Messages

This is awesome.

It was fun! Thanks to everyone who participated, voted and nominated! It was very nice and humbling to get nominated and even win something.

Anyone who has no idea how to join without the ceremony game use this mibbit link.

Happy birthday miguel! I wish you enough testicles to last a lifetime, so you never run out, no matter how angry the society is with you!

Damn, I'm clearly late. But my wish stands.

There will be no stupid dares where a person could get hurt or any illegal dares of course...

No life-threatening or illegal stuff? Pff, count me out.

How about people who like the basic way in which AGS lets you make adventure games, but don't like all the limitations of the current version in terms of platform support, relying on DirectDraw and old Direct3D, shortcomings in the scripting language, and all the other things people have been asking for and complaining about for years?

You're confusing yourself over two different things. One is where we want AGS to get to, in terms of architecture, design and functionality. The other is how to get there (by gradually rewriting and refactoring the current code, or starting from scratch). We've been over the arguments about the second point (where the idea is certainly not to add "another half-arsed hack", but rather to start fixing the hacks that are currently in there), but CW argued that we first need to decide these other things. Therefore, I was giving my two cents on what the "ideal AGS 4.0" should be like.

Yeah, but I have to reiterate my question: how many of those feature requests are actually minor fixes that don't require such huge long-term reworking that is ultimately equivalent to a full rewrite? That can actually be reasonably done iteratively without major headache over trying to keep it all functional midway somehow and dodging all the nightmarish bugs arising from the process of such transition? E.g. you make "script language improvements" sound like just another relatively painless and trivial task that can be tackled in baby steps. Does AGS actually allow for that?

I find this prospect profoundly un-scary. Indeed, a future where people have all these great engines to choose from sounds great. But if this future is so certain, why bother with this at all? Why not just sit back and wait for a better engine to come along?

Even though clearly sarcastic, that's a perfectly valid question. I'm guessing the primary reasons would be that it's still entirely possible that none of the alternative solutions will appear and the AGS community may end up with nothing. And the fully understandable desire to have a "community engine" that is authored, owned, controlled etc by the community. And so, I wasn't arguing towards cancelling the idea entirely, but rather considering the circumstances of its execution. Which I think is a valuable perspective.

And if you don't think AGS is usable as a starting point for a good, competitive modern adventure game studio/engine (even if the actual code is rewritten), why even care about it? Complete that devkit and you have the engine of your dreams, right?

Please don't get me wrong, I don't have any petty stake in this. Indeed, I already almost have the engine of my dreams and I don't particularly care about AGS. Furthermore, I'd like to share my engine eventually because why not, but it was never a priority, never will be and I still don't care about its adoption by a wider userbase. What I care about here is AGSers and I speak purely out of concern for them. I really like the community, I consider myself a part of it and so I suggest what I think are reasonable arguments to consider, that's all.

[and]

- What kind of system/engine do you want to get done?
- What kind of users is it aimed for?
- What kind of general features should it have?
- Do you want it to be extensible, and which way?

Ironically enough, I get the feeling none of these questions are really answered by the proponents of maintaining the existing AGS codebase even though they seem to want to target somebody who they'd call "the existing AGS userbase". Like, I genuinely don't understand what is the intended audience of this endeavour would be. People who want to do what exactly? What I'm getting at is... people who are content with all the fundamental AGS limitations, already have AGS. People who aren't however, wouldn't really be happy with another half-arsed hack added to the existing pile of hacks and probably would prefer some proper features properly implemented. Are there really that many minor flaws in AGS that can be just fixed? Like, genuinely minor, as in not actually stemming from major mistakes in its design and implementation? Because I honestly don't know and it certainly doesn't seem that way to me. For instance, the list of "improvements" Snarky posted a few posts above clearly implies pretty much a complete (like >90%) rewrite of everything.

The bottom line is, I've seen virtually no compelling arguments or reasons here for maintaining the existing AGS code as means of achieving a successor engine so far. Not even to mention there doesn't seem to be well, anyone who actually wants to touch it, especially on a long-term basis.

Also keep in mind, that even if the community decides(tm) to go down that route, it doesn't mean other developers wouldn't continue working on their solutions. So it's reasonable to expect you'd still need to compete with freshly cleanly designed solutions in the near future. They may not come tomorrow, it's not clear what Calin's plans with Adore are, when Adventure Creator will mature and how it will turn out, or when I actually will have time to attempt to make a user-friendly devkit based on my own engine etc etc. So sure, AGS seemingly has an advantage right now. Would it still have it in, say half a year from now, even with continued maintenance? A year? Just make sure you don't have to regret your answer to that question.  Because whatever your opinion on what is the best course of action for AGS is, you have to realize that projects with more clean and modern foundations and connected to actual game development will be moving at a much faster pace than the refactoring & rehacking & maintenance of AGS. Writing stuff "from scratch" takes a lot of time but in my humble opinion spending more time sucks less than spending some lesser time in vain. Don't say I didn't warn you that your own target audience may eventually run away once something more practical presents itself, which can be pretty damn frustrating. Just saying.

So I daresay, if you really really want to have some open source "community engine" as some kind of future-friendly defacto solution, assemble together and make one properly, instead of trying to keep a previously proprietary product afloat indefinitely and at all costs. Because all the talk about the importance of open source is frankly a bit amusing when what is holding us back here is essentially some legacy code that was proprietary the most of its lifecycle.

And with that said, I find tzach's and Monsieur OUXX's proposals very intriguing.

This sounds a bit like reinventing the wheel to me. Are these actual problems people have with AGS the way it is now? If not, why mess with it?

If you're afraid that the relevant people voicing opinions on how they want adventure game development to be structured may turn out to clash with what AGS does now, then yes, it's an actual problem admitted by your own implication, surely?

The game's title is also the name of the girl.

Sorry, but I'm not talking about Adventure Creator, I'm talking about this.

Oh dear, it's one of those. I totally haven't played them though and wouldn't be able to guess the name of the gi- I mean, the game. >_>

I'd like to bump this in good faith. Since there's a lot of talk about other engines right now and Adventure Creator has resurfaced, I'd like some status update on this as well.

Looks and sounds fun! Also, Linux support? Good show.

Ok, right you are.

Which?

It's Lula: The Sexy Empire.

Yep.

It's 3 Skulls of the Toltecs.

Have at ye:
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/d3eiN5r.png[/imgzoom]

Marriage is pretty cool, I guess.

By the way the live ceremony game completely works through the latest Wine, so anybody who wants to attend the live ceremony from Linux can do so without any problems as well.

The theme is this picture, designated "height". In 20 hours the fun shall start!