WinAGI is Back

[MusicallyInspired]

Obviously Back to the Future is high on my list of great time travel stories, but really it was kind of the movie that got me into time travel stuff to begin with. I owe it all to BTTF. My favourite TV episode would probably be Star Trek Voyager's Relativity or TNG's Cause and Effect or even Time Squared. Window of Opportunity was a great episode though lol.

Sorry, don't mean to hijack the thread.

[Collector]

Well for TNG there is also Yesterday's Enterprise, which is also somewhat important to the series' overall story arc.

[MusicallyInspired]

Yeah but it's not so much about time travel as it is alternate reality. Which is cool too. The season 6 Worf episode Parallels is another great one.

And now we have officially hijacked the thread. Slightly on topic, I've always wanted to take a Star Trek episode and make it into an adventure game somehow. I started making frameworks for such things with making an AGI sprite for Data, giving the SCI0 template game's Ego every Star Trek uniform I could think of, and making that 8-bit Enterprise D bridge for SCI1.1. I wish I could actually finish this stuff. I'm just not as talented as an actual artist so it only comes in spurts of inspiration and motivation. Same with Heir To The Empire SCI with my Thrawn sprites (even though I'm convincing myself that is just an art exercise and not an actual game). It's actually nice that AGI seems to be going through a bit of a resurgence because AGI art is much easier to make and I've never tried an AGI game before. I skipped right over it because I was more interested in seeing SCI get off the ground. So I missed that whole magical AGI fangame scene.

[Collector]

It's actually nice that AGI seems to be going through a bit of a resurgence because AGI art is much easier to make and I've never tried an AGI game before.

With modern AGI IDEs we could have something to entice potential users. AGI might be a good stepping stone to SCI.

I skipped right over it because I was more interested in seeing SCI get off the ground. So I missed that whole magical AGI fangame scene.

I did the same.

[Nicktatorship]

I was around for some of early AGI, somewhere between the AGDS stuff being found by the community but before Peter Kelly released a version of AGI Studio. Not sure how long I was working on The Lost Planet before doing any kind of release (there may have been a weird 0.01b version as I first made anything). For me AGI came at a time where I was trying to create an adventure game in Allegro and some C variant, but this was a way to actually make something with a feel similar to what I'd grown up with.

I knew SCI was being researched but making games with it didn't seem imminent at the time. After some taste of a SCUMM-ish interface thanks to AGI Mouse, and then the difference that 256 colours brought, I foolishly decided to throw in with AGS, which was a lot more work for a solo non-artist. I thought about going back to AGI a few times, but found all of my backups of what I'd been working on in AGI were gone. Strangely I *do* still have my AGS backups for The Lost Planet which was never much more some screens and an interface, so, very strange turn of events in total.

I did go through periods of nostalgia, where I would search around, but could rarely find more than broken mirrors, especially after the "Ultimate AGI/SCI" site moved and became less a thing. It was a few years back that I did find a playthrough of TLP on YouTube, and a running copy on archive.org, but it was never the complicated mess of a solution I remembered best, and only this past week found *that*, setting right a bit of memory.

Still deciding if I'm "back" but tools and such are definitely familiar. While I know I could try SCI instead, it does feel like i've got unfinished business with the state of my past AGI gamey stuff.

[pabuslem]

Definitely nostalgia for me, but I love nostalgia. Everything I spend time on these days seems to be nostalgic.

Lance, but what's not to love about nostalgia? I think all of us spend time on nostalgic stuff to some degree.

I've been a gamer since I was about six or seven, on the Atari console. I'm 40 now and I'm the father of a six year old boy and a toddler, so I don't have too much spare time for gaming, but, man, I love it.

Unlike many of you who have a background in engineering, computer science and programming, I'm a freaking journalist, which means that what most of you can do in 10 minutes takes me 3 hours or more. I'm also a Chilean, so my mother language is Spanish. My name is Patricio Abusleme.

But since I love this, I try to fight my limitations and overcome my lack of technical skills. In 2013, I build a gaming computer, quite an enjoyable experience for me. I enjoy games like shooters and what they call "action/adventure" games nowadays, like the "Assassin's Creed" saga and the "Batman: Arkham" games. Oh, I also love RPGs, like the "Dragon Age", "Mass Effect" and "The Witcher" sagas.

