Messages

What we likely need in AGS is a way to setup Build Configurations, like in proper IDEs.
I cannot remember if we had such topic already somewhere on forums, but we definitely talked about this in the past.

There are at least 2 options currently in General Settings, that rather belong to a build config: Debug Mode is one, another is Build Targets which let select platform to build for (Windows, Linux, Android, ...).

If we had a menu to setup build configurations, these configs would include debug mode and build target(s) selection, and maybe more, like additional compilation flags for script, extra files to package, and so forth.
This is to outline the idea.

It's not at all complicated to do such thing on its own, but the thing is, Debug mode is meant not only for testing inside the Editor, it may as well be used when running a prepared game distributive.

People normally add various testing utilities into their game, like commands and guis that let fast-forward the game or cheat, etc. And then they may want to send their compiled games to testers. If "Debug" would automatically get disabled when you build the game, that will cut off such opportunity.

This has to be done differently.

E.g. there could be two different menu commands: Build Game for Debug, Build Game for Release.
or something similar.

I assume "proper support for 2 branches," means that it's not just a matter of forking the manual's Github repo, then.

I don't know, maybe having 2 repositories is also a way, if branches don't work.

With 2 repos the wiki pages may be still being used to edit the manual (github does not support editing multiple branches through the "wiki" front).

This approach will become inconvenient if we want to have separate branch per maintained version, including minor versions. But it also may be a temporary "dirty" solution until something better comes up.

Out of curiosity, what features are you looking for feedback on?

Any from the list, really. Even if only just the fact that they are being used, work as expected, and if are useful or not.
It's not clear at this point which were tried by other people than the devs themselves, since there had been little mention of this.

Then, there are those that are rather straightforward, and those that are complex. The latter may be of more interest.

1. New scripting features available with the new compiler; more importantly those that require using pointers: managed structs within managed structs, connecting custom managed objects together, and such. These involve both script compiler and the engine managing "garbage collection".
2. "Watch variables" panel.
3. From new scripting commands, it would be nice to see someone trying VideoPlayer, but I understand that's rather niche thing to have in games. That will mostly be useful if someone makes one of those "FMV style" games.
4. New Joystick/gamepad interface in script. It should replace a use of joystick plugin. But this is interesting for people who make gamepad controls in their games.
5. Translations, because they are now saved in a PO format. Although the usage should still be pretty straightforward, but I am curious if they cause any kind of trouble.

Earlier I would have also mention "Room editing" because of the new rooms storage format, but you can't miss it when you edit the game, so, I suppose. this was tested more than other things.

Are you planning to add the possibility to update games without losing saved files in this version of ags?

I'm adding this in 3.6.2 first, because I wanted to have this in a backwards compatible version as well. (Of course AGS 4 will receive it too)
The basic functionality is already done*, and currently I am working on a additional "save prescanning" feature that lets to test a save without actually loading it.

This is thoroughly explained in this thread, and links to test builds are available in posts:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/engine-development/load-older-game-saves-into-updated-game-attempt-2/

* - when I say "done", i refer to the minimal functionality. It may be expanded further (although there's a limit of what may be achieved with the existing save format). This feature still awaits its users to provide potential use cases and feedback.

[EDIT:]

Please inform me if there is any further changes to the situation.

So, I added "text reading speed" option to "Accessibility settings" in setup.
Download: https://cirrus-ci.com/task/4742122312564736
or here (acwin.exe only): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5lr7rvv1z9czrjidn581s/acwin-3.6.2-textspeed.zip?rlkey=q91tj5qmuuofrv609n3l7g8p5&st=q9rpeybq&dl=0
EDIT: this feature is now available since 3.6.2 Beta 3 release:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/ags-engine-editor-releases/ags-3-6-2-beta-1-a-wip-3-6-update/

The option is a slider that can be 0 (meaning use game settings), or range from 1 to 30 chars per second. AGS default is 15, so any lower will make text stay longer, and any high will make it go faster.


