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[@Sinitrena]

#51

Competitions & Activities / Re: Fortnightly Writing Compet...

Last post by Baron - Yesterday at 03:05:29

Wow, we all kinda took that theme and ran in four different directions. That's what I love about this comp!


@Sinitrena

Spoiler

I liked it! It was moody and thought-provoking. The half-twist (slide?) at the end was fantastic! Slight grammatical lapse with "were it tears in his eyes?" - I point this out because I've noticed similar conjugation quirks like this in your writing before, and it's a distraction from what is otherwise very good writing. There is a rare circumstance where you could pair it + were (conditional tense i.e. "were it not for him"), but in general you should always use "was" when "it" is involved. So, even though "tears" is plural ("tears were in his eyes" is correct), when you construct the sentence around the subject "it" the sentence should read "was it tears in his eyes?" (I personally would prefer "were those tears in his eyes?", but then we're getting into stylistic arguments  ). Getting back on track, this story punched hard for me because I have exactly two kids myself (no plans to run out on them, but it would be horrible if they were cut out of my life for forty years). So top marks for insight into the human condition, pulling on my emotional strings, and twisting the script at the end.

[close]

@brushfe

Spoiler

I'm sure somebody will bring it up ( ), but we've had lengthy debates in the past about contest administrants submitting their work. One school of thought says it's biased, because they already know what the topic is ahead of time, and another school of thought says more stories makes the competition more interesting, so what's the harm? The unofficial compromise has been that contest administrators can post stories but then declare that it's not a "real" entry and therefore can't be voted for. You're new, you didn't know, and since I was in the second school of thought it doesn't really bother me, but to keep the peace I automatically discounted voting for you. 

Having said that, your story was like a wormhole into my mind. Whichever lane of traffic I pick, the other always seems to be doing better (or maybe only as well?). Maybe it's a Canadian thing, being such a car-centric culture but also having such horrendous traffic in the major cities. Either way, you have me questioning that my suffering is pre-ordained and that the only way out of this Sisyphean purgatory is to just stay home and avoid lines/traffic/people altogether.    Of course there's always driving into a concrete wall to prove a point, but that seems an escalation too far IMO.

[close]

@Mandle

Spoiler

At first I was a little put off by the rambling tone of your story, until I realized that it's exactly how I would scribble a note on the fly (pen pals, anyone?  ). I'm always a sucker for sci-fi (know your market, I suppose), and I was fascinated with how the inconsequential super-power turned out to be consequential indeed. I'm making some jumps of inferencing here, because it's not overtly stated, but I'm assuming [Joe] was able to see the future of his own demise because of the ridiculously inconsequential trial ahead of time? You got my vote for cool concept, strong narrative technique, and hilarious twist at the end. Good work!

[close]

#52

AGS Engine & Editor Releases / Re: AGS 4.0 - Alpha 22 for pub...

Last post by ThreeOhFour - Yesterday at 02:39:13

We moved to full 32-bit ARGB colors. All colors in script must be made a 0xAARRGGBB number, or a Game.CreateColorFromRGB used.

Another potential issue is drawing with a transparent color. Since alpha component is now in play, the result is that with fully transparent color no pixels are changed. This may be worked around by setting DrawingSurface.BlendMode = eBlendCopy.

That fixed it, thank you! I just replaced

Code: ags

surface.DrawingColor = 14458110;

with

Code: ags

surface.DrawingColor = 0xFFEA99FB;

and everything works properly. Cheers!

#53

Beginners' Technical Questions / Re: Way To Change The Winsetup...

Last post by Crimson Wizard - Yesterday at 02:26:59

I guess it's just someone who are used to "modern high-res HD graphics" and cannot stand blocky pixels, so they prefer playing the game in a tiny window.

It's still hard for me to imagine someone using a small window instead of a fullscreen.

But if "pixely" graphics is the issue, then maybe using "Linear" graphics filter may improve things.

#54

AGS Engine & Editor Releases / Re: AGS 4.0 - Alpha 22 for pub...

Last post by Crimson Wizard - Yesterday at 02:23:44

Finally back to building an AGS project after getting it written and when I tried to update my project from Alpha 14 of AGS 4.0 to Alpha 22 I noticed that my functions that use the DrawLine() command no longer work. Has the way dynamic sprites work changed between these versions? It doesn't crash, it's just that nothing shows up. Restoring my backup up project and opening it in the Alpha 14 build had the lines showing up as expected.

We moved to full 32-bit ARGB colors. All colors in script must be made a 0xAARRGGBB number, or a Game.CreateColorFromRGB used.

