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When I build my game and then run it in the editor, as soon as the game launches the built executables disappear. I'm using the latest version as of this post (version 3.6.1.31 P9).

Can anyone else confirm this behavior before I file a bug? I'm running the editor on Linux using the Wine compatibility layer. I'd like to confirm that people who use the editor on Windows have the same issue.

Farmer Zeke is captured by extraterrestrials and has to try to escape in time to feed his animals. This is a very short game for April 2020 MAGS, mostly to learn the AGS software. If you try it out, I would appreciate knowing which operating system you used (Windows, Mac OS or Linux) and if you had any technical issues or problems figuring out the game. You should end on the same screen that you start the game on.

I may continue the story (or at least use these characters again) in future MAGS games.

The game code is Free Software (General Public License 2.0 and Artistic License 2.0) ,and the art and music assets are available under several Creative Commons licenses.

Thanks for looking.

https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/2440-upducted/
https://gamesbypell.itch.io/upducted

Can anyone point me to the license terms for the graphics that come with the template games so that I can include them in my MAGS game? I'm planning to use the GUI graphics (icon bar, quit game dialog, etc.) from the default Sierra style game. I can only find terms for the source code, which I'm not sure automatically applies to the graphics. The license text specifically refers to "source code".

I'm modifying the original thread to something more to the problem. It's not clear in the dialog tutorial of the manual that the dialog GUI options for the "dWares" script need to be filled in rather than left blank. I read it as the "dWare" script was not intended to have clickable options in the dialog. Of course, this caused the engine to hang while it waited for the player to click dialog options that did not exist.

I'm talking about the this manual page:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/manual/acintro8.htm

Maybe the text could be updated to clearly show that the dialog options for "dWares" need to be filled in. The tutorial only mentions filling in "the script however you like".

Edit: Now this probably belongs in the Beginners' Technical Questions forum.

[SOLVED] I see where it briefly mentions filling the options in, though I missed it originally. In a tutorial where most steps are explicitly demonstrated, usually with graphics, this was easy to miss.

When I export a walkable area from the room editor using the "Export mask to file" feature, then try to reload it using "Import mask from file", I get the following error message:
"This is not a valid mask bitmap. Masks must be 256-colour(8-bit) images, using the first colours in the palette to draw the room areas."

I originally got that message trying to load a walkable mask I created in GIMP. I'm not very familiar with GIMP's indexed color features, so I thought I'd take a look at a file produced by the editor as reference. But even the editor's own saved mask file fails to load. This happens with masks I create using the editor's mask tools as well as with walkable masks that come with the template games.

I'm running the AGS 3.5 editor in Wine on Debian 10 Linux. Can anyone replicate this in Windows?

Where can I find a specification or diagram for the AGS game file format (that is the file or set of files the engine loads)?

I'm looking to develop my own tools and workflow to develop AGS games on Linux without needing to run the editor in Wine (and if there's enough interest, it could become a publicly-released cross-platform editor). I've been going through the source code at the github site and looking at the project files for the editor running in Wine, but is there a diagram or document laying out the format for the AGS game file?

To clarify, I'm not trying to make my own version of the engine (like MonoAGS). I'm making an alternative way of creating a game to run on the standard AGS engine without having to use the Windows-only AGS editor.

Any advice on this will be much appreciated. Also, if this already exists (and is reasonably functional) I'd be happy to hear it.

Note: I don't know if this should go in "Other Engine & Editor Development", but the main topic of the thread is the file format, not the tools I'm working on.

Today I checked out out the master branch and tried to build the engine following the instructions for Debian Linux. The build failed with compilation errors apparently related to the agspalrender plugin. Here are the first couple of error messages (after skipping all the warnings about pointers and constants):

Code: ags

                         ^
../Plugins/agspalrender/ags_palrender.cpp: In function ‘int agspalrender::DrawReflections(int, int)':
../Plugins/agspalrender/ags_palrender.cpp:1624:65: error: invalid use of incomplete type ‘struct AGSCharacter'
  if (Reflection.Characters[id].replaceview == 0) view = currchar->view+1;
                                                                 ^~
In file included from ../Plugins/agspalrender/ags_palrender.cpp:31:
../Engine/plugin/agsplugin.h:87:8: note: forward declaration of ‘struct AGSCharacter'
 struct AGSCharacter;
        ^~~~~~~~~~~~
../Plugins/agspalrender/ags_palrender.cpp:1626:51: error: invalid use of incomplete type ‘struct AGSCharacter'
  AGSViewFrame *vf = engine->GetViewFrame (currchar->view+1,currchar->loop,currchar->frame);
 

I was able to get the engine to build by disabling the inclusion of all built-in plugins and it worked fine with two fairly recent AGS games ("The Goat Crone" and "Clotilde Soffritti in: Never Buy a Used Spaceship"). I'm not a make expert, so there's probably a graceful way of disabling just the plugin that was giving problems. Has anyone else had this problem? I'll file a ticket on GitHub if you all think it's a problem with the code and not something I should have done differently.

Edit: I downloaded the latest ags3 branch zip file (I don't know how to check out branches in git), and it built fine without any modifications. I tested "5 Days a Stranger" for a few minutes, and it seemed to run fine.

Edit: The latest 3.5 branch (zip file download) also builds and runs fine testing with "The Goat Crone".

For anyone interested, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine has several snapshots of the old Reality On The Norm site that used to be hosted at Home of the Underdogs.
Full Archive

The earliest snapshot is from March 20, 2002:
https://web.archive.org/web/20020320131915/http://ron.the-underdogs.org/

Here's one from April 10, 2004 with links to "Latest 10 posts on the forum..." which were also preserved:
https://web.archive.org/web/20040405063839/http://ron.the-underdogs.org/

Unfortunately, although the links to the forum home pages have been archived for the few dates I've tried, the subforums and individual posts seem to be lost. So far I've only found posts that have been linked from the main site home page.