I became a big fan of Sierra and LucasArts' adventure games in the mid eighties and early nineties, but I came to the AGI fan scene a little late, around 2005, when many people were already migrating to AGS. Last night I played the demo of a game called "Kathy Rain" and I found it quite decent. Back in the day, I also translated "Conquest of Camelot" into Spanish and collaborated with two guys from Argentina to translate the VGA remake of "Quest for Glory I" into Spanish.

When I found the AGI tools, I became particularly interested in the coding of the games. Three or four years ago I managed to program a 3 room "game" as kind of a greeting card to my wife as a birthday gift (I actually completed it about two months after her birthday) and I can't believe I don't have a copy of it. I had it on a flash drive that I seem to have misplaced.

Anyway, I'm trying to learn some programming basics through courses on Internet now. I'd still like to make an AGI game someday. Fooling around with AGI Studio and WinAGI, I've found that I can manage sprites fairly well. Of course, I might need more help and dedication to make the rooms, music and coding.
 

[lance.ewing]

Lance, but what's not to love about nostalgia? I think all of us spend time on nostalgic stuff to some degree.

Totally agree.

I've been a gamer since I was about six or seven, on the Atari console. I'm 40 now and I'm the father of a six year old boy and a toddler, so I don't have too much spare time for gaming, but, man, I love it.

I've been an adventure gamer since about the age of 11, originally on the VIC 20. I'm nearly 42 and the father of two girls aged 14 and 10. When the toddler grows up I'm guessing you'll find a bit more time. That is how it is with me. The girls keep themselves busy a lot of the time.

Unlike many of you who have a background in engineering, computer science and programming, I'm a freaking journalist, which means that what most of you can do in 10 minutes takes me 3 hours or more. I'm also a Chilean, so my mother language is Spanish. My name is Patricio Abusleme.

It takes me a long time as well. Perhaps not the coding, but an AGI picture can take me many hours, and I wrote the picture editor I'm using! , so I should really be able to make it easier for myself.

But since I love this, I try to fight my limitations and overcome my lack of technical skills. In 2013, I build a gaming computer, quite an enjoyable experience for me. I enjoy games like shooters and what they call "action/adventure" games nowadays, like the "Assassin's Creed" saga and the "Batman: Arkham" games. Oh, I also love RPGs, like the "Dragon Age", "Mass Effect" and "The Witcher" sagas.

I built what would probably be classed a gaming machine a few years ago. I don't play a lot of games though, and certainly not games that require the kind of power I'd put in to the machine. Graphics adventures are about the maximum demand its going to get.

I became a big fan of Sierra and LucasArts' adventure games in the mid eighties and early nineties, but I came to the AGI fan scene a little late, around 2005, when many people were already migrating to AGS. Last night I played the demo of a game called "Kathy Rain" and I found it quite decent. Back in the day, I also translated "Conquest of Camelot" into Spanish and collaborated with two guys from Argentina to translate the VGA remake of "Quest for Glory I" into Spanish.

I've never played Kathy Rain but I've been thinking about getting it on my phone for a while now.

When I found the AGI tools, I became particularly interested in the coding of the games. Three or four years ago I managed to program a 3 room "game" as kind of a greeting card to my wife as a birthday gift (I actually completed it about two months after her birthday) and I can't believe I don't have a copy of it. I had it on a flash drive that I seem to have misplaced.

Yeah, it's so sad to lose AGI creations like that, as I described in a post to another thread earlier today.

Anyway, I'm trying to learn some programming basics through courses on Internet now. I'd still like to make an AGI game someday. Fooling around with AGI Studio and WinAGI, I've found that I can manage sprites fairly well. Of course, I might need more help and dedication to make the rooms, music and coding.

Something that has been simmering away in the depths of my mind for a while is a way of programming AGI Logics using something similar to the Scratch programming blocks. Actually what I had in mind was an online visual programming environment like Scratch that was very, very similar to AGI in what blocks it provided and the main goal would be to support an export to AGI feature. I was thinking that this would be the best chance of creating some interest in AGI again. Things like Scratch, Snap, Hopscotch and Tynker are quite popular for kids and are now included in a lot of school computer science lessons. Wouldn't it be great for an animated adventure game visual programming web site that has an AGI based design to reach that kind of popularity? If it was done right, it could well be possible. People seem to have a thirst at the moment for visual programming tools that target children.

[lance.ewing]

I did go through periods of nostalgia, where I would search around, but could rarely find more than broken mirrors, especially after the "Ultimate AGI/SCI" site moved and became less a thing. It was a few years back that I did find a playthrough of TLP on YouTube, and a running copy on archive.org, but it was never the complicated mess of a solution I remembered best, and only this past week found *that*, setting right a bit of memory.

