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I believe that the obstacle is that AGS is pretty much built around the Allegro graphics library and that it doesn't support verctor graphics.   Having said that, the SVG (scalable vertor graphics) standard, were it supported by Allegro and/or AGS would be the answer to this request.   All of the "Can I have more resolution" request would go away if AGS were to ever have SVG support.   

There are only a couple of editors that support it at the moment but you can pretty much do the same things with it that you can with any paint program PS and PSP included.  Here is one such editor, it was recommended to me by someone here.  I haven't had a chance to try it tough.
http://www.mediachance.com/realdraw/index.html

All in all, I would much rather be able to just write the whole thing using C++...so all I need is some libraries ...

Here are a few...
http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/
http://www.libsdl.org/index.php
http://gamedev.sourceforge.net/
http://vz4.sourceforge.net/
http://www.openrpg.com/
http://www.grinninglizard.com/kyra/
http://www.swig.org/exec.html
http://gameq.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=info
http://www.questml.com/editor/

And there are many more at source forge
sourceforge.net

Hope this is helpful to you ...

[f = (0.2200 - 0.02195) Cycles / 0.0005 Seconds]

Hi Yak,

I'm not sure how much I'll be but heare are some of my thoughts after listening to your noise.  Btw, was this a recording from speakers or from the headphones? 

Ok, I took a look using Audacity (screenie below).  The wave form magnitude is amplified to get a better view. 



The main frequency of the noise is 4 khz.  Calculate this by counting the number of cycles between 0.2195 seconds and 0.2200 seconds and dividing by the time difference.

f = (0.2200 - 0.02195) Cycles / 0.0005 Seconds

The gap between 0.2200 and 0.02205 seconds is evidence of a second (possibly more) frequecy present. 

What it probably isn't ...
Although possible. these are the least likely culprits, IMHO

• It's probably not comming from the power line related (i.e. 60 hz hum).
  
  
• It's not AM modulated so it's probably not from a radio station or anything like that.
  
  
• It's probably not a loose connection.  A loose connection would likely get you one or both of the above.
  
  What it may be ...
  Well, obviously you have to ask yourself what goes on at 4 khz.  Here are a couple of my guess to get you started.
  
  
• Power Supply - What frequecy do switching power supplies run at?  I always thought they were something like 15-30 khz but I am not sure?   I guess 4 khz is not entirely out of the question, especially if you have a malfunctioning power supply.
  
  
• Sound Card - Since the noise is in the middle of the audio range I suppose some of the sound card electroincs could have failed. 
  
  
• Software - You didn't say how fast your computer is but I suppose we can assume it runs at 200 Mhz or more, fast enough to have a 4 khz program loop.   
  
  I can't get out of my mind how the noise sounds, it has that white noise or random quality.    This kind of makes me think it's not a power supply.  I would not expect that to have such a random quality to it.   The same thing works against the sound card as well.  Although, DSP or other processors on the sound card are presummmably to run 4k program loops they are not entirely eliminated. 
  
  I just wonder if you don't have a resource contention problem with the sound card and some other device or software.  I sometimes disable AGS sound so I can listen to some MP3s while I write programs.  Ocassionally I do something that interferes with the MP3 player, sound card, or something and I get like a skipping record effect.  When I exit from whatever cased the problem the MP3 continues playing.  I wonder if the problem you are having is something similar?
  
  What has changed in the last 48 hrs?  Has your computer contracted a virus, spyware or something?  Have you installed any new software or hardware in that time?  Any other configuration changes?
  
  Sorry, I don't have more ideas or can't be more certain about anything.  I wish you luck in getting everything working again and hope I may have been of some help.
  
  Cheers
     
  

In a sense, it already does that. The editor compiles a data file with the game in it, which is then run by the Windows/DOS/Linux engine. In theory there'd be nothing to stop somebody writing their own engine from scratch to run AGS games (except that the file format specs aren't public, of course).

Right, and the file format isn't published to discourage unathorized ripping of someone's game (I remember that from one or more discussions over the years).  So my musing was that perhaps there could be another optional file format that could be published.   

It also occurs to me that such a format could also be readable/importable by the AGS editor and perhaps be the basis of a flexible import/export mechanism (i.e. for rooms, objetcs, chaaracters, etc as well as whole games).  Currently we can import/export characters, gui's and games via templates via seperate mechanisms.   Character import/export doesn't include any code, GUI import/export includes AGS event handlers but not any other code required by GUIs.   