EDIT:  I tested couple of games mentioned in this thread.
Although it works in "Cedric and Revolution", but still not in "Bustin' the Bastille" for some unfortunate reason. Possibly they are using purely custom settings in their game.

Just out of curiosity, what if anything is holding AGS 4 back from becoming the official AGS release (or at least the next RC)?

1. My lack of confidence in planning.

2. Documentation must be updated, and before that we need to have a proper support for 2 branches of the manual (3.* and 4.* at least).

3. At least couple of planned new features, like Touch input API (joystick/gamepad api is already implemented, and touch api is the only api remaining to let users script their own controls on all types of platforms).

4. Each new major feature has to be reviewed for completeness, tested, and finished if it's not complete, like the "blend modes" that eri0o mentioned.



In regards to testing: I am fairly certain that at least several people have been using AGS 4 for a while now to make games. But I know that mostly because of the occasional conversations on Discord. If it were possible to bring more people to just experiment with the new version, or chosen features at least (if not making actual games with it), and give feedback, that might speed things up too.

Right, there's a forum post dedicated to the wip AGS 4 version here:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/ags-engine-editor-releases/ags-4-0-early-alpha-for-public-test/

It contains download links, as well as a list of new additions and explanation of some of them.


About the watch panel in particular,

The original request thread was here:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/editor-development/feature-request-inspect-variable-while-debugging/

I suggest using that thread for any further discussion of this functionality.

UPDATE: Latest test build with save scan feature (with fixes):
https://cirrus-ci.com/task/5978139342405632

Explanation is in this earlier post:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/engine-development/load-older-game-saves-into-updated-game-attempt-2/msg636666991/#msg636666991

I tried the build from the CI to check that if I call it in game start when the event would trigger - I guess if you have a scene in After fadein it would run either before or after but not during - which is alright but I was curious.

So, when Game.ScanSaveSlots is called the scanning is scheduled, and it is executed after the current script has finished, in a post-script step. This is where it schedules the event eEventSavesScanComplete.

But then the on_event is also run in the same post-script step, right after other scheduled actions were run.

So, the whole thing completes before any other script runs.

For example, if you call Game.ScanSaveSlots in game_start, room_Load and room_AfterFadeIn:

- game_start: call Game.ScanSaveSlots, scanning is scheduled
- after game_start exits, scanning is run
- on_event is run
- room_Load: call Game.ScanSaveSlots, scanning is scheduled
- after room_Load exits, scanning is run
- on_event is run
- room_AfterFadeIn: call Game.ScanSaveSlots, scanning is scheduled
- after room_AfterFadeIn exits, scanning is run
- on_event is run
- normal game loops begin to run.

I can't post the whole code, it's a big part of my next game,

Of course; I did not mean the whole script, just the relevant parts with constant declarations and their use.
But if it's resolved, then it's fine.

I noticed that I had MY_VALUE defined in 2 different places, however that doesn't explain why I got a 'Undefined Symbol' error instead of a 'MY_VALUE is already defined' error.

I would only be able to answer this question if you'd post an actual code, and a full error message.

For example, if I put two "#define MY_VALUE" in two different script headers, I am getting an error:

Macro 'MY_VALUE' is already defined

Above code is supposed to work. (there's a missing ";" after function declaration, but I assume it's a typo?)

It works if I put it into a dummy game project.

Could be the code you posted is not exactly the code you have in game, and that difference matters?

I put the #define statement in the header of one of my scripts and tried to access it from a Room file, but got a compile time error in the Room file.

That should normally work, could you post actual script (relevant parts), and copy error message here?

Yes, I'm aware of that (I edited my post at about the same time you replied) but I can't seem to make them globally accessible.

Hmm, please tell, where did you put these and where are you trying to use them?

In AGS the scripts can only see what is declared in:
- the script itself (before the usage, obviously);
- its header;
- any header located above them in the list of scripts.

Well, Snarky's reply provides necessary info then.

The only ammendment that I may make is the optional hidden script generated from "Global Variables" panel.
If you have any variables added there, then AGS will autogenerate a script with some internal name (like "__GlobalVariables.ash"/"__GlobalVariables.asc"), where these vars are declared and initialized.

