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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.

If it's a financial thing like needing to pay hosting fees, please let us know if we can help. Don't let the site just disappear like adventuredevelopers.com did.

I've had the same problem: no access for a couple of days, then it works, then out again.

OK. After reading a few other threads I did start to think Master might not be the latest stable code. I saw that pull request after posting, but I wasn't sure it was the same issue.

Thanks for the git info. I've hardly used more than "git clone" and "git pull".

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".

Hi all. Any chance at a sneak preview of next month's topic? I'm off tonight and would love to start brainstorming.

"Feb. 15th, 8 am - The end of the week's rolling around, so Yahtzee should hopefully have the first RON game done soon â€" Bionic Bill"

That is old, isn't it. I wasn't around back then. I first became aware of Reality on the Norm in April 2004, I believe.

I won't make it. But here's some of what I worked on:

My working title is Jack Flash Space Adventurer in "Kiss My Gas".

Hi all. I'll join in.

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.