Messages

I agree wioth both of you on many points. The fact is, that display technology is undergoing a transition. We now have decided formats to target. Whether we choose to design our games for a dying format, or produce entertainment on a new one, one thing is for sure, Flatscreen LCD/TFT monitors ain't what they used to be. They've been outperforming CRTs in all catagories for a couple of years now at least. I own two 30" LCD monitors, one Apple, and one Dell and they both display color richer and deeper than any CRT I have ever used. The same goes for my 22" and 19" widescreen Panasonic displays. The quality cannot be surpassed with CRT technology.

Three things to look out for when buying a new LCD/TFT:

• Response time. (4ms is acceptable, 2ms is ideal. Refresh rate has nothing to do with LCD technology, ignore that option in display properties.)
  
• Make sure it is 16:10 and not 16:9. Many companies try and sell LCD TV's as computer monitors when they really are not designed for this. 16:10 was decided upon as an ideal aspect. There are a few reasons why but one of the well known reasons was that this aspect allows two full page documents to be conveniently viewed side-by-side.
  
• Contrast Ratio. (The brightest avaliable, besides HDR display technology is 8000:1. Ignore fancy market spins like super-black filtering, bright-white technology, or whatever. Just pay attention to the contrast ratio scale.
  
  There are other more minor things to consider but I'm going to stop here before I start sounding like a bloody salesman. 
  Cheers,
  Sparks.

I actually posted the idea in the suggestions thread for having a notes pane. I already made the icon for it and it can be found in the 3.0.2 Wishlist thread on page 2.
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=34365.msg450069#msg450069

Cheers,
Paul.

I would like to see masked hotspots for transparent buttons in a GUI.

Cheers,
Paul.

Thanks visionastral. Have to say, I also assumed subspark was talking out of his ass, but your explanation makes sense.

Thanks for your confidence in me snarks. 

Your english, visionastral, is excellent, and your understanding of the screen scaling process is astounding.
Thanks for explaining it for us. I wasn't sure where to start looking for technical answers so thank you for your research.

2560x1600 is the maximum resolution a 16:10 widescreen monitor will allow under current GPUs and as a result I think it can be considered standard as well.
By TFT do you mean LCD? I also run an animation studio (visual effects to be more precise) and use many screens as you do. Good to see a fellow 3D animator enjoying the wonders of AGS.

Cheers,
Paul.

Are you saying that you ran Crysis at 1024x768 and your monitor is scaling it up?

No. I am saying that I ran Crysis at 1024x768 and the game scaled it up to 2560x1600. Although it was stretching the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:10, it didn't look too bad.
But when I changed the game resolution to 1280x800, the game scaled it up by a power of 2 without ever changing the monitor's resolution and it was difficult to detect the individual pixels due to the superb interpolation going on.

You have to understand that on a monitor such as mine (30" 16:10 Dell), running monitor resolutions like 1280x800, 1 game pixel uses 4 actual screen pixels, making the pixels themselves very obvious and distracting. The same for a 20" 4:3 monitor running 320x240. If you scale and interpolate those pixels as smoothly as in Crysis or other games not necessarily 3D either, you forget that there's scaling going on because it is so smooth it becomes invisible. I'm not sure what interpolation algorithm Crytek used for Crysis but the same technique would certainly help AGS become more convenient with differing resolutions and aspect ratios.

My point is that this is a new feature in modern games (2D or 3D) and should be considered for AGS because of it's convenient benefits.

Cheers,
Paul.

Heheheh. Well we're all friends here so yes it is indeed. 

[Edit:]

Okay no problem. Even if your time is soaked up, we all appreciate the effort you put into the Mac port. Thanks for what you did manage to do mate  .

Cheers,
Sparx.

Edit: Is that you in your avatar picture, Steve? I've always wondered. Kinda looks like another friend of mine.

I agree. I never liked the PS2/PS3 Controllers but eventually muscle memory kicked in and I became very familiar with the control style. I think Wii would be the same. I'm all in for the Wii if our dear scotch would be gracious enough to port the engine!

Cheers,
Sparx 

I didn't say that

Oops you didn't too! Whoopsies.

That's mainly why I am enjoying the Wii homebrew situation right now, it's got a lot of potential for us indie/amateurs.

As does XboxLiveArcade. Have you looked into that too? Theres a very strong market ready and waiting for games to download and play!! Porting to Xbox from Windows would be easier for obvious reasons but I too would love to see our games on the Wii marketplace.

Cheers,
Paul.

I bet the latter. No doubt there.

Sorry to knock your hopes down gentlemen but it looks like Steve is the wrong man for the job. Sadly.

[Edit:]

I believe that the IPhone SDK T&C prohibits interpreters such as the AGS runtime engine. This is one reason why Flash is taking so long to arrive on the iPhone

Yes this is true.

Now try to hit that small hotspot with that huge, flat index finger of yours

This is also true. Good point. I guess the sorts of games I imagine developing for iPhone would make heavy use of puzzle solving with the use of the touch screen's specific advantages. In a similar fashion to the Nintendo DS, puzzles that involve moving blocks, blowing dust off books and squeezing lemons would be a refreshing touch to adventure games. Unlike the DS, the iPhone is not currently shipped with a Pen device so in aggreement with Khris, making games the way we're all used to, with fine hotspots and character navigation would be very unintelligent. With these new ways to control our games (Wii/iPhone/DS) we are challenged to come up with new and creative ways to engage the player which would not work under conventional circumstances.

