AGI Studio (further development)

Nailhead I have given myself the task of furthering development of AGI Studio. It's what started out as killing a single bug, then escalated to adding new functionality, and now I'm taking suggestions. I hope this helps all of you in creating such excellent AGI games. :)

http://www.nailhead.org/agistudio

For anyone running an AGI site, please feel free to add this link to your lists. Thanks!
AGI1122 Hey nailhead when I tried to visit you AGI Studio page I got the error Forbbiden. What is causing this and how can I get to your page.
Nailhead Sorry about that, I had a few IP prefixes banned from the domain. I've lifted them, so try it again.
AGI1122 Thanks I was able to get the AGI studio file. Thanks for adding the right click menu it's pretty cool.
AGI1122 Hey nailhead below is the things Peter Kelly was planning to add to AGI Studio  but never did you should try adding these things to AGI Studio.

Resource Management
-------------------
-Detect 'VIEWabc.000' or 'VIEWxyz.000' etc as VIEW.000 etc when adding resources
-Add drag and drop from explorer for adding/extracting resources
-Show resource size in resources window

Preview window
--------------
-If an error occurs, display it in the preview window instead of a message box

Logic/text editor
------------
-Do not allow defines to be used before they are defined.
-Allow command blocks with no commands, e.g. if (isset(12)) { }
-Require quote marks around include filenames
-Give proper error messages when compiling something that is all comments

View Editor
-----------
Features:
-Allow view editor to be used when there is no game open
-Make view loading more robust
-Fix up problem where other keys such as 9 and + on the num. keyboard trigger off other keyboard events
-Speed up pasting by determining whether or not clipboard image is from A.S. or external
-Add undo for cel/loop insert/delete/add/append
-Change MaxHeight and MaxWidth to functions ?
AGI1122 Hey nailhead I found an error in AGI studio. When you have a logic open and click on the words.tok editor you get locked in the words.tok file.
Nailhead That's pretty strange on two levels.
1. I can't imagine why it would act that way.
2. I can't seem to duplicate the error on my machine.

By "locked" do you mean that you can't enter back into the logic screen?

Try the newest version that I have ready, maybe that bug is gone, if not I'll look into it further.

____________________________________

Version 1.33 (10/10/01):


  • Syntax Highlighting
  • Allow command blocks with no commands, e.g. if (isset(12)) { }
  • Added line number counts to the statusbar of all text editing windows
  • More robust text editing, with gutter, margin, and more
  • Pressing 'F1' will search a word in the Help file. The context is determined by the current position of the cursor in a text window.
  • Improved the 'Find' text feature
  • Added a 'Replace' text feature
  • Added a 'Go To' text feature
  • Added 'Bookmarks' to the text editing windows
  • Access bookmarks through either the right click menu or using hotkeys
  • Toggle bookmark using "CTRL+SHIFT+0". Use 0 through 9 to toggle specifics
  • Go to bookmark using "CTRL+0". Use 0 through 9 to goto a specific one
  • rich The thing that really needs to be added, IMHO, more than anything else (because I can get around all those other things), is a sound editer. This has always been the biggest request of most AGI Studio fans over the years I'd say. It's certainly mine.

    Rich
    bokkers I absolutely agree with Rich: a sound editor would be the definite thing, but it seems quite difficult to me, as the sound.xyz resources are quite weird and limited.
    Nevertheless, if anyone manages to get something like this done, I would appreciate it  ;D
    bok
    Nailhead Ah, a sound editor, of course! It would truly then be an AGI Studio. I'll definately look into that one.
    bokkers @Nailhead:
    If you're really trying to do this and need some help, drop me a line. I have some experience with computer music and midi.
    b.o.k.
    AGI1122

    Hey nailhead I found an error in AGI studio. When you have a logic open and click on the words.tok editor you get locked in the words.tok file.


    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.
    AGI1122 I checked your new version pretty cool but that problem still exists. A new bug with 1.33 the highlighting dont work if your use capital letters such as IF
    AGI1122 Hey nailhead I was wondering if you could put my web site in the web menu, because I put a whole bunch of AGI utilities on CD's that I burn then I take them and distribute them to people in my high school for free to get more people into AGI and to help them learn about games of the past and how to create these kinds of games themselves. So I would like to have a link to my site in there for them to use.
    Nailhead

    @Nailhead:
    If you're really trying to do this and need some help, drop me a line. I have some experience with computer music and midi.
    b.o.k.


    Thanks for the offer, I may take you up on that. :)

    AGI1122:
    That's the strangest sounding bug, and I really with that I could duplicate that error on mine. I've looked into all of the windows handling code and there's nothing strange about it. Are there any other programs that produce that same error? Also, what version of Windows are you running (eg. version, service pack no., language, charset)?

    I'll definately add your site to the menu, and any other useful sites as well.
    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?
    AGI1122 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.
    AGI1122 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.
    AGI1122 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.
    AGI1122 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.  ;)
    AGI1122 Your welcome. I can't wait to see the next relese of AGI Studio. It will probably have some real neat things in it.