Topics

I guess there are a lot of installers out there but I have decided to use this one.  


NSIS Installer

It's script based so it's very flexible and it seems to do a good job at compression.   You can get a nifty IDE fo it here:

HM NSIS Edit  

The IDE features a syntax highlighting editor, a pointy and clicky wizzard, and online help.  You can create a complete  installation package using  the wizzard only.  Everything is GPL'd open source  so it's cost and nag free.   The newset version is in at an ALPHA-4 stage (seems very stable to me) and it seems like there will be a production release soon.

I suppose everyone has their own favorite, I thought I would share this with everyone.  

Has anyone else noticed the recent profusion of annoying signature lines some people have been using here?

IMHO, it's annoying to wade through a thread where the signature's are 10 times larger than the content of the post.  I think it's a rude distraction we can all do without.  

Just to be clear, I'm not referring to the little 20 pixel banners folks sometimes use to promote their current project.  I'm talking about one with gigantic graphics (50, 100+ pixels)  and/or  8 or more lines of text.  

Not to be mean or anything but do we need to includ some guidelines about this in the "Read This First" rules?   What do you all think?

[Bluster]

Bluster  is a game organizer and launcher.  Games are grouped into categories, select a game and a preview document is displayed and it's theme song is played.  Click the PLAY button to launch the game.   The current  feature list is as follows:

• View html preview document
  
• Play theme song or sound
  
• Launch game
  
• Launch game's setup programs
  
• Supports AGS made games
  
• Limited support for non-AGS games
  
• Run from CD or hard disk installation
  
• Install individual game, category, or entire collection from CD to hard disk
  
• Open browser on link to game website

Download current version at ....
http://gaia-spa.com/download/Bluster.zip


Project Status
11-14-03
* Release V1.00 Beta-1

11-08-03:
* Releast V0.04 for alpha test

11-04-03:
* Request for beta testers
* Changed name of application to "Bluster - The BluSoft Game Launcher"

10-25-03:
* GameBlaster is currently in production and is expected to be released before November 25, 2003.  Check back for updates.

A while ago I thought I saw something where you could run the game setup by passing command line arguments to the game.exe file.  

If this is so what are the command line arguments?  

If not, let me know so I can go get a beer or something...

CJ just out of curiosity are the following parameters still used?  They seem to be unaffected by the current winsetup.exe file.

  digiid=-1
  midiid=-1
  digiindx=0
  midiindx=0

CJ,  
I just noticed the little help box that pops up and shows function parameters.  That really rocks, thanks for taking the time to include this for us.    

I would find it useful to see the revision number in the initial splash screen.  Is there a way to automate this?  If not then a perhaps a more practical and only slightly less useful alternative would be to include a string differenitating the beta versions from released versions (i.e. the splash screen of released versions would be as they are now and beta versions would include a string similar to this "beta test version".

I know it's trivial, but if it's not too much trouble something like this may keep one of us from disaster someday.  Thanks for listening anyway.  

Hi everyone,

Life has a way of keeping us busy with the real world sometimes.  I haven't been around much lately because of real life not because I lost interest in AGS.   So this weekend I'll be changing apartments, moving my wife's beauty solon business, and starting a new consulting project next week.  

These are just annoyances though.  The thing that really got to me was my mom's recent illnes.  It's not certain how it's going to turn out but so far she is responding very weel to the treatments and will probably be ok in a few months.  

I have missed everyone here.  I think of you all as good friends even though we have never met.   (I live a while in the South (USA)  and "you all" is correct there).

I'll be back in a few weeks and look forward to seeing you then

Cheers
Rick

I just came across this CD publisher and thought some of you may be interested in taking a look.  They will do 1000 CD's for around US$690 and 10000 for around US$3500, including a 4 color label and CD duplication.  This is one of the better prices I've seen so I thought there may be some interest.  Well here's the link...  

http://www.edocpublish.com/default.htm    

*** edit
Sorry about the broken link.  Thanks for fixing it Quickstrike..

The RunAGSGame() variable "game.previous_game_data" is not listed in the "Variables" section of the help file.  

I have a couple ideas about the GUI inventory window element that I would like to suggest.  

1.  Would it be possible to select the inventory window's background color or to select it to be transparent?  Having only black limits the number of possible GUI color schemes that are "artistically coherent" (hehe... thats an engineering term, I just made up, that means it has to look nice ...).

