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I'm trying to run some AGS games with the Linux runtime for AGS 2.5.

Actually the ags runtime works with no problems, but I can't start the ags-setup executable; it gives the error "setup: error while loading shared libraries: libxml.so.1".

I've already done "apt-get libxml2" and "apt-get libxml2-dev" but that didn't help; if anyone could point out what I'm missing that'd be much appreciated.

I was wondering if anyone had the WFN files for the three fonts that come automatically with a newly created AGS game. I'd like to edit them (for accented letters and such) but I can't find them. Thanks!

Does anyone know what this error refers to?

AGS 2.72. exception 0xc0000005.

http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u282/glamrocker91/error.jpg

Thanks!

[Eye of the Tempest]

Eye of the Tempest



Well, the people over at Mittens have already seen it in action. The folk from Crystal Shard are working on Eye of the Tempest, a 3-d dungeon RPG made in AGS, reminiscent of such classics as Lands of Lore. Featuring dozens of spells, skills and monsters.

Here's some sample music. We do not have an official release date yet.



Artwork by Cris, Fizzii and Meerbat. Music by Bosa. Scripting by yours truly.

[Vector Vendetta]

Vector Vendetta (updated in July)

As an experiment in what other things AGS can do (and MAGS, of course), this is a fast-paced shooting game with retro-style vector graphics. It's probably the first AGS game that uses a grand total of zero sprites, and proves that AGS is quite capable of handling arcade games.

In your mighty triangular ship, use mouse, keyboard or a combination of both to obliterate the enemy vectors before they do the same to you! It starts out easy, but on later levels you'll be quickly overwhelmed by swarms of enemies! Dodge bullets, kamikaze ships, and laser beams, collect sparks to upgrade your ship, and prepare yourself for the boss battle at the end.

* Twenty different enemies, from lowly Wonk to nasty BFG, and an evil boss monster.
* Lots of powerups and special weapons, from teleportation to nukes.
* Retro graphics and soundtrack.
* Three difficulty levels, three game modes.
* Keeps track of high scores.
* Two-player support.
* Demo recording.
* Enjoy!

[Quest for Yrolg]

[embed=640,390]http://youtu.be/r-E_62Dsqns[/embed]

Quest for Yrolg

A medium-length adventure game with a twist! Deep within his dungeon, Yrolg the necromancer is about to summon a mighty demon to complete his plans to conquer the World. Three brave adventurers, a warrior, a rogue and a sorcerer, have come to his underground lair to disrupt the ritual and end his reign of terror. Your job is to stop them.



As a lesser minion of darkness, use your wit and guile to lead the heroes into traps and to a nasty demise. Should they succeed, your Master will be slain, and the world shall be covered with flowers and puppy dogs. That must never happen - evil shall prevail!

Download here. This includes a Voice Pack, and translations into German, Spanish, French, Italian, Hungarian, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, and Turkish.

Thanks to:
* Fizzii, for the graphics!
* Meerbat, for more graphics!
* Justin Parker, for the music!
* Voice acting by Kristyn Mass, Jesse Lowther, Edwyn Tiong, George Exley, and Michael Malconian.

So....

I'm in charge of the finances of a small club. Now there's this guy whom the club owes money. The problem is that the club owes him about $50, whereas he claims that he should receive $100. He has no tickets or anything to back up his claim, and research proves that he's simply dead wrong (e.g. a declaration for travel expenses can be double-checked on the internet based on distance traveled and the price of gasoline).

Now this guy has an intimidating personality, cannot be reasoned with, and has threatened to beat me up unless I pay immediately.

I would like to hear some opinions on how to deal with this.

I'll most likely find myself in Boston for a week on job-related business, some time this spring. Now I was wondering, can somebody give me suggestions on what to do there? Is there some sight or place that I simply must visit (or simply must avoid)? Or are there any AGS'ers in Boston who'd like going out for a beer some night? Thanks!

I have "Receive forum announcements and important notifications by email" turned off. Nevertheless, I am receiving e-mail messages for "important notifications". This would seem to be an error.

I have a few question about if, because I'm using way too many ifs in my scripts these days.

If there are multiple conditions in an if (using && or ||) are these all always evaluated? Or does e.g. "if (x && y)" stop evaluating when x turns out to be false?

Are mathematical conditions simplified by AGS, or should I do that by hand? If I have CONST as a #defined (or an enum'ed) constant with a value of 5, is " if (x > CONST + 1) " the same as " if (x > 6) "? Or does the addition get performed every time the if statement is encountered?

