The Question is... Why do you use AGS?
 

I've always been wondering why so many people use AGS. So, with this freaky Poll as the moodsetter, tell us why you use or don't use AGS.

:spam:

Why don't I use AGS? (At the moment, I might convert). Back when I started looking into the different adventure game creation programs, I went to the AGS page, and it was, first of all, quite bad. I don't remember if there was a Windows version yet - probably not, or if there was one, it was the first beta or something similar, with a big red text warning that it was unstable and ate people. Also, the support for different resolutions wasn't really that grand back then - 320*240 was the highest, if I remember correctly - and besides, according to the AGS system specifications, my PC would still have problems in running any game that uses high resolution. I tried some AGS games, and they had flickering sprites. The way files HAD to be named in a certain way made me think that AGS was obviously something very special, and chose Agast.

I believe that a thousand AGS fans will prove me wrong with an added-features list. Hit me. I'm not afraid.

To be fair, I must add that nowadays AGS is a lot better. The amount of casualties has dropped significantly.

Well, despite not ever having finished anything, I picked AGS because I was introduced to it through playing the Rob Blanc games.

I was put off the other engines through the need for even more scripting than AGS requires. And AGS does have a nice, large, supportive community that doesn't yell at me when I ask stupid questions :)...

Why do you dislike scripting?

I use AGS because so far it's been the best, and easiest program for me to use to make adventure games. (If there's a better/more efficient program/whatever/, please don't hesitate to suggest me one. I sort of stumbled upon AGS one day, and didn't bother to look for anything else). Oh. And I couldn't script/program if my life depended on it.

There wouldn't even be a point. The engine is so far advanced beyond the point you describe that you might as well be talking about an entirely different engine. AGS is rather ridiculously fully-featured at the moment, and Chris Jones updates so frequently that it's hard to keep track of all the newly added features. It has definitely far surpassed the LEC and Sierra systems it once strove to emulate in terms of capability.

i like it because it has the mix of script/user interface that makes it easier to use. you dont have to be a wizz at programming to use it.

AGS has an amazing amount of features, more than any one game developer will ever need to use. With some creative scripting, almost anything is possible. It also has a great, supportive community. Plus, if you bug CJ (the creator) enough, he'll add any new features you might require eventually... Why go with the rest, when you can go with the best? :)

Aye, but what I described was true... five years ago or something.

That really is nothing extraordinary, when compared to Agast, WME or Sludge. Possibly the only feature AGS has and other engines don't have is lip synch. So will the secret of AGS's popularity remain a mystery to me forever?

Maybe not. I believe the real reasons are

1) People are scared of scripting
2) AGS might be the engine that's been around for the longest period of time => it has always had the most users => it will attract more and more users. People like to belong to as large a group as possible, or something. The amount of people using it is also thought of as saying something about its goodness.

For me good scripting support is THE most crucial thing in an engine. I think everything should be script-controlled.

That's subjective! :P :D

--Erwin

I just picked it up more or less randomly. Of the few engines that I checked out way back when I took up amateur game development it happened to be the only decent engine, but I don't actually use it. I only stick around because of the community.

I don't know enough about the other engines to claim AGS is the best.

Oooo, lip-sync!

*runs off to the SLUDGE forums to suggest a new feature for the engine* :devil:

--Erwin

Does AGS, like SLUDGE, support light effects?

I find this hard to believe, because CJ adds new features ludicrously fast. You might be right, it just seems unlikely to me.

That's a very real strength though, it's not just perceived. With such a huge community, getting help, suggestions, and constructive criticism is much, much easier. It's a huge convenience.

Well, you can obviously do that in AGS.

It depends what you mean by light effects. Different areas of the screen can have different light levels, if that's what you mean...

Out of Order uses some neat SLUDGE light effects in the beginning of the game, in that big alien area when you just stepped out of your bedroom.

--Erwin

I remember that. I thought it was kinda excessive though.

Yeah, I'm sure it's on purpose to show off the engine.

--Erwin

At first, I didn't use AGS because of the reasons deadworm222 specified. Then, I didn't use AGS because I had already paid for SLUDGE! ;)

Really, though, SLUDGE was worth every penny. It's the perfect engine for me, just as I'm sure AGS is the perfect engine for a whole bunch of other people.