Another potential issue is drawing with a transparent color. Since alpha component is now in play, the result is that with fully transparent color no pixels are changed. This may be worked around by setting DrawingSurface.BlendMode = eBlendCopy.

#55

AGS Engine & Editor Releases / Re: AGS 4.0 - Alpha 22 for pub...

Last post by ThreeOhFour - Yesterday at 02:19:58

Finally back to building an AGS project after getting it written and when I tried to update my project from Alpha 14 of AGS 4.0 to Alpha 22 I noticed that my functions that use the DrawLine() command no longer work. Has the way dynamic sprites work changed between these versions? It doesn't crash, it's just that nothing shows up. Restoring my backup up project and opening it in the Alpha 14 build had the lines showing up as expected.

[OR]

#56

Beginners' Technical Questions / Re: Way To Change The Winsetup...

Last post by Gilbert - Yesterday at 02:04:34

"Awful" how?

I guess it's just someone who are used to "modern high-res HD graphics" and cannot stand blocky pixels, so they prefer playing the game in a tiny window.

OR They're playing the game in full screen mode (which changes the displayed resolution instead of keeping the original desktop resolution and adding black borders), then the whole thing would be a blurry mess, since modern flat panel monitors are all inferior to good old CRTs have a fixed native resolution, displaying anything other than the native resolution would look awful (could have incorrect aspect ratio too in playing a 4:3 game on a wide screen monitor if not set-up correctly).

#57

Editor Development / Re: My personal list of proble...

Last post by Crimson Wizard - Yesterday at 01:57:55

EDIT 3: My laptop is known for having a very high resolution combined with a very wide screen (3840 x 2160). Could it be that the coordinates of the popup window are so crazy that the system decides to close it? It's just a shot in the dark, because like I said I do see it flash briefly.

Earlier you mentioned that you have updated your project from 3.4.0 to 3.6.2.
Do you get same issue with 3.6.2?


Output panel being cleared is a known issue and existed for many years. It's being cleared up whenever there's a new process that can theoretically produce messages.

4) I press F5 -> It does not regenerate the warnings

F5 does not rebuild all rooms, only recently modified ones.
Did it not display warnings about the currently opened room which you edited?

In the end I had to take a screenshot of the warnings, to have both the room and the warnings side by side.

You can do right-click - Copy the output messages.

In 3.x saving the room also compiled it, which displayed the warnings. But I dont remember if that's still a thing in AGS 4, where rooms are no longer stored in compiled format. OTOH, there's likely no need to close current room anymore when compiling a game, for the same reasons.

[I've recorded a video]

#58

Editor Development / Re: My personal list of proble...

Last post by eri0o - Yesterday at 01:55:40

EDIT 2 : I've reset all the settings to default (I changed the font, like I said before) but the issue is still there. I've recorded a video : https://www.mediafire.com/file/r4o3f4jitnx68cx/ags_troubleshooting.mp4/file
(WARNING: It will remain online only 3 days)

I noticed if I use AbortGame(""); then no window shows up while AbortGame("a message"); makes the window show up. I guess a window should show up even on empty messages. Edit: it looks like this is the cause of the error message not showing when AbortGame script call is with an empty string; I don't know why the null check there but one possibility could be to cause the script call to always be non null by using some default message if no message is passed like "The game has been aborted from script" or similar.

But I watched the video and the error message that disappears says there is a null-pointer error in line 379 that is being triggered at game_start, on your DebugGui.asc. But I don't know why it is disappearing fast in your case. I tried some null pointer errors here and they still appeared.

About debugging things, a new addition to AGS 4 that may be useful to you is there is a Watch Variables pane which can show your variables when you advance them step by step in the debugger.

The mentioned multi-monitor issue is this one, but it looks like something different from the video.

#59

Beginners' Technical Questions / Re: Way To Change The Winsetup...

Last post by Ghostlady - Yesterday at 01:12:55

Thank you for all this info. I'll make the changes and get back to the tester for more details.

[ISSUE #5: "warnings not generated again when saving room"]

#60

Editor Development / Re: My personal list of proble...

Last post by Monsieur OUXX - Yesterday at 01:06:12

ISSUE #5: "warnings not generated again when saving room"
1) Do "rebuild all files"
2) I get all sorts of warnings about one of the rooms. OK why not.
3) I open the room to try and fix the problems -> As soon as I open the room, the contents of the "output" panel get cleared (all the warnings disappear).
4) I press F5 -> It does not regenerate the warnings
5) I run "rebuild all files" -> It does regenerate the warnings, but... closes the room.

In the end I had to take a screenshot of the warnings, to have both the room and the warnings side by side.