Messages

A circle tool for rooms that tracks the mouse for both x and y diameter (so you can make ellipses) would be awesome.  Also, if the freehand/line tool would start drawing WHEN you pressed the button instead of after you started moving that would be more in-line with how conventional art programs work.  As it is, if you want to place a single pixel you have to click-and-drag to get it, which is difficult.

Also a zoom for the mask editing on the room editor would be fantoostic!

cheers,

lemmy

Hi, not sure if it's just us, or if it's already been reported, but when we do for e.g.:

cMia.ChangeRoom(12, 100, 100);

it sets her position to 100, 100, and THEN it fades out to change room, which is making all the room transitions look a bit odd at the moment.

Sorry if this has already been reported.

Thanks,

lemmy

It's due to the maximum size of posts. We split our post into two and it works fine.

Not sure where an appropriate place to post this is, but here goes:

Has there been some change to the way the forum works? Just our TFE thread, the first post is showing up as blank since the maintainence downtime. If I click edit the contents of the post is still there, but whatever I try doing the post appears as blank when I save.

Thanks

lemmy

Hi CJ.  It worked fine in beta 3 (not sure about 3a) so is a recent thing.

I don't think that any behaviour around this has changed in beta 4. Are you using the DX5 driver, because I wouldn't expect DrawText to work with D3D.

Hmmm no, we have the DX development in a different plugin for now, and AGX is still using the DX5 drivers. I'll have a play see if I can give you more info, but all I can say is it is calling DrawText with a valid string, and an on screen location, in the POSTSCREENDRAW on DX5, and we're not getting any text displayed.

Thanks!

lemmy

I agree with both Mash and EldKatt.

She will instantly think you are trying to pick her up, guaranteed... and buying her a $250 phone will most probably make her think you're going to start stalking her and sending her flowers every day.

Sorry, but whether you're interested in her or not, I can't think how such a gesture could work out well, whatever your motivation. :S

Hell, if I bought a good friend something costing $250 I think they would be confused and uncomfortable.

One thing? Has anything changed that might influence the AGSPlugin call to DrawText()? I've got this code:

   GetAGS()->DrawText(x, y, 0, 58136, (char*)szString);

It doesn't seem to be drawing anything on the POSTSCREENDRAW event any more.

Are you talking about something specific to beta 4, or a change from 2.72?

Hi CJ. It worked fine in beta 3 (not sure about 3a) so is a recent thing.

Thanks!

lemmy

Nice work CJ!

One thing? Has anything changed that might influence the AGSPlugin call to DrawText()? I've got this code:

   GetAGS()->DrawText(x, y, 0, 58136, (char*)szString);

It doesn't seem to be drawing anything on the POSTSCREENDRAW event any more.

Thanks!

lemmy

That works a treat! Both the crash and the weird text problem!

Thanks CJ!

Ooooh, an AGSE_ event is where ALL my stuff is updated.

It was just a nice way of lowering the amount of set up to implement our plugin. Seemed to work fine in 2.72 so I saw no problem... but if that could be causing problems then...

Wow, I'll try changing this. Thanks CJ!

I can use a raw char * in an AGS call? Didn't realise that. So what IS the correct use of CreateScriptString?

Thanks muchly!

lemmy

Hi CJ. It seems to be directly related to me calling SayBackground, which is strange if the crash happened in drawing a sprite :

//-----

const char* szToPass = GetAGS()->CreateScriptString(GetStringStore()->GetString(nSpeech));
SayBackground = (void (*) (AGSCharacter*, const char*))GetAGS()->GetScriptFunctionAddress("Character::SayBackground^1");
SayBackground(GetAGS()->GetCharacter(m_nID), szToPass);

//-----

If I comment these lines out then it works perfectly (but I get no text appearing, obviously.

As I said, this only crashes when running through the debugger. It's completely fine otherwise.

What is the lifetime of strings created using CreateScriptString? Perhaps these are getting deleted and causing me to trash sprite memory only when debugger is running, or something weird?

