Messages

When exporting items from AGS, it doesn't auto rename the filename. So you have to type the file name yourself. In addition, once the export is saved, AGS doesn't remember the last path you saved from its editor, and so on the next export it takes you to the current folder of the game's you're working on. I suppose that this scenario is the same in other places in the editor where the operating system file browser is involved. It should remember where you last been.

Currently, we can only use \n escape sequence to making new lines within text elements. But if you'd wish to align some left to right text to the right-hand side of the text box by using \t for tabs it doesn't work. An example of how this would be useful is an context-menu GUI where you want to present the keyboard shortcuts of each option in a straight aligned line from top to bottom to the right side, while having the text aligned from left to right:

File    <F1>
Edit    <F2>
View    <F3>
...

Using spaces for this alignment doesn't work very well, unless the font you're using have an exact width for any of its characters, including of the space. So in some lines the alignment would show broken (just as showed above where I used 4 spaces between the words and the first < sign. In text editors, when hitting TAB after words, it automatically completes the desired spacing until the next TAB point, by either subtracting the words length from the amount of spacing that a TAB consists, or if the word length is more than 1 or more TABs, it completes the number of spaces until it reaches the next point where a new TAB should start.

It seems that each text editing program has different amount of spaces for a TAB character. A TAB in Notepad++ for example consists of 4 spaces, and in the regular Notepad in Windows, a TAB is consist from 8 spaces. But the general idea is the same: when you use TAB in any of these programs after words, it subtracts or adds the character amount of the word from the next TAB, until it reaches the next TAB position, where all lines could eventually be aligned for showing the further text vertically straight.

word Let's say that a tab- if the word is in text editors

If you use Win10, you'd find that dragging of tabs from right to left works, but doing so from left to right is somewhat broken. If you have 3 opened tabs and you wish to move the first tab to the most right, you won't be able to do that unless there's another tab after it and you're dropping the tab in-between those tabs.

It seems like there's no "quicker" way to get selected string. Like having a ListBox.SelectedItem property in the dropdown list.
-Fixed.

When creating a listbox item, the default value of the property SelectedBackgroundColorNumber for black is set to 16, where the SelectedBackgroundColor above it shows 0,0,0, which is incorrect. Selecting the SelectedBackgroundColor property and hitting Enter on the 0,0,0 value changes SelectedBackgroundColorNumber to 0, which makes the text transparent. So the two properties don't seem to share the parallel color index.

In general, the SelectedBackgroundColor shows the color in its RGB form, where the SelectedBackgroundColorNumber proabaly shows them in index color numbers, and the higher numbers in it don't make any sense.

Currently, only the listbox GUI element have the highlighted background and highlighted text color properties, along with a border color option. Labels on the other hand does not. It would be nice if all GUI elements that use text could have these properties in them.

In addition, the only GUI element that can align text to all possible edges of its bounderies is buttons. Others can only align to either left, center or right.

The Parser section seems to be one of the things that were least improved in AGS since it's very beginning. It would be nice if it could be improved as follows:

- Abiltiy to multi-select words for deletion or for changing their type (ignore / normal / synonym).

- Ability to have the Delete key affect the selection of words in the list, and to prompt the user for deletion or for a type change. Currently it is only possible to right-click to delete, and it doesn't even prompt if you're sure that you want to delete the word if accidently clicked instead of "Add synonym / new word".

- Add option option to add an ignored word in the right-click context menu instead of needing to right-click on an existing ignored word and to add a synonym to it.

* The entire Parser could actually be replaced with an external text file for adding/editing words and types, instead of needing to edit everyting direclty in the editor.

The default behavior of the built-in inventory window is to present the added items from top left to the right, and when there's no more room it goes down a line.

It would be very nice if we could set it to either start from right to left, or even from top left / top right to bottom, and then to set its borders how we like and the items would be presented accordingly.

For example, a 2 lines inventory window where you want that the first item will go to the top left slot, the second to the bottom left slot, the third to the right of the top left slot, and so on.

