Messages

Yes, as Gilbert says the reason this happens is because AGS automatically creates a Restart Point save game when you start the game. I suppose it would be possible to add some sort of General Setting to allow you to disable the Restart Game feature which would stop this happening, but how many game authors would actually bother to change that setting?

If you try and assign too long a string to a button's text property AGS will crash with "SetButtonText: Text too long, button has 50 chars max" error. However it looks like the actual limit is 49 characters.

Hehe well spotted, I might fix this one

You'll get something about me trying to use a renamed file in place of a valid icon.

I know you've said before it has to be an actual icon but I was being lazy. Anyway, if you create a template with an invalid ICO file the editor crashes (at least when you try to load it directly, i.e. for testing the template).

Interesting point, I suppose that is something that people might do so it probably should handle it better.

My game is on 640x480 resolution, and if I want to change the background, I can't do it properly without the following steps and all the hotspots/walkable areas/regions get delete anyway.

What do you mean exactly? Is your game set to 640x480 in General Settings but you can't import a 640x480 background?

Hmm interesting, I'll look into this.

You can't modify sprites just before they're blitted to the screen, for two reasons:

(a) AGS stores the sprite in memory. If you modified the image then that change would be permanent and would also affect the sprite the next time it was drawn
(b) In AGS's rendering loop, it no longer has knowledge of sprite numbers, therefore even if there was a hook to intercept each bitmap being drawn, you wouldn't know which sprite number it corresponded to.

A workaround might be to create an alternate copy of the sprite and then change the object/character sprite number in the AGSE_PRERENDER event to use the new copy.

Well spotted, the behaviour here doesn't match the documentation. What's actually happening is it's returning the size of Sprite 0 (the Blue Cup) since that is what will be displayed for any invalid sprites.

I'll get it fixed to return 0.

Thanks for sending, I have analysed this and it was a bug in AGS that has since been fixed. If you're not able to continue playing, you could try asking the game author to upgrade the game to AGS 3.1.2 SP1.

Have you checked the HotspotX and HotspotY properties on the Mouse Cursor to check that the cursor hotspot is set correctly?

Thanks for the tips. Obviously the AGS Editor is not supported when running on Linux, but if it works, great!

Ah, this is because the character doens't have a SpeechView. In your test game if I change the SpeechView to 1 it works.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or just something that should be clarified in the documentation for the SpeechView property. The way the engine sees it, if the character is not animating then they are not actually "speaking".

Has anyone else had any crashes like this with the beta?

Seems fine for me too. Can you try putting a breakpoint on that line to make sure that the repeatedly_execute_always is actually being called?

Sure, I've PM'd you my e-mail address

The OpenFileDialog.SafeFileName property was added in .NET 2.0 SP1 -- therefore you probably need to install the Service Pack.

Alternately SpacePaw could update the plugin to use the FileName property instead which doens't require SP1

How about some bar on the side that would be like: People who liked this game, also liked these:

Yes, this is something that's been talked about before. It would be good to add at some point.

Also a BIG 'how did you like this game, Rate it!' image jammed somewhere in the middle of the content.  The easier it is for someone to spot that they can rate games, the better (i'd even rate games more often )

That's a good idea, yeah the voting link is easy to miss on the current site.

Currently Pick of the month is in one column and show case is in another.  What if these were to span both columns.  For  "Pick of the Month" the text would appear in the left column and it's screen shot in the right column.  For "Showcase" there would  be one game in each column with both text and thumbnail.  A crappy example follows:

I like that idea -- I've changed the test page to look like this:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx

The bottom of the page could use something. A big "Lucky Dip" button with a touch of air up and down of it?

That might work well, if someone can draw an appropriate button image that would fit the look of the page!

Are we also talking about extra fields for the games DB?

Well, I see this as a two-stage process:

Stage 1 -- convert the existing functionality over to the new site. Ideally I'd like this to be ready so that the new site can launch on the AGS 10th Anniversary, which is in a month's time.

