Messages

Hi AGA, thanks for taking the time to respond to this thread! I agree that my big post + diagram is probably going to be quite overwhelming with the volunteer situation around AGS. I'm well aware that people's free time can just disappear in an instant, this happens in our day jobs and easily happens in our personal lives as well. I'm just going to naïvely think that this post might be different and change may happen. 

In response to your list:

What I Think We Need

• Someone to produce a mobile-friendly (responsive) redesign of the main site.  As far as the main site is concerned, I'd need an HTML + CSS template of how the landing page, games pages, etc (essentially any page with a unique design and layout) would be structured, plus one generic template that could be used for all other pages (i.e. the free text pages with similar layout, like most other pages on the current site use).
• Someone to produce a mobile-friendly (responsive) redesign of the forums.  This would need to work inside the SMF template system, which allows you to edit the core HTML and CSS that sits behind the dynamic forum content.
• The community (with or without a project lead, stakeholder panel, whatever) to decide what the site (and forums if a restructuring is really wanted) content, flows, etc. should be.
• Me to apply the site and forum content to the template pages provided.
• Community members to take ownership of actually keeping the site up to date, whether it's through a Content Management System I build into the site, using the wiki as the data source, whatever.  I have no interest in our using WordPress; getting it to interact with our existing data, integrate with the forums etc, would be just as much effort as writing a CMS myself.

• Responsive Site Design: I'm more, more than willing to help pay for this. The simple fact is that I can modify existing stuff quite well (with a lot of swearing and trial & error) but to build responsive templates from scratch is beyond my capacity. Would something like ThemeForest be an option instead? As I said, I'd happily buy two or three templates that look good and you can then see if that might work?
• Having thoughts around the site from a community point of view is absolutely what I hoped to trigger with this post. I think the core questions should be around "what does the site want to be?". Having just gone through the Wiki a bit more, for example, there's games listed in there, but only a select few. And then there's the actual Games Database, which I feel should be much more of a focal point, rather than games also being listed in the Wiki. To me, the Wiki should be about tutorials and FAQs. There's some really good stuff there that should probably live in the AGS Manual instead, in my opinion. It's about design principles for me here: Wiki for FAQ/Tutorial/Lists, Manual for the technical stuff and scripting, Forum for community discussion.
• Patreon: I know I've mentioned Godot before, but their Patreon page gives quite a clear overview of what the different tiers mean and what impact the money will have on future developments. We can do this in a similar way and have a community-voted option for certain tasks that are just "too large" for our current contributors.
• A CMS would be great and I'd be more than happy to help maintain the site with that. Again, I'm not partial to Wordpress (any CMS will do) it's just that I'm most familiar with that one.
• Is it OK then if I just dive into the Wiki and start to have a ponder about how to improve/change things? And perhaps modify things here and there a bit? (If I have the rights? The front page seems locked for admins only)

-----

That being said I would like to see more feedback on my previous post if people have any thoughts/ideas they'd like to add!

Thank you all for this, it's been a great help. I've been playing around with this and I've got a fully functional map (accessible from the inventory bar). The map is a separate room. I set the player character to be invisible and can now use "hover over" on the hotspots to highlight cities, rivers, mountain ranges, etc.

The only thing I did was modify the GlobalScript to prevent interactions & looking at things:

Code: ags

if (type == 1) // look
    {
      if (player.Room == 14) {
        Wait(0);
      }
      else {
      player.Say("It looks as expected.");
      }

This way, when the player's in Room 14, the Unhandled Event for looking doesn't run. Yet it runs in every other room. I've also done this with the Interact unhandled event. That way, the gActionBar works as expected. I've set the gInventoryBar to 100 transparancy (since it's insistent on popping up and I don't want it on the map screen.

Since the character's set to invisible, can't move, doesn't trigger interactions, I use player.ChangeRoom(player.PreviousRoom); to go back when I press Exit. And the x and y coordinates work. I've tested with both my main characters and it works a treat.

Not sure if this is the "cleanest" way, but hey... it works! 

Thank you all!!!

[1. Overall Organisation]

Dear all, thank you so much for responding to this topic in such detail. I have many, many thoughts in response to this which I've tried to formulate below... and please remember that, like you, I'm coming from a place of loving AGS. And I've been in-and-out of the community over the years so will have some very significant gaps in my understanding of where/how things are organised... so some of the things I mentioned might already be well and truly sorted. 

I think there's a few key points for me, some of which people have mentioned, that instigated this whole post in the first place:

• The incredible value of AGS vs the current state of online resources for newcomers.
• Having AGS's online presence reflect how alive & current the actual development on the software still is.
• To put to bed, once and for all, this nonsensical notion that AGS is for hobbyists only.