A couple of months back I discovered that The Ruby Cast demo was on archive.org as well. Amazing what turns up on there, and great to know now that The Ruby Cast is preserved in that form.

Still deciding if I'm "back" but tools and such are definitely familiar. While I know I could try SCI instead, it does feel like i've got unfinished business with the state of my past AGI gamey stuff.

Well I guess you are "back" whenever you post a message on here. That's kind of how I view it. I got lost in a bit of VIC 20 nostalgia at the start of last year. I spent literally 6 months staring at a microscopic photo of the silicon layers of the video chip used in the VIC 20 and was trying to reverse engineer the schematic. Made quite a bit of progress while I was at it, perhaps covering about a sixth of the surface. I guess I was away from the AGI community over that time but made another return in the second half of last year.

The Ruby Cast is certainly unfinished business for me. I will eventually focus enough to continue working on that.

[Nicktatorship]

A couple of months back I discovered that The Ruby Cast demo was on archive.org as well. Amazing what turns up on there, and great to know now that The Ruby Cast is preserved in that form.

Isn't it cool? Totally unexpected, too.

Well I guess you are "back" whenever you post a message on here. That's kind of how I view it. I got lost in a bit of VIC 20 nostalgia at the start of last year. I spent literally 6 months staring at a microscopic photo of the silicon layers of the video chip used in the VIC 20 and was trying to reverse engineer the schematic. Made quite a bit of progress while I was at it, perhaps covering about a sixth of the surface. I guess I was away from the AGI community over that time but made another return in the second half of last year.

The Ruby Cast is certainly unfinished business for me. I will eventually focus enough to continue working on that.

Yeah, I suppose I am. Spent a bit of time over the weekend trying to retrace original ideas, plan how a 'remastered/restored' version of The Lost Planet might fit into the wider setting/story (that's changed a bit since I originally did the game), plotting out required rooms, how the game might differ, etc etc. I guess that's kind of telling.

That'd be great to see The Ruby Cast continue - I remember it somewhat (though haven't retouched it since), and given it was around before AGI Studio, it's one of those little hallmarks of what it was like back then.

[obscurenforeign]

Thank you for making WinAGI. I got it working on an old Windows XP computer, works alright, seems like a decent program. But when I use it on Windows 7, I get strange compiler errors when compiling the test game, and pictures and musics I create don't save. Strangely, iirc, this behaviour happens on Wine too. (Luckily there, QT AGI Studio at least seems to work as intended on modern distros, minus some display issues in the code editor.)

Is there something I'm doing wrong? If it works on Windows 10 for you, then why wouldn't it work on 7 for me? And if I can't get it working on 7 or Wine, then oh well, because...

Is it intended to work on Windows 95/98? Yes seriously. Why? Well, I was thinking it would be cool to make a game on an actual old DOS (/Windows 9x) PC. I tried getting it running on Windows 98 but nothing seems to happen at all, but I might have screwed up the VB runtime.

[obscurenforeign]

Further information: I tried WinAGI on Wine again. There doesn't seem to be issues with saving per se, but I still can't compile anything, getting an error about WORDS.TOK being open. I guess the bug is something to do with the way files work slightly differently under Wine compared to Windows (because of them being different under Linux). Well, I doubt a bug that only happens under Wine because of Wine file weirdness matters much, so I guess I'll give up there.

And strangely enough (I just thought to test this) under Windows 7, compiling into an empty folder seems to work properly! (On the other hand, trying to compile into an empty folder just results in... an empty folder, on Wine. Weird.) Still has a bunch of weird errors, but the compiled template game appears to function as intended, just ScummVM recognizes it as an unknown game. It still appears that the picture and sound editors don't save right though. (Will have to look more into that...)

[AGKorson]

Thanks for posting.

I'm about ready to release another version that fixes even more things I've found since rebooting this project. So having this feedback is very timely.

I don't have any experience with Wine, but if it's complaining about WORDS.TOK being open, I should be able to track that down, and find out if it's a bug on my part or not. Can you provide some more specific information? Are you trying to compile a single logic, or are you compiling the entire game? It will help me know where to start looking. Also, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by pictures and sound not saving. The more detail you can give about what you were doing and what happened, the better I can track down potential bugs.

