Messages

OK, so here's some suggestions for AGS:

It would be nice if each of the inbuilt arrays like character, object, etc all had one or two extra members per item that were read/writeable and available for the use to use as they wished. Ideally, the user could control the number/type and names of these, but even if there were 1, called userdef1, then that would be great. I suppose these are like read/writeable propertty schemas, so it could be doen through that. Or through a way of getting OO extends to work on those builtins

As well as having inventory items, it would be nice if AGS had (at least one) another general purpose item list, which could be used for spells, icon-based dialog options, etc. It would be in the editor like the inv item list where you could set a sprite, cursor hotspot and property schema for each item. Ideally, there would be a generalised tree system where "Item lists" was the top level, with Inv items being a special case and default on the list, but the user could add other lists themselves.

If the user could define their own things to go on the "General settings" page, someone could write a super-template that the  let the user change a combo box on the front page from "SCUMM FOA" to "Sierra classic" to "Broken Sword" to get various default game styles.

OO stuff makes include files or some kind of script module import/export easier to organise and more obviously a gap. At least the single-GUI import/export that I already mentioned.

Character editor should show view NAMES when choosing default, idle, talking views, etc.

Also be nice if characters, like GUIs, could have a named handler function

Be good if you could specify whether the dialog GUI goes away after an option is selected, or if it stays. Alternativley, specify a function to be called before and after any dialog

A GUI could have its own on_key_press and repeatedly execute handlers, and it would be nice if a GUI could have a click handler rather than just GUI controls, because lots of GUIs have a regularity to them that means that individual handlers would mean lots of cut-and-paste

Another nice thing would be if the recompile all rooms dialog on loading an old game had 3 options instead of 2: OK, Load but dont recompile rooms and Cancel... that way you can use the latest editor to load an old game just to look at, without it forcing the old game into 2.7 ...


EDIT:

and are enums strictly type-checked? Can I use an enum value of one enumeration as a parameter to a function that has a different enumeration type? Can you set more that one identifier to the same value in the same enumeration, i.e.

enum verb { Take = 1, Pickup = 1, PickUp = 1, ...}


EDIT 2: MORE TECHIE QUESTIONS

Is it possible for a global function to take a pointer to a function as an argument, and then call the dereferenced pointer. Would this work if the function was a room specific function?

I am thinking to avoid using the interaction editor by having global functions  called something like SetObjectCallback which run in the before_fadein of the room and set up a global array which the global script can use to find otu which function pointer to use for a given verb/object or verb/hotspot combination. Is this possible?

And can you have static protected functions?

And can you have static member variables, protected or otherwise?

Oh, and the manual doesn't mention that you can have a room-specific rep_ex_always function

I added some stuff to Wikipeida on AGS, but it has been subsequently edited and improved (I didn't put any links in). And Jimmy.... its a Wiki... if anyopen has additions or remarks they can do them directly in the Wiki!

Well, most games on CD are compressed and use an installer to expand onto hard disk...

You can get programs that add an in-memory self-extractor to an EXE, so that it self extracts into memory (rather than disk) and then runs the extracted code.

Also, would a 650Mb AGS game need 650Mb of memory to run? If someone has that much memory then:

a) They've probably got a DVD drive
b) They've probably got enough HD space to install

I remember meeting you
On a bright September day
We danced the night away
I would give anything to be there
With you
Everything is there
With you

Booyah! And I didn't use "under!"

Spoiler

The money is hidden in the "IOWIWEW", no, the "UYYEUEU"... damn!

[close]

My parents didn't buy a VCR until after I had left home and bought one myself... but then, we didn't have a colour TV until like I was 10 or something. My mum used to watch snooker on a 9" black-and-white TV which had an analogue dial.

This wouldn't be surprising if I was born in the 50s, but I was born in 1975!

The winner is the first person who doesn't use the word "under" in their clue!

I wanted to write you
The ultimate letter of love, then
....

Spoiler

Isn't this taken from a movie? I just don't remember which one...

[close]

Spoiler

It may well feature in a movie, but I have no idea which one and I didn't deliberately take it from anywhere

[close]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but "vanity publishers" like this trawl around the internet to find writings by people, then bung them all in a PDF, then set up an overpriced link for you to get a print-on-demand book. Many low-volume publishers use print-on-demand these days, but it makes this kind of scam very easy. Of course, there's nothing illegal in it, but just taking advantage of people's vanity...

