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Games work fine on the laptop monitor. As soon as I move them onto the primary (external) monitor the problem occurs. And it is a DELL as well, which makes me think there should be no compatibility issues. Maybe it has something to do with the graphics chipset and how graphics are transmittet to the external monitor. But I don't know how...

@KhrisMUC: Well, the problem exists for quite a long time. I guess, there was no SP3 when it occured first, but there were running AGS-Games on other computers (on my home machine as well). But since I needed a laptop for developing my game (with AGS 2.72!) and I had to replace it in 2006 my work stagnated.

So I tried to make a new attempt now and found out by accident, that I can display the games on the native Laptop monitor, which I never used before.

So I guess, the reason for the prob must be buried somewhere else...

As it sometimes is, promptly after writing the problem down I found out something to give you new information about that issue:

I'm working with that laptop via a docking station using a seperate screen as the main monitor. When I open my laptop and use both screens in dual mode, the games still don't work on the main screen, but they run perfectly on the laptop screen as secondary monitor.

So I'm very glad I found that workaround, but I'm still interested in an explanation, why the games don't run on the main monitor

Hi everybody!

I have an obviously quite special problem with playing AGS-Games on my Hardware. I can start an AGS game, but the screen stays black. I tried it also in windowed mode. The result is the same. Only if I move the window around, the game becomes visible. But not playable, since it is not possible to get the mouse cursor catched by the game window. And if I stop moving the window, the scene freezes.

I hope now that someone knows that issue with certain hardware. Here is what I have:

Laptop DELL Latitude D610
Intel Pentium M (Centrino) 1,73 GHz
RAM 1 GB, 795 MHz

Graphics:
Mobile Intel 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express Chipset Family
Driver: 6.14.10.4693 (latest, although of 15.09.2006)

OS:
XP-Prof. SP2

If somebody needs more specific information about that computer, please ask!

Thanks for help!

Oh sooooorrrrryyyy, I am so stupid sometimes!!! 

Ich didn't recognize (or did I forget?) that I have to doubleclick on the rooms. I always tried to open them with a single click. Too silly!! Please forgive me!   :

...but I was quite shocked 'though!

Hi!

I have a strange Problem. I made a game with AGS 2.72 in 2006. The last change I made was in June 2008. With every developement step I saved the complete set of files into a zip archive so that I should be able to reconstruct nearly every stage of development.

Now I want to make another change. So I unpacked the latest archive into an empty folder, fired up AGS 2.72 and loaded the game into the editor. The complete list of rooms appears here, but when I select one room, I got a black room window with nothing in it. No objects, no hotspots, nothing! When I open the room files with an ordinary text editor, there is everything in it. I can read the names of the hotspots and so on. So I tried to unpack an earlier archive, and another one. But the result remains the same. I even tried to open the game with AGS 2.71. And I did it on two different machines.

Only if I open it with an AGS 3.x version the rooms and all their contents are there. But unfortunately the conversion brings a lot of script errors because variables seem to be handled different to former versions and the conversion doesn't manage that issue properly.

Does anybody know, what is going on or what I am doing wrong when loading the game into the editor?

Wow, sometimes it's so easy...

Maybe you transfer this thread to the beginners Forum.   :

Thank you very much!!!

In fact to work around this prob, I run a script under "Player enters room" and put the line "character[BOY].ChangeRoom(25);" on top (where 25 stands for the number of the *current* room). I think I do not need to place the character somewhere with a further script command, since I defined an empty picture frame as the normal view of the character. In the game the player is actually talking to an animated object which looks like the character. (Of course I have defined a starting position in the characters definition, but it is somewhere in the picture. It doesn't matter.) (Hope thie might help somebody else...)

Ich got a strange issue with a 2.72 compiled game. Strange, because I can't find an error in my coding since the dialog behaviour is defined in the "general settings" and with the character definition itself. Now what is defined and what happens?:

I defined the speech to be displayed in the left top corner and of course I defined a speech view for every character.  Now lets focus on one room with one additional character besides the EGO. The visible second character is definded as an object. Now it happens that the character disappears during the game and appears later after some special conditions are set (means, you did something right in the game). Now it is, that as long as the character is visible the first time, the dialog works properly. But, after it reappears, the dialog still works, with speech and so, but only the EGO speech is displayed correct. The speech of the second character is centered on the screen and appears without portrait (still in the colored character speech, not only plain text), although it is still the same dialog as before.

Is there anybody who has an idea of what could be the reason for that?

Sometimes you have to ask somebody to find a solution by yourself...

Or, at least, it is some kind of workaround: It seems to be an issue with the graphics card. I have a "Mobile Intel(R) 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express ChipsetFamily" Model within my laptop. As long as my colourmode is set to 32 bit the issues appear. When I switch down to 16 bit, everything works fine!

Maybe somebody can give a more technical explaination for that circumstance.

Thank you very much!

As far as I know... As I said: I only recognize those issues with AGS games.

