine:
- Fixed GUI textual controls don't redraw when the game translation changes until player clicks on GUI (regression since previous 3.5.1 updates).
- Fixed multitasking mode persisting if the game was switched from windowed to fullscreen mode (even though it's not supposed to work in fullscreen).


Changes in the Patch 11:

Editor:
- Fixed batch sprite export with "Set exported file as sprite source" option was assigning new source paths without file extension.

Engine:
- Perfomance fix: GUIs changing Transparency or Visible state should not redraw their surface.

Compatibility:
- Allow AudioClip.Play to to place clips on a crossfade channel, which is normally unaccessible from script. This prevents errors in some games that relied on this behavior.


Changes in the Patch 10:

Engine:
- Fixed crash when visible viewport does not have any linked camera.
- Fixed ListBox.FillSaveGameList() may include save slots with negative slot number (e.g. when the save file has "*.-01" extension).
- Fixed potential crash after failed RunAGSGame() call.
- Fixed search for the game data by GUID when restoring a save belonging to another game;
  this was implemented in 3.5.1, but appeared to not work correctly.


Changes in the Patch 9:

Editor:
- Removed restriction on max dialog topics in the project. The dialog limit in the engine was removed in 3.4.1, but remained in the Editor by oversight.
- Fixed Audio Clip items in the project tree not displaying their IDs right after being renamed.

Compiler:
- Fixed crash occuring when compiler tries to report "Already referenced name as import" error.

Engine:
- Added "--translation" and "--no-translation" command-line arguments.


Changes in the Patch 8:

Engine:
- Clearer error messages for Get/SetProperty functions.
- Fixed PlayFlic() command fails to start the video (regression in 3.5.1).
- Fixed DrawingSurface.DrawSurface() not applying transparency parameter correctly if the drawn surface has alpha channel.
- Fixed OVERHOTSPOT is not updated immediately when character's name changes while cursor is above that character.

Templates:
- In BASS template fixed right click not dropping currently selected item if cursor was hovering over another item.


Changes in the Patch 7:

Editor:
- Added "Layout -> Reset to Defaults" menu command.
- Editor will now reset panel layout to default state if loading layout fail for any reason.
- Default config is now saved also when the game is run in debug mode (F5). This ensures that the test run is using the latest Default Setup, if the user's config has not been created yet.
- Editor will now display an error if user tried to reserve too many channels for audio types.
- Fixed Editor failing to start if user preferences file is corrupted.
- Fixed "Use old-style custom dialog options API" was not set when importing pre-3.4.0 projects.
- Fixed comboboxes' drop-down arrows were not painted with the right color from a color theme.

Engine:
- Fixed program crash occuring if the game reserved too many channels for audio types.
- Fixed potential crash occuring when player loads a save made in a multi-frame room, but the room was since edited and no longer has as many frames.
- Fixed character may have incorrect Frame (property) values while turning.


Changes in the Patch 6:

Editor:
- Added line numbers in the dialog script editor.
- Fixed Dialog script loosing changes if the pane is closed or redocked.
- Fixed controls arrangement on the Dialog pane getting broken when it's redocked.

Engine:
- Fixed filepaths in scripts that have backslashes ('\') fail on non-Windows systems.
  All the (script) File functions will now convert backslashes in filepaths into forward slashes for compatibility.
- Fixed engine was still creating standard directories for game saves and data, even if user provided the custom paths for these.
- Fixed TextBox control crashing the game if it's empty and player presses Backspace.
- Fixed controls on a fully transparent GUI were not interactive (this is an original AGS behavior, which was unintentionally changed in 3.5.0 by mistake).

Compatibility:
- When running 3.5.0 games, treat fully transparent GUI as non-interactable.
  In AGS transparent GUIs may be still interacted with, but 3.5.0 introduced an unintentional (and undocumented) change to this, which was reverted in 3.5.1.

Android:
- Support global engine's config file when the game is run from the Launcher: it's located in the AGS games' parent directory, same place where android.cfg is.

WinSetup:
- Added "Custom game shared data path" to complement "Custom save path" option.


Changes in the Patch 5:

Contained no changes and was a formal re-release with only fixed program build instructions for Linux.