This hidden script is processed above all others.

In versions 3.* the AGS script compiler has a number of syntax features that are not implemented to the full extent.
For the most part this is fixed in the new compiler, available in an upcoming AGS 4 version, found here:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/ags-engine-editor-releases/ags-4-0-early-alpha-for-public-test/

As for the AGS 3.* versions, I don't remember about "const", but the usual way to make constants there is to use "#define" preprocessor command:

Code: ags

#define MY_VALUE 1

Maybe not as important here, but I'd like to clarify, that this is not the order of compilation that we are discussing here, but the order of dependency.

Compilation is a process of changing a script into a program runnable by the engine. In order to compile a script AGS does not need other compiled scripts, it needs only to read their headers. Thus compilation may be done in any order, even done in parallel.
After all scripts are compiled, they are linked, resolving function imports, and it is here where their dependency becomes important.

The fact that AGS restricts their dependency to a top-down list is just AGS own quirk. I suppose that it could be redesigned with certain effort.

But this all is just a general information, and does not mean to answer the questions posted here.

Released AGS 3.6.1 Patch 8:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/ags-engine-editor-releases/ags-3-6-1-patch-8

[Download AGS 3.6.1 Patch 8 installer]

AGS 3.6.1 - Patch 8

Full release number: 3.6.1.30

Download AGS 3.6.1 Patch 8 installer

Download AGS 3.6.1 Patch 8 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: 17th November 2024

Previous stable version: AGS 3.6.0 P11 forum thread


This release is brought to you by:

- Alan v.Drake (fixes, improvements)
- Crimson Wizard
- Donovan Watteau (fixes)
- edmundito (iOS fixes)
- eri0o
- mausimus (Text Parser fixes)
- Walter Agazzi (fixes)



Summary

3.6.1 update focuses mainly on improving performance and usability of existing features, in both Editor and Engine.

The noteable addition to the Editor is a "Log Panel", which lets you read game logs right in the editor's window. "Goto definition" now works on game object script names and opens their respective panels. Room editor features better panning and zoom controls. Views allow to select and modify multiple frames at once.

In the engine, there's a significant improvement to script performance, which may make script-heavy games run 30-40% faster compared to AGS 3.6.0 (these were real test results on a certain game with 3D simulation). There's a big improvement to the speed of manipulating Overlays, and general speed improvement of graphics rendering primarily useful for high resolution games.

There are other fixes and improvements to various parts of the program too.
Please be sure to read "Upgrading to AGS 3.6.1" topic in the manual: https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/UpgradeTo361.html


Changes in the Patch 8:

Editor:
 - Fixed game cannot be loaded if its GameFileName setting is an empty string.
 - Fixed pressing Alt was not selecting Main Menu.
 - Fixed error occuring when trying to assign an image to the multiple selected View Frames if they have different initial images.
 - Fixed script preprocessor directive "#else" in the nested conditions.

Engine:
 - Made File.ReadStringBack() support reading back strings without null-terminator in the end
   (ReadStringBack() reads a string, which has its length prepended to the sequence of chars).
 - Improved graphic mode selection when game window is moved to a secondary monitor.
   Note that still not all graphic setups are reliable on secondary monitors, specifically "real fullscreen" mode may be behaving unexpectedly if you try to switch to it on non-primary display.
 - Fixed AudioChannel's Paused state is not saved when saving the game.
 - Fixed error in case a character was walking while being locked to a temporary View, and switched to a directional loop which does not exist in the locked view.
 - Fixed active item cursor's image may duplicate itself onto other cursors under certain conditions.
   (this is regression since 3.6.1 Patch 6)
 - Fixed Inventory Window in automatic mode not redrawing its contents immediately when player character changes.
 - Fixed ListBox.FillDirList() may add case-sensitive duplicates on platforms with case-sensitive filesystems.
 - Fixed room's fade-out effect playing while skipping a cutscene (it must skip instantly).
 - Fixed FadeOut or FadeIn not toggling screen state if they are inside a skipped cutscene. This could have resulted in screen not turning to black or not restored as expected if cutscene was skipped by player.
 - Fixed Wait() delay of value > 32k would be treated as infinite timeout.
 - Fixed Ctrl + Alt key combination not working (toggle mouse lock). This is a regression in 3.6.1.
 - Fixed game may fail loading on platforms with strict memory alignment (e.g. MIPS processors).

