Messages

[@emabolo]

@emabolo, Have you ever used Speech Center plugin?

No, but if you think it's useful to manage translations I'll try it. Thanks

I think switching to a token based dialog in the current editor will be confusing, in IDEs that have support for this you usually can edit the text of the token directly where it's used

In my idea this should be an option, I wasn't thinking about switching to tokens by default. Also, I think this is an option that should be used when the game is complete or almost complete.

I can think of another advantage: imagine your game doesn't have translations, it's in English only, but you want to send all the text to a professional proofreader. In "hardcoded mode", when you receive the corrections, you will have to copy and paste everything, line by line, into the code. Argh. While if you activate the "tokens mode", it's just a matter of copying the file to the game folder. Much easier.

In theory you can already do that, except you have to do everything by hand and there will be "default language" selection in the engine and setup which should not be chosen by player.
Or script translation system that works similar to described alternative (I think some people already did this in their AGS games)

Right, in fact, more or less it's all already supported. It's more a utility to make the transition from hardcoded to external translation easier. And once you have migrated, AGS should just avoid running the game with placeholders instead of real text.

Probably it's not a high priority, but talking about the translations, have you ever thought about a feature like "Move Default Language to Translation File"?
This action will move all the strings of the game from the code to a file such as English.trs, replacing the text with placeholders. Placeholders could use a few words of the text (just to make it more readable), followed by a random number to make them unique (something like "%HIMARYHOWAREYOU-157563%", or maybe something smarter I don't know).

In English.trs you will have 2 lines, the first one is the placeholder:

Code: ags

%HIMARYHOWAREYOU-157563%
Hi Mary, how are you?

The other languages will be the same, but when you create a new translation, instead of 2 lines for each text, the system could generate 3:

Code: ags

%HIMARYHOWAREYOU-157563%
// Hi Mary, how are you?

The second row is the full text, as a reference for the translator, but commented. I guess the compiler will remove first the comments, so it will end always with 2 lines.

This way, when you want to change the main language text, you just change the trs and you don't need to adjust the other languages, which is a pain now.

When you add a new text, eg. Say("Whatever"), you can just add it to the code, as always, this won't break the game. The engine will detect if it's a placeholder or not, and if it's not a placeholder it will show the hardcoded text. But when you do an "Update", the string will be moved to the translation file.


Maybe it's a crazy idea, but I thought it was worth suggesting it.

Ok, thank you!
Probably I tested IsTranslationAvailable too quickly, but I was sure about Game.TranslationFilename.
I'll wait for the next release. Thanks!

The last one available, 3.5.1.7

[Game.TranslationFilename]

Hello
Not sure if this is a bug or if I did something wrong, so I post it here.

I did this in my game and it works

Code: ags

Game.ChangeTranslation("Portuguese");

it changes the game to Portuguese, which is not the default language.
But strangely, this does not work

Code: ags

labelLang.Text = String.Format("Lingua: %s", Game.TranslationFilename);

Basically, Game.TranslationFilename is empty, despite the game is using a translation. I also checked IsTranslationAvailable () and it is false.
What could be the problem?

But if you really must do this, the latest version of AGS (3.5.1) provides direct means to access user config regardless of its location using new tag $CONFIGFILE$.

Fantastic! Exactly what I wanted. Thanks a lot!

Hello
I read in the documentation that the engine supports three configuration files, read in the following order:

1) Default config file
2) Current user's global config file
3) Current user's game config file

Is it possible to know what is the file that the game has read? In other words, I'd like to know if the game is using the default config or the user game config. Something more advanced than just testing if "%USERPROFILE%/Saved Games/GAMENAME/acsetup.cfg" exists, since this changes between Mac, Windows, and Linux.

The idea is to avoid asking for some preferences (for example translation) if the user has already chosen it and saved it in the game config.

Thanks!

Now I get it. The point is you cannot place statements outside functions, I guess because AGS doesn't know when to run them. It totally makes sense. Declaration of variables is ok, but not an assignment.
In fact, it's not true that you can assign basic types, also something like "variable = 1;" doesn't work.

Thanks!

I'm trying to understand AGS scripting language a bit better, and I'm following this guide: https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/ScriptKeywords.html

I declared this struct in GlobalScript.ash:

Code: ags

struct Weapon {
  int damage;
  int price;
  String name;
};

and then I added these lines to the room1.asc

Code: ags

Weapon sword;
sword.damage = 10;
sword.price = 50;
sword.name = "Fine sword";

But I receive a Parse error "unexpected 'sword'".

Can you tell me what's wrong with the code? The initial version was different, but then I decided to copy and paste from the guide, to see what happens, but it doesn't work.
Thaks!