Changes in the Patch 4:

Editor:
- Fixed swapping of inventory item's numeric ID could lead to errors.
- Fixed crash when importing pre-3.* games with multiple script modules.
- Renamed "Enforce object-based scripting" setting to "Enforce post-2.62 scripting". This is for clarity.

Compiler:
- Fixed potential memory corruption when user script reaches max nested if/else blocks.

Engine:
- Also tell module name and approximate source line when reporting script import errors for the variables and local functions.


Changes in the Patch 3:

Editor:
- Fixed sprite file over 2 GB could not be loaded (regression since the last patch).

Engine:
- Further improvement to GUI perfomance: don't redraw GUI when the mouse cursor is hovering over or interacting with controls not leading to an actual visual change.
- Fixed ListBox items could become unaccessible if its font or height is changed leading to a disabled scrollbar.


Changes in the Patch 2:

Engine:
- Fixed speech lipsync getting disabled after loading another game with RunAGSGame().
- Fixed MOD/XM clips fail to play (regression).
- Fixed certain OGV videos fail to play (regression).
- Fixed software renderer was not updating game screen correctly when running a game with legacy "letterboxed" feature (regression).


Changes in the Patch 1:

Editor:
- Fixed script compiler sometimes was not specifying actual Dialog number when reporting errors in the dialog scripts.

Engine:
- Fixed Game.TranslationFilename always returning empty string (regression).
- Fixed GUI controls which were toggled from disabled to enabled state not responding to the mouse clicks until the mouse is moved (regression).
- Fixed OpenGL did not apply a Linear filter when "Render sprites in screen resolution" option is off.


What is new in 3.5.1

Editor:
- Added "Attach game data to exe" option to General Settings. This lets you to package game data separately from the game.exe (only important on Windows at the moment).
- Deprecated "Limit display mode to 16-bit" property in Runtime Setup as it's no longer used by the engine.
- Display aspect ratio in game resolution dialog.
- Implemented classic Color Picker dialog for the Color type values in the property grid, instead of the default one which does not allow user-defined colors.
- Improved tab switching performance for script windows.
- Editor will now enforce full game rebuild after upgrading an older project, this ensures that all scripts are recompiled with the new version rules.
- Fixed room lists in property editor were not updated after room number is changed.
- Fixed importing pre-3.* projects broken by incorrect assignment of "Game file name" property.
- Fixed importing Characters and GUI without sprites still created empty sprite folders.
- Fixed crash when exporting/importing Characters with no Normal View.
- Fixed translation compiler did not correctly save some of the escaped sequences, such as "\n".

Scripting:
- Implemented correct parsing of a "const string" function return type.
- Fixed implementing imported functions was forbidden in the room scripts.

Script API:
- Added GUI.Shown readonly property that tells whether GUI is active on screen. This is primarily for GUIs with "Popup At Y" style, because they hide themselves regardless of Visible property. Note that since 3.5.0 GUI.Visible only tells a script-set value.
- File.Open() now supports $CONFIGFILE$ tag which will try to open user config file for reading or writing regardless of where config is located on disk.
- Added System.SaveConfigToFile() which writes current engine settings to the user config file. Only the options that can be changed at runtime are written back at the moment.
- GetTranslation() now returns "const string" (was "string"). This is to prevent modifying returned string using old-style string functions, such as StrCat(), as this string may be allocated in the internal engine memory for its own use.

