Messages

Go to sprite manager of AGSedit and right-click on the sprites...

[-=]

If you still want controls and other things happening during the countdown, you can't put the decreasing part within interface_click() (if you really want to start it via clicking on an interface :p), just put it into repeated_execute:

if (counter>0) {
           counter -=1;
           if (counter==0) {
                    // put whatever you want to happen when the counter expires HERE
             }
}

I think he really drew the whole frame onto the background image, and he hadn't checked it yet.

And no, I'm not impressed.

[COOL]

Could I just say... the people here drive like MAD.  I wouldn't say they break the traffic laws, so much as they just ignore them altogther.  Our driver weaves and dodges between cars, bicycles, motorcycles and pedestrians like he's playing hopscotch - all while driving at mach three speeds.

Yeah, that's how it is in the more civilized areas of Mainland (Shenzhen and Gaungdong, etc.), in the past, before there's a boost on "motor vehicles", bicycles were one main way of transportation (still is), but now there're a mixture of many things on the roads as you mentioned, making it EXCITING.
And I'm not lying, when I went there last year, the taxi driver drove past a Red traffic light, then I noticed a small plate under that traffic light, reading "You CAN proceed forward when the red light is on.", so he didn't break any rule, isn't that COOL?

I had duck's blood for lunch today.  Seriously.  It's quite good.  Try it.

Yes, chicken blood and pig blood are good, too. But be careful, as the bird's flu period isn't over yet.

[GUI'S]

GUI'S

Point 1

Near the end (This had been reported in that other thread already):
"...Choose the property whose value is "Persistent" and change it to "Script only". This way, it will only appear when called by a script..."
Just change "Script only" to "Popup Modal".


(Okay that's all for now, hope it helps. )

[SCRIPTING & CODE]

SCRIPTING & CODE

Point 5

Add:
Also, the change in character direction will only be visible when the screen is refresh (ie when a gameloop is advanced), if you want the character to change his direction simultaneously and quickly (eg. making a turning-around movement) and place several FaceLocation() lines in a row (or use it within a while() loop, etc.) , make sure you put a Wait(1); line after each of such lines to ensure the screen got updated after each turn.

(One more...)

[GRAPHICS & CHARACTERS]

GRAPHICS & CHARACTERS

Point 2

(a) Near the beginning of the current answer:
"Okay, okay, I'll help you. The most common circumstances in this case are that the image being imported was usually saved in high-color (24-bit)..."
Well that "hign-color" is obviously "true-colour"...

(b) Add:
Starting from V2.6, AGS now supports 24 or 32 bit true-colour graphics natively, if you REALLY want to keep the excellency of your killer graphics, you may try this new feature by changing the colour-depth to 32-bit in the Palette tab of the editor. Be warned that using true-colour graphics can increase file-size drastically and is more resource hungry, so your game may run slow on lower end computers.


Point 3

Okay, I think you can now display characters with ASCII code>128 for TTFs (but not for SCI fonts) after that "international" release of AGS, but I'm too lazy to check, you may think of updating this point.

(More to come...)

[AGS EDITOR & USER INTERFACE]

Okay, I start this thread because of the discussions from this thread, I had read the FAQ a bit (I didn't read it thoroughly, just read the parts that I thought may be outdated and compared them with changes.txt and the latest stable version V2.6sp1), seeing that some of the infos there are already outdated, and I don't want to continue the discussions there as it's a bit offtopic.

NOTE: I'll post multiple posts here in this thread divided according to sections in the FAQ, to avoid each of the posts being too long to read.

AGS EDITOR & USER INTERFACE

Point 4

(a) Near the end of the current text:
"...Just set the GUI so that it never appears (Set it to "Script only"), or simply never refer to the inventory item. If you can't delete it, ignore it."
Note that in current version of AGS, the mode "Script only" had its name change to "Popup Modal" (actually I think there're some changes in behaviour too), so update the text there.

(b) Moreover, actually you can delete GUIs and GUI objects in AGSEDIT now, I suggest adding the following text (or incorporate it into the original contents):
You can now delete GUIs in the editor, just click the "Delete this GUI" button. WARNING: You must be VERY CAREFUL in doing this, as items in AGS are referenced by number, if you delete a GUI which is not the last in the list, it will cause a re-numbering on the ids of teh remaining GUIs, as a result, it is possible that your game's script will refer to the wrong GUIs or even a non-existing GUI, causing hard-to-track crashes. Fortunately you have a name for each of the GUIs, if you only refer to them with their script names (ie, you didn't type in the EXACT GUI ids in your scripts), this can be fixed just by recompiling all the rooms (Game --> Rebuild all room files) and then re-saving the game.

