Messages

Thank you.
The log shows that the mouse bounds are reasonable, there's nothing suspicious there, at least not at the first glance.

I don't have much ideas at the moment. But I'd like to ask something else: could you try if this happens only with your game, or any random AGS game too?
That's to make sure that it's purely engine's problem, and not something unusual scripted in your game.

Could you add following lines to acsetup.cfg found inside the compiled game:

Code: ags

[log]
file=main:all

then run the same test,
then go to "%USERPROFILE%/Saved Games/Adventure Game Studio/"
and find a file called "ags.log" there,
and then either post that file's contents here, or upload it somewhere (like google drive) and post a link here?

[states]

I now just need to clean my code a bit because I'm still using my "previousobject" logic, but that'll be the easy part.

Actually, I did not think too much about this earlier, but now I suppose it may be done both ways, using "previousobject" or checking all cards each time.

But the point in any case is to remember the states of objects (moving, and which direction), not only which were the previous one.

Maybe you should define this logically first. Which area exactly would mean that the upped card should stay up, and which area would refer to another card.

Note that you may check both: card object and area, with card object having a priority.

If it turns out that you need "overlaying" areas, then this may be solved by adding a second row of transparent objects, duplicating these cards. These transparent objects do not move and stay in down position, but have their baselines adjusted along with their visible counterparts.

If we have the cursor barely touching an object, our logic tells us to move that object up. That object is no longer under the cursor, so it needs to move down. Upon moving down, it touches the cursor again, and so up and down ad infinitum.

Then this is not the problem with overall logic, but the problem with detecting. You would need to detect not only object, but certain area in which it could be located.

I suppose that you may use hotspots for this.

The way I see this, the logic should be following:

On each game tick:
- check which object is under the cursor and remember it, in local variable
- for each object, in a loop:
  - if this object is the one under the cursor:
    - if it's already up or moving up
         then keep it that way
    - else
         start moving it up
  - if this object is not the one under the cursor:
    - if it's already down or moving down
         then keep it that way
    - else
         start moving down

Note though:
1. You dont need to have to remember "previous object".
2. OTOH You will have to remember each object's state, because, although you can test the static position, AGS does not provide the way to check where object is moving to unfortunately (Characters do have DestinationX/Y properties, but not room objects. This reminds me, this should be added to Object type too).
EDIT: I dont know if Tween allows to do that easily enough. If it does, then you might as well use that instead.

How big is the alligator compared to the room? Room background animations are usually meant for changing WHOLE room looks, like day-night cycles, or complex animations which affect whole background (example: it's raining with water drops and streams everywhere).

If alligator is just a piece in the room, then it's better to use Room Object for that. Room objects have Animate command that can run back and forth, once or repeated, or get locked on particular image.

acwin.exe System Error
I get an error message that reads:  The code execution cannot proceed because SDL2.dll was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem.

The screenshot that you posted earlier sais that you are running AGS 3.6.1, in which case there should already be SDL2.dll among the compiled game files.
Where did you put this acwin.exe to? I meant it should be placed with your compiled game files (e.g. Compiled/Windows folder).

Here's an updated archive with SDL2.dll, just in case.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/rr5sur3m8db2hn4ho3ck2/acwin-361-widedisplay-issue.zip?rlkey=giedu74a3el2n94rb1lykqykf&st=tphn84l1&dl=0

@Ghostlady, I made a test build of the engine with some fixes, but I cannot test it myself, because I have only one monitor... Could you download it, place into the folder with your compiled game files are, and use it to launch the game (instead of game exe); then try the same situation as before, where you drag the window to the big monitor and switch modes?

Here's download link:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/rr5sur3m8db2hn4ho3ck2/acwin-361-widedisplay-issue.zip?rlkey=giedu74a3el2n94rb1lykqykf&st=xqu2i9mb&dl=0

I want to animate the backgrounds not an image, but only for one cycle.

There's a command that allows to switch frames or start/stop animation by hand:
https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/Globalfunctions_Room.html#setbackgroundframe

With this you could wait until last frame is reached, and stop it on the current frame.

Do you want to animate this in a blocking manner, where it pauses everything else, or keep the game running?
Do you want to repeat this process periodically at some points, or only once after a room is entered? Or once at some point?
The final code would depend on answers to these questions

For example, if you want this to be a non-blocking animation, then you may do this in room's Repeatedly Execute function:

Code: ags

if (GetBackgroundFrame() == LAST_FRAME_NUMBER)
{
    SetBackgroundFrame(LAST_FRAME_NUMBER); // this fixes it on the last frame
}

Still need to figure how to actually run the transition, because the Overlays get killed on room change, I think I will need to take a GUI to be able to have where to draw things, possibly with a few buttons to be able to make the drawing faster.

I doubt that matters, because engine does not draw while the room is unloaded. Would that be GUI or overlay, or anything else, it may be shown on screen only while there's some active room.

I suppose that if you had an overlay with outro animation in room A, and then create another overlay with saved image in "before fade-in" of room B, then there won't be any "cut" in the animation.

Yep, if you hold down Alt while in most image editing programs the cursor will change to the eyedropper tool while the Alt key is held down, then change back to your previously selected drawing tool when you release it. This is fairly universal - from memory GIMP uses Ctrl by default instead, but everything else I know uses Alt.

