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Fair enough! Like I said, my perspective is different. If people are actively asking for it and genuinely want it, then that answers my question.

Sorry CW! As always I approach these things from a commercial dev perspective, so what seems obvious to me might not be obvious to everyone else. My question is basically why bother supporting 16 bit games to begin with, since games are no longer made that way (and haven't since 2004) and barely run on modern computers. Wouldn't it be easier to just drop 16 bit support altogether? If we draw a line under that and just make every game 32 bit (or make all games compile to 32 bit), then this ceases to be an issue. Unless there's a reason for this that I'm totally missing.

By running old games, you really mean COMPILING old games, right? It will still be a 16 bit game no matter what, which will still run into the same compatibility issues above. And can't the latest version of AGS convert 16 bit graphics to 32 bit anyway? Or am I misremembering?

Edit: To expand on what I mean; I recently took the 16 bit Gemini Rue, imported it into the most recent version of AGS, changed the color depth in "general settings" to 32 bit, and recompiled. Does that make the game 32 bit? I know that I no longer have the same compatibility issues that the game used to have.

Is it even worth maintaining 16 bit mode to begin with? Speaking as a commercial developer, releasing a 16 bit game in 2017 is kind of laughable. Copying the LOOK and FEEL of a 16 bit game is one thing, but making an actual/literal 16 bit game is just asking for compatibility trouble. I know that we had no end of issues when we released the 16 bit Gemini Rue even back in 2011. Maintaining this just seems like a lot of effort for something that fewer and fewer people are using.

My AdventureX talk is up! I talk about Unavowed somewhat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaNYwDJRHi0

And if you're not totally sick of watching me talk, Adventure Corner did an interview with me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gOF0t7BOZM

Save file received! Check your PMs.

Oh you want the save file? Sorry, I misunderstood. I'll ask them for it!

The first thing I thought of! The idle is disabled in the previous command. But even still, that shouldn't give an 0xC0000005 error. At least, I'd assume it wouldn't.

Not another one! (We need to do something with the topic titles, because although error message is similar, they are often related to different reasons)

Yeah, after doing a search for the problem I wasn't sure how to title this thread.

IDK how else to help without gathering more info.
Do you know if that happens to these players every time? Maybe they have a savegame near that location?

I've asked them! Maybe it was a one-off thing. Hopefully it was.

edit: I asked the players to reload an old save. The closest save did not work (the crash repeated), but they reloaded one save older and the crash did not happen. So... yay? I suppose if you can't treat the disease, you treat the symptoms! Here's the thread if you want to chime in.

Sweet! Downloading now.

Hello hive mind! Some Blackwell Epiphany players have come across one of those pesky exception errors and I have no idea what the problem is. The game has been out for three years and now two players have come across this error at once. Here is the error:

---------------------------
Illegal exception
---------------------------
An exception 0xC0000005 occurred in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x0050594B ; program pointer is +5, ACI version 3.21.1115, gtags (39,210)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and post the details on the AGS Technical Forum.

in "GlobalScript.asc", line 2891

Line 2891 in question is simply an animation call. Specifically:

Code: ags

cJoey.Animate(22, 3, eOnce, eBlock, eForwards);

Any light shedding appreciated!

Thank you.
-Dave

A bit off topic, but would it be possible to add some kind of "lock" toggle to the general settings? A toggle that, if activated, will prevent you from doing anything that will break saves? It's often fairly easy to break them by accident even when being super careful.

This wouldn't fix the problem, but it would make dealing with it slightly easier.

Just posted this one to Twitter for #screenshotsaturday. I'll post it here, too!

Ah. If it was last September then maybe I just missed it! I am trying to reproduce it and can't seem to.

I guess it's true what they say about "assume!" Apologies. Feel free to lock/remove/destroy this thread.

It... can? What about later versions? Most of our games were written in 3.3x.

My wife and I work together on games all the time. You just have to coordinate and be careful.

The .acs scripts merge pretty painlessly when using stuff like GIT or SVN. Any changes in the editor (like adding sprites, creating a dialog option, or adding a GUI - anything that effects the sprite file, the .ags file, or the room .crm files) will NOT merge. So when you work with your team, make sure it's clear that only ONE person can use the editor at a time, while everyone else just works on scripting.

If your game is on Steam than your game will update automatically, yes. GOG does the same thing, I believe. But as others have said, it is risky. The save game issue is, sadly, a thing.

Some things to keep in mind when updating your game after launch:

• Changes to script are usually safe (unless you add a global variable), most changes to the editor will break the game.


• One thing I usually do is create 10 dummy global variables of each commonly used type (for me personally: ints, strings, booleans, and Audiochannels). That way if I need any of them after launch, I can use them relatively safely.


• If you need to change or add art assets after launch, the only way to do it safely is to read the files from the hard-drive, which can get messy.


• Updating your game to a newer version of AGS will completely break your save files. There is no way around this. It's the one reason I haven't updated a lot of our games yet.

The save issue can be really difficult, but not totally insurmountable (aside from the last one). Anyway, good luck!

-Dave

On the last shot, I don't know how you are doing the panning, but in the gif the movement doesn't look smooth. If the game is 60fps and you are tweening y position of the objects/GUIs it will probably look smooth, but in the gif it doesn't look smooth.

GIF compression is, sadly, a thing.

We've been fiddling around with some establishing shots.

Hopefully I am posting this in the correct place! This is one of those AGS-isms that has been bothering me for a very long time, but never thought to make a feature request until now.

Currently, when an idle animation is playing for a character, AGS treats the idle view as its CURRENT VIEW. So if you try and call an animation loop while the idle animation is playing, the game will crash with a "loop not found" error.

Here's an example of how it currently works:
Character "Eli" has a main view called vEliAnims, which contains his walk cycle and his various animations. He has a jump animation at loop 23.
Eli's idle animation view is called vEliIdle.
If I want Eli to jump and his idle animation is playing at the time, AGS will look for loop 23 in vEliIdle instead of vEliAnims. The game will crash.

I know there are ways to get around this problem (like passing an idle of -1 before any animations are played) but they are fiddly and easy to forget. Ideally, AGS would look for his loop in his default view, not his idle view.

Thanks! If I posted this in the wrong spot, feel free to move it.

-Dave