Engine:
- Support loading audio and video from data packages larger than 2 GB.
- Improved game data loading times by introducing buffered file stream. Initial tests showed 3-4 times faster file reading.
- Improved game perfomance by not reupdating all of the GUIs each time anything changes, instead only affected GUI will be updated each time.
- Some improvement to general script perfomance.
- Some improvement to script Dictionary and Set types perfomance.
- Room Object's Graphic property now can be assigned a sprite with index over 32767 and up to 65535. This restriction is due to internal data format, which cannot be fully fixed without breaking compatibility with plugin API. This may still be worked around by assigning a View, as View's frames may contain sprites of any index available.
- Similarily, Object's View, Loop and Frame can now be assigned a value over 32767 and up to 65535; not that this was ever an issue...
- Removed arbitrary limit of 1000000 dynamic array elements (now supports over 2 billion).
- Dialogs with no enabled options left will be now stopped, instead of raising script error.
- Engine will not longer quit the game when failing to write a save, but simply display an error on screen (...why this was a thing in the first place?!).
- When restoring a save engine will now try to match game pack by GUID rather than using exe/pack name. This resolves potential problems when game package may have different name in distribution to another system. Also makes saves in multi-game collections more reliable.
- In Debug game mode allow to toggle infinite FPS mode (prior it could not be turned off).
- Expanded text parser error messages for easier debugging.
- Adjusted all the command-line options to have consistent prefix convention, where all full-name options must be preceded by double-dash, and one-letter options by single dash.
- Added "--localuserconf" command and similar global config option which tells engine to read and write user config in the game's directory rather than using standard platform path. Game dir must be writeable for this to work.
- Added "--conf" command which forces engine to read only explicit config file on startup.
- Added "--user-data-dir" and "--shared-data-dir" commands for setting save game directory and shared app data directory from command line (this corresponds to existing options in config).
- Fully configurable log output (in both game config and command line) allows to set up which message types and groups are printed by which output methods (sinks), including: file, system console, in-game console. "warnings.log" is now created only if file log was not requested by user.
- Added "--log-" set of command line options for setting up log output.
- Added "--tell-filepath" option for printing known engine's and game's file locations.
- Added "--tell-gameproperties" option for printing some of the game's general settings.
More information on log config and --tell commands currently may be found in following text file: OPTIONS.md
This has to be added to the manual eventually.
- Support proper lookup for Allegro 4 library resources (such as its own config and digital MIDI patches) in the game directory.
- Engine will no longer precreate directories for common files: saves, user config, shared files and so forth, - before actually having to write these. This ensures that no new directories are created on your disk without actual need. Also this fixed a problem that could happen if someone deleted e.g. a game's save directory while game was running.
- Fixed running game from another directory by passing its relative filename as command-line argument: in this case engine was incorrectly using its own directory to search for external game data, opening files for reading by script command, and so on.
- Fixed some of the engine's own hotkeys (such windowed/fullscreen mode toggle) not working during certain skippable game states.
- Fixed overlay was set to wrong position if it were using TextWindow gui and either its text or X, Y properties got changed.
- Fixed crash occuring when the speech is using text window gui with zero Padding and the speech text is an empty line.
- Fixed characters and room objects were not updating their looks if their current graphic was a Dynamic Sprite, and that sprite was modified with ChangeCanvasSize, CopyTransparencyMask, Crop, Flip, Resize, Rotate or Tint function.
- Fixed Views' frames keeping reference to deleted Dynamic Sprites causing crashes. Now they will be reset to dummy sprite 0 for safety.
- Fixed engine crash when button's graphic is set to sprite out of range.
- Fixed animated cursor's normal graphic reappearing in between animation frames if mouse mode is being repeatedly reassigned, for example in rep-exec script.
- Fixed certain interactions did not work with GUI if it was made fully transparent.
- Fixed ListBox.FillSaveGameList() search pattern, it included files which contain save filename pattern but do not exactly match; for example: "agssave.001_".
- Fixed engine was ignoring audio files in game directory when running games which use old audio system.
- Fixed crash in Direct3D and OpenGL renderers that occured if game uses a plugin that performs software drawing on screen, and one of the rooms is smaller than the game's resolution.
- Fixed Direct3D was assigning wrong fullscreen refresh rate sometimes, slowing alt-tabbing.
- Fixed "--test" mode was lost upon restoring a save.

Engine Plugin API:
- Added IAGSEngine::GetRenderStageDesc() function which returns current render stage parameters. As of this version these parameters include 3 transformation matrixes, allowing any 3D render plugin to stay compliant to engine's scene rendering.

Compatibility:
- Fixed engine was trying to read unnecessary data when loading pre-2.72 games.
- Fixed "upscale" mode for old games (was broken in 3.5.0). Also engine will now try to detect if "upscale" mode wanted by reading old config options (if they are present).
- Fixed GUI.Visible not returning expected values for GUIs with "Popup At Y" style in pre-3.5.0 games, breaking some older games logic.
- Fixed potential buffer overflow when reading pre-3.1.0 games with old dialog script texts.
- Fixed engine was applying player's position too early when ChangeRoom was called for 2.72 and earlier games, which could result in wrong placement in the new room if the character was walking right before the transition.

Android:
- Corrected game scanning in AGS launcher, now it will work consistently with the desktop ports, and detect any compatible game data files named "*.ags" or "*.exe".