Regarding Windows 7, I honestly don't remember if I ever tested on that. There was a long stretch of time when I didn't do any AGI stuff at all, and it might have coincided with a skip of an OS version or two. I'm surprised that it doesn't work though. I will see if I have a Windows 7 box at home and try it there. But again, if you can give me more specific error information, I might be able to figure out what's going on.

And yes, AGI was started on a Windows 98 box. It does work well on that OS. (At least it did last time I checked it!) When you say nothing happened at all, what do you mean? If you use the installer program, it should make sure you've got the right VB runtime. If you just try copying the files, it's not going to work; the custom DLL needs to be properly registered; the installer does that.

Thanks again for the feedback; I'll do what I can to help you get up and running.

[obscurenforeign]

And thanks for getting back to me! On my Windows 98 PC I ran the Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime Plus installer that can be found on SourceForge to install VB6 on my PC. As it is, the installer for that had some strange errors, so maybe its claims of working on 95 and up aren't so true. I suspect that messed up the VB6 runtime, so I think I'll try again on a clean install, installing VB6 a different way, or try it on Windows ME instead. (I wanted to know about Windows 95 specifically, but if push comes to shove, I have successfully installed 98 on my DX2 before. Runs like a dog, but you can get stuff done alright. Oh, I might have screwed up the Windows installer service too. The runtime for that was pretty hard to find, thanks to Microsoft taking almost everything predating Windows 7 down! Well, thanks for letting me know that I'm not wasting my time here, it's probably me at fault here. (Oh, yeah, on the subject of what happens when running the executable... literally nothing. I open it and just stare at the desktop.)

In both cases, when I say compile, I mean recompiling the entire game. (Well, I would have to do that eventually if I wanted to release something, right? Maybe not...) But, now that you mention it, I should try compiling a logic too. (And well, I did on Windows 7. Appears to work as intended.) When I say not saving in picture and sound editors, I mean... the way it's supposed to work, is when you want to save, you close the window, and it asks if you want to save your work, right? That happens to me on Windows XP and Wine, but for some reason it just... doesn't on my Windows 7 PC. It just discards my work! (I haven't tried the view editor, but I should, shouldn't I...)

Oh, I was kind of wrong on how to save? Just noticed the resource menu. However, the save option is greyed out!

Well, here are the specific errors I got on Windows 7. I'm not sure if we can post links, and there doesn't seem to be a way to copy paste the error text... so I resorted to transcribing it:
Warning: 5025; Description: 'input_received' is normally a read-only flag; changing it could have unexpect results; Logic: 0; Line: 332; Module: MainLogic
Warning: 5025; Description: 'input_received' is normally a read-only flag; changing it could have unexpect results; Logic: 0; Line: 332; Module: MainLogic
Warning: 5025; Description: 'joystick_sensitivity_set' is normally a read-only flag; changing it could have unexpect results; Logic: 91; Line: 127; Module: Initalization
Warning: 5025; Description: 'input_received' is normally a read-only flag; changing it could have unexpect results; Logic: 99; Line: 161; Module: DebugHandler

Hope this post was coherent enough.

[AGKorson]

OK, so you want to run VB6 (the actual dev tool) on the 95/98 box in addition to installing WinAGI? Is that right? Because you can install WinAGI without installing VB6. I suggest not installing WinAGI until after you have installed the other stuff; if it's the last thing installed, it should make sure you have the correct VB6 runtime DLL.

And OMG, this is so funny - I'm running Windows 7 Enterprise on my work computer (never even noticed it until now!) So I installed WinAGI, and I'm seeing the same problem for sounds and pictures (views too). I will take a look at that first thing tonight.

The errors you listed at the end are not errors; they are compiler warnings. When you compile a logic, WinAGI will examine your source code, and if it finds things that might cause a problem, it will generate warnings. You can double-click on a warning to be taken right to that place in a logic editor window. If you don't want warnings, you can turn them off by using the Settings feature. You can also right-click any warning to disable just that warning.

As soon as I fix the resource Save feature, I will release another beta version and post it here in another thread.

Thanks for the feedback!

[obscurenforeign]

Sorry, when I said VB6 I meant the VB6 runtime. I don't usually think about the distinction at all because I have no use for Microsoft's dev tools, I don't like them even.

I don't believe the compiler warnings come up when compiling the test game under Windows XP. And, I would be surprised if your template game intentionally contains errors, anyway. WinAGI seems fairly well-made.

So weird how the save bug appears on Windows 7, but not XP or 10. How's that even happen!