Compatibility:
 - Fixed SetCharacterViewEx() not treating "align" parameter according to old-style set of values.
 - Fixed SetTextOverlay() could cause internal mistakes leading to unexpected errors in game.
 - Fixed Wait() calls for pre-3.6.0 versions of Script API, where negative delay was treated as 0.

WinSetup:
 - Fixed setup not distinguishing "desktop resolution" and "native resolution" from explicit resolution sizes when saving or loading config. Made sure that it remembers exactly the choice that user made ("desktop", "game resolution" or explicit resolution size).
 - Fixed "native game resolution" not present in the list if it equals desktop resolution.
 - Fixed nearest resolution selection in case config requested a resolution equal to the native game's resolution, but that resolution was not among the supported ones.


Changes in the Patch 7:

Engine:
 - Hotfix mouse cursor not being drawn sometimes after changing rooms (regression in 3.6.1 P6).


Changes in the Patch 6:

Editor:
 - Fixed Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V not working in GUI editor.
 - Fixed sprite export and copying a sprite to clipboard operations were always exporting a 32-bit image, regardless of the actual sprite's color depth.
 - Fixed "Recreate spritefile" command was unintentionally converting any sprite to 32-bit if its source was not found, and it was taking existing image from the old spritefile.

Engine:
 - Fixed Software renderer could crash the game under some circumstances when the sprite cache's limit is exceeded (this is a regression in 3.6.1).
 - Fixed text-based lipsync's frame delay calculation: the existing formula was causing the delay value to "jump" back and forth with the slightest difference of speech text length, resulting in the speech lines of close length to be played with the notably different animation speeds.
 - Fixed drawing a 32-bit sprites on a 8-bit surface (e.g. a room mask), it was done wrong and was causing a memory corruption too.
 - Fixed drawing a room's walkable mask in script could cause errors during character walking if used colors exceeded walkable area number limit.
 - Fixed walk-behinds not drawn over characters and objects anymore (regardless of their baselines) after walk-behind mask was changed using drawing operations in script.
 - Fixed Game.SimulateKeyPress() not working in "old key-handling mode" (regression since 3.6.0).
 - Fixed script location is not reported in case of logical errors in engine's functions (regression since 3.6.0).

WinSetup:
 - Removed an obscure "Use 85 Hz display" option.


Changes in the Patch 5:

Editor:
 - When the room background size changes, clamp Room Edges to the new size.
 - Fixed Editor refusing to load a project if its folder name exceeds 40 characters.
   (An obsolete historical limitation which we forgot to cut from the program.)

Compiler:
 - Fixed script compilation hanging forever if a non-latin unicode character is met in script (outside of comments).

Engine:
 - Fixed GUI.ProcessClick() using mouse position when detecting a GUI control, instead of the position passed in the argument list.
 - Fixed Region.GetAtScreenXY() was returning null for offscreen coordinates. Made it return region[0] for consistency with other room areas, and backwards compatibility.
 - Fixed room Overlays not sorted in the order of their creation, like screen Overlays.
 - Fixed a potential mistake in Lucas-Arts speech position when there are multiple room viewports and speaking character is not directly visible in any of them.
 - Fixed Engine could switch program's locale to the current system locale by mistake when player is typing text. This could potentially lead to random glitches in text input in games which are run in ASCII mode and are handling extended characters.
 - Fixed TextBox was trying to display unsupported characters (in ASCII mode), resulting in random garbage.


Changes in the Patch 4:

Editor:
 - Fixed extracting templates with very large files inside would cause "Out of memory" error.
 - Fixed crash occuring when trying to import a non-existant GIF frame during Sprite Import.
 - Fixed potential mistake with sprite transparency occuring when importing a 8-bit sprite into 16/32-bit game.

