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Or we have access to that Gogglesearch thing I keep hearing about.

Well I always prefer when answers are hinted rather than directly googled 

So since no one is asking for tips, it means that either all of you ordered the game from day 1 and have finished it already, OR you're all really really self-disciplined, OR you're all extremely good at adventure games

the "5" turned out to be a "6".

I strongly support the appearence of such modules 

Hi all,

if you're stuck in solving the game, you can ask, I'll try to give hints without spoiling.

I'm stuck myself in the forrest

Spoiler

I'm stuck with reaching the pizza van after finding it

Spoiler

the code I enter doesn't work

Spoiler

When I enter the code found on the pizza flyer into the keypad of the electric fence, it still triggers the alarm???

[close]

[close]

[close]

So, the current problem is that -
1) AudioClips do not have any ID property whatsoever. Script-name is not really an ID in AGS, you cannot convert it to basic type and store somewhere (like in file). In fact, script-name is a name of variable that will be declared in your game's invisible built-in script header.
2) AudioClips cannot be meaningfully arranged in the strictly ordered list within editor's UI. Dragging them around folders works, but it is error-prone and easily broken, as Snarky pointed out in one of his posts above.

Yes.

[Another question]

It's really not that obscure Have a peek at the lines 300+

I'm not the one working with it now I'm being helped by an texternal programmer who is rather new to AGS.

I don't know if it's worth the effort making the module OOP

The thing is that adding a struct to contain all the functions also works indirectly as a namespace. It's much easier to check straight away what comes from which module (we have a billion of them).

Another question: why did you duplicate the enum for user modes? (instead of having eModePull, etc. you have eGAxxx, etc.)

Hm... I think it was done to be independent from mouse modes.

Good point. That's what we want, as we will offer several GUIs depending on the hardware and on the user preferences.

Users can choose if they want to handle everyting with an "otherclick" function and check for the verb there, or if they want to use the hardwired Talk/Use/Look/Interact functions.

Well, we were doing that in our own system, but using the built-in mouse modes. So...

Anyway, great to know that 7coG is on board

...And we're happy and grateful to be able to use powerful tools. 

[Could you give an accurate example of such use? A module you made, maybe?]

I'm sorry to mix two conversations (on the one hand, the overall conversation about the best practices for handling stuff in the code using numbers/pointers/arrays of those, and on the other hand the original conversation about the usefulness of setting custom sprite numbers). But I feel the urge of pushing forward the investigation on why people use custom sprite numbers :

Gilbert, you said you use special algorithms to predict the number of a sprite or a sound.
I suppose you use this to manipulate sequences of sprites or sounds, based on the number of the first one (for example, if you know that the first sprite of an animaiton is 1,000, then you can predict that the 3rd sprite is 1,002 -- but that works only if the numbers ar ein sequence). did I guess right?
Could you give an accurate example of such use? A module you made, maybe?


=========

Also, this:

I'm not a huge fan of a generic Game.AudioClips[] array (or similar for any of the other resource arrays AGS offers), though it's probably necessary given other limitations.

It's always vital to be able to iterate on every stuff in the game. This is what allows universal powerful scripts, as opposed to hand-made scripts with limited scope.

========

Also, this:

Although that's technically possible to re-add global ID to audio clips if this all is so serious... I guess AGS is just so numbers-based that it takes more effort to support name IDs properly in both script and UI.

I think that everything should have an ID. That's how it's made in professional tools, like, let's say, Sharepoint. On the one hand there's the actual pointer to manipulate stuff at execution time, but on the other hand there's always a unique numerical Guid hidden somewhere, as the unique identity of this item.
They don't have the same use : the reference or lightweight ID or even url makes the object unique at execution time. I don't mean only code execution, but also what you could call databse instantiation -- had you instantiated that database slightly differently (for example: in dev environment or in production environment, some basic settings are slightly different), then some urls would be different.
However the Guid makes it unique before the execution and even before instantiation. For example, even before databases get built, at the time the columns get defined, everything gets a unique ID.
--> And that's precisely the paradigm that we encounter in AGS : we add/delete/move items in the Editor outside of the execution time. And yet we want their identity to remain stable, to disambiguate the identities of these sprites/sounds/whatnot when required. That's what IDs are for.
One might argue that sprites do need an ID because they don't have names, but sounds do have names. Well, there is indeed a contradiction there. Snarky pointed it out in his "hold on, these are the same examples" remark. True. In the case of sounds, IDs would be exactly like names. But a name is easy to change (woops, I mistyped something). Whereas an ID should be, and remain, unique.

