Messages

In Firefox 11 the last line of the Showcase and AGS awards text is sometimes cropped. Not all the game screenshots are showing up for me. Apprentice II and Journey down both have no screenshot.

The cropping should now be sorted. Unfortunately there's no easy way of putting the ellipses text cut-off at the right place on multi-line text, so it looks a bit of a mess now. If anyone knows a way to improve this let me know.

As for the screenshots, some of them are broken but it's up to the game authors to fix them, we don't host the screenshot images. I guess this is more prominent now that the new website makes a bigger deal of showing game screenies...

Also, I see the boxed-number characters in place of apostrophes, which has been mentioned before. I don't know if it's quotable but...

Ok, fixed Apprentice. Let me know if the apostrophe problem is anywhere else.

Finally, after 2 years of discussion, the new website has launched!

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk

Sorry it's taken so long, and thanks to everyone for your help designing and testing the new site.

In the process, I've finally cleaned up the domain names -- previously both adventuregamestudio.co.uk and bigbluecup.com were pointing to the same server but only bigbluecup.com would recognise forum logins.
Now, I've changed it so adventuregamestudio.co.uk is the official domain and bigbluecup.com just redirects to it. Hopefully this should simplify everything (also also help the google ranking of the games pages, as their ranking was divided amongst two domains before).

Let me know what you think!

Thanks for doing the upgrade, AGA!

Yep the text centring needs to be fixed, also the "AGS Forums >> AGS Development >> Bug Reports" bit is no longer clickable, you used to be able to click one of the bits to take you to that part of the forum.

Other than that, looking good -- nice job!

Ok, I've moved the new website off the /Newsite URL and onto the main URL.

For now both websites are running in parallel. Can you guys please test this:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Home.aspx
and make sure it's all working properly. Once we're happy, I can change the default page so that the main www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk and www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk pages point to the new site instead.

These still have issues:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx/Detail/1436/3
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx/Detail/822/Emma_Rode
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx/Detail/1417/Gear_BladeDX
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx/Detail/724/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Fountain_of_Youth_DEMO
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx/Detail/257/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Fountain_of_Youth_ROLLING_DEMO
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx/Detail/1515/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Passage_of_Saints
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx/Detail/1121/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Temple_of_Spheres

These now look ok to me, if there's anything wrong that I haven't spotted please let me know what it is.

Not sure what's going on with the credits for http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx/Detail/1303/Eternally_Us... Calin seems to be listed twice and it says he's worked on 16 games, listing each twice.

He had been entered twice, I've now corrected it.

The whole rearranging would also be a great time to remove "wrong links". My game page lists me as author for two games I did not make, but the usernames also have "ghost" in them*. I bet there are more cases.

This shouldn't happen on the new site, as it only matches based on forum names and doesn't do the substring search that the old site does.

I agree that a facebook "like" button would be good on the Games Detail pages, is it easy to add one?

I've uploaded an update of the new site; you should now see a link to edit your game when viewing a game that is yours. Can you guys test this and check that this message only appears for your own games?

Ok I've made some updates, hopefully most of the character encoding issues should be fixed so let me know of any that are still there.

I've also changed the red colour for team member comments to a more subtle purple and added a link to Add Your Game.

Thanks for the feedback!

When I click the whats new in 3.2.1 link it takes the viewer to the forum where alot of technical info is. To some this is great but to the average joe (who may never have come across AGS) this may seem a little confusing. Could there not just be a list of the upgrades or limitations of the version.

Possibly, but I'm not sure that someone who's never come across AGS would be interested in what's new in the latest version -- surely they'd be more interested in the general features of the program. We could do this, but it'd be just one more thing to keep up to date.

* Dont know where to post this bit but is someone gonna get rid of A Niggas Revenge 2 ?its broken, offensive and on the first page on the list of games. An outsider who happens to be Afro American could well cause bad press here.

Looks like that wasn't even a game and was just some offensive spam, so I've deleted it.

** There is no add your game link on the games page will this be implemented (or did I miss a memo somewhere) 

Good point, it needs a link adding to that.

It might be a good idea to open the "Coming Soon" and "Hints and Tips" links in a new window/tab since they navigate away from the main page.

That might be a good idea -- but we'd probably then get some people complaining about all the popup windows the site was opening as you browse around, so I'm not sure at the moment.

it's simply confusing to have two completely different ways to list games. If you start by "browsing" (which is really searching), you may never realize that the A-Z list offers completely different features. Ideally the two list styles should be unified, so that the A-Z list appears the same as a universal search of the database, and all the features of both versions are available however you've generated the list of results.

Thinking about it now, that's a great idea and would make more sense.
However, it's certainly not something to hold up the release for -- might be neat to do that later on as a follow-up feature.

On the Picks of the Month page, 'Ben304' appears where I'm assuming it should say 'April 2012'.

good spot, that was just a mistake with the latest pick (nothing to do with the new site) but I've corrected it.

The text is obviosuly set to wrap underneath the image, but there isn't enough text to make it look like wrapping. It just looks weird, a random couple of words just hanging there.  Maybe the text could be cut off earlier so that it's guaranteed to tail off before it gets to the bottom of the image.  Further still, I wonder if you could set it so that the mini-description given in this showcase box automatically ignores any breaks between paragraphs that occur in the main game description.  So that the 'Although the...' would automatically be told to follow the full stop after 'nanobots'. If you get what I mean? :-)

thanks, I'll take a look at this!

I'm a bit of a stickler, but this image...
...has 3 screenshots. 2 screenshots are of the same game. Shouldn't all 3 either be of different games or the same game?
Maybe showcasing a commercial AGS game, a freeware AGS game and a non-adventure would work.

