Messages

What about the "Modules, Plugins & Tools"? It already has a WFN fonts thread. We need to ask Gilbert or Dualnames if that's okay. Maybe even sticky it there.

On the other hand, why are these called "pixel fonts" if they are TTFs?

So, both indicator and the way to change animation's volume are now in the latest 3.6.0 beta.

Opened a feature suggestion in a tracker: https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/issues/1714

Am I imagining things, or have someone reported a mouse not moving in fullscreen on Linux a short while ago?

I've reinstalled a newer build on Ubuntu on a virtual machine, and the previous problem of fullscreen not displaying anything is gone, but now I have a different issue: the mouse cursor not moving. Curiously enough, mouse clicks (and keys) work. This is fixed by alt-tabbing out and back. Could be something related to vm though, as it sometimes has issues with mouse grab.

Please, don't just say "I have a problem", tell what the problem is, what is happening.

Sorry I will not use that phrase again; I thought I explained it after that 

It's not about the phrase itself, but the further explanation was not clear: as you posted your script but did not tell what were your intentions and what exactly happens instead. Sometimes it's possible to guess what the person means, but not always, and there are multiple possibilities (script does not compile, script does not work as expected, game stops with error, and so on).

[Download AGS 3.5.1 installer]

AGS 3.5.1 - Patch 12

Full release number: 3.5.1.19

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

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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: 23th June 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 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!

So, unfortunately there was still an annoying sound bug in the recent update, related to crossfading tracks; I'll be releasing a next update quite soon, maybe in the end of this week (want to wait for a couple of days more to see if there are more problems found). Meanwhile there's this temporary build with fixes:

https://cirrus-ci.com/task/4541835971395584

You're right. everything, not just speech volume.

Sorry, I don't understand what do you mean by that.

As for the volume controls, AGS does not support going above 100% setting, so either you lower music and sounds in game (say, music at 80% and speech at 100%), or rebalance the source files to make them be approximately at the same level.

What about the original files, how does their volume compares to your music/sound files?

[Editor:]

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

Editor:
- Added "Help" option to the editor pane's tab context menu.
- Dialog scripts now too can open help topics for keywords or script functions under cursor on F1.
- Fixed not showing correct help topics for several panels on F1.

Engine:
- Added "multitasking" option to config in "[misc]" category, that defines the starting multitasking mode (may later be changed by SetMultitaskingMode in script).
- Added stubs for agsshell plugin (a contemporary cross-platform variant of ags_shell).
- Fixed characters switching to a wrong loop unnecessarily if a current walking directional loop does not have as many frames as the previous one (regression since 3.6.0.6).
- Fixed GUI controls don't update immediately when game translation changes.
- Fixed saving of dynamic sprites and screenshots to a file (or a savegame).
- Fixed certain OGG clips stuck in loading forever.
- Fixed sound clips getting stuck in a playback state near the end if their size is a multiple of 65536.
- Fixed some clips reporting a large negative number as their length (should report 0 instead if it cannot calculate one for whatever reason)
- Fixed multitasking mode persisting if the game was switched from windowed to real fullscreen mode (even though it's not supposed to work in exclusive fullscreen).
- Fixed Direct3D renderer not able to restore an exclusive fullscreen mode after switching out from the game window.
- 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).
- Fixed number of occasional crash cases on game exit.

@Crimson Wizard : are you going to update properly AGS 3.6 soon ? Or I have to use your fix you gave me before ?

You could use a "temp build" with a fix, as it is exactly same program, only in between "official" versions.

The next update will be exclusively bug fixes, I think it will happen later on this week.

Thanks for reply CW. But things that are compiled with AGS don't ever try to access internet, at least not by default, right?

No engine nor games themselves don't have any network code whatsoever atm, so they don't send anything anywhere.

Also was wondering, does AGS collect any information?

AGS has been collecting some anonymous statistics (which could be turned off in preferences), but that is currently disabled because of the server issues.
It included:
* OS name and version;
* version of installed .NET framework;
* desktop resolution;
* version of AGS.
server also was able to distinguish IPs which sent these, if I remember correctly.

These statistics were quite interesting, as they allowed to know average number of users of each AGS version, and knowing their system let predict whether it's safe to stop supporting old ones if a need arises.

Additionally, it was sending editor crash reports, which also included screenshot of the AGS editor window at the time of crash; but this is also disabled now for the same reason (and iirc screenshots were disabled separately for privacy reasons).

Maybe fill the cup with blue too? not fully, but with an offset, to keep white internal outline.

[our new]

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. I got more strange symbols than before.

You need to clarify exactly what you did, because you could miss some step. What do you have in TRS, and how does it look in game, can you post screenshots?
I did Arabic test in the past, but only as a test to see characters, I don't have actual game now.

* TRS should be saved in a correct encoding (utf-8 without bom)
* TRS should have "\\#Encoding=UTF-8" option set in the header
* TRS should be compiled to TRA using our new tra compiler, because older agstools may not support encoding option (unless their author clearly state that they updated the tool)
* You need a proper Unicode font that has Arabic letters in it placed in the game folder
* Game should be run using the latest 3.6.0 engine

Please tell, which version of AGS are you using? In 3.6.0 all the Wait* functions now have the pressed key code in the return value:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Globalfunctions_Wait.html
so if you use that, you could test which key was used, and if it's a "wrong" one then continue looping and waiting.

Code: ags

while (!Game.SkippingCutscene) {
    int skip = WaitMouseKey(40);
    if (!((skip & eInputKeyboard) && ((skip & 0xFFFF) == eKeyP))) // scary bitwise math
        break; // break out if anything BUT eKeyP code
    /*...Irrelevant animation code...*/
}

I cannot predict if that will work exactly as you like though.
Other than that, like eri0o said, perhaps all this could be redesigned by checking for IsKeyPressed in rep exec always, but I cannot clearly imagine details right now, this is something to ponder upon.

I actually recommend using Notepad++, i believe it works better than regular windows notepad.

It seems that my file is in UTF-8. I use Notepad (I don't know if it's the same name in english, it's the basic program in Windows).

Is your game itself made in unicode format, where are these texts coming from (script, properties)?
Could you upload a translation file, just to understand what we are talking about?

Hi again ! I created a new translation file (in the editor), and I saw that the texts inside it were badly displayed. Each éèÉ etc... was displayed badly.

How is the file saved (what encoding), does your text editor have options to display in different encodings and which is active?

Does the script API and compatibility need to be at 3.6.0? It's set to 3.5.1 atm.

Hmm, no, I don't think that matters. Unicode mode lets it have proper codes, and "Use old key input mode" (true or false) defines whether on_text_input is called at all.

What about text display, will it show up correctly if you just display the string of Greek/Korean text on screen?