You can also delete GUI objects in the editor, just select the object and hit the DEL key.
WARNING: You must be EVEN MORE CAREFUL in doing this, because of the same reason mentioned in the "delete GUI" part. UNFORTUNATELY, currently you can't set a name for the GUI objects, so you have to fix your script MANUALLY if you really want to delete a button or a label, etc.

Room objects can also be deleted by right-clicking now.
WARNING: I'm too lazy to type, this point is essentially the same as in the "deleting GUI objects" part.

For fonts, characters, views, etc., just reuse them as advised above or just leave them alone, they don't contribute much to file size anyways.

Note that deleting stuffs is only meant to be used by experienced users, and remember to BACKUP your game before doing any of such hazardous acts!


Point 5

Add this:
You can now revert to the default fonts quickly by clicking the "Revert to defaults" button in the editor, it will revert Font 0, 1 and 2 back to their original stage, and DELETE ALL THE OTHER FONTS.
WARNING: As Fonts with #>2 will be deleted using this function, make sure you didn't refer to fonts other than 0, 1 and 2 in your game, or else you may need to fix hard-to-track crashes yourself.


Point 7

Add this:
Heh just kidding, actually the winsetup.exe is useful, as most people just playing AGS games may not know the "game.exe --setup" trick, and because the batch file method won't work for some WIN-NT based systems, and the shortcut method is not practical as you shouldn't force the player to install your game in some fixed folder. So, please include winsetup.exe (or whatever it's renamed) when you distribute your game.

(I'm still typing, more to continue...)

Okay, I had read the FAQ slightly, and have a list of things that need to be updated, I'll start a new thread pointing them out soon.

I don't know (actually I just know that there's an AGS beginners' FAQ page today), but I could only find this link from the rules thread, which is not working for me, maybe it's because of my firewall. (Actually if it's web1000, I won't be able to see it, web1000 links never worked for me).

[Script only]

"Script only" is the old name, "Popup Modal" is the new name, currently used in AGSedit.

Since in your former post you said it's added to the beginners' FAQ:

... Choose the property whose value is "Persistent" and change it to "Script only". This way, it will only appear when called by a script. ..

I can't confirm as I'd never been to the beginners' FAQ and the page seems to be down for me (while clicking the link in the sticky rules thread).

[that layer]

Yes you can use whatever acceptable colour depth for the imported bgs (provided you had set up the game correctly), but the masks must be 256 colours.

One suggestion is that if you're using  a "layer-enabled" graphics package, just draw the mask on a new layer and then convert that layer into a 256 colour BMP for importing. Also notice that if your game is set to run in hires (640x400,640x480 or 800x600), with an exception on the walkbehind mask, the other masks must be drawn in half the res of teh bg (eg, if your game runs at 640x400, the masks should be 320x200, this is because it's the internal game coordinates the game is using), a better way to draw these mask is to shrink your bg image in your graphic package first and then draw the masks into new layers.

Choose the property whose value is "Persistent" and change it to "Script only".

Don't know when it's been changed, it's now called "Popup Modal", so better change it.

1. Why? Just draw over the areas to fix it, note if you set the area to 0, it's actually erasing the aread.

2. In that case, just draw that walkable areas in PSP (or whatever graphic programmes you want to use) and save it as a 256 colour BMP (make sure that the mask pic contains flat colours, no antialiasing and the colours for the areas use only the first 16 colours of the palette, I never used PSP so I cant tell you how to do this), and click "import mask..." in agsedit.

[gameloops]

No, I think it's described in the manual (too lazy to dig it up at the moment).

As far as I remember that "speed" actually means "delay", that is, a frame will stay on screen for "animation speed + frame speed" gameloops.

For example, if a frame's speed is "5" and you play the animation at a speed of 6, then that frame will stay on screen for 6+5=11 gameloops.

Alternatively, if a frame's speed is -3 and you play the animation at a speed of 6, then that frame will stay on screen for 6+(-3)=3 gameloops.

Heh no need to apologise, the codes will work anyway, I was just curious.

Well I didn't played a lot of AGS games, but the only game I know that uses text parser (mostly) is Rode Quest.

If you can, don't use a video file, script the animation scene within AGS.

No, I think that thread is even locked, so you can't reply to it for requests, etc. It's just "sticked" so it always appear on top of the list and will not be pushed down by new threads. When someone is new to a forum, he has to make sure that he checked out the sticky threads first (eg. the rules threads are all sticky threads), so he can post correct stuffs according to set rules and won't ask questions already answered.

Well... A sticky thread is a thread set to be "sticky" by forum moderators so it's always on top of the thread list.