Messages

Oh, it would really be helpful if Datetime wasn't a static struct and instead all these properties were writable, so decoding the rawtime would be just a set value after parsing it out of the name, I think for now getting the time back from RawTime for presentation purposes would require re-implementing the date conversion in script. :/

I guess the easiest approach is to have an int in the name, a counter, that you get the biggest value and increment (add one to it) and then you save it in the slot that has the smallest value. So something like the name being "autosave_COUNTER_description", and then you parse back by just using the counter - the approach you mentioned in the previous comment, but ignoring the date.

Does YYMMDDhhmmss fits in an int32? If it does than this date can be sorted with a simple int sort.

You can set the name of the saveslot and you can also read the name of the saveslot, but if you write to the same slot number it will be overwritten - and the name will change.

I need to think on the logic but I think you can just save the file as "autosave_yyyy_mm_dd_hh_mm_ss_description", and then you can retrieve the dates from the name. I am in transit but I think there's some way to use this to workaround without the need to save in something else the saves information.

I use something on the effect here in my savegame interface in my small games: https://github.com/ericoporto/dont-give-up-the-cat/blob/fc2810d9d580f6e1b51742489fa388fbd96cdbd0/dont-give-up-the-cat/CustomSave.asc#L88

3.6.2 is in Beta, not sure when it will be marked as release though.

I created an issue just to track this here: https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/issues/2546

You can do a dumb version just to test performance. Other alternative is to use Room Overlays, it's a bit more manual handling but they also allow for more control.

I haven't tried this specific case, but I did an experiment using characters some years ago and anything above ~150 characters visible on screen, all moving, resulted in significant slow downs - this was still in AGS 3.5.0 so there's a chance things are better nowadays. I don't know your game and maps, but just mentioning to experiment earlier to see how things work for you - using placeholder graphics.

Ah just mentioning, there's an open source engine that is for diablo like games called Flare, I have looked into in the past, I didn't end up liking it very much but it has some open source games with assets that are also interesting if you need something placeholdery to play with : https://github.com/igorko/flare-game/tree/master/art_src

Under the spoiler I hid a general explanation for rellax

Spoiler

If the character has movement linked to animation it will teleport the speed amount of pixels, then wait the delay of the frame, and then teleport again such amount of pixels that is set in the speed, which gives the perception that the character walks when it animates.

Rellax uses two different things to follow the player (I am going from my memory of my code...):

• If the player is moving, it uses some lerp approach to interactively approach the actual camera target, which smooths it out
• If the player is not moving, it will instead tween the camera to where it should be - this allows the camera to properly "lock" into target

If the player is walking very fast, the lerping approach will make the character ghost as the camera tries to catch-up with the player - if it's full scrolling, the camera is trying to keep the character in center. There are a few additional nuances in rellax but this is sort of the gist of it all.

I haven't been able to properly devise any way that it doesn't look so, but if the game is higher resolution and the character doesn't use movement linked to animation this is usually less perceptual.

The only way I think this could actually function is with floats for camera movement - this would allow the camera to position in fractions of pixels.

[close]

In actual games I have been able to workout the camera smoothing in a case by case basis, to avoid ghosting and all that, if you could show a video of the room where you are facing issue we could share ideas - one example, make areas and have the camera tween between areas when the player reach specific thresholds, but there are several approaches, you can even use tween+camera api to zoom out and zoom in.

[agstoolbox]

I had released a 0.5.2 version that fixed a crashing bug and forgot to put it here!

Also when running in a totally clean PC I discovered my agstoolbox actually depends on VS2017 redistributable, I added a link to it in the first post - I guess either when I added VS itself or some Steam game that used redistributables it suddenly worked and I never noticed. Ah, the redistributable is only necessary for agstoolbox, the command line companion atbx does not require it.

(curiously I actually am building for windows using wine and docker but I had to steal some dlls from VS to make python work flawlessly, I guess I need to polish my python->exe building in Linux a little more)

Right, the code for tween is something like

Code: ags

Game.Camera.TweenPosition(1.0 /*seconds*/, 1200 /*X*/, 0/*Y*/, eEaseLinear, eTweenBlock);

More info in the module docs https://edmundito.gitbook.io/ags-tween/basic/screen

I have a script somewhere where I have a config so that if the screen can't move it uses Movement linked to animation and if can move it doesn't - by setting the property to false through script. I also use two frames per image when using Movement linked to animation, so it can "fake slide" something that looks like a half frame and this allows me using a small pixel distance per step, which is the main thing that causes choppiness.

In this particular scene shown in the video though, it looks like a simple camera tween would be the easy way to have it smooth - along with making sure you have SetGameSpeed(60) at game_start.

The T14s arrived! It's a beautiful computer! Includes 3 year warranty from Lenovo, which includes a very interesting support that feels like corporate support which is great, did all the product registration and everything, it's an actually Brazilian product version too, with the Brazilian Portuguese keyboard - I mostly write in English but it's a nice thing to have.

