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Thanks a lot, it worked and I succesfully updated the info

Hi!
I'd like to fix a couple things - including the broken download link - in the page of a game I worked on a long time ago (https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/485/).
I'm logged and registered as one of the authors, but if I understood correctly from other messages on the forum, there's a "main" author that is the only one allowed to edit the page, and it looks like it's not me.
Can somebody help me about it? AGA?

Thanks,
D.

Joseph: hey, I remember about you
When the game will be ready, we will of course ask here on the forums for help with beta testing and translation review, as we did long time ago for the Tech Demo. Happy to count you in!

KodiakBehr: no, the cutscenes are ogg theora videos edited outside AGS by BobaFonts.

Sorry for the "misunderstanding": i clarify the development situation:

- I had to stop coding for the project a 3 years ago. So BobaFonts, the project founder, looked for a tool to work indipendently on the project without the need of a programmer. He picked up MMF and updated the site, but he started working on another area of the "Shadows of the Empire" story.
- The "Hunting the Hunter" part of the project, that is the one I did (lot of) coding for, is 100% AGS and will be finished in AGS with my collaboration. The video I posted comes from this part. There's about an hour of playable game ready and tested since years. I'm going to restart working on this and hopefully we'll be able to release the full "Hunting the Hunter", made in AGS, in reasonable time, even if I prefer not saying dates.

I have no idea of what will happen to the project after the AGS "Hunting the Hunter" release, but it's pointless to think about that for now

*Bump!*
Is SOTE slowly coming back after a long break? Maybe it is!
I've just edited the original post with the following update:

[03/08/2012 - Hunting the Hunter prologue gameplay video on YT]
It's been a long time, isn't it?
Well, just to show that we're still alive and the project is paused but not dead (we've put too much time and energies to just abandon it - we *have* to complete and release it someday), we uploaded on YT a gameplay video: it's the beginning of "Hunting the Hunter".
It's a small part of what we released to Italian beta testers around three years ago.
We hope that you enjoy it!

So, click here to watch the video on YT!

Hi AGS community!
I miss hanging out here more often - someone might remember me for Star Wars:SOTE (yeah, someday we're going to finish that, I promise!).

But today I'm here as client programmer of the Zodiac digital distribution system, that distinguishes from the others for being aimed specifically towards adventure games.

There are already a few commercial AGS games on Zodiac, by Midian Design (Quantumnauts, Odissea, Doc Apocalypse...), and we just added a free one (The Infinity String). So i thought of posting here about it: if anyone is interested in seeing how an AGS game looks in Zodiac, he can try the software by just registering an account and adding "The Infinity String" to its account. There are other free games too, but TIS is the first made with AGS.

We have in our plans integrating scummvm and dosbox (in fact, they are integrated, but there aren't games using them publicly available yet), and my software in written in C++ with QT, so Linux/Mac versions will follow easily when the catalogue widens to those platforms. In fact, I already have succesfully tested a Linux build on my development machine.

So, in which way all this could interest you?

1) someone could be interested in publishing its game as freeware on our platform, like "The Infinity String".

2) someone could be interested in selling its AGS game on our platform, like the Midian Design games

Games can be published either DRM-free or with our custom software protection, that anyway is thought to be user friendly: just one time online activation before the first play, possibility to play offline, no limits on download and installation.

Of course, choosing what can published (free or paid) or not is up to the staff: we need to propose quality games.
But, if you know what I mean, we're not Steam, so lower profile indie adventures could find their place on Zodiac


If you have questions/considerations about the platform, feel free to reply here.
If you want to propose your game, please contact business@zodiac-store.com

Thanks!

D.

ps: here's a screenshot of the client running TIS
http://client.zodiac-store.com/_helpdesk/screenshots/zodiacTis.png

pps: we're open to suggestions and criticism, but please keep in mind that the platform is still young and in beta!

Hey, relax, there's a new Linux port
Check the sticky threads

Looks like we have some company!

Good luck with your project

D.

Therefore I'm not really sure what the best way forward is. If indeed the D3D effect is just too slow to manage in software mode, then I suppose the alternative is changing D3D so that it looks like DX5 -- it might be a rubbish effect but at least it would be consistent. Anyone got any further thoughts?

I agree, consistency comes first.
And I'm saying this also because I used TintScreen (DX5) for some effects and hope they won't be broken

Maybe you could add an optional parameter that enables the current D3D behaviour, adding a warning in the manual "hey, it might slow down the game a lot in DX5 mode".

Can't wait for it's release, the demos didn't work for me though, just extracted an OUT file.

Sure that it works, just extract with winrar or 7zip.
If you get a .tar file after the first extraction, extract the .tar too.

