AGS 2.6 Final - it's that time of year

[InCreator]

due low notice I'll post these pics again:
http://www.hot.ee/increator/bad1.gif

And with scaling fonts at 600x400 disabled
http://www.hot.ee/increator/bad2.gif

[Mer]

Hello everyone,
Will it be possible to enhance the auto-outline feature so that we could outline objects and characters, for example like they did in Fallout (during battles)? That would be really useful, even better than what is already done   !

[SSH]

Mer: that's easy: just use a paint program with anti-aliasing  

Seriously, though, I think that this can be done easily already with another view for your object/character, so it would be a bit of  a waste of CJ's time to do. However, font editing is much more difficult, so the font outlining is worthwhile.

CJ tends to concentrate on the things that people can't do any other way for new features. Also, having lots of people  harass him about a particular feature until he gives in and implements it helps to get things implemented (e.g. 32-bit colour) So I'm starting my campaign:

CJ, I will never use AGS again unless you implement  a way to scale a sprite independently in the x and y dimensions of a sprite!

[sublime777]

Woa I just checked this game maker out. I like it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :o
:o :o

one problem dude -----> 32 bit graphics arent supported by my laptop. I need 24 bit.

Subliminal

[Spyros]

Also could you add 22bit color support?

[Pumaman]

Spyros: ah well spotted, I'll get it fixed.

InCreator: are you saying that still happens with beta 4? If so, can you upload the font that you're using.


Finally, I don't want to sound like a grumpy old man here, but I take it you guys did read this:

NO SUGGESTIONS IN THIS THREAD - BETA-RELATED TALK ONLY PLEASE

[Sublime777]

Major whoops! \

sorry puma.

[Vel]

OMG! Y0|_| 4R35 73|-| |\|00|3!!!!!11

[PureGhostGR]

I've just tried the 32 bit color and I must say that everything looks great.
Great work CJ.

One thing I noticed (apologies if it has been mentioned before), is that when I load my previous game (older version), even though it opens ok, the "flipped" animations look damaged (yet the normal ones work perfectly).

Importing them over again fixes the problem.

Just that.

[Pumaman]

Thanks for the report - yes, currently there are some problems with using 16-bit graphics in a 32-bit game, ie. it should work fine if you start a new 32-bit game and import all graphics and backgrounds at 32-bit.

I am working on fixing it up to allow 16-bit sprites to work in 32-bit games for the next beta.

[Goldmund]

I don't really know what 32 bit graphics means, but congratulations and thanks, Puamam4n.
Does it mean our previous backgrounds are going to look better or do we need to save them in this format first??

[scotch]

It means your true colour graphics don't get reduced to 16 bit when you import them, which looks better.  You'll just have to set the colour depth of your game to 32 bit when you start, and they'll be imported for that colour depth.
The main advantage is on subtle gradients where the relatively low number of colours in 16 bit is obvious:

16 bit:

32 bit:


(obviously you'll need your screen colour depth to be over 16 bit to see the difference, but most people's are)

[Gilbert]

Does it mean our previous backgrounds are going to look better or do we need to save them in this format first??

If they're already imported in a 16bit game, you need to report the graphics in 32bit mode, as when AGSEdit imports them in 16 bit mode, the graphics were already downsampled to 16 bit.

[Goldmund]

Scotch and Gilbot: great thanks for illuminating this computer ignorant!
The example indeed makes a difference.... actually, it will fix some backgrounds in Donna...
so: cool Chris, danke schoen!

[GarageGothic]

What does 32-bit color mean for the file size compared to 16-bit? And how about performance? Is it like 800x600 resolution, something that's supported but not recommended?

[remixor]

I'm wondering the same thing as GG.  It would seem to me that 32-bit color is 2^16 times as big as 16-bit color.  That would in turn SEEM like it would result in a rather obvious file size increase.  However, there's a good chance my understanding of color depths is totally wrong, and in that case I'd love to be corrected.

[Isegrim]

Doubling the color bitrate means double file size when pictures are saved uncompressed. (Uncompressed file size is simply (number of pixels)*(color bits))
With compression, the gain in file size is less significant (although I don't know if and how images are compressed in AGS)

[Fuzzpilz]

It would seem to me that 32-bit color is 2^16 times as big as 16-bit color.

That would be 1048576-bit color, which you'll probably agree is an intensely silly idea. As Isegrim said, 32-bit images would only be twice as large as 16-bit ones.

As for compression: if CJ uses Allegro's packfile routines, then AGS data files are compressed using the LZSS algorithm, which should work fairly well depending on the image in question.

[Pumaman]

Yes, 32-bit images are double the size of 16-bit ones. Compression will probably work at about the same ratio as before, so compressed images will be double the size of compressed 16-bit ones.

On the performance side - I'm not sure, it's something I'd like feedback on. It'd be handy if you guys could turn on the FPS display (put Debug(4,1); in game_start) and see how much speed difference there is compared to 16-bit. Bear in mind that for the comparison to be fair, you'd need to be using 32-bit sprites and backgrounds in the 32-bit game.

[Scorpiorus]

I've realized it's now impossible to set game.text_speed = -1 as well. I used this in order for DisplaySpeechBackground() to show a speech message for the unlimited time. Or is there other way now?

...I'll adjust the check to just test for 0 rather than <1 so that you can continue as you are.

That would be great! High thanks, Chris

~Cheers