Compiler:
 - Fixed "\t" (and few other less common escaped chars) not handled properly when they are inside string literals.
 - Fixed a crash in compiler occuring if user script defined a variadic function.
   (User-defined variadic functions are not properly usable at the moment, but this at least prevents an unhandled exception.)

Scripting:
 - Declare "UNICODE" macro for scripts if game is made in unicode mode.

Script API:
 - Added a number of missing OPT_* constants used with Get/SetGameOption functions.

Engine:
 - Fixed setting Screen.AutoSizeViewportOnRoomLoad to false in "game_start" could cause primary viewport and camera become initialized with zero width and height.
 - Fixed setting camera's size in "game_start" would unexpectedly get camera clamped to 320x200.
 - Fixed number of mistakes in Text Parser occuring when handling "multiwords".


Changes in the Patch 3:

Editor:
 - Fixed that after deleting a View's frame editor did not select next frame (regression in 3.6.1).
 - Fixed "Delete last loop" button not appearing in the View Editor if the view is filled using "Assign sprites to view" command from the Sprite Manager.

Engine:
 - Implemented an alternate solution for rendering "bad" TTF fonts that does not increase their loading times (after previous patch 2).
 - Allow scene render during "load room" event if the last room transition was "Instant".
   This has to be done because number of games used this event for custom transitions.
 - For games compiled in "Debug" mode "warnings.log" file will be written in "savegame dir" on platforms where modifying game directory is forbidden in principle (OSX, iOS, Android, Web).
 - Fixed System.Log() was registered for plugins using a wrong argument list.

Compatibility:
 - Fixed loading of 3.5.0 saves (broken in 3.6.1).

Windows:
 - Fixed disk space check was testing space in the current directory instead of the save game location.


Changes in the Patch 2:

Editor:
 - Fixed few potential program errors for "Generate Keystore" in Android preferences.
 - Fixed external processes (such as test game runs) were started using ShellExecute, which could theoretically lead to unintended results.

Engine:
 - Fixed String.Replace crashing the engine if the resulting string exceeds 3000 bytes.
 - Fixed releasing a mouse button could cause double "on_event" call (with eEventGUIMouseUp).
 - Improved rendering of TTF fonts which have glyph sizes surpassing declared font's height.
   This fixes the look of text on gui controls, and automatic outlining on these fonts.
 - Fixed a dialog shown with InputBox() function drawing typed text beyond text box'es border.
 - Fixed custom dialog options in the "old mode" not triggering redraw when the active option changes.


Changes in the Patch 1:

Editor:
- Fixed View's frame preview sometimes drawn incorrectly, in case of certain panel sizes.
- Fixed folding in the script editor not working correctly if there's a commented closing bracket ("//}") inside this code section.
- Fixed Editor sometimes failing to update game exe's file information and/or icons, if user was importing any sprites during this working session.

Engine:
- Fixed room objects not updating under Direct3D/OpenGL renderer, if they were assigned a dynamic sprite, then that sprite was deleted, and a new one assigned with coincidentally same ID.
- Fixed room objects not updating under Software renderer, if they were assigned a dynamic sprite, and that sprite was modified while object was not visible on screen.
- Fixed inventory cursor's crosshair not displayed (when enabled in game settings).



What is new in 3.6.1

Common features:
- Implemented Deflate compression option for sprites.
- Removed length limits for: Game name, savegame folder, Character's script name and regular name (description), Inventory item's name (description), Mouse cursor's script name, Audioclip's script name.

