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The limit could easily be increased to 32767 sprites, but the problem is that the AGS Engine internally uses a 16-bit int in various places when dealing with sprite numbers. So to raise it higher than that or remove it completely, would require the engine to be changed to use 32-bit ints for sprite numbers.

So basically, yes it can be done, but it's a non-trivial change.

Are there actually any Windows PC's set up to deny access to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER branch of the registry?

AGS doesn't try to write to the LOCAL_MACHINE key, and CURRENT_USER should always succeed, unless the sysadmin has gone crazy with their permission restrictions...

Sorry, this game was made with a very old version of AGS (2.62) which is no longer supported.

You could try running Winsetup and turning off the audio, this sometimes fixes crashes in 2.x versions.

This does look like some sort of .NET Framework issue.

tzachs, I don't think your patch will work, because the SEHException is happening inside the ex.ToString() call in the main exception handler, so it's AGS attempting to get the stack trace of the original exception that then causes an SEHException.

It's probably worth re-installing the latest version of .NET Frameowrk in case that is the problem.

It's been a long time, but AGS 3.2.1 is now officially released.

Changes in this version include:

* Added Find/Replace In All Files capability (Tzach Shabtay)
* Added GUI control snapping, alignment, grouping and locking to GUI editor (Steven Poulton)
* Added loop cut/copy/paste, Flip All Frames and Import From Sprite Folder options to Views in editor, to access this right-click to the right of the loop (Tzach Shabtay)
* Added RGB colour selector to the various colour properties (ProgZmax)
* Added Characters option to room editor to show all characters set to start in that room (ProgZmax)
* Added Find All Usages right-click option to script editor (Tzach Shabtay)
* Added current co-ordinates display while dragging objects/characters in room editor (Steven Poulton)
* Added syntax colouring to dialog scripts (Steven Poulton)
* Added Dialog.ShowTextParser script property (CJ)
* Upgraded to latest version of LEC template (abstauber)
* Middle mouse button now activates the "Copy co-ordinates to clipboard" option in all the room editor modes (ProgZmax)
* Fixed D3D tints not working properly (3.2 regression) (Nefasto)
* Fixed crash drawing GUIs with no background (3.2 regression) (CJ)
* Fixed crash restoring/restarting depending on state of crossfading (CJ)
* Fixed intermittent crash moving objects and using the Ctrl+A debug option (CJ)
* Fixed "crossfade buffer null attempting transition" if you restored a save game that had a different current transition type to the current game position (CJ)
* Fixed script editor tooltips getting stuck if they appeared over the tab bar at the top of the editor (Tzach Shabtay)
* Fixed editor error if you deleted a room that a character was set to start in (CJ)
* Fixed co-ordinates displayed in room editor not reflecting Low-Res Co-ordinates setting (ProgZmax)


If you're still using 3.1.2 SP1, then this release also includes the changes in 3.2 which never had a website release:

* Rewrote audio system. The old number-based sound and music are gone, replaced with new named audio clips. Added AudioClip.*, AudioChannel.*, Game.IsAudioPlaying, Game.SetAudioTypeVolume, Game.StopAudio, System.AudioChannels, System.AudioChannelCount, System.Volume, ViewFrame.LinkedAudio script commands.
* Added Game.IgnoreUserInputAfterTextTimeoutMs, Maths.Exp, Maths.Log, Maths.Log10, Maths.Cosh, Maths.Sinh, Maths.Tanh
* Added option to automatically add side borders when running 4:3 games on widescreen monitors
* The generated EXE version information is now set to your Game Name and Developer Name instead of "Adventure Game Studio" and "Chris Jones"
* Added new LEC-style template by abstauber
* Added Applies To feature to custom properties, so that you can have properties that only apply to Rooms or Characters, for example
* Added menu option to remove old Global Messages from the game, to stop them coming out in translation sources
* Added support for anti-aliased TTF fonts in all situations where they weren't previously supported.
* Added $APPDATADIR$ support to File.Open to allow you to write files to an accessible folder that is not the Save Games folder
* Added eMouseMiddleInv support to on_mouse_click
* Added editor plugin API methods IGUIController.ActivePane, IRoomController.PreSaveRoom
* Added plugin API events AGSE_PRESAVEGAME and AGSE_POSTRESTOREGAME
* Improved graphics mode detection so that the screen doesn't keep flickering when trying to start up a low-res game full screen
* Improved colour quality of mini-sprites displayed in sprite manager
* Improved the user-friendliness of some error messages, thanks to Error Reporting
* Improved editor robustness to recover if the Game.agf.user file was corrupt
* Winsetup now displays the game name in the title bar instead of "Adventure Game Studio"
* Disabled editor option to save changes whilst the game was running, since doing so  could cause sprite file corruption
* Editor property grid now displays a drop-down list instead of a text box when selecting a font or room
* Changed the pathfinder so that the character cannot get stuck if he ends up outside one of the room edges
* Removed limit on number of text parser words
* Renamed the "handle inventory clicks in script" general setting to better reflect what it does
* Removed room properties Play Music On Load, Music Volume and Save/Load Enabled since they are now obsolete
* Mouse.IsButtonDown now works with eMouseMiddle
* "Export all sprites in folder" command now exports 32-bit sprites as PNGs to prevent losing the alpha channel
* Improved error handling if you passed an int to a string argument in String.Format
* The Restart Point save file (AGSSAVE.999) is no longer deleted when you quit the game,  to fix a problem where RestartGame didn't work if you started the game by double-clicking an Enhanced Save Game file in explorer
* Disallowed accented characters like é in script names in the editor, because they wouldn't compile
* Dynamic sprite deletion warning is now only displayed on exit if Debug Mode is turned on
* Fixed sprite entry getting duplicated if you dragged a sprite to the end of the list
* Fixed crash with Hq2x and Hq3x graphics filters (3.1.2 regression)
* Fixed character/object tints and light levels in D3D not matching DX5
* Fixed TintScreen in D3D so that it looks the same as DX5
* Fixed Sierra-style speech box moving if the room was scrolled while it was displayed
* Fixed error running game and problems with save games if there were unicode characters in the folder path
* Fixed GUI controls not updating properly if the control moved under the mouse, but the mouse didn't move
* Fixed theora video being permanently muted after you played one video with muted audio
* Fixed Dynamic Sprites causing memory corruption if a mouse cursor was set to sprite 0
* Fixed Compress Sprites setting not taking effect until you next edited some sprites
* Fixed GUI AdditiveOpacity mode not working properly if you tried to have a non-alpha sprite on an alpha GUI
* Fixed light levels >100% not working with Direct3D driver
* Fixed Object.MergeIntoBackground not working with Direct3D driver
* Fixed IsKeyPressed not working with the following keys: [ ]  ; ' , . /
* Fixed struct member functions with more than 9 parameters giving run-time error
* Fixed File commands looking in the wrong directory if you launched the game by double-clicking a save game in explorer
* Fixed SetBackgroundFrame in Player Enters Screen event causing old frame to flash up briefly with D3D driver
* Fixed Make Default Language command crashing if two different source lines mapped to the same translated line
* Fixed run-time error if you returned a string from a function that was a member of a local dynamic array
* Fixed sprite cache corruption if you had a single sprite larger than 20 MB
* Fixed Room.GetDrawingSurfaceForBackground and Character.PlaceOnWalkableArea to give error message instead of crash if you called them from game_start
* Fixed GUI label text not being anti-aliased if there was a background image but the BGColor was set to 0
* Fixed editor crash creating new game if your Windows username had unicode characters in it
* Fixed Views tree collapsing after renaming or drag-dropping a view
* Fixed editor crash on startup if you made the editor window very small before closing it down last time
* Fixed editor crash if you set an object's image to -1
* Fixed character gliding if he bumped into another solid character and the character's MovementLinkedToAnimation property was false
* Fixed DynamicSprite.Rotate cropping 1 pixel off the left side when rotating an image with an odd width/height
* Fixed ShakeScreenBackground not clearing letterbox borders properly if you switched from a large to a small shake
* Fixed "Internal compiler error: table overflow" if there were a lot of imported functions/variables
* Fixed when importing an 8-bit image, if there was another palette slot in the image with the same colour as the transparent slot it got changed to black
* Fixed Game.SpriteWidth/SpriteHeight returning the size of the blue cup instead of 0 if you supplied an invalid sprite number
* Fixed script editor issue if you typed some text, switched to another tab, then came back and did Undo
* Fixed autocomplete editor crash if there was a line break inside an array indexer
* Fixed compiler crash if a dialog script just had a @ on a line on its own
* Fixed editor crash if you tried to use a non-icon file as TEMPLATE.ICO
* Fixed sprite import window crash if you right-clicked in the second stage of tiled import
* Fixed mouse cursor being drawn in dialog options in DX5 mode even when Mouse.Visible was set to false
* Fixed no line number provided when DynamicSprite.CreateFromDrawingSurface threw an error
* Fixed script editor crash if you saved the script while the final function was missing its closing brace
* Fixed the editor Preferences window only allowing you to type 5 characters in if you wanted to manually enter a path for the New Game Directory or Import Directory
* Fixed "Close all other tabs" crashing if a room editor with unsaved changes was one of the other tabs
* Fixed changing a walk-behind baseline not marking the room as modified
* Fixed editor crash XmlException: An error occurred while parsing EntityName.
* Fixed compilation errors if you named a character with only numeric digits, eg "c500"


http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/AGS-3.2.1.exe

(if you were using the betas, this is the same release as 3.2.1 Final 3).

If no major issues are reported in the next week or so, I'll create the RAR release and update the website.

We'd need to see more of your code to understand the problem. Is "fondo" definitely still playing at the time? If it's a music channel (where only 1 simultaneous audioclip is allowed) then the new one would end up on the same channel as the old one.


If you haven't solved this please post a separate thread about it, I don't think this is related to the 3.2.1 release.
Speaking of which, I'm now going to make it an official release so this thread is closed.

Does Form.ActiveForm not work for this?