So, I did this, but there's a silly issue I met. Whenever Alt key is released, the focus goes to the menu, as that's a standard thing in windows.
I can prevent this by marking the key event as "handled" if it's done in "Area editing" mode, but I was not sure if that would be expected, as that would on contrary prevent user from calling a menu using Alt while in certain room editing modes.

How do applications deal with this usually?

EDIT: don't know why, but appears it goes to system menu, and not to the main menu. Maybe that has to be coded separately.
Also AGS seems to have a separate glitch on its own, because as soon as you open a system menu after pressing Alt, it's moved down, causing graphical artifacts on the window panel...
EDIT2: apparently something got broken in that regard too. In 3.2.1 pressing Alt would focus the main menu, but starting with the first open source version 3.3.0 it focuses the system menu and causes the above glitch. Perhaps this got broken when AGS interface was redone with docking panels.


EDIT3: Maybe I should change this feature to using Ctrl instead. Ctrl is usually associated with selection (ctrl + click can mean "add to selection" in editors).

The issue might be related to the invalid "letters" but the error is only happening in the versions 3.6.0 and above.

Were these letters present in script names before, in earlier versions?

Thing is, these letters are not allowed to be present in script names, and I do not think that they can be added in the editor. That's why my suspicion is that they were added by saving Game.agf file incorrectly.

EDIT: No, this does not seem right, I cannot imagine how they could be converted from "I"... there is something else here.

Do you have a backup version of this file, which may be used to restore it or compare with the current one?

I solved that problem but  there is another: This one is about the "Invalid Character Error" but I am not sure why it is happening. The game file was working before.

It looks like all the script names in your game had changed the common latin "I" letter to a turkish (probably?) letter which is "I" with a extra dot.

Did you fix the previous problem by editing Game.agf, and if yes, which text editor did you use? which encoding did you save Game.agf in?

Do you have a previous backup of this file?

Going forward, should I put the setting back to what it was or leave it as OpenGL.  I am thinking of when the game is complete and put on Steam, I would prefer the best possible performance and less people having to fiddle with settings.

Only settings in Default Setup are written into the config in Compiled/Windows,
you may still experiment and test the game with different settings by changing them in winsetup. Winsetup writes config file in your user documents, and that won't affect the game that you distribute to others.

As for which setting is best, I cannot tell that personally, it may be worth asking game developers with popular commercial releases, they likely track these and other usage statistics.

until last week I wa working on my game files on AGS 3.6.0. Then Someday the AGS started showing an "Exception Error".I tried to use other releases and check the net for answers but I could not find any topics about this problem.

Please elaborate, was it a game that you already worked on in AGS 3.6.0, and it suddenly caused this one day, or was it a game made in a older version that you tried to load in 3.6.0?

The error means that "Game file name" setting got empty for some reason.
Although in theory you should be able to put empty value there, so that's a mistake on its own.

I suppose you may manually fix this by opening "Game.agf" file in a text editor and editing "<GameFileName></GameFileName>" entry, adding a meaningful value there, like: "<GameFileName>mygamename</GameFileName>"


EDIT: I found that we have a rule change by mistake, which does not let this field to be empty, starting from around 3.6.0.
AGS was supposed to let this field be empty, in which case it would use the project folder name.
I will revert this change in the next patch.

There's unfortunately an annoying bug found in the latest Alpha 14 release, following an addition of "Script Module" selection for events in AGS 4.

Room scripts are stored in a different place in AGS 4, but the script module setting was not adjusted for AGS 4 situation in this feature, so ScriptModule for rooms points to a non existing file.

As a result, when you hit "..." button wanting to add a new event function, the function's name is filled into the property field, but the script is not opened and new function is not added there.

The workaround is to add such function in script by hand.

I'm currently investigating this to make a fix, and will have to release a new update soon.

EDIT: here's a temporary build with just this fix:
https://cirrus-ci.com/task/5366978280423424

nother shortcut I use all the time in image editing programs is alt + click to colour select with the eyedropper tool. Seeing as alt + click doesn't seem to be used for anything else in here, might I add that as a feature request? It would make picking between hotspots, regions and such very quick and familiar to people used to Photoshop, Aseprite, Clip Studio Paint, etc.

So, - make "Alt + LMB" to trigger a area selection when in corresponding mode. I suppose this may be done.

The video code that figures the exclusive fullscreen video resolutions is a bit confusing.

Please elaborate, how is it confusing?

Note, the problem happens when switching to the windowed mode, with OpenGL renderer too (which does not support exclusive fullscreen) and the user said that she has "borderless window" checked in setup.

Some interesting observations.  If I change my large monitor in be the "main display" the issue does not happen.

I think this may hint what the source of the problem is, the engine likely relies on the "main display" settings when selecting size of the window and drawing rectangle.

Did you see my post above about the frozen mouse?

Yes, it looks as if the engine restricted mouse movement to a tiny rectangle in the middle of a screen.

The command is "Build -> Build EXE", and there's also "Build -> rebuild all files". (saw these and did that)

So it still does not work when you run game.exe from Compiled/Windows?
Which version of AGS are you using?
Do you have anything set in "audio driver" in winsetup other than "default"?

Is your audio configured to be packaged inside "In Main Game Data" or "In Audio VOX"? This may be found when you select audio folders. (I can't find the setting for this)

It's in Project Explorer -> Audio -> Double-click any audio folder ("Music", "Sound" etc) -> DefaultBundlingType