Messages

Very interesting AI experiment by META!


https://sketch.metademolab.com/canvas

It cannot export into spritesheet... so I asked ChatGPT to create a webpage to do it:

https://github.com/jumpjack/MotionCapSpritesheet/tree/main/mp4-to-spritesheet

(Work in progress)

Also this AI experiment from Adobe is very interesting_

https://www.mixamo.com/#/?type=Motion%2CMotionPack

And you can also create speech and SFX: https://audiobox.metademolab.com/storymaker/demo

Probably creating a game is going from being a team work to being a movie-director. :-)

Interesting tutorial about how to create a sprithesheet from advanced hires 3d characters:
https://awentzonline.github.io/human-sprites/

It uses:
- MakeHuman software (warning! broken link in the tutorial, use this one) to create the character
- Blender to animate it
    - motion captur data available here as BVH files
- An ancient free version of ASESPRITE to prepare the sprite sheet.

.BVH file players::
https://lo-th.github.io/olympe/
http://www.akjava.com/demo/bvhplayer/

BVH file of "walking around": https://mocap.cs.sfu.ca/nusmocap/0005_Walking001.bvh
BVH file for "walking straight": https://mocap.cs.sfu.ca/nusmocap/0018_Walking001.bvh

Found here: https://mocap.cs.sfu.ca/nusmocap.html#

Also found descriptions of file formats:


.hdf: raw 2D marker positions, as well as all intermediate data representations and the end results
.fbx: Autodesk file format
.bvh: final skeleton and skeletal animation
.c3d: labeled 3D marker positions in binary format
.txt: c3d data in ASCII format
.vsk: ASCII file format for calibrated skeleton and marker attachment positions

Alternative descriptions:
c3d: Reconstructed 3D data
txt: x,y,z translation data derived directly from the c3d data
FBX: FBX can also carry a mesh with image based textures or color per vertex, as well as virtual cameras.
bvh: The bvh file defines both the skeleton and the motion data all in one file
amc: Same as bvh except it is a different skeletal format

Difference between C3d  (3d coorindates) and BVH (bones rotations):





https://alinen.github.io/MotionScriptTools/notes/MotionBuilderC3D.html

C3d is binary positions, BVH is ASCII rotations.

To create an automatic spritehseet creator, I think BVH is better, because I'll have to overlay over each bone a rotated bitmap representing arms, legs, hands, and I already have rotation values... in 3d: I will have to convert to 2d, which may be tricky.
Instead, to turn C3d into 2d it should be enough to suppress depth (as long as movement of the character is exactly along horizontal axis).

Further study needed.

Just found a very interesting free resource:

http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu/

It's a database of body animations data!

Walking, runnin, dancing... everything!
I'll have to study it a bit, I want to figure out if I can turn the data for a walking character into something human readable, maybe a multiple chart or something.
Then I will try to  create a walking stickman based on this data.
And eventually I would like to attach "something" to the stickman (dresses, flesh,...), to make it cooler to look at... But this will be the hard part!

This sounds like you didn't extract the entire zip file first.

No, the file was there, but I can now confirm that the editor was not able to find it until I installed C++ redistributable. Once installed, the editor started fine.

I am getting this error upon running portable 3.6.1: "AGS.Native.dll" file not found or missing dependencies.

Maybe it's due to missing C++ redistributable... but no clues about it in the message.


P.S.
How do I attach images to forum?

It's a puzzle Seriously though, that was a concious decision to simplify things.

Spoiler

If the player can change the temperature while the door's open, that means extra animations are needed for freezing and thawing with the door open as well as closed. I'd also need to figure out what happens if the temperature is changed while the chef is standing in the freezer, but the door isn't closed yet. The number of states that the chef and engineer could be in were already making my head hurt, so it made sense to simplify the player's options.

[close]

This is not my point. My point is that  I din't notice the card reader until 100th time I entered the room, and only because I read around there should be a card reader somewhere, because the reader is hidden behind the open door! So I clicked 1000 times the badge ON THE FRIDGE!

Is this a question of portable Editor or portable engine (game runner)?

I was talking about editor.

At first I thought you are speaking of the former, but then you referred to it as "interactive video player" which sounds like the game engine.

Also the editor is just a matter of "showing images and saving data", from O.S. point of view.

As Khris said, Editor may be downloaded in an archive and simply unpacked. It does still have system requirements (.NET framework and VC Redist) but other than that may run, for example, from a flash drive that you insert into a random machine.

Sorry, could not find it.

PS. But... why dig out a 13 years old forum thread for this?

Because this is just what both google and internal search engine reply to query "AGS portable".

