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AGI Programming => AGI Development Tools => Topic started by: AGKorson on March 14, 2019, 12:37:09 AM
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After a long, long hiatus, an updated version of WinAGI is finally available. This release adds a ton of new features and improvements, as well as fixing a lot of bugs.
You can download the install file from the AGI Wiki WinAGI Page (http://agiwiki.sierrahelp.com/index.php?title=WinAGI).
It includes AGI version 2 and version 3 templates (THANK YOU to Eric Oakford for your help!) that were written in WinAGI. I encourage everyone to check it out, as the enhancements to the various resource editors, and other tools (such as the Layout Editor and the built-in support for ScummVM, DosBOX and/or NAGI to allow for easy testing of games during development, to name just two) make this the best AGI game development tool ever produced. I would be happy to answer any questions regarding capabilities and usage of WinAGI.
I hope that you find this to be a useful tool, and that it encourages the creation of more fan based AGI games.
Enjoy!
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Well, that was just a bit anti-climactic. For some reason, I am unable to upload the install file. Until I can figure that out, here is a link to the file that should work:
If I can figure out what the problem is, I'll update the original post to include the file itself instead of a link.
The install file is now available from the AGI Wiki WinAGI page (http://agiwiki.sierrahelp.com/index.php?title=File:WinAGI_1_2_3.zip).
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I was looking to see how to upload a new tool, but what I found only lets me edit the entry for the old version. You could upload it to the Wiki in the mean time. If you want an account, PM me with an email you wish to use.
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I adjusted the formatting of the WinAGI entry on the Wiki for consistency, but did not change any of your content. I also uploaded the installer to the page. You will want to update the screenshot to one of the new version. If you mean for this to be open source you will find a link below the installer to add the ZIP.
Now that you have an account, feel free to make any other additions or updates to the Wiki you wish.
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Hey, I'm loving this new version of WinAGI, and I'm really looking forward to using it to make an AGI game!
Are there any keyboard shortcuts for the View editor, though? For going back and forth between frames in a loop and so on, the help file doesn't seem to have them and I can't find any.
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Hey, I'm loving this new version of WinAGI, and I'm really looking forward to using it to make an AGI game
Thank you, I'm glad you like it. I would love to see some new games created with WinAGI. I found it much easier to write the tool than to use it!
Are there any keyboard shortcuts for the View editor, though? For going back and forth between frames in a loop and so on, the help file doesn't seem to have them and I can't find any.
You're right, the Help file isn't helpful on that issue. Sorry about that.
But there is a way to use the keyboard to change the selected loop/cel. Use the TAB key to bring the view tree into focus (you can tell it has the focus because the selected item will be highlighted in blue instead of gray). Then you can use up/down and left/right to move through the loops and cels.
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You're right, the Help file isn't helpful on that issue. Sorry about that.
But there is a way to use the keyboard to change the selected loop/cel. Use the TAB key to bring the view tree into focus (you can tell it has the focus because the selected item will be highlighted in blue instead of gray). Then you can use up/down and left/right to move through the loops and cels.
Would it be possible to add dedicated keys for going back and forth between frames? When I animate, I need to be able to quickly flip the frames and draw without going through menus. I also have a macro keyboard I use, so I can bind shortcuts to keys on it when my laptop is in tablet mode (and the regular keyboard isn't available). Adding it would make it significantly quicker and more comfortable to animate views.
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I noticed that you added a link for "set.pri.base" on the WinAGI page. Would you mind creating the entry for it on the Wiki? Just click on the link and and you should be able to create it.
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I noticed that you added a link for "set.pri.base" on the WinAGI page. Would you mind creating the entry for it on the Wiki? Just click on the link and and you should be able to create it.
I was planning on updating all the AGI commands at some point, using the WinAGI help file as the baseline. I'll add the set.pri.base one today.
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Would it be possible to add dedicated keys for going back and forth between frames? When I animate, I need to be able to quickly flip the frames and draw without going through menus. I also have a macro keyboard I use, so I can bind shortcuts to keys on it when my laptop is in tablet mode (and the regular keyboard isn't available). Adding it would make it significantly quicker and more comfortable to animate views.