Editor:
- Discontinued Source control integration functionality, removed "Put sound and sprite files in source control" option from General Settings.
- In General Settings moved few properties to different groups for better consistency.
- Added "Scale Character sprite offsets" property to General Settings. This property refers to scaling of Character.z and sprite offsets added by LockViewOffset script command.
- Added TextureCacheSize and SoundCacheSize properties to Default Setup. These let configure the sizes of runtime texture and sound cache sizes respectively.
- Added "Leave room after fade-out" event to Rooms (called "Unload" by default).
- Added Translated property to all GUI Controls (was available only in ListBox). Translated property tells whether this control's text has to be translated, and applied text direction (in right-to-left text mode).
- Support '\n' linebreak character in the Label's Text and potentially other text properties.
- Improved Room Editor controls:
  Added free panning mode done by holding the middle mouse button, or alternatively - by holding Space + LMB.
  Mouse Wheel without key modifiers scrolls the room vertically; Shift + Mouse Wheel scrolls the room horizontally.
  Zoom is done by Ctrl + Mouse Wheel and room now zooms towards or outwards the cursor position.
- In Room Editor the context menu is now displayed by RMB or Shift + RMB while editing masks.
  The individual room mode menu is merged with the "copy coordinates" command when shown.
- In Room Editor the hint with coordinates is now also displayed when moving Objects or Characters with keyboard.
- In Dialog Script editor support most Edit menu and context menu commands from the regular Script editor, with a few exceptions.
- In Sprite Manager added command "View" -> "Show filenames" which toggles display of a sprite's source filename under the sprites.
- Adjust sprites' import settings after "Crop sprite edges" command; this would ensure that these sprites are restored from source file keeping their cropped sizes.
- During sprite export Editor will display a proper progress dialog.
- Zoom controls in Character and View panes now allow downscaling too. View editor displays the preview sprite stretched to fill the parent panel.
- View editor now allows to select multiple frames at once, across multiple loops too, using standard Shift + LMB and Ctrl + LMB combinations. Properties panel lets modify properties for all the selected frames at once.
- Added "Replace with all sprites from folder" command to the View editor's context menu.
- For Audio Clips in the project tree added "Force Reimport", "Force reimport all file(s)" and "Replace Source File" context menu commands.
- For Output Panel added "Copy selection" context menu command.
- Implemented Log Panel that lets you see the engine and game logs right in the Editor.
- Improved LipSync panel looks in case user's system has display scaling option enabled.
- "Goto Definition" command in script will now work for most of the game entities too, such as Characters, GUIs, and so forth. In that case it will find a game's entity and open a respective editor panel for it. This still does not work for some types, such as Room objects, and Views.
- Added main menu commands for opening a Project folder and Compiled folder.
- Added "Export Global Messages to script" menu command. This command is meant for upgraded pre-3.2 game projects, and will generate a script with a String array, moving global messages texts there.
- For script's tabs added a context menu command for opening this script's location.
- When run with "/compile" argument Editor will print all messages to the console (stdout), instead of displaying modal message windows.
- For Android build target Editor now supports a directory to place plugins in.
- When building a game for Android and Linux the Editor will now be more tolerant to missing plugins and only issue a warning instead of stopping with error.
- Config will now be saved in UTF-8, letting to support setup program's title text in unicode.
- For non-Windows build targets Editor will fix config containing Direct3D graphics driver option and set OpenGL instead.
- For Color Themes: implemented character literal, braces match and braces error settings.
- Made Editor be somewhat more tolerate to missing XML nodes in Game.agf, in many cases it will still let open a game.
- When upgrading older game projects, Editor will insert a call to SetRestartPoint() in the end of the 'game_start' function in GlobalScript.asc. This is done to complement removal of an automatic restart point in the engine. This inserted command is safe to remove.
- When upgrading pre-3.2 rooms with disabled SaveLoadEnabled property the Editor will reset this property and insert a comment with a warning into the corresponding room's script. This is done because this property is deprecated as is no longer accessible.
- Fixed Editor refusing to open a game if one of the translation files is missing.
- Fixed General Settings and Default Setup not working correctly right after importing a pre-3.* game project.
- Fixed importing GIFs or 8-bit PNGs may lose transparent pixels if source images used other palette index than 0 for transparency.
- Fixed Project Explorer's folders collapsing after certain user actions, such as dragging items or renaming things.
- Fixed deleting collapsed "region" in script would sometimes lead to portion of the script undeleted but staying invisible.
- (Possibly) Fixed a "Index out of range" exception in Script editor, related to the "script location" drop-down list, which could occur at random circumstances while
  working with the script, and any Color Theme is enabled.
- Fixed Editor could miss some of the files when cleaning up old compiled files after the Game's Filename property is changed.

