Messages

301

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI is Back

« on: April 13, 2017, 01:30:00 PM »

Hello pabuslem, thx for the compliment. I am almost done with the next version of WinAGI - just polishing up a few new added features and tracking down miscellaneous bugs as I find them. If you've had a chance to do much with the last version (1.1.22), I would love to get any feedback on it, in case you've uncovered something I haven't.

For me, my 'return' to AGI honestly is driven mostly by moving from 'kids in the house' to 'kids in college, and eventually on their own'. I wonder if that might be true with some of the rest of you. Anyway, after a long hiatus, I've been spending a lot of time relearning what I used to know, and remembering how much I enjoyed it. I never did write an AGI game myself, but it's still on my to-do list.

I'll post a link to a beta version of WinAGI 1.2.1 soon.

302

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI is Back

« on: March 18, 2017, 01:16:28 PM »

I think I have been able to address the Layout Editor issues. Keeping the Layout editor and the logics in sync is tough because it's hard to anticipate all the ways a user might make changes in logics and in the editor. But I think I've got it mostly figured out. I'm also adding more checks to make sure everything stays correctly synched, and either warning user to rebuild or fixing issues automatically.

I like your suggestions for the picture editor. I can add both of them very easily.

I assume you're using version 1.1.22? If you're interested, once I've got a build ready for testing, I can provide a beta of 1.2.1 so you can see what's already been fixed/improved.

303

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI is Back

« on: March 16, 2017, 09:41:03 PM »

I just discovered the Repair Layout option. That has reintroduced the missing room but has also added in a whole lot of extra unattached links that I assume might relate to links that I may have deleted at some point.

Edit: I was just going through and removing those extra unattached links, i.e. right clicking on them to delete, but before I finished doing this, the tool and in fact the whole IDE has locked up with the spinning circle. It's not coming back. The very last thing I was doing was attempting to remove some strange links from "Room 1", which I hadn't yet removed. This is the original room that comes with the template game. I'd left it there by itself while I was creating the rooms for the game. After using the Repair Layout option, the links around this room looked a bit strange, so as part of the removal of unattached links, I tried removing those ones as well. It was in attempting to remove one of them that it appears to have gone in to some sort of infinite loop.

I try to put error trapping in all routines that have any potential for bad loops, but might have missed one or two. Hopefully when I fix the stuff from above it'll address these issues as well.

304

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI is Back

« on: March 16, 2017, 09:37:49 PM »

Thx, this is just the kind of feedback I need.

The one thing I can't seem to find at the moment is a way to change the text in the room box, i.e. the Room ID.

The LogicID can be changed by selecting it in the Resource list, then choosing Description command on Resource menu. You can also change by double-clicking directly on the property box (below the resource list).  These changes are dynamically linked to the Layout editor so you will see changes made immediately. You can also select the Description command when you are editing a resource. But I can see that it would be intuitive to be able to change ID from within Layout editor- that's easy to add.

So I had to resort to deleting the room (I did this within the layout tool) and recreating it with a different name. I was able to pick the same Logic number, which was good.

When a room is deleted, any exits from other rooms to the deleted room should show up as errors (arrows pointing to red triangles). Did you see them?

When I tried to link it back up to the other rooms, I somehow ended up linking in to the middle of the room, so I attempted to delete the link, but both the link and the room box disappeared. The Logic was still there in the resource list though but I couldn't work out any way of adding it back in to the layout. If I tried the show room option, this particular room wasn't available for selection, even though it existed in the resource list and wasn't shown in the layout.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'linking to middle of room'? Can you elaborate? If the room was not in the list, then the layout editor thought it was being drawn- that's not good. If you are able to duplicate it, the exact steps taken would be helpful.

So I had to delete it again, this time with the right click option in the resource list. What appeared to have happened when I reopened the layout tool is that another one of the rooms had disappeared from the layout. The links from the two rooms that it joins to were still there but the box for the room was missing. I was able to add the original room that had disappeared (and that I then deleted) back in, and I was able to join it back up to the rooms on its side, but after saving this, then closing and reopening the layout tool again, the second room that disappeared mysteriously reappeared again but the original room that disappeared that I had recreated and linked up again has now disappeared again. Not sure how to get around this now. The original deletion of the room appears to have confused the tool.