I'm trying AGS, because - when my game's production starts (now in pre-production stage) - I probably need some art help and AGS is where the masses go. Besides, it can't be all that bad, since people use it :D And it's interesting to be a part of a community where something happens. WME and Agast message boards have pretty low post & member counts.

EDIT: DOn't worry, Mnemonic, Genesis will use WME:D And the new GUI editors are actually very good.

I never thought I would say anything like that. We live and learn.

AGS users are even more perverted than we are.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/petteri-/agsers/

It's true! I ride a whale, really!

I use AGS simply because of it's ease of use. It's a program that has a steep learning curve at the beginning, but once you get used to it, it's smooth sailing. Plus, it's free.

I don't use AGS, but...
 

I just surfed over from the Sludge board, which has been frozen for a while. When I looked into AGS, many moons ago, I got the impression that there was a limit to the number of resources that could be used. My game is rather large - It's early days, so far it only has three hundred scenes, but the number of strings is likely to exceed a hundred thousand. Does AGS (today) have any upper limits to resources, strings, objects, etc?

None that you're ever likely to reach, no. Current limits are:

20 objects per room
100 messages per room
500 global messages
299 rooms per game
300 inventory items
15000 imported sprites
240 sprites per folder
400 views
16 loops per view
20 frames in each loop
150 characters
40 GUIs
30 controls on each GUI
200 total GUI controls of each type
500 dialog topics
2000 dialog-script messages
30 options per topic
10 screen overlays at a time
500 text script GlobalInts
50 text script GlobalStrings
100 interaction editor global variables
5 background frames per room
20 mouse cursors

Should you ever come close to any limit though, contact Chris Jones (AGS' creator) and he'll most likely increase the limit, it's happened in the past...

Quite what you mean by 'strings' though, I don't know. You mean variables? Of what kind?

"so far it only has three hundred scenes"

"299 rooms per game"

I guess this is a problem, if you indeed have 300 scenes. Crazy bugger.

re: limits to AGS
 

By strings, I mean anything in "quotations." In Sludge, every time a character says something, and every time an object has a name, it adds to the total number of strings, which cannot exceed 65000. I intend to use rather more than that, so have written some code to increase the limit. Can that be done in AGS? For example, one of my characters is Plato, and anyone who wants to can talk to him about his famous Dialogs. So Plato alone will require over a thousand strings. OK, he is unusual, but I expect to have over a thousand characters, and each one will need to say a lot of stuff.

Most of the limits in AGS are no problem. But I need a lot more strings, rooms and characters. I also need to know if AGS is scalable - has it ever been tested with that many rooms or will it slow to a crawl? And would the boss make such big changes for just one user (me)?

I don't want to go on about numbers - quality is more important than quantity. But some of the recent changes in AGS are very exciting to me. And to be frank, the recent freezing of the Sludge forum has spooked me a little. My game has taken three years so far (only a year of it in Sludge) and will probably take another ten years. By that time I wonder if Sludge will be a memory, but AGS will still be supported?

The biggest reason why the grass looks greener on the AGS side of the fence is the audio license. I intend to sell my game commercially, but for that, Sludge asks ten thousand dollars on an audio license (it's only free for non-commercial use). As far as I can tell, AGS sound (well, part of it) is genuinely free. Plus the whole open source / free ethos suggests that it will stay free for the foreseeable future.

Still, Sludge is clean and simple, and so flexible. I will probably stay with it, but AVG just keeps on improving....

AGS doesn't use strings in that way, so I'm pretty sure you won't encounter any limits as far as that's concerned...

AGS' sound is royalty-free if you use the MP3-free version and use OGGs instead.

As for the other things, you'd be best off asking on the AGS technical forum...

numbers and stuff
 

Thanks. I'm on to it!

This thread is really interesting. I think we need a good old-fashioned adventure game engine roundup. Point-by-point comparisons... that kind of thing. Anyone up for it?

I'm not a developer right now, but as time frees up in the future I might be giving these engines a try. A good comparative guide would be incredibly helpful.

comparing engines
 

I agree! I did a lot of comparison work a year or so ago before choosing Sludge, but a lot seems to have changed by then.

I registered, and tried to start a new thread, but got a 'page not found' error. Is this normal?

Most definitely. Try going to www.agsforums.com/yabb and trying again. The forums are definitely up at the moment, I'm on them right now...