Scripting:
- Support "#else" preprocessor directive.

Script API:
- Implemented Room's "After fade-out" event.
- Added eEventLeaveRoomAfterFadeout event for the global "on_event".
- Added eEventGameSaved event which runs after game was saved.
- Expanded interaction functions for Character, Object, InventoryItem, Hotspot and Region types: now they all receive respective object's pointer as a parameter, similar to GUI event functions, as well as a cursor mode this interaction was run with, if applicable.
- Added Game.ResetDoOnceOnly(), which completely resets all DoOnceOnly instances.
- Added Game.PrecacheSprite() and Game.PrecacheView(), which preload certain sprites and linked frame sounds into the engine's sprite cache memory.
- Added ScriptName property to AudioClip, Character, Dialog, GUI, GUIObject, Hotspot, InventoryItem, Object.
- Added static GetByName() function to AudioClip, Character, Dialog, GUI, GUIObject, Hotspot, InventoryItem, Object.
- Added Object.AnimationVolume property, which works similar to Character.AnimationVolume.
- Added static File.ResolvePath() and File.Path attribute.
- Added support for a text formatting to a number of functions: DisplayAtY(), Character.SayAt(), Character.SayBackground(), DrawingSurface.DrawStringWrapped().

Engine:
- Updated to SDL 2.28.5 and SDL_Sound 2.0.3+.
- Significant performance improvement to scripts. Script running speed restored to a level close to AGS 3.2.1. Testing few "script-heavy" games showed fps raise by up to 30-40% compared with 3.6.0 engine.
- Improved performance of String objects in script.
  For instance, appending a character to a String is now roughly x2 times faster, *sequential* iteration of String.Chars[] in Unicode mode is about x12 (!) times faster (Strings in ASCII mode have relatively less improvement, because they have been faster than Unicode mode already).
- Improved performance when creating, deleting and manipulating Overlays; allows the game to have thousands of those with much less slowing down.
- Improved performance when updating and deleting dynamic sprites, and notifying any objects that have to redraw themselves. Engine no longer resets Graphic properties of objects referencing deleted dynamic sprite to 0.
- Implemented "texture cache", in addition to the existing "sprite cache". The texture cache keeps textures generated from raw sprites and lets reusing them, improving performance and reducing CPU workload. The actual impact is proportional to the game's resolution and amount of simultaneously animated objects on screen.
- WFN font renderer now too supports unicode mode and renders texts in utf-8, so long as the font contains glyphs of corresponding indexes.
- Buttons, ListBoxes and TextBoxes now support Right-to-left text direction.
- DrawingSurface.DrawString now supports Right-to-left text direction.
- All the script File functions now treat paths in case-insensitive way (including subdirs), which makes them platform-independent.
- Removed an automatic SetRestartPoint() call at startup. This is done in case user does not want to use default "restart" save slot, or has a custom save system.
- Support handling multiple mouse clicks per game frame, similar to how multiple key presses were supported since 3.6.0.
- When starting up, engine will now precache only first 4 or 8 loops of the starting player character's View. This is done to avoid filling sprite cache with too much sprites at once in case when the player's View contains lots of additional animations.
- Characters will now have their graphic offsets, set by Character.z property and LockViewOffset() function, scaled along with the character's own scaling. This is done so long as the respective game option is enabled in the General Settings.
- Ensure that character and object scaling is updated even when the game is not drawn. This fixes rare issues when their scale property did not update in time whilst the game was completely fadeout, and similar cases.
- Allow to change Character's move speed while its moving.
- When Character is ordered a new move command while already moving, the engine will try to make a smooth transition between old and new moving without a delay.
- Ensure that when Overlays have identical ZOrder they will be sorted in the order of their creation. Besides convenience, this is also meant to restore historical behavior from before Overlay.ZOrder property was introduced.
- Allow game to call DynamicSprite.CreateFromDrawingSurface() and CreateFromBackground() with zero or negative size, clamping it to 1x1, in consistency with Create().
- Engine will now log a warning for the most incorrect parameters to Animate function instead of quitting the game.
- Engine will now skip blocking Character.Say commands instantly while skipping a cutscene.
- Object.SetView now lets invalid loop and frame values, and fallbacks to using loop 0, frame 0, printing a warning. This is also consistent with backwards-compatble SetObjectFrame() behavior.
- Changed Object.SetView() to not play a frame's sound, which could lead to a duplicated sound play if Object.Animate is run right after.
- Text Overlays internal images are now registered as dynamic sprites, and their IDs may be read from Overlay.Graphic. This lets find out their sizes using Game.SpriteWidth/SpriteHeight and optionally draw them somewhere using DrawingSurface.DrawImage.
- Ensure all the script API is now correctly available for the plugins.
- Engine will now safeguard plugin's reading and writing of game saves, so that any mistakes done by plugins won't affect other parts of a save.
- Engine will disable vsync in a "infinite fps" mode, because vsync prevents getting more fps.
- Engine will force any in-game debug messages to be displayed in message boxes, disregarding game's "Display all messages as speech" option.
- Display critical alerts as system modal messages on all platforms that support that (unless engine is run with "--no-message-box" parameter).
- Print some info about memory usage when reporting a "Out of memory" error.
- Deprecated in-game "console", as practically useless.
- Added new config settings in "graphics" section: "sprite_cache_size" (which replaces deprecated "cachemax" in "misc") and "texture_cache_size".
- Fixed Characters may be seemingly "walking in place" for some time when arriving at destination.
- Fixed Display and Say commands treating the second met "&" sign as a voice-over token too (they must only check the first one in string).
- Fixed PlayMP3File() function limiting filename argument by an arbitrary number of characters.
- Fixed speechlines were adjusting their Y position while trying to not overlap GUIs even when these GUIs are completely offscreen.
- Fixed first Sierra-style speechline in a sequence was adjusting its Y position without need when GUIs are set to be hidden during game pause (this includes blocking speech). Normally, the speechlines are adjusting their Y position in order to not overlap GUIs, but when GUIs are hiding during speech there should not be any need to do so.
- Fixed script behavior in case a local variable was assigned a value without being initialized with a zero memory by compiler's intruction beforehand. This is not a problem with the standard compiler, but technically could be an issue with any custom implementation.
- Fixed old-style letterbox viewport getting broken after loading an old pre-3.5.0 save.