The notebook looks solid, overall it appears to work well and be very silent. It's a Gen 4 (they just released Gen 6), so this is why I got an excellent price for it. I am very happy and started all the Windows updates and driver updates, Lenovo BIOS updates and all the other dance until I get to installing the stuff I actually use. Overall very happy and looks like a solid computer I will be able to use to code for hopefully a few years ahead.



It's practically the same size of my ASUS notebook, but I hope it's keyboard and battery last a lot longer. The screen feels bigger, it's 1920x1200, but it feels nicer. The PC is slightly chonkier but not heavier, hopefully this means better cooling, but we will see.

_{(please leave the gif I love it)}

We can claim 30 years of AGS somewhere in 2027 which is cool.

Ah, there is a new website being made, the topic is this one from this specific message: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/adventure-related-talk-chat/ags-website-redesign/msg636665239/#msg636665239

Thanks for the review @Cassiebsg !! I am super curious on Chuwi because of their different form factors. They are not cheap here though since they have to be imported and they don't have presence in the country, this causes them to be highly taxed - for comparison I got the brand new Thinkpad from Lenovo for less than the Chuwi Microbook X I had my eyes on.

For now I gave up in having a really small computer, I will just be happy to have a notebook with a working battery and keyboard.

Spoiler

Virginia my home sweet home I want to give you a kiss.

[close]

AGS is now open source.

Spoiler

I have no idea who you are and when you dropped :/

[close]

Uhm, so basically RPG Maker uses it's own concepts that are attempting to describe a specific type of game, JRPGs, and as so it will have it's logic geared towards those, and using things like map with tiles, events and charas, tou have a screen where you configure some things like the curves for the stats, you plan the battles and stuff like that, standard things that you can expect in classic JRPG games, but it also gives two additional layers to add some logic, one in it's minimalist logic and other in straightforward Ruby or JavaScript - depending on which RPG Maker you are using, the really old ones didn't have this second layer.

AGS on the other hand, uses concepts that are familiar to classic Adventure games, you can have characters, inventory items, and instead of maps with tiles we get rooms that use an image to set the background and you can put objects in these and the walking uses walkable areas to set them and the like - concepts that existed in the original engines in classic adventure games.

Like RPG Maker, AGS is old, but it hasn't been redone as much as RPG Maker - it's been open source and has been maintained by volunteers.

Anyway, it depends on what type of game you want to make.

The manual has a tutorial, you mentioned you played around with AGS for some time, perhaps try following the tutorial here: https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/acintro2.html

I would recommend trying to make a small adventure game, just to play around with it.

In regards to scripting, there's no escaping it in AGS, you will have to when you use it, the manual also has something on it, here: https://adventuregamestudio.github.io/ags-manual/index.html#scripting

I don't particularly like the tutorial there too much, so don't hang up on it, but I would say it's easier to learn it by making some game so that you focus on what you need and have some motivation and then as you go you would get more experience.

Is this grid of boxes something that is presented as a zoom in of something that is shown in not close-up view before, and then once you click you enter in "puzzle-mode" or more like something in the room, where the player has to walk around to place big objects? I think the visual design can orient to either a GUI or a Room implementation.

Are the objects inserted in the grid using the same sprite as when they are in the inventory or do they have specific sprites for each, or even a specific sprite for each grid position and a single sprite for when they are in the inventory?

The general idea is you will need to remove the inventory when placing the object and look at the piece and then retrieving the appropriate inventory item to the player if they pickup such item back.

There are many ways to go here, but you probably only need 9 elements switching their sprites.

Ah, also the room object limit should actually be 256 objects unless you are not using the latest stable release

Computer arrived with a few issues, I returned and got me a T14s, waiting for it to arrive, so it's another week of waiting. :/

Uhm, what version of AGS is this? (We really should put the AGS version on the error message).

Also if the error message is correct it fails loading the Editor Preferences not the actual game settings, so presumably you didn't lose anything that's to hard to recover from (erh, maybe the android password if you didn't note down it elsewhere).

@Khris I agree that 16:9 is more common specially tvs and desktops but 16:10 (and 3:2!!) made a come back in laptops in recent years. If you look around for laptops today there are several high ends that are going for huge 16inch screens with 16:10 resolution. My guess is they sell well for people working from home that write a lot of text.

Oh, I didn't thought that issue was about this, for some reason I thought it was about triggering an event from a module - like event.Emit() will cause a listener to pick it, and I never had much use for this. But yeah, the events being able to assign a specific script module allows one to skip a redirection step in the global script to call the other modules.

In my head people would have script modules either for game wide systems or for game "areas", say three rooms where a puzzle involve things that exist between these areas. Then you would have some items that are specifically made to be used in this area and some GUIs related to these items, so this is the kind of use I would give for changing from the global script - plus I usually have a script module for my game menus and these GUIs would link to this script module directly.

I am curious how other people organize their games and if they would have similar uses.