Messages

Currently AGS matches the center point of the loop with the X coordinate of the character.  What would be really fun is if each loop could have an X "anchor" value that would specify an alternate point to use instead.

The reason I think this would be neat is for when you have a lot of loops in a view where the feet don't necessarily line up with the feet in the other loops.  For example your talking loop might be really slim if the guy has his arms at his sides, and that loop fits naturally because there is no space on either side of him.  But if you have another loop where he gestures to one side, then you'll have a bunch of space on that side for his arm to move around.  You either have to edit all your sprites in order to pad the other side of the guy, or you have to adjust the character's X coordinate before you run the loop.  Otherwise, the guy will "jump" to one side while that loop plays and then jump back when you switch back to the normal loop.

In fact it might be cool if you had both an X and a Y that you could use to anchor the loop.  But even just the X coordinate would be awesome.

Just something to consider if the contributors have too much time on their hands

I've written a script that uses DialogOptionsRenderingInfo functions to render my own dialog options window.  It is working great (thanks for asking) except for one thing: if the DialogToRender has text parser enabled, I want to make extra room on the bottom of the window for the text box.  If not, I don't want that extra space.  But I cannot figure out how I can get the value of that option.  The Dialog managed type does not have a property that corresponds to the ShowTextParser property from the dialog's property sheet.

Any advice?

Thanks!

I have some animated GIFs that I exported from an SCI game.  I have been trying for hours to get them to import properly using Quick Import GIF Frames and I can't quite seem to get it right.

First of all, the reason that I'm using GIF frames is that the SCI export tool positions each frame within the animated GIF properly so that I won't have characters moving around within the loop when they're not supposed to.  So if I can figure out how to use the GIF frames feature properly, it will save me a lot of time in the long run.

First problem: Stuff from previous frames shows up in subsequent frames, if the subsequent frame is smaller than the previous one.  This one can be solved using Filters -> Animation -> Unoptimize in GIMP.  Took me a while to figure that one out.

Next problem: Transparency.  My game is in True Color mode.  Obviously the GIFs are indexed color.  I have tried every combination of:
1. Make the transparent color be the first palette entry.  This didn't work; it just makes it black where it should be transparent.
2. Making the transparent color be the first palette entry, AND making sure it is #FF00FF even though it displays as transparent.  Same as above.
3. Making no transparency in the GIF and filling in #FF00FF instead of transparency.  Now I just get sprites surrounded by #FF00FF.

I have always made sure that the top-left pixel of each frame is the color that ought to be transparent.

So my question is: what is the precise behavior of this utility?

Edit: (before I even finished posting) I think I figured out what I was doing wrong.  "Quick Import" seems to take the transparency settings that you last used.  I couldn't find documentation on that, but I had previously imported a sprite with "No Transparency", so manually importing a sprite with proper transparency settings and then re-importing my GIF frames (with #FF00FF filled in to transparent areas) has solved the issue.  I'm going to post this anyway in case someone else has the same issue and does a forum search.

For SCI-exported GIFs, the Unoptimize filter in GIMP seems to be sufficient for good import (i.e. you don't have to fill in #FF00FF everywhere).