So I agree and disagree at the same time. There are ways around the shortcomings of the iPhone but are we willing to make games like this is the question that comes to mind. Personally I say, bring it on while at the same time respecting the small scope of AGS's and its lack of programming hands!

Edit: Sorry scotch I missed your post as I was typing mine when you submitted it.

To me the DS seems like the most logical candidate of all the non-PC devices out there.

I don't disagree with this at all actually. I think thats a good bet to make. The DS is by far a wider spread technology than the iPhone but is has been around for many years longer. It may be a case of waiting for the iPhone to mature a bit more. I wouldn't be phased one bit if we all decide that the iPhone is too risky right now for an AGS port. Thats fair game. OS X and the Nintendo DS on the other hand is most definitely the ideal platform for AGS and one that would benefit from an immediate and established user-base.

On one hand, I love the DS because of its fantastic touchscreen and proven market, but on the other hand its non-standard resolution of 256 x 192 holds it back from being 100% compatible with older games. ScummVM uses a hideous pan and scan technique to play classics like Monkey Island and Sam & Max. This limitation can be ignored for new games designed to work on the DS and it is not a limitation the iPhone offers. In fact, you get more vertical resolution than a PSP (480x272) on the iPhone platform. Widescreen has always been the favorite pet in the household of display technology. You can be on that!

Cheers,
Paul.

[Edit:]

Well actually I did my research and I wanted to get everybody's opinion on the iPhone. It might be a huge step up for AGS developers interested in the platform. Apple are only going to sell more iPhones. Lots more. Everybody's unjustified and biased Apple-Paranoia is rubbish. SSH is correct. We really need people with a history of AGS games to speak out. What target platforms would you like your games played on? Come on people...I'm just one guy here!

Edit:

Quantity of sales is not really the point. If you want volume of the platform

Actually its one of two valid points. One being sales for professional developers and two, as you said,  being the number of players willing to download and play our games. Both issues are of equal value actually.

Cheers,
Paul.

Well sure if we don't find anybody to port AGS then switching engines may be our best hope. But I don't have to like it .

Actually if it's just 320x240 or 640x480 scaled up to 2560x1600, the result may not be that bad, as a pixel block with say, 5 screen pixel width may not look that difference from one with 4 pixel width

I'm not quite with you mate. Could you clarify your argument for me please? I'm not sure I follow.

Cheers,
Paul.

Theres no attitude my friend but just a desperate need to port my games to other systems.
Some of us are relying on this one day to make money you know. So while I am comfortable making do with what we have now, you can understand my particular concern about AGS future.
You said yourself you wanted to see AGS on other systems.

Again, no attitude, but concern for the future.

Cheers,
Paul.

I don't mean to sound like a dick, but I don't see you volunteering.

That might have something to do with the fact I'm not a programmer.
In actual fact I am a Game Designer and Artist who wants to see my games on many platforms for a wider market. Isn't this reasonable?

Cheers,
Paul.

"Oh if only that horse was still alive."
Seriously, isn't this a matter of time rather than difficulty? We MUST find someone dedicated enough to make time for this stuff, otherwise we will never see AGS mature in the way we all hope we live to see. With all due respect, I think Steve should step down and hand the Mac port to someone with a bit more time. His infrequent efforts are in vein it seems. AGS is a serious game development platform for indie developers and in turn should be taken seriously. I get the feeling AGS could be a LOT more if we move it to other platforms but this simply wont happen until someone steps up and puts in the hours.

Cheers,
Paul.

It's just a shame that there doesn't seem to be a set of standard widescreen resolutions, like there are for 4:3 resolutions.

You can say that again.  :'(

The Direct X scaling method in the 3D gaming world seems to be pretty sharp and clear. You have to remember that the graphics is being scaled up from (in my case) something like 1024x768 to 2560x1600. It looked good because the pixel size wasn't blocky due to actual resolution change but instead a smooth interpolation was presented. It may not wont work as well with lower resolution games like 640x400 or 320x200 but the principle is the same. It is going to look better overall and solve more problems than not if the graphics are scaled to match your desktop rather than run in a blocky and 'interlacy' native resolution on your monitor. There are some very smooth scaling techniques that really do seem to increase resolution when it is really not. I don't move in programmer circles normally but I get the feeling there is some very free source code for this kind of thing over on major development sites. There might be something GPU-wise in the AMD/Nvidia DirectX SDK samples. Microsoft would have its own knowledge base for this technique. I thought I had the link yesterday but scotch brought it to my attention that it was unrelated after all.

Cheers,
Paul.

If this was implemented it'd have to take care not to mess up the aspect ratio, to avoid texture filtering and inconsistently scaled texels.

Yeah I agree. I guess the aspect changes would call for automatic black bordering for 4:3 and 16:10.

All I was pointing out was that while Crysis rasterizes graphics on the fly to arbitrary resolutions

Sorry I misunderstood you scotch. No offense intended whatsoever. I get a little short sometimes when people misread my posts and reply as if I had never posted. Your not guilty of this in any way and I agree with your statements on many levels.

I guess you googled for "screen scaling" and assumed it was relevant?

Yeah I was on my way out of my apartment and did a quick google search. Its obviously not relevant afterall, perhaps you could find some valid information on the scaling technique I am talking about.

Cheers mate, 
Paul.