So with those 3 things in mind, let's take a look at this diagram with my thoughts/ideas/proposals:



And perhaps in response, people can refer to these in the same way? Or mention new ones (and I can update this diagram to help further conversation).

1. Overall Organisation

1a. Steering Group
I would want to start with this one, which might be the most contentious one... but to establish, firmly, a steering group, that will guide all other areas listed in this diagram. Members can put themselves forth to join the steering group and are voted in on a two-yearly basis. Obviously it's all volunteering so if someone falls of the radar, they can be replaced if they are non-responsive to any communication after a month. The steering group would:

• Make decisions on all matters related to what is listed on this diagram.
• Have final say in what happens.

I understand it's quite democratic and authoritative, but in opinion, the only way forward. I would suggest the following roles: Chairman, Community, Website, Development, Finance&PR. Five people is nice (if there's a vote, there's never a tie). The Chairman is completely the wrong title for it, since they won't be any more "in charge" of the steering group, but it's that person's responsibility to organise online meetings (Zoom, Meet, whatever) and set the calendar for the year. The Community person would look after the forum, keep in touch with the Moderators, bring forum-issues to the steering group, etc. The Website person, obviously, would lead on the website. Development is for the actual technical development of AGS (Github, setting the release calendar, etc). Finance&PR would look after Patreon/Paypal funding, engaging with Itch communities, profiling AGS on Twitter, etc etc. All the social media stuff and engagement that will help build the word on AGS further.

1b. Succession planning
Bluntly put: Right now, if Crimson Wizard hangs up his wizarding hat and steps away... who's going to set the next AGS release? How long would it take for things to be reorganised? If AGA wins the lottery and rides off into the sunset, who can pick up the website? If Darth Mandarb is convicted of breaking too many blue cups and put in prison, who takes on the Games in Production moderation?

You get my point. The steering group would have to give these matters serious thought. It's the internet. It's volunteering work. Love for AGS can only take people so far before fatigue sets in. Love wanes (a honeymoon phase is exactly that) and then there needs to be something else to keep things going. A community is the best thing (just look at how AGS has survived/thrived over the past few decades). But it can also hit some real lows.

1c. Design Principles
The first core rule, in my opinion, for the steering group is to set firm design principles. This prevents "everything and the kitchen sink" thinking and shapes a vision for the future of AGS. Some design principles can be, as an example:

1. We will refine and update the UI for AGS. But we will not move away from the core layout with the right-side menubar.
2. We seek to have AGS as accessible for all users interested. No one is more important than the other. We're an open source community where everyone can pitch in.

What I'm trying to say here is that these guiding principles relate to how AGS is designed & shaped. Good principles travel. They ensure the steering group stay on track and can also say "NO" to certain requests. Or better, say "No... not yet." since priorities will stem from good principles. Which we'll get to later on with the Roadmap.

2. Website

2a. Front pages
As Babar rightly pointed out, from a new user perspective, the website gives the impression that AGS isn't actively developed anymore. Through no fault of anyone, so much stuff is outdated. I think the problem is that so much of the site design is closed-source and needs some serious "fresh starts" to stay more nimble. And whether that's with Wordpress (the tool I'm just personally most comfortable with) or with something like Jekyll (which I like, since it's open-source and links directly to Github pages)... the more we choose an established open-source development project that's been around for a long time, the more we're likely to future-proof ourselves. And with something like Jekyll, we also make sure that the actual website content shifts into the open source domain.

2b. Wiki / Manual
Whether we call it a wiki or a manual - having one place to go to for a manual would be best. The wiki's outdated, the online manual is improving, the ags-help.chm file that comes with the installation is still my personal go-to. It would be so, so much better if all of these just went to one place and one place only. Even if that means the .chm file is taken out of the installation and all AGS does is redirect you to a web-based version of it. One thing to maintain for everyone.

2c. AGS Game Database
As much as I agree that the AGS website is a very different place now than 20 years ago, it's still so nice to have a games database. But bringing it into the modern era a bit more would perhaps be a good idea as well. The way it's linked to SMF right now is helpful though, which I'll raise some thoughts on later too...

2d. Plugins / Modules
They... live on a webpage? On the forum? Or? I propose again, it's through a wiki-like setup that the official repository is kept up. The individual pages there can link to the individual forum topics. But with a good "added on", "age" and "last updated on" area there, with an automated message saying "warning, not been updated for 6+ months" will also alert people to the fact this particular one's probably not going to work anymore... The more we can have an automated upload/managing system for this, the better. The forum can be a place for discussion, but shouldn't be the repository for plugins / modules.