Again, this not really a serious suggestion; just something I find interesting to think about and thought I would share it with you.

The fact of ags being c++ is fine you get c++ to java converters they rock! very accurate!

I have worked on a number of such projects where it was desired to port an application from one programming language to another.   Code convertewrs work only in very constrained circumstances.  If you have a lot of repetive stuff they can cut some editing time, just as find/replace functions and programmable editors do.  The remaining obstacles to such a port are significant if not insurmountable.  There is no such thing as as an "EASY" button.  You don't have to believe me; just try it yourself.  Dump a simple game to text file(s), run it through your converter and let us know what happens.   

[XMLish Things]

IMHO, Fmarais's post points out the broader issue of portability to future platforms.  Nobody knows for sure what the future holds; about the only thing one could be certain about is that it will be different from the present and that we will all be older.   When I look into my crystal ball I don't see M$ having a lock on 95% of desktop (or other) computers.   

I'm just musing mind you but what if there were an option in the AGS editor to build to an intermediate game description language (perhaps ans XMLish thing), in additon to DOS and Windows?   Third party developers could then make runtime engine thingies that could consume the game description language and either render the game or an executable for whatever platform they wished.   

Of course the problem is which should come first the chicken or the egg?  Presummably it would be a lot of work to output to an intermediate language, so one would probably not want to do such a thing unless there were dedicated developers willing to create runtime engines.   An of course they wouldn't want to do this unless their engines had something to run. 

As I was writting this I wondered if there were any such languages out there and when I googled I found a couple of interesting links.

XMLish Things
http://questml.com/

Mobil Game Development
http://developer.mophun.com/
http://www.synergenix.se/index.php
http://pocketinsanity.sourceforge.net/

Other Game Development
http://www.openrpg.com/
http://vz4.sourceforge.net/
http://gamedev.sourceforge.net/

This isn't a serious suggestion, just some interestesting thoughts I thought to share with you.  I hope you find them amusing and/or interesting.   


"The future ain't what it used to be!" Yogi Bera 

AGS uses a third-party TTF renderer and I don't really understand how it works, so there's not a lot I can do about how it draws fonts I'm afraid.

That's cool.  Since there are plenty of TTF fonts to choose from I don't really see this as a problem.  Now that we know the situation we can stop complaining and get on with our lives.  Presummably in the long term the renderer you are using will be improved or a better alternative will become available etc, etc.   

But I find it strange that it works in other programs.

Yeah, I thought that too when I found the one that cauysed AGS to crash.  Let me know if you're still having problems.  If so I could upload the fonts I'm using. 

PDP-8 was a mini computer from Digital Equipment Company.  It was the predecessor of PDP-11 and VAX.   

If you have any more questions or if you need help with any of the above suggestions just let us know.

Garage,

I have been able to use fixed width TTF fonts without any problems... errrr..ahhh.. except one of the ones I tried crashed AGS but that's been passed on to CJ.   Perhaps the font you are trying to use isn't mon-spaced or has some other characteristic the causes such a problem in AGS. 

You could also try using GetTextWidth() to return the pixel width of the string for a given font and then adjust your spacing accordingly. 

Hmmm,

Probably the easiest thing to do is to use NPC characters for the puzzle elements.  Each character could use the same view.  Each frame in the view would contain a different pick.  Maybe frame 0 would contain the blank pic.

You would use SetCharacterFrame(CHARID, int view, int loop, int frame) to change the when the character recieved a click.  I would use a struct array to determine which pic is revealed.   I would have an initilization routine randomly populate the array with loop and frame ids so that only two characters would have the same pic.   When two pics are revealed you would only have to compare the loop and frame values of each character, if they match the pic matches. 

You could also do something similar using room objects or using hotspots and raw-draw commands.  I think using characters is a bit easier to do though.  Good luck.

P.S. Hehe, I programmed PDP8 commputers using the paddle switch and neon lamp interface, if anyone knows what that is....

I just tried it and everything worked fine for me.  I even downloaded and installed winace from their website.  I just double clicked on fow.ace and presed the extract button on the tool bar.  I checked "extract to current directory" somewhere in the process.  It extracted and I ran the game fortress.exe. 

Sorry I can't be more helpful.  Maybe there are some more experienced winace users that can give you more suggestions. 