In addition, for texed based games like an AGI-style, it would be nice if we could also make the items show as text by showing their names instead of their icons, or even both. The text should have an option to select a font to presenting it, and also have listboxes properties such as alignments and highlighted background and highlighted text.

* Instead of rasing another thread for this as this is of the same matter, the alignment behavior should also be added to listbox items which basically works the same way of storing items in them. So we could either have list boxes that show items in the current form of top to bottom, or to have them showing from left to right, right to left, or even in reverse order from bottom to top.

When using a for loop to adding items to a list, like so:

Code: ags

function sync_list()
{
  mylist.Clear();
  for (int i = 1; i <= Game.InventoryItemCount; i++)

  {
    if (player.InventoryQuantity[i] > 0)
    mylist.AddItem(inventory[i].ScriptName);
  }
}

If the

Code: ags

i <= Game.InventoryItemCount

is replaced with < instead of <=, it does not add the second item to the list when it is triggered.

In AGS 4.0 there's a very nice feature that allows scaling of GUI elements during runtime - meaning that a GUI can be created in a 1:1 aspect ratio and then presented in 2:1 for example wen the game runs for an AGI style look, the same as when setting a room to 160x200 and then make it scale twice as wide to fill a 320x200 resolution, using the viewport scaling option.

Also, since Mouse cursors behave the same as GUI(s) in terms of lack of scaling options in the current build, it would be nice if we could also affect the mouse cursor sprites so they too could be scaled on runtime.

Thanks! This works great on runtime. It's not a must, but if we could also have an option to set the preview of different panels that are sprite related sections* in the editor to other aspect ratios, such as 2:1 for AGI style games, that would be wonderful. This way you could view the artwork in the correct aspect ratio form and not a narrow preview of it.

*sections:
- Sprite
- GUIs (if they could be scaled during runtime too, like in AGS 4.0)
- Inventory item preview
- Views
- Character
- Mouse cursors (if they could be scalled during runtime too)
- Fonts
- Rooms

Learned some more information about the AGI interpreter game area layouts. So this may be more complicated than I originally thought. I found that the game area is actually a mix between both 1:1 and 2:1 aspect ratios, where the backgrounds and sprites are in 2:1, and anything that is text based is 1:1.

Here's a demonstration showing what happens when I took a screenshot from the game, divided it by 2 to get a 1:1 aspect ratio, and then resizing it back by 2. If everything was in 2:1 then when restoring the size everything should have looked the same as before resizing. But here you can actually see that while the background and sprites restored correctly, the text got squashed, both after dividing the size by 2 and when resizing it back by 2.







Here are more info with exact pixel size for each section:




And lastly, this is the inventory panel which is all texted based:


So I'm really not sure how to be able to reproduce such mixed aspect ratio game in AGS. Technically, this would need to be a 320x200 game, where the rooms should be in 160x200 which should be shown in 2:1 aspect ratio (all of the GUIs and fonts should remain in 1:1 aspect ratio on top of it). And all sprites should also be shown in 2:1 aspect ratio.

Thanks CW and the rest of the team! Honestly, the effort that you put in listening to us community members, along with the frequency build updates with the fixes to the varies issues we report about are much appreciated! Your loyalty to this engine and to its community is what makes it the awesome thing that it is!

To anyone who's interested, I've made a short video that describes how to install and run AGS in CrossOver (Wine) on MacOS. The procedure should be the same on Linux. Enjoy.

Thanks @eri0o for the info.

Yep, I tried installing Wine manually and got lost... I wonder what's the issue with CrossOver is. I sent them an email asking about it as I didn't found any recent info about it online - only old discussions which are irrelevant to the current version. My Mac runs Sonoma 14.4.1 by the way. Trying to update it to the latest 14.5 and see if it makes any difference. Will update shortly if it does.

UPDATE:
No change. Still CPU and memory peak with nothing running... I tried to re-launch AGS and to load my game in it anyway but same slowness and cracking sound problems. I guess it is related to the CPU and memory peak.

UPDATE2:
After testing back and forth, I noticed that the AGS editor actually works completely fine, and that it's only the cracking audio that makes everything feel slugish. However, after installing a different audio program and found that the audio actually plays without any problem, I figured that it has to be something with how the AGS game plays its audio, and I managed to put my finger on the problem!

