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It was a little tricky to wrap my head around how to use it at first but I'm really liking what I can do with this module! I'm using it for some thought bubble styled options.



I was wondering if there is any easy way to add some kind of animation to the options/UI?
I'm thinking either having the whole UI bob up and down by 1 pixel could be enough, or if there's a way to make the options use a view instead of a sprite number and animate those?

I tried making it bob myself but didn't get it moving.

Hm, yeah I tried patch 9 again and now it does work for me too. Tried with an older backup from 3.6.0 as well with no problem there either.
Not sure what's different now other than having had patch 8 installed after, and installing patch 9 again a second time.

Maybe something just went wrong the first time I installed it. It was right around the time of a windows update maybe that's got something to do with it. I only have guesses though.

But at least it works now!

It doesn't happen with a new template game. Trying patch 8 now and the crash does not happen with that either.

I realized I forgot this other part which is probably also relevant. If I, after having had the crash, try to run the exe in _debug manually, without the editor open I get this error:


I tried replacing the font and trying again but that didn't solve it.

Edit: this seems to happen with the other editor versions too so probably not relevant after all.

Already wrote about this in the support channel on discord while i was trying to figure out what exactly was happening but putting it here too just to make sure its been noted.

When I use this I seem to have some kind of issue with the debugger.
If I try to "run" the game via the button ie with the debugger, no game window shows up, the editor freezes entirely and can only be closed by ending the process.

Turns out doing so still leaves the run-time engine running in the background which leads to some other problems that were puzzling me for a while like if i start the editor back up again I can't compile or run the game even without the debugger since the unseen run-time engine is preventing the files from being removed/overwritten.

I can still compile the game just fine and run it without the debugger with no problem, and I have no issue with this if i go back to trying it with 3.6.0.

Is there is an easy way to combine the features of this module with the ones in this function I'm using for most of the movement in my game? (The gist is I'm doing side-scroller perspective and most things you can interact with can be done from either side, plus an extra thing for auto running, all of which is just comparing x coordinates)

Code: ags

static void DoIt::WalkUpTo(int middle, int distance) {
  
// Walks up to something from either direction to set up for interaction.
  
  if(middle > cTy.x + 120 || middle < cTy.x - 120){ //If far away enough,  switch to running.
    if(!MacIsShirtless && cTy.Moving && cTy.View != 175){
    cTy.StopMoving();
    }
    if(MacIsShirtless && cTy.Moving && cTy.View != 177){
    cTy.StopMoving();
    }
    cTy.SetWalkSpeed(9, 9);
    cTy.AnimationSpeed = 3;
    if(MacIsShirtless){
    cTy.LockView(177);
    }
    else{
    cTy.LockView(175);
    }
  }
  
  if (cTy.x < middle)
  {
  cTy.Walk(middle-distance, cTy.y, eBlock);
  }
  else {
  cTy.Walk(middle+distance, cTy.y, eBlock);
  }
  cTy.FaceLocation(middle, cTy.y, eBlock);  //Makes sure he still ends up facing it if he happened to be standing close to the middle of the thing.
  
  DoIt.ResetMacWalk();  // Makes sure he goes back to walking
}

I assume my stuff would need to get shoved into a second variation of the function in this module since its working off that if statement.
I had a go at that myself but I couldn't figure out how, haha.

Update: I figured it out, just had to do it one bit at a time

Ah, I assumed that since the activity in this thread was so recent that the module would still work with more recent versions of AGS but it seems I was mistaken. I'm seeing more things now that are no longer supported like System.ViewportWidth and GetViewportX

Unless someone happens to have a patched version to share I will simply join the que of folks patiently waiting for v2

Edit:
OH! Just went back and saw Daves notes on what to swap out, will try that, thank you Dave and also eri0o

Edit 2:
It works! Woo!

Decided to try this out today but apparently:

SpeechBubble_0.8.0.asc(797): Error (line 797): undefined symbol 'eAlignCentre'

Couldn't find anyone else having this issue when I searched so not sure how to solve it

@eri0o

Oh wow! Yeah DirectionRatio(2.0) makes it look completely correct! Its hard to tell what exact angles its changing at but it seems basically dead on with the graph haha.

So yeah this gets a big thumbs up from me!

The main "issue" in context looks like this:



Where if the character travels at an angle even slightly more horizontal than ~26 degrees it switches to the horizontal loop, when for my uses I'd want this to still be using the diagonal loops.


I assume I would need to set up some custom walking animation thing where I calculate the angles and assign the loop manually but I do not know how to do trigonometry and I know even less how to code it, lmao
Like I understand what needs to happen in rough terms but not how to put it together in code.

I do have it set up that way currently yeah, it does make the speed make sense for the perspective but that's about it.

I made a new image that better shows what I'm looking to achieve with the angles rather than the reason why:



Basically if a character is traveling at any angle in one of those green zones its going to use the respective loop for that diagonal. I want to change those angles so it better reflects the perspective. So for example, the up-right loop would appear if the character is traveling at any angle between 13.25 and 53 degrees, instead of the current range which i think comes out to between 22.5 and 67.5 degrees.

I'm putting an isometric over-world in my game and my current solution for making sure my character is using the correct loop while going in the eight directions is to just have a crude network of grid-like paths for him to ride his bike on.




However ideally I'd let him roam free. Or at least a free-er.
My issue being that diagonal movement loops for characters are based around being 45 degrees, which would work fine if it was entirely top down, and sorta makes sense in terms of dividing up angles evenly, but makes it hard to properly convey a viewing angle that's closer to the ground.

Even moving along thin paths like he is now it still looks uneven whenever he turns around.

I'm assuming what happens is something like: the game checks if the angle that the character is traveling in is closer to whichever angle is the "center" for each loop angle, like, is the angle closer to 90 or 45, and if so use that loop etc.

Basically what I'm looking to achieve is changing the "center" of when a character uses the diagonal loop from 45 degrees to something like 26,5.



I have seen some isometric control modules and such but I'd prefer to keep the existing clicking and path finding behavior if I can since I'm trying to keep the game effectively mouse-only, and from what I've noticed, in my case its really only the angle of the diagonals for the character that causes me any issues by ruining the illusion.

Thanks

First off, this module is absolutely phenomenal!
I initially tried it out as a solution for some flickering I got with the default camera behavior whenever I had two characters walking at the same time and getting out of sync, (my characters all use low frame rate animation and the MovementLinkedToAnimation turned on as a style choice) which this not only solved, but also made the experience of walking around in the game more pleasant general!

However, I seem to still be using 0.2.1 and when I tried upgrading I cant seem to achieve the same smoothness I have when using the old version.
Not sure if this is some setting I forgot to change or something that's different in the module itself. I would guess it might have to do with my characters using movement-linked-to-animation? Which is not something I want to change since like I mentioned its part of the style I'm going for.

I'm fine with sticking with the older version since it does what I need it to but I did want to ask if there is a way to move an object that is all the way back in the parallaxing background?
In my specific case I have a cloud that would ideally crawl across the sky while still being all the way at the back at PxPos 100 without needing a view with hundreds of frames, haha.

Is this possible? and if so is it possible in any version or only as of some later version?
It's not crucial at all but it would be neat if I could.