There's no technical reason for "Game.agf", it's just that at the time there was no particular reason to have a game-specific name either.

However now that the Recent Documents list has become more obvious in Windows 7 due to the way it's displayed, it probably is worth changing this. Note that any change would need to take account of characters like \ and / in the game name which are not legal filename characters. Also the old .AGF file would need to be deleted when the one with the new name was created.

This would go hand-in-hand with an option to specify the game EXE name in the Global Settings, this could then control the name of both the AGF and the EXE.

Also, if CJ reads this, could I maybe get check-in rights to the repository?

Yes, though first we need to agree a process whereby changes can be proposed and accepted/rejected before people start randomly checking things in when they feel like it.

Was this problem solved? It seems Vsync still works under DirectDraw only.

No, not yet. It's not a complex change, just needs Winsetup to be updated to have a Vsync checkbox when running in D3D mode. Probably should be done for hte next version.

Tiled sprite import is still quite a hassle. Or let's be honest, disgrace. Importing tiled sprites required loads and loads of trial and error, because AGS acts very unfriendly and every misclick is punished by forcing you to start over.

This sounds like a nice idea, but can we keep it to a separate thread please, and concentrate this thread on the 3.2.1 release?

That's what I meant. I don't want programs that install in the registry. Icafes restrict installation because of the flagging of setup programs. So it's kind of a pain if that happens. I cant even install some programs (although the recent internet cafe that i went to is non restrictive about that, I'm still concerned.)

I would suggest something similar to what open source programs do, using ini's of cfg's instead of the registry; then putting those on the users folder to avoid User Control. Eg:

Have you actually had a problem running AGS in these scenarios?
AGS only writes to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER section of the registry which does not require any special privileges. If you use the plain RAR install then you don't need to run an installer which means you can install the AGS Editor without having main registry access.

The server was upgraded to a better one on Tuesday, it seems like the e-mail system broke in the process. It should now be back up so you should start to receive notifications again over the course of today.

Weird weird bug, and I'm sure it wasn't there at the beginning...
Anyways, thanks for your report, I checked in a fix into the dev branch.

Well spotted, might be a bug I introduced while changing the way the popup worked. Thanks for fixing it!

If you change the name of any room, and then go to a character and select StartingRoom's drop down menu...it shows the names of the rooms before they were renamed.  The only way to change this is to close the program down and restart it.  It's not a big deal, but I figured I'd point it out.

Thanks, fixed in Final 3.

Final 3 is now up, which fixes the Find & Replace issue since that was quite important, and a couple of other minor things.

Now, this time hopefully if no other important issues are found this release can become official soon! There are no changes to the ACWIN engine in Final 3.

It should be the responsibility of your video card's driver to ensure that the connected TV can display 640x480 resolution (with black side borders as appropriate), I don't think this is really the responsibility of AGS.

AGS currently does a 1 pixel-wide outline, but looking at this it probably would be better if you could specify a thicker (eg. 2- or 3-pixel) outline. Something to consider for a future version.

There's a bug when you select to display a room's characters (in the Room Editor). The drop-down for the Properties pane is automatically set to the room itself (so the room's properties are displayed in the Properties pane). That's not the issue (though it would be nice to have some properties for the characters like StartingX, StartingY, Baseline, and a (readonly) Scaling property..), the issue is that the drop-down is not actually cleared. So for example, if you go from displaying the room's Objects and then go to the room's Characters, the drop-down still lists the Objects. There's no crash or anything if you change the selection, but it might be worth looking into.

Well spotted. This does need to be fixed, but it's minor enough to leave for the next version I think, I want to get this released!

3.2.1 Final 2 is now up. Please try it out, and if there are no major issues hopefully this will definitely become the formal website release!

Yes, while you're correct that technically speaking even DirectDraw 5 uses some hardware acceleration features, this property is referring to whether the main rendering loop is hardware accelerated, which is the case with D3D.

Ok thanks, glad it's solved! I'll upload 3.2.1 Final 2 now.

Strange, does it matter which game you install first?

I've heard the possibility that the file format won't be open-sourced to make it harder to decompile people's games, and I've got some questions and an idea about that.

I've already said that this is no longer an issue, I'm happy to release the full source code. I will do this once 3.2.1 has been formally released so that there is a stable code version to base the first release on.

  My point is, that i REALLY love AGS and I think I finally managed to get my head around the scripting to do it on a decent level and I think it is a fantastic platform. But the way the sprites are handled is causing massive slowdowns and I often find myself cutting down on stuff because I simply can't expect everyone who plays my games to own a very powerful pc....

  Is there no way to improve that? How is Wintermute dealing with this problem? I am no expert at these things but surely a better hardware acceleration would make everything run faster....

Is AGS significantly slower than any other engine at the same resolution with the same quantity of graphics, when running in D3D mode? I've seen occasional posts from people commenting on how slow AGS is, but is this actually a fact or are people just making assumptions?

If there is a significant performance problem then this is something that should be investigated and improved, but this has never been formally reported as a problem, as far as I know.

Hmm strange, has anyone else had a problem like this?