Excellent rules!



I wanted to write you
The ultimate letter of love, then
I thought of that weekend
that we spent in Skye
I am yours forever!

Do not doubt
That I remember your touch
Your kiss, your perfume

The memory of them
is what keeps me from dementia
Each of your letters I keep
And I read them until
You set my heart on fire

Wait for me, please wait
for when I can again be your lover
I am yours alone
Please remain only mine

It would be good if AGS defined some builtin #defines for some of the hard limits, especially iif someone is making a template and wants it to be future-proof:

e.g.

#define _AGS_MAX_OBJECTS_PER_ROOM 20

For those who dont know what the FOREGO and ERGO  awards are/were:

ERGOs

FOREGOs

Unfortunately the FOREGO threads have been deleted, but the results are still up courtesy of Darth.

One possibility is to combine the two: a lot of the ergo stuff was forum related

Also suggestions of new/modified categories: e.g.

Best member's homepage (Is Ghormak a shoe-in?)
Best avatar (my ultrasound one, obviously)
Best n00b
Worst n00b

Just to gauge interest, please reply here or PM me:

1. Do you think the FOREGO awards I ran last year (for forum members rather than games) should run again?
2. Would you be willing to help/do all the work/badger people into voting

And as for the ERGOS, I dunno if Barcik or Andail want to ressurect them

*cough* Aspergers Syndrome *cough*

Yeah, and I took an IQ test at 13 and got 151, but no-one liked ME either, back then.

... cue someone to say that some things never change

Happy Birthday to Pete
His music is 1337
We hope Goldlagoon is done soon
That would be so neat!

A couple more things....

I got that crash again, and it is very intermittent. Fortunately this time I had saved 30 seconds before again. It always seems to happen on a save, but I reloaded my 30-second old game and tried doing the same chnages again (it was all just changing stuff on the game settings page). This time it saved OK.  Something intermittent like this implies "memory leak" to me!

I suggest you try loading in a bunch of sprites, editing GUIs, change stuff here and there for a while and see if you can get the crash too, CJ. I'd never seen this instability before this beta, and I think it will really bug people.

Secondly, if you have a GUI control you called the object handle goPUsh by mistake and you want to change it to goPush, it wont let you and you have to rename it via "temp" or something first then back to what you wanted. It seems that the object check is case-insensitive, and also includes itself if the check of clashing names...

Second Gilbot's suggestion of a gui[n] array....

Actually, now that GUIs can have their own individual handlers, would it be possible to allow import and export of individual GUIs rather than always havign to load and save the whole set of GUIs. That would be another boon to co-operative development: it would also make it easier for someone to import, for example a Savegame-with-screenshot GUI on top of whatever GUIs they are using already.

Another thing that I thoguht would be nice is to have user-defined Game properties, like you have room, onject, character properties already. And, as I think is on your list already, sepearate schemeas for the different types of object.

The nomenclature is getting a bit confused now, too. I mean we have Objects (OOP) and Objects (in rooms), and we have Properties (OOP), Properties (things like  anti-glide mode) and Properties (user defined schema)... maybe some thoguht needs to go on giving them well-defined and different naming conventions?

If you load the "Default game" template as new game in beta 7, spend ages setting up a bunch of stuff , importing sprites, etc, and then save the game without having a room file, it crashes without any warning/dialog after the dialog box about "no room files" is OKed...

I'm not going to try and reproduce this, tho  It doesn't happen if you do it straight away after using that template... I guess it may be dependednt on sommething I changed (and lost). Oh, I also did run a "Recompile all room files" earlier on, which appeared to do nothing at the time.

The "edit this AGS game" file had been modified, as had Compiled/acsetup.cfg, but all other files had not been changed from when I first created game from template (1 hour 40  mins earlier  )

There were backup versions of the .dta and .spr files in the game directory, with the older modification times.

The trouble with the TV show was that they spent most of the budget on the second head for Zaphod (it having been easy to say he had two heads in its original format, Radio) which didint work and looked rubbish. With CGI it should be much easier and better.

I've updated the game database page, my web page and the CGA thread with new links for PMIV download. Let me know if you get any more problems.... I know the PMIV screenshot is broken, but that's Angelfire's fault for not allowing remote linking

All of my games can be found just by clicking my forum name on the left and looking at the game list in my profile.