Stage 2 -- build on the new site to add new features that people have been wanting. The things you mention could be done at that point, they're all good ideas.

Though instead of having the option to show other screenshots directly on the page, I would prefer having a box pop up when you press the image for then to be able to go through the whole "gallery".

I like that idea, and your mockup looks really good. This is definitely something that could be done as part of the Stage 2 work to allow more than one screenshot.


Anyway I've updated the game detail page a bit more, the game authors bit is now completed and it now shows you other games that everyone on the team has worked on. This is different to the old site which just displays other games that have the same team name in the Author field -- I hope this way is more useful?
Example here:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx/Detail/905/A_Tale_of_Two_Kingdoms

I tried two times, and for two times it crashed, in two different ways, this is the second one:

*Attempt of reading or writing of the protected memory. Often this condition indicates that other parts of the memory are damaged.
Version: AGS 3.2.0.93

I'm on Vista, game in 32bit color, 1024x768, I imported only 1 BG and 1 OGG, the first time it crashed running the game, I edited everything again from THE start, deleting everything, and it crashed while I was editing a simple Wait (100); 

Do you also get these problems with 3.1.2 SP1 or is it only the latest beta that does it? That's a crash in the script editor which I haven't changed in 3.2, so there's no reason why there should be any new bugs there.

As far as it being changed Chris, couldn't both functions have an optional bool preserveLoop=false added to the parameter list? That would preserve backwards compatibility and provide the requested functionality for future versions...

That's a good idea, it's probably worth adding something like that to a future version. For now the workaround that you've posted should do a good job.

No, the bug I was talking about fixing was the one that Dualnames reported.

I haven't been able to reproduce your problem ... could you upload something that demonstrates the problem?

- The header takes a lot of real state. It should be a little snuggier I would think, especially if all pages are going to have the same header. This is less design and more application side, but I'd like to see my login info in all pages. It kind of drives me crazy that the only way I can tell if I'm logged in or not to the site is if I check the forums.

Considering the sort of resolutions that people use these days, I don't think the header needs to be shrunk really. Also, putting the login info on the page means that the page becomes personalized to you and can't be cached, which slows down the server. Login info will be on pages that need to check it, for example the Game Detail page which I've just added has it.

- Oh my, too many fonts! I think professional designers would agree that picking and sticking to the right couple of fonts is much better. I see at least 4 fonts used on the site plus not to mention they're not even remotely closed to the ones used for the editor logo. I think AGS in general has needed a more unified design style

The main page has a few different fonts, but I think they work well together -- and besides, the main home page design is pretty much finalized now anyway, we can't keep twiddling with it forever

On the question of identity I was wondering what is the relationship between the games and the editor? the games page seems to remain buried down as not the primary gateway for the site, but I bet it gets much more traffic from external non-community sources than the rest of the pages.

On the contrary, I think the Games get more of a mention on the new home page than they do with the current one. Besides, we've already debated the home page to death and there's no point re-opening that debate now. The debate now should be about the Games page!!!

Compared to the old layout? Heck no, it looks great.

Just to be clear, I don't mean that the overall site layout looks rubbish -- it looks great! And the new main home page looks fantastic.

What I mean is that my thrown-together Games page is all a bit mis-aligned and not very pretty, which is why I want someone's help.

In the mean time, I've added a quick initial version of a Game Detail page here:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/Newsite/Games.aspx/Detail/1182
Do you guys think this kind of layout works? Any other suggestions (not for new features on the page, they can come later -- I just mean the layout of the stuff that we already have).

Yeah, with hindsight this is how UnlockView should have worked, but there's really no way it can be changed now without breaking tons of people's scripts.

You can use Extender Functions to implement your own version of LockView and UnlockView which remembers the loop number and restores it.

The Mono (or .NET) framework is huge, and so I don't think it's something viable to require or distribute with AGS games. With a game like The Sims where you have to install a CD anyway, it's not an issue -- but I don't think it's something that could really be done for downloadable games like AGS ones.