I can't seem to replicate your situation exactly, but I do see there are some problems when deleting then re-adding rooms. After several times of adding, deleting, redrawing exits, I also got a bunch of 'straggler' lines that didn't seem to connect with anything. Selecting and moving them eventually causes a hangup. I think I can track this down though, and fix it.

305

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI keeps inserting uncompilable characters into logic files?

« on: March 15, 2017, 02:36:21 PM »

It does use some of the common controls, which require a separate OCX. And the text editor is a custom control that I wrote, as VB doesn't have a built in rich text editor that could provide the functionality I needed.

But those aren't the real reasons this would be difficult to port to dotNET. The real problem is that there are so many changes from VB6 to dotNET, even simple things like how screens are updated, how toolbars work, how interactions with mouse and keyboard are processed. If I really wanted to port it, I'd probably be better off writing all the user interface parts from scratch using the original as a guide. Some of the routines behind the scene also would require significant work, as dealing with classes and objects changed drastically too.

On the plus side, there are a lot of things in dotNET (VB, C# or any of the languages) that are significant upgrades in capabilities that would eliminate a lot of the things I had to do by making API calls or other programming tricks to get VB to do some of the 'high performance' things. While I feel good that I was able to leverage VB6 to create a really good tool, it would be nice if I could do those things using built-in features.

Anyway, I'm always looking for a good challenge, and I think now is the time to dive into C# and finally learn it. So helping with Visual AGI is something I think I have interest in.

(As a side note, when I first began working on WinAGI, I originally had "VisualAGI" as the title. But then I found the other "Visual AGI" program that was in progress, so I decided to choose a different name. While I used AGI Studio as the starting point, my goal all along was to create an environment that 'felt' like any other Visual Studio developer tool. So the possibility of bringing some of WinAGI's features to the new Visual AGI feels like coming back full circle.)

306

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI is Back

« on: March 14, 2017, 12:29:43 PM »

I'm getting close to a releasable new version. Here are most of the big changes that'll be in next version:

• the annoying 'WinAGI isn't tested on this Windows version' popup now has the option to be turned off. (maybe I should just remove it completely? I'm actually unaware of ANY compatibility issues with ANY version of Windows since I've used WinAGI along on my systems through the years on every version of Windows since XP and never had a problem)
• the Template loading issue that some experience is fixed
• logic compiler bugs fixed (there were some cases where different AGI versions were not being handled correctly, and handling of inventory objects had a pretty big bug that's been fixed)
• View loops can now be exported as an animated GIF (right now, you have to export each loop one at a time; do I need feature to do all loops in a view at once, or even every loop in every view at once?)
• Pictures can be exported as BMP or GIF files - you can export visual screen and/or priority screen (- as with loops, do I need feature to do them en masse?)
• Compiler Error/Warnings moved to a window instead of a text file, which improves ability to manage errors
• VB syntax and references to it are gone ( )
• In layout editor, there is an option to display the visual screen for each room instead of a generic textbox with room ID
• In menu editor, you can choose the background (helps you see how menu will look in different rooms)
• default small size limit for text in editors changed to 8 pt (in case settings aren't being restored properly - text size can be easily changed by clicking the Settings option under the Game menu)
• a bunch of minor edits/fixes

Before I finalize this release, though I need your help!
What I would really like is as much feedback as I can get from as many users as possible. If there are any bugs that you are seeing, please let me know so I can address them now. If there are any features that you would like added or modified I'll try to incorporate them (recognizing that not all things are doable. And that there a ton of features in WinAGI that you might not even be aware of - so I might even be able to tell you that WinAGI already does what you want!)

Any feedback you can provide is valuable, so thank you in advance for all your help.

307

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI keeps inserting uncompilable characters into logic files?

« on: March 14, 2017, 11:41:03 AM »

Not a bad idea. Once I finish this release, I'll take a look at Visual AGI to see if I can help. The WinAGI compiler is pretty good, and I could probably port that to C# fairly easily (he says without any training or experience). I also have a sound editor in WinAGI, which could serve as a starting point for a sound editor.  But I'm getting ahead of myself - got to focus on WinAGI for now.

308

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI keeps inserting uncompilable characters into logic files?

