Messages

My hope is for AGS to have a (ever increasing) flexible API, so people [who are willing to spend the time/money/effort] can customize it to their specific needs, by means of runtime and/or editor 'plugins'.

I totally agree. I think this would open up a new class of design opportunities for a developer.

Paul.

Roger that! Good to know 

Paul.

I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere.

Hehe. This is something I've already requested a couple of times not so long ago. It's in this thread somewhere I beleive.

Cheers,
Paul.

Hell thats interesting!
Paul.

[Edit:]

That's what I was thinking...

Thanks for the clarification, Dkh. I couldn't really pinpoint what you were suggesting in your first post, sorry.

I openly agree with both of you by the way, as long as the artist has equal control over walkable areas and regions. After all, it is indeed the artist that designs the backgrounds in which these areas fit. I definitely think a more programmer-friendly way of creating walkable areas, other than drawing them, is a welcome idea.  8)

Cheers,
Paul.

Edit: I like the way that font is presented GarageGothic. The one at the top feels very nice!

Are you suggesting we code in our walkable areas? I'm not a programmer and setting up rooms is usually, at least for our team, the artist's space. I wouldn't want the programmers treading on the artist's toes or vice versa. This is poor workflow and bad principle.

If we are to be awarded with additional walkable areas, then I believe the artists should also be able to create them.

Cheers,
Paul.

Thanks Monkey. I was hoping somebody could reply before I took over the thread with posts.
Lt. Smash, I agree with monkey in every case and I think its best that the program behavior your questioning remains untouched.
We like those features the way they are. Thats not to say however that other things can't be improved or redesigned.

What does anyone else think?

Cheers,
Paul.

Good luck with your projects, Paul!

Thanks mate! And the same to you all .

Initially, I imagined that all this could be done through a plugin, aside from the encryption of a personalized data library, but AGS can essentially draw things such a sprites from a working directory can it not? Isn't that one of the things raw draw is good for after all?
As for the custom library files, perhaps AGS can be scripted to read data from a zip archive with a renamed extension?

What is the scope of AGS and it's reading and writing of files on disk? Am I dreaming or can some of this stuff already be achieved without the official support of a new feature?

Cheers,
Paul.

[Edit:]

having problems with Perforce (natively supported by AGS),

CJ Fixed the Perforce BUG when I reported that AGS wouldnt launch. It was suggested by Chris that i rename a dll in the perforce directory to 'iforgethename.dll.no'. I can't remember if this workaround had been eliminated by now.

We try to not mess-up with conflicting updates, but for now we didn't have any problem. And hey, if something will go really bad, we can revert to a previous version

I'm glad to hear you've found a system that works for you. I can't say that I would be satisfied with the same method because my artists would end up waiting around for one another to finish committing their changes to the ever evolving 'acsprset.spr' where as if the data was external to the editor, single sprites could be upgraded.
With a data management system like the one I have suggested, members could indeed better manage their files. Not to mention the would-be unnecessary trend of having only one guy use the engine and import all of the data.

I am a project lead and an artist so you can imagine the drama of having to essentially halt production for me to go in and make technical changes to the rooms, fonts, GUIs and oversee all the work that has been done. Eeaargh!

My idea of customizing your own data packages (tree/extension) is to make the game more your own and less 'everybody else's'.

Cheers,
Paul.

Edit: Oh and about Steam, I have long-time friends at Popcap Games who started out as a small games development studio much like my own here in Sydney. They chose to contact Valve software about securing the SteamSDK so that they could distribute their games to a larger audience. Adel was the project manager for one of their early games I forget which one now, loaded up their sales tracker each week for about 8 months to find that 'larger audience' was something around the 270,000 customer mark. In less than a year, they pulled in over a million in sales and something like 7 or 8 percent of their gross profit went to Valve for their service. From memory, it was unusually small being a single digit percentage. This is extremely lucrative to me and my team and if I am going to invest decent money into developing our games then this is an avenue I would like to explore. Company growth is a prime objective of Valve's, through their support of a 3rd party market. So again to sum up my suggestion, I would really love to see AGS become more compatible with 'diffing' and 'merging' data in a way that feels personal.

[[1]]

I would really love to see an enhanced file manager that enables the author to create custom data libraries instead of compiling most of the game data into the executable. I imagine the author creating a project tree in windows (a series of personally organized folders and files), and AGS would read the tree and draw game data directly from it using a file browser.