Does it matter whether I do " if (x) { y } else { z } "  or " if (x) { y; return; } z " ?

Thanks!

Those of you who haven't already, should check out this year's Golden Raspberry Awards, and, for that matter, the recipients of last october's Ig Nobel Prize.

The reason I'm bringing this up is this: the yearly AGS awards used to have an award for the worst game of the year, called the P3n1s award after its first recipient. This ran into some controversy last year, as an relatively high quality game was nominated because some people considered it "a huge disappointment", and hence the award was dropped this year.

However. I think it would be fun to have one, or perhaps up to three, less serious awards for the AGS ceremony (or, perhaps, for a separate less serious ceremony a week later). These would, however, require a better description than "worst game". There are plenty of games released for AGS each year that aren't intended to be serious, and yet are quite funny in one way or another, and could deserve some recognition.

For instance, we could have the "funniest game" award, or the "strangest plot twist", or the "silliest concept for a game". Or even the "blurb text that is completely unrepresentative of what the game actually does". Games that I could envision winning include Snail Quest, and Me Go Store, and probably quite a bunch of others.

Thoughts please?

---------------------------
Illegal exception
---------------------------
An exception 0xC0000005 occured in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x004313C7 ; program pointer is +379, ACI version 2.72.920, gtags (2,0)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and notify CJ on the Tech forum.


This happened while testing a game I'm working on. What does this mean?

[EnchantHosting]

WARNING, please spread the word.

The hosting service known as "EnchantHosting" or "DragonStar Networks" (DSN) has been known to cater towards independent game authors, and people who create adventure games. Essentially, they're a standard hosting service, offering a domain and bandwidth for money. Some of the people involved may be known to this community, such as Johan Botes, aka Gronagor, and a guy named Chagall.

EnchantHosting is a fraud.
DragonStar is a fraud.

The hosting fee is quite reasonable. But when you start using them and your initial registration expires, they will suddenly charge you ludicrous amounts to continue their service. This is extortion: you pay $5 for the first year, and are unexpectedly charged a $100 fee for the next, or have your domain permanently removed. And of course they will prevent you from moving that domain to another host.

Forewarned is forearmed. Don't make the same mistake I did, do not do business with these people.

The help text for IsChannelPlaying() states:

"if the user doesn't have a sound card this will always return 0."

Is that even possible with contemporary computers, or is that a remnant from the DOS era?

I believe I have a rather novel problem with AGS:

If the repeatedly_execute script gets too complex, it causes the (MP3) music to stutter.

This is still under v2.72, and the reason is probably that the rep_ex makes extensive use of RawDraws (yes, I know you're not supposed to combine those), as well as looping through a substantial number of structs for custom things that move around. Interestingly, the frame rate is unaffected, and is somewhere between 30 and 40.

Aside from the obvious ("don't do that, then"), I was wondering if anyone, in particular CJ, had a suggestion on how to deal with this? Perhaps I should upgrade to 3.0, or use OGG, WAV, or MIDI instead? Or perhaps there's some clever workaround? Would PlayMusic/PlaySound/PlayAmbientSound make any difference?

I think perhaps the games.php structure needs a "report broken link" button. For several of the older games, the download links no longer work. If oldbies were aware of which ones, perhaps they could re-upload some of those games to, say, americangirlscouts.org, and have the moderators replace the old link with a working one. Or something. Preserving history is fun, at any rate.

For those who are online at the moment -

The Adventure Developers Online Conference 2007 is ongoing. So you can talk to everybody's favorite (or so we hope) Pooka, Blue Cup, and drunken wizarding student here.

Well, I just got a new (ish) graphics card, a NVidia GeForce 4 MX 440, to replace my much older 3dFX card, and downloaded the drivers from the nvidia website.

However, with this new card, NO game that runs in full-screen mode will work, and DXDiag reports that Direct3D acceleration is "not available" (and the button to "enable" it is grayened out).

Does anyone recognize such a problem and have suggestions? I'm running W2K in case it makes a difference.

Does anyone know the default values for SetSoundVolume and SetMusicMasterVolume?

I just noticed something weird:

if you run an AGS game, and move its window through external means (that is, not by dragging the title bar, but e.g. by using the "Tile Horizontally" button from your task bar) the mouse cursor screws up (the AGS cursor appears in a different position than the windows cursor). It's kind of hard to explain but try it some time