Is there an alternative way I can test if those things are correct?

Well, I have a strange problem and I hardly have the hope that anybody can help me with that issue. But maybe there are some system-freaks around...

Generally I don't have problems to get AGS and AGS-Games working on any of my computers, except my companies laptop which I have to work with the whole day:

If an AGS game is loaded the screen stays black. If I try to execute it in windowed mode, the frame of the window appears on the screen displaying the desktops background but nothing else. When I now move the window by dragging it with the mouse, the picture of the game appears in it but without any animation as long as the window is not moved any further. The visual information is only actualized (and animated as well) as long as the window is dragged accross the screen.

Besides, the issue occur on every AGS game independently of the the AGS version. And it appears ONLY with AGS. I didn't recognize that issue with any other application. And: I don't have any problems to start and use the AGS-Editor, only with the compiled games.

So if anybody had that same problem and found a solution, your help would really be appreciated!!!

Thanks!

@Ashen: Sounds good, but where to get? The links all seem to be dead.

Well, what do you really NEED if you get used to scripting?

Since I'm discovering more and more of the limitations of the interaction editor, I'm exchanging step by step nearly all of the interactions with scripts. But I still find things like that confusing me.

Thanks for help, Gilbot!

Looking in the interaction editor I see a pendant for "Game - Add score", it is GiveScore(). But I can't see one for "Game - Add score on first execution". The field is blanked out. And there is no explanation in the script reference under GiveScore.

Is there an existing pendant or do I have to find a workaround maybe with setting a variable?

Thanks again, RickJ and Ashen! your workarounds work very fine (although you had a little trap in it, Ashen. But I quickly found out to write GetAtScreenXY starting with a capital letter  )

Though I'm still interested in having my question answered, I decided for the scripting solution to manage the GUIs, since it gives me the flexibility of having the Iconbar at top and the Statusline at the bottom of the screen (with the YPos parameter it seems only possible to open a GUI if the cursor comes above this position).

Great help!


BTW:
Yes, I must have editet the game_start. I remember that I didn't like that static grey bar on the screen in the beginning.

Hey, thanks, it is always good to have creative people around and I promise to give these attempts a try, BUT:

The Iconbar is having the right behaviour already. And it is clear from the options panel why it appears. What is not clear is why it disappears. This must be coded somewhere. And I guess that there must be a similar section or something where to do it for the statusbar as well.

What I tried to do is: If I move the cursor to the top of the screen (YPos 13) the Iconbar should appear. When I move the cursor even more to the top (YPos 1) the Statusline should appear. As I move down the cursor again, the guis should disappear.

Since this works already fine for the Iconbar in the template game, I tried to make the specific modifications to the Statusline-Gui. In the controls panel I changed "Visible" to "Mouse YPos" and "Popup YPos" to 1. I also changed the Z-order to 3 for the Statusline overlaying the Iconbar. Since there was a "gui[0].Visible = false" in the game_start() section which leads to not show the gui at all I had to remove this to get the Statusline working.

Now everything works fine until I move the cursor off the guis again: The Iconbar removes as expected. But the Statusline stays on the screen giving me no chance but to finish the game with Alt+F4 because everything is blocked.

How is that? And why is the Statusline switched off by default (I can't remember to edit the game_start() section in the past)?

Great experience!

That helped! It works! Thank you so much!

BTW:
I set the timer to 2 game loops and it is alright too. But did you try to set the timer to 1 game loop? That seems to be too short, since it gives me the old situation again. Seems that 1 is too less to count.

Thank you, strazer, for the explanation. I now understand how this feature is working.

I also tried your suggestion, but unfortunately it doesn't work. The intro-run is completely ignored and I'm left on my first screen.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

But I now tried something different, which makes me wonder , if your explanation was really correct.

Please take a look

Code: ags

  // script for Room: Player enters room (after fadein)

Wait(100);                                               // defering visibility of object[0] a bit
object[0].Visible = true;
Wait(1);                                                   // without that object.Visible won't work
DisplayAt(320, 240, 1, " ");                      // display nothing to wait for interaction

// start animation
object[0].SetView(16);
object[0].Animate(0, 3, eOnce, eBlock);  

DisplayAt(320, 240, 1, " ");                     // display nothing to wait for interaction
player.ChangeRoom(6, 310, 150);          // goto next room

Since I gave space and time for interaction, it doesn't lead to it, that the game restart point is in the first room (maybe after the first DisplayAt). It is still in the second room as describes.

Hi,

I made an intro for my game. I made it by creating a seperate room with no player displayed. There is only an animated object and after the animation is finished the player is moved to the next room. Arriving in this room, two messages are displayed and after that I can start walking and playing. If I now press F9 the player position will be reset to the players starting position of this 2nd room. This means that the intro and the two messages are left out (BTW: The messages are in the first-time-player-enters-room-section of the second room).

Why does the game not start with the intro (the first room) again?