Messages

AGS uses a D3D Pixel Shader to do sprite tinting, and the complexity of the shader code means it requires PS1.4.

On older PCs, you can just use the DX5 driver instead.

Would it be possible to upload a sample game that demonstrates the problem?

I thought I'd prove just how few photos I took at Mittens this year by posting them all:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/mittens2009/
I was even too lazy to caption them!

Also there are a few from our roadtrip here:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/roadtrip/

There shouldn't be a problem doing this -- especially with Lucasarts-style speech.

If you try to display it below 718 in the 1024x768 game, does that work?

The problem for me is that every game creates a new folder in My Documents to put its saved games in. That leads to a lot of clutter, and folders that don't always make sense out of context. Therefore, it would be great if AGS by default put the game's saved games folder within a general AGS folder, for example "My Documents\AGS Saved Games\WhateverQuest" on XP. You could give game makers the option to skip the AGS folder if they so desired.

Since v3.1, AGS has done this. Games created with 3.1.x create their save folders within a "My Saved Games" folder on XP.

I'd be happy with either. I was at a couple of discussions about this at Mittens where Holland seemed to be the best option, but the general tone in this thread seems to be that more people would prefer Italy.

If we can get by in Italy without a native-speaking host then it would seem like a viable option.

I suppose the point of the message is also to let the people know the game is not downloadable. I must admit that I agree this is almost useless and, worse even, it discourages people to even try... in my case, in the last two years there likely have been at least some people who didn't even try to download, having seen the message...

The reason for the message is that in the old days, the moderators here used to get lots of PM's and e-mails from people saying "did you know, the link for Game X is broken. Please fix it!!!". This was annoying since we couldn't fix the link since it's the game author's responsibility.
Therefore, a message was added saying "we know this link is broken and it's the game author's responsibility to fix it", which stops people contacting us complaining about broken links that we can't fix.

Maybe it's also an idea to keep the games that are added to the database (responsibility of the game maker) in a central archive so links don't get broken anymore?

We sort of tried this once, but the server died. It's not exactly trivial to ask someone to provide 15 GB of disk space on a server to host all the games and provide all the bandwidth that people downloading them would use up.

Actually, I would like to add the ability for AGS to change those two bits of information, since it is wrong that compiled games all have my name on them and it causes me to get e-mail from people who have played a game and assumed it was written by me.

The issue here is actually technical -- it's relatively difficult to make the AGS Editor change this information. It is of course possible, and is an option that I will add at some point when I have the time to implement it. In the meantime, you can use a resource editor to change those two fields in the version info, but as you are editing the EXE, I will not support any bugs iwht games that have been edited in this way.

It might be possible to add a script command to allow you to control the cursor speed, if this is something people would find useful?

Ideally the AGS Editor would use some sort of dockable window system like Visual Studio so that you could put windows wherever you wanted, but it's not a priority at the moment.

Yes, it looks like this is caused by the same issue causing the music.vox problem. It is something I will be looking into.

The easiest way to get the problem fixed it to delete the option "Save Game Folder" in the general settings tab to avoid that people generate a game that automatically tries to build save games in a folder that is part of the Microsoft Windows structure.

As monkey and Gilbert have said, it has to be saved into My Documents because of the security restrictions in Vista -- if you make it save to the game's folder, it won't work if the game is installed to Program Files in Vista.

Great pics and vids, guys!

Also, to whoever slipped the blue cup into my luggage -- thanks, it means a lot! Also, I'm grateful it was a cup and not a bag of heroin, because I didn't spot it until now

I have also returned, and never before has the cool miserable British weather seemed so refreshing!!

Thanks to Francisco for hosting, and to everyone for coming. It was great fun as usual!
And it's lucky we didn't play 1KBWC because it looks like Jess would have won by default!!

I didn't really take any photos this year... as I'm sure you all noticed I spent lots of time running around bugging you guys with the camcorder instead. I'll try and get something edited together over the next few weeks, but in the meantime here's the most important scene of the week:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/temp/QueenBurning.avi

Ahhh, patriotism.

Is this the first time that AGS 3.x has had to rebuild all the room files in this game?

When you upgrade a game from AGS 2.x, you need to load it into 2.72 and Rebuild All Rooms to make sure that AGS 3.x can read them.

If you haven't edited those two rooms since AGS 2.6, then the 3.x editor will not be able to read them. If that's the case, then loading them into 2.72 and saving them again should get them working.

The volume system in current versions of AGS is dodgy to say the least -- as Gilbet says it is being re-written for the next version, which will deal with these problems.

Yes, AGS supports the first 256 characters in a TTF font, if there are any extended unicode characters used then these will not be rendered at present.

Hmm, it looks like this may be related to a script compiler limitation of 2500 imported functions/variables in a script (this would include any Global Variables). I will increase or remove this limit for the next version of AGS.

Thanks for mentioning this. Actually my plan for a future version is to change the Font selection into a drop-down list rather than typing a number in so this wouldn't be a problem, it's all about finding some time to fit in the change.

The image in your initial post doesn't seem to work for me, can you try re-posting it?

Are you sure you didn't test the game (using F5) which as GuyAwesome says would have saved it?