I searched and tried a bit, but I was not yet able to find an AI able to create a complete sprite sheet, or even just a single sequence of frames for a moving character.

Did anybody successfully perform such search? Such an AI would make free adventures "market" literally explode! Now we already can count on advanced backgrounds and objects generators (just ask MS paint to draw them!), saving us a lot of time; the next ovious step is auto-generation of the sprites.

Beware, the card reader gets totally covered by fridge door!

This thread did not last so long....
Does it exist today a portable version of AGS? I don't like running executable installers for programs which do no need direct access to advanced system resources. Isn't AGS just an interactive video player, in last instance?
Even better it would be to have an online version of AGS, so as not to download anything, I've seen several "miracles" made with WASM!

I don't know anything about "Among us", so figuring out what's the objective of the game was quite hard, especially because it's quite unusual thatin an adventure game you have to kill them all!
So, a "kill them all" sentence at the beginning would help.
It would also helo a fridge door which does not cover the card reader....

Is this the only thread about AGS4? It is very old.
The only other one mentioning AGS4 is Engine & Editor V4.0 Alpha - Proposal, and an issue on github.

I would like to follow the ongoing discussion, if any, about new features going to be implemented  in AGS4.

I add here a link to all AGS4-tagged issues on github, for reference:

Open
Closed

I copied my "defective" .ags file into a folder containing the files of web engine taken from latest release (3.6.0 RC6), but the flickering is still there:

https://jumpjack.github.io/Space1999Adventure/AGSdebug3_/

I didn't keep the source of the defective .ags so I cant't compile it with updated editor.

Should the problem have been fixed on the editor/compiler or in the engine?

I thought that this fix included also the overlays ordering bug (undefined order if Zorder is the same):

- Fixed GUI sorting for cases when ZOrder is equal (this could cause both regression in drawing order, and click detection mistakes);

Sorry if it's a silly question, but why also in 3.6.0 there is no "New" button/menu to create a new game without exiting the editor?

Apart from this, I just opened an issue about a "text bug" I recently discovered in RC3 but still present:

https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/issues/1900

In splash screen of Build 3.6.0.38 I read "November 2022", shouldn't it read january 2023?

I updated the link on the first post with an updated version of this.



You now only have two groups active in the Editor log, which is the Game log group, with things that are reported from the engine internals that are relative to the Adventure game parts, and the Script log group, which are the logs you yourself can output by using System.Log().

Interesting, but listboxes are quite uncomfortable for continuous usage: I would suggest two static lists of radioboxes on the right or left.

I would also suggest separated panels for game messages and script messages.

Could you also include a list off to the side having all the objects and characters and their coordinates beside them as a window.The log shows where the characters go to but not where they are.
I cant remember all the times when I wished I knew where the character was exactly at a certain moment.
I know this Is a bit extra to ask.Especially since there might not be any room to place a window.

You are mixing up editor features with engine features...

The list of objects should be placed in the Explore Project panel of Editor window (I wonder why Chris did choose that strange view mode for objects, areas and whatelse).

The runtime engine should show current character(s) position. Showing the positions of dozens of objects looks not feasible/useful: too many data.

By the way, this is somewhat related, but theoretically one could write a stand-alone application that either reads the engine log on the fly, from the file or stdout; or connects to the engine using same "Debugger" interface as editor uses, and then displays all messages in a window. This way one would be able to see game's log even without the editor.

It's what I am currently doing with my favourite text editor, PSPad, which has an "autoupdate" feature,to show in real time how a loaded file is changed by other applications.

I created this function:

Code: ags

function debugPrint(String text,  bool displ) { 
  File *output = File.Open("$SAVEGAMEDIR$/log.txt", eFileAppend);
  if (output == null)
    Display("Error writing to log file.");
  else {
    DateTime *dt = DateTime.Now;
    String dateText = String.Format("%4d/%02d/%02d %02d:%02d:%02d" , dt.Year, dt.Month, dt.DayOfMonth,  dt.Hour,  dt.Minute,  dt.Second);
    String filetext = dateText.Append(" - ");
    filetext = filetext.Append(text);
    output.WriteRawLine(filetext);       
    output.Close();
    if (displ) { // blocking message
        Display(filetext);
    }
  }
 }

It saves log into "Saved games" system folder.

But having this function embedded in the editor would be of course much better.

Upon creating a new game in 3.6.0 RC4, if I select the empty template I am warned about it being... empty  , and suggested to use "Defualt Game" template, but there is no Default Template available: I see Bass, Empty Game, Sierra-Style, Tumbleweed and Verb Coin.