Engine Plugin API:
- Added IAGSStream interface, IAGSEngine.OpenFileStream() and GetFileStreamByHandle().
- Added IAGSEngine.ResolveFilePath() method, which resolves a script path (with location tokens) into a proper system filepath.
- Fixed IAGSEngine.GetFontType() incorrectly reporting TTF font type for WFN fonts with more than 128 characters.

Compatibility:
- In Editor, restored all the Character's variables available in "backward-compatible" mode. This is primarily to make it easier to import very old games.
- Allow to run an animation over a loop with zero frames, by using the placeholder frame. This lets particular old games to continue running instead of crashing with error.
- Fixed slower character walking speeds in pre-3.1 upscaled and high-resolution games.
- Fixed Object.SetView() and SetObjectFrame() not treating -1 for loop and frame as "keep previous values" in older games.
- Fixed inventory window not updated after game.top_inv_item is assigned a new value.
- Fixed a "New Room" command in old-style dialog scripts was preventing "First time Enter room" event to be called.

Windows:
- 32-bit Windows engine is now built as "large address aware" program, which will allow it to use up to 3 GB of RAM on 32-bit systems and 4 GB of RAM on 64-bit systems (was 2 GB previously).

iOS:
- Updated port for 3.6.*.

Web / Emscripten:
- Fixed Safari cannot switch the game into fullscreen mode.

WinSetup:
- Added options for setting texture cache and sound cache size.
- Added options to disable particular graphic drivers and graphic driver selection, and fullscreen mode selection.




Thanks to everyone who contributed to and tested this version!