2e. Donation system
I'm not partial to Patreon. Or Paypal. But having both would be great, since I honestly do feel we can draw in more people to support AGS. And we can have a think about what we do with the money. It can even be (pie in the sky thinking) similar to Godot, where we can employ people to actually write manual stuff or work on a MacOS / Linux / Android / iOS / whatever port.

2f. Main News section
I do think a friendly "hello everyone, here's an update" message on the main website every few months or so is more than enough. But as a landing page for new people (and for SEO) it will definitely help to keep things alive.

3. Community

3a. AGS Forums
I'm well aware the AGS community is active in many different places. However, "we" don't own any of the other platforms, as far as I'm aware. The forums however, are "ours". Having a look at the forum architecture, it seems to be SMF and not phpBB as someone mentioned earlier. I'm not too versed in the difference, but I see that phpBB is actively maintained (and had a plugin like BridgeDD for Wordpress to keep single-sign-on active, for example). SMF seems to be more niche so perhaps a transfer from SMF to phpBB at some point would be worth exploring.

I would also argue it'd be great to set up a "Archive" area on the forums and any topic over the active age of 1 year gets moved there. It would clean up a lot of the "old" and make space for the "new". Right now I feel the forums are an absolute treasure trove of information, but one does need to put on their spelunking hat to find anything. And whilst I love to play Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis... during my actual life, archeology on a forum isn't really my hobby. 

4. AGS Development

4a. Bug Fixing
AGS Development, in my opinion, at its most basic level, sits in two different areas: bug fixing & future development. Bug fixing is pretty much a "Issue tracker" thing on Github as far as I'm concerned. If people have issues with AGS, that's where they should post it. Not on the forum. Again, github is where AGS is being developed/maintained, so let's make that the place where these things go.

4b. Future development via a Roadmap
A core task for the steering group: establish a roadmap. But always be flexible depending on how things pan out. Based on the core principles set out earlier, the roadmap should be filtered out from there. This means that there's no longer that very tiring whiplash effect for core development (which I think is mainly Crimson Wizard as far as I can see?). Random suggestions pop up all over the forum and the more we can help guide these suggestions to the github Issue Tracker, again, the better. This can then be a moderator-task or stock reply. "Great idea, post it on github. We'll put it on the roadmap."

The roadmap consists of big milestones, with future version, but also minor additions / changes. And also, as decided by the steering group, fridged/shelved developments. Why? Because AGS can't be everything to all people. And it shouldn't be, since the field has changed significantly over the past few decades. By having a clear vision, guiding principles and a defined roadmap, there's clarity as to what AGS is and will be. Which can only bring a lot of peace of mind and as we work on clearer documentation / guidelines on the main website, can only help bring new people in. The whole onboarding thing for volunteers is such an important part to keep our community vital.

------------------------------------------------

I think that's my soapbox over and done with! Again, if people want to add different things to the diagram (for example, you want to discuss "3b. Some other community stuff Hobbes isn't aware of" then please do! I'll update the diagram).

I think personally speaking I would be more, more, more than happy to help out anywhere in 1-3. I just don't know how to program software, so 4 is not my area of expertise at this point in time. Gathering some more feedback on these points, at this point in time, is important. Judging by everyone's very positive engagement in this thread, I think there's so much love and life in this community that we can only improve that with these ideas.

[player]

1. I have multiple player characters. So a Character.ChangeRoom & Character.ChangeView won't work, since the map screen is in the menubar GUI and might be used by different Characters at any time.
2. With the map screen being in the menubar, it's accessible from any room at any time. So if you're on the map, pressing "Exit"... there's no Character.ChangeRoom(PreviousRoom, previousX,previousY) function that I can see.

1. If you use player.ChangeRoom instead of Character.ChangeRoom (which is recommended anyway) it doesn't matter which character is the current player character, same with ChangeView or anything else.

2. There is a Character.PreviousRoom property you can use. And you can easily store the player's coordinates before entering the map, so that shouldn't be a problem. Edit: Also, what Snarky said. If the player is invisible on the map you don't even need to store the coordinates.

I'd say go for using a room as a map.

That's great news, thanks both Snarky and Matti! There's a player.Changeroom, that's great. I tried looking in the ags-help.chm file for that, but couldn't find it... fool on me. Is there also a player.PreviousRoom property?