I think that we'll repackage the demo as a self extractor someday, it's incredible how many people hated the tar.bz2 we choosed to have linux permissions stored and get the game ready for playing after extraction on linux too

bump!

Another (this time, consistent) italian-only beta is out! Details and new screenshots in the first post

bye
D.

Hi, this post is mainly for italian users potentially watching the thread.

On december 7 (next sunday) we'll have a little talk about Star Wars: SOTE and fangame development at the Gamecon, in Naples.

Detailed info (in italian) are available on our website.

Anyone around is welcome to come and sai "hi!"

We'll talk about SOTE development and show some "behind the scenes" stuff.
I think that we'll publish some material on our website after the convention, so give it a look next week, if interested

bye bye!

D.

Update 3.1

Suggestions:
1) write in the docs/instructions what's needed to have the cheat command working if you aren't using the template. Now if you import the module and the pre-made GUI, it's missing the handlers that go in the global script. You should just tell to copy paste in the global script

Code: ags

function bconstype_OnClick(GUIControl *control, MouseButton button) {
  if (constxtbox.Enabled==true) {
    constxtbox.Enabled=false;
    return;
  } else {
    constxtbox.Enabled=true;
    return;
  }
}

function bconsdown_OnClick(GUIControl *control, MouseButton button){
  lstconsole.ScrollDown();
}
function bconsup_OnClick(GUIControl *control, MouseButton button){
  lstconsole.ScrollUp();
}
function constxtbox_OnActivate(GUIControl *control){
  AGSConsole.CustomCommands(constxtbox, lstconsole, true);
  constxtbox.Text="";
}

2) autoscroll: easy, you just call lstconsole.ScrollDown(); when you add a line to the listbox. That's different respect autocleaning because you can manually scroll up to read an old entry.
Now, I see in the code that you repeatedly do

Code: ags

 if (event==eEventStartDialog) {
    aevent=aevent.Append(rmenter.Format("Player just started dialog: %d",data));
    lstboxtoevent.AddItem(aevent);
  }
  if (event==eEventSaveGame) {
    aevent=aevent.Append(rmenter.Format("Player just saved gameslot: %d",data));
    lstboxtoevent.AddItem(aevent);
  }
  // other cases

to clean a bit you could call just once the addItem, after all cases: you're always doing the same thing, adding a string to the listbox. The variable part is formatting the string to add.
For the scrolling thing, I'm suggesting of wrapping AddItem and have like

function addLine(String line) { 
  lstconsole.AddItem(line);
  lstconsole.ScrollDown();
}

At this point you can find/replace
lstboxtoevent.AddItem
with
addLine
and it works smoothly. It's not perfect because if you manually scroll up when another line is added it doesn't scroll down at the end of the listbox, but that can also be done, of course.

3) cheat commands.
Well this is the hard part and a personal point of view. I don't like very much the command names and popups that come out to ask for parameters.
This console is mainly for debugging and skilled users I suppose... so, why not choosing the new scripting style and do a little parsing on what the user inputs?
I mean, interpreter like, you write in the console
character[3].Transparency
and the console outputs
= 80;
or you can input
character[3].Transparency = 100
and it changes transparency for character 3.

I understand that part 3 is a lot of work, so feel free to ignore it - I might code it myself in the future, and let you know!

Thanks, bye

D.

Ok, version 3.0 is up. I'll be adding custom cheat commands for the next days, so sorry if you waited only for those.

Thanks, I like very much this Quake-like console idea!
Just trying it (5 min) and waiting for the next versions with the command handler...
some random suggestions about stuff that you probably already taught of:
- listbox autoscroll and related key or command to set it on/off at runtime
- fancy Quake-like drop down animation

A basic information filtering based on some commands, when you implement their input, could also be useful.
Looking forward to this one (and also contributing if I have time!)

bye,
D.

A step forward regarding translations would be maybe changing the file format so that you could use some popular software internationalization tools to handle them.

If you can point me towards what the most popular tool(s) are for this, I can investigate compatibility with them.

I found an interesting list of tools here.
It seems that the most popular formats involved in software localization (and supported by most tools) are PO and the XML-based XLIFF.

bye

Hmm, well if you want to set the dialog text up manually in the script, and have all your own custom script for doing all the dialog stuff, then you could argue that you should just ignore the built-in stuff completely and write your own dialog system.

Mmm I thought about it but in that way you're forced to write the code to render the options screen too. And that part is now also customizable by the new functions, so it's a pity to not to take advantage of it.