In the shown example there are three screenshots.  There are navigation arrows on the screenshot (swipable on mobile), and picker buttons at the bottom of the image to select individual screenshots.  They also rotate automatically every few seconds.  If you don't see any of that functionality, perhaps you have scripts disabled on that page?

You are right, sorry I didn't notice there was a slideshow. It's very nice like this. I would add some thumbnails below the main screenshot so you can click on them to show the bigger version. Also, in the desktop version I would prefer to see the majority of the space dedicated to the images, not to the list of details (like 2/3 on the images, 1/3 on the details, now I think it's the opposite).

Great job with the mockups! Below my feedbacks:

1) How to browse games? I don't see any games browsing section. As someone that has discovered first the AGS games, and later AGS, I really think that this part is very important. Right now it's not easy to browse the games database, so I think this is the perfect chance to redo this part. Users should be able to order the games by Popular, Top sellers, Top Rated, Most Recent, Most commented, or search by tags
2) On the games detail page, I think one screenshot is not enough. The pages should be more visual. A big screenshot/video and a screenshots slideshow would be nice (ie. humblebundle: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/borderlands-3-ultimate-edition)
3) Typography: there is a mix of open sans fonts (Nunito+Open Sans), personally I would avoid two fonts that are so similar. For what is worth, my suggestion is to use a font, at least for the titles, more similar to the traditional logo of Adventure Game Studio website. Raleway is perfect:  https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Raleway?preview.text=Adventure%20Game%20Studio&preview.text_type=custom#standard-styles. You can use Raleway Black for the titles and Raleway Light for the text

Ok, I guess for now I'll have to stick to the Windows 10 magnifier

But the size of things, it may be possible or change the DPI config on Windows properties. In wine I know there's a way (I use it) but I don't remember on Windows.

Or maybe an automatic scaling?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/forms/autoscale?view=netdesktop-5.0

I'm sure you already noticed it but with a 3840x2160 screen resolution, the font of the AGS editor is very very small. Luckily, it's possible to increase font size in the script editor but it's not possible to change/increase font size in the room editor, character editor, properties, and all the rest of the program. I don't if this has been already planned (or maybe it's possible and I don't know?). I searched the forum but I didn't find any discussion regarding the editor font.
Is there any plan for this?
Thanks

As a side note, if you use itch.io's butler (the command line software to push builds), you can add the flag --fix-permissions (both for max and linux) so you don't have to do that manually.

I didn't know about the butler. I'm definitely going to use itl! Thank you!

I imagine things downloaded from the internet after Catalina gets tagged as insecure by the OS, so I it would require both code signing and notarization to run. But the SO answers says a bunch of different things: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64842819/cant-run-app-because-of-permission-in-big-sur/64895860#64895860

So apparently it was a problem of permissions. I solved it with

Code: ags

 chmod -R 755 NameofGame.app 

After that, I was able to launch the game, after the usual warning about insecure source.
thanks!

Hello! I used the AGS Mac Wrapper 3.5. I added all the files of my game into the Resources folder, I also renamed the app and changed the icon. The game worked perfectly. Then I zipped it and send it to my friend but he could not open the app, he saw an error message "you don't have permission to open this app". I tried to download the zip and this happened to me too. I also tried the usual Ctrl+Click to open it, but it's the same. There is no way to launch the game if it's downloaded.
Do you know if it's possible to fix this? Thanks a lot!

Good game, my son loves Bake Off
Can you send me the english.trs file? I  would like to translate it into Portuguese and Danish, so my son can play it and use it as a learning tool. 

Thank you! It's definitely a game for kids. Sure, how do I send it to you?

PS - I spotted a missed translated text: when you get the cake dough to take it to the oven, the mouse over still displayed the Italian text.

Interesting, that must a bug, I can see in the translation file:

Code: ags

Impasto pronto da cuocere
Ready-to-cook dough

This was the text right?

I played and finished the game with 1270 points. Does that mean I've missed something?

To be honest, I don't remember what is the max points achievable  I might need to change all the values so that you reach some nice amount like 2000 or something. However, there is a sort of easter egg, an action that is not required to complete the game but it just gives you some points.

Spoiler

Not really a spoiler, but I can tell you that If you still have the recipe in the inventory at the end of the game, you didn't get all the points

[close]

This was fun, even if I'm not familiar with the tv show. I guess it will be even better for those who watch it. The alien was very funny, and now I want cake...

Thanks a lot! Yes, for sure if you know the show, you can appreciate some more details, but the game should be ok for all. Btw, as I said, the recipe is real, you can try to make it

Oh, and thank you for the comment on the games DB.