I am not currently planning an update to WinAGI any time soon. Ideally, I'd like to either port it to a more modern development platform, or incorporate it's features into the AGI/SCI Developer project. But that all depends on how much free time I have in the near future. I'll add this to my WinAGI 'TO DO' list, but I can't make any promises.
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I was planning on updating all the AGI commands at some point, using the WinAGI help file as the baseline.
That would be great. I still have to "wikize" the official AGI documents and add them, but have had so much else to do lately.
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Good to see this is still going! It's been a while for me.
These days I'm primarily using Linux (Ubuntu, might change in the future) and I've been trying to make as much work this way as possible. So, I decided to try getting WinAGI to work in Wine. (Well, again I guess, but more seriously this time.)
First off, when you run it you'll get an error about missing MSFLXGRD.OCX. To fix it, you'll need to install msflxgrd with winetricks. The VB6 runtime might be needed too, I had it installed prior because I thought it was the culprit.
Picture, View, and Sound editors all appear to work from a cursory look, I was able to compile and build the template game, and it ran fine in ScummVM. However,
Minor problem: the splash screen displayed black.
Much more major: trying to open the code editor crashes WinAGI. I guess something about it disagrees with Wine. Of course, trying to make an AGI game without being able to edit the logic would be rather difficult!
(I also couldn't get MIDI playback of Sounds to work, but I think there might be a way to make MIDI playback work in Wine.)
(I know, this probably isn't even worth figuring out WHY it doesn't work, let alone fixing.)
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Good to see this is still going! It's been a while for me.
These days I'm primarily using Linux (Ubuntu, might change in the future) and I've been trying to make as much work this way as possible. So, I decided to try getting WinAGI to work in Wine. (Well, again I guess, but more seriously this time.)
First off, when you run it you'll get an error about missing MSFLXGRD.OCX. To fix it, you'll need to install msflxgrd with winetricks. The VB6 runtime might be needed too, I had it installed prior because I thought it was the culprit.
Picture, View, and Sound editors all appear to work from a cursory look, I was able to compile and build the template game, and it ran fine in ScummVM. However,
Minor problem: the splash screen displayed black.
Much more major: trying to open the code editor crashes WinAGI. I guess something about it disagrees with Wine. Of course, trying to make an AGI game without being able to edit the logic would be rather difficult!
(I also couldn't get MIDI playback of Sounds to work, but I think there might be a way to make MIDI playback work in Wine.)
(I know, this probably isn't even worth figuring out WHY it doesn't work, let alone fixing.)
Hi!
I wish there was an easy way to port this to another platform so it could run natively. I don't know much about Wine, so I probably can't offer too much in the way of help.
But with regards to the code editor, it's most likely caused by the RichEdAGI.ocx not loading. You can check that by trying to preview logics; preview uses the same OCX, but without highlighting. If the preview also doesn't work, try manually installing the RichEdiAGI.OCX file like you did with MSFLEXGRID. If they preview OK but it still crashes, it might be that syntax highlighting is causing the problem. In that case, try turning off syntax highlighting; on the Logic Settings tab, uncheck the box for "Enable Logic Editor Syntax Highlighting". That should allow you to edit logics (but no highlighting).
I have no idea why the splash screen is all black; it might be a timing thing with regard to fully opening the main window. But you can disable the splash screen on the General Settings tab so you don't have to see it again.
Let me know if you are able to get it running!
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Hello, thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, registering the OCX didn't seem to help, logics still crash WinAGI, even the preview.
Wine, for whatever it's worth, lets you run Windows software on a Linux system. It's not perfect of course, but a lot works these days. I've been able to use a lot of software in it that'll never be able to be ported natively, and sometimes it can even run stuff that doesn't work on current versions of Windows. (Trying out old games in Wine is a fun way to waste a day...) The main problem is that things using some of Microsoft's more esoteric technologies often break due to the ways Microsoft does things.
I isolated the relevant console output in Wine, though it's probably incomprehensible to you anyway. (I didn't see a way to insert it into the post without making it annoying, so I'll try as an attachment.)
The splash screen, I really just see as cosmetic, but I guess I felt like mentioning it anyway. No worries there. It's probably more notable that I had no MIDI output. (But that's not specific to WinAGI, and I think there's a way to make that work too.)