It appears that when running the game via F5 uses the default audio driver - whatever that driver may be, it was what caused the cracking audio. I run the game setup, went to Advanced and manually tested all audio drivers. I found that only when it is set to DirectSound that it works smooth without any cracking in the background.



As for the CPU and memory peak that the Task Manager in the CrossOver shows, this may be incorrect as this is not an entire Windows machine with resources to give and get, but some sort of a container that runs specific apps and utilizes the maximum amount of resources it needs from the host that it runs upon. To my understanding this is why it shows almost 100% of usage. I may be wrong, but what I do know for sure is that when I hit on the battery icon at my Mac's top bar, it shows that no apps using significant energy. Unlike when I run an entire Windows environment virtually.

So now I'm very pleased with how this CrossOver works and I can finally run AGS on my M1 Mac along with other companion Windows tools that I use on my PC when working on AGS.

Thanks again @eri0o for opening my eyes for a whole new world of possibilities.

Hi guys,

I wasn't aware of the existence of this CrossOver solution. I just installed the trial along with AGS and the latest .Net Framework and can't believe my eyes! I'm running AGS on my M1 Mac and no virtualization is involved! This is insane!

The only thing I'm trying to figuring out is why the CPU and memory jump to the skies even when there's no app running, and when I launch AGS it kind of slow and has cracking sound problems. I tried building a Wine environment manually but failed to doing so...

If anyone had encountered this CPU and memory peak problem in CrossOver and found a solution, kindly let me know.

Thanks

Just checked this, though the multiple deletion occurs too fast; I hitted the Delete key only once and it deleted 2-3 frames from the sequence. The first press on the Delete key should have a delay of about half a second I think before it keeps deleting further frames. And I think that even on the repeatedly deletion there should be a small delay as the deletion is happening too fast.

Is this a new behavior, or does it happen similarly fast in 3.6.0 version (the last which did not have new multi-frame selection)?

Good question. Installing 3.6.0 to check...

UPDATE:
Seems to behave the same way. It's fine. We can keep it this way. At least now the selection box is fixed again after deletion. Thanks!

The test build with fixes may be downloaded here:
https://cirrus-ci.com/task/5667463642218496

based on 3.6.1

Thanks CW. Just checked this, though the multiple deletion occurs too fast; I hitted the Delete key only once and it deleted 2 frames from the sequence in one go. The first press on the Delete key should have a delay of about half a second I think before it keeps deleting further frames. And I think that even on the repeatedly deletion there should be a small delay as the deletion is happening too fast.

UPDATE:
Please ignore the double deletion of frames - it's okay. From some reason the refresh of the sequence after frame deletion looked as if it deletes more than one frame. But I still think that the repeatedly deletion should have a very small delay.

I see. Well, thanks for the detailed information and for looking into this. This would be a nice add-on for AGS if eventually implemented. No rush about it, though. Only if and when you have time. Appreciate it. Thanks!!

Hi Snarky

The old AGI style doesn't use speech, only text boxes describing what happens when you do something. But anyway, if the camera would be set to stretch everything twice as wide on runtime then no further manual adjustment needed to be done - everything would have an aspect ratio of 2:1 then.

The squeezed graphics in the editor is just something I find a little annoying when editing the game - I remember making a game in an old game creation engine in 160x200 resolution back in my childhood, only to mimic the AGI style and feel, and I had to work my head trying to ignore the narrow look when editing everything, while the engine was set to stretch the game to 640x400 on runtime (320x200 x2). While it worked, it was somewhat annoying while editing...

However, I wouldn't want anyone to spend a lot of time working on something that only a minor amount of people might use. But if there's an option to have the editor support an aspect ratio setting which would manipulate the appearance of the pixels in both the editor and engine, that would be great! You can then even have a different aspect ratio in mind if you want to have a unique style of a game, the pixels would be manipulated automatically, and you won't need to tweak any camera setting - only to handle the aspect ratio property.