« on: March 13, 2017, 11:33:44 AM »

I'll have to do a bit of research to learn more about XML. I did do a conversion of WinAGI to .NET back in 2008 or so, but the differences in were so huge- even basic (no pun intended) syntax going from VB6 to VB.NET was altered significantly. I basically gave up and haven't given it much thought since. I have some immediate things I want/need to fix, so I plan on staying with VB6 for at least one more release. But after that  I think it might be a good time to revisit the possibility of moving it. It'll give me the opportunity to learn something new. I think C# is something I could pick up if I spend some time on it.

309

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI keeps inserting uncompilable characters into logic files?

« on: March 12, 2017, 10:21:59 PM »

OK, I looked at the code, and here's the story. On the settings page, font sizes 8,9,10,11,12,14,16 are available to choose, but you can actually type any value in and WinAGI will use it. My thinking was I didn't want to limit users if they really wanted to choose crazy settings.That value is then stored in the registry for next time WinAGI opens.

When WinAGI starts, it looks for settings (which should be in registry). If it can't find them, (such as first time it runs) it loads defaults. For font size, the default is 10pt. If it does find settings in registry (anytime after first run) all settings get a validation check (in case registry got corrupted or something else went wrong). For font size, if a setting found in registry is less than 4pt, WinAGI uses 4pt, and if greater than 72pt, it uses 72pt.

It sounds like something happened to the registry settings; it read something so it didn't use default of 10pt, but what it found was less than 4pt so it limited it to 4pt.   

I'm thinking of reducing the band of acceptable font sizes to 8-16 and not letting users pick sizes outside that band. I really can't see anybody wanting to intentionally choose something outside that. That would at least keep things readable in case registry has a problem.

Assuming you didn't intentionally set the size to a low number, I'm not sure why WinAGI couldn't read your registry settings correctly. If you close and re-open, does it go back to 4pt, or does it now remember correctly what value you chose?

310

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI keeps inserting uncompilable characters into logic files?

« on: March 12, 2017, 07:33:20 PM »

On the Game menu, choose 'Settings', then choose the Logics tab:

311

AGI Development Tools / Re: C# AGI Interpreter

« on: March 12, 2017, 07:06:29 PM »

Lance, have you looked at Nick Sonneveld's NAGI source files? NAGI was probably the best modern interpreter ever written, and Nick's source code was really easy to follow. There might be a lot of stuff you could borrow from there to finish your C# interpreter faster.

I used his source code a lot while working on WinAGI, and I also tinkered around with it, adding support for changing color pallets and extended fonts.

He used a resource called SDL for graphics and sound, so there might be some lower level functions that won't necessarily be useful. But if you haven't looked at it, it just might make your job easier.

312

AGI Development Tools / Re: WinAGI keeps inserting uncompilable characters into logic files?

« on: March 12, 2017, 06:56:35 PM »

Hi Andrew. Great to see you back in the AGI community. I too was away from the scene for a long time, perhaps 12 years in my case, between about 1999 to 2010. I hope we see more people like us returning.

I was playing around with WinAGI recently. I'm really impressed with how much effort and commitment obviously went in to it. Would love to see it fully usable on modern Windows versions. When I tried it recently (version 1.1.22), I had issues with the editors for the OBJECT and WORDS.TOK files. The text was very small, such that I couldn't read it. I didn't check to see if there was an option to increase the size. I assumed it was probably an issue with running on Windows 8.1. Is this something that you think a new release could resolve?

Hi Lance, I've been watching your efforts on this site for the past couple weeks, and that's what got me back into the game, so thanks for that! 

I haven't noticed that issue (small text in some editors). I'm running Windows 10 on a Surface Pro, and don't have easy access to Windows 8 for testing. I'll take a look at the coding for those editors though, to see how I manage the fonts. I'm guessing it's something that I can either fix, or provide an option for users to choose whatever font and font size they want.

Do the font options in the logic editor let you pick options that make it readable?

313

AGI Development Tools / WinAGI is Back

« on: March 12, 2017, 06:50:36 PM »

Hi all!

I'm the creator of WinAGI. After the last release in 2007, I've been completely away from the AGI scene (RL sent me in a different direction). I've recently found interest in AGI again, and more specifically WinAGI, and have dusted off the dev files to see where I left off. A number of issues that were reported in the last release (1.1.22) I believe are fixed. And I have added a few more things to an update that's pretty much ready to release.