2.  Would it be possible to display multiple inventory windows simultaneously where each window is displaying the inventory of a specific character.  The character would be specified in the GUI editor and/or a script command.  This would open up many different GUI design possibilities and enhance the AGS gaming experience.

Do any of these ideas appeal to anyone else.  Please comment.  

WOuld it be possible to refine the gui TextBox element so that the left and right arrow keys could be used to edit the input string?  Tis would make it operate the way most people have come to expect.  Thanks.

[Biography: Professora Tessora Primora]

Well art is definately not my strong point.  I obviously could use a lot of help in this department.  So here is my first character.  She was drawn with VISIO, a vector drawing program.  I plan on improving her with Photoshop.  Any help or advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks



Biography: Professora Tessora Primora
Professora Primora is a biologist who has recently completed work on her Ph.D.  She wrote a paper entitled "Microbes on Mars".  She is young and enthusatic about everything.  She has a great sense of humor; she'll laugh at just about anything.  She believe's there is life on Mars because she says she has been there and seen it.  She is either a brillant scientist or very crazy, or perhaps a little of both.

**edit
http://www.icehouse.net/rickj/ags/primora.gif

I have been working with Docbook for the past few weeks and it's pretty cool.  

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, docbook  is a widely accepted XML standard and is similar to HTML.  The difference is that docbook tags are used to define what the enclosed content is rather than how it looks.   The result is a document source file that is easily converted to single or multiple html files, pdf file, html help (chm) files,and other formats.  Table of Contents, index, and glossaries are automatically generated and the document look and feel is determined by reuseable stylesheets.  Professional publishers use this system extensively.   Actually, I believe that a form of docbook (SGML) standard was the forerunner of HTML and XML.  

The problem we have with AGS tutorials at the moment is that they are all in different formats and are widely scattered amoung our individual websites.  We seledom share these with each other because of the amount of work involved in reformatting them to have a consistent look.

I think that using docbook to make AGS tutorials would solve this and other problems by providing the following benefits:

• Documents by various authors would be consistent with each other.  
  
• Collections of documents from different authors could be easily created and provided to the community.  
  
• The "look" of a document, or collections of documents, can easily be changed by modifying style sheets and republishing from the source.
  
• Documents can be provided in different formats without any additional work.
  
• Since the author doesn't need to worry about the final format, only the content, it is easier to make the document is this respect.
  
• Automatic table of contents and index generation.  In the case of HTML these are hyper linked.
  
• Fairly easy to learn to use.  
  

Here is an example tutorial I have created using this standard.  The HTML headers and footers are from a slightly modified  default stylesheet.  These can be changed as we see fit.  

Here is an example of the single HTML output format...
Example HTML

Here is a zip of the complete example including the source document mingt.xml, and the CHM, Multiple HTML, Single HTML, and PDF outputs formats.
Complete Example (300k zip)

Here is an alpha version of the compelete system.  This system was an open source project sponsored by [urlwww.e-novative.de/docbook[/url].   The original system uses a command line interface.  I have used AGS to create an intuitive GUI front end, in cooperation with e-novative.  The command line version is at V1.01 (or soimething like that).  The GUI is at the Alpha-2 stage.  You can download the complet thing from here if you want to try it.    

Complete Publishing System (28Mb zip)

To install this just unzip it to c:\docbook.  You will need to install a java jre if you don't have one already.  There is one included in the zip, just goto the docbook/jre folder and run jre.exe.

To run the GUI just go to the c:\docbook directory and click on the short-cut eDE or goto the gui directory and run ede.exe

The example document is mingt.

Well, I am curious as to your opinions of all this.  At least take this time to look at the source and output files.  Keep in mind that you edit the the document.xml source file and then run a program to generate the HTML, PDF, CHM files.  

Thanks to Scorpiorus and Jimi for their indespensible help on this project.

I know this last statement should be obvious but you would be suprised to know that an entire General Electric Engineering department spent nearly 10 years whining and complaining about how the  productivity tools  I made for them were a pain in the ass.  I could never understand their position, until I returned 10 years later as a consultant and they showed me how they were editing the text processor output files and were therfore manually editing page numbers and table of contents, instead of  letting the damm computer do the work.  

So I appologize for talking down to everyone, I assume you got it, but just in case I thought I would be clear.  To this day I still can't believe this whole bunch of engineers are so dense!!!

