Messages

And then they say AGS is a clunky, dead engine. Off to GOG!

EDIT: bought it yesterday night, but the download took 30 minutes, then I had to go to bed. www.myfascinatinglife.com Long things short : I'm dying to play it but I'll have to wait tonight.

It's a long shot, but... Could it be Abe's Odyssey? (not really 3D but still 3D)

[Not MonoAGS' fault, though. I still think it has great potential.]

For the record I've completely given up on this. I lost steam while writing Readers in C# for .xml files for rooms, characters, objects, etc.
Not MonoAGS' fault, though. I still think it has great potential. Just not mature enough for the use I want to make of it. If some sort of easy resources loader appeared, mirroring AGS' game.agf file (with sections split into several files) I'd give it another try.

your pull request does not compile (yet)

Weird. I made sure I never committed without compiling and testing first.
How do pull requests work? Do you see the state of the code at the time I did the pull request, or do you see the current state of the cloned respository and the branch it contains?

Legacy bugs bad.
Stability good.

thanks CW!

I also disagree pretty vehemently that Photoshop looks best. It's better than the GIMP, but it's still afflicted with dithering pretty much covering the entire image â€" and what's worse, single-pixel dithering. Pixelator has a much more pleasant look to my eyes, though it feels a tad too soft.

You guys should REALLY try the PS plugins I keep mentionning : XiMagic Denoiser and XiMagic Quantizer. They are a-ma-zing.

The Original and the one I edited:

Spoiler

[close]

I need to check again if it was indeed to 128 colours, because I added some adjusts and things after I indeed it and I didn't check it again.

So you started from the hi-res MI2 background and downscaled it?
It's hard to compare them as you've pasted both "before" (hi-res) and "after" (low-res) at the same resolution. And it's too small to see if the noise reduction or color reduction were positive.
...Or did I misunderstand what you posted and are you asking if your downscaling produced better results than Lucasarts' downscaling? Are the two images that you posted side to side the result of Lucasarts' downscaling (as seen in MI2) and your own downscaling from the hi-res image?

The issue is that you posted a JPEG image instead of a PNG image si you ruined all your pixel work.

It would take some doing and an enormous game to break the barrier

It depends if you design your game in an old-school manner or in a "modern" way. Nowadays, many animations are automatically generated (for example, imagine some rain falling, or the flickering surface of a lake -- generated using After Effects or Blender for example). If each animation has like 100 frames , then the total number can grow pretty fast.

on one of those gaming stores.

What gaming stores?

- should the game installer also install DirectX? This specific store has a redistributable option where I can just select it. It didn't seem to hurt.

Indeed I'd say it doesn't hurt, unless their detection is weak and they offer the player to install it even when it's already installed. Then it might confuse the non-tech-savvy players hwo have no idea what's a redistributable.
That said, in 2018, what gaming/home computer doesn't have at least DX9 installed?

- which folder should contain the savegames on Win/Linux/MacOS ?

AGS uses environment variable SAVEGAMEDIR, and lets the OS transform it into its native environment variable. If I recall correctly, on Windows later than Vista it's something like /Users/YOURNAME/AppData/Local/Adventure Games Studio/YOURGAME/...  but it might change depending on the version of windows or the language.
On Linux I don't know what env variable that would be.

I need to watch them so they can be synced accross computers.

What do you mean "I need to watch them". Who needs to watch them? Do you have a daemon that uploads saved games to the cloud? Or do you rely on the app store's daemon?

I went through the exchange and I see no version of anyone's smiling expression being used at any point, so I am not sure what you are referring to.

Spoiler

This :

*giggle giggle*

[close]

The game is great. Seriously. But if there's ever a version 1.1, I'd recommend changing the facial expression of the two characters in the opening sequence (the one where you pick your character and the exorcist holds you at gun point with a staff). At the moment it looks like they're both smiling and having a good laugh. the game is supposed to be dark and start right in the action, but it totally ruins the tension for me. All I'm thinking is : "what are laughing at?"

[AGS like a pro]

Hello,

In the same spirit as "AGS commercial boot camp" or other threads, here is the "AGS like a pro" video series.

You can find it here on Youtube : Playlist

First episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6WXIduwU0Q&list=PL773FMqtyjdtU5YxSY62nUKNmW3wShEvH

Full playlist :
01 intro
02 online storage
03 conflicts
04 git
05 git 2
06 git 3

What took me a very long time to understand : this has to be an ability of the sound card. It depends on the hardware. Some cards are technically able to "loop" their output into a so-called picrophone channel. Some aren't. Usually, the cards that can't do that are the built-in audio chipsets of notebooks and such.
Sometimes it's possible but the option is buried in the manufacturer's custom audio settings utility or popup window.

Anyways, if the sound card can do it, you should see that "alternative" sound source appear in the options and you should be able to select it.

