Topics

Maybe i shouldn't complain. but snow/rain plugin doesn't work with ags 2.56!

Rain is essential component of some rooms in my game so i think i won't ugrade my game to new ags.

is plugin modification and recompiling stopped or will creators rewrite them for newer versions of AGS?

1. What's the priorities in advancing AGS? I mean, what comes next? There's many suggestions and you're telling that most things won't be added yet. What are the most important things you want to add right now or are working with, CJ?

2. Is AGS Demo game project now stopped forever,
or is it just waiting for volunteers to make it even better?

3. I imagine that it's very difficult to do, but will AGS ever see *crossfading* room-change style?

Okay, I think these questions ain't worth their place in this forum. But still, crossfading sounds good to me.

1. Interaction editor

I wanted to make AGS to display text for every inventory item when used on character.
It looked like this:

Use item on charecter
 Conditional - If inventory item was used (number)
   Run Script
 ....

For 30 inv items i have to search for this "Conditional - If ..." condition 30 times from interaction list!
And the list is long. And a bit messy.

So here it is --
All the interactions could be selectable with mouse,
maybe even multiple (more than 1) with dragging,
and then copyable when -- lets say, when shift key is held and mouse is dragged, so i could copy this condition and just change the inventory item number from its properties. This goes with other interactions too. So I -- for example -- could drag(copy) same Run-Script interaction for different events, like:
(a long example here  )

I have Run-Script command with proper script, that says Roger to play some animation or display some speech when he's being "Interacted".

I just copy-drag same Run-Script (with its contents, of course) to event when he's being "Looked At", without
need to make new Run-Script interaction under "Look at character" event and copying all the script text from previous one there. Makes things alot easier, right?

I hope i made myself clear, english isn't my mother language. Anyway, it's just a suggestion. We can manipulate sprites and script text using clipboard. Why not Interactions?

2. Mask editor

Although mask editor seems to be left with no special attention, It's maybe most important thing about AGS.

The tools there are very basic. Too basic.
Circle? Rectangle? Multiple Undo levels? Selector tool plus area's-copy & paste? Someone already asked for that.
I think a bit helpful could be ability to do really STRAIGHT line. Like holding down some key when dragging. (example: MS Paint -- shift key for straight line in 8 directions).

Of course, mask can be made outside AGS. But this goes for simpler backgrounds, mostly made with painting programs. It's not the quality thing but color count! Let me explain.

Bckgrnds with HIGH different color count such as photos
and 3D-rendered pics have *many* colors. Antialiasing makes often things even worse. Easiest way to reduce color count -- to make 256-color mask file -- is to lower color levels. Colors with similar contrast (or hue? Don't know right word for that) will be set into same single color. But it can't be always done, no matter how good paint program is. For example dark red and dark gray are considered both as as black. If I rise levels enough to separate them, other things are affected too, so i have to make few hundred clicks with "Wipe colour" tool in mask editor to get rid of other walk-behinds, which were caused by high level color separation.

I thought that it could be cool to see all my sounds and music in AGS, separated into slots and folders like sprites or in a list with *descriptions*, like dialog topics.

sound99.wav doesn't say much. If I really had 99 sounds, I bet I couldn't remeber any of them. This is where my idea could be useful.

Same thing about music.

And maybe in this... lets call it "sound resources" thing were basic play/stop buttons so developers could listen to their sound resources right at the time when making the game.

I know that this is lots of work and could be major improvement, so -- this is an idea far away from reality, but how about it?

You can just rememeber this until you run out of  ideas, Chris. (Although I don't believe THAT could ever happen  )

Hm. Maybe it's a stupid question, but as I understood, MP3-player isn't excactly part of AGS, so it has its own copyright rules and terms. But module music, like XM, S3M and MOD? Are they played also by this MP3 player module or is their player an AGS's freeware part? And what about MIDI?

Okay, this is my first attempt to do something really GOOD.

1. Just click on the link to check it out.
(Link's safe, no banners, big images nor popups.)

http://www.hot.ee/adreamwalker

2. Write some opinions here and tell me how do you like it.

I didn' write anything about game HERE, because my site is completely about that game and doing one thing twice sounds stupid.
At the moment, page has 5 screenshots. I'll add more as soon as I decide whether do I keep them in game or not.

