Messages

Attempting to attach a file in the issue tracker gives me an error msg that the attachments directory is not writeable.

It might be best as a juried award?

Probably. The issue is that three of the aspects you mention (visual appeal, simplicity, and innovation) tend to be mutually contradictory. For example, the best visual appeal is probably a Sierra or Lucas-styled interface with good graphics (but that's not really simple, and clearly not innovative). The best simple interface is arguably a one-click interface, or left-to-look,right-to-use (but there's no visual appeal here, and it's not innovative either). Innovative interfaces are things like Infinite Monkeys (which is neither simple nor visually appealing). I don't think that adding another ambiguous award is the way to go.

Thinking about it, it's probably better to see "visual appeal of interface" as part of "best sprite art", and to see "ease of use of interface" as part of "best gameplay"; and we already have an award for best innovation.

How about an award for best user interface?

That depends; do you mean the easiest to use interface? The prettiest looking interface? The most innovative interface? The most versatile interface, in that it also works on one-button mice or touchscreens?

A different one that has been reported is this, which occurs when restoring a game:

An exception 0xC0000005 occurred in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x004CFA76 ; program pointer is +2051, ACI version 3.3.0.1156, gtags (48,2)

Do you have an idea what may be causing this? It's apparently a different issue.

Just a funny anecdote is an issue report I received today for one of our games.

The issue turned out to be that the user opened setup without understanding what it did, changed some settings more or less at random, and now the game won't work (i.e. a PEBCAK). This issue was solved by resetting to the default values.

So yeah, I'm happy that we simplified setup.

[we postpone question 3]

Question one: III, I, IV, II.
Rationale: 2 is just messy. I think there are enough commercial games to warrant some kind of split though.

2.I. b, c, d, a
Rationale: I'm not sure if it's useful to separate sound and music, as both are complements to the game's auditory experience; although voice acting should remain separate.

2.II. a, b
Rationale: Writing and dialog are two sides of the same coin.

2.III. c, b, d, a
Rationale: It seems there is disagreement over what "character art" means: some people feel it's mostly about portraits (which is closer to background art), and other people feel it's more about character sprites (which is basically what the animation award is for). I think that's a good reason for removing character art as a separate category.  It doesn't really matter where "character art" gets merged into, since there is disagreement over what that term means.

2.IV. c, b, d, a
Rationale: It doesn't seem clear what "best gameplay" means. To some people, it's synonymous to "best game"; others consider it similar to "best puzzles", or to "best writing". Again, I'm not sure if best gameplay should be left as a separate award. However, "best programming" is clearly distinct from all of these. So my preference is to eliminate "best gameplay" (since it is not clearly defined what that means), and leave "best puzzles" intact.

2.V. b, c, a
Rationale: I find having two character awards somewhat redundant.

About question three, though: There has not been enough discussion about this topic, and the top post doesn't currently list the suggestions people had. Most importantly, I believe that the outcome of questions one and two will influence what people want for question three, so I suggest that we postpone question 3 until voting on the other two is complete.

No. having screenshot for slot is completely unrelated issue. There should not be workarounds like that. The crash should be fixed instead.

Fair enough. Nevertheless, if the game is saved during the startup process, it would be reasonable to store a blank bitmap (after all, the screen isn't initialized yet so there's no screenshot to show).

And Alan - yes, this is D3D.

Then it still doesn't need a screenshot, because the 999 doesn't show up in restore game GUIs, nor does it show up on the user's desktop (since it gets deleted when you quit the game).

Yes. As I recall, the game makes a saved game when starting up (this is the .999 save used for restarting the game) and perhaps the screen isn't initialized yet or something. Easy workaround: never take screenshots for the .999 save.

It's 1156, not 1146. That should be the final build minus the last hotfix.

Hm, I guess it doesn't allow cross-site linking. Very well, it's attached (shown left of) the first post here: http://forum.caravelgames.com/viewtopic.php?TopicID=36960   

Yes, it is HQ. It would be easiest if you could download the executable from http://store.steampowered.com/app/283880 - if that doesn't work for you let me know and we'll figure something out.

First crash dump: http://forum.caravelgames.com/getattachment.php?id=35692
Second crash dump: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bacwiz86puq6w7b/CrashInfo.3.3.0.1156.dmp

I got 256-128-64-64-32-16-8-8-8....

[AGS already supports non-adventure games]

I don't get why people suggest that a new application is needed to support non-adventure games. AGS already supports non-adventure games; there is even a yearly AGS award for "best non-adventure game". I've seen platform games, RPGs, shoot-em-ups, puzzle games, and board games all made in AGS. So I'm really not seeing the issue here.

A different one that has been reported is this, which occurs when restoring a game:

An exception 0xC0000005 occurred in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x004CFA76 ; program pointer is +2051, ACI version 3.3.0.1156, gtags (48,2)

It's nice to have, but there's also several tools out there that easily convert a SCI font to a WFN font.

(several years ago, the only way to deal with SCI fonts was to install the buggy-and-unsupported SCI Studio, but thankfully there's alternatives now)

Yep, it works now. Thanks!

Some of our players have reported the following,

The mouse becomes extremely unresponsive while near the middle of the screen, then overly sensitive when you reach the outer edges. Turning off enhanced pointer pricision reduced but did not remove the problem
It seems to be a smoothing issue to me. If you move the mouse slowly, it does not respond. You have to move the mouse very fast in order for it to move, which means minor mouse movements are very hard to do.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Do we know how to fix it?

I've tried changing the game page on my laptop, which also runs Chrome, and this works fine. Also, I'm pretty sure I haven't done an update of Chrome (on my desktop) since the last time it worked. So I doubt it's actually the browser causing this, although I'm not sure what else it would be.

Some players report the following crash for 3.3.0, but only when running in windowed mode:


An exception 0xC0000005 occurred in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x00469B98 ; program pointer is -1893, ACI version 3.3.0.1156, gtags (8485,21)
AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and post the details on the AGS Technical Forum.
Most versions of Windows allow you to press Ctrl+C now to copy this entire message to the clipboard for easy reporting.
An error file CrashInfo.dmp has been created. You may be asked to upload this file when reporting this problem on the AGS Forums. (code 0)

I have the .dmp file too, if that helps. The screen is 320x200 using max NN scaling, perhaps something is going on with detecting the proper multiplier?