The author would choose a file extension for their data library or libraries and could enable encryption. When the project compiles, AGS copies the files in the windows project tree and bundles them up into a neat data package.

There are two distinct advantages to be had from this idea:

[1] The author could release their game on a digital distribution system like Steam and provide updates to their players that don't require them to redownload the entire game exe. You would essentially diff the data libraries.

[2] The author has more control over how their game data is distributed and can better manage projects where multiple people are involved. An SVN repository could be created, for example, and daily builds could be done with the latest file revisions that are checked in by fellow team members throughout the day.

Heres how I would set up my data package:


I'm not 100% sure that all this could be done with a plugin but I get the feeling that AGS already has the ability to use data from outside of the editor. That said, I would much rather see an official overhaul of the project data system.

Food for thought if nothing else.

Cheers,
Paul.

Nobody has asked why you need such an incremental adjustment to movement speed. If your trying to footsync, then I suggest you use the techniques presented in this thread:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33099.0

Or you could have a read of the Wiki which has an article dedicated to jerky motion. I'm not sure if this is your issue but I've mentioned it anyway.

http://americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/Graphics%2C_Characters%2C_Text_%26_Rooms#Jerky_character.2Fsprite_animation

Cheers,
Paul.

Not every developer is english.

Ah, but the one person likely to fix the error is... :o

So with the convenience of CJ and the would-be international translators in mind, I am inclined to agree with Naltimari although I'm not sure how much can be done to counter the behavior of the windows .net framework.

Cheers,
Paul.

Radiant has a point here. And its a good one. If you rearranged your walkable areas so that you recycle them but are careful not to place the same walkway too close to the last, then with a little clever scripting you could have the character undergo different states (scale/light/color) depending on where the character's coordinates are. Another way you could handle this is essentially stop your character from being able to go back over a previous walkable area that has been recycled. I know this is rather limiting your gameplay scenario but, doesn't your labyrinth change on the player anyway depending where he is? Reminds me of the movie with the young Jenifer Connelly. "Oh it's just not FAIR!!". 

Hope this helps.
Paul.

I suggested that someone design a new module for parallax specifically for AGS 3.0. Ali was kind enough to take on the task.

You can find the thread here:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33142.0

Hope this helps,
Paul.

[Edit:]

Thats exactly what I had in mind Snarky. I probably should have been more elaborate with the explaination of my concept.
Hows the parallax module going anyhow, Ali? Still tinkering?  

Cheers,
Paul.

Edit: Ali seems to have incorperated subpixel movement into the module already! Congrats to us both Snarks! And big applause for Ali!

[EDIT:]

Wow, sounds like more trouble than it's worth for the majority. Perhaps CJ could pick some more color values and assign additional walkable area slots to them.

Cheers,
Paul.

EDIT: An 'Add Walkable Area/Region' function coupled with a color picker would be ideal but that will take CJ longer to implement. So I've added it to the suggestions list for a later version.

[SUGGESTION:]

What do you mean by blurriness? The interpolation between scaled pixels or is it an artifact created through the a/d conversion? All graphics tech here in my studio is digital except for my third monitor which is a 4:3 Samsung SyncMaster 913v LCD but I don't know what I'm looking for so I can't hunt for a comparison.

Cheers,
Paul.

SUGGESTION: I think an 'Add Walkable Area/Region' function coupled with a color picker would be ideal for those of us who require a little more than 16 seperate areas. This of course would still be restrained by a hard coded limit but not that of 16.

I'm in love with my two 30" Apple Cinema Displays but agree entirely with ProgZmax in that support should continue for 4:3 in all areas of the computer software industry until 4:3 hardware is phased out. I don't think this will happen for a further half decade yet.

So...With a little hope, we beloved AGS developers may finally gain control over both 4:3 and 16:10 aspect ratios.
At the end of the day of course, this lies very much in CJ's capable hands. 

Cheers!
Paul.

Are you working on A SCUMM Module now monkey? Perhaps we could continue the SCUMM template we were working on a while back seeing Ashen has disappeared of the map. It's got artwork, sound and everything. PM me if you want to pick up where we left off because I don't want you to start from scratch if you don't have to. 

Cheers mate,
Paul.

By allowing us to customize those to either resolution, we could make the best of both aspect ratios.

GarageGothic is right and as I have suggested a few times already I think we need to be able to control 'screen layout' in the editor along with the other features found in the default game setup exe.

And I'll say it again to be just to be super clear, I don't believe we need to break compatibility of older games or remove what has already been established by adding these new features. 

Cheers,
Paul.