Whenever selecting sprites, with few exceptions, MAIN is the default folder.  Normally one must then navigate to a folder and then select the desired sprite.  Would it be posible for the folder from which the previous sprite was selected to be set as the default folder.  IMHO this would make many tasks much more efficient.  

Compiled GUIOff() without any parameters.  The error message refers to the old InterfaceOff() function instead of the newer GUIOff() function.   This is one of those things that's harder to know about than it is to fix.  Since I have come across it, I thought I would take the time to make note of it for the benefit of all.      

I think it would be interesting if there were an option to run
a game (not the editor of course) in  a window, with transparent background, and without the standard windows frame.   I don't know how much trouble it would be to implement this or if it's worth the effort.  Although this is, admittedly, of marginal utility, the cool factor is huge .  

The GUI button's active area doesn't resize when the button is resized using SetButtonPic().

If SetButtonPic() is used to change a button's appearance and if the new graphic is of a different size the mouse-over and click events still use the original button size and not the new one.   It would seem more intuitive, to me, if this area were determined by the graphic used for the "normal" view.  

Would it be possible in some future version to have the SetButtonPic() function, calculate and update the button size parameters, whenever it is used to change the "normal" grahic?


 

[Execution Control Functions]

In this thread the functions that comprise the animation engine will be discussed in detail.  This discussion is being conducted here for the benefit of the community and to allow opportunities for making input in the process.  A design spec as well as other documents are available in plain text form from the urls below.

• Animation Engine Spec (3-8-03)
  
• Autonomous Character Spec  (3-8-03)
  
• Global Script (not available yet)
  
• Script Header (not available yet)
  
• TerranRich's Original Thread
  
• Scorp's string array solution
  
• Junc's AI thread

Checkout Juncmodule's disscussion of AI/Mood system.  

Execution Control Functions
Here are the functions curently defined that control the execution of animation engine threads.  

  // Start and stop execution of the specified thread
  AeRun(thread)
  AePause(thread)
  AeStop(thread)
  AeToggle(thread)

  // Debug GUI - Next and previous line in the specified thread,
  // Similar to single step function in traditional debugers
  AeNext(thread)
  AePrev(thread)

  // Debug GUI - Switch gui to another thread
  AeNextThread()
  AePrevThread()
  AeGotoThread(thread)

  // Get current execution state of specified thread
  AeState(thread)

Thread Creation, Branching, and Looping
These functions can be nested upto aeNMAX levels deep.  aeNMAX is a constant and can be set to any number of desoired levels.

What convention should be used to name constants?  Use aeNAME, AENAME, AE_NAME or some other variation?

  // Create thread, threads are bounded by these functions
  aeInit(thread)
     :
  aeEnd()

  // Expressions
  // An expresion consists of two values and one of the
  // following operators: (eq, ne, gt, lt, ge, le, and, or)

  // Conditional branching
  aeIf(value1, operator, value2);
     :
  aeIfElse();
     :
  aeElse();
     :
  aeEnd();

  // Conditional looping
  aeWhile(value1, operator, value2);
     :
  aeEnd();

  // Unconditional looping - loop fixed number of times
  aeLoop(value); or aeRepeat(value);
     :
  aeEnd();

which name is preferrable aeRepeat() or aeLoop()? aeRepeat is currently implemented to repeat the entire thread and simply jumps back to the beginning the specified number of times.   What should I do about this?

  // Unconditional branching
  aeDoCase(case);  
     :                        
  aeCase(case);      
     :
  aeDefaultCase();
     :
  aeEnd();

Statements immediately following the DoCase() will always be executed.  When the first Case() is encountered a jump to the specified case will occur.

  // Unconditional branching
  aeDoRandomCase(case, random);  
     :                        
  aeCase(case);      
     :
  aeDefaultCase();
     :
  aeEnd();

Similiar to DoCase() except actual case is calculated by case=case+Random(random).

Ok so let's review these first, then we will go on to the next group.  Let me know what you think, questions comments, suggestions, pitfalls, etc..  

I made a little timer application with AGS 2.53 and 800x600 resolution.  I am going to use it to time speeches but it could be easily applied to other things.  It's listed on the games page or you can get it from http://www.agsforums.com/games.php?category=3. You can get the source from the website, just goto the games page and follow the links.  (650k)