OSX:
- When looking for game files engine will no longer use hardcoded filename, will search for any compatible pack file instead.

Windows:
- Windows version of the engine now reads global configuration file. It is looked up in "%USERPROFILE%/Saved Games/Adventure Game Studio/acsetup.cfg"
- Default log file location is now also in "%USERPROFILE%/Saved Games/Adventure Game Studio".
- Added "--no-message-box" command line option to hide message boxes when alerts are raised. These messages will be still printed to log (if one is enabled).
- Added "--console-attach" command line option to try attach to the parent process's console. This is useful if you run game from command line and want to see engine's log in the console.

WinSetup:
- Fixed changing fullscreen mode from "use current desktop" to explicit resolution on save.







Thanks to everyone who contributed to and tested this version!

I'd suggest to try using 3.6.0 mac engine which relies on SDL2 and see if anything improves.

Even if for the sake of experiment; just get a 3.6.0 mac engine, and use it to run the game compiled with 3.5.0.

I should perhaps mention that the above code creates a new Set each time player enters the room. Is this a correct intention?

EDIT: oh, it's fixed now.

[Label1.Text = String.Format("%02d", Time)]

NEVERMIND guys, I solved it like a second after I made the post.

I original had the Label1.Text = String.Format("%02d", Time); in repeatedly execute, instead of repeatedly execute ALWAYS

Note also that you may let "repeatedly execute" run during dialogs too, if you enable this in General Settings.

[data]

Store the "total minutes" value in a global variable for easier addition and subtraction, but when displaying on a clock convert from "total minutes" to hours and minutes.

Code: ags

int hours = total_minutes / 60;
int minutes = total_minutes - (hours * 60);

EDIT: Or, if you need to have a second-precision, then store "total_seconds", and convert from them:

Code: ags

int hours = total_seconds / 3600;
int minutes = (total_seconds - (hours * 3600)) / 60;
int seconds = total_seconds - (hours * 3600) - (minutes * 60);

PS. The above idea is valid, but I could make some math mistake, so need to double check that above works right.


UPD: In overall, in the software design, when you have a similar situation, the idea is to separate the data and the visual representation. The data is chosen in such way that makes it easier to store and change. The visual representation may be anything; or there may even be several different representations, all converted from same data.

I've tried that module, and had to use older version of AGS to make it work (if i'm not mistaken - need to revisit and check).
Thankfully website provides different versions.

Latest versions of AGS (3.5.1, 3.6.0) have full backward compatibility with the old games and scripts. Usually you have to adjust compatibility options in the General Settings to make deprecated functions work.

https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/ScriptAPIOverview.html#api-switches

Yes, i confirm, hide works now, thank you.

I remember the flashlight plugin but all links are gone now, does anyone has anything that works for a simple flashlight to follow the cursor please  ?

You don't need a plugin for that, that's as easy as making a big black GUI with a transparent circle in the middle, making it translucent (Transparency property) and scripting it to follow the cursor.

@greg, there's a temp build with this fixed (hopefully):
https://cirrus-ci.com/task/5434752730660864

also fixed several other minor problems. I think we'll have a proper new update soon.

Should I report new forum bugs here?

I noticed that spoilers do not work correctly, instead the "hide" tags are displayed verbatim.
Did syntax change or they are broken? If syntax changed, is there a way to convert the topics to the new one automatically?

I'm afraid I don't have that info yet, but seemingly I misunderstood the problem. Everything including the audio seems to be slowing down.

Could be the system is running out of memory?

Another thing that comes to mind, antiviruses don't like it when AGS reads sounds packed within the exe, there have been a case when an AV began scanning game process over and over each time it tried to load a sound clip.

I'm not certain what do you mean by "can't delete first number", like, do you mean a "digit" or a number consisting of several digits, and does it reappear, or something else happening (script errors and so on). But I think that your code has a mistake, where you do not check for the text length, because if text's length is 0 you might get invalid array access error. This might be a problem if you begin deleting characters with backspace.

So that more correct condition would be:

Code: ags

if(tbInput.Text.Length > 0 &&
   (tbInput.Text.Chars[tbInput.Text.Length-1] <= '0' || tbInput.Text.Chars[tbInput.Text.Length-1] > '9'))

Where (which function) do you have that code you posted above?

Please tell which version of AGS are you using?