AGI Studio (further development)

[bokkers]

Hi there.

What happens is all of the buttons at the top disapear such as minimize,maximize,and close which locks me in the words'tok editor. I have a similar problem with the original AGI Studio but it got worse with your version so maybe you can take a look at that.

When I experienced this several times with the original AGI-studio, I tried to use the buttons despite them looking disabled. And... they worked, the buttons only look like this, in truth they are fully functionable. This was happening especially often with the Words.tok-editor, but I have had this also with some logics.

But what I think is the most striking bug in the original AGI-studio is that sometimes when you open a logic, the script would appear and after a second be replaced by just plain nothing. When I minimize and maximize the logic script again, everything is there again. However, when this happens, and I compile that script, I get a lot of bugs into it, for example some of the lines from the script get ignored when compiling it.(!) For example I opened a script with the lines
load.sound(10);
and later
play.sound(etc...);
and after that bug I mentioned, the game told me "sound(10) not loaded." now for the real strange thing: as i expected this had something to do with the bug, I simply moved the line load.sound(10); some lines down to the area which was not hidden. Afterwards it worked fine. The load.sound(10); was clearly positioned right before, so I could definitely see that this special lines (and others as well I suppose) really got ignored when the script was compiled.
Now thats what I call strange.
Has anyone else experienced things like that?

[Chris Cromer]

Hey bokkers I had that same problem it is caused when the resource preview window is bigger than its default size. Just go into the settings menu and reset the windows location and it will clear up the disapearing text the bad thing about it is you have to do this everytime your preview window resizes for a big view. Hey nailhead I use windows 98 and the language is english I dont know any of the other things about it. I thought of a good way to add web sites in the AGI studio program make it look in the AGI Studio.ini file for a line like this
[web]
sitename="Chris's AGI Web Site"
siteurl="www.agi.zzn.com"

this would make it so other people can add sites or change them if they change domains. I noticed that the buttons work in the original AGI Studio even though they look like they don't but in this new AGI Studio the buttons dissapear completely.

[Chris Cromer]

I just thought of a nice feature that would be real handy a compile all option. This way you can compile all of the logics if you change stuff in the defines.txt file.

[Joel]

Just checked out version 1.33. Nice work! It looks really good so far. I do have some suggestions, however, most of which wouldn't be terribly difficult to implement:

Resource Window
----------------

Right click menu: when right-clicking a resource in the list box, highlight it and include in the context menu an option that says "Open" (and to keep with the windows user interface, it should be set as the default menu item, if you can do that with delphi).

Logic Editor
-----------

Tabs: handle the case of a user pressing the tab key, and make it optional whether doing so inserts spaces or tabs...might be good to have an option of how many spaces are inserted, too

Selection Indenting: (nice feature by the way), a good short-cut for selection indenting would be the tab key...I've seen many editors that use this shortcut...the corresponding shortcut for "outdenting" would be shift-tab

Syntax highlighting: customizable colors would be really nice; I'm not real big on the current handling of the #define directive...in all C/C++ editors I've seen, #define is treated like a keyword. Obviously, that's not a pressing concern and I'd probably get used to it if you decided to keep it coloring the entire line, but right now I'm used to the C/C++ way.

Margin, line-numbering, and column 80 indicator: all very nice features, but it would be nice to be able to turn them off, because they can be distracting

View Editor
-----------

A "play" button that animates a view until a "stop" button is pressed.

It would also be really cool to have indicators that tell you your current x and y position, in AGI coordinates

I implemented a View viewer a while back with these features (using C++), so I know they're not horribly difficult.

An append/insert multiple menu item for the loop and cel menus, or a shortcut key for appending/inserting loops and cels. It's a pain to have to use the menu to do that.

General
-------

More shortcut keys. I don't know about anybody else, but I try to avoid using the mouse whenever I can.

Check for duplicate mnemonics in menus, it causes the menus to not open when you press an alt-key combination.

I am also experiencing the bug where the logic window and the WORDS.TOK editor window lose their minimize, maximize, and close buttons. I'm running Windows 98 SE with IE 6 and all the latest updates to both.

I know that's kind of a lot of suggestions, but I think they would make the program even better than it's already looking. Keep up the good work.

[Joel]

More information on that bug:

It only happens for me when the logic editor window is maximized and I open the WORDS.TOK editor (it happens regardless of whether I open it with the toolbar button or the Tools menu item). When the logic editor is in normal mode, the buttons do not disappear.

[Joel]

Possibly related bug...

When I have the text/logic editor maximized and I open/switch to a text/logic editor window, the buttons that disappear no longer work. If I task-switch to another program so that those buttons are covered up and then task-switch back to AGI Studio, the buttons disappear, so basically it's the same problem. Also, when I move my mouse up to the menu, the text looks all screwed up.

I don't really understand how these errors are occurring. Windows should be able to handle all minimize, maximize, restore, and window-switching code for the application (and it does so by default). It also handles the pressing of the minimize, maximize, and close buttons by default. It may be something about Delphi, but I don't know, because I don't use it. I can't duplicate the behavior in any other program, so it's definitely a bug somewhere in AGI Studio.

[Joel]

And it gets weirder...

If the bug occurs and I then use the Window menu to switch to the Resources window, that forces the text editor and other windows to Restore...they still don't have their buttons if I do that; however, if I double click on their title bars then they will maximize, and the buttons reappear, fully functional again. But if I switch to another window while maximized, the bug will occur again.

[Chris Cromer]

Hey here is something that should be changed you know the recently opened thing that you added you should make it so it lists them in the order they were opened instead of which one was opened first.

[Nailhead]

Wow, guess I haven't popped my head in this thread in a while. All excellent suggestions! I will be done with a new rev shortly. I agree with you Joel, about the shortcut keys, I'm a shortcut key guy too, so this will be a big part of this next version. I do hope that someday I catch this nasty bug.

[Chris Cromer]

I think we should stop posting suggestions until he gets done with working on these suggestions. The only exception would be errors that make AGI Studio unusable.

[Nailhead]

Haha! Thanks for saving me Chris.  

[Chris Cromer]

Your welcome. I can't wait to see the next relese of AGI Studio. It will probably have some real neat things in it.