Messages

porting the engine is a worthy goal.

Oh dear, so sorry. I thought you were referring to the whole kit and kaboodle.

Of course, I see no use for an editor on anything other than a PC(win/linux)/Mac but I am convinced that surely runtime support would be of some interest to us.

Cheers,
Sparky.

Yeah we need a subsection for 3rd party editor development. I suggest a generic title that can eventually be applied also to a forum for engine development also.

These walkcycles of mine are old and now obsolete, but perhaps they will be of some help to you.


Cheers,
Sparky.

Hey! Neato pathfinding. 

Sparky.

Merging with svn is hell.

Hehe. I wasn't sure if it was the pinnacle solution. Just though I'd put it out there because it hadn't been mentioned yet.
I've used SVN for almost half a decade now. I have no gripe to make about it.

Sparky.

Subversion perhaps?  8)
Sparky.

I have to agree firmly with Tzachs. The sooner, the less cleanup required, naturally.
I'm happy to help out any way I can if you need bulletproof hosting, or it might be preferable to you if myself and others offer a small regular donation to fund your own private hosting.

Cheers,
Sparky.

Personally I have no interest in seeing the editor on other platforms. The Mac/Linux voice always shouts very loud, but it is such a tiny proportion of real world users that in terms of the editor it's not something I think it's worth spending time on.

I think your underestimating the adoption value of would-be handheld developers. It's the chicken or the egg. If there's no chicken, there's no egg. CJ, sorry buddy, but your the chicken.
Sparky.

If the editor were opened up, that's one of the many things that could be added in more fully.

Monkey's right. A refresh on the interaction editor could be assembled so that most of the current scripting language could have a click and drag front-end.

For example you might have a scene where you need your character to play an animation while he is speaking as the room scrolls to the left. This is relatively basic to set up in the script already, but I imagine this sort of thing (and more) would become quite trivial to the most basic user.  8)

Sparky.

Fantastic decision Chris! The possibilities here stir great excitement in me.
I basically feel like I'm unmarried again, back in the garage eating chicken pretzels and watching pron! Yeaah!

Sparks.

I'm also eager to see that fighting game.

Thanks Wyz. There will be a press release soon about it.

Cheers,
Sparky.

All the hard work's finally paying off, good buddy. 8)
This is really great stuff. I wonder if we could use this to drive our custom pathfinding system for sprite based characters we had on paper?

Dude, 3D maths is wayyyy out of your league.. just let this one go.

Push yourself to do something small first.

whatever.  Can't wait for the next PMQ game that'll never take off.

Whoa :o, dread from another thread - did I miss something?! Go easy on the new kidz fellers!

Cheers,
Sparky.

the worst case scenario is that someone would be using them for a freeware fangame

If this were to happen to me, from the perspective of a competent studio, I would find it difficult NOT to be somewhat flattered.

The trunk of the engine and the "official" version would still be controlled by CJ and official additions would still require his approval but the advantage of releasing it wholesale is that any flashes of genius from the community are not wasted by bureaucracy and the ruling of a panel. It gives an individual coder a chance to prove that their addition is worthy by virtue alone.
If the idea of that addition is sound but the implementation is not consistent then the panel/CJ are open to say so and provide guidelines to the coder in order to help them fix it.
If the idea is shitty to begin with then the panel/CJ merely has to say that the addition is not part of the vision but they are welcome to use it in their own games.

Again you reiterate/refine exactly the steps I believe should be put in place to allow free-er use of the engine. To for the very first time enable developers, right down to the individuals themselves, to take AGS home with them and make it work for them in a way that complements their project and indeed perhaps compliments the majority of us through the acceptance of that code through the main trunk. Again I think it's important for the community supporting AGS, with the few surefire expectations we hold to its tangibility, for there to still be an 'official' face on it. So I think the main trunk is extremely important for this.

Cheers,
Sparky.