Thanks,

lemmy

Does this include character sprites at all? All we've got there is vanilla AGS gui, background, characters and text so I'm not freeing anything at all as far as I can tell.

Basically all I'm doing in cases when it crashes is making calls to SayBackground, and setting views/frames of characters. :S

Will look into it more and see if I can provide you with any extra info. I guess unless I'm fast that'll probably be after the maintainence!

Thanks again CJ!

Hi CJ, I've got a strange crash that's happening with the lastest beta of AGS that only occurs when I'm debugging, which is making it impossible to debug the game.

Testing out the amazing new noexceptionhandling thing (woot) it appears its crashing inside AGS not the plug-in but since it's happening between two AGX update calls I'm not certain what is causing it.

---------------------------
Illegal exception
---------------------------
An exception 0xC0000005 occurred in ACWIN.EXE at EIP = 0x0046A514 ; program pointer is +5, ACI version 3.01.1012, gtags (17,64)

AGS cannot continue, this exception was fatal. Please note down the numbers above, remember what you were doing at the time and notify CJ on the Tech forum.

Most versions of Windows allow you to press Ctrl+C now to copy this entire message to the clipboard for easy reporting.

An error file CrashInfo.dmp has been created. You may be asked to upload this file when reporting this problem on the AGS Forums. (code 0)
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

CrashDump: http://www.lemmyandbinky.com/CrashInfo.3.01.1012.dmp

If you could give me some idea of where to look that would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

lemmy

Hey Nightfable! This looks totally fab! Love the graphic style, the backgrounds are cool, and I especially like the Gladia character's pose!

Will look forward to this a lot! Keep up the good work!

lemmy

Just a thought:

What would be ultra fabby, would be the ability to multi select a bunch of frames in the sprite manager, and then be able to import over them all a list of gif files in the order of the file select order -> sprite numbers. If less were selected in the file window, it would only replace as many frames as were selected, if more were selected, it would add the remainder as new frames after replacing the selected frames.

This means you'd no longer have to import the sprites as new sprites, reassign to the view/views, then delete the original.

No biggie at all, just when any slight sprite edits happen with long animations (walk cycles etc) it's quite a cumbersome process to replace them at the moment.



Thanks!

lemmy

I also think this will not exactly encourage people who are conscious they might not be the best artist or dialogue writer to make an AGS game for fear of being publicly embarrassed, as light hearted as it is and awarding joke games, you'd have to be careful it was clear it was a joke.

I would agree that if the "very bad thing" is interesting enough to be a surprise later, then it should be used as such and not given up right at the start. It all depends if your ending is strong enough for the "very bad thing" revelation not to be needed to add weight to it, or indeed whether the "very bad thing" is just a means to an end, or the central point of the whole story.

I know it might be considered a bit of a cliche in some circles, and it's been used on at least one adventure game that pops to mind, but is there any exciting point in the future that could be used as a hook into the game instead of a conversation? that would be more instantly gripping and also maintain the mystery of what the "very bad thing" is? So instead of asking yourself "why is the dad so angry at the daughter?" (low stakes) you're thinking "what in hell could she have done that's so terrible that X, Y, Z!!! :-o:-o:-o)

that would set up two things for the player to look forward to: a) how did they get into that situation in the first place and b) what was the terrible thing she did that lead up to the start of the story... the game proper kicks off with that conversation between father and daughter, along with the extra dramatic involvement in the story.

It's a tough one I guess, as only you know what is the core important elements in your story and what is best to keep secret, and what is best to give up early to draw people in.

My 2c worth, anyway.

IMO the best openings are ones that set up an instant hook. Get straight in with some drama or put the player in an interesting situation they want to discover how they got into, be that interactive or in a cutscene. My least favourite openings are ones with two guys talking for 10 minutes with huge reams of dialogue. No matter how good that dialogue is I'll start getting bored and skipping text, which hurts my enjoyment of the game in the long run.

Me too! We're in the North East, you're in Oxford. Wow that's really spooky! I didn't even think we could get earthquakes!  :o

Fuck that was really weird!  :o