In that case, if they both exist and work (and you're right, leaving the x and y alone), then I just need to make sure I change views... which might be a bit tricky, since the character I'm controlling needs to change to an empty view. However I've got 2 possible characters, so I could change both their views, I suppose...

I could even have the whole room as a walk-behind, then I don't need to bother with changing their views, I imagine?

The option to do it within the GUI as described by Snarky might work as well... I think I'll have a play with both options - thanks again!

Hi Slasher,

Thanks for letting me know! And thanks for trying out my game!

Can you remember what frame/animation was missing transparency? I did fix the crying animation on the girl, but maybe I didn't upload the ZIP file everywhere (I think the one on Itch.Io is definitely complete)

However, the save/restore error is very, very weird! As far as I can see, I haven't changed the BASS template at all. But for some reason it's not saving games when you press "Save". But no errors are generated in the Warnings log. And when I check out the scripts, they're all there and tied to the button. Very weird!

I fixed the save/restore error. I was using the open_gui command, which for some reason doesn't render the correct info. show_save_dialog and show_restore_dialog do the trick. Thank you for spotting that one!

So... I'm guessing this is a Beginner question, but it might be more advanced to solve it. I'm working on a map screen for my game and would like to do this as a GUI. The main reason being:

1. I have multiple player characters. So a Character.ChangeRoom & Character.ChangeView won't work, since the map screen is in the menubar GUI and might be used by different Characters at any time.
2. With the map screen being in the menubar, it's accessible from any room at any time. So if you're on the map, pressing "Exit"... there's no Character.ChangeRoom(PreviousRoom, previousX,previousY) function that I can see.

Let's say my map looks something like this (it doesn't, but it's not finished yet):



The finished map will have many things on it that, on hovering over them, I'd like its name displayed. It doesn't have to do anything with clicking on it, just hover over, show name.

If the map was in a room, I could easily add hotspots to it. With the gActionBar (I'm using the BASS template) it would then display the names of these hotspots. However, hotspots don't exist in the GUI toolkit that I can see. I've changed the Z order, so the gActionBar is on top of the gMapScreen GUI... so is there an easy way to make things appear on hovering over them? Like, invisible buttons that would trigger gActionBar?

The reason I would like to use invisible buttons (or something similar) is that this map screen will have many, many things. I don't want to use sprites on top of the map, I would like the map to stay as one big fat 320 x 200 sprite. Makes it easy for me to add/change things as the game grows.

Any help/thoughts about this would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Thank you!

(For those of you who played Betrayal at Krondor back in the day, that's exactly the vibe I'm going for. You hover over stuff and the name of the city/forest/river/ocean appears)

[https://new-site.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/]

A new website is currently in development. Check out the work in progress and give your feedback:

https://new-site.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/

There is a temporary link in the community drop down called "TEMP: Redesign release notes", so you can see what has been changed since you last visited the page. Please keep commenting your feedback here.





Original message:

Having used AGS many moons ago when Chris Jones was the sole developer and now returning, obviously a lot has changed since 2004/2005. I briefly tried to dabble in Godot about a year ago and was impressed with their website infrastructure/design (for lack of a better word). In short:

• Patreon as a donation system seems to be a good idea. I just tried to donate to AGS, for example, and got refused. I can't donate from/to my/the country. I also don't know who EMAIL_ADDRESS_REMOVED person is (I trust that it works, since it's on the website, but it doesn't come across as professional as it could.)
• A more streamlined way of proposing new features might be useful, though I'm not sure if Godot's own 2019 idea really took off?
• A centralised News page on the main website
• Positive, open-source and free marketing and explanation on the front page

I fully, 100% understand that AGS is a labour of love. I am so appreciative of all the active moderators, developers, etc I see around here. The reason I'm raising this particular topic is that I'm more than willing to help out. I'm comfortable with WordPress (I know some people don't like it, but it's easy to use for non-technical people). I'm more than willing to pay for plugins, theme, etc, to help build up the main site there. It can incorporate a more streamlined approach to certain things are mentioned above. It can link more easily to the new AGS manual, etc, etc, etc.

So in essence I'm offering my help here, if it would be desired. I would be more than happy to start doing a redesign of the AGS website. I could host it on my own server for now and then it could be transferred across if/when people are happy with it? I just don't know who to speak to!

Working well over here! (Still rocking the AGS Editor on my Mac  )

In script editor you can do Ctrl + Mouse wheel to change font size, this seem to be similar among the text editors today. The problem is that it does not sync between the script panels and does not save between the sessions.

I think for the script editor, as a wishlist thing, a colour scheme changer would be great too (so I can set it to dark mode at night).

Dark theme is already supported, download link is in the release post (under "For Editor" spoiler).