[MUST NOT]

I can't help but feel almost entirely responsible for this. I started the AGS 3.3 Wishlist to encourage some serious and responsible suggestions and while that was the case for some of it, the 23 page topic took-off beyond what I unwittingly thought would be a manageable amount of feedback for CJ to draw from. I know this decision was inevitable and CJ would naturally grow lethargic from the repetition of his release/feedback/improve/bugfix routine but I still feel indirectly responsible for 'seemingly' breaking CJ's spirit. :'(

The majority seem so quick to dismiss all the hard work involved with keeping AGS a proprietary format. As a long time AGS user, who really only started to get serious with it in the last 5 years, I remember - As much as I tried to fight it, I respect the old-day mindset of keeping AGS proprietary. I firmly respect the decisions made back then as I believe they were relevant then, and it remains a serious topic even today. Times have moved on, I see this, and I pushed for this, perhaps a little too boisterously if you read back through the history of my posts, however I am extremely proud to have eventually come through with an unconditional sense of honor for those responsible for holding our community together and backing the one man responsible for all of this. Thats you CJ!

The irony is clear: Even I now miss the old days and fear the new, but it is a brave new world for our community and I believe, have always believed, that we lot are responsible enough to slowly become familiar with an open source environment and I strongly agree with the fundamentals some of you have laid out. Here's looking at you, RickJ, Dualnames, Baron, ProgZ, Garage and Calin. I think you've all hit on some key points that sum up what I think needs to happen rather distinctly.

So, in the end I suppose I get my wish. But it comes with great humility and a strong appreciation for what some of us take so well for granted.
I stand by CJ and his elite community driving force, and insist that something so refined and precious deserves careful and steady planning. We MUST NOT rush 10 years of passion out into the wild. This whole thing must be prepared in such a way that its community remains faithful enough to carry the collective spirit of the past decade into whatever lies ahead in the next.

Forgive my omen-esque, WW2-era sentiment but may I leave you all with this:
Only through the window of history can insight into the mistakes of the future be seen.

May Adventure Game Studio live to see a new day in our hearts and on our hard disks!

Cheers,
Paul (Sparky).

EDIT: You know it should be possible to invent our own display system that could respond to input and that doesn't actually pause the game in such a brute force manner.

Yeah 'Display' is one of those old-world leftovers from last decade thats still actually quite useful but, until recently, not in a way that has proved to be a potentially disruptive system to manipluate.
If a workaround isn't discovered, CJ, could we get some kind of plugin input access to toggle display messages off?

Damn fine work, Wyz!

Sparky.

Sounds fantastic Wyz. I can't wait to pump it into our fighting engine!

Cheers,
Sparky.

[Edit:]

Agree with you guys on all points. I too, would like to see nicer internal handling of joypad mechanics.

I also thought that we could run code when a USB controller was plugged in during runtime.
I even made a series of fading icons for it. Now if only we can get them to work properly!

Edit: Great to see you online at exactly the same time as I am, Wyz. Dkh and I will have to chat first about all this then come back to you with a definitive answer.

Cheers,
Sparky.

If I want to implement such thing, then I want the developer to have full access to it's capabilities

Well that was the intention. Dkh and I are working on a Street Fighter'esque arcade fighter and would really love to work with you to help develop and improve haptic feedback under one kick-ass plugin.

I can understand the light thing for now but ultimately, exploring the led switches is an interesting notion to us and might be something to explore further into the future.
For now, I really want to home in on great controller support for optimal gameplay feel, which is something your plugin is starting to give us even now! 8)

Hope we can help you develop it further for the community.

Cheers,
Sparky.

Take a look at this, Wyz:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pstubbs/archive/2006/02/13/531008.aspx

Lighting up the LEDs on the Xbox360 controller seems possible.

Agreed with dkh. Force feedback is essential.

Cheers,
Spakry.

I agree a lock feature would be convenient, but you don't actually need to click objects to select them

Yeah but I'm just old fashioned like that.

Cheers,
Sparky.