Thanks. I tried a different (more expensive) ISP and it worked. Some message boards (aimoo is a nother one) seem to be sensitive to slower ISPs at busy times.

Let's not confuse Sludge with Firelight, the guys that made the sound library which Sludge uses. By the way, AGAST uses the same library.

Tim's already working on implementing a new library, a free one, but things are awfully quiet at the moment.

I hope they'll improve on speed in the future. A resolution of 1024x768 is problematic in AGS at the moment. Don't know about 800x600, though

--Erwin

I don't think anyone should choose which engine to use on the basis of such a list, because there's lot more to an engine than "does it support 1024*768 resolution or not". The best way is to try different engines, and pick the one you like the most.

Possibly a longer article could explain the differences of the engines better.

People shouldn't forget that Agast and Sludge and WME are getting better all the time, too. For example, some years ago the Agast programming language itself went through a major change.

And one feature AGS apparently doesn't (yet) have is five music channels, so that it is possible to crossfade music files (WME supports this). And AGS doesn't support seamless looping from one point of a music file to the other, too, if I remember correctly. Could somebody from the AGS community confirm this?

Is AGS 3D accelerated? 3D acceleration improves the framerate considerably in high resolutions, especially if you use antialiasing or sprites with an alpha-channel.

Crossfading and exact position-finding in music files is possible. As for 3D acceleration, I don't think that is supported, no.

comparing Sludge and AGS
 

The last I heard, the new library would be free for shareware use, but not for a full commercial project. It must be a lot of work to change something like this, so I don't think Tim would go back and change it again just for little old me. I had resigned myself to having either a silent game or paying a ton of money. Then discovered that AGS has come a long way in the last couple of years.

My heart is still with Sludge, but I wonder if my head should rule my heart in this case. Here are the reasons why I chose Sludge over AGS, and why those reasons are crumbling:

1. AGS had limits on overall numbers, but Sludge typically offers 65000 of everything. Yet the AGS limits have increased and there seem to be workarounds.

2. AGS seemed to force people into doing things in a certain way, but Sludge allows more freedom (it's more like a programming language). Yet it now appears that AGS scripting allows a lot of freedom as well.

3. No offense to everyone here, but Sludge games generally look better than AGS games. However, I think the reason is ease of use: AGS is so easy that it encourages a lot of beginners. Only the serious users bother with Sludge.

4. AGS games seem to run slower that Sludge games, and I assumed that this difference would increase with a very large game. But it seems I was wrong - a thousand room game will not run any slower than a ten room game.

5. The legal stuff. When I checked (long ago), AGS seemed a tiny bit vague about the legal issues, but Sludge was very clear and open. However, the current AGS site is very clear and precise.

There were other reasons, but these were the main ones. There is also a big 'X' factor. My game will not be ready for at least ten years. I have to use a crystal ball. What will the future bring? I like to use lists, so here are some other issues:

1. Will people still use 32 bit Windows in 2014? I think 'yes', because of the huge user base, even if it is just emulated on Linux.

2. Will the licensing situation change? The Sludge sound licensing depends on particular company. It might be out of business by then. Or more likely, I might find it impossible to prove what the current licensing situation is. I plan to sell my game to a regular distributor, and these gray areas could be a real headache. However. the OGG license (used by AGS) is sufficiently well established that I think it will still be clear cut in 2014.

3. Will some new bug arise that kills my game? Something minor and unexpected that is incorporated in 128 bit Lindows perhaps? I find the big AGS user base to be very reassuring. I am beginning to think that somebody, somewhere will still be bug fixing AGS in ten years. Normally you cannot say that about any software product, commercial or otherwise, but it seems to me that AGS has the inertia to stay.

4. How important is speed and flexibility? In ten years, even the best technology today will look dated, and even the slowest programs will run smoothly. My game is based on story, not clever technology. If the medium looks dated, or is a little restrictive, that's OK. Being dated and restricted never hurt the printed book. Perhaps if AGS is a tiny bit more restrictive that might even be a good thing - it might make beta testing a little easier.

Just my POV.

AGS is slower on high resolution - though many people have fast enough processors these days.

I don't, however.

Hmm, that's not what I heard. Tim emailed a few people about this. I'll see if I can dig it up.

I thought you knew a lot of people have asked for this and Tim is working on it?

--Erwin