Cheers

Just came across this name generator.  It's kind of fun amd who knows you may even be able to use it to think of a name for a game character or something. 

http://www.cyborgname.com/

I put in mine and Sqinky's name just for fun and here's what I got ... as you can see, he is a bit more advanced than me   

I think you can just use the relevant resolutions.  A game designed for 800x600 would be distored if it were run at 640x400. 

It's my understanding that on some combinations of hardware the "Test" feature does not work properly.  AFAIK CJ, the author of AGS, has not been able to replicate this problem and so has not been able to do much about it.  There are, however, some things you can try to get Test to work as folllows:

• FULL SCREEN - When runing in full screen mode, AGS attempts to change the resolution of the screen according to the settings in the acsetup.cfg file.  Run winsetup.exe to see what rresolution the game is set to run at.  Then be sure that you can set your computer's screen to that resolution.   If not try changing the resolution using winsetup.exe to a setting that works on your computer.
  
  
• WINDOWED MODE - Try running the test in windowed mode.  You can do this from the menu File->Preferences->Game Testing State=Forced Windowed.
  
  
• RUN EXECUTABLE - As a last resort just try running the executable directly.  You can generate the executable just by doing a File->Save command from the menu.  Then goto window's file explorer and double click on the game executable file in the compiled folder. 
  
  Give these things a try and let us know how it turns out.  Maybe some of the others will have more ideas about what to do.   Good luck.
  

If IE beat me, I WOULD have it changed, but I'm used to it...

It just did!  Quit your blubbering  , get Firefox, and you will have no such problems in your future. 

http://www.mozilla.org/

I can start clearing the compile errors this weekend and probably have most of that done before the end of the week.   After that I can enhance the documentation and possibly convert some of the stuff to the new coding style depending upon how much time there is between now and when V2.7 releases.   

By the way, what minimum length should a module name have? I appreciate the shorter the name the greater the possiblity of name collisions. Longer names, on the other hand, could clutter the source code, especially if a module has several exposed structs.

That's a tough question  :.  I'm certain that there at least a half dozen opinions on the subject  .  However, I guess I would say at least "2 or 3" should be required and probably something like "7 or more" should be the recommendation.   I can see using the shorter names for library type things. 

============
For anyone interested here is a link to a pre-alpha version of the document generator.  Currently it reads the first 100 lines from the IniFile.s file, analyses the line's content and displayss the results in the left hand column of the screen.   The actual line that was read is displayed at the top of the screen.  The document is displayed under the current line as it is being read.   

ScriptDoc_V001A01.zip

The design goal of the parser was to make it very modular so consequently some of the processing is duplicative. I believe this will not be a problem because the file size of the documents are relatively small. 

No I can start working on doing the document output.  This should be a bit more fun and a little less tedious than the parser.   I am thinking of using a config file to define how and what to extract from the input file.  This would allow us to use it for other purposes.  I'll see how it goes and if it's practical. 

Oh well, feel free to let me know what you think.   Cheers!!!

I just noticed that GUI control script names aren't allowed to contain digits 0..9.  I can undestand not wanting a name to begin with a numeral but why not allow them in subsequent character positions.  For example it's not possible to use button1, button2, button3, etc for script names.   There are a few cases where it makes sense to have names of this form.  I was wondeing if this were an oversight or if there were some other motivation to make this restriction. 

SSH, cool!  I also have a patent, it's listing is here. You can click on "IMAGES" to see the actual patent and drawings but you need a TIFF Plugin to see the images. 

The Patent office can invalidate a patent without any court required ...

In both cases you cite, I believe substancial legal expenses were incurred.   In the eolas case there was a lenghtly court case prior to the patent office decision.   The problem is that if large companies like Microsoft are allowed to file and be awarded silly patents, prior art or not, who among open source or freeware developers could afford to defend against a patent infringement claim?     

IMHO, the whole patent system is outdated in that it is not equiped to handle current and future volume of innovatin and it is not likely to catch up either.   When I worked at GE they had a full time legal staff that attempted to patent everything we did.  If they got a patent awarded fine, if not they had mountains of documentation and an official document from the goverment stating why it was denied.  This would enable them to defend against patent infringement lawsuits rather than bring them, IMHO.   I think many large compaines engage in this practice.

CJ,

I have been out of the loop for a little while and the new OO stuff has kind of side tracked me more recently.  I'll check in with the group and see what they have and get back to you.  I'll make a commitment to do the grunt work to make this happen.    Can you give me some kind of time frame and minimum requirements as you see it?   I  suppose it shouldn't use any of the deprecated functions and all new OOstuf??