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[UPDATE:]

You guys....

I just made a test game with this loop and only 3 above script lines, and this behavior reproduces (AGS 3.5.0).


If you slow animation down (set delay 5 etc), you can clearly see that animation begins playing, but as soon as character stops it is overriden and starts playing anew.

Can't remember for certain, but maybe we heard about this issue before? (I mean, this seem like something easily noticable...)   and so far it looks like a serious mistake in the engine.


UPDATE: same happens if you do non-blocking movement.

UPDATE2: If you make moving distance long enough for the first animation to complete, then upon stopping moving it does not play full anim again but resets loop to frame 0 and stays there.

Hello - after toying with different ideas I decided to give a go to the Lucasarts 9 verbs template. Now this may be a silly question but, what is the best way to "reset" it? I mean, when you create the template there is already two rooms, two character, and various items. I am concerned that if I start deleting them to put my own game elements it may screw up the GUI. Is there anything I should be aware of before I start messing with this?

GUI is usually made in a way to be separated from actual game objects, rooms, inventory items etc. Essential parts are GUI panels themselves and related script module(s).

^ To give an example of what sort of songs their are singing , the very first song in the above album is called "Forester" ("Лесник"), and the story goes like this:

A tired traveller finds a forester's cabin in the woods and asks to stay for a night there. The master of the cabin seems very welcoming and nice person, and they spend night eating, drinking and telling stories.
The forester tells that he likes forest animals, and that he befriended wolves by occasionally feeding them.
Soon after they hear a howl in the woods. Forester leaves for a minute, then comes back with a gun and sais: "my friends are hungry, let's go for a walk".

Recently I started listening to one Russian punk group called "Король и Шут" or "The King and the Jester" (if translated), which I've only heard about from my school friends long ago. Something reminded me of them and I decided to check it out, and loved it. They worked in an eclectic genre of "fantasy horror" with lots of dark humor and grotesque pathos in their texts. Unfortunately I don't know of english translations, but I could try finding later.

Here's one of the albums:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-C0lCPFTj8

Thought I'd mention just in case, there's a torrent file for many hungreds of older games that were previously hosted on agsarchives.com: https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=56578.0

EDIT: it looks like above game is not present there though...

I've ended up with all the Civ games, but the last one I played properly was Civ2. (And I was never particularly good at it.) If I were to play one now, which would you recommend?

A history of Civilization is a bit funny, as they were constantly experimenting with rules and feature design, sometimes changing core mechanics in updates, and when you think they finally reached something concise they surprise you by resetting everything in the next game.

Curiously, Civ2 is often regarded as the "best civ game", even though it had numerous bad design decisions (some of which transferred from Civ1). Maybe because it was simple and its flaws could be tolerated for simplicity sake. And it created truly random worlds with bizzare land patterns.

Civ3 was first one made by new developer (Firaxis), they introduced very interesting concepts: trade requiring actual routes rather than caravan units and trade goods having distinct effect on game; also first game featuring state borders, so finally opponents could not randomly wander a settler into your land .

Civ4 iirc was the last one featuring giant maps and empires, and also last one that had rectangular tiles. It had 2 big updates, and main game combined with both updates finally made a pretty logical system of rules, from what I recall. It was the first game where you could upgrade units with perks as they leveled up, allowing you to create extremely powerful veteran armies (so long as they stay alive).
Oh, and, it was also first fully moddable game, introducing open XML-like scripts, and people were creating all kinds of mods and total conversions with it. You could go into the data files, change few dozen of strings and create a completely new terrain type with it's own bonuses for your game.

Starting with Civ5 there are hex tiles, and maps became smaller afaik. Also combat rules changed again. There appeared to be units that shoot at range of x2 hexes, siege units that can only attack cities, and cities had garrison that may attack sieging units on its own. Culture became more important than ever (culture appeared first in Civ3, and its effect on the game gradually increased since).

I did not play Civ6 but I heard that maps are even smaller, and it is more focused on managing small states rather than doing endless conquest in Civ2 style.

Is curl a standard program in Linux and/or MacOS? It would be cool if I didn't have to ship it with any of my game's ports.

Idk about macos, but on Linux you're supposed to know how to install any program yourself, so it's hard to tell what is "standard" program at all. But it is probably a "common" program.

It did not come with Ubuntu when I installed it on VM, but it was as easy to install as "sudo apt-get install curl".

In 3.4.3 you could do a big switch, but you'll have to manage and update it by hand:

Code: ags

String GetAudioClipName(AudioClip* clip)
{
   switch (clip)
   {
       case aMusic: return "MyMusic";
       case aSound: return "MySound";
   }
}

• Some of the colors in the game were inverted.  Not sure if it is the game, the engine, or some combo.  I'll need to do some research.

I swear, this happens all the time. Each 2-3 years someone fixes it, and then it appears again.

There are two places where color conversions are mentioned, first: https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/blob/master/Engine/main/engine_setup.cpp#L185
and second this bitmap->video mem conversion: https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/blob/master/Engine/gfx/gfxdriverbase.cpp#L314

And since you're there, maybe also the Linux one?

https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/releases/tag/v.3.5.0.24

Also seem to be asked often: how to hide player character in particular room (main menu, intro, etc).

[@Cassiebsg]

@Cassiebsg, looks like it works in "Ghost GUI" mode by default (don't know why :/), which requires you to set a GUI object to the module.

Change to another mode as

Code: ags

DragDropCommon.DragMove = eDDCmnMoveSelf;
   OR
DragDropCommon.DragMove = eDDCmnMoveGhostOverlay;

I must update this module when I get spare time, with fixes and maybe also better tutorial.