That's great - I'll take a look now. Thank you! (As always!)

Working on a 3440x1440 screen, I do agree sizes are quite small. To be honest I couldn't even find the setting to change the editor's font size. :-) I think for the script editor, as a wishlist thing, a colour scheme changer would be great too (so I can set it to dark mode at night). Not really a high priority though. 

Finished! Erg, erg, erg mooi spel!

It felt like some old-school Dynamix adventure (Herat of China / Rise of the Dragon) done the right way - with some lengthy Gabriel Knight'esque dialogues. The minimal colour palette worked very well for this game, particularly for the final ending shots at credit time. Congrats!

Dear both,

Thank you so much for this feedback. Fernewelten, you're right, I was thinking about plugins mainly. I remember using a few way back in the day and then tried to update to a newer AGS version and things went a bit... wrong. And then it quickly became a "I have no idea what I'm doing scenario".

Crimson Wizard, I tried to it this way but as soon as I set the GUI to be used for dialogs, the option to change X and Y coordinates for it (as well as the width, which I would want to set to 200 for full-screen coverage) went out the window too. Which is probably why I'll need to circle back to the module mentioned earlier.

And whilst I can always set my game to an earlier scripting version, I seem to have this compulsive desire to keep things up-to-date. I think that's based on past experiences where my work on Buccaneer 2 (we are talking back in 2004/2005 here) went out the window and I messed up a lot of stuff when trying to update to the latest version. And then I was stuck using an older version of AGS, etc etc. I really like all the work you're doing on the engine & editor and would like to keep up with the latest scripting features. Therefore, if I can avoid it, I would like to stay away from any custom coding that might complicate matters later. If that makes sense? (I do realise all of this is stemming from my own inexperience at scripting and therefore the niggling fear of messing up my game halfway-through!)

These are all great suggestions so far - thank you! I'm looking seriously at Ableton Live at the moment... I think I'll wait a bit longer, since their Mac compatibility is in the works with the new M1 processor.

In the meantime, I'll have a go at PaintCAD on my Windows PC. Looks bonkers! And Gilbert, I remember seeing you around the forums for aaaages. And I seem to have ended up on your side of the world now!

I'll take a look at Reaper next...

Hope this doesn't sound like the personal blog of Mr. Poststoomuch. 

I'm enjoying your mini-reviews, so keep posting them! They help me decide what to play next.

Me too! Though first on my list is Breakfast on Trappist-1. As a Dutchie I feel I should be playing some Belgium-related game first.

Thanks for your response! I have looked at it in the past, my only concern is that modules can get a bit messy at times when AGS updates. So I don't really want to depend on a module to then run into potential compatibility issues later on and have no ideas how to fix it.

I'll give it a go though if there's no easy way to do it without. Even this module does a lot more than what I'm looking for perhaps? Thanks!

Wow!!

Just gave this a go and it's working really, really well. My game's playable from start to finish in Safari (on a Mac). Sound effects + music all play.

There are two occasions where I use ScreenShake(5) in my game. And whilst it works perfectly well, it temporarily halts all music whilst the effect is running.

My guess is AGS has a rather peculiar way of doing this effect, since ScummVM completely ignores it instead. 

But again, wow!!

Quick one... I know I've got the option to build a custom GUI interface (which requires advanced scripting and scares me a little bit!). However what I just want is to put a sprite behind my dialog options, that's all. I like the default option which puts all dialog choices at the bottom of the screen, but I would like to change the text colours + use a full-width sprite behind it.

Is there a way to achieve this without programming a full custom GUI?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks for responding! Paid software is OK, I'm in a luxurious situation where I can afford to spend some money on this. I've looked at Cubase and it would definitely be a step up. I finished my first few compositions in GarageBand at this point. And whilst not ideal, it was... OK.

Would you say for some "easy" composing to start with things that Cubase Elements would be enough? I'm a bit hesitant to spend 300-500 euro on a piece of software straight away. I would potentially want to load some VSTs into it at some point... some good orchestral VSTs. Affordable ones. Which seems to be rather tricky to find!

I was wondering if it's possible to delete a game from the AGS Database? I added "The Strange Day" nearly 20 years ago. Since then I've lost the source code, the compiled code, the... everything. There's a blank page there with no useful information. I tried to remove myself as the Owner, but it needs one person attached to it. Am I being a bit obtuse or is there no "Delete" button on the page?

Any help would be most appreciated - thank you!

With the latest news that development is going to speed up - good luck on the final hurdles. I've been following this game for a while now, super excited about this one!! Best of luck!