Necroposting to add some new info :

If (like us) your AGS project contains subprojects, then you can make .gitignore ignore the exact path and apply the filters recursively by using the "**" syntax :

/**/Compiled/**
/**/_Debug/**
/**/backup_acsprset.spr
/**/Game.agf.bak

Back some years ago I wrote a module that would add automated text parser functionality to existing point and click games, though that was way back before version 3 and I don't know if it's still available on the web anymore (Though I still have the zip files if you want them).

Hi! Thanks again for sending your module. I've been testing it: It's a nice replacement to a plain parser but in terms of functionality it doesn't add much to a regular parser, and it doesn't address the requirements that we expressed. That doesn't make it a good candidate. Thanks anyways for your willingness to let us have a look at it.

EDIT: (that's frustrating, lately I find the solution to my problems the exact second after I post and it's too late to take it back)
Solved: array inventory does not exist until you create at least one inventory item in the editor.

Spoiler

Um, that's embarrassing for me: how do you do inventory[id] in the latest AGS? I can't find array inventory anywhere. I tried the help, I tried player.inventory, game.inventory...

[close]

EDIT: my bad. It's caused by right-to-left resolution of parameters. There's absolutely no bug here.

Spoiler

You can reproduce this bug like this :

(in AGS 3.4.1.14 aka 3.4.1 Patch 2)
1) Create a module
2) Create code as follows :

Code: ags

int val = 0;
int GetValue(String name) 
{ 
    val++;
    Display("value returned for %s is : %d", name, val-1); 
    return val-1; 
}
void PassParams(int a, int b) 
{
    Display("a=%d, b=%d", a, b);
}

void repeatedly_execute()
{
   PassParams(GetValue("a"), GetValue("b"));
} 

This produces following result on-screen :

Code: ags

Value returned for a is : 1 //EDIT : In my own code I didn't add the "for a" and "for b" bits. that made me realize that everything works as expected.
Value returned for b is : 0
a=1, b=0

a and b are reverted!

I suspect (total shot in the dark) it's caused by the way symbols are managed in the list of function parameters. There are two parameters called "GetValue" (same name) so, regardless of their individual value computation, maybe they're stored in an unordered fashion that causes AGS to fail restituting the computed values in the correct parameter slots?

[close]

CW did you see that?

Well it says that you can use any previous asset so it's hard to "cheat" with such a permissive rule

[text-based adventure module]

Scripting challenge : text-based adventure module

Hello adventure lovers! This project is still alive and kicking, and needs you more than ever to be finished in record time!
In the past we've noticed that scripting attracts more contributors than graphists or musician. So here goes our noew scripting challenge.

General idea of this module :
- Start from the Tumbleweed game template. The actions used in your script must be the 9 verb actions of that module.
- Whenever you enter a room, after fade-in a GUI appears on top of the room (the GUI takes the whole screen).
- This GUI contains some sort of console (a listbox, really) that is used to display text.
- This GUI scans the hotspots, objects and characters of the room. It lists them in the console. It also somehow lists the exits (it's OK if that bit is hard-coded for every room)
- There's a textbox in the GUI that lets you type one of the 9 verbs (take, look, push, pull, open, close, use, talk, give) followed by what object or hotspot or character you want to interact with. Example: TAKE CUP
- When you type the command, the action is executed. However you have to imagine that you can only run the interaction command as if the player had clicked on the object. And you have to imagine that the corresponsding function has already been scripted, with potentially some "player.walk to" in it -- i.e. some blocking or asynchronous instructions that do not go well with the sequential nature of your console. How will you handle the  "walk to"? You can decide to let the regular walk happen behind the scene, or decide to force-skip it, I don't mind as long as it doesn't crash the module.

BONUS :
Extra points if you:
- make the whole thing a git repository and post the URL
- Handle the complete absence of walkable areas in the room (that's right: we might already have scripted the "walk to", but not drawn the walkable areas yet)
- Handle dialogs with other characters (they don't have to appear in the console as long that they can be read by the player on top of your custom GUI)
- Handle cutscenes

It doesn't have to look pretty, it's only a tool for super quick prototyping.

Scripting guidelines :
- No global variables scattered accross the code please (gui names, font names, import/exports, etc.). Please set local variables up in game_start and then use those only.
- use struct as much as possible (an exception will be made for "global" variables used only in the body of the module).

Suggestions:
- Font : I suggest using the Tiny font from the Tumbleweed module to pack more text.
- Console : You can ind out-of-the box text wrapping algorithms somehwere in these forums. Alternatively you can steal the biggest part of the AGS Console module to avoid having to rewrite all the boring utility functions for console scrolling and whatnot. Please note however that we also use that module in our game so the names could be conflicting.

So what do you say?

PS : please post it here if you've started giving it a try, so that you don't colide with someone else.

EDIT: forgot the option "export all sprites in folder"