This data is in game.agf since my thought process was that this behavior should be consistent between different collaborators. Specifically, anything that affects the way the voice script is generated and the custom functions that were chosen, as well the checkboxes that were selected/unselected should also be stored and synced between users. Usually a .user file is per specific user preferences and this would mean different users of the same game project would not see the same outcome of the plugin.

Is there a different place to store project-level data (and not per user preferences)?

I apologize for forgetting to reply.
Yes, it looks like that Editor does not currently provide an appropriate config for shared "workspace" data. It's hard to tell whether the *user file does work as you expect though, because nothing prevents from copying it between collaborators as well. But it contains more "volatile" data, such as last build configuration (debug/release).

Really? So rating is based on the numbers of f-words? It means that even a movie about the Mathama Gandhi sharing peace for the world become a X-rated if a british soldier says "*rap" 400 times?

Why should it matter what the movie is about? If you make a video with kittens and add lots of swearing on the background, should it be considered okay for small kids to watch?

Also asked often:
* How do I do some action when animation reaches particular frame?

* Example:

Code: ags

function repeatedly_execute()
{
    if (oObject1.Animating && oObject1.View == SOME_VIEW && oObject1.Loop == SOME_LOOP && oObject1.Frame == SOME_FRAME) {
         // Do action
    }
}

Is this an AGS issue or SpeechCenter's, that it writes its data into Game.agf even if not used in the particular game project?

What's the expected behavior if AGS loaded the plugin? It's possible it writes an empty node, but not sure what's the issue.

I never knew how editor plugins are expected to work in this regard. When you work with engine plugins, these may be turned on and off for the individual projects, but not editor plugins, it seems.
SpeechCenter writes a node into Game.agf whenever I save a game, even if I don't really use it in this project. This does not seem right, because Game.agf is a part of project source, and it's not supposed to have data that does not belong to the game.
This is not a critical issue, but may be an annoyance, because if I share project code with someone else, and they don't have SpeechCenter installed, they will keep getting warnings upon opening a project. Also, data will get lost and recreated, and these recurring changes become part of version control commits.

For the reference, here is what it adds:

Spoiler

Code: xml

  <Component Name="SpeechCenter">
    <SpeechCenter Version="2.1.0.0">
      <Document Version="2.0.0.0">
        <Settings>
          <CustomFunctions />
          <VoiceActorScripts NewParagraph="PER_FUNCTION">
            <Format>
              <Styles>
                <CSSStyle CSSName="body" FontFamily="Cambria" Color="" FontStyle="inherit" FontWeight="inherit" />
                <CSSStyle CSSName=".currentCharacter" FontFamily="" Color="" FontStyle="inherit" FontWeight="inherit" />
                <CSSStyle CSSName=".otherCharacter" FontFamily="" Color="LightGray" FontStyle="inherit" FontWeight="inherit" />
                <CSSStyle CSSName=".lineNumber" FontFamily="" Color="Firebrick" FontStyle="inherit" FontWeight="inherit" />
                <CSSStyle CSSName=".duplicate" FontFamily="" Color="Thistle" FontStyle="inherit" FontWeight="inherit" />
                <CSSStyle CSSName=".speechCorrect" FontFamily="" Color="MediumBlue" FontStyle="inherit" FontWeight="inherit" />
                <CSSStyle CSSName=".speechIncorrect" FontFamily="" Color="Red" FontStyle="inherit" FontWeight="inherit" />
                <CSSStyle CSSName=".filtered" FontFamily="" Color="LightSlateGray" FontStyle="italic" FontWeight="inherit" />
              </Styles>
            </Format>
          </VoiceActorScripts>
          <Translations EnableEditing="false" />
          <Edit ShowWarning="true" ExitEditModeAfterSave="true" RefreshProjectAfterSave="Any" />
          <DialogParsing ShowAllOoptionText="false" />
        </Settings>
        <SpeechLines />
        <Translations />
      </Document>
    </SpeechCenter>
  </Component>

[close]

What kind of data is this, as in, is this supposed to be a persistent data used in game, or "workspace data" used for plugin's work? I don't remember if AGS editor API provides good alternatives though. I know there's also *.agf.user file where optional workspace settings could be saved, but have no idea if it is suitable for SpeechCenter's needs.

Is this an AGS issue or SpeechCenter's, that it writes its data into Game.agf even if not used in the particular game project?

[Lifetime Achievement:]

Lifetime Achievement: densming

For making the popular AGS YouTube tutorials, which have taught so many people how to code in AGS. Enough said!

Oops, I suggested densming in PM last year, but too late. I also resent this suggestion recently, before noticing this post. Not sure how this works, but if possible, I'd like to second this.

Posting that Galaxy Quest clip just reminded me of another thing that grinds my gears:
there are no good spoof/parody movies made anymore. Instead you get serious franchises becoming ridiculous and garbage like the Scary movie sequels,
which are nothing but toilet humor and pointless references that only serves to remind you that better movies exist.

Agreed!
And while there are lots of movies that BEG to be parodied.

Q: I loaded my old game in a newer editor, and now I get errors about some AGS functions not defined.
A: These functions were probably deprecated. Check the "Upgrade for X.X.X" topics in the manual to learn about possible breaking changes and how can you adjust your script to the new standard.
If you're in hurry, go to General Settings and set "Script compatibility level" to the version you were making game in previously (that usually works).

(all of those are rough draft ofc and should be improved and expanded)