I don't really see the big deal here -- nobody's really going to be inspecting that image in detail, and newcomers to AGS may not recognise any of the games anyway. Still, if someone wants to do a replacement image then we can always swap it out.

1. Is there a way to not show games with broken images on the front page? It kinda ruins the look.

unfortunately at the moment there's no tracking of whether the screenshot image URL is valid or not -- this would be neat to add at some point.

2. When you click on a developer to see other games from him/her, there is no separation between games which the developer is the author of, and games in which he/she contributed to. If no separation, I'd at least put the author's games first. Also I think that the highly rated games should be put first, so that at a quick glance I'd be able to get a taste of that dev's best work.

Nice ideas, would be good to do at some point.

3. The dev team comments are colored in red. Maybe a different choice of color? The red makes it look like an error.

Yeah it does look a bit harsh. I'll take a look at it.

There's a character encoding problem here:

Hmm yeah that seems to affect the current site too ... I think the database got restored at some point and the character set was set wrong, so now half of the data is in UTF8 and half of it is in ASCII... to make matters worse it looks like the current website has been saving some strings back to the DB in HTML Entity format. I need to sit down and clean this up at some point.

Ok, I finally had some time to try and finish this off. So:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Home.aspx

the Browse Games bit and the Post Comment have been implemented, so i think the new site is now nearing a state where it could become the new official homepage.

There are still some bits missing (such as Voting on a game which sends you back to the old site) but generally it's now looking good.

any comments?
(I know the download AGS link is broken but will work when the new site moves onto the main URL)

Good work getting things organised, guys!

I'm a maybe at the moment, as I have a wedding to attend on 25th August, but I may come down and join you on 26/27th for the second half of the week!

I've just been doing some spring cleaning of the database, which would have been making it hang fairly often in the last hour.

I've stopped now, is it any better?

Ok I think I've sorted the noms page, and sent it to bicilotti.

Sorry for my absence around here ... I've just been really busy lately.

The other thing I really want to do is finish off the new website ... it's so nearly there, 95% complete and just needs the Search page and Post Comment form to be done. I hope I'll have the time to do that "soon", but is there anything else people are needing from me?

Guys, you're awesome  

I love the thought behind this, and I love how many people are participating.

And I'm sorry that in recent years I just haven't had the time that I'd like to dedicate to AGS.

Agreed, the new website needs to be launched. It's been 90%-done for about a year now, I just haven't had the time to finish it off. Money wouldn't help with that, it needs me (or somebody else) to have the time to finish coding it.

The forums have been a bit unreliable on occasion. But as far as I know, there's nothing wrong with the server. Occasionally the database gets corrupted for whatever reason, and I have to log in and run a repair operation on it, then the forums start working again.

This isn't due to lack of money or a cheap server, it's just due to me not being available to react immediately when the database goes down -- the same would happen if we had a 32-core multi-xeon-terahertz machine.

So actually I think what we need is people, not cash. For example, I should appoint a deputy with full server access who can go in and fix it when it breaks. But it needs to be somebody who is very familiar with the server applications and knows how it all works -- because it's so easy for somebody inexperienced to mean well but end up accidentally breaking everything.

I should also appoint a deputy to finish the new website (or open-source it). But the problem with this is that it requires a copy of the DB to be able to work on it, and I would need to spend time taking a DB backup and cleaning it up (eg. removing private data like PM's) before making it public.

So by all means, please do continue with the Bake Sale. But perhaps we can come up with another way in which the money raised could go towards buying something for the community that people would like.

yep should be fixed, sorry for any inconvenience!!

I am also home after that very long drive, and Davy & Kim have been sent on their way back to Sunderland!

It was great to see you all again and to welcome you newcomers; this year's house must be way up there in the coolness stakes for having its own bar -- shame we never could get the beer taps working!

I had a brilliant week -- see you all next year, at Mittens West Coast US!


EDIT: photos here: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/mittens2011/

Ah ok, yeah that should be no problem to pick you up

Great, so you could get Abstauber and he doesn't have to sleep at the busstation (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=42539.msg577585#msg577585)

Well, our ferry takes us straight from the UK to Rosslare, and Rosslare to Dublin is a 5 hour round-trip by car. So let's not start making any promises at this stage!!

Yes we'll be going by car, hence the spare seat available for the return trip if anyone needs it

Thanks for organising all this, Disco!

Me, AGA, Jake, Davy+Kim are currently planning on booking a ferry and driving across from the UK. We're all planning on doing the two nights in Dublin afterwards and going home on the Sunday.

AGA is not coming back with us on the ferry, so we'll have a spare place coming back to the UK if that's helpful for anyone?

I think it would be a shame to move away from anti aliased fonts when it's so close to looking good.

I posted about this a little while ago. Perhaps the solution would be a 2px outline (or 16 black versions?). If their was an option to render the original colour twice on top of a 2px outline (like strong AA in Photoshop) I can imagine that making it much more readable.

I tried to mock up an example in Photoshop, but even with 'Crisp' AA it was far bolder with 8x outlines. 4x outlines looked similar. I also tried 5x which had one of the outlines offset by 2px and rendered the original colour text twice.

Now that the engine source code is released, somebody can have a play around with this and see if they can get it looking good. Then we can build that into the next version of AGS.

Oh. It's just that the "Download AGS" page still links to the 3.1.2 SP1 release, so I assumed that the new one was still in some "shakedown" state, or something.

What "Download AGS" page are you looking at? The one on the website was updated on 17 April to link to 3.2.1 and looks correct to me.

Some people seem to be under the impression that you can just take Java or C# and magically build anything around it.

Do you want AGS games to rely on the player having the Java Runtime or the .NET Framework installed?

What about things like automatically preserving all the variable states when you save/restore the game? That's a feature that doesn't exist in Java/C# and would mean your game would need a lot more coding to cope with saving/restoring all your variables.