10. Jun 2003
Now the final story is set and some more rooms have been added. I'll update webpage as soon I can.

1) I had a big problem because S3M didn't play with windows version of AGS. Now It's fixed by converting my songs into XM-format. But before I did that, all my
songs were in MP3 format. And there's the thing --
With MP3-s game size was 12 MB, now -- with XM instead, it should be much smaller after compiling and rebuilding VOX --  but It's not!  

I checked that and found out that music.vox-file is still there. I deleted it manually, everything seems to be fine now. It's not much of a bug, but useful to know.

2) I know It's not right place to ask it, but where is?
-- I REALLY want to put my game up there as soon It's ready. Problem is that it's going to be a big one. About 20-30 MB I think. What are the ways to make my game smaller? I'm using as small sprites as possible and background gfx in PCX-format. Is that right? Does this site have any maximum size for games show here?
I guess not, as far there's only links up there, but I ask that to be sure!   This site needs *complete* FAQ, I think.  

3) And final question - Game Announcements forum - are games listed there all also up on agsforums.com games download section, or is this just another way to show your game?

1) First, silly one.
Is there any way to make a Dialog Editor better so it's GRAPHICAL and lot easier to use.
Dialogs are like algorithms so they can be shown
in schematic view.  Like schematic view in 3ds max, for example.

So making them graphical makes dialog scripting 90% easier, users can track all their option-on/off commands and everything. This will become extremely handy when having long dialogs.

2) Second, not so bad one
Another thing what could be improved is to add some commands for GlobalInts into dialog scripts, too.
Run-Script command can do that, but switching between two scripts makes things messy.

3) Third. USeful for lazy people. Like me.
When creating new dialog options (like things to be said), those @int things will be automatically added into script. Why cant there automatically be the option to be selected text as remarks? Something like if
i create first dialog option with text "Um, Hi"
then into script automatically goes line
@1  // "Um, Hi"

How about that?

Made a new GUI for game settings.
Added a slider and modified the slider spinner image, putting 8x8 sprite there.

In script, slider should change SetMusicMasterVolume (at the moment when "return" button (also on this gui)) is pressed (just before InterfaceOff command), and set the volume according to slider value.

But in game, moving slider just crashes the game and returns to  Windows.



No error messages nor anything else like that is displayed and game compiles normally.
What's wrong? (Ags 2.55)  

Am I really stupid to have some script misktake somewhere or does anyone else met same problem?

Ok, I at least HOPE that someone actually READ what I'm tying to say . There's some things CJ could improve in future releases of this magnificent engine.

* Better GUI management -- I just made a new GUI
for my half-3D adventure (which will soon give a good competition to all others uploaded here) and when
I tried to make a new GUI button, my finger slipped
on mouse button, released it, and now i have 3x30!
size button on my gui. Too bad I can't select it, so
resizing or deleting is impossible. Think it's just too small for AGS to be selectable. Good that we can erase GUIs now, at last.

* Less confusion with relative sizes when creating GUIs and rooms. Why couldn't everything be in it's ACTUAL size? It can't be THAT hard to achive. but 320x240 instead of 640x480 makes things really messy.

* This is more a question than suggestion --
ok, maybe not now, but in future - will AGS ever
have option to place/render LIGHTS? and SHADOWS?
Y'know, Pain(t) Shop Pro can do that. Why not AGS?
It could be soooooo nice to have some shadows under my characters. And light relative shadows -- this could be even nicer. I think i spotted a word about shadow plugin somewhere here -- am i wrong or there actually
IS that thing? I couldn't find this from plugins page, though.

* Bug? S3M files just don't get along with AGS-s Windows engine. What's wrong? I've heard messed up channels, instruments that even aren't in the song and other stuff like this. Usually, songs won't play at all! Just some quiet ticking is all i can hear.  

Anyway, AGS is unbeatable leader of adventure game
designing world, so me and (thousands other people)
will always admire Chris's work and hope it'll be free forever.