IMHO it's a bit the complement of the new custom rendering functions. Now if you're satisfied by the text data/logic part, you can alter just the rendering part.
But if you're ok with the rendering, you can just partially take control of the logic with scripting using DisplayOptions: you can't setup the text of the options to display.

Would anyone else find it useful to be able to change the dialog option text at run-time? Currently the save games don't include this information, and so to implement this would involve having to persist more data in memory.

Uhm I can see the problem... similar to the custom properties alteration at runtime thing.
And what about approaching differently the problem? I mean, having an alternate version of DisplayOptions that takes as argument the options to display (a case where being able to pass an array of string would be useful).
Or you could add a CustomDialog object that extends the normal Dialog one offering SetOptionText. So that only who needs the feature would instance a CustomDialog in the script, and you'd just save those in the savegames, avoiding general savegames-bloating. Too messy?

Feel free to ignore me following your AGS-priorities

D.

- To make translation easier there could be a table in the AGS editor (similar to General Settings). On the left side original language, to the right the translated version.

Mmmm often who translates is not part of the development team of a game, so it's a good thing that he doesn't need AGS nor the source of the game to do the translation, but only a text editor.

A step forward regarding translations would be maybe changing the file format so that you could use some popular software internationalization tools to handle them.

Collaborative translation web-apps, for example, might speed up the translation of big games.

Just an idea, absolutely not a feature request

D.

I'm very happy to see the dialog-system related improvements in the recent versions.
I found particularly useful Dialog.DisplayOptions(), and I think I'll try soon the custom rendering functions added in the last beta.

While scripting the logic for a dialog using DisplayOptions, I thought that it would have been nice being able to specify the dialog options in the script too, and not to be forced to use the "Dialog" tab of the editor and its textboxes. If I'm not forgetting anything, it's the last dialog-related thing that you can't do by scripting...

So I was wondering if would it be easy to add a

Code: ags

SetOptionText(int option, String text, optional bool show = true, optional bool say = true)

function, that could solve the issue and help who wants to implements his custom dialog system on top of AGS.
For example, using a single dummy dialog and this function, combined with arrays/structs/Strings, I think that we could implement some nice stuff related to complex dialogues.

Sorry for being long winded but just to be clear I haven't posted in this thread to ask for help creating a cumbersome and/or complicated workaround, although Dusk, your ideas and comments are greatly appreciated.   I am posting here to provide CJ with  a clear explanation of the problems I have encountered using AGS, why I think they are important, and what advantages/disadvantages they were fixed/not fixed, so that he is able to make intelligent decisions about he wants to take AGS.  Peace everyone ...

Oh sure (peace! ), I totally agree with you that solving the issue at the basis (the AGS directory listing code) is the best thing. But I can see that this fix might be low priority for CJ, regarding just a few users that work in particular environments, so maybe finding (not too complex) workarounds would not be that bad. I'm recently using Windows more than Linux just for AGS, and that's why I'm particularly interested in your tests (unfortunately I haven't time to actively partecipate trying something myself in these days).
About the backup scheduling thing, you might find useful to know (also not referring to this particular issue), that backuppc is designed to work in environments where machines aren't always on: for example, you can configure it to check each hour if a machine is up and backup it only after its previous backup has exceeded the one day age. By the way, if you tried to access with plain samba a shared folder on C: and it didn't work, I suppose that the same would occur with rsync (some virtual network issues of virtualbox maybe... you might want to portscan the VM to check that samba/rsync are properly listening from connections from the host machine).

Just another two cents of mine,
D.

I'm actually running under Windows 2000 virtual machine in VirtualBox on Kubuntu 8.04.   The current beta works splendidly in this environment as long as I keep everything on the virtual c: drive. 

VirtualBox uses a network mapped drive as a means of sharing files between Linux and Windows.   Files stored on such drives are accessible to both linux and windows applications while files on the virtual C: drive are accessible only from the windows virtual machine.   The virtual c: drive is just one massive file that exists on the linux partition.  I am not comfortable  keeping all my source files on C: because if something should ever happen to the virtual machine or to virtualbox  it could mean curtains for my bits.   If everything were accessible from the linux side then it would be a simple to have linux periodically make secure backups of everything on other machines in the house and this is why I am so interested in getting this to somehow work. 

Have you tried sharing the game folder on C: and accessing it through samba from Linux?
This is what I've been doing with VMware from a long time ago (now I think there's some automatic feature to share stuff with the host system, but I've never tried it).
Another interesting setup I use at work to backup stuff on the network involves rsync for windows and backuppc on a linux server that automatically, periodically, gets stuff from computers on the network (VMs too) and does full/incremental backups. You might be interested.
I suppose that as long as you don't use particular features of VirtualBox but the Windows file sharing or rsync, all should work.