While I was creating WinAGI, I spent a lot of time disassembling the original AGI interpreters; if y'all have questions about the interpreters, I may have already found the answer for you. And there are some things that are still in the AGI spec files that are wrong (which WinAGI [and it's help files] have right, for example, the algorithm for drawing lines in PIC resources, the definition of splatter codes, the function of reserved flag f11[it's set if a particular platform supports the noise channel - it's not 'logic0 is run for first time']). I also learned a lot about commands, and how the interpreter handles data passed to them which would be really useful for game developers to know and included that in the WinAGI Help file). I may try to upload what I've learned to the Wiki, but only if moderators are cool with it.

I am not an IT guy in my day job dev and programming have always been just a hobby for me. I knew enough to be dangerous 10-15 years ago, but I have never been able to keep up-  most of the dev world has blown by me. I can do simple java scripts, and I've played around with some of Microsoft's latest Visual Studio dev environments (I created a simple phone app that solved a collectible card puzzle game just to see if I could do it), but I'm woefully ignorant of most modern dev tools. My expertise is VBA for Office and VB6 so I tend to stick with what's familiar. With the kids grown up and out of the house now, maybe I'll have more time to learn about all these other tools, and I might even try to port WinAGI to a more modern environment.

I know there's not a lot of love for VB6 and programs created in it, but it's an incredibly resilient programming environment that has worked extremely well even as Windows has gone through many major revisions. (I'm running VB6 on Windows 10 with no issues at all, and WinAGI runs perfectly on my Windows 10 Surface Pro.)  And I also know that Windows doesn't seem to the OS of choice for a lot of AGI aficionados. So maybe a Windows based app developed in VB6 is not the most sought after AGI tool.

But I really hope that people won't discount WinAGI just because of the dev tool used to create it. If you are looking to create a full featured AGI game, I submit that there is no better tool than WinAGI; it's not just a resource editor - it has built in tools that allow you to manage creation of your game from start to finish. And it also has the best editors for ALL agi resources, IMHO.

The VB syntax that I included in WinAGI seems to have been a huge turnoff for many, and caused confusion for many more. I think for my next release, I'll hide that feature so only the original Sierra programming language is shown/discussed. (I'll leave it there as an undocumented feature for myself and anyone else who doesn't believe that VB is the spawn of the devil).

I will probably issue a new release by end of the month, but if anyone has anything in particular that they like/don't like about WinAGI, I'll entertain requests, recognizing that time constraints to make code changes are the biggest factor. And if you have any WinAGI questions, message me or post in the forums.

314

AGI Development Tools / Re: What is the simplest way to export AGI resource pics to bitmap?

« on: March 12, 2017, 05:39:19 PM »

HI there. If you're still around, I'm the creator of WinAGI, and while it's true the last release did not include an export to bmp (or any other format) did not exist, it's pretty simple to add that. (I've already added an export to .gif feature for views!) I'll probably be releasing a new version very soon, and will add export of pics to bmps.

315

AGI Syntax Help / Re: N00b here.....

« on: March 12, 2017, 05:34:12 PM »

Anyway, maybe it's cause of Win8 problem. I really don't know. I really don't care anymore.


I have a stupid question: King's Quest V was released in 2 versions. EGA and VGA. Both used the same, 320x200, resolution. The first with 16 colors and the second with 256 colors. But.......why the art in the EGA version of King's Quest V is MUCH better than in for example, King's Quest IV, since both use the same resolution and the same number of colors? Is that something I don't understand OR it was just a matter of choice and artists' capabilities?

Hi there. If you're still around, and still interested in WinAGI, I am the creator. I've been away from the AGI scene for a long time, only recently having been poking around it again.

The problem with templates not loading was a bug that is related to Windows Local Settings (users formatting numbers with '.' for thousands, and ',' for decimal point). I used actual numbers to reference version numbers, converted to strings, so if you write 2.917 as 2,917 in your locale, WinAGI would hiccup. You can work around that by manually copying the template file you want into your new working directory and then opening it.

I fixed that bug years ago, but never got around to releasing it. I've been playing around with it recently, and will probably be releasing an update soon which solves that (and a few other bugs that were in the last release). I've tested it on a Windows10 box and it seems to run just fine.

If you have any questions about WinAGI, send me a msg or post in the forums here!