======

also, also : have you ntocied how this entire thread exactly addresses the issues I've raised regarding the half-baked pointers system of AGS? What is Gilbert doing, apart from working around the lack of pointers and referencing capabilities by using the lightweight and "universal" type that is int -- which he can easily reaffect, iterate on, and store into arrays?

[On a different note]

Both Usermodes are actually in use: WalkTo is Usermode2 and Open,Close,Push and Pull are Usermode1.
Could it possibly be that you are going to integrate this into 7 cities of gold?

Oooooooh, OK! That explains a lot.
I don't know if this was documented somewhere but I suggest you do, if only as comments (if i remember correctly, this module is on source control, so it shouldn't be too hard?).

Yes it will be integrated into 7coG. Our interface was rather powerful ( didn't make the original code base, but it was a good job), but I prefer your way of handling translations. And I expect that switch to make our code more maintainable (because it will mutualize the knowledge).

On a different note: what would you say if we turned the module object-oriented? How would we upload the updated version? If it's in ags git it's easy.

Another question: why did you duplicate the enum for user modes? (instead of having eModePull, etc. you have eGAxxx, etc.)

I was actually wondering: what's the point of letting people set their own ID for a sprite or object? Has that ever been used by anyone for anything? the purpose of IDs is to be unique identifiers. So as long as the engine gives away unique IDs, it's good enough. Therefore, removing the ability for the user to set his/her own IDs (i.e. removing the ability to create "holes" in their sequential generation) would remove the difficulty in managing the memory structure.

That said, if it's not possible to do that, then I'm wondering what would be the best solution.

As you said a hashmap for such a large structure is not ideal (if the data to hashmap ratio is too large, then there would be a lot of collisions, leading to an acces time of O(n). If it's too small, then lots of space would be wasted).

How is it managed in Javascript? (in that language, it works the way you described: if you have an array of size 1 and then set a cell value at position 1,000,000, it creates all the cells inbetween).

Would it actually be a big deal to have an array of size 1,000,000? The end-user already has the ability to create rather large dynamic arrays. And very few people use the ability to set the sprite's ID themselves. So yes, in a few cases there would be space wasted by the user's mishandling. But nowadays, a 1MB array of int (or pointer to object) is no big deal, is it?

Digging up thread for support :
I've imported that whole module into my own game, but the game starts with some cursor mode that I didn't have before (can't remember if it's usermode1 or usermode2).
Do these cursor modes have a special use in the module? Do I need them or can I just kick them out?

1. I told them about Dropbox, entered their email addresses on the Dropbox website

Welp, I didn't proceed like that for nay of the contributors. So I guess that's all wasted now.

OK

OK. I'll run tests.
Do you think it might help if the game's FPS is a multiple of 60PS (e.g. 30FPS)

My bad. I saw that post but didn't read through at the time, I thought it was about something proprietary

Something free and powerful added on top of something else also free and powerful. What more should you ask for?

https://godotengine.org/article/our-point-click-framework-finally-out

Sharing the news because it's interesting for every point n'click enthusiast

[Merged with previous thread. â€"Moderator]

Can you explain tintLuminance? That's a combination of "tint" and "luminance"? I tried in older AGS and the scripter had to choose between tint OR luminance. If it's now merged together, it's awesome.


Also:

- Fixed DynamicSprite.CopyTransparencyMask() was overwriting magic transparent pixels on destination with alpha values from mask.

I suppose that means we can now intersect sprites?

- Fixed using '[' special character in Display-like commands discarded all of the backslashes before it (e.g. "\\[" should now print \[ as expected).

I have edited the Wiki page on escape characters.

So in effect it acts more like a "scope".

Gilbert continues to do things with AGS that I didn't think were possibleâ€"and then he says it's easy. Maybe it is, for him, but I can't help but think if it were actually easy we'd see more quality AGS titles.

Well, I don't think the difficulty comes from AGS. I think the difficulty comes from managing a low-budget indie game project all the way to the end.
The weird thing, though, is that AGS' simplicity drags in many hobbyists. They end up believing that AGS is only, well, for hobbyists. And, since the tool is easy, then it's probably very easy too to make a long game. Which it isn't. Hence the failures. Whereas the (relative) complexity of Unity is like an entrance barrier that discourages non-serious designers.

I'm having a look. Very interesting!

I've seen in the code that it refers to "instances".
Just to be sure: at one given time of the execution of a game, how many instances are there?
- Is it sorrect to say that these "instances" have nothing to do with the potential multiple execution threads?
- Or are they precisely these execution threads?