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If you are unable to get it going via Wine you can try Chris' updated QT AGIStudio:
http://sciprogramming.com/community/index.php?topic=1850.0
I think the reliance on OCX will be problematic on non-Win platforms and may start having issues on modern Windows going forward.
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"May start"? I run Windows 7 and as a former VB Classic user I can confirm OCX already are problematic (http://helmet.kafuka.org/logopending/2017/11/05/but-why-though/).
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I isolated the relevant console output in Wine, though it's probably incomprehensible to you anyway. (I didn't see a way to insert it into the post without making it annoying, so I'll try as an attachment.)
According to your error log, it appears the problem lies in the WINE implementation of the riched20.dll library; on an assertion in the source code:
Assertion `~para->member.para.nFlags & MEPF_REWRAPSo it's not the OCX, it's the underlying WINE implementation of the dll.
I found a discussion thread on sourceforge.net (https://sourceforge.net/p/npp-plugins/discussion/672146/thread/405041c6/) in which another app using riched20.dll has this same error in WINE. The thread suggests using a thing called 'Winetricks (https://wiki.winehq.org/Winetricks)' as a way to use the actual Windows dll file instead of WINE's file. According to that post it solves the problem. Unfortunately, I don't have any idea how to make Winetricks work. I'm hoping you can figure that out!
I hope that helps. And I'm sorry that I don't know enough about Linux to be able to port my source so that WinAGI could run natively in it. It's a vastly superior IDE in any OS environment, but that means nothing if you can't run it.
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First off, when you run it you'll get an error about missing MSFLXGRD.OCX.
I figured out what happened with this missing OCX. My install package doesn't include it. But it does include a different grid control OCX that is actually not needed. I don't know how I missed that- it appears to be the case for the last several versions I've released. I never noticed it before because the correct file is already present on all systems that I've ever tested the app on. I wonder how many other people have had this error? Ugh.
I'm going to update the installer for v1.2.3 that's on the Wiki, and the next release will also have the correct file.
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That did the trick!! I guess this proves after all that Wine's debugger actually is useful for Windows devs, provided that they care anyway. (And how can I even blame someone for not wanting to figure out why Wine's broken.)
On the subject of Winetricks, it's just an extra utility for Wine that you can install, and run it, mostly to install bits of Windows like that to make things work. Just choose what you want from an alphabetical list. (Funnily enough, it appears to acquire the dll by downloading Windows 2000 SP4 from some random FTP server, the Windows Installer installer from the HP website, and uses that to extract the DLL from the service pack...) Maybe I should make a tutorial how to do this. WinAGI works perfectly now! (It's funny actually, I've used Notepad++ in Wine too, but this problem never occurred to me. I think it's crashed on me before but I didn't think about why.)
For what you just wrote about MSFLXGRD.OCX, so this isn't part of Windows?
Collector, since WinAGI appears to work perfectly on Wine after tweaking, it looks like for this case at least, that this will hardly be a problem at all. That's the cool thing about Wine I tried to get at before, it preserves backwards compatibility this way, because Wine won't try to break things in future versions, and if they do you can always go back to an older one, there's ways to give a prefix its own binary I think. (Now distributions breaking Wine, on the other hand... cough Ubuntu)
Oh, and I've tried an older version of AT AGI Studio before, I found the editors a bit incomplete, and the template was full of bugs. Maybe this has all been fixed now, but with the old one I figured trying to use WinAGI was more worth it, even if I have to use a PC old enough to run the original games to do it.
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I'm glad that worked for you. Now I know that Linux users at least have an option to run WinAGI.
Regarding MSFLXGRD.OCX, no it's not included in Windows (at least in Windows 10; I'm not 100% sure about earlier versions). But since I have VB6 loaded on all my machines, it was always there. At work we recently upgraded to Windows 10; when I installed WinAGI to test it, that's when I figured out what happened.
Now that you have WinAGI up and running, I'd love to hear any feedback you might have. I'm currently working on a minor update, fixing a few more bugs that I've found. So if you find anything that needs fixing, or anything you'd like added that's not too much work, I can work that in to the next release.